TL;DR – A pair of young mechanics are kidnapped by pirates. Adventure follows.
Ragdoll Rating: Exceptional
Recommended For: Fans of comics, especially girls ’cause it has 2 awesome female leads!
About the Book…
Rox and Zam live and work, tinkering around in a space junkyard. One fateful day, a real pretty ship comes asking for repairs, but is turned away. The girls offer their services, but find themselves quickly kidnapped by the most feared space pirate of them all.
What follows is a brilliant tale of underdogs fighting the system.
What I thought…
Let’s just go through a quick checklist of things I already loved about this book, long before I finished it:
2 female leads, one of which is fat (and a lizard), both genius mechanics who are totally brave and crazy and totally awesome
Space pirates
A ship shaped like a skull and crossbones
Brilliant, cute artwork
I’m not gonna lie, it would be very hard for someone to put those things in a book and have me hate it – but I don’t just throw that ‘Exceptional’ rating around for just anything.
This book is funny, it’s got plenty of action and it’s totally ridiculous. The main characters, Rox and Zam, are totally awesome female leads. Cool and fun, super smart and totally adorable – and they make excellent pirates! I love the addition of the baby Zolorians (lil’ baby lizard mechanics) – they are so cute and silly. I love them partly because they are about as far away from ‘serious’ as you can get. They are vaguely telepathic, have an affinity for mechanics and eat power cells, and they wind up playing a pivotal role in the story despite being babies. It’s just hilarious and I love it.
Final Thoughts…
If you like space silliness, then you HAVE to read this book, then come back here and tell me all about it. Definitely getting a physical copy of this ASAP.
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
TL;DR – A story of good and evil with a freak-show background.
Ragdoll Rating: 4/5 Buttons
Recommended For: Folks who like mysteries and mythology
About the Book…
Ruby is a freak – literally. She works as snake charmer as part of a circus sideshow. Life is normal, or as normal as circus life gets, until the day a performer commits suicide. The geeks replacement, Daniel, is an unusual man who doesn’t seem to belong. But he also harbors a deadly secret that turns Ruby’s life inside out.
What I thought…
I was really enjoying this book, right up until the end. I must say, before I go on, that the reason for this is that what I wanted to happen, didn’t happen, the ending was perfectly fine otherwise.
Miraculum starts off as a bizarre mystery over the backdrop of a travelling circus, and morphs into a wild and creepy occult battle of good versus evil. The book goes pretty deep into a sort of voodoo / occult area, which I struggled with a bit as I understood almost none of the words being thrown around.
The whole book is entertaining, and also pretty tragic in places. I love the main character, Ruby – and the way she interacts with a world she has no place in. It’s pretty upsetting to read about the treatment of the freaks, although the book doesn’t dwell on that too heavily.
Final Thoughts…
It’s a fun book and definitely worth a read if you like fantastical stuff in a historical setting.
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
TL;DR – Bite sized chunks of wisdom, spiritual insights and self-help guidance from the punk perspective.
Ragdoll Rating: 4/5 Buttons
Recommended For: People with a more sceptical view of spirituality, who want to dip their toes in the water
About the Book…
I Wanna Be Well is sort of spiritual smorgasbord, in a good way. Drawing from a range of sources from Buddhism, yoga, the 12-Step program and others, Miguel Chen provides insights and advice, backed up by years of experience practicing what he preaches.
Each chapter takes up a specific issue, for example, breathing, compassion, forgiveness, and explains the concepts with reference to various spiritual traditions and Miguel’s own life story. Each chapter ends with a different practice for you to try, drawn from a number of sources.
What I thought…
I almost gave up on this book quite early on, because if I’m being completely honest, I was thrown by the authors use of swearing. I’m not opposed to swearing, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t swear myself, but for some reason it felt abrasive, and it made me uncomfortable. Having completed the book, I would reassess that position, and suggest that in reality it is just the way the author talks, and this book is written in an informal style to help better engage people who might find all this ‘spiritual talk’ dry and hard to follow if it was written in the style I am accustomed to. I’m still not sure I like it, but I do at least understand it.
The content of the book is actually pretty good. Miguel uses examples from his own life to explain various concepts in a simple and informal way, and offers regular reminders that none of the stuff in the book needs to be thought of as inherently religious or spiritual, it’s just useful things to help calm your mind and help you live your best life.
At the end of each chapter, there is a practice to do, broken down into simple steps and with a tl;dr after each if you just want an overview. I actually really liked this, as it tied everything together nicely. I imagine if you picked this book up and read a chapter a day, or every other day, by the time you finished you would have a really good set of tools to help you cope with life. There are also step by step pictorial instructions for the various sets of yoga practices the book contains, which I thought was another useful touch.
Final Thoughts…
I’m glad I finished this book. The writing style caught me off-guard, and kept me that way, but the practices and explanations contained in this book made that small discomfort worth enduring. Actually, thinking about it, I could have probably done with this book as a teen.
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
TW: This book contains descriptions of self harm and sexual assault.
“As if waking up in an unfamiliar world isn’t enough of a surprise, Ember gains a new title to her name. Savior.” (Goodreads).
Long ago, the world was fractured. Split into three parts across magical lines. And only Ember has the power to piece reality back together again. But to do so, Ember and her friends must steal an powerful artefact from the castle of the evil Crescent Prince.
Evenfall is chock-full of magic and adventure and has the potential to be a really fun series.
What I thought…
Here is a brief list of words I never want to hear again: Argent, Obsidian, Sapphire, Utterly. I’m starting with this because it annoyed me so much. There are a handful of descriptive words that are massively overused in this book and it just irked me something fierce. Now moving away from petty gripes…
The basic premise of Evanfall is actually something I really enjoyed. A world split along magical lines, each inhabited by a population with it’s own unique form of magic. A saviour that has to stitch the world back together or all hell’s going to break lose. Very much my cup of tea. Pure magical fantasy. The execution, however, left a little to be desired.
Actually, that’s not quite fair. There wasn’t a great deal wrong with the execution, it was just too fast! I really struggled to keep track of what was going on, even from one page to the next at times. The basics of the story I could follow, but the specifics I struggled with. It felt like it needed to be longer, just to slow the pace a little. I just found it too intense, and I hadn’t recovered from the last big thing before the next big thing kicked off.
I also felt confused, really quickly. Ember appears in a new world. Not a strange world, a world she literally had no idea even existed until right that second. She immediately meets someone who in no-time-at-all she is best friends with. A little later she encounters the Crescent Prince, the villain of the piece. Keeping in mind she has never heard of him before and only knows anything about him because of minuscule amount her new friend has told her. So obviously, she immediately fears him for no apparent reason. Then even later, she falls head-over-heels in love with him after being kidnapped by him, and completely changes her mind about the man she has been told is a bloodthirsty tyrant after a brief conversation about how much the rest of the world sucks.
Don’t get me wrong, if your negative opinions are based on basically nothing, then I absolutely see why you would change your mind almost immediately when confronted with new information, it just feels a little weird.
Final Thoughts…
Evenfall was an enjoyable, if intensely annoying, read. I’m not sure I’d read it again, but I would definitely read the next book in the series, so take from that what you will.
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
Recommended For: Crime fans, Victorian history fans.
About the Book…
A body is discovered in the coal cellar of a boarding house, and the lives of the Bastendorff family are thrust into the national press to be critiqued, analysed and slandered. Who was the mysterious corpse, what had happened to her, and who hid her body in the cellar?
What I thought…
I think this is probably the first ‘True Crime’ book I’ve ever read, and I’m not gonna lie, it took some serious work to get into it. Presumably if you’re big in to True Crime you are used to the line between fact and fiction being trod, the narrative reading like it came from a really good documentary. But I’m not, and it took some adjustment. Having said that, once I switched my internal voice to that of Tony Robinson (of Time Team and Blackadder fame) I found this book to be both enjoyable, and easy to read.
The book provides you with the facts of the case, alongside a smattering of Victorian history, which actually proved to be almost as interesting as the plot itself, but then I’m a bit of a history geek so…
The big problem I had with this book was the ending. There’s no spoilers here, it’s an unsolved case so there is nothing to ruin. Since the case is unsolved, the last part of the book is dedicated to what the investigating officer might have thought, if he even thought about it at all. It’s pure fantasy. I have nothing against pure fantasy, but I do have a problem with the only scenarios explored where ones where mentally ill characters committed a gruesome murder. It doesn’t sit right with me that out of the million and one ways the murder could have been carried out, only these two were selected for examination. In great detail I might add. It really spoiled the book for me if I’m honest.
Final Thoughts…
It took work to get into it, and I hated the ending, but I still think it’s worth a read.
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
Tardy Bells is the tragic story of a teenage nerd who wants to be a witch. Clarissa Lawrence is a geek. She loves Star Trek and Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings, and she loves magic. But her wish for magic turns sour when, after an incident at the Oregon Country Fair, where Clarissa’s sister becomes convinced she will be murdered by Clarissa before her 18th birthday.
What follows is a tale of magical discovery and teenage romance.
What I thought…
I really enjoyed this book, it was another one of those can’t-put-it-down reads where, had I not had other things to do, I would have read it all in one sitting. I hate how much I relate to Clarissa, the 14 year old girl inside me was crying out the whole way through screaming “Oh my god YEEEEESS!” She is a nerdy little girl who doesn’t fit in, struggles at school and has a group of weird friends. She is a total underdog and you can’t not root for her. Her sister is the preppy, beautiful popular cheerleader. Clarissa’s life reads like a story book, which for a character so heavily influenced by fiction seems highly appropriate.
It is established that Clarissa is geeky by namedropping all the various geeky things she enjoys, from Star Wars to My Little Pony. I understand why it was done, it was just super irritating.
Also, I hate Clarissa’s mother. I personally feel that the events of this story, much like the events in Disney’s Frozen, could have been easily avoided if the child’s parents weren’t total morons. Clarissa’s mother goes out of her way to make Clarissa think magic doesn’t exist, allegedly for her own protection. To whit, she has drugged her daughter since birth, and after an argument, literally burned every magic related item Clarissa owned, which was about 90% of her stuff. When Clarissa’s sister gets abducted at the Country Fair and comes home raving about how Clarissa is going to murder her, instead of sending the sister to a psychiatrist or something, the whole thing seems to be put on Clarissa. Her mum hates Derrick because she senses magic in him, and worries Clarissa’s magic will surface by association. Now to her mums credit, that is exactly what happened, but realistically if she had done the sensible thing and talked to her daughter about the situation like a normal person, the terrible things that happen throughout the book might have been avoided. Infuriating, but good reading.
The story is paced well and reads nicely. The writing style is informal, I suppose very much in the way you would expect a well-read 14 year old to recount things. It makes for very easy reading. I love Clarissa and Derick as characters, I see so much of myself in both of them, which was really nice. I just want them to be happy! I’m so pathetic!
Final Thoughts…
This really is a book for the outcast weirdos out there. This book is a fun little read, that I couldn’t put down. It’s a little weirdly written at times, and the constant name dropping bugged me, but I’m glad I read it and will definitely be reading the rest of the series (I have the next 2 downloaded already!)
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
Recommended For: Fans of classic fiction novels, action adventure and dinosaurs.
About the Book…
The island of Acheron is an incredible place. A land where all manner of prehistoric creatures live in conjunction with ‘ape men’ and humanity. Acheron is a hugely popular tourist destination, made all the more popular by the absence of prohibition. Drinkers, gamblers, cutthroats and gangsters mix with hunters, holiday makers and the wealthy elite all across this impossible island.
Sir Edwin Crowe (son of the island’s discoverer) is a dinosaur guide and gentleman adventurer. But when a sinister corporation tries to take control of his island home, Crowe and his rag-tag band of associates find themselves in the middle of a war.
This book runs strongly in the vein of classic pulp adventure novels.
What I thought…
I have some very conflicting thoughts about this book. It has me in two (or more) minds, and it was very hard to rate.
On it’s surface, I love it. I love the concept – think Jurassic Park in the 30’s with a big dollop of Indiana Jones thrown in and you’re not far off. The story is exciting – it’s definitely a page turner. Conceptually it’s right off my Christmas list. Which leads me to my other thoughts.
First off, let’s talk about racism. I get that it’s set in the 30’s (or 20’s, or whenever prohibition was), but when you’re telling a story about a time-travelling island full of dinosaurs and crazy warlords, I think you’ve already thrown out enough ‘realism’ to avoid referring throwing in negro or oriental, or repeatedly calling one character the Jew lawyer. Call me ‘snowflake’ all you want, scream ‘historical accuracy’ until you’re blue in the face, but when you’ve got dinosaurs and time travelling magic ruins and a white dude who thinks he’s Genghis Khan reincarnate, you can afford a bit of racial sensitivity. Actually while I’m on the subject of race stuff, I may as well throw in that every single non-white or non-British/American is a criminal or a gangster or a smuggler. Every. Single. One. Plus the ‘Ape Men’ are treated as savages and servants etc. Don’t get me wrong, Panush was aiming for a certain literary style, and he absolutely nailed it, I just personally felt it was unnecessary.
That said the writing was, if a little weird at times, pretty solid and very enjoyable. The main character was actually kind of annoying, but that was more to do with my own personal taste than the writing. My favourite characters were, as far as I’m concerned, CRIMINALLY underutilised, but I’m hoping I might learn some more about them in the next book.
Final Thoughts…
Panush has absolutely nailed the feel of the genre, and written a really entertaining story to boot. It’s just a shame about the time period.
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
Life sucks for Hayden Cross. His wife is dead, he’s just been fired and now someone is trying to kill him! But Cross soon comes across evidence that his wife faked her own death – solving this mystery will take Cross and his associates into the middle of a war, filled with terrorists, political machinations, espionage and betrayal!
What I thought…
I think probably the best thing I can say about this book is that it is fun. It goes to some serious places, but it doesn’t take itself to seriously, and that’s exactly what I was hoping for.
The plot is a bit complicated in places, the writing style is a little strange at times and some of the names are a bit cheesy (The Terrorist leader is called Xealot, and the biologically advanced ruling class is called ‘The Supremacy’) but that’s about as far as my criticism is gonna go. More importantly the book is action-packed, with likable (and not-so-likable) characters, and a whole load of violent explosive nonsense going on.
The book starts with a terrorist being crushed to death as a car runs through the wall of Hayden’s home, and ends with a full-scale assault on a top-secret military base, it’s that kind of story.
Final Thoughts…
If you like a good space-warfare action read, then this is definitely the book for you. Bring on book 2.
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
The Gambler’s Den has been reduced to a pile of smoking wreckage, the (now homeless) showgirls have taken to running their own restaurant, and the alleged deaths of Franco and Misu are mourned far and wide. But Franco won’t stay in hiding for ever – instead he has commissioned a new train, the Morning Star to carry on the show!
Wilheim Fort, the crime lord, has escaped from Jail and kidnaps Franco, and blackmails Misu – If she uses the Morning Star to deliver shipments of Red Root, he will return Franco in one piece. Misu does everything she can to get Franco back with unexpected results.
WARNING. Under absolutely nocircumstances should you read this book if you find descriptions or situations of psychological or physical abuse to be detrimental to your health. The descriptions are not overly explicit, but they do lead to a mental atmosphere that could be potentially upsetting and triggering.
What I thought
The first thing you should know about this book is that the exciting climax rescue is really enjoyable, exciting and great reading. There’s heroism, daring raids on a crime lords stronghold and a whole host of kick-ass female characters. I really like that part of the book. The reason I’m starting by telling you about the ending is because the rest of what I have to say isn’t that favourable, and I don’t want you to get the impression that I didn’t like this book at all or that it isn’t worth reading. It almost certainly IS worth reading, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Now I’ll explain why.
There is a special place in hell for Franco de Monaire, I hope he finds it.
Franco was a jerk. Or at least, I thought he was. He gave Misu all kinds of grief for making a bad choice, a choice she was compelled to make by someone who had spent literally years abusing her and a host of other women. I make no bones about it, I can’t stand Franco.
I could probably adapt that tagline for use in this review, if I changed the words Franco de Monaire to basically every character. Especially Misu. I have to believe this wasn’t done on purpose – I don’t know why an author would want you to hate all of their characters intentionally. I’m not going to go through why I dislike basically all the characters (apart from Wyld), so I’m just going to complain about Franco and Misu for a while.
Misu – for reasons I cannot begin to imagine – finds herself under the thumb of Wilheim, her long time abuser. Franco has been kidnapped and in order to have him returned safely, Misu agrees to haul Red Root (or ‘super heroin’) all over the place. She does this without telling any of the other people on board, which, as one of the showgirls is quick to point out, turns every single last one of them into accomplices to the crime, because who is going to believe that nobody on board knew that they were transporting AN ENTIRE TRAIN CAR FULL OF DRUGS!? What’s more is we get a sort of explanation in the form of back story, where we learn that in order to survive under Wilheim in the first place, Misu ingratiated herself to the crime boss and was put in charge of a great deal of abuse and slavery of ‘weaker’ girls. I have such mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I absolutely understand the need to survive any way you can in that sort of situation, which is why I was still on Misu’s side during this back story, despite what seemed like a deliberate attempt to make me hate her guts. I get that it’s hard to trust people after that sort of thing too, but given that one of the main points of the previous book was the Misu did something terrible because of her past abuse, and didn’t bother to actually tell anyone – an act which causes the den to be blown up, the girls to go on the run, Franco and Misu to be considered legally dead and any number of other problems, I just cannot understand why she wouldn’t have mentioned it, or why she would go out of her way to cover the whole thing up. This serious character flaw is bought up constantly, with basically everyone hating Misu, and eventually you have little choice but to agree.
Also, Misu and Franco let the entire crew of the Gambler’s Den believe they were dead for two years – which is bad enough – but then instead of breaking the news gently, they rolled into the girls new place of business and just went Guess whose not dead! The crew are understandably livid. Jaqcues has become an alcoholic, drug addled vagrant – his life has been completely and utterly OBLITERATED trying to keep the promise he made to France, that he would keep the girls safe. They just appear out of the blue and their excuse was a vague notion of ‘safety’ as if Wilheim wasn’t the sort of person to punish associates of his enemies, regardless of whether that enemy was alive or dead.
Misu treats everybody like absolute scum the whole time. Before they discover the drug dealing, she is rude to them – she takes everything out on the new driver, who is basically a saint for taking it without some sort of outburst. But the worst of it is the attitude she – and Franco – have created on the trains. Somewhere in the middle of this book, a new character, Elizabeth, is having real trouble dealing with the fact that the defending the train can, and does, mean killing people. This wasn’t what she signed up for. Then another character starts talking about the expectations of the employees on the train. She shows Elizabeth a bullet wound received in the previous book (I think). She tells Elizabeth how fortunate she was to be on board the train, how Franco and Misu had bestowed some sort of great kindness on her and that people on the train has to ‘pay their way’ or ‘earn their place’ or some other similar expression. Pay it with blood. Now, Elizabeth and all the other girls are employed to work on this train. They all have talents that make them a valuable part of the staff. Elizabeth is a beautiful singer and they use her talents in the show, a show that earns Franco his money. She owes Franco nothing. She is paid to be there because of her skill set. Without people like her, the show stops and Franco and Misu would find themselves penniless and alone. But apparently this attitude that the girls on the train are so fortunate to be their – because what else would they do – is an attitude actively fostered on the train and re-enforced by the management. What make it worse is that this kind of rhetoric, that these girls don’t know how lucky they are to be taken from hardship and put to good use, is EXACTLY THE SAME as the rhetoric used by Wilheim to justify his slavery ring. Plus, Elizabeth notices that something is wrong, that it’s all secretive her concerns are dismissed and she is ostracised for daring to question authority – it is seen as a behaviour to be stamped out.
Finally (and I promise I will move on from this as soon as this paragraph is over), while planning the rescue of Franco, Misu is negotiating a deal with a mid-level member of Wilheim’s criminal enterprise. Seeing he has the upper hand, this criminal, Jackdaw, declares that he will only help if Misu agrees that at ANY POINT IN THE FUTURE he can call on Misu (and the rest of the staff) to do him a favour. Anything at all in the entire world, they HAVE TO DO and they cannot under any circumstances refuse. Misu, still recovering from a literal mutiny due to the fact that she made MASSIVE, LIFE-ALTERING, DANGEROUS decisions for the entire staff of the Morning Star, not to mention the aftermath of the previous book which was also made worse by her making bad decisions and not telling anybody, instantly agrees to this complete insane request, without speaking to any of the crew and asking what they think. It is even attempted to be justified as a reasonable action. As a narrative device, I can see understand what the idea behind this move was, it set up the sequel, but in terms of the characters? Misu will be insanely lucky if the crew doesn’t utterly destroy her in the most horrific fashion imaginable.
Final Thoughts
This book feels more ‘adult’ than the previous ones. It’s more sexual, the bad language is not excessively used but from what I remember there is more and worse language used than in the previous installment, and the whole book is based around drug dealing, one of the characters actually being a drug addict. This was not a welcome change for me – I liked the tone of the last book, which felt more like a classic adventure with some grit thrown in at strategic times, where as this book just felt gritty. I’m not so big on grit.
Also, this book just made me feel uncomfortable nearly the whole way through. I don’t understand the characters motivations, they all seem to hate each other and the author seems to want me to hate them! I couldn’t follow why people were acting how they were – their responses to things didn’t make sense to me at all. Maybe it’s because I’m autistic, I’m not great with that sort of thing, and the emotions involved were definitely complex, so maybe I just missed something other people would find obvious, but whatever the reason it just didn’t sit right.
Finally, the whole parallel ‘saviour’ narrative between Franco, Misu (the heroes) and Wilheim (the abusive, slave trading, drug dealing crime boss) just made me feel ill. The girls on that train were brought in to put on a show and from my perspective, abused. The basic story might have been really good but I couldn’t get past the elements of this book that I have mentioned. To be honest, it made me feel ill.
Just to end this review on a more positive note, because so far it’s been incredibly negative.
I really struggled to rate this book, and I’m still not convinced I’ve got it right. The parts I hated made me want to commit this book to the ‘do not read’ section and be done with it – but that seemed unfair. I finished the book in a few days, and the parts I liked, I really enjoyed, these are not the hallmarks of a really bad book. So I have given it 2 buttons in recognition of that parts I did like.
In addition, I have the next book on my kindle and I will be starting it in about an hour and a half. So it hasn’t written off the series. I guess what I’m saying is, this book reallywasn’t for me, but it might be right up your street. So I don’t know, try it and see.
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
Recommended For: Fans of fantasy and adventure. Also anybody else at all.
About the Book
Sancia Grado is a thief. A good thief. But she is also different. Tevanne is a strange land, that runs on a form of magic known as scriving. If you know the write sigils, you can alter objects and change their behaviour – legend has it that an ancient group called the hierophants could use scriving to bend reality to their will!
Sancia is a scrived human. The only scrived human. She started her life as a slave and she was experimented on – but the scrived plate in her head gives her some special abilities which make her an excellent sneak thief.
Sancia is offered the job of a lifetime – steal one item for more money than she could ever hope to see in her lifetime. She takes the chance, and then her world falls apart.
What I thought
I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed this book. I mean I really, REALLY loved it. It’s 512 pages long, and I must have read 350+ of them in one sitting – I would have read three quarters of the book in one day if I’d had the energy to keep reading. It was that kind of book.
First of all, we’ve got to talk about scriving. At first this seems like your pretty average magic stuff. Say the right words and it does what you say kind of thing. But it isn’t. It goes WAY deeper than that. Bennett goes into considerable detail over the course of the book about the mechanics of scriving, the theory, the practical uses and the history. It’s rare to find a magical mechanic in a story that has been this clearly thought out, which would be worth big points in my book on its own, but it was the way this information is relayed to the reader that really made this book stand out. We never get too much information in one go – it doesn’t feel like you’re reading fictional non-fiction – you get just enough information to understand without breaking the flow of things…and it’s just really cool.
I’m not sure if the following paragraph counts as spoilers, but I’m gonna talk a bit about why scriving is awesome:
Scrived objects are logical and stupid – you can only change them in ways that make sense. For example, you can make wood stronger, by scriving it to act like stone, but you can’t make it melt by telling it that it’s ice, because that’s too different.
BUT you can do cool things with it if you are clever. For example, you can make a cart propel itself by telling the wheels they are rolling down a hill and telling them how steep the hill is. This leads to some wild things later on.
It’s hard work. You’ve read got to know what you are doing to make it work, and experimentation can be really dangerous because its so easy to get things wrong – because of this, it’s a rich mans game, which has led to a really horrible unequal society.
It controls (almost) everything in Tevanne. It’s so understandable. Sometimes you read about something amazing in a story and wonder why it’s under utilised, like the Force in Star Wars. If I had the force I would never stop using it, all the time for EVERYTHING. But they never do. But in Foundryside, those who can afford scriving, use it for everything they possibly can. It supports buildings, changes weapons, powers foundries, it is everywhere, and that can lead to big problems.
I’m sure there is more I could say about why I like this element, but I don’t want to go on and on. Trust me though, it’s really cool and it stays cool all the way through.
Secondly, two words. Unexpected Queers. I’m not the only queer person who, unless explicitly told otherwise (and often even then), assumes every character in everything is 400% queer. Then I find out it’s not the case. Well guess what – there’s at least 3 actual, factual queers in this book (by my count). Which is GREAT. Not just because they are queer – but because it’s written completely naturally. Nobody bats an eye. In Tevanne, it’s perfectly, completely and utterly normal to be queer. And that is so refreshing. It’s so nice to read a book that – to the best of my knowledge – isn’t presented as queer-lit where a characters queerness is just another part of their character. It was also really nice to be right for a change, after deciding a character was queer.
Thirdly, the plot. I am a big fan of the idea that if it’s gonna go wrong, it may as well go catastrophically wrong. I like it when things go to hell, real fast. It’s fun and I like seeing how it can get worse as much as I enjoy seeing how that characters fix the problems – and this book did not disappoint on that front. I found every page more exciting than the last (especially the pages involved in the previous paragraph 😀 ). Everything went from bad to worse, and was written really well so you actually care about it.
Finally, the mystery element. This book has a lot of folklore in it – tales of the Makers or Hierophants or Ancient Ones – a race of giants who could bend reality to their whim with scriving. It also includes a talking key and a bunch of weird artefacts which are all surrounded in mystery. You find yourself constantly guessing how the ancient mysteries actually work, and how to solves the puzzles the characters are trying to solve – and I was right about 50-70% of the time. Actually if I’m honest this was probably the only element (besides some peculiar phrasing at times) that I didn’t like as much – mainly because for some things (for example, how the ritual works), I knew how it worked so long before the characters I wanted to yell at them for being so dense! But I suppose that’s the advantage readers have over characters – we get the extra context.
Final Thoughts
I loved it and I think anyone with even a vague interest in the fantasy / adventure genre should read it immediately. Also, I cannot wait for part 2 in the series!
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Please Note: I received a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions contained within are my own and have not been influenced by any external entity!
Ragdoll Reads 
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