Tag Archives: Fantasy

Book Review: Her Body and Other Parties

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her body and other partiesHer Body and Other Parties
by Carmen Maria Machado
Fantasy/Magical Realism Short Stories
241 pages
Published 2017

This is another book off my Wronged Women list – women who have been part of the #metoo movement. Specifically the ones that have come out against Junot Diaz and Sherman Alexie, but I hope to expand it to others as well. Her Body and Other Parties is a collection of eight surreal stories. Magical Realism is probably the best categorization for them, as they’re not really fantasy. Real World stories with a touch of magic, or events that we’re not sure whether they could be magic or are just in the narrator’s head.

The Husband Stitch is the first story, and it’s a retelling of an old children’s story that I recently saw being discussed on Twitter – the one with the woman who had a green ribbon tied around her neck. Her husband always wanted to ask about it, but she refused to answer any questions about it, and wouldn’t let him touch it until she was on her deathbed. In Machado’s version, it isn’t just the narrator that has one. Every woman does. It’s different colors, in different places, but it’s still never talked about. I think she means it as a metaphor for trauma. It works well.

Eight Bites is a particularly haunting piece about self-hate, body acceptance, and peer pressure. It’s probably my second favorite story after The Husband Stitch.

The only one I didn’t love was Especially Heinous. It was written as episode synopses of a television show, and it was interesting, but it just went on too long.

All of the stories are written well, though, and each one makes a different point. I think this would make an amazing Book Club book, because I’d love to discuss the meanings of the stories with other people. Other women, specifically. It would definitely be a great book for discussion.

From the cover of Her Body and Other Parties:

In her electrifying debut, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. Here are eight startling stories that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties enlarges the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Book Review: Starless

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StarlessStarless
by Jacqueline Carey
Fantasy
587 pages
Published June 2018

Jacqueline Carey has been a little hit or miss for me lately. I loved Kushiel’s Dart, read that years ago. Wasn’t fond of the second trilogy in that world. I read Miranda and Caliban a while back, and it was alright. This, though, blew me away. First, the idea that there are no stars in the sky. They have three moons and a sun, but no stars. Their mythology is that the Stars rebelled against their father, the Sun, and he threw them all to Earth, including one who hadn’t participated as it had been a babe in the womb during the rebellion! The stars now walk the earth as gods and goddesses, and we meet several in the book. (And hear about a few more.) The one god that hadn’t been part of the rebellion, but was punished anyway, has been nursing his hurt and resentment until, prophecy states, he will eventually wake and try to kill everyone. The problem is the prophecy was shattered into as many pieces as there are gods, and spread across the world. There are prophecy seekers that try to collect all the bits, but they’re not very successful.

In Khai’s country, the sacred twins are their gods. Pahrkun the Scouring Wind and Anamuht the Purging Fire. They can be seen on occasion striding across the desert. It is by Pahrkun’s will that Khai is bound to the youngest princess as her soul twin; very rarely the royal family gets one of these, and they are always meant to be bodyguards. So Khai is sent to the temple of Pahrkun’s warriors, deep in the desert, and trained in the many ways to kill. The warriors are all men, but Khai turns out to be non-binary, and this is what lets him guard the princess in a culture that includes harems and eunuchs. I love the relationship between Khai and Princess Zariya, and Zariya is no typical princess.

The book follows Khai and Zariya’s adventures in court intrigue, marriage proposals, sea battles, and prophecy-chasing. The action is perfect, the world breath-taking, and the people beautifully written. I’ve always enjoyed the fantasies where the gods show up commonly enough that people know how to identify them and how to treat them. From the Wind and Fire of Zharkoum’s arid country to the shape-changing Quellin and the terrifying Shambloth, the people that live near them build governments and societies around their gods, which makes each society stand out in their own way. World-building is definitely something that Carey is an expert at.

Starless is an amazing fantasy with a lovely queer romance at its heart. It’s full of varied cultures and enigmatic gods and goddesses and I just LOVE IT. Definitely one of my favorites this year.

From the cover of Starless:

“I was nine years old the first time I tried to kill a man . . .”

Destined from birth to serve as protector of the princess Zariya, Khai is trained in the arts of killing and stealth by a warrior sect in the deep desert; yet there is one profound truth that has been withheld from him.

In the court of the Sun-Blessed, Khai must learn to navigate deadly intrigue and his own conflicted identity . . . but in the far reaches of the western seas, the dark god Miasmus is rising, intent on nothing less than wholesale destruction.

If Khai is to keep his soul’s twin Zariya alive, their only hope lies with an unlikely crew of prophecy-seekers on a journey that will take them farther beneath the starless skies than anyone can imagine.

Series Review: The Bone Witch

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the bone witchThe Bone Witch/The Heart Forger
by Rin Chupeco
Young Adult Fantasy
411 pages/501 pages
Published 2017/2018

I’m reviewing the first two books of a trilogy here, The Bone Witch and The Heart Forger. The third book, The Shadowglass, is due out in March – but I wish it was out now!!

Both books are told in an alternating chapter format; short chapters, told from a nameless bard’s viewpoint as Tea tells him her story, and longer chapters told from Tea’s viewpoint, being the stories she’s telling the bard. All of the bard’s chapters take place over the course of a few weeks, while Tea’s story covers her entire life up to that point. So you get glimpses of what she’s currently doing, while getting backstory and explanation of why she’s doing it.

First thing I want to say is Tea is BADASS. The book opens on her raising a terrifying monster from the dead and making it into a pet. A PET. The bard she’s talking to is intimidated, to put it mildly. Then we launch into her story. Tea tells us how she went from farmgirl to Asha – think a geisha with magic and combat training, and you’ll get the picture. Tea’s world is fairly rigid on the gender roles – women with magic become asha, men with magic become Deathseekers. A significant side-plot revolves around a young boy with magic who wants to be an asha instead of a Deathseeker, and Tea’s efforts to help him. Tea turns out to be a rare kind of asha – a dark asha, or bone witch – whose powers are mostly concerned with raising the dead.

heart forgerA major point of this world is heartsglass – in several of the kingdoms (but not all of them) everyone wears a locket around their neck with their heartsglass inside. Heartsglass is basically a small ball of light summoned forth from a person’s soul when they come of age. It can’t be given away unwillingly, and the different colors of someone’s heartsglass means different things – whether they’re a magic user, or a bone witch, or an asha, or a heart forger. Or rather, whether they have the potential to become those things. Some people – the ashas, death seekers, any of the magic users, really – can see peoples’ emotions in their heartsglass, and can tell when people are lying, or guilty, or a number of useful things. People in love often trade their heartsglass with each other, literally holding each other’s hearts. This can be dangerous; the bone witch who trains Tea in the first book gave her heartsglass away, but her lover died without returning hers. And she doesn’t know where he hid it. Without a heartsglass, her powers – and life force – are dwindling.

I love Tea so much. She is incredibly powerful, but hurt and pissed off and out for vengeance. At the same time, she doesn’t want to be evil, so she is tempering her vengeance to a knifepoint so innocents aren’t caught in it needlessly. She’s doing horrifying things while you’re thinking “Oh. Yeah. That’s justified.” The writing in these books is excellent. The side characters are fleshed out with motivations of their own, the villains have interesting reasons for their villainy, strange events get revisited later and explained – it’s just amazingly well done.

Between raising the dead, flirting with princes, taking down army-destroying monsters, and taming dragons, the only bad thing I have to say is I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL MARCH FOR THE THIRD BOOK?!

From the cover of The Bone Witch:

The beast raged; it punctured the air with its spite. BUT THE GIRL WAS FIERCER.

Tea is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy makes her a bone witch, who are feared and ostracized in the kingdom. For theirs is a powerful, elemental magic that can reach beyond the boundaries of the living – and of the human.

Great power comes at a price, forcing Tea to leave her homeland to train under the guidance of an older, wiser bone witch. There, Tea puts all of her energy into becoming an asha, learning to control her elemental magic and those beasts who will submit by no other force. And Tea must be strong – stronger than she even believes possible. Because war is brewing in the eight kingdoms, war that will threaten the sovereignty of her homeland…and threaten the very survival of those she loves.

Lyrical and action packed, this new fantasy series by acclaimed author Rin Chupeco will leave you breathless.

From the cover of The Heart Forger:

Life isn’t fair. AND SOMETIMES, NEITHER IS DEATH.

No one knows death like Tea. A bone witch who can resurrect the dead, she has the power to take life…and return it. And she is done with her self-imposed exile. Her heart is set on vengeance, and she now possesses all she needs to command the mighty daeva. With the help of these terrifying beasts, she can finally enact revenge against the royals who wronged her – and took the life of her one true love.

But there are those who plot against her, those who would use Tea’s dark power for their own nefarious ends. Because you can’t kill someone who can never die…

War is brewing among the kingdoms, and when dark magic is at play, no one is safe.

Book Review: Eden Conquered

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eden conqueredEden Conquered
by Joelle Charbonneau
Young Adult Fantasy
303 pages
Published June 2018

So much happens in this book. Actually, too much happens in this book. Eden Conquered falls victim to something a lot of fantasies fall victim to – too many events in too short of a time, with hand-waving to explain the timing. Princess Carys is supposedly “wandering the wilderness” after faking her death in the previous book, Dividing Eden. She’s also supposed to be recovering from the withdrawal effects of the drug she was taking to cover the pain of being semi-regularly beaten while at home. (I’m not even going to get into why she, a Princess, was regularly beaten…it’s weird.) And yet, beyond a few pages in the beginning, she doesn’t seem to have any issues with the withdrawal, and the “wilderness” is never more than two day’s horseback ride from anywhere she seems to need to get to. The “War” that we keep hearing about we never see in either book. The battlefield is…somewhere else. There’s no real sense of time or distance, when it really feels as if there SHOULD be.

That aside, it’s a pretty good sequel to Dividing Eden. I think it would have been more satisfying to have been a trilogy, with the second book about Carys wandering in exile and Andreus dealing with the treachery in his kingdom, and the third book about Carys coming back to Garden City and reuniting with her brother. Perhaps we could have delved more into what the Xhelozi monsters are, and why the city is based on “Virtues.” That’s another problem I had, actually – they say, more than once, that the Xhelozi are strong because the Virtue of the city is weak, but never explain that. We don’t really get into the mythology much. Had the duology been a trilogy, perhaps we could have explored their religion more as well. There’s so much interesting world-building dangled just out of sight! As is, with only 300 pages, a secret is barely dangled in front of us before it’s revealed, and tension doesn’t have a chance to build properly.

It’s a great story. It needed more space to be fleshed out.

From the cover of Eden Conquered:

The trials of Virtuous Succession have ended.

Prince Andreus is King – and Princess Carys is dead.

But even as he’s haunted by what he did to win the throne, Andreus discovers that his dream of ruling only brings new problems. The people love his twin even more in death than they did when she was alive. The Elders treat him as a figurehead, undermining him with their own rival agendas. And the winds of Eden are faltering, leaving both the city and Andreus’s authority vulnerable to attack.

Yet despite what everyone believes, Carys is alive. Exiled to the wilderness, Carys struggles to overcome the lingering effects of the Tears of Midnight and to control the powers that have broken free inside her. And as she grows stronger, so does her conviction that she must return to the Palace of the Winds, face her twin, and root out the treachery that began long before the first Trials started.

The Kingdom of Eden is growing darker with each passing day. Now brother and sister must decide whether some betrayals cut too deep to be forgiven.

Book Review: Trail of Lightning

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trail of lightningTrail of Lightning
by Rebecca Roanhorse
Fantasy/Dystopia
285 pages
Published June 2018

Okay, first off, this cover is AWESOME. I’ve been following the author on Twitter for a few months now, and was extremely disappointed when my library didn’t order this book. But one of the other libraries in the state did, so this showed up recently as an interlibrary loan and MADE. MY. DAY.

The story and writing is EXCELLENT. The reader is thrown into the world of the Diné, with little to no explanation of what the Dinétah words mean. I think that only comes across as weird because it’s a real language; if the words were some made up fantasy language’s words, we wouldn’t think twice about it. I saw someone on Twitter mention that they really enjoyed the book because they spoke the language, so having the Dinétah words meant something to them. I think I like that they’re not explained; so much in this world is created for white people’s consumption. It’s nice that this isn’t. It’s no less understandable to those that don’t understand the Navajo language, it’s just a little extra thrown in for those that do.

I do know a little bit about Native American mythology, so to see Coyote show up made me grin. What we learn about him through the course of the book doesn’t surprise me at all. I knew about Changing Woman and the Sun, but I’d never heard of their son, so I wonder if he was made up for the novel or if he actually exists in the mythology too.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book. It has a sequel, Storm of Locusts, due out next year, and an unnamed third book already planned. I can’t wait!

From the cover of Trail of Lightning:

While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters.

Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last—and best—hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much larger and more terrifying than anything she could imagine.

Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel to the rez to unravel clues from ancient legends, trade favors with tricksters, and battle dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.

As Maggie discovers the truth behind the disappearances, she will have to confront her past—if she wants to survive.

Welcome to the Sixth World.

Book Review: Sky in the Deep

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sky in the deepSky in the Deep
by Adrienne Young
Fantasy
335 pages
Published April 2018

Sky in the Deep came out in April to a LOT of hype. It’s mostly deserved. The plot is a little odd; the two clans come together every five years to fight in a blood feud between their gods. But they only fight every five years in a designated place – if you really hated each other, why wouldn’t you try to wipe out the other tribe all the time, instead of letting them rebuild their strength for five years? And then this third, mysterious tribe shows up and is enough for you to set aside all your anger at each other? I don’t know. It’s a little weird.

That oddness aside, I loved this story! I loved Eelyn’s fierceness, and also her willingness to see the Riki as people too. Eventually, of course. In Eelyn we have the definition of a strong female character. (She’s not the only one, either!) She is admired for her fierceness and strength, but not seen as any less female. Women are warriors in her culture too.

It’s a pretty straightforward book, with a few graphic scenes of violence in the fights. Everything happened pretty much as I expected it to, but I still enjoyed seeing Eelyn grow and change throughout the book. It’s also very atmospheric; I could almost hear the snow crunching beneath boots, the rushing roar of the mountain river, the quiet creaking of the frozen lake. Young’s writing style pulls you right into the book and doesn’t let you go.

Set aside your questions about the plot’s logic and just enjoy this book. It’s wonderful.

From the cover of Sky in the Deep:

Part Wonder Woman, part Vikings – and all heart

Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield – her brother, fighting with the enemy – the brother she watched die five years ago.

Faced with her brother’s betrayal, she must survive the winter in the mountains with the Riki in a village where every neighbor is an enemy, every battle scar possibly one she delivered. But when the Riki village is raided by a ruthless clan thought to be a legend, Eelyn is even more desperate to get back to her beloved family.

She is given no choice but to trust Fiske, her brother’s friend, who sees her as a threat. They must do the impossible: unite the clans to fight together, or risk being slaughtered one by one. Driven by a love for her clan and her growing love for Fiske, Eelyn must confront her own definition of loyalty and family while daring to put her faith in the people she’s spent her life hating.