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Kel has finally achieved her lifelong dream of being a knight. But it's not turning …
Review of 'Lady Knight' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
Finishing off the Protector of the Small quartet, LADY KNIGHT is an excellent end to a good series. It's the story of Kel's first big assignment as a knight: running Haven, a refugee camp near the border with Scanra. In her Ordeal of knighthood she was given a task by the Chamber, and chafes at the feeling that running the camp is holding her back from going after the man killing children and turning them into strange metal monsters. There are new storylines related to her time running Haven, and her care of Tobe, a boy with horse magic. I don't think anything is both introduced and resolved here, since the biggest rescue relates to the task the Chamber set her in SQUIRE. Technically a great many characters' storylines are "resolved" through death, but those who are met and then later killed are nearly as many as those whose first …
Finishing off the Protector of the Small quartet, LADY KNIGHT is an excellent end to a good series. It's the story of Kel's first big assignment as a knight: running Haven, a refugee camp near the border with Scanra. In her Ordeal of knighthood she was given a task by the Chamber, and chafes at the feeling that running the camp is holding her back from going after the man killing children and turning them into strange metal monsters. There are new storylines related to her time running Haven, and her care of Tobe, a boy with horse magic. I don't think anything is both introduced and resolved here, since the biggest rescue relates to the task the Chamber set her in SQUIRE. Technically a great many characters' storylines are "resolved" through death, but those who are met and then later killed are nearly as many as those whose first mention on the page is when Kel finds their bodies.
As the final book in the quartet it leaves open the idea that Kel and her comrades will have further deeds when this is done, and it settles what she'll do after Haven. It resolves the magical threat posed by the killing machines, and gives an idea of what her friends will do next. It teases a few things that could happen later for secondary characters, but these won't necessarily show up in future Tortall stories.
Kel is still the narrator, with the exception of a brief section from someone else's perspective. She definitely sounds older than the first two books, and her characterization in LADY KNIGHT is consistent with the end of SQUIRE. Other than the fact that Kel was set a task before the book begins, this is self contained enough that it could mostly make sense if someone read it without any of the other books. It covers only a few months, rather than years, and focuses on events within a small area once it gets going. The ending will definitely be more satisfying for someone who at least read SQUIRE, but there's still a lot to love for any readers who try starting here (especially if they're familiar with Tortall as a setting from other series).
Kel has grown up a lot but is very aware of how much she still has to learn. She has a lot of strong relationships which get a chance to pay off here. She's not hanging out with people as much, since her duties and her organization of the refugees take the narrative place that training filled in the earlier books. However, Neal, Dom, and Owen have a strong presence, and I'm fairly confident that this has more of Merric than the rest of the series combined. The animals play an even bigger role this time, made possible by some help from Daine.
The worldbuilding focuses on the logistics of running Haven, as Kel begins having to to many things herself and gradually gets infrastructural support and clerks to make some aspects easier. There's some detail about the war, but as the fourth book of a quartet set in a world already filled with stories, it doesn't pause to explain quite as many things as the earlier books did. There's still enough to make the relevant things make sense, and it works overall.
The plot is the most focused of the quartet. Kel has two main things she needs to accomplish, and she works on running Haven until she gets the information she needs to act on the directions from the Chamber. I enjoyed the process of turning Haven into a defensible position filled with confident civilians who know how to defend themselves. The story conveys the shape of Kel's days without dragging, never letting go of the need to stop the source of the killing machines as soon as she can.
Keladry of Mindalen, the first girl to train as a knight since Alanna, is officially …
Review of 'Page' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
PAGE continues with Kel's second year as a page, now that her probation is over. It covers three years, concluding with public tests for pages ready to become squires. It continues Kel's resistance to Joren's bullying, bringing younger pages into her and her friends' protection as they try to stop the hazing. In addition to new and old friends among Kel's peers, she gains a maid and a dog. Lalasa has been subject to unspecified harassment and physical assault, and her uncle, Gower, hopes that being Kel's maid will offer Lalasa some protection. There's a mostly new storyline related to Kel's efforts to teach Lalasa self defense and help her have a life outside her duties. It intersects with the continued harassment of Kel and her fear of heights in a very dramatic finale which I hesitate to spoil. It doesn't really try to wrap up many plot threads, other …
PAGE continues with Kel's second year as a page, now that her probation is over. It covers three years, concluding with public tests for pages ready to become squires. It continues Kel's resistance to Joren's bullying, bringing younger pages into her and her friends' protection as they try to stop the hazing. In addition to new and old friends among Kel's peers, she gains a maid and a dog. Lalasa has been subject to unspecified harassment and physical assault, and her uncle, Gower, hopes that being Kel's maid will offer Lalasa some protection. There's a mostly new storyline related to Kel's efforts to teach Lalasa self defense and help her have a life outside her duties. It intersects with the continued harassment of Kel and her fear of heights in a very dramatic finale which I hesitate to spoil. It doesn't really try to wrap up many plot threads, other than specific incidents (which resolve soon after they begin) and the finale. It's building up to challenges she'll presumably face as a squire, meaning that most things are assumed to continue later in some form (or are so minor as to not require a resolution at this time).
Kel's voice is consistent with the first book. She sounded a bit older than ten there and now she actually is, so it's a benefit to this story even if it didn't quite fit the first one. The story could mostly make sense to someone who hasn't read FIRST TEST, since the harassment and bullying begun there continue here in a form which is easy to understand even if its origins were shown elsewhere. Happily, the friends she made before continue here as well, with the welcome addition of Owen to their group. It also focuses on Kel's perception of her training and the differences in her body as becomes a teenager. This gets the room to be a fuller story and slightly less of an anti-bullying PSA, while still having enough of that for continuity. The slight reduction there is made up for in discussions of sexual harassment and self-protection, as Kel teaches Lalasa to defend herself from unwanted advances. It's a bit coy about exactly what Lalasa fears, and my one worry would be that it's only helpful to a reader who doesn't need things explained in the first place.
Overall it feels like this book is doing more work for the quartet as a whole than it is for itself as a volume within it. The plot that's mostly unique to this volume has to do with Lalasa, but even that story is of Kel trying to prepare her to defend herself and then it not being enough without Kel's help. Having read later books before, I know that even this incident is part of a broader conflict spanning most of the series, which means that the main conflict is a continuation of things begun earlier and finished elsewhere. That's fine for the second book in a quartet, it's common for book two of a series to have this feeling, I just wish this book had more that was its own.
Stephen’s god died on the longest day of the year…
Three years later, Stephen is …
Review of "Paladin's Grace" on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
The White Rat books definitely have a trend towards featuring broody men who are good at stabbing things and carry around an enormous amount of (understandable but often overwrought) guilt. Stephen is no exception to this. He is a paladin whose god died suddenly three years ago, which left people disturbed and confused that a god could die, and triggered berserker rages in many of the paladins. The survivors are now in one of the White Rat’s temples, offering their services as protectors, guards, and whatever else the temple needs where muscled and frequently brooding swordsmen are of use. Grace is a perfumer who has an excellent sense of smell and finds herself rather suddenly in trouble.
Grace is so genuinely trusting that she needs someone more cynical and observant around to keep things from turning out badly when people take advantage of her. She can, and has, reset her …
The White Rat books definitely have a trend towards featuring broody men who are good at stabbing things and carry around an enormous amount of (understandable but often overwrought) guilt. Stephen is no exception to this. He is a paladin whose god died suddenly three years ago, which left people disturbed and confused that a god could die, and triggered berserker rages in many of the paladins. The survivors are now in one of the White Rat’s temples, offering their services as protectors, guards, and whatever else the temple needs where muscled and frequently brooding swordsmen are of use. Grace is a perfumer who has an excellent sense of smell and finds herself rather suddenly in trouble.
Grace is so genuinely trusting that she needs someone more cynical and observant around to keep things from turning out badly when people take advantage of her. She can, and has, reset her life after betrayal, but it's so nice to see a part of her life where people help her rather than leaving her to sink or swim in the wake of abuse and betrayal. Stephen and his fellow paladins are living each day without their god, trying to be helpful rather than letting the black tide swallow them. It's nice to read a story where the main characters have lives separate from each other, but it's obvious how their lives are enriched by each other's company and possible affection. Zale is a fantastic wit and an even better lawyer, it's great to see them again.
While technically not a sequel, this is set in the world of the White Rat, mentions places featured elsewhere, and includes at least one character from SWORDHEART. The story itself is entirely new. The worldbuilding focuses on just a couple of locations, but describes places in a way that provides relevant information for this story while giving details which complement what that other White Rat books established. I recommend reading at least SWORDHEART before this, but the main thing that will affect is whether Zale is a new or familiar character.
When Alanna became the King's Champion, it was decided that girls would henceforth be allowed …
Review of 'First Test' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
Kel is the first girl to train as a page in living memory who is known as a girl during her training. Alanna’s previous example is wielded against her, as it’s assumed by unhappy sexists that Alanna only made it through with help. This provides narrative opportunities for challenges that Alanna didn’t face, or at least new angles on familiar topics (such as bullying). Kel feels older than ten, not enough to be jarring, but enough that I had to keep remembering how young she is. She's handling a lot of stress very well, partly because of coping mechanisms she learned while living in an unfamiliar country with her parents.
Nealan is Kel's sponsor and quickly becomes her friend. Gradually she gets more of a social circle, but it's difficult to be the only girl surrounded by boys when many of the adults in charge are also treating her gender …
Kel is the first girl to train as a page in living memory who is known as a girl during her training. Alanna’s previous example is wielded against her, as it’s assumed by unhappy sexists that Alanna only made it through with help. This provides narrative opportunities for challenges that Alanna didn’t face, or at least new angles on familiar topics (such as bullying). Kel feels older than ten, not enough to be jarring, but enough that I had to keep remembering how young she is. She's handling a lot of stress very well, partly because of coping mechanisms she learned while living in an unfamiliar country with her parents.
Nealan is Kel's sponsor and quickly becomes her friend. Gradually she gets more of a social circle, but it's difficult to be the only girl surrounded by boys when many of the adults in charge are also treating her gender as somewhere between an annoyance and an issue. The plot focuses on Kel's first year as a page, specifically the fact of her probation and the bullying amongst the pages. She also has a fear of heights, something which one of her instructors makes her work to mitigate.
This is technically not a sequel, but it’s set in Tortall one year after the conclusion of the Immortals Quartet. It's notable for sneaking in a bit of Daine and Numair while Daine is barely under eighteen and Numair is thirty or so. Jonathan is king and the land is filled with the immortals who remain, of which Spidrens are a constant danger for even wary travelers. Raoul leads the King's Own, and Alanna has been ordered to stay away from Kel, lest her involvement taint the public perception of Kel's success or failure.
The worldbuilding is continued from the previous quartets, rarely pausing to explain things which were given more thorough treatment earlier. This has the effect of subtly updating continuing readers on what previously-met characters are up to now, while keeping the main focus on Keladry’s current problems. The one place this was a bit jarring is there are a lot of changes from Alanna’s time as a page, and the characters often not-so-subtly comment on them. Kel obviously doesn’t have Alanna’s experiences in her head, but she knows what her brothers said of their time in the palace and (conveniently) most of the notable changes stem from sometime after their tenure.
Prior Tortall books have mentioned the Yamani Islands, but this is main introduction to any specifics about them. Kel’s parents were the Tortallan ambassadors to the Yamanis, and when FIRST TEST begins, Kel had spent more of her life there than in Tortall. Most of the details about the Islands seem meant to invoke real-world Western ideas of East Asia (specifically but not only Japan). This shows up in bowing styles, lucky/waving cats, clothing, and (most notably) outward impassiveness and control of emotions.
I've read this many times before as a teenager, but it's been a while, and I was surprised by how much of the plot is Kel dealing with bullying in various ways.
It feels like it’s taking forever to get anywhere. It’s so short that I made it over halfway through but I’m not enjoying it and I keep reading other things instead of making any progress.
It feels like it’s taking forever to get anywhere. It’s so short that I made it over halfway through but I’m not enjoying it and I keep reading other things instead of making any progress.
Pull three people out of prison—a disgraced paladin, a convicted forger, and a heartless assassin. …
Review of 'The Wonder Engine' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
THE WONDER ENGINE is a perfect sequel to THE CLOCKWORK BOYS, full of wit and care between a small group of people expecting to spend the rest of their extremely brief lives in one another's company against long odds and in great danger.
Grimehug plays more more central role here, but specifically not as one of the heroes. He's accompanying the humans so that some gnole is keeping track of them, much as other gnoles accompany the clocktaurs. Learned Edmund's change of character is gradual enough to feel reasonable, but is a complete transformation from his first appearance in THE CLOCKWORK BOYS. I love Slate and Caliban, and I like finding out a bit more of Slate's former life in Anuket City. Brenner continues to be a lurky assassin and an excellent character.
This does a tremendous amount of worldbuilding related to gnoles as their society intersects with humans in …
THE WONDER ENGINE is a perfect sequel to THE CLOCKWORK BOYS, full of wit and care between a small group of people expecting to spend the rest of their extremely brief lives in one another's company against long odds and in great danger.
Grimehug plays more more central role here, but specifically not as one of the heroes. He's accompanying the humans so that some gnole is keeping track of them, much as other gnoles accompany the clocktaurs. Learned Edmund's change of character is gradual enough to feel reasonable, but is a complete transformation from his first appearance in THE CLOCKWORK BOYS. I love Slate and Caliban, and I like finding out a bit more of Slate's former life in Anuket City. Brenner continues to be a lurky assassin and an excellent character.
This does a tremendous amount of worldbuilding related to gnoles as their society intersects with humans in Anuket City. It also shows much of Anuket City's underworld, which is highly involved in most other parts of the city's functioning.
As the second book in a duology, this shows the crew’s whole stay in Anuket City and briefly addresses the aftermath. It addresses Slate and Caliban’s feelings for each other, the mystery of the Clocktaurs, Gnole society, and Learned Edmund’s personal growth. It doesn’t leave anything for later, while other books are set in this same world, these particular characters’ story seems wrapped up for now. Slate and Caliban are the main point-of-view characters, just like in the first book, with a brief section or two from other characters. I don’t think anything is both introduced and resolved here, but this is literally part two of two books and it has its own storyline by being specific to a place while the first book was the journey there.
If someone read just this book without the first one it might make enough sense to be interesting, but several parts of the finale and a lot of the character growth depends on seeing how they started out, which is contained in CLOCKWORK BOYS. While it might still be enjoyable on its own, I definitely recommend reading both books as they are much better together.
If you enjoyed THE CLOCKWORK BOYS then don't skip THE WONDER ENGINE!
A Blade So Black is a young adult fantasy novel written by L.L. McKinney and …
Review of 'A Blade So Black (Nightmare-Verse, #1)' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
A Blade So Black uses Wonderland to magically embody community trauma and personal grief. Moving beyond a simple retelling, it is referential instead of a replication. It is the terror of a Nightmare made flesh with blades strong enough to fight it.
When adapting or re-interpreting well-known source material like the collection of books and poems by Lewis Carroll which are often known collectively as "Alice in Wonderland", it can be difficult to find a balance between leveraging that background knowledge and building a new understanding of that world. I love adaptations of this world in particular, and I love how this version turned out. The characters are referential rather than just copying the source material, the history and current state of Wonderland are explained sufficiently for readers who might be unfamiliar with the original (or who are perhaps more familiar with some of the famous adaptations), and overall I …
A Blade So Black uses Wonderland to magically embody community trauma and personal grief. Moving beyond a simple retelling, it is referential instead of a replication. It is the terror of a Nightmare made flesh with blades strong enough to fight it.
When adapting or re-interpreting well-known source material like the collection of books and poems by Lewis Carroll which are often known collectively as "Alice in Wonderland", it can be difficult to find a balance between leveraging that background knowledge and building a new understanding of that world. I love adaptations of this world in particular, and I love how this version turned out. The characters are referential rather than just copying the source material, the history and current state of Wonderland are explained sufficiently for readers who might be unfamiliar with the original (or who are perhaps more familiar with some of the famous adaptations), and overall I think it lands correctly in this balance of inspiration, homage, and new stories.
This book is deeply steeped in grief and mourning. It wasn't depressing or stressful to read, generally, but part of its genius is it provides an explanation for Wonderland's crisis that is equal parts fantasy and reality. Alice's personal trauma is explored a little but there's a lot of room for her to grieve and grow as the series continues. It's also about a magical expression of community trauma, and where Alice's life fits within that.
I'm particularly excited about the handling of Hatta and the Twins, they're my favorite characters from the original and I love them even more here.
This book leaves a lot unresolved so I'm glad there are sequels. It feels like stage one of a much more epic story and I'm very ready to find out what happens next.
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. …
Review of 'Soulless' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
Alexia Tarabotti is a spinster in her mid-twenties, mostly content to spend her time at home, in libraries, or with her friend Ivy who has unfortunate taste in hats. She’s also soulless, a preternatural whose touch can temporarily revert any supernatural persons to their formerly mortal state.
Alexia and the London werewolf Alpha, Conall, have chemistry built on mutual annoyance. He enjoys someone who will surprise and stand up to him (a limited commodity when one is the Alpha of a pack of werewolves), and she seems surprised when annoying him for fun turns into something more. Professor Lyall is his Beta, a competent and unassuming older werewolf who is a quiet, steady presence. Ivy, Alexia’s hat-obsessed friend, is one of my favorite characters but this isn’t yet the book where she shines. Lord Akeldama is a flamboyant and well-informed vampire who is utterly delightful.
The worldbuilding is cohesive and …
Alexia Tarabotti is a spinster in her mid-twenties, mostly content to spend her time at home, in libraries, or with her friend Ivy who has unfortunate taste in hats. She’s also soulless, a preternatural whose touch can temporarily revert any supernatural persons to their formerly mortal state.
Alexia and the London werewolf Alpha, Conall, have chemistry built on mutual annoyance. He enjoys someone who will surprise and stand up to him (a limited commodity when one is the Alpha of a pack of werewolves), and she seems surprised when annoying him for fun turns into something more. Professor Lyall is his Beta, a competent and unassuming older werewolf who is a quiet, steady presence. Ivy, Alexia’s hat-obsessed friend, is one of my favorite characters but this isn’t yet the book where she shines. Lord Akeldama is a flamboyant and well-informed vampire who is utterly delightful.
The worldbuilding is cohesive and worked naturally into the story. Alexia and Conall both have to think in order to stay in step with social expectations (or notice whenever they flout them), which provides opportunities for many details about the setting without distracting from the story. I read this series so many times in high school that I’m having trouble distilling my thoughts about the series generally into what just applies to this book. It sets up the cephalopod-obsessed organization which will continue to have a presence in the series, as well as establishing (at least by mention) many of the characters who will matter as the series continues.
I love this series and it’s so nice to dive into it again.
Review of 'The Bone Shard Daughter' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
There's a pretty large cast of narrators, listening via audiobook helped enormously with keeping track of them since there are three audiobook narrators to handle all the perspectives. Those performances are great, making helping keep the characters distinct even when the same performed voiced multiple characters.
The plot has several threads, following each of the main characters. The blurb implies that Lin is the only main character, but Jovis plays an enormous role (meeting all but one of the other main characters at various points), and the romance between Phalue and Ranami felt complex and real. Lin is the daughter of the emperor, trying to get her father's approval by getting back memories she lost in a sickness several years ago. Jovis is a smuggler who is trying to find his wife who was kidnapped five years ago. He ends up rescuing children from having their shards taken. Phalue is …
There's a pretty large cast of narrators, listening via audiobook helped enormously with keeping track of them since there are three audiobook narrators to handle all the perspectives. Those performances are great, making helping keep the characters distinct even when the same performed voiced multiple characters.
The plot has several threads, following each of the main characters. The blurb implies that Lin is the only main character, but Jovis plays an enormous role (meeting all but one of the other main characters at various points), and the romance between Phalue and Ranami felt complex and real. Lin is the daughter of the emperor, trying to get her father's approval by getting back memories she lost in a sickness several years ago. Jovis is a smuggler who is trying to find his wife who was kidnapped five years ago. He ends up rescuing children from having their shards taken. Phalue is the daughter of a governor on one of the islands, and Ranami is her girlfriend who keeps turning down Phalue's marriage proposals because Phalue doesn't seem to understand the enormity of her privilege in comparison to everyone on the island. There's a woman called Sand who is trying to escape her current situation, I don't want to spoil anything about her but she seems set up to do much more in the sequel.
Lin has spent years trying to get her father's approval, and is frustrated by his ableist insistence that she's not whole unless she can get back the memories she lost. Desperate to get him to pay attention to her as she is and not as she was, Lin starts copying his keys to get access to rooms that might hold knowledge of the magic he should be teaching her. She's in competition with her foster brother Bayan since he regained more of his memories and seems to continually be one step ahead of her in getting the emperor's attention.
The relationship between Phalue and Ranami briefly dips into some toxic territory as Phalue doesn't seem to understand or know how to take seriously Ranami's concerns. It definitely helps that both of them are narrators, so their perspectives are shown directly at various points.
Jovis ends up with an animal companion after he saves it from the water during a disaster early one. Mephi is pretty cool and not annoying, which is a relief because sometimes I end up detesting animal sidekicks.
The magic system is based on using bone taken from the empire's citizens as children. The shards can be used to power constructs, and once in use they slowly drain the life force of their original owner. The emperor uses an elaborate array of constructs to do all the imperial bureaucracy which could be done by people, but he doesn't trust anyone else to do it right. This setup means that the way the lower classes are exploited is more than just cruelty and resource hoarding by the rich, but that their very lives can be taken, slowly, by an emperor they'll never see, if he happens to pick their shard from a drawer and use it to fuel a construct. I love the way the magic system is inseparable from the political structure and brewing uprising.
Review of 'Sons of Destiny (Cirque Du Freak' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
SONS OF DESTINY is the final showdown between Steve and Darren, as they both learn who set them in the other's path.
This wraps up Darren and Steve's conflict with a final confrontation. It addresses some of what happens to the other characters afterward, but only in brief detail. It kind of has a new storyline about what happens to Darren after the conflict, but that's so much of a continuation/redo that I'm not sure whether it counts as a new storyline. It introduces and resolves Darren's transformation. As the final book in the series it wraps up Darren's personal storyline as well as a smattering of other plot threads. Darren is still the narrator, as he has been for the whole series.
It would not make sense to start here, not only is this the final book but it revisits some early events from an altered perspective. To read …
SONS OF DESTINY is the final showdown between Steve and Darren, as they both learn who set them in the other's path.
This wraps up Darren and Steve's conflict with a final confrontation. It addresses some of what happens to the other characters afterward, but only in brief detail. It kind of has a new storyline about what happens to Darren after the conflict, but that's so much of a continuation/redo that I'm not sure whether it counts as a new storyline. It introduces and resolves Darren's transformation. As the final book in the series it wraps up Darren's personal storyline as well as a smattering of other plot threads. Darren is still the narrator, as he has been for the whole series.
It would not make sense to start here, not only is this the final book but it revisits some early events from an altered perspective. To read this without having read any of the others would be a pile of massive spoilers which would be in danger of feeling anticlimactic because they lacked context. The book starts with a concise and useful summation of the series so far, but that's more useful for those who waited a while between reading the other books and this one, and would most likely be insufficient context for anyone who tried skipping the others and just reading this.
The plot picks up where LORD OF THE SHADOWS left off, with Darren and Vancha figuring out what to do with Darius and dealing with Steve's actions at the end of that book. It packs an incredible amount of incredibly spoilery worldbuilding and character work into a very small space, with a villain speech which ties things together with brutal clarity, all the way back to the start of the series. The second part of the book is devoted to the aftermath of the violent clash. The ending is the reason I wanted to re-read this series. I loved it as a kid and I'm so glad it mostly held up now that I'm an adult. It's not the only series that has this kind of finale, but it does it very well and it was the first such ending I'd read.
