Monthly Archives: April 2019

Book Review: Jackaby

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jackabyJackaby
by William Ritter
Urban Fantasy/Detective story
299 pages
Published 2014

I don’t remember why this book was recommended to me, but it’s been languishing in my library stack for at least a couple of months now. I finally got around to reading it – and it’s delightful! There are three more books and a novella in this series, and the author has apparently started another fantasy series.

Jackaby is told from the viewpoint of Abigail Rook, an English miss who ran away from home in search of adventure. The book opens on her arrival in America, by way of the Ukraine and Germany. The only work she can find in this new town is as an assistant to Jackaby, a distinctly odd character who claims to see things no one else can. Abigail, however, begins to believe him, and accompanies him to a murder scene, where she spots mundane details that he had overlooked. With Jackaby spotting supernatural things that no one else can, and Abigail taking note of more mundane details that Jackaby misses, the two make a formidable team.

Jackaby, of course, has that infuriating habit of not telling Abigail all the things he knows, which leads to her not mentioning useful details because she didn’t know they were useful. I’m hopeful, now that she’s earned his trust, that in future books they will communicate better and work together more seamlessly.

The worldbuilding here seems to take “America as a melting pot” into the supernatural world as well, with creatures from various cultures migrating with their humans to America. Jackaby has a rather improbable knowledge of this huge variety of creatures, as well as a library to look up more obscure facts that aren’t already in his labyrinth of a mind.

I liked that Abigail wasn’t portrayed as stupid; she’s a bit ignorant of the supernatural world, but she didn’t know it existed until Jackaby, and she’s learning quickly. She also can’t see it like he can, so she of course misses some things that he thinks are obvious. He could be a little better about remembering that not everyone can see the supernatural, though.

The cover mentions that it’s Dr. Who meets Sherlock, and that’s a very apt description. Jackaby is VERY Dr. Who like, with the bustling energy and quick mind that comes off as arrogant but is more…oblivious, really. Abigail fills the companion role, along with a certain policeman that I’m hoping shows up in the following books as well. I will have to track those down and find out!

From the cover of Jackaby:

Newly arrived in New Fiddleham, New England, in 1892, and in need of a job, Abigail Rook meets R. F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with a keen eye for the extraordinary – including the ability to see supernatural beings. Abigail has a gift for noticing ordinary but important details, which makes her perfect for the position of Jackaby’s assistant. On her first day, Abigail finds herself in the midst of a thrilling case: A serial killer is on the loose. The police – with the exception of the handsome detective Charlie Cane – are convinced their culprit is an ordinary villain. Jackaby is certain the foul deeds are the work of an inhuman creature, the likes of which the authorities are adamant to deny.

Doctor Who meets Sherlock in a debut novel, the first in a series, brimming with cheeky humor and a dose of the macabre.

Library Loot Wednesday

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I took three books back, not intending to pick up ANY new books, but then my husband wanted to peruse the stacks for some reading material, and – well. Needless to say, I checked out more books! Five, to be exact. I’m not good at this game.

 

So my husband found a Mercedes Lackey Elemental Masters book that neither of us have read, called The Bartered Brides. I found a book I’d seen talked about and is half novel, half adult picture book, Above the Timberline. I got two short story anthologies, Shadowed Souls and Warrior Women, and White Stag, a fantasy written by an autistic author.

My husband checked out four additional books, including The Alloy of Law, which is the very first book I reviewed on this blog!

TTT – Outrageous Things I’ve Done For The Love Of Books

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Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. She has a linky on her page for everyone participating in this week’s topic, Outrageous Things I’ve Done For The Love of Books!

I don’t actually think I’ve done too many outrageous things for the love of books. I mean, yes, I read over 200 books last year, in my goal of posting to the blog every single day, which was getting better at doing in the second half of the year. Is the fact that I have a book blog at all one of those outrageous things? I guess it could be. Other than that, hmmm.

Well, I have purposefully moved into houses with slightly too many rooms so that we could have a dedicated library. On that same note, I have moved literally over a ton of books. Repeatedly. On one move we had all the same size boxes; we weighed a few of them, averaged that, and then multiplied it by the number of book boxes. Come to think of it, trying to figure out how much our books weighed might qualify as a weird thing!

Some of those moves were from the west coast to the east coast (and east to west, and west to east again, yay military…) and on both of the west to east trips, I definitely scouted out locations of notable book stores to hit. (The east-to-west trip was my father and me while my husband was deployed, and Dad’s not a bibliophile like my husband and I are.) On that note, Half Price Books is an AMAZING book chain, and I wish we had one around here! Powell’s I have been to more than once, and is fantastic, and Smith Family Bookstore in Eugene, Oregon, is also awesome. *cough* where was I? Oh Right. Things I’ve done for the love of books.

I can’t actually think of anything else. So that’s – seven things I’ve done for the love of books. Maybe other people’s posts will remind me of more!

 

Book Review: Unmarriageable

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UnmarriageableUnmarriageable
by Soniah Kamal
Young Adult/Romance/Retelling
335 pages
Published January 2019

One of these days I really need to read Austen. I enjoy so many retellings – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and I know I have a copy of Mr. Darcy, Vampyre around here somewhere! (And now that I pulled up The Lizzie Bennet Diaries to link it here, I’m sorely tempted to sit down and watch the whole thing again but I have books to read!)

Anyway. Austen. I’ve read a bunch of retellings but believe it or not, I haven’t read the original. I really need to get on that, but instead, I read Unmarriageable, which is Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan! It’s SO GOOD. The themes of family honor, class structure, and rumors damaging reputations translates incredibly easily into Pakistani society, which is why Soniah Kamal wrote it. In her Afterword, she writes:

“Was there any worry more Pakistani than the concern about what might bring a family honor or dishonor? …. Was there anything more Pakistani than [Charlotte’s] calculated, ‘arranged’ marriage? … Was there anything more apropos to Pakistan than class issues, snootiness, and double standards?”

She goes on to say she was already reading the book as if it was set in Pakistan, so why not write it that way for other Pakistanis? Kamal explains that Pakistan is very much a mix of Pakistan and English culture, and that the emphasis on learning English and English culture comes at the expense of their own indigenous culture, something forced upon them by colonizers. Unmarriageable is her way of melding the two cultures.

I really enjoyed this version of the classic, and it has me even more interested in other versions, such as Ibi Zoboi’s Pride and Sonali Dev’s Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors. Book Riot actually ran a short list recently on diverse Austen retellings, and I’ve added every one of them to my To-Read list!

From the cover of Unmarriageable:

In this one-of-a-kind retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry – until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. 

A scandal and a vicious rumor concerning the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won’t make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and have children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire the girls to dream of more.

When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat, certain that the family’s luck is about to change, excitedly prepares her daughters to fish for rich, eligible bachelors. On the first night of the festivities, Alys’s lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of Fahad “Bungles” Bingla, the wildly successful – and single – entrepreneur. But Bungles’s friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. As the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal – and Alys begins to realize that Darsee’s brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance.

Told with wry wit and colorful prose, Unmarriageable is a charming update on Jane Austen’s beloved novel and an exhilarating exploration of love, marriage, class, and sisterhood.

Sunday Stuff

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Well, things have calmed down somewhat, and after getting most of our stuff unpacked, my husband and I have agreed to take a few weeks off to relax before tackling the upstairs rooms. So I’ve been able to get back to reading!

The husband is also getting some reading time in, and while we share some interests, one thing I haven’t been able to give him any recommendations on his hard sci-fi. Specifically, military sci-fi. So if anyone has suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

Book Review: The Priory of the Orange Tree

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priory of the orange treeThe Priory of the Orange Tree
by Samantha Shannon
Epic Fantasy
830 pages
Published February 2019

Holy COW, you guys. I keep saying “I haven’t read much epic fantasy lately” and “I don’t have time to read such long books/series” but I made an exception for Priory, and I’m SO glad I did. Just WOW.

So the basic premise of this world is that The Nameless One (some gigantic evil dragon) was locked away a thousand years ago, and all his minions with him. The exact details of how and who did it have been mostly lost to history. It’s said that as long as the House of Berethnet rules Inys, he’ll never rise again, and Berethnet queens always have one child, a daughter. The current queen, however, is unwed, and minions of The Nameless One have begun rising, and in fact have conquered a few neighboring nations. We have three main factions of countries; The East, who have dragon riders, but make a distinction between their dragons, who are aquatic and identify with the stars, and the evil minions of The Nameless One, who are full of fire. Then we have Virtudom, which is headed by Inys, and is a coalition of countries who have made a religion of the Knightly Virtues. This is the West, and they make no distinction between the draconic servants of The Nameless One and the water dragons of the East. This has forced a split between the West and the East, because Virtudom won’t have anything to do with countries that have anything to do with dragons, because most of what they see is the third faction – the Draconic countries. These are countries conquered by minions of the Nameless One, and they are full of chaos, fire, evil, and plague.

This is the world the book opens on. Most of our main characters – Queen Sabran, her handmaiden Ead, the dragonrider Tané – are women, but we also have Doctor Niclays Roos, an alchemist, and Lord Arteloth Beck, a friend of the Queen. In this world, women are just as capable as men, and are treated as such. There are female knights, and same-sex relationships are just as ordinary as opposite-sex ones. There is a bit too much moral emphasis placed on monogamy/sex within the bounds of marriage, but I guess that’s “Knightly Virtue” for you. Skin color is only mentioned a couple of times, but I seem to remember Lord Arteloth being described as very dark-skinned, and Ead as golden-brown. Rather nice to see a fantasy NOT all caught up in racial and gender differences. Not to say there isn’t a fair amount of bigotry, but in this book it’s based pretty much solely on nationality and religion. And when the biggest sticking point is “do you like evil dragons or not” that kind of makes sense!

I think the only thing I didn’t like about this book was its size. It’s unwieldy to read, at over 800 pages! I’m not sure why they didn’t break it into a duology. Regardless, if you have the choice, I’d read it on Kindle. It would be far easier to handle. I’m not complaining about the amount of text, mind you. Just the sheer physical size. I can’t imagine the story being told in less time. There’s So. Much. Here.

This book goes from Queen Sabran’s court to the dragonrider academy in the East, to the draconic kingdom of Yscalin, to the Abyss where the Nameless One sleeps. We see glittering courts, hidden islands, sweltering tunnels through volcanic mountains, and deep valleys with secret magic trees. We battle wyrms and cockatrices, swim through endless seas with dragonriders, sail through storms with pirate crews, and navigate the trickiest of diplomatic matters with courtiers. The Priory of the Orange Tree paints an elaborate, incredibly complex world and I am absolutely here for it.

Okay, so one tiny quibble – while I liked the romance, I feel like it started kind of oddly. I didn’t see any reason for the initial spark. From there, it progressed perfectly, but I just didn’t get the beginning.

This book has multiple queer couples! There’s at least one same-sex couple mentioned as attending a party; Doctor Roos spends a lot of time mourning his dead lover, and there’s the lesbian romance between a couple of main characters. And one character has at least strong affection for a man before falling in love with a woman; I think she was in love with both. No trans or ace rep, but plenty of gay, lesbian, and bi!

This is hands-down the best book I’ve read so far this year. It took me three days – it’s a big book – but it is absolutely fantastic.

From the cover of The Priory of the Orange Tree:

A WORLD DIVIDED.
A QUEENDOM WITHOUT AN HEIR.
AN ANCIENT ENEMY AWAKENS.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.