Maybe I Need To Attach A Content Warning...
The first book of the three has parental death and the second lots of animal death. Sorry, guys, just the way it worked out.
Next book on my list is called Bar Manchester, so I guess this one will involve lots of alcohol.
Review: Dragons of Frost and Fang by Rowan Silver
CW: Parental death. CW: Cannibalism
If you remember being vaguely traumatized by Bambi…this book has a passage which is worse. Kids are more tolerant of dark stuff than we realize, thankfully.
The dragons of Tasien, by the way, have fur. They aren’t the only kind of dragon in this universe, but they’re the kind being focused on. They’re arctic/Antarctic creatures…on a world that’s facing an ice age.
Even the kitsune is white…and yes, there’s a kitsune, who’s a very fun character. They all are.
Silver provides us with fun characters and some neat worldbuilding, although I kind of wish I hadn’t read this book during a cold snap. Just saying.
I could use something set in a hot desert or tropical rainforest now. Just saying.
Oh, another warning…this book is a tome. Especially for a classic quest narrative in which the two dragon cubs are trying to find their mother’s relatives…their pack.
Things don’t go well for them, or perhaps they do. This book is, at its heart, about family, as well as being about persistence.
Family is what you define it to be, in the end. Always worth remembering, especially when your racist uncle won’t shut up at the Thanskgiving table…
Review: The Cradle of Oshae by A.K. Hauser
CW: Animal death
There’s been a push lately to avoid the typical late Medieval/early Renaissance tech level of most fantasy. Even now, though, I can’t immediately think of another secondary world fantasy novel in which the tech level is Stone Age.
It’s pretty well done, too, although there’s absolutely no explanation for how all these disparate peoples have a common language. The tribes in the valley, sure, they’re clearly closely related, but the druids?
(Also, the druids are very…weirdly…D&Desque).
My biggest issue with this book was that there were too many POV characters, such that even in closing on 400 pages I never felt I got enough of any of them. They’re good characters, but it felt head hoppy, especially with a lot of POV changes within chapters. I think this book might have been stronger if Hauser had cut that down.
The plot, though, is fairly interesting. Yes, it’s a variant on “There and Back Again,” but it’s a pretty nice variant on it, and the worldbuilding highlighted by the journey is solid, but flawed in places.
(There’s only one tree in the valley? What, is it a male tree that somehow survived all the other trees? Sorry, that is a worldbuilding issue. I’m also not so fond of “everyone is secretly bisexual” takes, and a culture in which everyone has a gay partner until they’re allowed to have kids very much plays into that).
The different cultures make sense for their biomes, though, so I was able to look past it.
If you’re looking for something very different from typical Medieval fantasy, it’s worth checking out, but great literature it is not.
Fike is fun, though.
Review: The Maker of Spells by Jenny O’Kell
First of all, I did enjoy this book. The protagonist is interestingly flawed, but competent enough, and the side characters are all interesting. The plot centers around a nice amount of political intrigue.
The magic system is based on traditional witchcraft and rootcraft, which was also nice to see. Spells require a lot of components and rituals and even then…this is a high magic world in which nobody is casting any fireballs. I definitely like how O’Kell handles magic.
So, what are my issues? I have two.
The first is the naming system for the characters, which smacks of Greco-Roman mythology, but ends up a little incoherent.
The second is that the nobility are all Black and the commoners are all white, and this is supposed to be from a generations-old conflict. The protagonist supposedly has a noble mother and common father, but is still described as “pale-haired.” This just doesn’t work. Yes, you can absolutely have a conquering high caste of another ethnicity, but they aren’t being nearly insular enough for there to be this divide, almost as if each kid takes after only one parent.
(I’m also always a tiny bit uncomfortable when somebody puts any race in charge and doesn’t use a lot of nuance).
This would just have been so much better a book without that. Even with it, there’s still a very enjoyable plot here…if you can look past genetics apparently not working right.
The world is casually queernorm, too, which I always like to see, and the protagonist is some form of bi/pan/omni.
I just…found the racial/appearance stuff a tad offputting. If you can look past that, it’s enjoyable.