This is an omnibus edition that contains Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light and The Fire’s Stone. Check out those respective pages for their reviews.

I don’t know a lot about Moscow, or even Russia in general. If I had more free time, I would devote some of it to feeling guilty for this gap in my knowledge. Some day I might even get around to rectifying it by reading some informative books on the subject, rather than fantasy (which, I’m given to understand, is not always 100% factual—odd, that). But not today! No, today I’ll talk about The Secret History of Moscow, in all its dark and magical glory.

Ekaterina Sedia writes fairy tales. The Alchemy of Stone is a fairy tale about a clockwork woman who wants to be a real girl. The Secret History of Moscow is a fairy tale about a woman who, out of place and out of touch with our own world, uncovers a secret one while searching for her sister. When Masha turns into a jackdaw after giving birth in their bathroom, Galina wants to know why. Along the way, she meets a cop who has been investigating similar disappearances. They, in turn, meet a street artist who leads them into another world—underground—where the detritus of Moscow’s past has slunk.

I’m not sure what to do with The Secret History of Moscow. I’m not sure what to say about it, or really how I feel about it. It was OK. Sedia kept me interested, kept me wanting to know how it would all turn out. But now that I’m finished it, I discover that it has left almost no impression with me. That makes it difficult to review.

Wherefrom this malaise? I blame the structure of the narrative, the way Sedia chooses to tell this story. Galina, Yakov, and Fyodor waste no time discovering the underground, a twisted sort of fairyland where gods go to wither and die…. And then they stay there. For a while. They sort of loaf around an ersatz inn, chatting with Yakov’s grandfather and learning a little about the locals. Is it interesting? I guess. But it’s a lull, one that belies the otherwise urgent beat of the plot drum. There are people missing, birds flying through reflections in puddles to other worlds … I wanted to jump up and yell, “You have to get a move on!” I wasn’t reminded of it while reading, but as I write this review, I’m spurred to compare this to Bridge of Birds. I’m not sure why—perhaps the fairy-tale qualities of both tales—but the latter definitely has more pulse-pounding action even as it fully embraces whimsy and wonder.

The Secret History of Moscow, on the other hand, sort of plods along. The characters are cool, even sympathetic. The deposed and dispossessed mythological figures are also fascinating. Sedia draws from a diverse range of backgrounds, creating a kind of mythological mosaic, a sampling of ideas from the various cultures and times that have called Russia home. I wish she did them all justice, but the book is so short that we get only the slightest glimpse into these characters and what they represent.

Galina’s choice, at the end, was a good way to end the book too. It makes sense, given what we know of her—but at the same time, I wish we had spent more time with her in Moscow, seen more of her life. Does she have any friends? No one who will really miss her? Was her life really that one-note? Sedia writes well, but if she were an artist she would own only one, really wide paintbrush, and paint in bold and sweeping strokes across a smoky, ashen canvas.

I liked the book, but I don’t feel enthusiastic about it. It’s competent but not compelling. I don’t mind tossing my recommendation in there, if you think this is your thing, because there is nothing outright poor about The Secret History of Moscow. But it didn’t excite me either.

I grabbed Polaris on a whim at the used bookstore. It looked like an interesting mystery set in the future—a future where humanity has spread to other planets, where entire civilizations have risen and fallen over a few millennia. With all this history between Alex Benedict and life back here on Earth, there are bound to be so many cool mysteries to explore. But when Alex and his partner, Chase Kolpath, begin investigating the sixty-year-old disappearance of the entire crew of the Polaris, people start trying to kill them. So they know they’re on to something.

Jack McDevitt elects to have a kind of Holmes/Watson relationship going on here. Though billed “an Alex Benedict novel”, Polaris is narrated by Chase. That’s fine, although I wish she had been mentioned on the back cover—there’s no indication that Chase exists until, after the prologue, the narrative turns first person but starts referring to “Alex”. A number of female reviewers on Goodreads have expressed ambivalence about Chase and her voice. On one hand, she is a strong female protagonist: a capable superluminal pilot who is often the one coming up with plans to get Alex and her out of mortal peril. At the end of the book, Chase is the one who speaks up and tries to change everything. That’s awesome. On the other hand, as those reviewers note and are more qualified to judge, Chase’s voice doesn’t necessarily sound very authentic. I think this is part of a larger problem with McDevitt’s characterization, though.

Neither Alex or Chase really display much in the way of character development. They end the book the same way they start. Alex is the somewhat eccentric but good-natured boss, an intelligent and insightful antiquities collector who isn’t afraid to be hands-on. Chase is the capable pilot and business partner. (We never really get a sense of what either of them does outside work to relax.) And, stubbornly, they refuse to learn throughout this adventure. There comes a point where Alex and Chase have travelled across the galaxy in their personal superluminal craft. Prior to this, vehicles they have been using have been sabotaged on two separate occasions. When they return to their spaceship, neither of them takes any pains to ensure the ship has not been compromised—I’ll let you guess what happens. It doesn’t exactly take a detective to see the pattern here.

As for the mystery of the Polaris … I was hoping for a more sinister explanation than the one we’re given. That’s not McDevitt’s fault, I guess, although the secret behind the mystery starts to look rather flimsy if you stare at its premises long enough. For example, in this universe really efficient superluminal drive technology exists—but there are a handful of superluminal ships, and they mostly accommodate fewer than a hundred people. Humanity has sprawled out and formed a loose Confederacy, but it seems to have stopped there. This doesn’t make much sense, particularly when population pressure is an important issue in the book. So there aren’t enough ships—why not build more ships?

This is an example of a more general malaise that perplexed me about humanity in Polaris. The mandatory incompetent police character, Fenn, spends more time trying to persuade Alex that there’s no real mystery here rather than investigating the very suspicious—and unusual—attempts on Alex and Chase’s lives. Chase remarks that the police on Rimway are unused to investigating crime because the crime rate is so low. If that’s the case, and Alex and Chase have been connected to a string of criminal events starting with the explosion at the reception and stretching onward … why are they not the top news story of that month?

It feels like everyone in Polaris has been switched with a semi-catatonic zombie. Where’s the drive to explore, that urge to innovate that makes us all human? Where is the passion? Chase mentions all the various human societies that have arisen—and fallen—since we expanded into space. Why does the Confederacy feel vaguely like “21st century America—in space!”? Communication is slightly easier, and there are hovercraft and faster-than-light ships … but that’s about it. Despite these utilitarian improvements to science and technology, no one really seems to live very differently from how those of us in the developed world live today. I like that McDevitt did not embrace the complete, nanotechnologically-driven posthuman future—a more embodied, meat-suit future is fine by me, but there has to be some kind of cultural novum for the reader to try to explore. In Polaris there’s nothing.

Writing mysteries, let alone mysteries set in space, can be tricky. As far as the plot goes, Polaris is fairly good. Alex follows a series of clues, dragging Chase along to narrate and rescue them when people try to kill them, and gradually the pieces fall into place. Indeed, it’s enough to mitigate some of my above criticisms—Polaris is flawed, but I still genuinely enjoyed it. If you enjoy laid-back science-fiction mysteries, this novel might work for you. I wish McDevitt had spent as much time on his characters and setting as he did the plot.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this, at all, going into it. I’ve never heard of Mark Frutkin. I saw A Message for the Emperor on my library’s new books shelf, and the description sounded intriguing. I wasn’t quite sure about it. The slimness of the volume seemed suspect. I was worried that I would have a hard time enjoying or following the plot, that the characters would be too stylized and not very real. I wasn’t sure how Frutkin was going to make "painter travels across ancient China to paint the four seasons and give a message to the Emperor" matter to me.

In other words, this book was just daring me to read it. So I did. I don’t regret it.

A Message for the Emperor is a romp of self-discovery for the main character, Li Wen. He has mastered painting and has nothing left to learn from his teacher, who decides to send him all the way across the country to its capital. Along the way, Wen will do one painting for each of the four seasons it will take to complete his journey. The paintings will be a long-life gift to the Emperor, and Wen will also carry a secret message from his teacher. (We even get to learn what the message says later in the book!) Wen is ambivalent about the journey at first, but he quickly warns to the idea of wandering. Through a few adventures along the way, he starts to discover capacities within himself that he didn’t previously recognize. And he re-learns important lessons that had faded and dulled through the passage of time.

Without verging too far into spoiler territory, I don’t think it’s outrageous for me to reveal that, yes, Wen makes it to the capital to see the Emperor, and that the dangers he encounters on the way there are not all that serious. There was little doubt, in my mind, that he would ever suffer permanent injury or lose his precious painter’s kit. These were experiences more than they were obstacles. This is far from realistic for any journey, but hey, that’s fiction for you. A Message for the Emperor is a little bit of a fantasy in the sense that Wen’s encounters are more symbolic and psychological than anything else. We’re supposed to sit back and enjoy the ride, and through his lyrical prose, Frutkin makes that easy to do.

The only sense of menace, then, surfaces in the capital itself, after Wen has presented his gift to the Emperor. Of course, as a simple country bumpkin, Wen stumbles into the viper’s nest of political intrigue surrounding the Son of Heaven. He makes some powerful enemies. And at this point, Wen’s fate becomes less certain. There is a flimsy frame story constructed around the main narrative, where a modern-day curator is inspecting the recently rediscovered paintings that Wen gave to the Emperor. If they were lost so quickly, what happened to the artist? Maybe Wen doesn’t make it out of the capital alive….

To get the most out of this book, though, you just have to commit to enjoy the writing. Frutkin excels at making Wen’s mastery of painting apparent. I am not very good at visualizing imagery, but even I was able to conjure up some vague ideas of the types of paintings Wen could create. Rather than take a purely clinical, technical approach, Frutkin inextricably links the act of painting with the acts of observation and reflection. Painting is poetry, as demonstrated by the verse that Wen embeds in each of his work. Painting is a reaction and a response to the nature that he says around him. All this comes alive in Frutkin’s hands, and it’s really quite fulfilling to read. The cover of this edition is very minimalist: burnished orange gradient with the title and author in a simple, unadorned font; a single, thin paintbrush that tapers to an elegant tip interjects itself, its shadow also visible. This embodies perfectly the stillness that Frutkin invokes, despite this being a novel about travelling.

I read this on a warm summer’s day, sitting outside in my favourite reading spot in front of our house. My dad sat in a lawn chair next to me, nose buried in a book of his own. Music played in the background. And this was the perfect kind of book for a day like that. As I sat there, sipping at my tea and reflecting on Wen’s latest experience, I said to myself, “This is how summer should be.” In two weeks, I’m back in England for another year of teaching. My summer has been briefer than I expected and gone by all too fast. But a good book is like a good bath: it washes away all the cares and concerns and reminds you how to be calm, how to be still, how to enjoy the perfect present.

I was never promised a flying car.

What I mean to say is that my generation was never the generation of flying cars. We grew up knowing better. It’s been seventy years since we started breaking open atomic nuclei to harness their incredible capacity for destruction and creation, and we are still sucking fossilized plants from the bowels of the Earth and lighting it on fire as fuel. My parents grew up watching men go to the moon. I grew up watching NASA’s budget bleeding out on the table, their shuttle fleet slowly becoming more obsolete and decrepit until it was only a matter of time that Challenger repeated itself. The euphoric spirit of technological progress that had so long balanced its darker fear of nuclear apocalypse waned, its promises seemingly hollow.

Of course, that’s not to say that my generation hasn’t been promised things, or that we haven’t been promised good things. Global warming and economic recession aside, we’re being told that computers are going to continue to shrink and become more mobile. Wearable computing is just around the corner (hello, Google Glass). My car might not fly, but it will probably drive itself. And, if Kurzweill and his buddies are right (they probably aren’t), we will either be immortal or computer uploads by the middle of the century, so hey, how bad can it get?

I say this all just to underscore the constant tension between what we have now and what we might have, what we envision as our future for science and technology. This is an entire academic field, one that is as important as it is dangerous in the sense that nothing it says can really be trusted, but we ignore what it says at our own peril. Futurists are increasingly valuable, because it seems like Gibson is right about the future already being here, just not evenly distributed—but they are human, like the rest of us, and fallible, prone to overexcitement and unable, sometimes, to step back from something in which they’ve invested so much time and energy.

I wouldn’t necessarily call Michio Kaku a futurist, but sometimes he plays one in books. Physics of the Impossible is his stab at categorizing certain things that are impossible now but might not remain that way forever. For example, the type of teleportation you see on Star Trek won’t be putting airlines out of business any time soon—but does teleportation really go "against" the laws of physics, or is our technology and understanding of physics just not there yet? In this way, Kaku distinguishes between things that we might be able to do in the next century or so, things we might be able to do in the next few millennia when we grow up, and things that we won’t ever be able to do unless our understanding of physics drastically alters. These Class I, II, and III impossibilities form the backbone for the structure of a book that is a mixture of physics lecture, geeky enthusiasm for cutting-edge tech, and optimism for the boundless ingenuity of the human species.

Kaku’s classification approach is a very useful one. We bandy about the word “impossible” quite often. The lay public, the scientifically-literate public, and the scientist public all seem to have different ideas about what it might mean, much like the confusion over the “theory” of evolution or “law” of gravity. Is anything really impossible? (The answer is yes, things that are logically impossible, but that is a much smaller domain than what we generally refer to when listing impossibilities.) Kaku has taken the time to give “impossible” a more well-formed definition that we can actual use. In this way, even if one’s understanding of physics is quite limited, one gets a better sense of the relative difficulty of creating or harnessing some of these phenomena.

The book contains ten Class I impossibilities, three Class II, and two Class III. The first category includes such things as teleportation, telepathy, and psychokinesis. From this, it’s clear that Kaku is either using a very loose definition of “within a century” or is incredibly optimistic about our how much progress we’ll make in the next century. Think “best case scenario”. In some cases, such as with telepathy and psychokinesis, Kaku doesn’t so much explain possible physics approaches as point to existing technology (brain-computer interfaces) and upcoming research (brain-mapping projects) and enthuse about how much we’ll probably learn in the next few decades. Hmm. In other cases, such as with force fields and invisibility, he seems to present the challenges of replicating what we see in Star Trek and other science fiction much more realistically. While this might not be as reassuring, I definitely find it more interesting.

I learned lots of interesting tidbits about physics from this book. I love reading books about physics, although lately the more I read, the less I feel I understand. Quantum physics is just so weird—and yes, I know that if this is the way the universe actually works, then technically that makes quantum physics the ultimate standard of normality. However, it’s still weird, OK? And the more you learn, the weirder it gets, until you’re so far down the rabbithole it doesn’t matter how many blue pills you take; you’re not going home, Alice.

Physics of the Impossible is a little more “pop sci” than many of the other physics books I’ve been reading lately, such as The Universe Within. There is only one equation in this book, and it’s one you’ve all seen: E = mc². Kaku doesn’t go into too many concepts in depth—he tosses out certain facts that I was able to accept, because I’ve been exposed to these ideas in other books, but they might cause another person to doubletake. I think it’s asking a little much to expect him to give in-depth treatises on all the concepts he touches upon, though. There’s just so many. It’s one of those situations where, if something intrigues you or confuses you, you should seek out a book specifically about that subject. Since this book is lighter on a lot of the explanation, I suspect that many more people will find it accessible.

My favourite fact is one I have not, as far as I remember, seen mentioned before: antimatter is actually just ordinary matter travelling back in time. How cool is that? And as a corollary, it’s possible that our entire universe is just a single electron travelling back and forth through time infinitely many times.

And you know what, I get so frustrated with technology sometimes. Some days I feel like I’m living in the future. Other days I wonder why everyone else seems so happy with their mobile devices while mine chug along at a sluggish pace. But maybe it doesn’t matter if I never get a flying car, or self-driving car for that matter. Sometimes, it’s reward enough just to learn the true depths of the weird and wondrous place that is our universe. Kaku definitely captures that here, and he does it in a way that is both edifying and gratifying.

I always regret not being more handy than I am. The feeling I get when wielding a screwdriver is the closest I can come to understanding what people mean when they say, “I just can’t do math!” It always bothers me when people insist upon this, as if mathematical skill is something that you either have or you do not. But when I am reduced to basic manipulation of the physical world, I understand their frustration. Like any skill, there are some who have a talent for it and others for whom it will always be an uphill slog. Some are like that with math, and I am like that with tools and any kind of physical labour.

So I have immersed myself in the world of intellect, becoming exactly the kind of disembodied, disconnected ivory tower individual against which Matthew B. Crawford argues in Shop Class as Soulcraft. Well, it’s not so much that he’s arguing against such people—he admits that, if academic pursuits are your thing, you should go for it—but he laments that we have somehow become the standard against all rising stars are measured. Crawford would rather see the trades and the crafts restored to a place of honour; for that matter, so would I.

Crawford paints a bleak picture of how our rising exuberance for computers at the end of the twentieth century muscled out shop classes in high schools across the United States. I think the situation in Canada is little better, though my limited experience here in Ontario shows glimmers of hope in the more enlightened, trades-oriented options that many high schools offer students. In some places, we are beginning to realize that a balance can be had, and we are striving to attain it. Whether the rest of society is willing to follow, I don’t know.

As the subtitle, An Inquiry into the Value of Work, suggests, Crawford sings the praises of the “honest work” of the people who build, repair, and make things. He intersperses more theoretical and academic approaches to the subject with his own, personal experience, first as an electrician and then as a motorcycle mechanic. In both cases, Crawford emphasizes how physical work offers access to a type of knowledge different from that which we acquire from books and from social interaction. There is certain wisdom one can only acquire through direct experience.

I enjoyed the sections in which Crawford describes his journey from novice to confident mechanic more than I thought I would. Even with the wonderful artist illustrations and his own explanations, I still can’t fathom or picture the magic he worked inside the guts of those machines. The way he describes doing something, the number of variables that he must account for, the amount he must know … it baffles me how anyone is able to do it. I guess that’s how people feel when I describe working on a math proof or programming. It’s a very weird feeling, knowing that someone else knows something you can barely comprehend.

I’m not sure how successful Crawford is at convincing someone more sceptical of his ideas, since I began the book firmly believing in the value of work. For that reasons, a lot of his arguments left me with a, “Yes, so?” reaction, simply because I felt like everything he was stating was pretty obvious.

Instead, Shop Class as Soulcraft was more useful to me as a mirror for my own frustrations. In my first year of teaching, which I spent in England, I ran up against a most fearsome dragon, that of standardized testing. I was teaching 16-year-olds who had no concept of how to multiply properly, let alone finding area and perimeter or the missing angle of a triangle. Somehow, though I was supposed to prepare them for a test that would give them a grade that would determine where they could go next for schooling and what kind of jobs they could get. It was madness. I could have taught much more basic math, arithmetic and personal accounting, the kind of thing that could really seem relevant to them. But my hands were tied by the test.

I always feel a little hypocritical when I try to extol the virtues of the trades to students. After all, it’s clear I didn’t go down that road—so who am I to try to convince them it’s worthwhile? Not only that, but it’s painfully clear I didn’t go down that road. Some teachers have the virtue of straddling the divide between academic and applied, of fusing these worlds together into a harmonious whole. That distinction is not mine to hold. Throughout my life, people have remarked that I give off the vibes of one dedicated to intellectual pursuits. That gives me pleasure, of course, but it also makes my attempts to downplay the academic life a lot more problematic. I basically feel like a fraud. Unlike Crawford, who has truly lived in both worlds, I have always been confined to one.

As I mentioned above, Crawford is at his best when recounting his own personal experience with the value of work. When he strays further into the territory of sociology and psychology, his arguments become less captivating even if they are more objectively robust. Probably most interesting of these sections is his explanation of how the introduction of assembly lines and mass production offered an effective alternative to the craftsman in his own little castle. It was the era of the assembly-line worker that ushered in the harsh distinction between blue collar and white collar, Crawford argued.

I’m not so sure, but I think he makes a good point when he links the rise of mass production to a reduction in respect for the trades. We are raised now as consumers first, producers second—production is something other, something that happens away from us. Moreover, society continues to become blazingly, bewilderingly complex. It’s just not possible to be good at everything any more or to know everything the human species knows. We have to specialize, and in turn this means we have to outsource certain tasks, whether it’s tax preparation or car repair, to other people whose specialities those are. Crawford provides some compelling explanations for why this makes us feel uneasy.

Shop Class as Soulcraft is exactly what it claims to be. It’s competently written, with an interesting mix of personal anecdotes and more abstract, philosophical reasoning. It isn’t quite as inspirational or awe-inspiring as it might be; this is more a sobre prod towards thought and action that it is a plea for swift change. You wouldn’t do wrong to read it, but I’m not particularly put out that it took me this long to get around to doing so.

With a little over a week left before I return to England, I went to the library and borrowed a few more books. As I was browsing the stacks, I noticed all three of these books next to each other on the shelf. Longtime library conossieurs will share with me the feeling of surprise and elation that one has when discovering the complete set of a series on one’s to-read list is there, ready to be borrowed in full. No waiting for a hold to come in, no disappointment as one discovers that the library has books one and three, but book two has mysteriously gone missing. I snapped up the trilogy, fully aware that these are lengthy books and I had already added four others to my bag. I’m not sure if I’m going to get these all finished before September 1, but I am going to try!

Naamah’s Kiss starts off a century or so after the events of Jacqueline Carey’s previous trilogy in this world. Phédre and Imriel and their assorted deeds have receded into the realm of history and legend. King Daniel rules Terre d’Ange, and a young girl of the Maghuin Dhonn, Moirin, sets off from Alba to find her destiny—and her father—in the City of Elua.

If you have nothing better to do with your day, you can catch up on my reviews of the previous six books set in this fantasy counterpart Europe (TVTropes). (Note that the reviews contain spoilers.) Fortunately, one doesn’t need to read the prior trilogies in order to understand or enjoy Naamah’s Kiss. I suspect one’s sympathies for certain characters might differ from a longtime fan’s—but that just makes things more interesting!

Moirin is half–Maghuin Dhonn, half–D’Angeline. She has super-awesome twilight bear-witch powers, and thanks to her other half, she’s on fantasy contraception (TVTropes) (a very convenient plot device given the amount of sex going on between these pages). Her father was a Priest of Naamah visiting Alba for a Cruarch’s coronation, and he and her mother felt a deep-seated spiritual need to get it on. Fast forward a decade or so, and Carey provides a quick look at
Moirin’s childhood and adolescence as she lives, loves, and loses for the first time. Upon gaining adulthood, she ventures into the wider world, certain she must find her father and confront whatever destiny awaits her beyond Alba’s shores.

The plot is nothing special. Moirin’s early life has much less in the way of antagonists than Phédre’s did—there is no Melisande-equivalent here. Instead, aside from a few tragedies, she learns mostly from allies instead of enemies. There are essentially two stories that happen consecutively. First, Moirin meets and is charmed by Raphael de Mereliot, who seeks to use her unique magical gifts to further the ends of his research society. Second, Moirin travels to distant Ch’in, where she seeks to help her teacher Lo Feng restore Snow Tiger, the Emperor’s daughter, to health.

In the first story, Moirin is somewhat cast in the role of ingénue, with Raphael as a guiding father figure/love interest (I say somewhat, because she isn’t exactly innocent so much as naive about the depths of Raphael’s self-delusion). She is drawn to him by the pulse of her destiny. But she hates that he isn’t entirely hers, that he also loves the Queen. (This is an interesting reversal from her relationship with young Cillian, where he hated that she wasn’t entirely his.) Moirin wants to help Raphael and comes very close to losing herself in the process.

In the second story, Moirin is now a protégé of Master Lo Feng. She is learning more about herself and how to live in harmony with the world around her—a laudable goal for one of the Maghuin Dhonn. They reach Ch’in only to find the empire in turmoil, one of its trusted advisers having betrayed the Emperor and built guns in preparation for a bloody civil war. Turns out Snow Tiger isn’t possessed by a demon so much as a dragon, and Moirin’s skills are essential to keeping the dragon—which is really sorry about the inconvenience—pacified until they can get to the place where they can release it. From there, the plot becomes the standard “we have to get there before the bad guys catch us” fare.

I confess I’m a little disappointed. When I lay it out like that, it doesn’t seem very impressive. Yet I did enjoy this book. I suppose that’s because Carey makes Moirin’s development as a character so enthralling. She grows up, becomes aware of and experiments with her sexuality, and then realizes she needs to go very far away from home in order to grow further. She has to make some touch decisions at certain points—though this is undermined, I feel, by the diadh-anam, the spark in herself that “flares” whenever she’s on the right path towards fulfilling her destiny. It kind of feels like cheating, since we don’t all have one of those destiny-compasses.

I enjoyed returning to Carey’s alterna-Europe far more than I thought I would. After the disappointment that was Mélusine, it was good to be reminded that it’s possible to create an entirely different world and drop an amazing number of names and history into the story without making it too confusing for the reader. Carey is constantly mentioning the names of far-off places we don’t visit and nobility whom we never meet; however, it never becomes overwhelming. And I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what it is that makes Carey’s exposition more comprehensible or tolerable than Monette’s.

Moirin is a pleasant change from the narrators of the previous trilogies. She is reminiscient of the very young Phédre from the beginning of the series: inexperienced, a little naive, and a constant surprise to herself and others. Unlike Phédre, however, Moirin lacks a D’Angeline upbringing and is thus unaware of how her involvement in court intrigue has truly altered balances of power. Moirin is also much more innocent in the arts of love-making, something upon which many of her D’Angeline patrons capitalize when manipulating and using her for their own ends.

On that note, is it just me, or is there more frequent and more explicit sex in this book than in previous? It’s been almost three years, so maybe I’m just imagining it, but I feel like the level of sex has ratcheted up with each book. It’s particularly notable in the first part of the book and then settles down to more perfunctory mentions in the latter part. I don’t know why people read Fifty Shades of Grey when series like this exist, because Carey offers the chance to read about sex on the page and enjoy an actual story with believable characters. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing. Personally, I find believable characters hot.

There’s a certain amount of fan service going here with the sex and all. However, Carey excels at blending the sex with the story in realistic ways. That is to say, she uses the effervescent sexuality of D’Angeline culture to analyze and subvert contemporary attitudes towards sex, gender roles, and power relations between genders. As a newcomer to this culture, Moirin is at a disadvantage: she has all the D’Angeline desire and none of the specialized cunning she should have been raised with. (She has her own brand of cunning, of course, which comes in handy—but it takes her a while to adapt it to court, and she gets pretty badly burned a couple of times.) Raphael de Mereliot takes advantage of her—but then Queen Jehanne takes advantage of him, in a way. So it isn’t just men exploiting women, or women exploiting other women.

Carey has created a very interesting culture in which both genders share very similar roles in terms of expectations of sex, work, and livelihood. In every role we see, whether it’s a servant of Naamah, priest, or nobility, we see examples of both men and women filling these positions. Of course, that doesn’t mean this is some kind of utopian society: people are still people, avaricious and fallible and flawed. And even in terms of sex and gender, D’Angeline culture has its own type of policing of gender expression—there is a notable absence of transgender people. Moreover, although women seem to be a lot more equal, there are still certain expectations (especially among the upper classes) regarding how women dress and act, with Florette and Lydia providing the example.

Carey’s portrayal of Ch’in was much less robust than her portrayals of other counterpart societies have been in the past. This is due in part to the plot, which has picked up the pace by the time they arrive in that country. However, one of the most outstanding things about this series is the diversity of its cultures: D’Angelines are notable for their devotion to free love, but other societies are much less sexually permissive. In previous books, Carey has explored the tension within her alterna-Europe and the conflicts this has caused. The discovery of the New World—called “Terra Nova” here—is a background event in Naamah’s Kiss, and I can only hope that future stories will see a protagonist visit those shores. For now, the race for the various powers of this continent to visit and claim that one promises to create some interesting politics.

Alas, if the description on the back cover of Naamah’s Curse is accurate, it looks like we’re in store for more personal and religious conflicts for Moirin. Which could be interesting, granted. Overall, Naamah’s Kiss has somewhat restored my faith in this world and Carey’s writing after the disappointment of the last trilogy. I’m not quite ready to sing its praises unreservedly, but I’m cautiously endorsing it for the adventurous.

My reviews of the Moirin trilogy:
Naamah’s Curse →

Also, check out my reviews of Kushiel’s Legacy!

There is both reward and danger in reading the books of a series in close succession. Obviously, it’s easier to see the common threads that tie the books together; it’s easier to appreciate the arc of the characters and how events in one book might later affect events in another. I often deepened my appreciation for many series through an extensive re-read (and the same could be said for “marathoning” television shows). Nonetheless, there always exists the problem of burnout, and the temptation to relentlessly compare one book in the series to another. I face the latter problem with Naamah’s Curse. I cannot resist trying to compare it to Naamah’s Kiss.

So rather than tiptoe around this elephant for the entire review, I’m tackling it head-on in a showdown: Naamah’s Kiss versus Naamah’s Curse.

This book picks up immediately where Naamah’s Kiss ends. Having, with Master Lo Feng’s help, resurrected Bao but at the cost of splitting her diadh-anam, Moirin sets off across Ch’in and into the wild Tatar steppes in pursuit of her lover, who himself is seeking answers and solitude. (Yes, she promises to give him space, but apparently that doesn’t extend to an entire country’s worth of space. So she chases after him, because that will make him love her more!)

Moirin falls in with some Tatars, has some good times, and finds Bao. But because this book would suck if it ended on page 100 with a happily-ever-after, Carey engineers a complication: the Great Khan sells Moirin to a fanatical Yeshuite (Christian) who believes it’s his destiny to “save” her by listening to her confess all the dirty sexual acts she’s performed. Hmm.

The first act of Naamah’s Curse cannot hold a candle to Naamah’s Kiss. Carey is at the height of her skill as a writer when she introduces Moirin and speeds through her childhood and adolescence. Moirin grows from a wiry wild thing to a young woman burgeoning with passion and desire. Here, we spend a lot of time listening to the Patriarch of Riva complain about how passion and desire are distractions from serving the One God. Although I liked the reminder that few cultures are as permissive about sex as Terre d’Ange, I found Carey’s portrayal of the Patriarch rather one-dimensional and boring at best. Fanatical though he might be, the idea that he has been spying on Moirin and amassed such a thorough chronicle of her adventures, just because he thinks she is the one being that is the most challenging for him to redeem, doesn’t seem very believable to me.

Notably, there’s much less sex in this book than in the first one. I don’t think Moirin actually has sex until she reunites with Bao, about a hundred pages in. And though the frequency picks up towards the ending, it is never depicted with quite the same relish or detail that features in Naamah’s Kiss. Moirin is no longer the sexual innocent that she was in the first book; indeed, she likens herself to Jehanne as she teaches the Rani a few tricks. It seems that if the first book was Moirin learning to accept and come to terms with her remarkable depth of desire, this book is about Moirin mastering that desire until she can use it for her own ends. This lesson comes full circle when Moirin is confronted with the possibility of seizing the Kamadeva diamond for herself. The diamond’s ability to amplify the desires of anyone who lays eyes upon it would overclock Moirin’s natural attractiveness, turning her into some kind of weird lust goddess. It would not be good times.

Still, I’m going to have to give it to Naamah’s Kiss here. As much as I enjoyed Moirin master her desires here, this book lacks any guiding characters as fun as Jehanne and Raphael. In fact, this book lacks a strong central antagonist. I cited that complaint about the previous book as well, but it wasn’t as much of a problem. Unfortunately, Carey has yet to create a nemesis for Moirin as deliciously twisted as Melisande was for Phèdre. Much like Lord Jiyang from the first book, the Falconer and Spider Queen are pale, stock villains with very little that makes them interesting.

Moirin’s destiny, as indicated by the flickering of her diadh-anam, continues to figure prominently in the plot. She refers to it constantly. Again, I’m not a fan of this. It’s not so much lazy writing as boring writing. Allowing a character the certainty that her actions are “correct” through some objective external instrument removes the ambiguity that should accompany all moral decisions. Carey seems to recognize this problem, because near the climax of the novel she attempts to introduce that ambiguity: Moirin’s diadh-anam refuses to indicate whether killing a man in cold blood while concealed in her magical twilight would be too dishonourable to bear. But it’s a false uncertainty.

Which brings me to the main problem with Naamah’s Curse: Moirin doesn’t suck enough.

Seriously, she faces an amazing number of challenges in this book, and she overcomes them all pretty easily. For example, she eventually begins to go along with the Patriarch in order to lull him into a false sense of security. He gets as far as wanting to baptize her, but he asks her to swear her faith on her diadh-anam. She can’t swear falsely without giving up that spark inside herself, so she refuses. And there’s no drama about the refusal, because we know she can’t do it. Fortunately, the Patriarch’s half-D’Angeline son gets seduced by her hair, so it’s all good.

Moirin’s beauty in Naamah’s Kiss was her vulnerability to external influences. Jehanne and Raphael both wanted something from her. Raphael started using her magic, twisting it for the ends of his Circle, nearly killing her on at least one occasion. This conflict strengthened Moirin and forced her develop into a much more confident person capable of taking action independent of what she thinks her destiny desires from her. In Naamah’s Curse, we see little of that. We see a Moirin on auto-pilot, one who is content to sit back and let things happen. Worse, we see a Moirin who seldom seems tempted, who possesses a certitude so solid as to make her an uninteresting protagonist.

I think at one point she even complains, in what comes as close to breaking the fourth wall as we’ll ever get, that being a heroine is so hard. What did you expect, Moirin? You had the opportunity to stick around Terre d’Ange as a royal companion. You chose the harder path.

Moirin is not a bad character per se. She just lacks for much in the way of challenges in this book, and as a result, her character doesn’t change as swiftly as it did in Naamah’s Kiss. It does change a little, and I like seeing those changes. But if conflict in a book is a river, this is a burbling brook and the first book was raging rapids.

All signs point to the New World (sorry, Terra Nova) for Moirin and a final confrontation with Raphael. (I haven’t yet read the back cover of Naamah’s Blessing as I write this.) I can only hope that she faces the toughest challenges of her life, so she can emerge from them even stronger and take her rightful place alongside Phèdre and Imriel as compelling characters in Carey’s canon.

My reviews of the Moirin trilogy:
← Naamah’s Kiss | Naamah’s Blessing →

Also, check out my reviews of Kushiel’s Legacy!

I probably shouldn’t have read this, considering how little time I had left to get through these library books. I probably should have skipped in favour of a book I was more confident I could enjoy. But I think I needed this—I needed something that’s just so bad I could sit back and bask in its badness for a bit. The Thirteen Hallows certainly satisfied me in that regard.

All the warning signs are clearly there. There’s the cover—and no, one shouldn’t judge a book solely by the cover, but the cover can give good indications about target audiences and the like. This one is abysmally generic, more akin to a mystery thriller than epic urban fantasy. That did not leave me with much hope for the tone of this adventure.

Indeed, the writing quickly confirmed my fears. The prose is turgid in its use of unnecessary adverbs and adjectives (“darkly crimson” as one example). The protagonist named on the back cover doesn’t appear until page 30. I can understand not starting immediately with the protagonist, but that seems excessive. Though, from the opening lines, I can understand why Sarah’s debut is delayed:

Sarah Miller had never done anything extraordinary in her life.

At twenty-two, Sarah still had dreams of greatness.

So Sarah is boring and pedestrian, eh? Sounds like a great protagonist! I’m so very interested in the book now.

Clearly the authors are trying to depict Sarah as a “normal” twenty-two-year-old before she becomes mixed up in this mythological mystery. I think the second sentence is supposed to mean, “She’s young, so she still thinks she can change the world”—a kind of wink/nod to the presumably older audience who is reading this. This is where being aware of the juxtaposition of sentences comes in handy, because when it follows that first sentence, it undermines that effect. It trips my sarcasm meter, and I retort, “She’s only twenty-two! Plenty of time left for dreams and extraordinary deeds.”

Unfortunately, Sarah isn’t a very interesting character. I sympathize with her, not for being swept up in the circumstances she’s in but for being trapped in such a terrible book.

The plot is a race against time. The bad guy is looking to collect all thirteen Hallows of Great Britain so that he can use them on Halloween (get it?) to unlock the gates keeping demons out of the world. He believes this will lead to some kind of personal apotheosis; I think he is crazy to think the demons aren’t going to eat him. But that’s generic villains for you.

Sarah inadvertently becomes mixed up in this plot when she befriends Judith Walker, keeper of the Broken Sword. Judith entrusts the sword to Sarah’s safekeeping, telling her to give it to Judith’s nephew, Owen. Sarah and Owen meet, team up, hook up, and go to Wales together to face down the bad guy and save the world.

There’s an author’s note at the end that mentions that the Hallows are actual, real objects with historical pedigrees—and they are. Mind you, they aren’t necessarily two-thousand-year-old artifacts imbued with magic by Jesus. (I particularly wonder how Scott and Freedman square the chessboard with this story, when chess was invented circa 6 century.) And that’s what annoys me … I don’t mind if authors use historical artifacts as part of a vastly fictious tale; nor do I mind if they make up artifacts instead. It seems to me like if you’re going to go to the trouble of using something real, though, you might as well hew as closely to the truth as possible and derive interesting consequences from that.

Instead, we have a freaky demon portal story that only makes sense if you look at it sideways on All Hallows Eve. Why are the demons coming through portals in Britain and not, say, Judea? Why does Ambrose give out the artifacts to a bunch of children? Wouldn’t that leave the artifacts very vulnerable to bad guys until the children grow up?

Let’s give the benefit of a doubt, though, and say that the premise is an interesting and worthy idea for a story. What of the story itself? It could be thrilling, except … oh, my. Where do I begin?

We’ve got a pair of cops who are on Sarah’s trail for multiple murders with the magic sword. They are just barely competent yet somehow never manage to catch her. It would be a lot more believable if they had caught her at some point and she had escaped or co-opted them. As it is, they are dead weight.

Scott and Freedman handle exposition is the most clunky, least interesting way they possibly could. Every once in a while, the action stops so that Sarah and Owen can sit down with a wiser character and listen them expound on things these two need to know (first it’s Brigid, then Ambrose). Meanwhile, we get subjected to numerous scenes of the bad guys gnashing their teeth and going, “Raaawr, we can’t find them in the Astral [plane]!” It would be funny if it weren’t so boring.

Strictly speaking, this is a book. It is a story, with a plot, and characters. But there are just so many better examples of books out there, that this one is hardly worth the time it takes to slog through it.

Now that’s how you end a series.

Naamah’s Blessing is the swan song of Moirin, half–Maghuin Dhonn, half-D’Angeline. Moirin has ventured as far eastwards as Ch’in, where she saves a princess and a dragon. In this novel she goes westwards. After a brief stop in Terre d’Ange, it’s off to Terra Nova, where she hopes to find Prince Thierry alive and bring him back to Terre d’Ange to deal with an opportunistic regent. Raphael de Mereliot awaits Moirin in Terra Nova, though, and he isn’t entirely sane any more.

The first part of this book is a nice, almost relaxing reminder of what it’s like to exist in D’Angeline high society. Carey once again shows how uncomfortable Moirin is with interacting with the nobility: she possesses the social graces but not necessarily the acuity needed to navigate the dangerous social terrain. She always tries to do the right thing, but she goes about it in very direct ways that tend to upset a lot of people, which isn’t her intention at all. Eventually, Moirin is forced to admit that the most good she can do is to fetch Thierry, whom most people believe lost forever, back to Terre d’Ange.

Once we hit Terra Nova, the plot thickens and the action gets more intense. Carey chronicles their journey through Mexican and Panamanian jungles down towards the mountains of the alter-Incan empire (Tawantinsuyo). Moirin and her party have to deal with all sorts of obstacles, from the boorish Aragonians to the human-sacrificing Nuhuatl (alter-Aztecs) to the more natural impediments of a jungle. People die. A lot of people die. And once they arrive in Tawntinsuyo territory, they discover that Raphael has set himself up as a god.

I still can’t bring myself to enjoy Raphael as an antagonist. He’s just not all that scary. In the first book, the most interesting part of the conflict between him and Moirin was the way he was manipulating her innocence. She felt obligated to help him, not because of outright threat (at least not until the end) but because she thought it was the right thing to do. The tragedy isn’t anything Raphael does so much as Moirin’s own naivety. In this book, Moirin is older and wiser and having none of it. Raphael comes off as unhinged and rather uninteresting.

No, the best things about this book are the natural perils that Moirin and party face, along with the moral conflicts that Moirin experiences as she tries to defeat Raphael. He makes her swear an oath on her diadh-anam, and if she breaks it, she loses that “spark” and all her magic. More importantly, because half of it is what brought Bao back to life, if she loses it, he dies! But it increasingly looks like the only way out might be the very human sacrifice that seems so despicable…. I rather wish Carey had interrogated the depths of this moral ambiguity more thoroughly. As it is, though, it’s pretty engaging.

Naamah’s Blessing also exemplifies the spirit of this series quite well. The numerous charges that Moirin is a Mary Sue have some weight. She does seem to make an inordinate number of people love her for little reason other than that she’s got some goddess in her. This book is no exception, and it seems like almost everyone except Raphael decides to be a good person just because Moirin is such an inspirational example.

If we can look beyond the flaw of this particular character, though, let’s acknowledge what Carey is doing with characters like Phèdre and Moirin. This world is thinly-veiled analogue to our own history, a history that is sadly lacking in many prominent women figures, at least the way the tales get told in school. Here, we have a woman exploring the wilderness of South America instead of yet another man. Magic aside, Carey’s confident heroines provide a healthy dose of “what if” and a reminder that the historical narrative of Great Men foisted upon us by tradition is just that—narrative, not indelible fact.

This trilogy is nowhere near as awesome as the first one, but a fair sight better than the second (sorry, Imriel, but you know it’s true). You don’t need to have read either preceding series to understand or enjoy these books. But if you’re just starting out, my recommendation would be Kushiel’s Dart. The original remains the best.

My reviews of the Moirin trilogy:
← Naamah’s Curse