Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings.  While I try to post no spoilers, if ye haven’t read the first book in this series, the book of koli, then ye might want to skip this.  If ye keep reading this log then ye have been forewarned and continue at yer own peril . . .

So, can I have the third one right now?  Cause dang was this even better than the first.  I gobbled it up in one sitting and need to know what happens next.

The world expands in this installment.  One of the things I loved best was that not only are we following Koli, but we also get to have a new point-of-view from an old character that Koli left behind in the village.  I didn't think I needed to know what was happening there.  I assure ye that I did.  The switching back and forth was excellent and each section ended on these awesome cliffhangers where ye wanted more but also needed too see what was happening in the other part of the world too.  I didn't know which parts I would rather be in.  So fun.

I continued to love the writing in the degraded language.  I loved watching Koli's group turn into a found family.  I loved all the characters' personal growth.  I loved the plants and monsters.  I loved the AI and tech and the surprises in that regard.  Actually, I loved all the surprises.  I just plain loved this book.

No major plot points from me because of the joy of watching the story unfold.  Just know that ye have to read book one first.  I am avidly waiting for the conclusion of the trilogy.  Arrrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank ye Orbit Books!

Ahoy there me mateys!  The lovely cover drew me attention and the quirky premise hooked me.  This is the first book in a duology that has fairy tale tropes but takes place in space.  And, seriously, it so worked for me.

The tone (kinda silly) and storytelling style (omnipresent narrator) did take some getting used to but I was quickly drawn in.  The story follows Rory who is the first girl born to the Thorne line in 200 years.  Court custom dictates that the fairies be invited to her naming to give blessings.  But no one actually expected them to show up!  Of course one of the 13 fairies is insulted and gives Rory a "curse":

I curse you, Rory Thorne: to find no comfort in illusion or platitude, and to know truth when you hear it, no matter how well concealed by flattery, custom, or mendacity.

Talk about awesome.  Though, of course, always knowing the truth doesn't help when immature or lacking wisdom.  But dang it it fun to read about how Rory and those around her have to deal with this particular issue.  The author makes a fantastic choice to have the actual thoughts show up in italics before hearing what the people say out-loud.  SO lovely and wonderful.  It never got old.

The other highlight were the strong female characters throughout.  There is Rory herself who ye can't help but cheer for.  Then there are her protection squad.  Gryt, the body-maid, is particularly wonderful.  Snarky, clever, and part cyborg.  The other two soldiers, Thorsdittor and Zhang, also rock and I was glad to slowly get to know them.  On the opposite side is the (male) Vizier who makes a nice counterbalance to Gryt and deals with the magical side of things.

The only two things I didn't really love were the historical asides of the narrator and the romance element.  The romance element was extremely mild and fine but could have been left out.  Those things aside, I LOVED the unexpected ending.  It was surprising and fun and I really want the next book.  It is scheduled to come out at the end of October.  I can't wait.  Arrrrr!

Is yer Captain's word not enough (though it should be)?  Matey Tammy @ books,bones&buffy has this to say about the book:

Probably the most surprising thing about this story was the way Eason combines rollicking space opera with fantasy and fairy tale tropes. It’s a combination I’ve seen before, but never done in quite this way. On the fantasy side, we have royal courts and princesses who have to wear ball gowns with corsets and follow strict protocols. And on the sci-fi side, the story is set in a “multiverse” full of planets and moons, space shuttles, and such familiar SF elements as drones, ‘bots and mecha implants. Tying these together is arithmancy, a wonderful blend of math, computer hacking and magic. Arithmancers can send their minds deep into the aether and use hexes to manipulate computer code.

Ahoy there mateys!  Though the First Mate and I have very different reading tastes, occasionally we do recommend books to each other.  We read and talked about the book and I enjoyed his viewpoint so I ordered asked him to write a review.  So you get one from me and a bonus additional review from me crew.  Please note that I write like I talk and the first mate writes like he thinks.  Hope you enjoy!

From the Captain:

Time travel books are either very hit or very, very miss with me but I can't help but hope every time a new one comes out.  The premise of this book is exactly what it sounds like - from age 18, Oona lives her life out of order.  She gets a year older mentally but jumps around to different years in her life.  The First Mate read this one and warned me I wouldn't probably like it.  I just had to try for meself because of the cool premise.

And I hated it.  The main character is selfish, stupid, whiny, and just so frickin' selfish.  And shallow, immature, self-absorbed, and lacking in any real introspection.  Then there are the super boring plot "twists."  The author had to take the even seemingly fun aspects like Oona's assistant and ruin it.  Or how she dealt with all of her love interests.  They sucked.  Then there was the mom who had potential that wasn't used.  Every time I thought it might take a better turn, it sadly didn't.

So why did I finish?  It was the only audiobook I had in the car for my long journey.  And at least I could vent about it to the First Mate.  Who was kind enough not to say "I told ye so."  Arrr!

Side note: some time travel hits - the anubis gates or the shining girls or the oxford time travel series

From the First Mate:

I remember making a friend laugh by saying that I wouldn’t trust a future me telling me to do something because I couldn’t be sure “they’d have my best interests at heart.” I was most likely thinking about the Evil Bill and Ted from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey when making that statement. In reality, I can’t imagine what would make a future me want to do anything other than help a present or past me. It’s possible that my inability to understand such a thing prevented me from enjoying Oona Out of Order more.

Time travel being my favorite sci-fi/fantasy trope, I was definitely onboard for the premise here. Every New Year after her 18th birthday sees Oona’s consciousness jump to another, randomly non-sequential year in her life. We see her very first jump, thirty years into the future, where she receives a letter from a previous (and older) self, explaining the situation of what’s going on. We find that she’s got a reliable support network in her mother and her assistant who both know what’s going on and they are, in that first jump, the most understanding and helpful people one could be fortunate enough to stumble upon. All pretty great. Nothing much happens in that first jump, mind you, but we learn the parameters of the premise and get introduced to the two other important characters in this tale.

We also learn that financial advice aside, future versions of Oona are not going to be helping her out. This weird decision, hand-waved away with a statement that knowing what’s coming will rob Oona of the joy of living, pretty much ruined the book for me. I honestly cannot fathom why future versions of Oona would not wish to help out or prepare present Oona for the year that is to come. In more than one instance Oona is even put in a precarious position for the disorientation of the consciousness jump. If I knew that someone else was going to be taking over for my consciousness at 12:01am on January 1, you can be damn sure that at 11:59pm on December 31 I’d be in a safe location with copious notes. Not Oona, though. That wouldn’t be fun.

I’m probably being too harsh in that the book I was hoping Oona Out of Order would be wasn’t the one that Montimore was looking to write. To a degree, I was hoping for a somewhat in depth examination of what it would mean to have one’s consciousness jump randomly and non-sequentially from one year to another (like Slaughterhouse Five but without the war and the aliens). To have both the certainty that one will get through whatever is currently going on coupled with the extra certainty that the next year may just as likely be in the past as in the future. I wanted the book to do more with the advantages Oona had with regards to knowing how various things turned out. I wanted more desperation of living in the moment because Oona would never know when she’d next be able to pick up any particular year she was living. I wanted many more years than we’re given.

Montimore seems to have been interested in telling a “you gotta take life as it comes” story. Which, okay. Not a bad message. And, I suppose the book more or less succeeds at showing the reader that there are always joys to find in life even when there is so much uncertainty. But Oona is constantly making stupid and selfish decisions that wouldn’t have to be made if her future selves merely decided to help out on the journey. I realize that we’re getting Oona from 18-26 and those are years when decisions are not always the absolute best, reasoned, or unselfish, but these decisions were just particularly bad. And her future, older selves surely would have wanted to mitigate some of those bad decisions, wouldn’t they?

And we only get less than a dozen different years with two of them being sequential (amplifying the stupid and selfish decisions). And we’re hardly getting a random distribution of Oona’s years here; not even a decently semi-random distribution curated for dramatic or narrative effect. And we’re robbed of the most important and potentially fascinating discussion that the book could have given us: how she reveals to her mother what’s going on.

I guess when I really think about the book I realize that I didn’t like the main character, I thought the premise was poorly used, I didn’t care about any of the secondary characters, and none of the eras that Oona jumped to felt fleshed out in any particular way. One could imagine a version of this book where the character started the jumps in 1918 and whipsawed back and forth through the century, meeting people and examining the many changes that occurred over that time period. Or even a version that started, as this one does, in 1982 and half of the jumps dealt with a future that hasn’t happened yet. As it is, there was very little to distinguish one year from another in this book, other than some mentions of technology and the aging of the characters. This is one of those books where I’m left with the troublesome thought of, “I wish someone else had written it.”

I don’t think I’d recommend this one to anyone.

Ahoy there me mateys! Aye, this novella has nuns in space. But it also has so much more. It is a fantastic character study about a group of women who have secrets and what happens when Rome and the Earth’s government try to involve them in a conspiracy.

Well the first thing I have to squee about is the living ship that is a kinda slug that the nuns live in. I love me some spaceships. I love me some living spaceships where ye get to hear about the realities of what living in one is like. These ships were fascinating and I loved the details about them like genetic studies and how ye raise them. This ship is even more complicated because it has hit maturity way too early and wants to breed!

The nuns themselves were pretty awesome. There are 10 in the ship and ye get to know five of them pretty well. Sister Faustina was me favourite with Sister Gemma a close second. I enjoyed the idea of a priest from Rome coming onboard to get them caught up with church doctrine and policy. I loved it even more that the nuns manage to have faith and adapt to both space and progress.

The only major problem I had was that the climax and ending were abrupt and I guessed some of the bad guy plot twists. That said, this was fun and I am so glad I finally got to read it. Arrr!

Ahoy there mateys!  Though the First Mate and I have very different reading tastes, occasionally we do recommend books to each other. We read and talked about the book and I enjoyed his viewpoint so I ordered asked him to write a review.  So you get one from me and a bonus additional review from me crew.  Please note that I write like I talk and the first mate writes like he thinks.  Hope you enjoy!

From the Captain:

My five star reads transport me into another world.  I lose meself in experiencing the story and this was one of them.  I was excited to read this book because I loved jonathan strange and mr. norell.  And so I went into this one blind hoping for magic.  I got it.  I feel like the setting of the book is real.  I want to visit and not just read about it.  I would talk about plot and character but to say more would influence the reader learning about it for themselve.  Arrrr!

Side note: I will say that as I am not a visual person, viewing the art of Piranesi before reading intensified the enjoyment

From the First Mate:

It feels gluttonous and ungrateful to say that I was expecting more from Piranesi, but that was my feeling throughout and ultimately upon finishing it. It’s well written, has a fascinating world, several very intriguing characters, and wraps up its plot in a mostly satisfying manner. And yet the experience of reading it felt as though I was experiencing something incomplete; that I was getting only a shadow of what was there. What I got was beautiful and very enjoyable, but it felt like something more was just out of reach.

Piranesi is told in first person narration from the eponymous character and it is a delightfully weird narration. He describes the House that he lives in, the other people in it and how he takes care of them, and his important work that he’s doing with his only friend, the Other. Due to some of the aspects of the world that he lives in, many of Piranesi’s memories and thoughts are a bit mixed up. While he believes himself to have a perfect memory and he keeps a very detailed journal, we soon come to learn that things in this world may be more complex than Piranesi has made them out to be.

There are a couple of longish passages where events in the past are explained, giving us just enough detail to know how the various characters arrived at where they are but little more. Many of the glimpses of the past (and especially some of the secondary characters) are absolutely fascinating and I kept hoping we’d come back to them but never did. We soon get an understanding of what is actually going on and then the plot swiftly moves towards its finish. I kept expecting there to be some twists along the path to that finish, but it played out in a pretty straightforward manner. Straightforward bound within the perspective of a delightfully weird narrator, of course.

Thematically the novel touches on the nature of identity, what constitutes friendship and trust, and finding one’s balance in the world/situation one is placed in. There’s some examination of the benefits of confinement and limits. There’s even a pretty good bit in there examining abusive academics and how it doesn’t matter if they’re smart or even 100% correct about the world because their abusive actions are still abuse. All very worthwhile themes and weighty topics, and the novel certainly made me think about them.

Clarke has said that she pursued writing Piranesi instead of the Jonathan Strange sequel that she had been working on due to her ill health. Her chronic fatigue illness has made writing a novel similar to her previous work impossible. When I read about her struggles I felt so horrible for her. And then, of course, I felt so horrible about wanting more from this book that I did truly enjoy. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Clarke to know the expectations that come from following Jonathan Strange and say, “I don’t have it in me to write that now” and still be able to write something compelling and beautiful like Piranesi.

Highly recommended to fans of odd narrators and weird worlds. Avoid if incompleteness enrages you, as there are many paths left unexplored here.

Side note:  There is a fantastic Guardian article about Clarke and Piranesi but it is full of spoilers so should only be read AFTER reading the book.

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

This was a very entertaining read.  The story follows a girl looking for information about a person whose image appears in a locket.  This main character has perfect memory recall.  The story is told in monologue format from various people that the main character interviews.  Ye get no perspective of the girl herself.  The questions she asks in her investigation are hinted at by the answers the other characters give.  Each chapter showcases a different person.  The world building is glimpsed in tiny snippets.  Basically every aspect of this book is a puzzle that the reader must figure out.  I rather enjoyed the journey.  Just go with the flow.

So lastly . . .

Thank ye Tor.com!

Ahoy there me mateys!  This book has been on me list ever since it was featured by Matey Lynn @ lynn'sbookblog in the SPFBO #5 in 2019.  It is a military fantasy and the tagline caught me:

John Carver has three rules: Don’t drink in the daytime, don’t gamble when the luck has gone, and don’t talk to the dead people who come to visit.

This was a good read even though it ended up being very different from what I was expecting.  This of course was me fault for not rereading Lynn's review before picking up the book.  Because the dead people who come to visit are not ghosts but hallucinations from PTSD.  I had forgotten this.

The story follows two people, John Carver, who is the one suffering hallucinations and Mackenzie, a nurse in Afghanistan who is kidnapped.  I very much enjoyed both characters and the shifting POVs.  Carver was the more interesting perspective for me because of his "ghosts" and military background.  He is also snarky and quirky and I love those types of characters.

The book itself is action packed and I read it in one setting.  This book was a bit of a popcorn read for me.  The major problems were personal preferences.  A lot of the book deals with torture.  It is not gratuitous but I don't know if I would have picked it up had I known the extent of that plot line's focus.  My fault again for not rereading Lynn's review.  The other issue is that the bad guys are two-dimensional and the reasons for their evil were flat.  In addition the Big Bag does some magical things at the end that made no sense in the context of the set-up for how the magic works.

I would have preferred the plot to have stuck with Carver's story and dealing with being in Kabul and running an op.  I highly enjoyed the mission Carver was on, how he was dealing with Kabul, and the light details about the drug-lords.  I wish it would have continued in that vein and not switched topics and locations.  Despite the problems, this was an enjoyable book to pass some time on a lazy day.  Arrrr!

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this short story collection eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

I have always loved reading Jane Yolen's novels but as I have gotten older I have loved her short stories just as much.  I have read all four of the Tachyon Publications of Jane Yolen's works and I love them.  This fifth one deals with dark themes though the book is set up along the lines of her previous collection, the emerald circus, which dealt with fairytales.

This collection has 16 varied tales.  Like any collection, I liked some better than others.  I also very much enjoyed Yolen's "Story Notes and Poems" at the end of the book which gives background on the short stories in the collection.

I don't want to spoil the magic of the stories and can't really do them justice with me own paltry words but I will try to give ye an idea of the bare bones of the stories:

"The Weaver of Tomorrow" - I loved this tale of a girl who wants to know the future and  her wish is answered in an unexpected way.  The ending was perfect.

"The White Seal Maid" - As the title suggests, this is a story concerning a selkie.  I loved how the story is told from the viewpoint of the husband but the wife ultimately wins.

"The Snatchers" - This was a spooky ghost story with a twist involving the Holocaust.  So very atmospheric.

"Wilding" - The setting for this is Central Park in NYC and is an odd and creepy take on the future.  It had a fun hopeful ending though.  Love the references to "where the wild things are."

"Requiem Antarctica" - Ever hear of the failed 1912 Robert Falcon Scott expedition?  I hadn't.  I had a lot of fun learning the sad history of the trek and then learning the "real" story as a deathbed confession.  Hope this version doesn't end up being true.

"Night Wolves" - The creatures under the bed are real and a boy has to confront his fear for a bigger cause.  The lego bear trap made me smile as did the ending.

"The House of Seven Angels" - This very short tale was about a rabbi, a child, and the angel of death.  It was well-written but I didn't love it.

"Great Gray" - This features the thoughts of a pedophile.  Though not graphic is was too disturbing and I didn't like it at all.  I wanted to scrub my brain.

"Little Red" - This was another disturbing piece combining Little Red Riding Hood and child abuse.  Can't say I liked this one another though the imagery is well drawn.

"Winter's King" - This felt like an old-fashioned fairy tale where the child is born into the wrong world.  I rather liked it.

"Inscription" - I loved this tale of warning from a dying mom to her son.  What she was warning him about was awesome.

"Dog Boy" - The boy of this tale has one rough life.  Nobody wants a father like his.

"The Fisherman's Wife" - In this tale, a woman fights to win her husband back from the sea.  It was bittersweet and yet lovely.

"Become a Warrior" - A father dead on a battlefield and the girl who doesn't follow a traditional woman's path until fate deals her a blow.  I loved this one.

"An Infestation of Angels" - This was a strange story of plagues and angels.  Gross angels.

"Names" - A harrowing story about the child of a Holocaust survivor and how her mother's tales influence her life.

I have to admit that I did enjoy the emerald circus better than this one but I will certainly read another collection of Jane Yolen's work, especially if published by Tachyon.  Arrrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank you Tachyon Publications!

Ahoy there me mateys!  It be no secret that I adore Garth Nix.  He was the first author featured in me Broadside No. 1 and I have re-read the Old Kingdom series many times over the years.  So I was super happy to finally read his newest standalone book.

I have to admit that this be different in what I was expecting.  It does not have Nix's usual complex world building or characterization.  The beginning was a bit rough in the sense that the main character, Susan, has no idea what is going on and no one will tell her anything.  So the first half of the book is Susan being dragged everywhere and things happening to her and no real explanation of anything.  In fact the booksellers and other world really never do get dealt with satisfactorily.  Also the book is set in 1983 but it could have been set at any time other than a few specific items.

That said, the second half picked up in terms of action and I liked it a lot more.  Susan finally takes a more active role.  There are delightful forays into British folklore and myth.  I enjoyed the playful word usage.  I enjoyed Merlin being gender fluid and having a wonderful relationship with his sister.  The ending was fun.  I have no regrets about reading this one but I am not sure I would ever read it again.  Arrrrr!

Side note: The story of how and why Nix chose to write this book were cute.

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

I am a newcomer to the works of T. Kingfisher having only previously read minor mage, which I loved.  So I was very excited to get a hold of this horror book for the October season.  This ended up being an okay read for me but I blame this on me and not the author.

Ye see, this work was inspired by a 1907 novella called "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood.  I hadn't heard of this.  Lovecraft called that story "the finest supernatural tale in English literature."  Now I am not a Lovecraftian fan.  The First Mate once had to tell me what a shoggoth was.  So had I known that Kingfisher's book was more in that style or had a clue about the 1907 novella (and taken time to read it first), I may have liked this better.

Now to be fair, I don't really think the blurb does this book justice.  Because it only talks about the main character, Kara, living in her uncle's house.  It does not mention that said house is actually a room in her uncle's museum called "Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities and Taxidermy."  The place is as good as it sounds.  In fact the entire beginning of the book was utterly captivating.  I love the museum, Uncle Earl, and Kara.  I loved the entire set-up and was avidly hanging on every word.  Then the "hole" is discovered.

I even enjoyed the exploration of the bunker and the other world.  I found the existence of the hollow places to be interesting.  I loved that Kara brings in Simon the barista from the coffee shop next door to help explore.  I adored their banter and the humor throughout the book.  I thought much of it was atmospheric and fun.  Oh and there is an awesome cat.  Made me happy.

The main problem was the climax and the wrap up.  It was very much Lovecraftian and I just didn't like it.  I can objectively say it was written well but it just didn't float me boat.  Plus the "why" of the hole existing was obvious from the beginning and I didn't like that it took forever for Kara to figure it out.  It is me not the book.  That said, what I did like I loved and I am very much looking forward to reading more of the author's work.  Arrrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank you Saga Press!