Ahoy there me mateys! While this book was partly enjoyable, I am not sure that I would read the next in the series. For starters, the blurb basically misleads the reader . . .

The story is supposed to be about a girl named Rhee who is the last survivor of her imperial bloodline. She wants revenge for the death of her family and a fight to get the throne. A soldier, Aly, is falsely accused of killing Rhee and must fight to get out the truth in order to save himself and perhaps avert a war.

It says that “Rhee and Aly are thrown together” to save the world. Ummm they see each other across the room once in this novel. That’s it. I kept waiting for their paths to cross. Perhaps in the next novel.

Well basically Rhee is a super annoying protagonist. Her method of getting revenge is subpar. For supposedly being a badass, she basically jumps into everything with no thought and stumbles from one place to another. She doesn’t have a real plan. Her take on revenge is juvenile and she seems to have no inkling of how to be an empress or desire to be one. She does not even appear to be willing to fight for herself. She expects everyone to help her.

Aly on the other hand was the highlight of this novel. He has the second POV. I loved many of his chapters. The fact that he has a robot buddy didn’t hurt. He uses his brain, meets cool people on his travels, and doesn’t whine. I wish the whole book was about him and his friend Kara. Rhee could disappear and I think the story would improve. He might be worth reading the second book for . . .

The plot itself had some extremely predictable points. In addition, time jumps between chapters and POV with no real explanation of logistics. The number of pods the characters steal without being caught (or even chased) sort of belied a feasible reality. In fact the world-building and planets seemed rather lackluster. As did the tech. Though there was an exceptionally cool ship made of organic matter that I loved. The book needed more fun details like that.

Again, I didn’t hate it. I just did not think the world or tech or characters were anything new or stunning. I think if ye never read a space opera yarn then this may be a book to lure readers into the genre. But for me it was just an okay trip.

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Ahoy there me mateys! I received this young adult fantasy eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. So here be me honest musings . . .

This novel be pure magic. I read it in one sitting and fell in love with the author’s writing and the world she created. The main character, Tea, learns that she is a bone witch when she instinctively raises her brother from the dead in her grief. Because of the rarity of her powers and the fact that bone witches be hated and feared, Tea leaves her family to train and learn to control her powers.

The novel is told from two perspectives – Tea in the past and a bard in the present. I loved the juxtaposition of witnessing Tea’s thoughts about training and the bard’s views of what she looks like to an “outsider” in her full strength and poise.

This novel is slow paced but filled with glorious details. It was the details that made the world and story come vividly to life. Things like the descriptions of magic woven into clothing, the elaborate training of the witches (known as asha). the different ethnicities of people, or even types food, made me feel that the author was describing a real place. Or at least a place well known to her.

Add in fantastical creatures called the daeva and I was mesmerized. What are daeva? Well according to the author’s website they are “Deadly creatures that roam the land . . . To defeat these beasts, one must find and rip their bezoar from their bodies – although such an action is only a temporary respite, as they are capable of resurrection.” They are all different shapes and sizes. How Tea deals with these monsters is at the heart of the story and one of the main reasons I loved it.

This book was a lovely set-up. I will definitely be reading the next book in the series when it comes out and while impatiently waiting, I will try and get me grubby mitts on her debut novel, the girl from the well.

Side note: the author’s about me page is awesome! In fact, I rather enjoyed pursuing the whole site. Check it out.

So lastly . . .

Thank you Sourcebooks Fire!

See me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordpress.com/

Ahoy there mateys! For those new to me crew, this be a category for those novels whose stories of acquisition be strange and unusual – like the time someone commandeered me 12 pages! There be a tale to tell on how I got me grubby mitts on this one . . .

Ye see this short story is not available to just any scalawag with a hankerin’. It is given to only those few who belong to a secret society of book lovers. And how does one join this society and get to add this treasure to their tally of booty? Well sit back me hearties (and grab that grog), for this tale twists and turns, and let me tell ye . . .

So a long while back, at nearly the start of keeping this here log, a curious thing happened. Ye see I be always on the lookout fer treasure as all Captains be. So every time I be back in port, I follow hints and whispers to find the shady places, full of shady characters, wherein the clues and possibilities for plunder might be found.

In one such adventure, after evading local authorities, brandishing me cutlass at the cur who thought I could be followed, and stopping by the local inn for some rum, I ended up in . . . a local bookstore. Egads! What hints there be of riches and exciting locales all ripe fer plunderin’. Being the smart Captain that I be, I quickly took notice of interesting ports for plunder. Number 9 on said list be this gem:

the girl with the ghost eyes (M.H. Boroson)

And what a lovely one this is. This author’s debut novel is a historical fiction fantasy set in Chinatown of San Francisco in 1898. It is expertly written, in my opinion, and full of surprises – including the ending. Quite frankly, I adored it. The author hinted that more of the glorious tales of Li-lin might exist. So through every storm, every port, every glass of grog, I kept me eye out and me ears to the wind to catch a glimpse of me elusive prey . . .

And then behold, a wink here and a nudge there lead me to Goodreads, an oft frequented haunt, wherein a connection was made with Raquel who be an interestin’ lass who seems to love both cats and books. With those interests, she be a source I could trust, a rare find indeed. So with her set of coordinates, I set sail for me next part of the adventure.

And what did I find there but a message in a bottle from the master manipulator himself . . . the author, M.H. Boroson! The salty cad. The trickster led me from the source that started this search, the girl with the ghost eyes, to a map written in his own log, wherein if ye are lucky ye might find his master plans. Now as members of me crew, I will share the secret of how to find the story story. Spread the word to other members of the crew.

What! Ye lazy scurvy dogs! Too full of grog and victuals and the pleasures of port to move. Arrrrrgh! Fine. For those of ye who cannot read so good, like One-Eyed Jack . . .

That M.H. Boroson (good name for a ship rather!) is crafty and wants more folk to read his debut novel. So like any good sailor, he knows ye need the best bait. So basically, if ye read his debut novel and post a review (for the good or evil) on his book’s Amazon’s log page, then he will send ye the delight that is the short story.

Now me being the crafty sort, I had already posted me review of the novel. But I sent him a scroll and we came to an accord. His return scroll stated:

Ahoy, Captain! Attacht be a copy o’ RIDE A MULE. Yer review be appreciated, arr!

So as part of the Code and in terms with the accord, here be the conclusion to this awesome adventure . . .

If it wasn’t made clear before, this Captain adored this short story. It immediately took me back to the world of Li-lin and Chinatown. I could read a million more brief snippets of her adventures while waiting on M.H. Boroson to finish the next novel so I can challenge him to a friendly duel and commandeer it. While only 21 pages long, the story contains elements of the world-building that made the novel so wonderful. Favorite characters like Mr. Yanqiu and Mr. Pu make an appearance. It was short and sweet and left me wanting more. If ye love Daoism, kung fu, monsters, magic, love, and Chinese folklore then ye should read this.

Now get out there and read me matey’s debut novel and join the secret society that loved it and gets to read this short story. Savvy?

Ahoy there me mateys!

I have to say that while this was an interesting read, it was definitely unusual. To give you an idea – the main characters are a mute, a baby, and a goat. Aye mateys. Ye read that right. And if that weren’t enough, there also be a magical sword with an eyeball. Cool, huh?

The story involves a world where there has been a breach and the demons are getting in and trying to take over. Wherever the demons go, corruption ensues. I loved the weird half-breeds and other unsavories that demon taint makes. In fact most of the demon related details were awesome.

The chapters alternate between the present where we follow the mute, i.e. the Vagrant, on his quest to take the magic sword to the Shining City and then chapters that go back eight years in the past to how the present came to be. And of course converge nicely.

I actually loved both the Vagrant and the goat. I mean, the goat was actually one of the highlights of the novel. Baby was different but not to me taste overall. I liked the idea of the baby more as a prop then as a character.

Having a character that was mute was actually fascinating. I thought the author did an excellent job making the Vagrant communicate. Of course, the Vagrant does run into lots of talking folk along the way and picks up some for a time along his travels. Also this is not the type of book where ye get to see into the main characters thoughts. So everything ye learn is basically through dialogue and action. Works astonishingly well.

So why didn’t I love it? Well, I think overall it was the very last leg of the journey into the Shining City that seemed lackluster as well as the City itself. It fit the story and the characters. It just didn’t thrill me. I think that overall I would have preferred this to be a standalone and not a trilogy. While I will not be reading any more of the series, this was a good read and I am glad I read it. Especially because of the goat.

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This was a beautiful and fascinating non-fiction read. Ms. Bailing was 34 years old and vacationing in Europe when she caught a virus that would change her life’s trajectory. What seemed like a simple flu led to her being bedridden and unable to move. The impulse of a visiting friend to bring her some violets and a woodland snail to her bedroom’s windowsill, leads the author on a journey of contemplation and companionship of an unlikely creature. Part memoir and part natural history lesson, I highly recommend this novel.

Snails are fascinating. For example did ye know that snails have teeth? Or that the scientific name for a snail, gastropod, means “stomach-foot?” Or that snails “tormented & haunted” Charles Darwin? Or that if it is quiet enough ye CAN hear a wild snail eat?

From poems and quotes from scientific literature, to exquisite reflections from the author, this novel was poetic look into the life of snails in general and one snail in particular. It is a fast and stunning read. I will never again look at snails in the same way. Pick this one up. It’s worth the read.

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From the Captain:

It is time to abandon ship me mateys! This one was recommended by me first mate because he loved it. Of course he did warn me that there was a 50/50 shot that I wouldn’t like it.

I made it to the 53% mark before calling it quits. To be fair the beginning of the novel was wonderful. This is the story of a dude named Bob who signs up for a cryogenics program, dies, and wakes up in the future as an artificial intelligence computer program.

The circumstances that Bob finds himself in, the politics of the world, how Bob deals with it, and the beginning of Bob’s exploration of the universe were delightful. Bob is a bit of a nerd to put it mildly. His quirky personality made the beginning of the novel fly by.

The side characters like Bob’s AI digital personal assistant, Guppy and the other “Bobs” are humorous. There are deeper concepts woven throughout concerning identity, personality, technology, and space exploration. The mix of cool technology and the silliness of Bob were wonderful.

The problem for me was that eventually, it was less about Bob exploring his new roles in life and more about determining the future. I got bored. There are only so many descriptions of new planets, mining, and such that I could take. It began to feel repetitive. There began to be gaps in time where we skipped the process of Bob figuring things out and jumped to the problem having being mostly solved. I get that Bob’s AI is way beyond me brain skills but I just wasn’t absorbed in the story. So I gave up. Of course the first mate disagrees with me . . .

From the First Mate:

One of my absolute favorite “cancelled too soon” t.v. series was a show from 1999 called “Now and Again.” The premise of the show was that an ad executive is accidentally killed in the subway, his brain is stolen by the government, and then a scientist puts that brain into an artificial body for use as a spy/assassin/whatever. What the scientist and the government didn’t count on was that a lazy ad executive’s personality is completely at odds with what they ultimately wanted to do with the artificial body. And that conflict was really the driving force of the show. The ad executive wanted to get away and be with his family again, while the scientist and the government wanted him to train and be a machine.

“We Are Legion (We Are Bob)” plays with the same trope (a normalish person is flung into a military science project against his will) but spins it in completely the opposite direction. Bob is simply too competent a programmer to be bound by the controls that the military has placed on him, and much of the fun of the first half of the book is watching him figure out ways to do what he wants instead of what is expected of him. And the first half of the book is fantastic. Dennis E. Taylor covers some quality philosophical ground without dragging the plot to a halt. We’re given an amazingly depressing in its plausibility backstory of the theocratic government of the future. Some quality tension in a ticking clock scenario to get Bob in space. There’s even a very compelling discussion of why 3D printers ultimately take the sci-fi place of nanotechnology in this world. And skiffy references galore. So many fun references.

While I was reading the first half of the book, I was thinking “this is the most fun I’ve had with a sci-fi book in forever.” I was also pondering, “this is so fun, I wonder if I should recommend this to the Captain.”

Unfortunately, for me, the second half of the book doesn’t quite live up to the first half. Which is a shame, as the second half of the book is where the “We Are Legion” aspect really takes off. The conceptual aspect of a multiplicity of Bobs is very interesting and Taylor does a very good job of differentiating the various Bobs. It’s just, well, the uses to which he puts them were less than interesting to me. Indeed, one storyline that involves a primitive civilization seems to be little more than a way of keeping one of the Bobs sidelined from the other storylines. Another gets bogged down in a very realistic bureaucratic negotiation situation that, while well written, didn’t make me smile in the ways that the first half of the book did. Still enjoyable, just a step down from earlier.

I suppose the major difference between the first and second half of the book is that the second half didn’t feel as though Bob et. al. was staying ahead of anyone. Sure, they planned and prepared for various scenarios (some which worked out and others which did not), but generally it was all very reactive. The first half of the book was full of Bob outsmarting controls and limits using skills that the military didn’t expect him to have. Perhaps that means that the first half is pure nerd fantasy, while the second half is more of a variant on hard sci-fi in space.

In some ways, “We Are Legion (We Are Bob)” feels like it fits in with the work of early Heinlein or Scalzi. Sci-fi adventurism with some hard sci-fi trappings. If that’s in your wheelhouse, it’s well worth a look. Me? I’ll definitely be checking out the sequel later this year.

Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordpress.com/

Ahoy there mateys!

Mental illness is not a laughing matter. Well, unless ye read this book that is. Ye see mateys, this book has a psychotic raccoon on the cover. I picked it up because I a) heard it was funny and b) thought it was a young adult book that had something to do with silly raccoons. No joke.

Well turns out it is a memoir by a woman named Jenny who has a lot of mental illnesses, an actual taxidermied raccoon named Rory who is the featured on the cover of this novel, and many crazy stories to share.

As the author states in her disclaimers at the beginning of the book:

"This is a funny book about living with mental illness. It sounds like a terrible combination, but personally, I’m mentally ill and some of the most hysterical people I know are as well. So if you don’t like the book then maybe you’re just not crazy enough to enjoy it. Either way, you win."

I must be crazy because I found a lot of the stories to be laugh out loud funny. I had to read whole sections out loud to the first mate because they were just too good not to share. And while the situations the author finds herself in are sometimes absurd and seemingly unreal, I still found them extremely human at the same time and relatable.

Feeling unproductive as a grownup? Check. Being unable to sleep for long stretches at a time? Check. Not wanting to be around people – ever? Check. Embracing the quirkiness of being who ye are? Check.

Add in things that wouldn’t occur to me or haven’t happened to me like:

- dressing up as a koala in Australia while attempting to hold koalas
- participating in a sleep study that sounds more like a horror movie
- leaving voicemail messages for yerself at 2:00 in the morning
- dealing with killer cannibal swans
- pondering how to survive the zombie apocalypse, the airport, and the zombie apocalypse at the airport (okay I may have done this one)

Seriously I am not funny enough to do the humor in this book justice. But the humor is not the whole point. At the root of the book, there is a woman embracing life in spite of all of the difficulties life has thrown at her. Whether it is her anxiety or depression or just the day to day struggle to exist, underneath is a love for life and a determination to win through in the end. To be furiously happy and savor the moments she can. That is the true joy in the book. As she says:

"Be bizarre. Be weird. Be proud of the uniquely beautiful way that you are broken.
Be furiously happy."

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Ahoy there mateys! I was first introduced to this author when I read her Nebula award-winning novel, the moon and the sun. That one is set in the court of Louis XIV and deals with sea monsters. Awesome. Read long ago, that novel always made me want to read her other works.

This novel was her first and is a sci-fi published in 1975. It was rather annoying to get a hold of because it seems to be out of print. But I persevered and read it. Despite some silly seeming scientific facts, it certainly was enjoyable and worth the effort.

Side note: Apparently ye can now buy many of her works in e-book form directly from her website!

The story concerns a telepathic girl named Mischa who lives in the last surviving city on Earth. Being telepathic is not something that makes Mischa’s life easy and being discovered could easily led to her death. In fact, the author’s take on telepathy in this novel was wonderful. It can be useful tool but overall is primarily horrible for Mischa. I am used to the version of telepathy in more recent novels that are seemingly effortless.

The city’s political and social structures were the highlights for me. Slavery is a big theme in this novel but even the top citizens of the world seem to be stuck in a less than stellar environment. Mischa of course is the plucky orphan who is trying to escape Earth. Her goal is to get on a ship to take her and her sick, useless, but beloved brother to a new life.

Plots are failing and Mischa’s options look bleaker than ever. When a ship lands on Earth during an off season time period and these twin brothers/clones take over the Earth, she might have one last shot at success.

With mutants, magic, clones, underground chases, excellent side characters, and thievery to boot, this novel had a cleverly setup premise and plot. The execution left a little something to be desired in the middle of the book due to the chase scene that could have been shorter, but I loved the character relationships. Also there are enough twists in the novel that I wasn’t always sure how it was going to end.

All I know is that I wish there were more novels about Mischa and her subsequent adventures.

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Hearty har har me mateys! Time to hear about a fellow grand and glorious sea dog . . .

If ye haven’t read the first book in this series, blackhearts, then ye might want to skip this post and go read the first book. Worth the read. If ye keep reading this log then ye have been forewarned and continue at yer own peril . . .

So I am assuming most of me readers have heard of the fearsome Blackbeard who sailed the waters of the West Indies on the Queen Anne’s Revenge. The first book sets up the “true” story of how Anne, a half West Indies / half English daughter of a respected merchant and the young Blackbeard (known at the time as Edward Drummond) meet and fall in love.

The second novel continues their story outside of Bristol, England and heads seaward to the Caribbean, mate! While I loved the first book and it’s forays into Blackbeard’s beginnings and how some of the myths surrounding him started, not much of it involved the sea. It was more of the story of how Blackbeard ending up having to go to the Caribbean.

This novel begins with Anne on the sea dealing with a dead man and continued to be a non-stop rollickin’ adventure. I devoured this in one sitting and loved every moment. From sea battles, to political intrigue, pirate code, treachery, and swashbucklin’, I found this to be the real pirate tale that I be cravin’. Arrrrr!

Both Anne and Blackbeard continue to be fun characters to follow. Feisty, spunky Anne be me favorite in particular. Add in excellent friendships, other pirates, and what life was like in Nassau, and I be hooked.

The author continued her entertaining portrayal of what Blackbeard’s life could have been like and how he turned “pirate” so to speak. I mean maybe it happened this way . . . who can say. Me mateys should definitely read this.

Side note: This was the author’s second novel. Still an excellent taste in choice of subject matter. Brilliant job.

So lastly . . .

Thank you Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing!

Check out me ship's log at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordpress.com/