The Ledberg Runestone (The Jonah Heywood Chronicles #1) by Patrick Donovan

Jonah Heywood is a shaman and a grifter, just scraping by -barely able to pay his ever spiralling booze bill

Which is a problem when you owe a large sum of money to a loan shark quite willing to break every bone in your body then move on to your family.

So when a woman approaches him with a deal he knows he shouldn’t take, a job he should avoid and a magical artefact he knows he wants no part of; he has to say yes

Jonah Heywood is a character that makes a lot of terrible decisions and he’s pretty unique for that

At which I hear you all yell “but you complain constantly about characters making terrible decisions!!!” Which is true - but in those cases I’m complaining about a character making terrible decisions that no-one - least of all the author - is willing to acknowledge as such. This isn’t a protagonist leaping blindly through portals or conducting one person searches of all Siberia - and succeeding. This is a protagonist making bad decisions which are constantly acknowledged: in fact so much of the plot ran simply because Jonah makes bad decisions which constantly put him in bad situations and leave him with further few good options.

Jonah is an alcoholic. He is in debt and making terrible choices to get out of debt. He is traumatised and not dealing well - or at all - with his traumatic past. He is making the worst enemies in the worst ways and generally just about everything he does I want to yell “STOP! STOP!”. But this isn’t like so many books we’ve read because - because the book is written to EXPECT me to say “stop”. At no point am I expected to agree with Jonah’s choices. At very least every time near-constantly drunk Jonah gets behind the wheel of a car I cringe.

And there’s a really nice balance between Jonah doing terrible things because he has not real choice while at the same time Jonah simply not making good choices: largely because he is in utter denial of where he is (especially in relation to his alcoholism) and in utter denial of the fact He Needs Help. Jonah needs an intervention. Jonah needs a keeper.

I want to route for Jonah. But not for him to win but for him to LEARN. I don’t want or need him to be awesome - I need him to be better; I don’t want him to ascend to be the all powerful one, I want him to put his life together. I want him to sort himself out.

And this is interesting to me because in the opening lines of this book I was sure I knew what this story would be - from the starting in a bar, hard drinking, war wounded, cynical with a woman coming in - who even if she wasn’t DESCRIBED that way you mentally call “dame”. The hyper-powered, hard bitten noir-ish: the Harry Dresden, the Yancey Lazarus, the Remy Chandler (and I won’t lie, I LOVE that whole schtick. Yes yes I do) but then for it to surprise me by turning what I expected to be a hyper-powerful over-the-top character into, perhaps, what that cynic, hard-bitten character would ACTUALLY look like was really an interesting twist. And I found myself really loving that

Side note here: it feels almost like whoever edited this book skipped the first few pages. The writing is actually inexcusably terrible, it’s long winded, convoluted, the dialogue is comic when read aloud, it’s super repetitive (with different characters all quirking eyebrows at each other) and I wrote loads of notes about the abysmal text… but that fades really quickly. I’m not sure why the first few pages skipped editing but it’s worth it to hang on in there.

And Jonah isn’t hyper powerful either. He has magic - he’s a shaman who has some nifty tricks up his sleeve but he is far from dangerous and mighty and definitely not a heavy weight. His magic nicely fits into the world building which is really nicely hinted at in this book (i really love the depiction of spirits here) but there’s more a foundation for more to come. For a story all about a shaman stealing a magical artefact from an all-powerful voodoo Mambo at the behest of a near god it’s all quite mundane.

The plot itself is fun - not unique in and of itself: it’s a classic find the Maltese Falcon plot line. We have twists and an exceptional one at the end; but what holds it together is this unique character and the foundations it lays for something truly epic to come.

The biggest powerful force in this book is a Black woman and her family - she’s extremely powerful but also clearly good. And that is important for any practitioner of voodoo since it’s so often demonised in the media. She is compassionate, even in opposition to Jonah and while she doesn’t play a huge role; she clearly represents the road not taken: the Sensible Choice. Also I think she’s going to be a major element of this series far more so.

We do have a gay character - and in some ways it’s excellent that he does have his life together despite very similar origins and obstacles to Jonah. He is what Jonah could have been with a life, a partner (albeit one never seen) and the ability to help others. But the flip side of this is he appears only when Jonah needs help. He’s Jonah’s greatest friend and he literally only appears when Jonah needs saving, a bed, a ride, someone to clean up after him: this is the very essence of a tokened trope. I want to see him have a life and I want a friendship which goes both ways. Similarly the only women in the book who isn’t his fridged dead sister or a quasi antagonist is a woman Jonah’s playing Saviour to. I’d like to see a woman who Jonah a) isn’t afraid of b) doesn’t need saving and c) has died tragically to give him trauma.

Jonah is a disabled man - he’s an alcoholic, has a lot of unresolved trauma and he has a disabled leg - and it actually affects him. I’ve seen a few characters who are described as having a bad leg - and then they promptly start sprinting, break dancing and setting new records in the triple jump… but not Jonah.

This book has introduced an excellent, new character with a very different focus to many in the genre, an interesting world and a promise of a whole lot of epic coming

Bleeders (Daemons of London #1) by Michaela Haze

Sophia was a barmaid in London. She had a life, friends, a job, a family

And then her sister died. Sophia fell into a deep, dark depression to which she is sure only vengeance against her sister’s murderers can possibly release her.

The hitman she reaches out to is a daemon - and though he is able and willing to do what she asks, in doing so she risks dragging herself, mind and soul, even further into the darkness

This book is a somewhat hard one to review - which is appropriate because it is a hard book to read.

The book is… powerful. Powerful is a good word: because it’s not fun. It’s not an easy story to read. It isn’t packed with action or even, for that much of plot or world building. Both are certainly there and create the setting and background for Sophia, but this book is about Sophia and her journey

Sophia does not lead an easy life. She suffers from extreme mental illness - depression, schizophrenia. She is pulled down by alcoholism. Most of this is triggered by the tragic death of her pregnant sister and her inability to get over this as well as her rage at the men she considers responsible for this. Sophia is a deeply damaged and hurting person and a lot of the book examines this. Her struggle with her mother, her struggle with mental illness, her alcoholism, self-harming, pushing friends away who care for her, her house denuded of all furniture for fear of invoking her sister’s memory while still maintaining a shrine to her sister.

The book is told from two different time periods - the present when Sophia is confined to a mental institution, suffering from some severe hallucinations and recounting her past while plagued by delusions and hallucinations. The other is the actual past she’s describing, drowning in depression and pain. Both are stark, brutal and very powerful

This continues when she find Henry and she starts to move out of her pain - and I admit I have a big note here screaming “gah, magical healing penis!” because she seems to be getting over her issues quickly. I then crossed it out - partly because of the woo-woo, but mainly because this is the next stage of her rollercoaster ride: obsession with him, abandonment, another addiction and hitting a whole new low of rock bottom as she transmutes her issues from one to another which does an excellent job of subverting the idea of romance healing all mental health issues

I also really like how even the base of her tragedy - her sister’s death and even her mother’s callousness are all just a bit more complex than she initially presents in her complete obsession. I like that, I like that things aren’t as simple as her angry, hurting mind portrays and that there are layers to her experiences which go beyond simplistic villains who hurt her.

Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters #3) by Heather Heffner

Raina Alvarez has never been fully accepted by her family, since she was the result of her mother cheating with a Korean businessman - who also is a Celestial Dragon

And now her father has found her in time for her to compete, as the Water Dragon of Spring, to become the next Celestial Dragon of the East. A being of great power that would save the world from disaster and shape a new age

But there are old enemies of the Celestial Dragons who have long memories and grudges against Raina’s new found father – to say nothing of dark fell powers rising in the West.

Those powers are also on Citlalli’s mind – newly alpha of the Seoul Wolfpack; a role that is far from easy with her pack divided, her desperate wish to have a real life as a normal girl. And then there’s her shattered soul; a terrible secret that makes all of that near impossible.

This book has a lot of callbacks to all the previous books – including the short story Year of the Boar. I really appreciate that – I love a series that feels like it is getting deeper and richer and stronger with every passing book – it gives a series so much more depth.

But at times I do feel like I’m getting overwhelmed by a lot of characters who I can’t keep much track of – especially since there seems to be a lot of characters (I kind of forgot that Una existed). Part of that is because there are a lot of powerful, excellent female characters each with their own storylines which touches each others but isn’t necessarily all dependent on each other. Citlali’s story is very different from Raina’s story and Yu Li and Nona have their own story.  And each of their own stories has their own relevant characters and conflicts and issues even as they are all linked – it still adds up to a large cast and very few characters that are just there to be tokens or tools.

It does feel a little overwhelming – bit it’s overwhelming because all the characters are characters. Because no-one is there to be written off, because no-one is just there to be an extra, because everyone has a history and an opinion and their own conflicts and issues and difficulties. It’s full – but it’s full of reality and development and complex world building and conflicting and complementing personal motives. You have to pay attention and it’s not an easy read, but it’s worth doing.

It’s interesting to see Raina’s draconic siblings all have their storylines and complexities – and no-one is the designated bad guy. Heesu is young and joyful and the most unconflicted (which, in many ways, means I like her the most). Ankor has his major issues with being a disappointment to his father due to a terrible accident with which he can bond with Citlali. Sun Bin at first comes off as a complete mean girl but in reality has major issues with her father’s sexism and homophobia: always looking down on her for being both a daughter and for loving another woman. They’re all very human and have faced very real pressures.

I also like Raina’s issues because they’re very real and neither make her a saint not make her bitter – but are a very human, complex reaction. Her resentment and envy towards Citlali and what she’s achieved and living in her shadow. Her reluctance to embrace her draconic family when she has no connection to them. Her history with her family due to being blamed as the one who broke the family up as living proof of their mother’s infidelity. There’s a lot of conflict and difficult feelings there with Raina and none of them are supernatural – it’s excellently done

Savage Prophet (Yancy Lazarus #4) by James A. Hunter

Yancy carries the Seal if the Horseman of War. His mind is being colonised by the demon Azazel and it’s a battle he’s losing

It would help if he could stop drawing on the dark power the demon offers. But with the world in the balance and another seal possibly falling into the hands of their enemies, he seems to have no choice. As he drags himself through horrendous, torturous experience after another, faces agony and horror and watches the Guild of the Staff completely collapse around him – can he really say no to the demon’s magic?

But if he accepts the demon’s help, does he risk being a greater threat than the very thing he’s fighting against?

The ongoing meta plot of this series now goes into high gear as the seals of the apocalypse and the archdemons who guard them are now front and centre to the storyline. We don’t just have Yancy stumbling across a situation that happens to be related to the epic ongoing battle on which the world rests.

This feels much more directed because of this, the grand fate of the end of the world and the consequences there are much more central. Even though that has been on the cards for a while, the last book felt more local, focusing on the Big Foot (big feet?) rather than the very world being in the balance. We definitely have the broader focus here. Along with all the epic conflict and fight scenes I expect from a Yancy Lazerous novel.

Perhaps because it is so focused, I don’t feel like this book is jammed with unnecessary fight scenes – not because there are less of them, but more because each fight as actually relevant to the overall plot line. In previous books if Yancy went to a bar, asked someone for information, pretty much anything, there would be a battle. I think one of the problems I have in taking Fast Hands Steve seriously as an epic enemy (beyond the awful name) is that he was introduced in a completely random unnecessary fight. Building a whole vendetta enemy out of a fight in a bar because Yancy can’t even play music without there being conflict going on really fails as a back story. Sometimes I feel Yancy eats BBQ in restaurants all the time because he can’t go to the shops to buy groceries without fighting ninjas, demons, and vampiric girl scouts.

Here all the action was on point

There’s also some devastatingly dramatic tension with Yancy confronting Fotuna after the horrendous things he suffers in this book. It doesn’t downplay or minimise the trauma nor expect Yancy to just breeze past it – it’s devastating and presented as such.

I also like Darlene

When we first met Darlene and Yancy dismisses her as an office worker way out of her depth, I waited for him to be proven gloriously wrong. I waited for this to be proven wrong. I waited for her to pull out some ninja magical nuclear powers and leave Yancy gasping at her violent awesomeness.

And I was wrong. She was out of her depth. She absolutely fell apart in a combat situation and generally Yancy’s first impressed was confirmed in spades

This isn’t a bad thing. Why wouldn’t a fully experienced combat veteran like Yancy NOT recognise someone with combat training. Plus waif-fu – or awesome fighting power houses who don’t remotely look the part – is an annoying trope that is kind of elated to the super-hot-thin-people-eating-fried-chicken-covered-pizzas-and-not-exercising trope. Actually being an active, experienced combat fighter generally comes with a level of physical fitness and muscle tone. And that’s aside from demeanour, grim bitterness etc – there’s every reason why Yancy should have been able to accurately peg Darlene

On top of that, Darlene isn’t terrible. I mean it would be tempted to shame her, hate her, demean her or otherwise reduce her because she isn’t a fighter. But she isn’t. Her skills, her administration and her encyclopaedic knowledge of the Guild’s procedures, reports and previous events is an asset and in the end definitely gives her some extremely useful input to saving the day

I like this. I like that Darlene can be capable, useful, respected member of the team without being a combat monster. While being, yes, a soccer mum. Especially since we still have Ferraldo who is, as I’ve mentioned in several previous books, a definite, skilled, dangerous combatant and tactician. We see two female characters, both adding awesome strength to the plot in very different ways.

We do have some very dubious elements that come with the world building. This is something similar to what Supernatural faced: when you have a world setting which moooshes all kinds of mythologies together, there’s a lot of dubious tropes you can follow, along with things like colonising, appropriating and generally raiding other cultures and belief systems which are all issues we’ve covered before. This book takes those issues and then sets up, the White King, a pretty blatant Judeo-Christian mythology god, as basically above them all. We have an excellent story of Indian naga and Buddhism which seems nicely done – and then jumps into this with angelic intervention and a seal of the apocalypse. We have this whole Buddhist based legend and story and just stuck in a quick “subordinate to Christianity” in there. Aside from this then ending up as part of the story lead by Fortuna and the Fates, again, restricted and controlled by the White King. Similarly when the gang travel to Haiti we have the Loa treated the same way – with Baron Samedi being pretty much completely erased as a loa and replaced by one of the seal bearers.

Which adds into the ongoing trouble of the whole Haitian and Voodoo depiction in the genre and in media in general (and in general societal awareness for that matter). Voodoo is constantly portrayed as evil, dark awful darkness with whole lots of racist undertones and exotic/savage otherness.  And in this book? Baron Samedi is literally a demonic horseman of the apocalypse. Voodoo is all about zombies, mind control, torture, gangs, child soldiers and death. All of it – there’s no counter example at all. More, the whole power of voodoo which the mage council doesn’t understand? That’s Nox. The special demonic power which is the very antithesis of

And Haiti? This is set in Cite de Soleil, a shanty town in Haiti, that is presented as basically a lawless giant violent hell slum of child soldiers, voodoo warlords, torture and awfulness.

Look, Cite de Soleil is a terrible place, it’s on record of one of the most dangerous places. And no, I’m not saying that Haiti should be presented as wonderfully wealth and prosperous and stable without gangs and crime. No, you don’t have to present Haiti has a utopia, or Voudoun as this perfectly serene religion whose followers are all enlightened saintly people.

The there’s no counter-narrative here. Everything about Haiti, voodoo and Haitians here is presented as evil, dark, horrific and generally awful. Also with absolutely no inclusion of the very relevant history behind Haitians history here. No, I’m not expecting Yancy to give us a nice historical recap of Haiti being the first (and only?) nation founded by rebelling slaves or the crippling, punishing debt that was then imposed on it by the international community in response. However, I also don’t condone a book to take a country, culture, people and religion and turning them basically into a hell-scape for Yancy to run around killing things in. You could literally have turned his entire time in Haiti into some hell-realm controlled by goblins and made no real change to the plot because nothing about this depiction acknowledge or treated Haiti as an actual place or tried to treat any Haitian as an actual person

Also I’m going to sideswipe here at the naga Buddhist monk who was basically serene and peaceful in between dishing out kung fu and, really, really? Y’know I said that it was excellently done to incorporate Buddhism into this story was nicely done? Well it would be nicer if the depiction of the one actual Buddhist person wasn’t cribbed from a 1980s kung fu movie.

This is pretty much the POC in this book – we have some other side POC who are part of the guild, but they’re not exactly major players or hugely influential on the book or plot line which does nothing to counter this… We continue to have no LGBT characters.

This series continues to have a lot of awesome moments, a lot of epic battles and an excellent meta plot. I think this book has all of that in excellent, amazing degree – but it also has a really terrible diversity problem that is, if anything, only exacerbated by it drawing so heavily on different cultures and mythologies

Year of the Boar: Tica (Changeling Sisters #1.5) by Heather Heffner

Tica has struggles to fight – bone cancer has left some devastating effect on her life and her future. Her dreams are severely set back and she has to fight hard to be someone other than “the cancer girl”

But there’s another struggle looming – the cursed Vampyre Prince Khyber has come to Hawai’i with a mission: he wants to die. And the keys to doing so lie in recruiting Tica to the fight to protect Hawai’i and the spirit world from desperate spiritual attack.

This book did an excellent job of filling in a few of the gaps – there are characters I read about in Year of the Tiger that I felt had a lot going on that I had missed. Which was true – but the elegance of the series is that I didn’t need to know Rafael’s backstory to understand Year of the Tiger, the battles that were fought or why Rafael felt the way he did. It was clear that Rafael had a major life above and beyond what Citlali saw, and that wasn’t a bad thing

Which is something else this story does excellently, we continue the whole metaplot of The Changeling Sisters series but also get to exp

I think, perhaps, this would have been improved without the focus on Khyber, to be honest. I think it would have been better served with a less involved vampire – or even no vampires at all (do the taking over dark spirits need the direct vampire presence to be an issue?). It would have done better at giving the idea that this is a battle across the globe with different warriors struggling against them. It would expand the universe.

But it still did expand that – because Khyber was pretty much unnecessary to the main plot of this book which was definitely, overwhelmingly Tica’s story. Which I also love because it sets another champion up who is every bit as awesome as Citlali

And Tica is awesome. She’s passionate and determined. She isn’t perfect and definitely has some painful, difficult moments with her friends and certainly with her mother. But she’s extremely knowledgeable and tough and faces both personal battles, accepts the vastness of the supernatural and absorbs and adapts to it well.

Her story is really well written, excellently paced as it matches development of her character and the world, her difficult, painful relationships, her very painful struggle as well as the action involved in fighting to save the spirit world and fight off the dark spirits (and the dark Spirits of Plague are horrendous – and much better villains than the vampires that seem almost clumsily inserted to the rest of this awesome story) as well as a lot of Hawai’ian mythology

Borderline (Arcadia Project Trilogy #1) by Mishell Baker

Millie doesn't have much of her inheritance money left and with few prospects, life is a little bleak.  A year ago, Mille was a student at UCLA having made her directorial debut and things were great but now, after trying to commit suicide by jumping off a seven story building, Millie is a double amputee and is struggling to deal with her borderline personality disorder.

When Millie is offered a job with the Arcadia project, though she is skeptical, she jumps at the chance to get out of the hospital and possibly rebuild her life.  What she doesn't realise is that it's going to introduce her to world that she had no idea existed.  Hollywood has always been a magical please to many but what people don't realise is that the magic isn't an illusion, it just comes from a different world.

All artists are talented because they either have a muse or are warlocks.  The greatest films, books or paintings could not have been created without the help of a fae muse.  This puts a new spin on how the media works.  Having adopted the human customs of ranks, only those who are considered royalty are allowed to travel to earth.  This means that every step of creation whether mystical or human, there is a gatekeeper in place.

I must admit that I was attracted to Boderline because of the fact that the protagonist is disabled. Disability is often erased in urban fantasy and when it does appear, more often than not, the character is either a side character or disabled in name only.  I am happy to report this is very much not the case with Borderline.  Millie's BPD affects every facet of her life and she is often forced to come up with coping mechanisms to deal with everyday situations.

"One of the fun bits about BPD is a phenomenon shrinks like to call “splitting.” When under stress, Borderlines forget the existence of gray. Life is a beautiful miracle, or a cesspool of despair. The film you’re making is a Best Picture candidate, or it’s garbage. People are either saints, or they’re scheming to destroy you."

Due to the conditions of her residency, Millie is forced to do without her medications and deals with it by talking herself down from extreme situations and employing the tools that she learned in therapy. This doesn't mean that she can always control it, as evidenced when she beat Teo with her cane for rejecting her sexual advances but it does mean at times she actively puts her "rational brain" in control, aware that she is not perceiving the situation correctly.

Chupacabra's Song (Magic Ex Libris Short Story) by Jim C Hines

I find myself writing the same short story disclaimer with every short story I read – that I don’t generally like them and prefer if they add something to the overall series without being essential. I don’t think a series of books should require you to actually read every little e-short in the series. At the same time, a short story that’s just a random fluff tale without adding anything of substance to the larger series always leaves me thinking “well, why did I read this? What’s the point?”

Because I’m awkward like that

But this short story again shows how it can be excellently done – but using the book to tell some of the history and develop some insight into one of the regular side characters of the main plot:

Nicola was a very intriguing regular background character throughout the Libriomancer series and definitely one I wanted to know more about. Her magic, the magic of a bard, of music is definitely one I wanted to see expanded and explained in the same way that book magic was examined throughout the series.

I also loved Nicola herself. She’s autistic and that deeply informs her character, is a part of her character and personhood and very much part of her story, her interactions and her experiences. Yet at the same time she’s a person not just defined by her magic of being autistic. She’s also very powerful, very capable and you can see, even as a child, the core of the leader she becomes in the books.

She’s also a woman with her own agenda and opinions, not following on a party line or being guided or controlled by others. Even when manipulated and deceived, she finds the truth and deals with it decisively

Magic Stars (Kate Daniels #8.5 Grey Wolf #1) by Ilona Andrews

Derek has separated from the pack, the werewolf is one of those who have now joined with Kate and Curran and their independent organisation. An organisation – and business – that doesn’t tolerate the slaughter of families

Julie, Kate’s ward, is certainly not going to stay out of the action either – even as their investigation reveals horrors they never expected, backing down is never an option.

A spin off series in the Kate Daniels universe? Give give give give! *grabby hands*

It can be said I did not react to this news with particular grace and maturity.

In the past I’ve been wary of spin off series because they don’t always work – the main characters are such a major part of the world that without them it falls flat. This world has carried the different spin off stories so well because, even while Kate and Curran are the most amazing, epic characters imaginable, the other characters in the series are fleshed out enough, developed enough and interesting enough to easily carry their own stories

Still, I was surprised that this series follows Julie – Kate’s magic-sensitive ward/sort-of-foster-daughter – and Derrick, the werewolf who has entered Kate’s shadow for a long time now

Like most of the characters in the main series, they have been developed, they have had their own storylines, they have their own histories which are quite involved. But for so much of the books these two have been very much extensions of Kate and Curran. Which makes it interesting that these were the ones chosen to expansion – I feel almost like the author has decided that they need more attention to show that these characters are just as awesome as everyone else.

And this book does an excellent job of taking both characters and establishing them as individuals. We have Derek’s history, how his path has changed so much with him being involved with Kate (but also, just as important, with his life before Kate) and how his face being scarred changed his life again (we also have an excellent look at the ableism Derek faces – with a woman assuming he will be grateful and servile towards her because his scars mean he should consider himself “lucky” that she’s paying attention to him at all). Woven into the story is Derek’s history, nicely setting him up as his own character and co-protagonist in this series as well as being a lethal fighter who has been forged through terrible experience

Half-Resurrection Blues (Bone Street Rumba #1) by Daniel José Older

Carlos is an Inbetweener, the only one he knows – a man not entirely dead nor entirely alive and a definite asset to the New York City Council of the Dead. Though not usually a happy one

But one of their jobs for him introduces him to others like him. Which would be easier to celebrate if he hadn’t just killed one of them, Trevor, which official Complicates his attempted relationship with Sasha, his surviving sister.

A further complication is knowing where she stands with the scheming of a sorcerer – who has dark plans both for the city and for someone he cares deeply about

I am in two minds about the voice in this book – I don’t particularly like it or find it very natural or flowing and it doesn’t draw me in. But it does really work towards the theme and atmosphere of the book – the sense of place and the characters themselves. So I both don’t particularly like it but also appreciate the skill with which it is written and what it adds to the overall book.

I really love the world setting here –it’s dark, it’s gritty and it is extremely original. We have a world of ghosts, it’s grim and gritty but with nice moments of humour to stop it being overwhelmingly dark. It’s hard to have a nicely grim setting while having regular humour as wall – and this book nails it.

But it’s also really original and not something I’ve seen elsewhere. The nature of ghosts (and their organisation which I an excellent skewering of bureaucracy everywhere), the different kinds of ghosts, the drawing on of different belief systems, the portrayal of the underworld are all excellent, different and would have me coming back to this series for sheer novelty value if nothing else. And it all works well with Carlos and the odd place he occupies as an Inbetweener, a man who is dead and alive, able to be one with the dead but still moving around in an almost dead body.

Carlos himself is also an interesting developed character, more than just an agent of the bureaucracy and more than just a hard bitten, bitter operative, all jaded and sad. He has friends, he has interests - he’s very well read and that also informs his character as much as his jadedness, his friendships and his snark.

The story itself works as an excellent mystery because we often don’t have answers - but that very slow discovery of what is happening is an excellent vehicle with which to introduce the actual world setting, the characters and how everyone fits in it. The pacing works and leads us to more and more new and fascinating concepts in this world though I do think there’s a shaky moment in the middle were it becomes more than a little wobbly and I’m not sure where the book I going from there

Engage (Ignite #2.5) by Erica Crouch

Kala is a guardian angel – but not considered a very good one. She is derided for her disability but, far more, she has a pesky belief that humans should set their own destiny. And that the hard morality of Heaven is too limited and lacking in nuance for the real world.

The angels do not approve – something has to change.

This book is an excellent short story in that it brings a whole new angle to the original series – it’s not an essential angle, you can read the whole series without this short story but it brings some excellent depth to the book series. For me this is exactly what I want from a short story – not an essential part of the ongoing meta (therefore not a necessary read) but also not entirely pointless or off topic

The main series is told largely from Penn’s point of view. Which means we see hell and demons and the many many many reasons why she isn’t happy with either and only affection for her brother and having nowhere else to go keeps her bound to hell. We know why she rebels. We know why she is desperate to find another way. We know why she is rebelling

But Heaven? We’re told it’s rigid but beyond that thrown away line we don’t really know what exactly is so wrong with Heaven. What are the angels so rigid about? What real reason do the angels have to rebel? What was so bad that it would drive angels and demons to ally together in their rebellion?

This is the book that fills the gaps. This shows us heaven, it’s rigid rules, it’s outdated resistance to change, it’s savage refusal to accept any kind of nuance or grey morality. It’s utter rejection of any kind of free well, it’s vicious judgemental nature, it’s constant quest to control humanity down what it considers the true path and, in many ways, Heaven is almost unable to even identify good and purity any more, just adherence to rules.

And backed by all of this is Heaven’s brutal purges of its own, of any angel that dares to be independent, to think of themselves, to make their own judgement – or, almost as bad – allow anyone else to make their own judgments.

Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1) by Wesley Chu

James is a Chronoman, one of the elite few who travel back through time to try and salvage what he can for a broken present without disrupting the timeline. It’s a thankless, desperate soul destroying job that only seems to postpone the inevitable – and James is sure he cannot endure much longer

Until, in the past, he meets Elise and does the unthinkable – he brings her to the present. He breaks the most fundamental time law and now he is a fugitive pursued by his own agency and worse, one of the most powerful mega-corporations in the solar system who have their own nefarious agenda.

But Elise brings with her something even more precious - hope

I love the world building of this book – it’s a truly fascinating dystopian world where the people of our far distant and ruined future are using time travel to literally mine their past for the resources they need to keep the future functioning.

I love the whole concept of the time laws – ways to remove things from the past, to claim resources and items, without actually disrupting the time stream. Inevitably that means hastily grabbing items before massive disasters and catastrophes, taking things that would be destroyed anyway so the time line isn’t disrupted.

There’s a wonderful theme of how decayed everything is becoming in this book which is done excellently in two ways. Firstly, we have the very overt descriptions of just how terrible things are. A lot of these are from James’s memories of his life in brutal refugee camps and his experiences of other times. We then have Elise with her very overt horror over what the world has become, how destroyed the Earth is, how things she took for granted as basic items of life have now been all but lost to the ravaged

But this first track is underpinned more subtly by the lots of little hints that things are getting worse, resources are getting more stretched – from the lack of chronomen each year, to the sheer desperation of having to send people back in time to harvest things like wood, to the fact each time and place can only ever be used once. We clearly see that the desperate temporary measures they’ve taken to try and keep humanity going are not going to last forever. It adds together and really informs the plot by adding not just the “everything is terrible” which is common in dystopians but also, with excellent subtlety, pushing the addition sense that “and it’s all going to get so much worse.”

This really does affect the whole story – the despair of the Chronomen becomes so much more apparently when you realise they’re swimming up stream and losing ground. Levin’s epic nobility and rigid following of the rules seems all the more pure – and all the more pointless – when we see the state of the world. Valta corporation’s ongoing greed and appalling self-interest seems all the more small minded and destructive in the light of this despair.

Mirrorheart (Require: Cookie Series #2) by Grace McDermott

New recruit Stef died, on a mission she was grossly unqualified to be on all because Agent Ryan couldn’t say no to the surrogate daughter who just wanted to impress him. And now she’s dead

Unless he breaks one of the fundamental Agency Rules and makes a wish to bring her back. There’s only really one choice - and a desperate need to keep it secret

Which isn’t easy when his Agency gets audited - not for bringing Stef back but because Recruit Curt is outraged by how Stef was put at risk and how little Ryan seems to care...

The shifting point of view of this book is interesting - switching away from Spyder’s viewpoint  allows us a whole new angle to the world beyond her own.

In particular we see a lot more of Agent Ryan, his flaws and his limitations, those latter two being especially important. It’s easy to see Ryan as this perfect, calm, benevolent force because that is the image he presents to the world and he has done some truly beautiful, kind things.

But when we see him through the eyes of some of the people he has wronged or treated poorly we see a whole new angle. Then we get to see him through his own eyes and we see someone so very unsure, whose bad deeds come more from a deep lack of social graces and understanding and a constant sense of his own inadequacy backed with an almost fierce self-loathing

This really does make the short story Legacy far more relevant. By seeing Ryan’s views of his former self, Rhys, and how that affects him - how he holds his previous incarnation in contempt, even revulsion. How he fights not to follow in his former footsteps while at the same time constantly being judged by his predecessors standards. It’s an excellent shadow hanging over him. His internal conflict and the conflict between how everyone sees him and who he really is really stands out excellently

And is part of the theme of the whole book. We have Curt, the ex-Solstice recruit, so often hated by his fellow agents for his past and so torn over it. Frustrated and angry that he isn’t given the opportunities he should have, isn’t given a true place in the agency or treated as a member of the team by his fellow recruits. Yet at the same time he hates what he has done before and loathes the idea of returning to what he once was - his own self-loathing is as powerful as his disdain for his fellows. On top of that he has his own PTSD to deal with - the abuse he suffered at the hands of agents shadowing him and his actions.

Blue Rhapsody (Require Cookie Short) by Grace McDermott

Michael Hu Luk, or Raz as he prefers to be called, is struggling to live day by day with his mental illness, the little support he gets from hat and the long suffering tolerance of his dutiful older sister

Until a chance encounter brings him to the attention of Agent Ryan from the Agency, the enforcers and facilitators of the supernatural world. And Agent Ryan can see the potential in Michael

The diversity of this book is excellent and really emphasises what the Agency is about. They don’t tolerate diversity. They don’t tolerate minorities – they celebrate them, embrace them, are empowered and enabled by the different elements they bring to the organisation and are stronger because of it.

This is especially true with mental illness as we take Michael (or Raz as he prefers to be called) who is considered completely and utterly unemployable because of his mental illness. His sister regards him as a burden, he himself has fully absorbed the idea that he’s completely useless. But he thrives at the Agency. He’s useful and capable at the Agency. And it’s not because he develops super powers, nor is it because he is magically cured by his mental illness – but he is given a place, a work environment and colleagues who are willing to make the necessary accommodations for him to succeed.

It’s wonderful – and also excellently added to by his sister’s contempt of him. Because she does support him; she is constantly giving him financial support. But it’s clear she doesn’t respect him; it shows that you can actually HELP a marginalised person while hurting them and regarding them with contempt.

We also see racial and LGBTQ diversity. Michael is Asian and gay both of which inform his character, both his family history and, again, with how his sister relates to him (apparently supportive but, again, not wanting his “not normal” gayness being discussed. And her patented “I’m totally not a bigot but I’m disgusted” expression) we have characters who are bisexual and genderqueer, South Asian characters, Black characters – even with the relatively large cast this short story has an amazingly diverse array of characters and some excellent messages about marginalised people in life and the work place.

Hideous by Devon McCormack

Luke is Cursed. Marked by a demon – a demon that possessed his father, killed his family and tortured him. Under the law of the land, the Cursed must be kept separate from society and carefully monitored because they are vulnerable to possession. Luke is a victim – but he’s also a threat and his entire life is defined by being that threat.

Desperately trying to exist in this terrible system, pulled in many directions and with many temptations, Luke’s worse fear is realised – his father’s demon has found him. And he is Cursed. He is vulnerable

The main fascinating original premise of this book are the Cursed and how they are treated by society and the way it is justified. The Cursed are vulnerable to possession (or infection). This means that even though they are victims, they’re also viewed as a terrible threat that needs monitoring – and they face

While this is a fascinating dynamic in and of itself and it would have been interesting to explore still further, it does introduce a shakiness to the obvious parallels that are being drawn throughout the book – to segregation and closeted LGBT people in particular. The Cursed, admittedly through no fault of their own, are dangerous, they are a risk and closely monitoring them does reduce that risk – this is a presented fact. This is a problem and why these metaphors for marginalised people so often fail – because they seem to always take a group that IS actually a threat in some way to compare with marginalised people.

Once we move past that original premise, however, the whole concept is far stronger and contains so many nuances. Luke faces frequent demands to think about the greater good and society while at the same time pointing out the system, society and the “greater good” never seems to include people like him. It’s easy to claim grandiose motives for the good of all when you’re not the ones who slip through the cracks. Related to that we have a criminal organisation of Cursed who are even involved in drug dealing.  The book does an excellent job of both saying how wrong this is and how these drugs are ruining lives – but at the same time, these Curseds outside the system (Deviants, as they’re called) don’t have any other option. They have to be involved in illicit activity to live – their choice is to struggle on the edge of the law, constantly being hunted or lived as constantly abused slaves within the system. When someone has all the good choices removed, you can’t judge them for making bad ones.

There’s also a Cursed character who navigates the system by, basically, being a sycophant and throwing his fellows to the wolves whenever he can. Let’s be brutally honest, it happens –in every marginalised community there are those who try to play the “we’re the good ones” role, who try to attack their fellows in exchange for a crumb of tolerance. We also have a very conflicted character who can hide the fact they’re Cursed. They live under constant stress of lying and being found out; he both embraces Luke as a confident, someone he can talk to but also shuns him in public and even aids and abets abuse of Luke as part of his own cover. It’s a very difficult role – on top of that Luke is, naturally, very unsympathetic to this character’s drinking because his life seems so much better than Luke’s that Luke cannot see or acknowledge the stress the other character has to deal with. It’s a really fascinating interaction.

Sunstruck (The Bigfoot Mysteries #1) by Polenth Blake

Ben is the new member of the Spokane Ecology Board, after his predecessor was murdered. Of course, it isn’t generally known what the full nature of the job entails – policing and investigating problems with the supernatural community of Spokane. A community Ben never knew about before – and certainly isn’t a part of.

It comes with a partner – Ari. A Bigfoot. She’s hoping this job will earn her some respect from the Bigfoot colony that has made her an outcast – she doesn’t have a great deal of experience with humans. Her predecessor has also been murdered

Both of them face something of a learning curve. But they have to learn fast – whoever killed the people before them may be targeting them next and, with the evidence heavily tampered with, the perpetrator may be one of the few people they need to trust.

Given that, Thunderbirds having a temper tantrum in town seems quite minor.

This is a neat murder mystery – it’s a story with lots of interesting little twists and tangents that unfold as the book progresses at an excellent pace. It has a few nifty red herrings that are thrown in with skill and aplomb, we have some action that’s in keeping with the characters. It’s a good plot and it has some points I really appreciated – like the action scenes not being one-on-one fights (because why going into such equal battles?) and the enemy not being so simplistic as is common place.

But the story is a far better vehicle for the world and the characters

The characters are excellent – Ari and Ben bounce off each other, flounder together, annoy each other, try not to annoy each other, fail to understand each other but keep bouncing back and coming together again trying to decide whether to sit down and figure out what happened or to Not Talk About It. They have pasts and experiences and fully realised characters that I just want to burrow through

If it weren’t for the world, the characters would be the best thing about this book. But the world, with the different supernatural groups, hefty amounts of Native American tradition, entirely newly created lore in places sprinkled with politics, tensions and strong connections to themes of colonisation – is even better.

There was a lot of Native American tradition and beliefs in this book and even without the bibliography at the end you can tell that there has been some research gone into them which is always great to see and helped contribute to the richness of this world (along with the development of the Bigfoots mentioned below). The combination and blending of well researched actual tradition and beliefs with really well founded and well made fictional worlds made for a very strong setting

Mirrorfall (Require: Cookie series) by Grace McDermott

Stef, or Spyder, is a hacker, computer genius and an all round geek. Who has just been given a job that is compelling, fascinating and almost impossible – decipher indecipherable code. Code that resembles nothing on Earth. Code that she can almost comprehend and is driven to solve. Code that may not even be from Earth – nor her employers

At least until guys with guns show up and everything  becomes very confusing very quickly.

She’s always wanted to see magic and things beyond the norm – and now she’s plunged into the middle of it, torn between loving every second and running in terror of not being able to meet the challenges of her new world – or her new job as a field agent for the Agency. Police, facilitators – she’s joined the organisation that tries to bring some semblance of peace and order to a very chaotic supernatural world.

And her boss may be an angel. He certainly saved her life before.

In story terms I think there are 2 stories pushed together here. One is Stef discovering the world beyond the one she knows, being recruited for the agency and then actually joining up and becoming Ryan’s protégé. This is a good story and needed a lot of growth. Then there is the Mirrorfall which feels kind of rushed, addressed only in passing and to be made up of a whole lot of bad decisions and not very well explained. I feel the Mirrorfall could have been a separate story and we could have just focused on Stef joining the agency and proving herself and establishing he bond between herself and Ryan – things which badly needed doing.

I didn’t dislike the stories but they needed more development, and to move faster. We spend so much time on Stef’s internal dialogue and doubts with occasional lectures that not enough happens or develops. Which is a shame because with some development this could go from a good story to an excellent story. With some development the intriguing relationship between Stef and Ryan could have become powerful and fun and interesting and not a little rushed and with Ryan’s affection being understandable – but excessive in the brief period he’s known her.

Which is a shame – because Ryan, the man who is never remembered, connecting with the child he saved, the child he broke all the rules for, the child he would not die who then grew up and actually remembers him is poignant and powerful without the angsty monologues that are so often used to try and convey strong emotion in the genre. Throw in him not being seen as human or living by most people who see his true nature, but Stef’s unique outlook caused her to not only see that but embrace it joyfully and you have a powerful foundation. Or Stef and her past and thought processes negotiating this new world, bringing to it the unique perspectives of her mind and hobbies and how this brings new strengths and richness to her role and makes her a far better field agent than anyone expected. These are great stories, these are excellent stories and there are wonderful cores of them there – but they’re not developed to their full potential before we head off to the Mirrorfall and a whole new story setting.

There is very good ongoing presentation of Stef as neurologically atypical person. Her thought processes are extremely good and representative of that, how she thinks, the odd places her mind goes, the unusual way her mind works is really well expressed. Several of that bleeds over into her actions – things she does, things she can tolerate, things she can’t abide and odd behaviour that is explained a lot when you can see into her head. This is compounded by her upbringing and her father who wouldn’t tolerate his daughter and her different mentality, his cruelty and his harshness has left Stef with an extremely low self-esteem and zero sense of her actual self worth.

This leads to a lot of insecurity on Stef’s part. She is constantly going to Ryan assuming she’s not good enough, assuming she’s too much of a horrible person to be tolerated, assuming she’s too criminal or too useless or too embarrassing to keep around

And Ryan is very good in both acknowledging her mental illness and realising, along with                              , that accommodations need to be made for it. It’s all realistically and powerfully portrayed.

The problem is that Stef does have strengths – but they’re not shown, or rarely. Her main ability is that she is a technological wizard of extreme skill. Great – and he makes her a field agent. Great if he has seen some potential in her or that her way of thinking would be an asset in such an unorthodox setting– and in her testing it seemed like she did have.

Review: Waiting for Daybreak by Amanda McNeil

Freida had a difficult life. Living with mental disabilities, she had a hard time negotiating the world and, especially, the people within it. It certainly seemed she’d hit one of her low points after a particularly awful date sent her into disassociation, self-harming and depression.

Of course, if she hadn’t been in that low, she’d have been outside when the zombie apocalypse began, rather than in bed reeling from depression. She would have been like the rest of Boston – perhaps the world – roaming around seeking brains to feast upon.

In the greatest irony, she almost seems to be thriving far more in this new, bleak world than ever she did before – just her, her cat – and even a love interest who doesn’t seem nearly as awful as her last real date. Perhaps they can carve their own life in world of zombies, despite every day being a battle to survive under constant threat from the Afflicted

When I picked up this book, I had reservations. It’s a very short book, especially for something not part of an ongoing series. It seemed too short to be a self-contained story in and of itself.

So I was wonderfully surprised by the masterful pacing that made this book and this story exactly as long as it needed to be. We had plenty of flash backs of Freida’s life to have a greater idea of her as a character and her history of mental illness. We learned enough about her to flesh her out as a person, to get an idea of the outbreak and what happened to her and how she survived – but not so much that it was extraneous, padding or unnecessary fluff.

Similarly when she met Mike and had a relationship, we had enough information and scenes to see the shape of it, but not so many that we were drowned in excess detail that bogged the story down and turned it into a romance. We didn’t learn much about Mike, we didn’t need to know much about Mike. The story was a extremely well done balance –neither too much nor too little.

Which covers most of everything in the book – the action scenes were exciting, lasted long enough that you didn’t blink and miss them but not so long that you were tempted to skip forwards; they were well described enough to get a sense of what was happening, without being so over-described that it felt like the fighters were actually taking notes. This whole book just hits the sweet spot – that perfect balance between too fast and too slow, too much description and just enough, too much world building and backstory, and not enough