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A compelling sequel to Kaelen's fantastic The Blighted City!

The Nameless and the Fallen is a great sword and sorcery adventure, with a few scifi tweaks. There's a strong Robert Howard vibe to the book, although I've had a hard time trying to articulate exactly how they feel similar. There's a classical machismo to it; not in any toxic way that I noticed, but something more in the swagger of the heroes and the bluntness of the villains. The bad guys aren't given platform to explain themselves, but it also doesn't feel like anything is lost from their absence of articulation -- the most important part of an adventure story is heroism in the face of struggle, and Kaelan's characters demonstrate that in spades. It also has a sort of alternately bold then shy dance around the sexual and romantic themes that feels comfortingly old fashioned.

I don't think reading the earlier book is totally necessary to understanding this one, but unfortunately this ends with a lot more unfinished threads to tie into the third. The action resolves on a satisfying finale, but a lot of questions remain -- I feel like it could have used a little more falling action, but feel a little silly saying so, since my only criticism of Blighted City is that it had too much of that!

Bold heroes, a dungeon crawl, ancient magics, ancient science, exciting action and an epic battle! This book has it all.

Powerful, character-driven, and dark.
Throughout the book, there's a powerful sense of impending tragedy, which is a neat trick in a volume that opens with a dead, mutilated child, but the characters and sharp prose kept me edging back to read just a little bit more. Matar has crafted a compelling fantasy world that is believably dark: many of the terrible things may be rooted in the fantasy setting, but what makes them truly terrible is how believably human the worst parts of it are. Amid that, she has drawn compelling romance, class struggles, haunted pasts, police drama, political intrigue and more.

This book is a character-driven novel, rather than plot-driven. There are twists and turns of external struggle, and those are cleverly realized, but the central arc of the novel is not those external events, but rather the personal evolution of the primary protagonist. That's an important point to understand, I think, because the novel is framed around that character's personal progression, rather than his external struggles. The external plot essentially ends on a cliffhanger, which is a little jarring if you approach the story as a sequence of worldly happenings. I would have preferred the external story to have included a little bit more of a denouement, but it's hard to fault the first book in a series for leaving me wanting more.

The character work here is truly exceptional. Any of the central cast, and quite a few of the passersby, seem like they could easily step into the role of protagonist, but their time on stage is carefully managed so that none ever quite outshine the lead.

Incredibly addictive.
I generally don't like first person narratives, but this memoir of a prison escape in a fantasy world had deep hooks that kept pulling me back in. The characterization of the narrator was very compelling. The characterization of everyone else is hard to gauge because, as a memoir, they really only exist within the narrator's re-telling -- one of the strongest points of the novel was watching the characters transform after key events caused the narrator to reconsider her assessment of them. Friends become enemies, enemies friends, inconsequential characters suddenly gain more distinctiveness as they draw into focus. It was a very interesting narrative technique and it kept pulling me back to see how things would resolve.

There were only two downsides to this one for me. The first, of course, is that it was a first person narrative, which I generally don't like... I think this story uses the technique very well, but it's not my favorite technique. The second, however, is that there were numerous minor copy-edit problems -- misplaced commas, homonym confusion, that sort of thing -- not a huge detraction, but noticeable. If neither of those issues is likely to bother you, then this is definitely a five-star story, and I highly recommend the read either way. I'm generally terrible about starting epics and never finishing them, but I have a feeling this one may draw me back.

It's easy to see how this fantasy epic earned its finalist spot in SPFBO 2017. Skillful world-building, and an intricate plot make the Crimson Queen an enthralling read.

I'll admit that early on I began to worry I was in for just a world-building info dump that would never reach the resolution -- it kept adding more and more detail, easy enough to follow, but it was hard to see how the elements of setting were more than just set dressing. At it proceeded, however, more and more of it wove together until assembling neatly at the climax, with only a few stray threads left to lead onward into the rest of the series.

The Crimson Queen is a classic fantasy adventure. A young boy has an inborn magical talent, various governments and magical orders get involved, they travel through ruins and are confronted by ancient secrets. In silhouette, it seems somewhat generic, and I'll admit I've lowered my score on past reads for hewing too closely to well-trodden paths, but The Crimson Queen managed to keep me hooked throughout, with compelling twists and elaborations that made it a real page-turner.

A comforting read about an unexpected heir ascending to the throne and being a good person.
I saw someone compare this read to a warm blanket, and I think that is as accurate a summation as I could manage. It is a tale of nobles in a fantasy world... but it has more in common with The Crown than Game of Thrones.

The book is a confusing jumble of names and names for things, but that feels appropriate given its context. While I might be unsure whether Drakkar Noir of the Bordelaise family was mentioned before, the main character is new to the whole Bernaise Court or... whatever, so he usually didn't know either. I couldn't even begin to guess at how the names were meant to be pronounced or reproduce any of them on command, but I'm really bad with names and they were all meant to be a confusing whirl anyway.

And despite that, the book was still comfortable. A good person was placed in charge of a messy situation, he rises to the occasion, faces adversities and overcomes them. It didn't feel rushed, or stressful, the action was never urgent, yet it had a hypnotic pull that kept me up late reading and left me feeling good afterward. There should be more books like this. There probably are, but I have no idea how they'd be marketed in a genre that typically only extols earth-shattering consequence and heart-rending drama.

An engaging novella exploring a fascinating sci-fi setting. Seeing praise for this online, I was really drawn in by the 'tea' part (I love tea), and did no further research: I didn't know it was part of a Nebula Award winning setting, and a piece of a very, very full pre-existing setup. If I'm being honest had I read about the setting on the author's web page first, I might have been scared off -- it starts with alternate history in the 15th century and continues forward. Present day life on Earth is radically different, with all sorts of cultural and historical surplusage... all of which is utterly irrelevant to this particular story! It's a compelling stand-alone tale, and you don't need any of that background to follow the action.

This story is a mystery, with a mysterious Sherlock Holmes figure who meets her Watson, a starship that has given up space travel and works as a tea-master, making the special blends of tea needed for people to endure the harsh unreality required for faster-than-light travel. Whether it's the author's usual style, or a benefit of all the other stories I missed, the setting's incredible tapestry is given almost no exposition whatsoever. In many ways, it was reminiscent of Frank Herbert's Dune, where the setting's rich character must be absorbed via immersion, making it feel at once both alien and incredibly real. de Bodard's concept of "deep spaces", for example, where time and reality slow and stretch, is never bluntly explained, despite being central to the plot... and yet it is utterly understandable throughout, making as much sense as it needs to, every step of the way.

It is a masterful construction of information-drip that keeps the focus on the compelling central characters. The mystery plot itself feels somewhat ancillary to the setting and the character studies, which would usually read as a criticism, but de Bodard does an amazing job of keeping only enough plot elements to give the story shape while paring them down to let the other story elements really shine.

If I have a criticism of this one, it's that I'd love to read more of the central pair solving mysteries in space... but de Bodard has already moved on to other facets of her universe. If I have two criticisms, it's that the tea isn't really tea, as the ship only ever discusses mixing herbs and things, so it isn't really camellia sinensis, but that probably won't bother anyone but me!

The Sword of Kaigen is a mix of brilliant feudal drama in a strange fantasy world that takes place in a very modern time period. In some ways, it reads like an amazing piece of fan-fiction for Avatar: The Last Airbender, although I worry that comparison diminishes what the author has actually accomplished here. Conversely, it leans much harder into in-world immersion than I prefer, and tinkers with language and culture in ways that feel, at times, a little awkward for a stand alone story.

It starts off by announcing what planet the story takes place on, but there is only one planet ever discussed in the book -- I later learned that The Sword of Kaigen is actually a prequel to another series that is a portal fantasy involving Earth. It may be that the various issues that, for me, pulled this down from a 5-star read, all stem from references back to adventures I've never read. As a result, in the early chapters I was unsure if this was more sci-fi or fantasy. The culture in which the story was set felt very feudal, with sharply defined class and gender roles, and Emperor worship, but there were also mentions of very modern technology (one of the main characters is installing cell towers to give the town Internet access). Those mysterious contradictions might be explained in the other books, but as a first time reader they were somewhat bewildering and made clearly picturing the setting a little more difficult.

The book is in English, mostly, but the characters would occasionally veer into a mix of mostly Japanese and fantasy words which I found off-putting. Perhaps the portal fantasy explains the spread of Earth languages, but on its surface, here it seemed like it was meant to be a fantasy language, and it was even the native tongue of the point-of-view characters, so translating random bits of that into a different language from the book's narrative felt decidedly odd. Other languages were spoken, generally shown in italicized English as characters swapped between them, so the inclusion of other Earth languages felt odd to me.

The other issue with language is that the setting was steeped in its own. Unlike Avatar, where people are just 'benders' of an element, here the various types of magic user (theonite) had their own unique names, which are frequently referenced long before the reader is given any explanation of what those names mean. My guess is that it makes sense if you've read the earlier Theonite books and already know the names, but since I read this as a stand-alone adventure, it just felt confusing. Worse, that cardinal sin of untranslated measure words was heavily indulged -- distance, even time, were referred to in their local variants, rather than in English. As a bit of linguistic flair, it's fine that some culture's second-tier measure word for time isn't the same length as our second-tier measure word for time, when that's a plot point... but it wasn't here. Unfortunately, that means that when told something is happening over a matter of 'gbaati', I can't possibly know what that means without a lot of contextual clues or referencing the glossary (which is trickier than needed on Kindle -- get on that, Amazon!).

Perhaps the different measure words, the shared real-world languages, the mix of high-technology with feudal social structures, and other aspects are important plot points in the Theonite series, but since I read this as a stand-alone, for me they were mostly detractions and distractions.

All that said, M.L. Wang's character work is nothing short of brilliant. The central themes of characters striving to fit impossible standards of perfection, of people fighting socialized constraint while failing to recognize those struggles in each other, were all incredibly compelling. In a world full of epic magic and dazzling swordplay, dangling on the brink of war, Wang makes us care far more about the impact it will have on the daily lives of her characters. The big machinations are made distant and almost unimportant in the face of more immediate family dynamics, love and loss.

Maybe the issues I had with this book are mooted by its predecessors. If that bit with the languages makes sense to you, and you already know how long a gbaati is, then I feel certain you will adore this story. If you're considering it as a stand-alone, I still say go forward with it -- even with the bits that felt awkward to me, it was totally worth it for the epic finale, and the tragedies and triumphs of the conclusion.

Jesse Teller has written a multi-layered epic fantasy world with Malazan's complexity and Westeros's grandeur.

The story follows an initially somewhat dizzying array of main characters, and much like [i]Gardens of the Moon[/i], it begins somewhat mid-action on a lot of their stories. Complex histories and relationships are unwound over the course of the tale, with major characters dying off and falling away to be replaced by others. It lends the story an immense scope, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of introducing several plot threads that never resolve. Perhaps they're elements for later volumes, or perhaps they're just there to lend a sense of weight to the deaths. Either way, the experience is sort of like catching the middle of a tumultuous history that may not have any clear cut beginning or end.

Where Teller really triumphs is in the sense of scale to the power of the gods and their faithful. Malazan, for all its good features, always fell short of that for me... the gods there were very casual, more like just slightly higher ranking dudes than true grandiose divinities. Teller's pantheon expresses true majesty, feeling both in the mortal world and impossibly distant all at once. In a world where wizards can dazzle with amazing spellcraft, the presence of the gods in the world feels far more magical than the actual magic does.

My biggest reservation on this title is the age of the characters. Many of the major characters felt about three years younger than they should have been. The child characters at the center of the action are intended to be exceptional people, and when other children wander into the story, the main cast are certainly more advanced by comparison... but at the same time, even amid demons and wizards and child gods, its still hard to envision an army following the direction of a trio of ten year olds. It was often easy to overlook. The ten-year-olds certainly don't act ten, so that fact would often slip my mind as I read, until there was some awkward reminder. All of these characters are constantly enmeshed in the setting's violence and brutal sex which, to me as a reader, was uncomfortable. The murderous moppets, the victimized young witch... I wouldn't say their stories were callously handled by the writer, but they are set in a callous world, and that juxtaposition was an unexpected unpleasantry.

That aside, I felt the parts that work all worked very well. Some of the components and world building were simply brilliant. Boxhead, the child god, was a particular favorite, and his cult's customs and magic, and the holy mission of his paladin, all felt like a bright light in an artfully horrid landscape.

A brilliant, twisty sci-fi adventure! O'Keefe's mastery of setting, character and compelling plot are dazzling.

O'Keefe does a great job of world-building as the tension ramps up throughout the first half of the book, and then when it takes off, there's a huge twist and everything turns upside down. Even her minor her characters are compelling and believable. It's reminiscent of the Expanse, complete with sci-fi, politics, espionage and survival in the hazardous depths of space. There's action, a bit of romance, and all exceedingly well-paced, building to an exciting conclusion.

Between the covers is a 5-star story... but it's slightly weighed down by extra stuff that isn't part of that 5-star story. The book has four on-going narratives, two of which tie together brilliantly. Of the other two, one is world-building that helps flesh out the stakes towards the end, but one just appears to be setup for another book. Unfortunately, at the moment there's only one book, and when that second one comes out, it's entirely possible those stray elements will converge into a brilliant expanded arc, but they don't really add anything to this book's story. That said, even the stray part is really good, and still solidly engaging, so it's a minor quibble. If it were a separate short story, I'd still recommend you read it, because it's good -- it just feels slightly weird here amid the action of this book, but that's the only reason I'd give this 4 rather than 5 stars.

I'm all in for the Protectorate #2.

Fast-paced exceptional fairy-tale fiction. I really enjoyed this one, it flew by and afterward it was tempting to push everything else aside and just read through the next four books. A marvelously fun read, reminiscent of countless things yet still enthrallingly unique. It conjures a storybook world of magic and myth that has the classic feel of a childhood story, but with added sophistication to give it more depth and maturity.

The Yarnsworld setting is fantastic and intriguing, and through it's unique twists it leaves the reader with multi-layered questions about what is real, what isn't, and what might be. It's a great stand-alone story that leaves the reader with philosophical questions rather than sequel musings, and I love that. I particularly love that the series keeps going with more stand-alone stories in the setting, and I am definitely hooked and will read the rest.

The structure was cleverly conceived, with chapters alternating between three related narratives; legends the main character knows, dreams he has about a prince, and then his own waking life. From the beginning the stories parallel each other thematically, but it's also easy to see that they interrelate, even if the 'how' is not immediately obvious. They render a setting rich with possibility and mystery.

Patrick creates a storybook feel where everything is dreamlike and familiar, but with a sort of unsettled undercurrent of more mature themes. Those themes never become overly explicit or gorey, but they are present enough to destabilize the reader, which in turn removes the solid anchor of an expectation of happy endings. That combination of a familiar feel but with off-key themes allows Patrick to recreate the sensation of a youthful reading experience of such stories even for a jaded adult audience. It is a delicate balance of just enough hints of maturity and just enough echoes of the familiar set against the strange and unique, and the author handles it masterfully well.

Do not let the imperfection in my score deter you; this was a great story and I highly recommend it. There were only two minor quibbles that make me rate this a 4, rather than a perfect 5!

First, some of the framing of the setting for this otherwise stand-alone story comes not from this book, but in a short story entitled And They Were Never Heard From Again. In combination, this is undoubtedly a 5-star story, but without that additional window of understanding, I don't think the narrative contained entirely within They Mostly Come Out at Night really captures the full depth of the setting. It is brilliant in context, but some of that context isn't there as a stand-alone. Without getting too spoilery, a lot of the deeper questions about what Artemis and the Pale Lady have done don't feel quite natural to ask without previously understanding the true nature of stories in the Forest and the first novel doesn't explain that as explicitly as the short story does. That story is free from the author's website, so for the full experience I encourage you to read it first and then read this novel.

The other minor quibble is that, given the pacing, there were some twists that I felt didn't get quite enough breathing room. Other readers may disagree with my preferences in that regard, and I certainly think that it was a choice of the author rather than any failure in his craft. It was most striking to me when a big reveal about 3/4s through gave me whiplash because the characters were given so little room to reflect upon it. If you love stories to race by moment to moment, you'll never notice it, but as I tend to fall in love with more ponderous tales, breezing by such turning-points in the narrative didn't quite meet my personal preferences.

I cannot emphasize enough how minor those quibbles are, however. Really, for anyone considering whether they want to start in on this series my advice is, "Yes, but start with the short story rather than book 1."

It's really good.

A lushly written tale of horrors in Victorian London. A perfect combination of setting and style to create a marvelous aura of suspenseful supernatural mystery.

The story is set just after London's obsession with spiritualism has begun to fade. The main character, an actual medium who had been made famous during the fad, is recuperating from both her time in the spotlight and the wear of supernatural forces. Throughout the work, Olson's story details the over-heated summer, the urban decay, and the looming shadows. From the beginning, it's clear the nerve-addled narrator can see into the beyond, but it's seldom clear how much of what she sees is fact, and how much merely fearful imagining.

The prose was the initial highlight for me. As a matter of personal taste, I tend not to enjoy first person narratives, but the period stylings here were enough to keep me going -- the long twisting sentences, dripping with detail, the elaborate descriptions sometimes providing a sort of dramatic pause to lend freight to otherwise simple exchanges of restrained dialogue. Once those drew me in, the narrative advanced to reveal intriguing clues as to the nature of The Half Killed's magical world. The narrator never really stops to explain exactly how her spiritualism works, it's not clear that she could explain, but I delight in magic systems that show just enough of their framework to hint that there are rules, while leaving the actual mechanics of their operation mysterious enough to provide a sense of wonder, and The Half Killed does exactly that.

The action has a more gradual build-up compared to some other stories I've read recently, but the story isn't overlong so that wasn't a problem. The first third gradually wound me in, lured by a morbid curiosity much akin to the fans of spiritualism who begged for the narrator's performances, but once its hook set I sped through the final chapters.

I struggle with the rating on this one, balancing it between my own eclectic preferences and recognizing the obvious skill and polish of the narrative. To give it 5 is at odds with my own usual taste in narrative style, but to give it anything less feels awkward with a masterful creation of the style it is in.

It reminds me a little of Jeanette Ng's Under the Pendulum Sun, but with Victorian spiritualism rather than Gothic fae. The setting also calls to mind Felix Gilman's The Revolutions. Fans of either of those works would probably find The Half Killed very much to their taste.