booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

Atl is a vampire hiding out in Mexico City after her family was murdered. Domingo is a former street kid, now working as a scrap picker for a rag and bone man. When he has a chance encounter with Atl on the subway, she invites him to her home to drink from him. What Atl intended as a single meal turns out to be the beginning of a partnership as they work on fleeing Mexico City together. They're pursued by Nick, a Necros who is obsessed with Atl, and Ana Aguirre, a detective who thought her transfer to Mexico City would mean dealing with fewer vampires than she used to.

The rapport between Domingo and Atl is excellently-written, driven by Domingo's adoration of Atl, and Atl's need for Domingo's help but distaste for feeling weak. Atl is using up every one of her mother's contacts along the way, relying on wisps of goodwill and loyalty from humans and vampires who assumed their obligations died long before Atl's mother did. This results in a tangle of one-off and repeating characters as Atl and Domingo navigate this loose network of contacts, just trying to get out of the city alive. 

The worldbuilding is immersive, built through stories, buildings, and how the characters move through this alternate version of Mexico City where not only are vampires real but there are several kinds of them. Some (like Atl) are Tlahuihpochtli descended from Aztec blood drinker temple priestesses, but human colonization and the encroachment of other vampires, like Necros and Revenants, have made things more complicated for recent generations. Several decades ago humans found out vampires are real, and many places promptly tried to legislate them out of existence. Mexico City is one such "vampire free" zone, a situation which causes problems for Atl.

The plot is a web of pursuers and pursued, beginning in earnest when one of Atl's pursuers gets sloppy and the police find a dead human. It's a dance of obsession, violence, and death, as Atl tries to use Domingo without him spooking, while Domingo finds himself falling in love with her and not minding being used.

I loved every minute, and am extremely happy with the ending. Don't miss this one.

THE SAVAGE DAWN is the mediocre ending to an okay but enjoyable trilogy.

Caius is around two hundred years old and Echo begins this book at seventeen, but turns eighteen partway through. They're already dating (as part of what was formerly a mess of love triangles), with Rowan as Echo's ex-boyfriend but still close friend. Dorian is working on letting himself admit that he loves Jasper now that Caius is firmly out of reach and Jasper's ex, Quinn, has been booted.

I guess Quinn the Warlock was around in THE SHADOW HOUR precisely long enough to do one thing and then get kicked out, which seems to be for the best. This means that instead of Julian being stalked by Quinn, the barrier to Dorian and Julian getting together is Dorian's stubbornness and sorting through the change in how he feels about Caius. Quinn shows up one time in THE SAVAGE DAWN, but it feels extremely perfunctory, just enough to stop him from being a one-book-wonder. 

There's more worldbuilding this time around. There's still a lot of character work, but this finally delves into a bunch of details that have been previously unaddressed. The first two books were short on plot and long on love triangle angst, but this has a lot more things happen while it's resolving the various relationship tangles. Of particular note is a scene which introduces a never-before-seen group of creatures whose sole narrative purpose is to force Dorian to get over himself and recognize that he’s in love with Jasper. It feels like the author tried to do more worldbuilding this time, but because there weren't solid previous layers as a foundation it feels more like "oh that thing exists too" rather than being integrated into this series of complex hidden societies that no humans have found before now.

Perhaps most emblematic of the way this series prioritizes character moments over worldbuilding is when Echo finds out that the Ala has (between scenes, with no setup for it) revealed their existence to humans and now has a military force helping her, ready to go against Tanith. This is handwaved away immediately. "A more detailed explanation for the impossible logistics of what had transpired in her absence could wait. There were more pressing matters to attend to. And so long as she wouldn't have to dodge bullets while staging a rescue mission that was also an assassination, Echo found she didn't much care how it had come to pass that the Avicen were working alongside the human military." Echo doesn't care, so we don't find out. 

There's a small moment where they discover that Tanith used her blood to open something and Caius proposes trying to use his blood to fix it it because "...Tanith is my twin. Our blood is identical." They almost immediately try it and it works. This implies that perhaps one of the following is in play: Caius doesn't know about DNA (a distinct possibility); either Caius or Tanith is trans (exciting if true, but otherwise unsupported by the text); that the Drakharin are closer to reptiles than known previously and maybe they have temperature-determined sex characteristics (I'm definitely rooting for that one); or (likely, but boring) that the magic doesn't actually need them to be identical, just close enough. Since Tanith's blood is polluted by magic and Caius's isn't but his attempt works anyway, I'm pretty sure it's the last option. It's a very brief scene but it fascinates me because it implies a bunch of things that are way more interesting than what actually happens.

A subtle but slightly frustrating thing was the way identical or nearly-identical phrases would be used in more than one place as if conveying information the reader didn't have yet. Except on subsequent uses, it's information the reader definitely does have and which doesn't need to be repeated like that. One memorable instance was when discussing the topic of Echo's birthday, but it's not the only time. It's a small thing, but it made me check to see if the audiobook had suddenly jumped back the first time I noticed it (it had not, everything was fine). Some of these phrases repeated within the book, and some are ones I could swear appeared in one of the first two books.

In my review of THE SHADOW HOUR I noted that someone (often Caius or Echo) would just randomly know a thing that they needed in order to do something for the plot. That's still happening, and was most egregious when Caius remembered exactly what something looked like from having seen the drawing one time when looking at a random book that he just happened to skim a long time ago. I guess by now it's just established that Caius must have an eidetic memory or something, but it only comes up when the plot needs him to have the information so it feels extremely coincidental rather than it being that he has an excellent memory. To be precise, I find it weird that he's constantly happened to study exactly the obscure old language just a bit that they run across, enough to translate random script, despite specifically not having studied it seriously. It make it feel like his two hundred year history is used to fix plot holes, rather than being a genuine well of diverse and interesting experiences from a being working on his third century.

As the final book in the trilogy, this is okay but not great. It wraps up some relationship things left hanging, but it's so character-focused that the main thing left for it to wrap up is what happened to Caius after he was kidnapped, and how they'll stop Tanith and the shadow thing. Everything else is an answer to who is dating whom, and that's such a fluid thing that "wrap up" isn't the right term for what's going on there. I can't think of anything specific that it both introduces and resolves, except maybe the fate one a random human soldier in the big battle, and I don't think that counts. The rotating cast of point-of-view characters continues, but I'm actually pretty fuzzy on which ones have and have not been narrators at some point in the trilogy. I know Caius and Echo have been from the start, but I'm not sure for everyone else. Honestly, I was able to tell them apart thanks to the excellent audiobook narrator, I don't think everyone's dialogue was distinctive enough to be sure without that.

This would not make sense if anyone started here and hadn't read the previous books. Worse, it would give a false impression of the complexity of the first two if anyone tried. This dumps a lot of lore, out of nowhere, and only some of it matters. Additionally, it rehashes previous emotional beats in a way that would be very confusing for someone just entering the series. It's a mediocre enough read that I'd only recommend it to someone who loved the first two and wanted the conclusion, it's definitely not great enough to stand on its own without them. As the third book of the trilogy, that's not a bad thing necessarily, but I don't mean it in a good way this time.

The plot is a mess of kidnapping and following clues. I'm fuzzy on what actually happens because it repeats a lot of plot beats from THE SHADOW HOUR, with less love triangle stuff, and then adds in a gigantic battle which should have felt epic but instead feels like two armies fight off-page while the main characters angst at each other. Rowan is just Echo's friend rather than acting like an ex-boyfriend, for the most part, which is fine but a little undone by the ending. 

This sure is a book I read, and now it's over.

There are two active love triangles for most of the book. They're handled differently but have some overlap in terms of their setup. Caius, Echo (with Rose in her head), and Rowan comprise the first, and the second is composed of Dorian, Jasper, and Quinn. Echo and Rowan were kind of dating when the first book began, but Echo thought that killing Rowan's comrade de facto broke them up. Now, we find out Rowan didn't necessarily take it that way. Caius loves Echo in a way that's probably separate from how she contains his previous love, Rose, but it gets tricky to untangle. Echo is seventeen and Caius is around two hundred years old. Jasper and Quinn were previously in a relationship that's implied to have been abusive, with Quinn being such an all-consuming presence that Jasper ended up feeling stifled and used. Dorian likes Jasper, but isn't ready to try a relationship since he's barely given up on his long-unrequited crush on Caius. Because of how thin the plot is in terms of things happening, the love triangles shape a lot of the emotional beats of the narrative. While Dorian/Jasper/Quinn is technically a love triangle, Jasper is clearly still traumatized by his previous time with Quinn, and has zero interest in resuming any intimacy with him. If you don't like the relationship tangles you probably won't like the story, but there are other things to enjoy once you're in it. I'm not sure what the age gap is between Jasper and Dorian, precisely, but Dorian is older than him by at least a century. Jasper's previous toxic relationship was a while ago as a sixteen-year-old with Quinn, so while I don't know how old he is here he's at least implied to be an adult.

The worldbuilding remains very character-driven, with very sparse details about any of either side's social structure. Even the history of the firebird is conveyed through impressions and flashbacks conveyed to Echo as its vessel. The main quest of the book is to get more information (since so little has been forthcoming), with separate threads following Ivy and Echo as Ivy tries to figure out the Dragon Prince's plans, and Echo sneaks off to find out more about the firebird and its destructive opposite. They travel to a smattering of Earth cities, either to get supplies or as part of the various quests. There's a fair amount of references to human things, but since they're often in the form of a subtle joke about one of the non-human characters being unfamiliar with something, they aren't very explanatory. That makes them feel more like character development than worldbuilding.

The audiobook narrator did a decent job with the voices, but towards the end the male characters started to blend together as their voices were performed similarly. This was especially true for minor characters who only have brief appearances. 

As the second book in a trilogy, this continues several things left hanging from the first book but doesn't really wrap any of them up. It shows Echo adjusting to being the firebird, the continued development of the main love triangle, and Ivy's ongoing recovery from having been tortured by Dorian in the first book. There's a new storyline related to stopping the shadow thing which was released when the firebird manifested, and that is partly left hanging for the third book to wrap up. It introduces and resolves something related to a new love triangle, and it leaves for later the start of something for Ivy that I hope develops further in the finale. Because it's such a character-focused story, a lot of the resolutions involve characters dying or grief over a character who has died, while ongoing issues tend to be either physical peril or injuries. Even an early battle lingers in the form of shadows making people sick, with the strange illness having more of an impact than the conflict itself.

Echo is still the main character and her voice is consistent with the first book. I'm still enjoying the multilingual vocabulary tidbits. It might make sense to start here if someone didn't read the first book but went straight to this one. Even though it's character-focused, the relationship tangles are established early in terms of their current position, then develop throughout once recapped from the first book. That makes it easy to jump in. The other thing that makes it easy to start here is that only a couple of important things actually happened in the first book, with about as many happening here. That makes the plot easy to recap, and the characters are shown in such an immersive manner that they make sense almost immediately.

I know this is an anti-hero story, setting her up to be the villain of the sequel, but I detested the main character and just couldn't keep going. Her relationship with Wei feels built on nothing but having been near each other. They have no chemistry and it seems like they barely even talk. I like it when characters have good reasons to try and do a bad thing, but this seemed like she's determined to make terrible decisions in order to live up to what her abuser wants, knowing that Guma was abusive. I don't like any of it and I'm stopping.

The worldbuilding is light on details, focusing on a few key mechanics (such as the powder that lets Echo turn doorways into portals), a little bit of the Avicen social structure, and the library where Echo lives. Where it dwells is in descriptions of interactions between the characters, coupled with their internal struggles. That there is a war between the Avicen and the Drakharin, one which has gone on for a long time and taken many lives, that is enough for now, but I do hope the sequels have more background detail.

Dorian has one eye, having lost the other by knife in a previous fight. What gradually frustrated me is how often his one-eyed status is brought up in connection with some unrelated negative trait, whether real or imagined. He tortured one of the other characters before they ended up working together, so it's completely understandable that he wouldn't be seen in a positive light and he's in a redemption arc. However, those extremely valid reasons to highlight any of his negative attributes kept being paired in the text with mentions of his disability. It's not a huge thing, but making the villain be the character missing an eye or with some other visible disfigurement is such a longstanding ableist trope that it's frustrating to see echoes of it here, even if dimly. I do understand that's he's not a villain by about halfway through, but he begins the book in the position of villain to Echo and her Avicen friend, Ivy, by being part of Ivy's torture in Drakharin hands.

The main storyline involves Echo following clues left behind in a series of objects which turn out to be relevant to one of the other characters. From there it's a lot of running and pining, long on vibes and short on plot (in an enjoyable way). I like how Echo collects words from different languages in order to say a single word to encapsulate some complicated feeling or circumstance. It blends well with her genre-savviness and tendency to reference the many things she read while living in a library. 

The chain of requited and unrequited romantic interest between the five main characters (and Echo's quickly sidelined sort-of-boyfriend) is delightfully messy, beginning to explore possible configurations among the main cast before they've even become a group. Echo and Caius are drawn together pretty quickly (for backstory reasons that end up paying off later), to the disappointment of Dorian who has been quietly pining for Caius for years. Luckily, someone else becomes interested in Dorian, and I'm especially looking forward to that playing out more in the next book. I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that Echo is seventeen and Caius is around two hundred years old, with his previous relationship taking place a century ago. Dorian is of a similar age as Caius.

The ending is fine, though a bit abrupt. I'm glad this is the first of a trilogy because it does a lot of work to set up these characters and I'm interested in what they'll do next.

Too focused on visuals and audio details, I prefer a conversation-heavy style.

This is a good introduction to Alanna and Tortall, setting up things that will play out fully in later books. The setting is a swords and sorcery fantasy (occasionally both in the same fight) in a vaguely medieval kingdom which various neighbors and internal factions. It also establishes the Bazhir and their complicated relationship with Tortall (partially absorbed through treaties and alliances with individual tribes, but not conquered), with the book's finale set in the desert.

Given that the Bazhir are loosely based on real desert-dwelling peoples (something which becomes abundantly clear in later books), it seems like a not-great thing for their prophecy to involve being saved by two people who come in from outside and fight a great evil which they either couldn't defeat or never tried to stop. Alanna (and probably Jon as well) is learning about the Bazhir for the very first time on the same trip where she and Jon combat this evil. It plays into a long history of white-savior stories in an uncomfortable way.

I first read this when I was Alanna’s age, and I’ve read it dozens of times since then.  Alanna trades places with her twin brother, Thom, so that he can study magic and she can become a knight. In order to pull off the switch, Alanna disguises herself as a boy, and finds herself bonding with a slightly older group of boys who become squires while she’s still a page. She also faces a bully who torments her in her first year, having to figure out the difference between being good at combat and being a bully.

One thing I appreciate about this book is its chapter containing something which was sorely needed in the late 1980’s when this came out and which is still useful today: a brief and useful description of what a menstrual cycle is and how to care for one’s body when it happens. Because Alanna becomes a page at age 10, and only her manservant knows she’s a girl and not the boy she’s pretending to be, when she gets her period she doesn’t know why it’s happening and has to secretly get help to find out what’s going on. It’s handled quickly and with enough detail that someone who needs this information would at least have a starting point. I don’t like how Alanna’s protests about disliking her body’s trajectory are waived away as being what the Gods ordained, but it fits this story in which the Gods are very real, and one Goddess in particular seems to be taking an interest in Alanna. 

This is a great start to the series while being a complete story in its own right, covering Alanna's first year of her life as Alan the page. 

Sassinak is captured by planet pirates as a child, losing her whole family. She joins the Fleet once she gets free, and begins to direct her later career towards stopping slavery and piracy altogether. 

The worldbuilding is immersive in several different settings throughout different stages of Sassinak’s life, from her capture and enslavement in childhood, to her Fleet training, to various shipboard positions throughout her early adulthood and middle age. Technically this is the first book, but it can also be read after its prequel/sequel THE DEATH OF SLEEP.

The narrative skips over years at a time, filling in bits of backstory as necessary rather than trying to tell all the twists and turns of Sassinak’s career in the Fleet. This keeps the pacing tight, as each section forms a discreet narrative. The later ones benefit from Sass’s increased knowledge and expertise, but most of the secondary characters are swapped out for new ones since first they’re her fellow slaves, then Fleet students, then crew-mates on successive vessels. That military structure means she has different people in similar official roles around her, forming closer friendships with a few of them.

Most of the difficulties revolve around saboteurs trying to use existing prejudices against heavyworlders to deflect suspicions from whomever the actual malicious agents may be. There’s at least one firefight with pirates, which is pretty exciting. The political tensions writ large exacerbate petty tensions between individuals in a way that feels realistic.

The ending is specifically a “to-be-continued” situation, where the sequel is a kind of prequel which explains how Lunzie and some others ended up in cold sleep for decades, and then the third book is about Lunzie and Sass going after planet pirates as an institution. That’s what seems to be promised based on SASSINAK’s cliffhanger ending and the other books’ blurbs, but I’ll find out for certain when I get to them. I enjoyed this and plan to read the rest of the trilogy.

I almost stopped at the second chapter because I wasn’t feeling it, but I tried to keep going for a bit. NASA’s plan makes no sense and the AI’s feel out of place. 

Not my thing.