Free Agent

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Courtesy of goodreads.comSo I picked up this book Free Agent by J.C. Nelson because it said it was book 1 of the Grimm Agency series. I thought that the idea of a Grimm (as in the brothers) Agency sounded interesting. And it was an interesting read.

We get introduced to Marissa Locks (as in Goldi) who is an agent for fairy godfather Grimm (no first name). She’s chasing down someone who has stolen a pair of glass slippers. Apparently if a godfather or godmother grants you a magical item, such as glass slippers, the magic will work perfectly for you until midnight (natch). But if you steal said item, it will turn you into a slavering monster at midnight (…natch).

Marissa’s job is to retrieve objects like this, to set up princesses with princes and pretty much do anything else Grimm asks of her since her parents sold her to him for a miracle cure for their youngest (and only biological) daughter. The interesting thing about this world is that there is a Kingdom (where all the high society lives) and it is sort of an overlay (or maybe underlay) to the mortal world. I don’t recall them naming the city it overlays, but I’m assuming its New York because it’s always New York. So there are actual princes and princesses in this place not just princely people.

After retrieving the slippers, Marissa has to play the “wrong woman” again. This means she has to go out, find the appointed prince, break his heart and set him up to find his one, true, princessly love. I had issue with this bit because why does a princess need a prince? Or vice versa.

But people pay good Glitter (the currency of the Kingdom) to get their happily ever after so Marissa makes that happen. Unfortunately for her, this time she screws up though we find out in time that it isn’t really her fault. A fairy godmother is trying to move in on Grimm’s territory, which is usually a no-no. And since fairy magic cancels each other out, neither fairy can go up against each other directly. Meaning its Marissa to the rescue.

I found a few of the things in this book just “ugh, why?”, mainly the whole setting up princesses for marriage thing. Now, I am happily married but I also believe that a woman doesn’t need to be married to have a fulfilling life. Or a man for that matter. But since we’re dealing with fairy tales here, obviously happily ever afters involve marriage or one true loves so I guess I’ll give it a pass.

I like the concept of Glitter being currency and the idea that fairy tale creatures are among us, if only just slightly off, like you need to turn sideways to see them. Its interesting and I’m tempted to get the follow up book but I’m afraid that Marissa is going to go damsel in distress as so many women do in fairy tale based stories. Nothing bugs me more than a strong woman suddenly needing a man to do everything for her when a romantic interest comes into her life.

All in all, it was an entertaining read. Rating: B+.

The Aeronaut’s Windlass

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Courtesy of jim-butcher.comOne of my all time favorite authors wrote a steampunk story. I fan girled. I got to meet him and get an autographed copy of said book. I fan girled. Then I read the book…and I sighed. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed in Jim Butcher’s The Aeronaut’s Windlass.

It isn’t what I would properly call steampunk. It had a lot of the same themes as steampunk: a highly stratified society, aeroships, aether, copper/brass doohickies. It was not clear whether this was some sort of alternate earth time line or some alternate planet. A no point were any recognizable human countries from the Victorian age mentioned.

All humans, and cats, live in these giant Borg cubes (and yes, that is straight from the horse’s mouth) called Spires. They are 10,000 feet high by two miles wide. Each level in the cube is 50 feet in height and referred to as a habble. The top habble occupied mostly by the top families, who are rather like the English nobility.

The main power source seems to be crystals rather than steam, which I thought was cool and not nearly as noisy. It doesn’t seem like women are at all treated like arm candy, which is pretty opposite of Victorian England, you must admit.

Cats can communicate, but only if the human is “smart” enough to realize that they’re talking. They’re also assholes but…so are real cats. There is also a caste (not really a caste system but the best word I can come up with at the moment) of humans called warriorborn. From what I can tell, they’re some sort of half-human, half-cat like creature as cats call them half-souls.

I think my favorite characters are the ethrealists, which are mad to a one. And by mad I mean Mad Hatter sort of mad.  They’re powerful but doofy. Master Ferus, one of the ethrealists, has a problem with door knobs. He can’t open them. It’s a nice little running gag.

Since the book only came out about a week or so ago, I’ll just give a brief overview. So possible SPOILERS here.

This book features five people other than the ethrealist Master Ferus: Captain Francis Madison Grimm (often called the grim captain by Ferus), Gwendolyn Lancaster of House Lancaster (who control the crystal vatteries in Spire Albion), her cousin Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster, Bridget Tagwynn (who speaks cat) and Folly (apprentice ethrealist).

Gwen and Bridget are new inductees into the Spirearch Guard of Spire Albion (there are several Spires, not just this one). The Spirearch is like the king and the guard are his, well, guard. They’re the police force and the fighting force  for the spire. Benedict has been a guard for two years already and is enjoying being one up on his cousin on the reg.

Grimm is the aeronaut with a bad past. He was drummed out of Fleet for cowardice, even though it clearly wasn’t him. He was the patsy. Still, he has his own ship, The Predator, no matter how badly damaged so he’s his own man.

Due to a surprise attack from Spire Aurora, our unlikely allies are gathered together by the Spirearch as the only people he can really trust. Mostly because they’ve all given them lip at some point, I think. At any rate, he has a mission for them to Habble Landing, where the majority of the Spire’s commerce takes place. Habble Landing, naturally enough, houses the docks and is the likely place for any further Auroran attacks.

The writing is good. If I didn’t know who had written it, I probably would have guessed Jim Butcher. But. It wasn’t what I would term a good steampunk novel. I would really classify this as just a fantasy novel. I think that’s where my disappointment stems from. I’ve read and enjoyed so much steampunk that I have an expectation of what it should be like, and this book isn’t it.

I would say that if you want to read this one, go into it thinking of it as a fantasy novel and not a steampunk novel. Don’t box yourself into a set of expectations. However, I would also say, wait until it comes down a little in price if you want to buy it. Rating: B-. I’ll probably read any follow up books, but I’m not sure if I’ll read this one again.

Killing Pretty

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Courtesy of goodreads.comI love the Sandman Slim novels. Richard Kadrey’s writing reminds me of a mix of Simon R. Green’s evocative descriptions and Jim Butcher’s snark peppered with a hint of the dystopian. A hint is all I need really, I’m not generally a person who reads full on dystopian books.

The latest Sandman Slim is Killing Pretty. This book picks up where the last one left off, pretty directly. Stark is resented by a lot of angels, his girlfriend Candy is ‘dead’ (she was ‘killed’ pretty spectacularly in front of a lot of cops but it was a fake out. A glamour making her a Japanese woman is all that keeps her safe these days) and he no longer has access to the room of 13 doors. This is the major bummer as that was his big trick, the one he relied on more than anything to help him figure out what was going on.

But the big thing is that someone has killed Death. Or rather, they managed to stuff the Angel of Death into a body and then kill that body. It didn’t take, so Death crawled out of where the body was and went to Stark for help. Because he’s working as a PI for a woman who used to be a marshal, she ends up working the case.

This is the big case, the name maker that will make sure that she and Stark remain in business. Because while Death is stuck in the body of a mortal, people aren’t dying. It’s a little Torchwood Children of Earth, honestly, but the mechanics of what’s going on at least make a little sense in this universe.

I highly recommend this whole series, and this is a pretty good one. You don’t need to read the whole series for this to make sense but there are a number of callbacks to prior novels that make more sense if you’ve read them. I do know that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea so be warned there is a lot of cussing and graphic violence, as one would expect with Sandman Slim. Rating: A

Forces from Beyond

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Courtesy of Amazon.comObligatory SPOILERS warning because this book is really, really new. I just finished the last of Simon R Green’s Ghost Finders novels, Forces from Beyond. This series features the folks of the Carnacki Institute, who deal with those who just won’t lay down and die already. The books revolve around one team made up of JC Chance, ‘Happy’ Jack Palmer and Melody Chambers.

JC is sort of like Faceman from the A-Team, smooth, suave, well-dressed and charming with it. He lives with his ghost girlfriend Kim. No, I don’t feel like elaborating. Read the books. 😉 JC is the team leader because he’s that sort of guy.

Jack Palmer is the team telepath. In order to keep himself functioning in a sane way, he pumps himself full of drugs which could probably kill an elephant. He lives with the team tech geek, Melody Chambers. From the sound of it, they have a really interesting sex life. Jack’s nickname of Happy is heavily ironic.

In this book, we find out that Happy is dying. No surprise given his drug problem, but it really seems to be just around the corner here. The Carnacki Institute is hoping to have him for one last push against the final boss, the Flesh Undying. We know it’s the last push because Carnacki Institute boss Catherine Latimer is behind what goes on in the book.

I don’t want to get into this plot in too much detail since it’s so new but I do feel that the book was rather rushed. I feel like he really could have stretched out this Flesh Undying arc into another two or even three books. It seemed like because he’s having some health difficulties, he’s decided to just get his series over with as soon as possible.

While that might work well with the Nightside or the Secret Histories, which are rather winding down naturally, it didn’t work so well with the Ghost Finders. I found this a rather meh series to begin with but the kind of Scooby Doo ending in this one just left me going “Wait, that’s it?”.

So yeah, if you’ve read the others in this series, totally go ahead and round it out. I really hate leaving books unfinished unless I find them truly godawful but I almost wish I hadn’t read this book at all. I have re-read a lot of Simon R. Green’s books but I don’t think this will be one of them. Rating: C-. Not worth the price, luckily I believe I bought this with birthday money.

A Red-Rose Chain

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Courtesy of goodreads.comI just finished the latest October Daye story from Seanan McGuire, A Red-Rose Chain. Literally just finished as I set down my Kindle and came to pop out a review. This book is so, so new (less than two weeks now), that I’m going to give a bare-bones description but please be warned that there could be SPOILERS here.

So, we start out with Toby and company fighting off a pack of Mauthe Doog, giant black dogs from the depths of Faerie that had been locked away by Oberon centuries ago. I’m still hoping that McGuire will get Toby to find out why Oberon sealed off much of Faerie so long ago. I think it would be fascinating.

She figures out that these dogs aren’t evil creatures. They’re frightened. They haven’t seen the mortal world in centuries or longer and to be suddenly dumped out in modern San Francisco scared the crap out of them. Scared animals will fight back, so naturally, they’d caused a dust up. And because she’s a hero of the realm, Queen Arden of the Mists called in Toby for help.

Once they Mauthe Doogs are taken care of, the next catastrophe rears its ugly head pretty immediately. Like, within 2-3 hours immediately. The Kingdom of Silences to the north has declared war on the Mists because, though Queen Arden is confirmed as the rightful ruler and heir of the prior king, Gilad Windermere, the deposed queen had run straight to Silences and the puppet she’d put on the throne.

Arden sends Toby as her chosen diplomat to Silences in hopes of averting a war. Which, given Toby’s experience is probably not the best course of action but Toby touched the queen without permission (a major taboo in the fae world). So this post is punishment essentially.

With her are new fiancee and King of Dreaming Cats (I believe is the kingdom’s name) Tybalt, squire Quentin and former Fetch May. Let’s face it, May is around because 1) she’s hard to kill and 2) she’s the only person who has a hope in hell of making Toby presentable to royalty. Together, they have three days to try and talk Silences out of their ridiculous war or there will be hell to pay.

I won’t say more because otherwise we get into major plot points and I don’t want to ruin it. It’s a delicious book that took me about four hours to plow through total (stretched over a few lunch breaks). I love the October Daye novels. All of them. There hasn’t really been a bad one, though some of them are definitely better than others. I think at one point in time Amazon had this listed of book 9 of 9 of the series, so I’d gone into this a bit sad, expecting a grand wrap up.

Luckily, I don’t think this is the case. There are too many loose ends. We still don’t know what it is that the Luidaeg really wants Toby to do. We don’t know what’s going on with Amandine. And (spoilers) Toby and Tybalt didn’t get married at the end of the book. So there’s lots left to come. I’ll be interested to see what happens. So, Ms. McGuire, I can haz next book please? Rating: A

Prudence

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Courtesy of goodreads.comI just finished Gail Carriger’s latest, Prudence. This is book one of the Custard Protocol series, which I assume will be a 4-5 book series like the Parasol Protectorate books and the Finishing School series. Because this is a very new novel, I won’t go into much detail here. All three series are interlinked, so it’s really fun to see where things come from or go.

This book follows Lady Prudence Akeldama, the adopted daughter of Lord Akeldama, rove vampire extraordinaire and biological daughter of Lord and Lady Maccon. She’s out in society, so probably about 18-19. Her best friend Primrose is the daughter of her mother’s best friend, Ivy Tunstall and she clearly has some sort of feeling for Madame LeFoux’s  son Quesnel.

This book follows the adventures of Prudence (called Rue) and her friends to India via the improbably ladybug colored dirigible, The Spotted Custard. This is a present from Lord Akeldama to Rue with the express intent of getting her out of London due to an unfortunate werewolf in bloomers incident at a society party and to get her to do some covert tea buying.

This is clearly the introductory story of her next story arc. There’s a lot of character building but I can’t quite decide of I’m supposed to like any of these character, particularly Rue. I feel she’s a bit spoiled and I can’t help but feel that I really, really want her taken down a serious peg or two.

There’s clearly supposed to be some sort of romantic build up between Rue and Quesnel, but…I just can’t seem to care. I think that’s far too tidy, considering Quesenl’s mother was in love with Rue’s mother. I don’t particularly like that Lady Alexia Maccon seems to have turned into every disapproving mother ever. She didn’t seem like that when Rue was little in the last Parasol Protectorate book.

I enjoyed reading the book. It had Gail Carriger’s distinctive style…but I think you could read the second book in this series (whenever it comes out) and still not really miss anything. It makes me want to read Soulless again. Rating: C+/B-

A foray into Dieselpunk

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Courtesy of goodreads.comMy go-to genres of books are Urban Fantasy and Steampunk. Obviously, considering my posts. But every so often I’ll venture outside my comfortable little world with sci-fi, straight fantasy (you know, knights and castles etc) and now, dieselpunk.

I just finished reading The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, an anthology of dieselpunk stories edited by Sean Wallace. I’ve never read dieselpunk before and the fact that the era is right in my historical wheelhouse (yeah, I’m a historian by schooling) and the awesome cover made me pick this bad boy up.

Like any anthology, there are good and bad stories. Some of the stories in the book are more like novellas than real short stories. That’s fine. But the all of these stories seemed just…too post-apocalyptic. Now, given the wide ranging time frame I felt this covered (WWI through WWII), that’s understandable. And yet…I really feel that it doesn’t have to be. There was so much going on in that time frame that was of a hopeful or fun nature: like Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart (before she disappeared), the advent of race culture (both cars and planes).

It was a little darker and a little more depressing than I thought it would be given the cover. The 1920s, 30s and 40s are the height of pulp fiction and radio shows. There’s so much that authors could do with it, I feel that these stories sort of missed that. I was kind of hoping for stories that were a bit more along the likes of The Rocketeer than A Farewell to Arms.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t read more dieselpunk if I could find something, it just means that perhaps that book wasn’t the best introduction to the genre, at least for me. So if you like dieselpunk, this would probably be worth the read. There’s a bunch of stories in there. If not, give it a miss. There are other anthologies out there. If anyone has a suggestion for a dieselpunk book to read, I’m all eyes.

Rating: C+. Being a historian, there were a couple of stories where I was heartily impressed by the author’s attention to detail, such as the one with the Japanese internment camps from WWII America. Other than that, I might just donate this book to the local library.

Crown & Key

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Courtesy of goodreads.comSo I troll through Amazon Kindle books on the reg to see if I can find anything that catches my fancy, especially when I’m between novels on my favorite series (Dresden Files, any and all Simon R Green etc). I picked up this steampunk novel The Shadow Revolution: Crown & Key by Clay and Susan Griffith. I wasn’t really able to figure out in this book if magic and such was on the DL  or if it was well known but considered ‘suspect’ (i.e.-practitioners are thought of in the terms of gypsies and such were at that time, an unwanted peoples). It certain seemed that everyone that our main character, Simon Archer, met was aware of magic on some level. But this is a first novel, so I give a little leeway on the world building ambiguity.

So, Simon Archer is a mage. Not just any mage, but a scribe. Supposedly he is the last one. From what I’m able to gather, scribes work magic through writing down spells and then speaking an activating word. Simon has taken this a little further and tattooed useful spells on his body. Therefore, all he has to do is speak the activating word to do the spells. The problem with magic in this world though is that if you use too much, you get ‘aether drunk’ (seems like an uber high, giggly feeling as it’s described).

Simon is a playboy. The illegitimate son of a scribe in some sort of protective society that seems to have fallen apart, Simon has made himself a bit of a name in the social scene. It isn’t unusual to see him at a party, even if he isn’t invited. This sort of lifestyle is all well and good for him until an old friend gets murdered by a werewolf right in front of him. She’d been trying to ask him for help regarding said werewolf but she was just a bit too late.

To try and get a little revenge, he crashes a very high society party (Prime Minister high) to confront the werewolf, a Peer whose name I have forgotten. Simon confronts him, gets in a fight and is helped out by a Lady by the name of Kate Anstruther. A self professed Alchemist, Kate has no time for societal games. She is much too logical to be swayed by some idiot lord trying to get in her knickers. She’s only there because her younger sister Imogene is a society person and it isn’t proper for a young lady to go out alone.

This fight brings together Simon, Simon’s teacher Nick Barker, and Kate in a race to figure out not only what’s going on but to save Kate’s sister. Imogene falls for the wrong sort (natch, always the way these things go) and it leads to a host of trouble. Throw in a Scottish werewolf hunter, a tinkerer named Penny and an evil doctor and you have a nice little mix.

I quite enjoyed this book. I kept waiting for Kate to go all helpless damsel and it didn’t really happen. The only time she did get a little stereotypically weepy woman was when she was strapped down to a gurney and both she and her sister threatened with extreme bodily harm. I personally feel that is quite an acceptable circumstance for your strong female (or male) lead to have a bit of a breakdown. I’m still deciding if I want to move onto book 2 of this series but I think its definitely worth a read. Rating: B, solid but not outstanding. Also, they never really got to why it was subtitled “Crown & Key”…

One-Eyed Jacks are Wild

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Courtesy of elizabethbear.com. Open for full image.I love a good personification story. I find it interesting to see what an author can do with the idea that a city is literally alive, where there is one (or more) person who is the city. In the case of the world in One-Eyed Jack by Elizabeth Bear, most major cities have a genius (commonly referred to in fantasy novels as genius loci) that represent the idea of the city.

As you may have guessed from the title, One-Eyed Jack takes place in Las Vegas. Vegas has two geni, the One-Eyed Jack (Yes, his name is Jack-well, John Henry Kinkead-and yes, he has one eye) and the Suicide King (whose name is Stewart). They, like other geni, were once living humans who had a tie to the city they are bound to. That could mean anything from they were born there to dying there to being a significant part of the culture there (No, neither of Vegas’ loci are or were Elvis or Frank Sinatra).

I think that this book is part of a world but not necessarily part of a series. Its a little unclear because its called a novel of the “Promethean Age” but when I look up Elizabeth Bear’s other novels with that subtitle, their blurbs don’t mention Jack, Stewart or Vegas. In any case, some of the world building ideas seem to be already set in place, like mages being called Prometheans and having been wiped out (it sounds like mages are just bad news in this world. Again, don’t know why).

This book starts out with Jack and Stewart at the Hoover Dam. Something is up with the dam, it has some sort of hold on both Vegas and Los Angeles, beyond just the power of the Colorado River. Jack is convinced that this is a bad thing and tries to fix it. He uses Stewart, his partner in all senses of the word, the job of distracting the masses while he tries to put a date on a blank plaque of some sort on the dam.

Before he can do anything, Stewart “dies” from having thrown himself from the dam and missed actually killing himself (not that the Suicide King can kill himself because apparently that’s the only way he can’t die. Nice twist) and a genuis from Los Angeles interrupts Jack. Called Goddess, she is the personification of everyone who has tried and failed to make it in Hollywood.

Goddess and her sister genuis, Angel (the personification of the seedy underbelly of LA with a veneer of innocence), are up to something. Jack wants to know what but his curiosity gets him and Stewart in trouble. With the help of a couple ghosts (Doc Holliday and John Henry of steel driving fame), some “media ghosts” (They never come out and say it but I think the media ghosts were the two guys from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and John Steed and Emma Peel from the Avengers) and a vampire named Tribute (also referred to as King and connected with LA and Vegas. Take a wild guess…Yes, you’re correct), Jack has to figure out what they’re up to and stop it.

Now the ideas behind this story were interesting. The genius loci, Prometheans, media ghosts, all pretty cool stuff. The writing itself could use some work. I’ve seen the technique of doing each chapter from a different character’s point of view (All of the Cal Leandros novels for instance) but this one was confusing because several of the main characters in the book didn’t have names. They were called the American, the Russian, the Widow, the Englishman and the Assassin. And there might have even been two Englishmen being referred to. It all got very confusing at times.

So if the writing got polished a little more and the novels continue with these characters, it could be pretty darn awesome. As it is, I just finished the book because I’d started it. I wasn’t really all that interested in the ending because I figured it pretty quickly. That’s not a knock to the writer. I just tend to figure out these things quickly. It took me less than half the movie to figure out that Bruce Willis was a ghost in The Sixth Sense (spoilers? Really, if you haven’t heard about that “twist” ending by now, it’s not my fault). Good ideas, like the fact that the main characters are a gay couple, love the media ghosts but overall…nothing to write home about and I’m glad I got it for all of three bucks (yay Kindle!). Rating: C-/C. Could be your cup of tea but it wasn’t really mine.

Jane Yellowrock: Dark Heir

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Courtesy of goodreads.comOnce more, I’m going to have to put a SPOILERS warning on this. Since this book is the latest in the Jane Yellowrock series, it hasn’t been out too long.

Okay, so this is take two. I wrote out this whole thing and…it didn’t publish. *sigh* So, Dark Heir is Faith Hunter’s latest Jane Yellowrock novel. We come into it with Jane and her partner, Eli and Alex Younger, prepping the New Orleans vamps for their upcoming (though when exactly is unknown) meeting with an entourage from the Europeans Mithrans (yeah, I don’t really like that term for vampires. Why gussy it up?). They’re doing pretty well, things are relaxed, which is naturally when things go to shit.

New Orlean Master of the City, Leo Pellisier, is keeping a secret in the basement. One that’s a bit of an open secret among the vamps and the reason the Europeans are sending an entourage. Chained in one of his sub basements (clearly enchanted to keep out water since New Orleans is below the water table) is the original vamp. The son of Judas Iscariot (not the first time I’ve seen this sort of theme but not quite used enough to be trope-y either), Joses Bar-Judas is the progenitor and therefore the strongest with the strongest blood.

Leo keeps him chained and starved in the basement to feed off from. Joses is clearly gone round the twist at some point as evidenced by his killing of fifty-two people upon escaping his confinement (with help from some conspirators against Leo). He only fed on a few of them, the rest of them he just killed for the fun of it.

Jane (temporarily) resigns her commission as Leo’s enforcer to take a contract from the city and the state to hunt down Joses and bring back his heart. The trouble is, he’s not only the world’s strongest vamp (and getting stronger the more he consumes blood), he’s a vampire witch. Jane calls on some locals for help and gets a surprise visit from her best friend Molly Trueblood (I think…Maybe it’s Everhart? Can’t remember and too lazy to open the book up again right now), a witch from the Tennessee area.

Since this book is relatively new, I won’t do a play-by-play. Suffice it to say, there’s thrills and chills (I just had to. It was right there), chases and near misses. The thing I really like is that even though Jane is in a somewhat steady relationship with honorio George (better known as Bruiser), Faith Hunter hasn’t turned her into a damsel in distress. So many writers start out with strong female characters who “don’t need no man” but eventually get with a man and all of a sudden, they can’t do anything without said man. If they’re hurt, they need the man to care for them and get pissed if he doesn’t. If they were a no sex until marriage type, they’re suddenly porn worthy in how much sex they’re having (I’m looking at you Anita Blake).

Jane has been and looks like she always will be (knock on wood), a kick ass woman. She saves herself, even when it looks like she’s about six inches from death. And then she ends up saving the city/state/world.  Awe. Some. So do yourself a favor and pick up these books. You don’t have to read the other books in order to get this one, but it certainly helps. Rating: A.