Reviews – Page 9 – Marked for Plot

Kalyna the Soothsayer – Political Fantasy with a Sense of Humor

One of my favorite things to do is read books nobody is talking about other than a few people who relentlessly hype it. Kalyna the Soothsayer was brought to my attention by u/RheingoldRiver over on the Fantasy subreddit. I’m a bit sad that it took me so long to finally pick this book up, but I really enjoyed it! It’s got a good amount of political intrigue, a delightfully unreliable narrator, and a setting that feels just weird enough to be noticed without distracting from the corruptive nature of power or xenophobic social orders. It’s not a comedy, but it’s got a relentlessly dry sense of humor. It isn’t epic fantasy, but the stakes are high. It’s not a crime novel, but our protagonist’s string of cons and lies were entertaining and filled with tension. It doesn’t quite hit my ‘all time favorites’ list, but it’s good enough that I’ve already put in an order for the sequel.

Elevator Pitch
Kalyna is from everywhere, but belongs nowhere. She is powerless in a family of soothsayers. Her ‘prophecies’ rely on guesswork and rigging the odds. She’s catches the attention of the Prince of Rotfelsen, an underground nation. She and her family find themselves kidnapped and forcibly placed in the Prince’s service right when assassination plots against the King are on the rise. She must figure out how to escape without killing herself, her loving father, or her viper of a grandmother. Until then, she’s got to fake some fortunes for a paranoid prince and hope things don’t go too sideways in the meantime.

Read if Looking for: long cons, a bucket of assassination attempts, characters using nontypical weapons, Jewish-coded protagonists, chaotic bisexuals

Avoid if Looking For: kind and sympathetic nobility, fight scenes with consequences, supportive grandparents, long chapters

Comparable Reads: The Justice of Kings, A Mask of Mirrors, The Blacktongue Thief

Ninefox Gambit – Is Novel Worldbuilding Enough? Sadly, no.

I was first (and second) introduced to Yoon Ha Lee through school. His Korean middle grade space opera Dragon Pearl was quite popular for a few years running, and I use some of his short stories from the fairy tale-esque anthology The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales as part of my high school Genre Fiction class. Unfortunately, I didn’t like Ninefox Gambit very much. Lee is a phenomenal worldbuilder who avoids the need to explain every element of the world. In a military-action story however, that choice doesn’t work quite as well. If you’re looking for something weird and trans-coded, this might be for you. Sadly, it wasn’t for me.

The Premise:
Cheris is a commander in the Hexarchate’s military force. She’s got a gifted mind for maths and formation tactics derived from the Hexarchate’s calendar magic. When offered a chance at rapid advancement if she can offer a satisfactory plan to recapture a key military base captured by heretics. Her plan? Host the ghost of a long-dead traitor-general who murdered his entire force of soldiers when alive. He’s even more of a genius than she is, but can she trust his motives and advice to be for the good of her empire?

Read if Looking for: calendar magic, military commanders making tough decisions, sieges, sentient robots building their own culture, creepy shadows with nine eyes

Avoid if Looking for: familiar Space Opera ideas, clear space combat sequences, strong characterization

Od Magic – Too Many Vibes, Not Enough Substance

Od Magic is an odd book. I should state first that the blurb is an absolute liar and shouldn’t be trusted as an accurate description of the book. You’d think the story was entirely about a gardner at a magic school when, in reality, he’s the most minor of around 5 POV characters. It’s not a book concerned with traditional plot structures, indulges in trope and convention, and tiptoes the line of being a modern fairy tale. I didn’t particularly care for this book, but the people who like it really like it, and I can respect that McKillip wrote something that doesn’t easily fit into a neat category or subgenre.

The Premise:
In the city there is a school at the foot of the King’s palace. In it is a teacher who doesn’t agree with the limits the King puts on the magic they are allowed to teach. It now also holds a new gardener, brimming with untrained magic and recruited by the legendary (and largely absent) Giantess who founded the school. The castle holds a princess who likes to sneak out and isn’t sure about this ‘being engaged’ business. The city holds a quarter-warden who would rather be patrolling the streets and a magician who pretends their spells are nothing but parlor tricks. Each of their orbits connect and diverge, with the central plot (if there is one) focusing on the King’s fear of lacking control of magic and how it affects all our protagonists.

Read if Looking For: vibes based books, grandmas that don’t give a fuck, negligent dads and emotionally distant fiancés, soft magic

Avoid if you Dislike: two-dimensional characters, miscommunication tropes, passive protagonists, a lack of gardening in a book supposedly about gardening

Winter Romance Roundup

I’m almost positive that my yearly romance kick has faded away for the time being. I’ve been settling back into some meatier fantasy/science fiction as I try and clear my shelves to prepare for r/fantasy’s yearly bingo to pick up again and I pivot to reading a lot of gay stuff again (probably including romances). It was a tough winter in Minnesota this year, which explained why I binged so many romances. They’re listed below in approximately the order I enjoyed them.

Lifelode – A Domestic Fantasy to Chew On

I am so happy that I read Lifelode. It isn’t a perfect book, but I love how it defies easy comparisons and pushed boundaries of fantasy in the 2000s structurally and thematically. It’s got delightfully weird worldbuilding and, if pressed, would use One Hundred Years of Solitude as the closest comparison I’ve read (though even that isn’t right). More selfishly, it’s also probably one of the best books I’ve read for a book club, simply because I think Lifelode makes so many bold choices that will spark interesting discussion. Certainly my views here on how Walton handled theme don’t seem to be universally shared amongst those who, like me, ended up reading far ahead for our midway discussion. Lifelode isn’t necessarily a dense book, but there’s a lot of interesting choices here which set a great foundation for discussion whether you loved or hated the directions the story took.

The Premise:
Applekirk is a rural farming town run by a lord and his family, who live in a large manor. Taveth is one of the four adults of the marriage, committed to maintaining the house. One of her husbands is Lord, another manages the sheep and farms. Meanwhile Chayra, the other wife of the house, has found joy in throwing pots. Their lives are thrown out of routine with the arrival of a flirtatious travelling scholar, a meanspirited ancestor to one of Taveth’s husbands, and a priestess of the goddess of marriage who has been sent to bring said ancestor to the goddess’ justice. Just as important, however, is the harvest and all preparations it requires.

Read if Looking For: books without easy comparisons, celebration of traditionally feminine work, Gods as hiveminds, reimagined family structures

Avoid if you Dislike: pastoral settings, relationship drama, complex family trees, peas, petty characters

The Justice of Kings

The Justice of Kings has been sitting on my shelf for a full year. Somehow, I found time to read it right as its hype has begun to fade into the constant churn of new titles being put out. Oftentimes I find myself at odds with popular consensus on titles, but I think this book’s reputation is about as accurate as you can get. I think some people will be frustrated that our protagonist character is mostly tagging along for this book, but it’s a really solid entry for people looking for books that tackle similar ideas as Game of Thrones, but without the sprawl of multiple points of view. Plus, this series actually got finished.

The Premise
Helena is a clerk for Justice Vonvalt, who travels the empire ensuring the law is followed across the land. He has the power of investigator, justice, and executioner at once, and he holds arcane powers bestowed only on those as an Emperor’s Justice. This story follows their investigations of heresy in a small town and (more prominently as the story continues) the murder of a merchant’s wife in a river city. Helena tells the story from years later, candidly talking about how these were the first dominos that began the long chain of events bringing the Empire crashing down upon itself.

Read if You Like: political intrigue, realistic fantasy, low magic settings, religious zealots

Avoid if You Dislike: extended courtroom scenes, proactive protagonists, traditional mystery plotlines

The Outcast Mage

Will February be the month of aggressively mediocre reads? Unclear, but if the last few books I finished are any indication it might be. The Outcast Mage reminded me that I need to DNF more, but kept luring me back in with interesting little tibits. Just as I was about to quit I learn that the spy priest is gay and eyeing up his bodyguard. I can’t stop there! Sadly, this book never quite came together for me, but I think could be a good fit for someone looking for a straightforward and modern take on Epic Fantasy.

The Premise:
Amoria is a city in a glass dome, a refuge for mages who fled persecution. Now however, they perpetrate many of the same crimes against those without magic. Naila lives between: she has the power to sense magic – and is thus a mage – but has now power herself. She is both with and without magic, trapped between two worlds who both view her with suspicion. This is mainly her story, but we also follow the city’s most powerful and arrogant mage, a senator who is Aunt to Naila’s best friend, a spy priest from the country who long-ago hunted down mages, and a strange woman wandering the countryside investigating mysterious calamities.

Read if Looking For: chosen ones, magic as an analogue for xenophobia, straightforward writing

Avoid if Looking For: intense characterization, nuanced villains, lots of dragons (more in the sequels?)

The Warden

If I’m being blunt, there wasn’t much drawing me to The Warden when I saw the audiobook in my public library’s catalog. It seemed like fairly traditional fantasy fare, but with a queer necromancer that wasn’t The Locked Tomb. The thing that actually hooked me? The anticipated wait for a hold to come up was over a year long. Surely something that in-demand is worth the wait? This book didn’t reinvent my reading life, won’t make my favorites list, but it absolutely was a fun farmtown fantasy filled with plenty of things to love in a 300 page package.

The Premise:
Aelis is a new Warden. She’s a prodigy able to manipulate magic from three fields of magic and the son of one of the country’s richest men. That didn’t stop her from getting placed at the very edge of the Country, near the frontier that serves as no-man’s land between Aelis’ people and the Orcs. Turns out everyone is terrified of a necromancer walking amongst them, there’s a few dangers and mysteries she didn’t expect, and a crumbling wizard’s tower in desperate need of a roof and a door. Before she can tackle any of those problems, she’s got to earn the trust of the locals.

Read if Looking For: classic D&D fantasy trappings, slow pacing, city-slicker arrogance, small towns with more secrets than one could reasonably expect

Avoid if Looking For: dynamic sapphic romances, skeletons everywhere, action galore, corny D&D humor

December/January DNFs

Every year I say I’ll get better at DNFing books, and I feel like I’m never making forward progress on that front. There are too many books on my TBR to waste my time on something I’m not enjoying. I must keep telling myself this over and over. Of these, I’m only particularly interested in returning to Mercy Makers, and then only in a different format.

Children of Time

I meant to read this book ages ago, but my dad (who never reads) picked it up off my bookshelf while visiting and took it back to Kansas. I finally resigned myself to not getting it back and grabbed another from a used bookstore. I’ve only read one other book from Tchaikovsky, and this confirmed that I like his books a lot, but they’re probably only for when I’m in the mood for something on the more breezy/readable end of things.

The Premise:
A planet was terraformed, meant to be home to monkeys infested with an evolutionary super-virus to help them prepare a civilization for humans to inherit. Things went wrong, and invertebrates ended up with the virus instead. We follow two societies across thousands of years: the spiders who raise from a simple hunter/gatherer society into spacefaring astronauts, and a spaceship carrying what may be the last of humanity, seeking one of the homeworlds. They will only briefly interact in this book, as their storylines largely remain separate but for a few discrete moments in time.

Read if Looking For: so many spiders, batshit crazy worldbuilding, spaceship politics

Avoid if Looking For: inhuman narration, stories focusing on first contact, messy thematic work