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davramlocke's Reviews (777)
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This is such an incomplete, unresolved collection that the publishers should be embarrassed that it exists.
I used to watch a show called Lost Girl about a succubus embroiled in a complicated Fae world. She had a human sidekick and lots of sex. It was an all right show, watched because, at the time, there simply were not that many fantasy shows on television. Game of Thrones hadn't blown the doors off of the possibility yet. Patrick LeClerc's Out of Nowhere reminds me of Lost Girl, not so much in its themes, though it too is urban, paranormal romance, but because it is neither good nor particularly bad. It's a solid piece of writing that feels like the urban fantasy equivalent of a James Patterson novel - it's easy to read but I've already forgotten about most of its characters and plot (in fact I just had to look up what the main character's name despite finishing the book yesterday).
Out of Nowhere is about Sean Danet, a man who can heal at a touch, and who is subsequently immortal. He can't heal himself, so how he can retain immortality is but one of many plot holes never explained. He can heal others so that their cells regenerate, and so has a cat of indeterminate age, but is unable to heal even a hangnail in regards to his own. Sean works as a paramedic, where he can use his powers without drawing too much attention to his supernatural self. As he has learned in the past, people fear what they can not explain, and so he keeps his secrets close. During a routine broken ankle call, Sean unknowingly heals the descendant of a man whose family swore a blood oath to kill Sean some time back in the misty past. This sets in motion the plot of the novel, which is basically Sean killing anyone who comes near him. He meets an ancient languages professor named Sarah, whom he falls in love with, and that is basically the book.
What I liked about Out of Nowhere is the obvious medical knowledge imparted on the text. LeClerc knows his EMT terminology, which he should because his bio says he worked or works as one still. This comes off in the text, and I wonder whether he might have been better off simply writing a book about an EMT. The supernatural stuff works in context, but I'm not sure it adds anything outside of the history portions sprinkled throughout the text. Sean is constantly reminiscing about some war or some woman from the past, despite his memories suffering from longevity problems. The history portions are interesting, and there is an authenticity feel to his combat descriptions, but I also had issues with this. Sean is constantly remembering historical figures as though he knew them well. He speaks of famous authors and generals as though he had tea with them weekly, and this might be believable once or twice in his long history, but not constantly. How many of us regular folk walking around are in touch with famous world-shaping types in our daily lives? I'd wager almost none, but Sean seems to have constantly been intimate with many. His healing powers might make this relevant if he weren't so touchy about keeping them secret.
There are also some sexist and racist bits in Out of Nowhere that had me cringing as I read them. At one point in the novel Sean asks himself if he's sexist, then goes on to explain that he is but that it's ok because he's the protagonist. The way he looks at women throughout the entire book is uncomfortable, to say the least, and while he isn't outright comparing them to fine cuts of meat, he might as well be. Similarly, there is casual racism sprinkled throughout that probably makes sense in a real-world context, I would assume LeClerc has encountered this almost non-stop in his time as a medic, but that doesn't mean it needs to make its way into a book. Authors have the power to create better worlds, particularly in fantasy, and so unless the book is specifically about racism or has themes of it, which this does not, I see no reason to pepper the text with even occasional racist slang. I might only have noticed this because I'm particularly sensitive to it, but it bothered me, as did the overt homophobic nature that rode right along with it.
What I see in Out of Nowhere is an effort by an author either new to novels or new to writing in general, and as such it's not a bad effort. I read through it, which I can not say for every entry into the SPFBO 2019 contest, even the finals, but had it been any longer than its 260 pages, I might not have. LeClerc is smart to keep this one short.
Out of Nowhere is about Sean Danet, a man who can heal at a touch, and who is subsequently immortal. He can't heal himself, so how he can retain immortality is but one of many plot holes never explained. He can heal others so that their cells regenerate, and so has a cat of indeterminate age, but is unable to heal even a hangnail in regards to his own. Sean works as a paramedic, where he can use his powers without drawing too much attention to his supernatural self. As he has learned in the past, people fear what they can not explain, and so he keeps his secrets close. During a routine broken ankle call, Sean unknowingly heals the descendant of a man whose family swore a blood oath to kill Sean some time back in the misty past. This sets in motion the plot of the novel, which is basically Sean killing anyone who comes near him. He meets an ancient languages professor named Sarah, whom he falls in love with, and that is basically the book.
What I liked about Out of Nowhere is the obvious medical knowledge imparted on the text. LeClerc knows his EMT terminology, which he should because his bio says he worked or works as one still. This comes off in the text, and I wonder whether he might have been better off simply writing a book about an EMT. The supernatural stuff works in context, but I'm not sure it adds anything outside of the history portions sprinkled throughout the text. Sean is constantly reminiscing about some war or some woman from the past, despite his memories suffering from longevity problems. The history portions are interesting, and there is an authenticity feel to his combat descriptions, but I also had issues with this. Sean is constantly remembering historical figures as though he knew them well. He speaks of famous authors and generals as though he had tea with them weekly, and this might be believable once or twice in his long history, but not constantly. How many of us regular folk walking around are in touch with famous world-shaping types in our daily lives? I'd wager almost none, but Sean seems to have constantly been intimate with many. His healing powers might make this relevant if he weren't so touchy about keeping them secret.
There are also some sexist and racist bits in Out of Nowhere that had me cringing as I read them. At one point in the novel Sean asks himself if he's sexist, then goes on to explain that he is but that it's ok because he's the protagonist. The way he looks at women throughout the entire book is uncomfortable, to say the least, and while he isn't outright comparing them to fine cuts of meat, he might as well be. Similarly, there is casual racism sprinkled throughout that probably makes sense in a real-world context, I would assume LeClerc has encountered this almost non-stop in his time as a medic, but that doesn't mean it needs to make its way into a book. Authors have the power to create better worlds, particularly in fantasy, and so unless the book is specifically about racism or has themes of it, which this does not, I see no reason to pepper the text with even occasional racist slang. I might only have noticed this because I'm particularly sensitive to it, but it bothered me, as did the overt homophobic nature that rode right along with it.
What I see in Out of Nowhere is an effort by an author either new to novels or new to writing in general, and as such it's not a bad effort. I read through it, which I can not say for every entry into the SPFBO 2019 contest, even the finals, but had it been any longer than its 260 pages, I might not have. LeClerc is smart to keep this one short.
I do not understand the title, but I liked this short. I was a little leery halfway through, thinking "if this is what this author does to children, this might not be for me," but I think I'm more interested in his novels now than before I started this. I get definite Bloodborne vibes.
I made it roughly halfway through this before realizing that I simply didn't care about anything happening in this alternate Marvel vision. It is so boring and the art so off putting that I am a little shocked it made it past quality control. I only give it two stars because I respect attempts to write outside the box (it's how we got Frank Miller's Batman and others of that ilk). This one does not work.
Disclaimer: The author of this book approached me through TBRinder and offered me a digital ARC of the book for an honest review. I read through the entire thing and an honest review follows.
"First of all - this is not an exercise manual. It's a fantasy novel suffused with mysticism and mythology," says author Andrew Rowe on his website in a letter written to introduce The Yoga of Strength. Titles are important - as are covers. Together, they set a tone, even digitally, that needs to be met within the first few pages of a novel and then carried onward. Despite Rowe's claim that this is not an exercise manual, the word 'yoga' immediately brings to mind, depending on who you are, a wrinkled old Indian man contorted into inexplicable poses, or a room full of middle-aged fitness enthusiasts in very tight pants. Therefore, we are at odds when we open the book and find that it is basically a historical fiction novel set in medieval Europe that, over its course, reveals the existence of hidden magic unbeknownst to its populace. In a way, this is appropriate for a book that never really finds itself and does not seem to know exactly what it is.
Despite my initial misgivings about said title, and cover, I was drawn immediately into Rowe's world. I am a sucker for medieval settings, as any fantasy fan likely is, and Rowe paints an authentic portrait of medieval European life. His protagonist, Andrew Cardiff (and I won't get into the problems of naming your main character after yourself, aside from pointing out it out here), is not so likable. In fact, he is so unlikable from the start that it seems overwhelmingly obvious that this will be a character-building novel that will hopefully see him transform into someone we can root for and maybe even love. I regret that, for me, this never happened. He does change throughout the novel, but the impetus is never his. He is bombarded with outside forces that require him to morph into someone else, but the core of him never transforms away from the cynical child that we meet in the beginning. There are never any true moments of self-reflection, but rather manufactured instances where he is told that something is so and then absorbs this knowledge completely. His arc is so disappointing that it becomes the central focus of a book that could, with a fair amount of polish, be something worth reading. There are other characters in the book, but they are largely irrelevant and seem to exist only for Andrew's benefit, marking another problematic point in a novel full of them.
The plot of The Yoga of Strength does have good pacing and flows along quite well. It follows Cardiff as he travels the breadth of an imaginary Europe, and though it is fairly boilerplate in terms of fantasy fiction, this is not inherently bad. Cardiff has a true Hero's Journey in the sense that he leaves home, travels through the desert (or Hell), and then returns a changed man. Unfortunately this relatively simple tale is marred by both Cardiff's personality (because we never leave our protagonists point of view) and a slew of issues surrounding sexuality, gender, and simple human motivations. There is a groin obsession in The Yoga of Strength that is so prevalent that I don't think a page passes by without some mention of someones genitals or other gratuitous body parts. There are also prevailing attitudes about homosexuality that are approached with all the nuance of a wrecking ball and fall so far from the mark that I felt severely uncomfortable reading them. The same can be said for the narrative's view of women, which are only ever seen through the lens of 'mother' and 'sex-toy' (and sometimes this line gets blurry).
Rowe's writing is almost as mystifying as his plotting. There were times when I was genuinely impressed with a sentence or paragraph, and I think he does an excellent job at describing a setting. But there are sentences full of grammatical mistakes, and a mixture of purple prose and gutter-talk that mix as well as wine and motor oil. There are tense changes, often mid-sentence, that do not make grammatical sense, and there is even the notion that Andrew is telling this story to someone, suggested by the use of 'you' throughout, and by passages describing how he later would have no memory of such and such an instance, despite no mention of this being a "tale-told" novel in structure. Rowe's insistence on using dialect, and only ever when speaking through the voice of one of the novel's poor, ignoble characters, is another black mark that is hard to overlook. On the whole, the writing itself mars the plot because it sows confusion, despite the odd skillfully written sentence or description.
To be clear, I do not begin novels wanting to dislike them. I open up every book with the same wonder I did as a child, prepared to be transported to a mystical world and fall in love with characters of all shape and color. The Yoga of Strength, despite its apparent mission of trying to tell the story of a cynical boy who becomes a strong man, fails in its goal, and I actually feel that I am being generous in giving it even a 2/5. This is not a book I would recommend, and I had a hard time getting through to the end. I think that Andrew Rowe has talent as an author, but there is a lot of work that needs to go into a book like this before it should find its way into reader hands.
"First of all - this is not an exercise manual. It's a fantasy novel suffused with mysticism and mythology," says author Andrew Rowe on his website in a letter written to introduce The Yoga of Strength. Titles are important - as are covers. Together, they set a tone, even digitally, that needs to be met within the first few pages of a novel and then carried onward. Despite Rowe's claim that this is not an exercise manual, the word 'yoga' immediately brings to mind, depending on who you are, a wrinkled old Indian man contorted into inexplicable poses, or a room full of middle-aged fitness enthusiasts in very tight pants. Therefore, we are at odds when we open the book and find that it is basically a historical fiction novel set in medieval Europe that, over its course, reveals the existence of hidden magic unbeknownst to its populace. In a way, this is appropriate for a book that never really finds itself and does not seem to know exactly what it is.
Despite my initial misgivings about said title, and cover, I was drawn immediately into Rowe's world. I am a sucker for medieval settings, as any fantasy fan likely is, and Rowe paints an authentic portrait of medieval European life. His protagonist, Andrew Cardiff (and I won't get into the problems of naming your main character after yourself, aside from pointing out it out here), is not so likable. In fact, he is so unlikable from the start that it seems overwhelmingly obvious that this will be a character-building novel that will hopefully see him transform into someone we can root for and maybe even love. I regret that, for me, this never happened. He does change throughout the novel, but the impetus is never his. He is bombarded with outside forces that require him to morph into someone else, but the core of him never transforms away from the cynical child that we meet in the beginning. There are never any true moments of self-reflection, but rather manufactured instances where he is told that something is so and then absorbs this knowledge completely. His arc is so disappointing that it becomes the central focus of a book that could, with a fair amount of polish, be something worth reading. There are other characters in the book, but they are largely irrelevant and seem to exist only for Andrew's benefit, marking another problematic point in a novel full of them.
The plot of The Yoga of Strength does have good pacing and flows along quite well. It follows Cardiff as he travels the breadth of an imaginary Europe, and though it is fairly boilerplate in terms of fantasy fiction, this is not inherently bad. Cardiff has a true Hero's Journey in the sense that he leaves home, travels through the desert (or Hell), and then returns a changed man. Unfortunately this relatively simple tale is marred by both Cardiff's personality (because we never leave our protagonists point of view) and a slew of issues surrounding sexuality, gender, and simple human motivations. There is a groin obsession in The Yoga of Strength that is so prevalent that I don't think a page passes by without some mention of someones genitals or other gratuitous body parts. There are also prevailing attitudes about homosexuality that are approached with all the nuance of a wrecking ball and fall so far from the mark that I felt severely uncomfortable reading them. The same can be said for the narrative's view of women, which are only ever seen through the lens of 'mother' and 'sex-toy' (and sometimes this line gets blurry).
Rowe's writing is almost as mystifying as his plotting. There were times when I was genuinely impressed with a sentence or paragraph, and I think he does an excellent job at describing a setting. But there are sentences full of grammatical mistakes, and a mixture of purple prose and gutter-talk that mix as well as wine and motor oil. There are tense changes, often mid-sentence, that do not make grammatical sense, and there is even the notion that Andrew is telling this story to someone, suggested by the use of 'you' throughout, and by passages describing how he later would have no memory of such and such an instance, despite no mention of this being a "tale-told" novel in structure. Rowe's insistence on using dialect, and only ever when speaking through the voice of one of the novel's poor, ignoble characters, is another black mark that is hard to overlook. On the whole, the writing itself mars the plot because it sows confusion, despite the odd skillfully written sentence or description.
To be clear, I do not begin novels wanting to dislike them. I open up every book with the same wonder I did as a child, prepared to be transported to a mystical world and fall in love with characters of all shape and color. The Yoga of Strength, despite its apparent mission of trying to tell the story of a cynical boy who becomes a strong man, fails in its goal, and I actually feel that I am being generous in giving it even a 2/5. This is not a book I would recommend, and I had a hard time getting through to the end. I think that Andrew Rowe has talent as an author, but there is a lot of work that needs to go into a book like this before it should find its way into reader hands.
"You don't argue with a name like "Lucky" if you were lucky to be alive." Thus starts KS Villoso's Blackwood Marauders, and in doing so introduces us to its main character, one Luc "Lucky" apn Jak, a young man so likable from the start that even had I not enjoyed the story and other characters of Blackwood, I likely would have read it simply to walk through the world with him. Luc is something of a paradox, in that he presents a positive and outgoing bent on life while traversing a world that is decidedly dark and grim. He is consistently in contrast to almost every other person he meets, and somehow Villoso makes this work.
There is much about Blackwood Marauders that could see it undervalued as just another fantasy coming-of-age story in a pile of them that none of us will ever be able to finish. There are tropes aplenty from the start: Luc leaves his rural village to find his place in the world; a convenient set of events leads him away from that home and does not allow him to come back; he does not know who his real parents are and was found washed ashore by a man who happened to be as morally pure as they come; etc. These are all themes we have read about before, in various mediums, and to see them emerge again either feels like visiting an old friend or having an old, unwelcome, friend visit you. I would argue for the former in the case of Blackwood Marauders because I think Villoso's voice provides a fresh take on this type of story. For one, Luc is not the shy, young man lacking confidence that we expect in this type of tale. He has a brashness to him that is common only in Errol Flynn-style swashbucklers, but it is a boldness tempered by his need to do what's right. He has character, imparted to him by the aforementioned moral father, and he never compromises that center even when faced with some truly troubling decisions. Luc is offset by Roena, the spoiled, rebellious daughter of a local lord, and when the two eventually meet, there is a clash of ideologies that is fascinating to watch.
Like many coming-of-age tales, Blackwood Marauders follows a Hero's Journey path. Luc leaves home, descends in to the underbelly of humanity, finds various mentors in various forms, and eventually returns home a changed man. Along the way he joins a mercenary band, kills magical creatures that he has no right tackling, and meets a gamut of fantasy personalities. I truly enjoyed Villoso's world-building, even if at times I found it hard to follow. She has built lore into her writing that has the ring of authenticity to it, and I wanted more by the end of the novel. I was actually disappointed to learn that Blackwood Marauders is a stand-alone, both for those lore reasons and because I think Luc is a good enough character to carry a series forward.
I did have some more pressing issues with the book. The writing can be inconsistent, with tense shifts and oddities in grammar that unerringly pulled me away from the narrative. This is not to say that there aren't beautiful lines within, like this personal favorite, "Daughter and father were like the sun and the moon - neither could light the sky at the same time." The dialogue can feel off in places while being excellent in others - certain characters feel incredibly real while others often feel like caricatures. Around the two-thirds mark of the novel, the pacing gets thrown off track, with events seeming to speed up and slow down in a disconcerting way, as though the novel were rushed in its back half and potentially even edited less.
Despite those issues, I really enjoyed what Blackwood Marauders had to offer. There is a mixture of Robin Hood and the Black Company in Villoso's depiction of the mercenary band that Luc and Roena find. I think Luc is a character worth returning to, and while I didn't particularly love Roena, I think she holds her own and the disparity between her and Luc, which ebbs and wanes throughout the novel, is interesting enough in its own right. Mostly, I just want to learn more about this world she's built. My hope is to do so with some of her other novels which seem to provide that backdrop I seek. Blackwood Marauders, despite its flaws, certainly receives a recommendation from this reader.
There is much about Blackwood Marauders that could see it undervalued as just another fantasy coming-of-age story in a pile of them that none of us will ever be able to finish. There are tropes aplenty from the start: Luc leaves his rural village to find his place in the world; a convenient set of events leads him away from that home and does not allow him to come back; he does not know who his real parents are and was found washed ashore by a man who happened to be as morally pure as they come; etc. These are all themes we have read about before, in various mediums, and to see them emerge again either feels like visiting an old friend or having an old, unwelcome, friend visit you. I would argue for the former in the case of Blackwood Marauders because I think Villoso's voice provides a fresh take on this type of story. For one, Luc is not the shy, young man lacking confidence that we expect in this type of tale. He has a brashness to him that is common only in Errol Flynn-style swashbucklers, but it is a boldness tempered by his need to do what's right. He has character, imparted to him by the aforementioned moral father, and he never compromises that center even when faced with some truly troubling decisions. Luc is offset by Roena, the spoiled, rebellious daughter of a local lord, and when the two eventually meet, there is a clash of ideologies that is fascinating to watch.
Like many coming-of-age tales, Blackwood Marauders follows a Hero's Journey path. Luc leaves home, descends in to the underbelly of humanity, finds various mentors in various forms, and eventually returns home a changed man. Along the way he joins a mercenary band, kills magical creatures that he has no right tackling, and meets a gamut of fantasy personalities. I truly enjoyed Villoso's world-building, even if at times I found it hard to follow. She has built lore into her writing that has the ring of authenticity to it, and I wanted more by the end of the novel. I was actually disappointed to learn that Blackwood Marauders is a stand-alone, both for those lore reasons and because I think Luc is a good enough character to carry a series forward.
I did have some more pressing issues with the book. The writing can be inconsistent, with tense shifts and oddities in grammar that unerringly pulled me away from the narrative. This is not to say that there aren't beautiful lines within, like this personal favorite, "Daughter and father were like the sun and the moon - neither could light the sky at the same time." The dialogue can feel off in places while being excellent in others - certain characters feel incredibly real while others often feel like caricatures. Around the two-thirds mark of the novel, the pacing gets thrown off track, with events seeming to speed up and slow down in a disconcerting way, as though the novel were rushed in its back half and potentially even edited less.
Despite those issues, I really enjoyed what Blackwood Marauders had to offer. There is a mixture of Robin Hood and the Black Company in Villoso's depiction of the mercenary band that Luc and Roena find. I think Luc is a character worth returning to, and while I didn't particularly love Roena, I think she holds her own and the disparity between her and Luc, which ebbs and wanes throughout the novel, is interesting enough in its own right. Mostly, I just want to learn more about this world she's built. My hope is to do so with some of her other novels which seem to provide that backdrop I seek. Blackwood Marauders, despite its flaws, certainly receives a recommendation from this reader.
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Read for SPFBO 2019. Rating and review to come.
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Some tough honesty here - Petrified has one of the worst covers I've seen on a book. It's so off-putting that it really soured this reader on the experience of even beginning it. I mean, look at that thing. It's right over there, staring at you, daring you to open it and knowing you won't. This is tragic because Petrified is a solid urban fantasy with interesting mythology and characters that feel worth knowing (for the most part).
The biggest regret I had with Petrified was the main character's ability to animorph into an otter/otter-man. To the very last page, this felt ridiculous to me, particularly when other characters in the book were transforming into less comical animals. This might have worked better had it been a comedy, but the book, while having jokes, takes itself fairly seriously. This even wraps back around to the cover, which also makes Petrified look like a comic fantasy, and I can't help but wonder what the book might have been had it featured a stronger main character. Overall, Petrified remains a solid read.
The biggest regret I had with Petrified was the main character's ability to animorph into an otter/otter-man. To the very last page, this felt ridiculous to me, particularly when other characters in the book were transforming into less comical animals. This might have worked better had it been a comedy, but the book, while having jokes, takes itself fairly seriously. This even wraps back around to the cover, which also makes Petrified look like a comic fantasy, and I can't help but wonder what the book might have been had it featured a stronger main character. Overall, Petrified remains a solid read.