Mortal Heart

Mortal Heart
by Robin LaFevers
2014

I started reading the His Fair Assassin trilogy after Kinsey reviewed the first book, and since Anna reviewed the second book, it seems fitting that I review the third book.

This is a fun series and I enjoyed all the books, each of which focuses on a different main character. However, of the three main characters, Annith, the focus of Mortal Heart is the one I find the most annoying. For all her capabilities, she’s really extremely naïve, especially given her history. I continually reminded myself that she was just 17 and a lot of people are gullible at that age. As the book progresses and there are plots and reveals, I would routinely see the issue significantly before the main character even though we’re seeing the same evidence. I also felt a bit of a letdown at the end because I saw a potential way for one of the plot arcs to be resolved in a really fabulous way and instead it was sort of semi-resolved in an okay way.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book was the look it gave into what the other eight gods of the old religion have been up to and how their chosen people are marked and what they do with them.

While the grand political conflict seems to have mostly worked itself out over the course of the three books, what happens next regarding the actual convent of assassin nuns is left so very open-ended that it makes me wonder if there might be a fourth book in the planning stages. I haven’t been able to find any mention of one though.

It was an okay book, but I did like the previous ones in the series a lot more. If there is a fourth book, though, I’ll definitely read it to see what happens.

The Shadow of Albion

Jan22 by Anna

By Andre Norton and Rosemary Edghill

When I first read this book, I recommended it to Kinsey as “the best time-traveling, regency romance, espionage fantasy book you’ll ever read” and I stand by that, even if it isn’t time-traveling so much as alternative realities, but that’s splitting hairs a bit, I think.

The only drawback is that the authors pack the plot so full of intrigue and plot threads that they weren’t able to tie them all up in this book, or even the sequel, and then most unfortunately, Andre Norton passed away in 2005, and I’m just a little resentful that Rosemary Edghill didn’t finish off the third one on her own. (The second one has a blurb at the end saying that they are working on the third! Also, the sequel was published in 2002, and Norton didn’t die until 2005, so what were they doing those three years?!)

Anyway, the premise is a little difficult to explain, especially with my very murky knowledge of history. The year is 1805, and our heroine, Sarah Cunningham, is introduced both dying in her ancestral mansion in England and orphaned in colonial Maryland. In order to fulfill mystical oaths to the land, the living Sarah is brought from her world (our world) to take the place of her dying double in a world in which magic exists. Magic!

So, in this other world, each artistocratic land owner is magically tied to their land, and each king is tied to his country through even greater magic, which means two things: one, overthrowing kings is much trickier to do, so the Stuart family still rules England; and two, Napoleon is playing even more havoc with Europe than he did in the mundane world. Politics!

Also, in this other world, Sarah turns out to be betrothed to the dashing and dangerous Duke of Wessex, who of course she has never met. Wessex is also an undercover agent for not one, but two government agencies, where he foils assassinations and facilitates treaties. Espionage!

Honestly, I don’t know why I’m trying to summarize the plot for you – dukes and duchesses, kings and queens, spies, assassins, fairies – honestly, that should be good enough, just read it!

I’m not even going tell you anything about the sequel, except that it has all of the above, but shifts the setting to the new world, where there are pirates, native mysticism, and the Marquis de Sade, communing with very real demons. Read it!

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

Jan17 by Rebecca

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories
by Holly Black
2010

I checked this book out of the library less because I actually wanted to read it and more because I was testing out the ability to check out kindle books. (It works! I love it! I can get books when the library is closed, when it is snowing out, and without getting dressed for the day.)

It also wound up being an interesting book of short stories. This is clearly the author experimenting with different characters and plot points. Some of them work better than others, but they’re all quite interesting. It makes me think that I need to read more of her Black’s books, because I really do think these stories were testing grounds for her books, and I want to see what she made of the more successful stories.

I thought it was pretty funny that one short story, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, is set in the same universe as the author’s book, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, but has an entirely different set of characters and plot arc. There’s a single throw-away line in the book that references the events of the short story. I really liked both the book and the short story, but I am left wondering: who does the author think is the coldest girl in Coldtown?

I’m virtually sure that The Land of Heart’s Desire is set in the same universe as Black’s Modern Faerie Tales series, using characters that I would recognize if I had read those books. And it probably would have made more sense if I had recognized them and thus knew their various backstories. I might need to go ahead and read at least one of those books to see.

I liked the short stories, The Night Market and The Coat of Stars, both of which are complete in and of themselves in a way that most of the other stories in this compilation are not. The rest tend to be character studies (Going Ironside) or plot summaries (The Dog King and The Poison Eaters) or single interludes from larger universes (Virgin). So while they’re interesting, they don’t really stand on their own. I enjoyed them, but I don’t necessarily recommend them.

Not Actually Fanfiction

Jan10 by Rebecca

As should be obvious, I really enjoy fanfiction. They are (often) fun stories by (presumably) amateur authors who can sometimes do amazing things unconstrained by thoughts of salability. They write because they have ideas they want to get out. And sometimes, it’s not actually fanfiction. Sometimes an amateur author, in the same spirit of fanfiction, will write an original story and post it online for anyone and everyone to enjoy.

There are even a few archives specifically for these types of short stories, presented like fanfiction except for being entirely original. The parallel for Fanfiction.net is FictonPress.com. ArchiveOfOurOwn simply added a category for Original Fiction.

Here are a few recommendations for original short stories presented online:

Suite for the Living and Dead
By Inland Territory
Summary: When he was twenty three years old, Mike Lafayette took it on himself to write an oratorio for a people without a god.
Why I like it: This is just beautiful. A beautiful concept and beautifully written, but also speaks directly of the particular pain of seeing a deadly and important conflict happening in front of you and, for one reason or another, not joining the fight.
Extra comment: This feels a bit like a fanfiction story in that it references a much more epic story with main characters who are minor characters here. It makes me wonder if there is a book out there this is connected to but I haven’t been able to find. My current assumption is that it is that the author of this short story has an idea for a book and maybe she’s even half-written it, but it’s not available anywhere.

Toad Words
By Ursula Vernon
Summary: Terri Windling posted recently about the old fairy tale of frogs falling from a girl’s lips, and I started thinking about what I’d do if that happened to me, and…well…
Why I like it: One of the problems with traditional fairytales that I (and many other women) are increasingly aware of is how they often reward young girls for being quiet, polite, beautiful, and awaiting rescue, while punishing young girls for being outspoken, ugly, and actively attempting their own rescue. This takes one such fairytale and shows the repercussions, and how a curse can ultimately be made a reward and a blessing can ultimately be a punishment.

Never the Same
By Polenth Blake
Genre: science fiction
No summary, but the first paragraph: Everyone thinks my brother is nice. He set up a rescue centre for birds, after the terraforming accident poisoned the lake. That’s always the image of him, holding a bird covered in sludge. The birds are never the same after they’re cleaned, but the gossips never talk about that.
Why I like it: This is a lovely little mystery, with a main character with mental health issues. With a somewhat unreliable narrator investigating a situation in a highly biased community, the story looks into the difference between right and wrong actions and right and wrong motivations.

The Emperor’s Last Concubine
By Yamanashi Moe
Warning: this has explicit sex in it
No summary, but I bookmarked it as: a story of love and politics
Why I like it: This story has the standard Cinderella structure but focuses on what happens after the handsome prince whisks his beloved away and the difficulties faced by both prince and beloved as they both become aware of the golden cage the palace makes.

Books You Already Knew I Was Going To Tell You To Read

Dec23 by Kinsey

I was on the road quite a bit in December and read a whole pile of books I enjoyed. But none of them quite seemed to warrant their own review, since none of them are going to come as a surprise to anyone who’s spent any time here. So a list seems appropriate, so I get to mention a few things that I heartily, if predictably, recommend:

1) Landline by Rainbow Rowell. I saw Rainbow Rowell speak in person earlier this fall, and that woman is made up entirely of curly hair and charisma, and the stories she told about writing this book had the audience literally screaming with laughter. This is no Eleanor and Park, but I’m not sure my heart could handle another one of those, so this story about a marriage and a magic telephone will do just fine.

2) Dreams of God and Monsters by Laini Taylor. Quite a while back on the blog I mentioned the first book in this trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone. That book was your fairly standard YA, magical realism, independent female narrator, star-crossed lover sort of story. And then book two, man, book two took a turn. It got dark and weird and tragic and bloody, and I actually put off starting the third one for months because I was scared of where things might go. But I ended up really liking how the story resolved, and I promise you, you have not read anything like this.

3) One Plus One by Jojo Moyes. I’ve already raved about Me Before You and The Girl You Left Behind, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that Moyes’s latest was equally heart lifting/breaking. (Note, because I know my readers: don’t worry too much about the dog. It will work out.)

4) The Secret Place by Tana French. This wasn’t my favorite of the Dublin Murder Squad novels–that would be The Likeness–but it was a compelling read. While the plot and mystery of this one didn’t grab me the way some of them have, it still delivered on the two things I think Tana French does best–unsympathetic but fascinating characters, and a romance-free vision of modern-day Ireland.

I, Lucifer

Nov24 by Anna

By Glen Duncan

I actually first ran across the album of the same name by The Real Tuesday Weld several years ago, which quickly became one of my favorites, but even after I found out the album was inspired by this novel, I hesitated to read it because what if I hated it and then couldn’t enjoy the album as much?

However, it was then recommended by a commenter on io9, where I’ve gotten quite a few good book recommendations recently, so I decided to take the plunge. I figured it might be similar to Good Omens.

It isn’t really. It is darker and nastier, which, I mean, makes sense, given we are talking about Lucifer here, but most modern personifications of the Devil as protagonist aim for something a little more sympathetic.

The very basic premise is that God is willing to welcome Lucifer back into Heaven on condition that he lives out a human lifespan in a human body, without committing any mortal sins. Lucifer narrates this ordeal, and is deeply unlikable—his narration is a manic flow interrupted often by praises of sex, violence, abuse and torture. I mean, it is a good job of personifying the Devil, but it was a pain to read at times.

What really surprised me, though, was the more nuanced discussion of the somewhat problematic aspects of religion, like the balance between freewill and predetermination, an omniscient being having an adversary, and Good begetting Evil. It was disconcerting to end a paragraph about bestiality and rape jokes, and start the next one on the deeper meaning of life.

So, this is a little embarrassing to admit, but in the end, I, Lucifer, a memoir of sorts by Satan himself, talked about religion, faith, and devotion in a way that really resonated with me. I realize that this does not speak highly of me.

There is a particular line in which Lucifer scoffs at his previous life as an angel in Heaven: “He turned a side of Himself to us and from it poured an ocean of love in which we sported and splashed like orgasmic kippers, singing our response in flawless a cappella.” And I thought, if Heaven is like being a fish in an ocean of love, surrounded on all sides with love, even breathing love into your body and circulating it throughout so that there is nothing but love and warmth and light in your entire existence, well, that would be pretty nice, I think.

And if you were created in this environment and had experienced only that, ripping yourself free would leave you so wholly cold and empty and hungry, that it would be little surprise that your existence outside of God would be pure torture and the crazed search for something, anything, to fill that void.

So, in the end, I’ve been happily listening to The Real Tuesday Weld’s album all week, so no harm done, and I will say that the odd, vaudeville-style song in the beginning called “Bathtime in Clerkenwell” makes a lot more sense now.

—Anna

P.S. This book actually complements Rebecca’s Biblical reviews quite well. Lucifer has a lot of the same complaints that Rebecca has brought up, particularly about God “not playing fair” when He hardens various people’s hearts so that He can smote them all the harder later.

Mermaid in Chelsea Creek

Nov2 by Anna

By Michelle Tea

Whew, this is a good book. This is how good it is – I actually started reading slower at the end to stretch it out longer.

Mermaid in Chelsea Creek is basically my favorite kind of book: metaphorical fairytale. And it is a fairy tale, but kind of a grimy one, if that makes sense. Thirteen-year-old Sophie starts getting visions of a mermaid who tells her that she is destined to save the world. Sophie, however, is your average young teenager, cranky, stubborn, and self-centered, trying to figure out her place in the world and her relationship with the people around her. She lives with her overwhelmed single mother in the economically struggling city of Chelsea, MA, where everyone seems to be hanging on by a thread.

It truly is this real-ness where the book really shines. The titular mermaid just puts a mystical filter over the growth every teenager must go through, and how difficult it can be even if you don’t have a grand prophesy to fulfill. Even the various magical creatures are trying to find their places in a decreasingly magical world. The themes of how full of pain and anger and sadness the world is, and how easy it can be to give up in the face of it all, but also how important it is to fight it with kindness and understanding, in whatever small ways are available to you — well, those struck a cord with me right now.

The mermaid is the most fantastical character, for sure, but the pigeons are the best, which is why they are on the cover. I hate to even mention anything that might make someone hesitate to read this, but I do feel that I have to extend a couple of warnings: there is some animal harm, which is pretty devastating, of course, and the book ends on an utter and complete cliff hanger.

The one problem with metaphorical fairy tales, if it can even be considered a problem, is that with things like cliff hangers, you never know whether it means there will be a sequel or if it just serves to show that there are no true endings where everything gets wrapped up. I’m okay with that, actually, but I’m rooting for a sequel because I would love to read it. (Edited to add: there is a sequel – Girl at the Bottom of the Sea comes out next year!)

Incidentally, the hardcover edition is published by McSweeney’s, and is a gorgeous volume, with an embossed cover, thick paper, and lovely line illustrations.

— Anna

The Girl With All The Gifts

Oct29 by Anna

By M. R. Carey

I’ve only paused in working my way through the Flavia de Luce series, which I’m continuing to love, because a reserve that I’d placed a while ago at the library finally came in. I hadn’t intended to find an appropriately spooky book for Halloween, either, but I guess things just aligned that way.

io9 gave The Girl With All The Gifts a raving but very coy review. Having read Carey’s other novels, I was willing to take the plunge on this one without more detail about the book itself. This novel has a similar setting as his others, of a dystopian London, but ratchets up the suspense significantly. This is due in large part to the truly excellent characters. I found some of Carey’s previous characters a little cartoony, but his characters here are very real. The novel shifts viewpoints between the various characters, so the reader gets wildly different perspectives on the same situation. Because there is no objective voice, I found my judgments of characters and situations constantly evolving.

The Girl With All The Gifts opens with a strange 10-year-old girl, locked in a small cell in an underground bunker, along with dozens of other children, who are delivered to and from a classroom each day under armed guard. This is all she (and the reader) knows, and while she doesn’t care for the guards, she loves her teacher and is not unhappy.

The book slowly expands from there, with the multiple perspectives helping the reader put the pieces together, which is half the fun, so I certainly don’t want to spoil it here.

In lieu of a longer book description, here’s another Halloween recommendation. I decided that I couldn’t stomach another season of American Horror Story, so to fill the void, I decided to watch HBO’s Carnivale, which I’ve been meaning to watch for years. And it is exactly what I wanted: suspenseful and creepy without being gross. Also, I was congratulating myself on being so smart to recognize all the religious symbolism in the first episode, before I saw how heavy they were hitting in the second episode, so there’s that.

—Anna

Spooky Graphic Novels

Oct26 by Rebecca

In honor of the approaching Halloween, I’ve been reading some extremely good graphic novels, that seemed seasonally appropriate. Although possibly more thematic to a more traditional concept of All Hallow’s Eve than to the modern concept of Halloween, per se. This is a time when the barriers between the living and the dead are the weakest and who knows what could be roaming the streets… you’d better prepare to be scary, too, to fit in.

Anyway, the artwork for all three of these are just gorgeous, which can possibly go without mention, since I don’t read graphic novels if I don’t like the art. But still, the art is really gorgeous.

East of West
written by Jonathan Hickman
drawn by Nick Dragotta

This is a futuristic western based on an alternate past with a whole lot of mystical beings thrown in for good measure. I love it.

One of the main characters is Death. The three other horsemen of the apocalypse are also wandering around, and there’s some sort of evil prophesy that a scary number of the world leaders are fanatical believers of. No one is really good or nice in this, by they’re all really dedicated to their various (and generally conflicting) causes. And there’s something very appealing about competency, good or evil, and something fascinating about manipulative people attempting to manipulate each other.

The back sums it up well:

“We would tell you to pray. But it wouldn’t do any good. You have earned what is coming to you.”

Anna gave the first one of these to me for Christmas last year and then I bought the second one for myself last month, and the third one has just been released a couple of days ago but I haven’t gotten it yet. I’m still going to review this whole series as awesome.

Pretty Deadly
written by Kelly Sue Deconnick
drawn by Emma Rios

This is another mystical western, although minus the science fiction aspect of East of West. Instead, the whole story has a surreal quality as it is structured as a fairytale told by a bunny (or rather the skeleton of one) to a butterfly (who might be part of death’s daughter) and there are stories within stories. I still need to read it again (probably a few more times) to really track down who all is who and what their intents are, but it’s fascinating. It’s also a complete story, which is nice. There are plenty of other characters who can be developed in the next volume, whenever it comes out (and that I’m looking forward to getting when it does), but the main plot arc following the girl in the vulture cloak is resolved at the end of this volume, and thus ends the story told by bunny to butterfly.

Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires
by Richard Sala

This is a stand-alone single story, and a much quicker read than the others. The story-line is extremely straight-forward without any real surprises. The plot-line sort of reminds me of a Nancy Drew story, although with even fewer surprises. In that way, it seems like something for a fairly young reader.

On the other hand, a lot of characters die, some in relatively gruesome ways. The focus on the gruesome deaths is actually the opposite of gratuitous, though. They’re shown quickly and casually and it all comes across as fairly light. It reminds me of the some of the older Grimm’s fairytales where, say, children push witches into ovens and then go home to celebrate with their families. So, you know, maybe it is intended for youngish children, but cheerfully bloody-minded young children.

And me, too, because I liked it a lot.

The art is also interesting in the way it’s all in black and white, with the appearance of woodprints.

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells

Sep5 by Anna

Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

This anthology is collected by the same editors and many of the same authors as Teeth, which I read and reviewed previously. It is described on the cover as “an anthology of gaslamp fantasy,” and having the setting be the common factor instead of the characters allowed for a greater range in the stories, which I appreciated.

The Victorian Era, too, is an excellent setting to pick, since so much was going on! There was the very first world’s fair, an explosion of technology, science, and manufacturing, and a return to romance in the arts. It was an era of lots of contradictions, as well: most well-known for extreme wealth, it also had predominant extreme poverty; the British Empire was both strongly xenophobic and driven to colonize; and Queen Victoria herself was both a pretty and lively young girl, and a solemn and joyless widow.

Though, once again, I checked out the book for the short story by Genevieve Valentine, I was pleased that the anthology also included Elizabeth Wein and Caroline Stevermer. My favorite stories ended up being “The Governess” by Elizabeth Bear, in which a governess takes a position in a very troubled household, and “Phosphorus” by Veronica Schanoes, about the strike of the women who worked in the match factories. Don’t those two alone reveal the wide scope of the book?

Can I also describe how ridiculous I can be? I had always had a vague feeling that I didn’t care for Elizabeth Bear, because I believed that she had written Clan of the Cave Bear (because “Bear”) and/or Women Who Run with Wolves, or some amalgamum of both books that only exists in my head. In addition to the fact that Elizabeth Bear did not write either of those books, I have not actually read either of those books, or any books that Elizabeth Bear has actually written. No reality will keep me from my pointless prejudices!