booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

SOULSTAR is the hard work of keeping promises and transforming from survival to thriving. It’s where the characters have to figure out a way to actually solve problems for people imprisoned, displaced, or otherwise affected first by the aether network and then by its removal earlier in the series. It stars a new narrator, Robin Thorpe, who should be recognizable from the earlier books. 

Robin’s arc is very different from those of Miles and Grace. Miles’s story is one of running away from power, of refusing to be used. Grace had to figure out what to do with power once she knew what it had cost. Robin is stepping up to accept power, trying to balance between new responsibilities and prior commitments. She’s bonded with her community, paying attention to their needs and trying to get the ruling class to listen. As busy as she is on the page, it conveys the impression that she’s even busier between scenes, every moment full of frenetic drive and concern that unless things materially change for the common people then the small steps won’t be much better than nothing at all.

There’s a major character, Zelind, who appears here for the first time, having been imprisoned in one of the asylums for the last twenty years. I love kher place in the narrative, khe has a sub plot which revolves around kher and becomes very important later in the book. The dynamic between the two of them is understandably strained, as the intervening decades and trauma has shaped them into different people from who they were, and they have to figure out what’s left and what they want now that they’ve been reconnected.

This wraps up a major thing which was left hanging at the end of WITCHMARK, developed but not solved in STORMSONG, and now finally addressed in a really great way in SOULSTAR. There's a few major storylines which begin here and weren't present previously, with a very major thing that's both introduced and resolved here. It is the last book in the series and feels very finished. The world has room for more stories in it, but there's a definite arc that has reached its conclusion, and a minimum of hanging threads. The main thing left is I'd love to see these characters thriving in the background of even more stories, but overall I'm satisfied by what's here. The main character is Robin Thorpe, who was a secondary character in the first two books (moreso in WITCHMARK than STORMSONG), and her narration is very distinct from the other two. One way that I noticed this is as a narrator she refuses to treat whiteness as a default, where the narrators of the other two books didn't comment on race at all. It's a subtle thing that fits the backgrounds and biases of the three narrators in the series and is just one example of the way they prioritize completely different things from each other. 

This might make sense if someone started here and didn't know about the rest of the series. The main plot is pretty self-contained since Robin wasn't really involved in how things got to be this way (specifically but not only with regards to the aether crisis), so her perspective would likely help pull a new reader into the story. As always, this is the third book of a trilogy and I do recommend starting with the first book rather than beginning here.

I love SOULSTAR, on its own and as a strong ending to a great trilogy. 

The Baudelaire orphans are passed to yet another relative, this time to a woman who lives on a rickety clifftop house overlooking the lake where her husband drowned. 

I like how well-developed the relationships between the siblings are. The books are short so there isn’t a lot of room for it, but most of the space available is used for interactions between them as they deal with whatever misfortune has happened next. Aunt Josephine is a pretty one-note but understandable character, she’s yet another adult who seems completely unable to help or fully understand what’s happening and why it’s bad. 

There’s a sequence involving one of Olaf’s accomplices, the one where the children can’t tell if they’re a man or a woman. The whole scene is a mess of transphobia and fatphobia, with part of the terror derived from Violet not knowing what pronouns to use, and not knowing whether they should be addressed with “Sir” or “Ma’am”. Given that they are helping Olaf, the children’s inability to guess their gender should be irrelevant to their characterization as probably evil, but instead the whole thing is handled badly and it brought my enjoyment of the story to a screeching halt. It makes as much sense as justifying fright from not being able to determine someone’s hair color, and it’s just bad. It’s combined with fatphobia, using language like “monstrous” and “creature”, commenting on their size as an additional frightening characteristic. As their terror increases the text begins referring to the person as “it”, further dehumanizing them. They’ve never spoken, which also seems meant to be scary, and at minimum reinforces the dehumanizing characterization.

Other than just being the next step for the children, this doesn’t wrap up anything specifically left hanging from the last book. The storyline is new and has a major thing that’s introduced and resolved. It leaves a few things for later books to carry on. The narrator didn’t change and continues to ominously talk about his own life and the children’s fates. It could make sense to start here, but there’s important backstory about Count Olaf as a villain and the children’s situation until now which is best conveyed by the earlier books.

The plot is good, it has a great setup and execution. There’s a pretty cool mystery that the kids have to figure out, and it’s one where the reader genuinely can solve it along with them. Olaf’s latest scheme hits a great balance between horrific and absurd, which is tonally appropriate for the series. Mr. Poe is useless, as always, and Aunt Josephine is handled in a way that makes her flaws understandable even as they’re exaggerated to a ludicrous level to make the situation as bad as possible for the Baudelaire orphans. I found myself enjoying it a lot until the transphobic and fatphobic sequence happened. Unfortunately it was even worse than in the first two books, and so I can't recommend this one at all.

Darren has started to accept his half-vampire status, but he doesn't trust Mr. Crepsley as far as he could throw him before he turned, and it might be a problem.

I find it fascinating (and true to the characters) that more than a year into Darren’s acquaintance with Mr. Crepsley he still fundamentally doesn’t trust him and is suspicious of him at the first sign that something bad has happened nearby. I’m more used to betrayal stories where the tension is in a main character slowly realizing that someone they’ve trusted is bad. Not here! I won’t spoil whether Darren is right to be suspicious, but he jumps straight to being ready to murder Mr. Crepsley when he and Evra find out about a bad thing that happened in the city. Evra has to talk him out of immediately taking drastic action without evidence. It’s totally consistent with Darren as a person, he’s principled and impulsive, so he has strong convictions but keeps acting on them without waiting to find out whether reality matches his suppositions. 

This adds a new layer to the worldbuilding in the form of information about the Vampaneze, a great concept that I won’t spoil further. A lot of the language around one character involves discussing them as “mad” (used as a synonym for “crazy”). They’re specifically portrayed as having a different moral code from the main characters and Mr. Crepsley rigorously defends that they’re not “evil”. So that’s better, I guess? But it still was uncomfortable to have ableist language around mental health invoked in order to explain their motives. Darren calls them “mad because he doesn’t know how to understand why someone would believe and behave in that manner, which is a very common response.

This doesn’t specifically wrap anything from the last book in terms of plot, but it does address Darren’s lingering distrust of Mr. Crepsley and gives context to a topic very brief mentioned in THE VAMPIRE’S ASSISTANT. This is a new storyline, featuring a problem not specifically addressed before, with an inciting incident which occurs in the start of this book. Something major is introduced and resolved, and it leaves a pretty important thing for later. Darren’s narration is pretty consistent with prior books, though he’s starting to grow up, so there are ways that could change in the future without necessarily being a sign of narrative inconsistency. This could mostly make sense if someone started with this book and hadn’t read the previous ones, but it would make much more sense for someone who had read the prior books. It is pretty accessible for anyone who last read the first two books a while ago, as it doesn’t require more than a dim recollection of some earlier major events in order to be understandable.

Normally plots relying on betrayal and miscommunications stress me out, but this one resolves that particular tension with timing that meant I wasn’t too worried for the long term. I like the premise, it works well and is resolved in a manner suitable for horror: the answer is creepy and could go sour later but the immediate tensions have been addressed.

Darren, newly a half-vampire, is trying to preserve his humanity for as long as possible by refusing to drink human blood. Frustrated by his obstinance, Mr. Crepsley brings him to the Cirque du Freak so he can be around some people his own age. It ends badly for most people involved.

One thing I’m appreciating about the narration now that I’m an adult is the way that Darren telegraphs the general shape of events to come. Each book is narrated as something that already happened to him and which he’s survived, at least he’s persisted existentially in a way that lets him narrate in the future. With little comments about how they didn’t realize that something or someone would be such a big deal, or mentioning how badly something would turn out later, there’s an effect of hyping up anticipation about how the story will become more stressful. This serves a secondary purpose of letting the reader brace for the inevitable badness, which actually makes for a less stressful reader experience in some ways while still preserving the tension in the plot. By condensing the zone of anticipated stress to a focused area of the narrative, it lets readers who want a gentler experience know what plot areas are likely more safe. It does all this while winding up the tension in the area indicated, which makes a better overall experience (especially for people like me who rarely read horror). I read more horror now, but as a kid this author’s books were the only horror I reliably enjoyed reading.

Darren makes friends with Evra (a teenage performer) and Sam (one of the townspeople). They hang out and explore as a trio for much of the book. The other big relationship is the vampire/apprentice relationship between Mr. Crepsley and Darren, with much of that tension driven by Mr. Crepsley’s desire to keep Darren alive in spite of his refusal to drink the human blood his body needs. The worldbuilding is very character-focused, revolving around just a few people at the Cirque and some visitors to it. The most important new information is related to the Wolfman, Mr. Tiny, and The Little People. 

This wraps up something left hanging from the last book. It has a new storyline which wasn’t found previously, with several major things that are introduced and resolved here. It doesn’t specifically leave anything for later, but it does end with a pretty major event which implies a lot of change for the next book to utilize. Darren is still the narrator, other than in the very beginning when a one-off minor character is followed by a third-person narrator. The plot is very self-contained and could actually make sense even to someone who hadn’t read the first one. I do recommend beginning at the beginning, of course, but this is especially friendly to readers who may have waited a while after reading the first book.

The ending sets reader expectations for the rest of the series in a way that is somewhere between establishing a minimum level of death and telegraphing the possibility that the series will continue to get bloodier and more brutal from here on out. As I discussed earlier, the way the ending is hinted at throughout the book promises the reader things are going to get bad well in advance of when they actually do. This definitely helps with the overall shape of the story and how the tension is wound. Darren’s main tension is in his refusal to drink human blood, fearing that doing so will change him in a way that be taken back. Mr. Crepsley is trying to get him to let go of this aversion since it’s literally killing him. Darren is trying to avoid the issue altogether by losing himself in hanging out with Sam and Evra, trying to be a normal kid for a while longer. Because this is horror, eventually things go terribly wrong and Darren is left with choices that are bleaker and simpler than what he had at the start.

JUNIPER &THORN is a story built on a complicated tangle of self harm and exploration as Marlinchen, now a young woman, finally starts to defy her controlling father’s dictates. Especially early on, she has a variety of maladaptive behaviors including but not limited to self harm, disordered eating, and intrusive thoughts (ranging from negative self-talk to hypersexual fantasies). These are symptoms of and reactions to the ongoing all-pervasive abusive atmosphere which consumed her childhood and is set to rob her of normal adulthood as well. She and her sisters live in fear of their father, but as he’s made himself the only allowable source of affection in their lives they are desperate to retain his favor. As he’s also a wizard he’s threatened their bodies and lives if they disobey him, and can back up his threats with intimations of what happened to their mother before them. He controls their sexuality through threats and intimidation, as well as by using magical means to check whether they’re still “pure”, something which doesn’t stop Marlinchen from masturbating but makes her worried about how she goes about it.

Marlinchen is gaslit and abused by her father, and has toxic (often abusive) relationships with her sisters. The way that she’s constantly made to question her own perceptions but is also the narrator sometimes makes it hard to tell what things were supposed to be bad, or what things are stressful while not abusive. This had this overall effect that for the first half of the book I felt increasingly unmoored, hoping to find some part of her life that was actually okay and increasingly coming to the conclusion that this is a horror story and there’s not much that’s meant to be going well. 

Marlinchen's relationships with her sisters is contentious. They're all trying to maintain access to the extremely finite resource which is their father's goodwill, but they have different ways of measuring whether they've achieved it. Marlinchen's yardstick seems to be whether his abuse stays verbal instead of escalating, which is a depressingly low baseline. There’s a pivotal scene midway through where the tactics in their father’s abuse have taken a sudden turn, and Marlinchen has a confrontation with Undine where in her exasperation Undine says things that explain her own survival strategy, and the flaw she sees in Marlinchen’s. This prompts Marlinchen to realize that she has options she never considered, and that perhaps her sisters have been employing completely different strategies with very different aims from herself.

Some little linguistic touches place this in the same world as THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN. I'm sure if I go back to re-read the other book I'll notice more things, but I noticed enough to be sure even before looking it up to see that I was correct. Because Marlinchen is only able to visit a few locations, there's a lot of detail about the house but less about other places within the city. This means that most of the information about the city and their place in it is gradually told as it relates to how her father feels about it (generally, how he hates it and why). This makes for a (plot-appropriate) gloomy mood.

The plot is well-constructed and engaging. It created a slowly-building feeling of dread which fit the story and was very stressful. The ending made a bunch of early inconsistencies have an explanation beyond "fairy tale logic", and I'm very satisfied with how things ended. 

If the Incryptid series is one great big "I told you that story to tell you this story", SPELUNKING THROUGH HELL is "this story", and it's more than worth the wait. Alice has been hunting for Thomas, her missing husband, for decades and it's time to get a fresh round of ink and try one more time.

I’m so happy, this is everything I could want for Alice and Thomas’s arc. If you don’t know who they are please stop reading now and go back to the start of Incryptid, or at minimum back to the start of Antimony’s arc with MAGIC FOR NOTHING, as that’s the most recent jumping-on point which should still let this book be satisfying. The other way is to read all the Incryptid short stories (including the ones on the author’s Patreon page) and approach this as a pivotal moment in Alice and Thomas’s story while skipping the younger generations. My fervent recommendation is to read everything Incryptid (including the main series, the short stories, plus the first three Ghost Roads books) before this one, but there is more than one path which will prepare you enough to enjoy this.

Alice has been emotionally broken by her husband's disappearance and the ensuing five decades of searching for him, and often physically broken by turning into a bounty hunter in order to keep moving. She's been physically patched up along the way, but she's aware that the process of leaving almost everything and everyone behind to find Thomas might have turned her into someone he wouldn't recognize. It's also turned her into the kind of person who notes that change, has that worry, but doesn't overly dwell on it because staying the same when she lost him was never an option, she just was able to choose the path of her transformation.

Alice has some people who regularly help her in her travels. The main one is Naga, a giant snake person who she met when she was a kid. He oversees the process which lets her stay young and provides her with magic to travel and defend herself. There's also a pair of satyrs, Helen and Phoebe, who Alice has known for a long time as their world is often in the right direction for her travels. Of course Alice's biggest relationship, whether he's present or not, is with Thomas. I like their dynamic together, and I would like to restate how damn happy I am with how this book turns out. 

The worldbuilding for the dimensional travel is nice. There’s specific details for a couple of particular worlds, guidelines for how the whole things works, and then the logistics get out of the way of the plot and Alice handles the travel to her destination. A lot of the worldbuilding for cryptids more generally has been built up over the rest of the series so far, with a little bit of previous info on other dimensions, but this is the big one for how someone actually, repeatedly, would travel between dimensions in a way that isn't a giant ordeal like in CALCULATED RISKS.

This does much more than wrap up things left hanging, it’s what the whole series to this point has been heading towards. It features a new narrator, Alice (new at least in the main series, since there have been previously canon short stories which follow her). This is, from one perspective, a new storyline, but for anyone who has read the available Thomas and Alice short stories this is the first time hearing from Alice after Thomas’s disappearance (as of this review the only short stories featuring them are from before that event). A major thing is both introduced and resolved here. Technically it has been noticed but not explained earlier, and this time it’s fleshed out and handled for good. 

This is not the last book and it specifically leaves something for later, having clearly stated what Alice’s immediate plans are and the approximate time planned to carry them out. I have no idea whether the next book will pick up with those plans, return to Sarah’s storyline (last featured in Calculated Risks), or follow one of the other Healy’s. The options are many, and the important thing to note is that this series has plenty to keep it going from here. Telling this particular story was the goal of the series so far, but it’s definitely not the last entry. Alice’s perspective is consistent with her previous appearances in various short stories as a teenager and younger adult, but she is a new narrator for the main series. Her voice is distinct from the other characters and I enjoyed finally getting her point of view in her life after Thomas’s disappearance.

As an individual volume which tells a coherent story, SPELUNKING THORUGH HELL would likely make sense if read on its own but it wouldn’t be emotionally satisfying. This is the resolution point of a slowly-building relationship and fifty years of dimension hopping, so the catharsis works best when there’s something to emotionally resolve for the reader alongside the main character. I love the plot! The balance between journey and destination (with additional events at the destination) is good. I’d been worried that the whole thing would be a tour of dimensions with just a “hi” to Thomas at the end, but she reaches his probable location early enough in the book for a bunch of stuff to happen there. 

The included short story is SWEEP UP THE WOOD... and ends the book on a great note. I love the whole combination of the main story and the short story, these two in particular are great complements to each other.