A Call to Duty by David Weber & Timothy Zahn

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life . . . the two things his neglectful mother couldn't or wouldn't provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he'd finally found the structure he'd always wanted so desperately.

But life in the RMN isn't exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of extinction.

The Star Kingdom is a minor nation among the worlds of the Diaspora, its closest neighbors weeks or months away, with little in the way of resources. With only modest interstellar trade, no foreign contacts to speak of, a plague-ravaged economy to rebuild, and no enemies looming at the hyper limit, there are factions in Parliament who want nothing more than to scrap the Navy and shift its resources and manpower elsewhere.

But those factions are mistaken. The universe is not a safe place.

Travis Long is about to find that out.

There are a few writers who I will read without fail when they release a new book and David Weber is one of them. A Call to Duty, co-written with the legendary Timothy Zahn, was a nice departure, taking his Honorverse universe back in time slightly to the early years of Manticore and showing a Royal Navy dealing with very different problems – a lack of enemies means that internal pressures are about to see the RMN fold completely, left with only a small number of ships to protect its borders. 

As usual, A Call to Duty has a large cast of characters, but the main storyline centers around Travis Long, a young enlisted whose out of the box thinking brings him both opportunities and major problems. Your reaction to A Call to Duty is likely to depend entirely on how you feel about the rest of Weber’s work – the book has the same long descriptions of hardware, political intrigue, space battles and lack of aliens. I for one love the universe Weber has created and Long is a worthy successor (predecessor ?) of Honor Harrington. The ending has all of the trademark action and tension as one expects from David Weber and sets things up nicely for the sequel whenever that may be.

I gave A Call to Duty 4 stars. 

Retribution by Mark Charan Newton

THEY'LL KILL TO HIDE THE TRUTH. HE'LL KILL TO FIND IT. 

Having just solved a difficult case in his home city of Tryum, Sun Chamber Officer Lucan Drakenfeld and his associate Leana are ordered to journey to the exotic city of Kuvash in Koton, where a revered priest has gone missing. When they arrive, they discover the priest has already been found - or at least parts of him have. But investigating the unusual death isn't a priority for the legislature of Kuvash; there's a kingdom to run, a census to create and a dictatorial Queen to placate. 

Soon Drakenfeld finds that he is suddenly in charge of an investigation in a strange city, whose customs and politics are as complex as they are dangerous. Kuvash is a city of contradictions; wealth and poverty exist uneasily side-by-side and behind the rich facades of gilded streets and buildings, all levels of depravity and decadence are practised. When several more bodies are discovered mutilated and dumped in a public place, Drakenfeld realizes there's a killer at work who seems to delight in torture and pain. With no motive, no leads and no suspects, he feels like he's running out of options. And in a city where nothing is as it seems, seeking the truth is likely to get him killed ...

Retribution is the second Lucan Drakenfeld novel, following Drakenfeld.

Following on from last year's Drakenfeld, Retribution is a nice continuation of the series, providing a keen mystery and a clever solution, playing with the idea of victim/perpetrator and the theme of revenge. Drakenfeld is a pleasant narrator, a clear successor to C.J Sansom's Shardlake, while his female companion and bodyguard gets some much needed and appreciated development here. 

Fans of Newton's earlier work will feel somewhat let down by the world building - Drakenfeld's world is a clear Roman cypher, mingling elements of Late Medieval / Early Renaissance Europe, without any particular attempts to bring in any of the clever New Weird stylings of the Legends of the Red Sun. The Drakenfeld series, though, continues to do what it set out to do - write a historical mystery series in a fantasy world - and to do it extremely well!

I gave Retribution 4 stars. 

Waistcoats and Weaponry by Gail Carriger

Class is back in session...
 
Sophronia continues her second year at finishing school in style--with a steel-bladed fan secreted in the folds of her ball gown, of course. Such a fashionable choice of weapon comes in handy when Sophronia, her best friend Dimity, sweet sootie Soap, and the charming Lord Felix Mersey stowaway on a train to return their classmate Sidheag to her werewolf pack in Scotland. No one suspected what--or who--they would find aboard that suspiciously empty train. Sophronia uncovers a plot that threatens to throw all of London into chaos and she must decide where her loyalties lie, once and for all.

Gather your poison, steel tipped quill, and the rest of your school supplies and join Mademoiselle Geraldine's proper young killing machines in the third rousing installment in the New York Times bestselling Finishing School Series by steampunk author, Gail Carriger

Gail Carriger burst onto the fantasy scene a few years ago with her Parasol Protectorate series, a fantastic historical urban fantasy, full of great characters, humourous dialogue and exciting action scenes. A kind-of-prequel - set earlier than the first series though initially seemingly without any of the same characters -  the Finishing School Series continues in the steampunk vein of the first series, adding the setting of a floating espionage school masquerading as a finishing school. While the first book did not blow me away, I enjoyed it enough to carry on. The series has got steadily better and this, the third book, is fantastic.

Following Sophronia and her friends once again, Waistcoats and Weaponry sees major changes in the status quo, as werewolves plot rebellion and vampires strike at mechanicals. Forced to take possession of a runaway train, Sophronia and her friends go up once again against the Picklemen. There are major changes in store before the book reaches its end, all of which Carriger handles with her usual humour. Her writing continues to be a delight, full of wit and funny turns of phrase, and Sophronia really grows as a character, willing to go once more against the prevailing societal pressures of her time. Her relationship with Soap is especially well handled here 

Setting up the final book in the series nicely, Waistcoats and Weaponry finally begins to bring the Finishing School Series up to the same level as the Parasol Protectorate. 

I gave Waistcoats and Weaponry 4 stars.

Ruin Falls by Jenny Milchman

 

The children had never been this far from home before. Liv had spent most of yesterday driving around, hunting for no-mess Crayola coloring books, praying they weren't too juvenile to keep a six- and eight-year-old occupied in the car, then running up and down the supermarket aisles in search of bars and snack pouches in case they couldn't find food on the road. Or in case they did find something, and Paul wouldn't allow the kids to eat it.

Liv Daniels and her family leave on holiday for the first time in years on a trip to see her husband's parents. When they stop for the night in a hotel, everything seems to be going well. But when Liv wakes up the next morning, she finds her two children missing. The police are called and a search begins, but it soon becomes apparent that the person responsible may be closer than Liv thinks...

Ruin Falls showed up in a Most Anticipated Books column on one of my go-to blogs, and the atmospheric cover caught my attention. The blurb seemed to promise a tense thriller so I added it to my To Be Read list. When it showed up on Netgalley I requested it and was pleasantly surprised when it was accepted - one of the first ARCs I asked for and received! I decided to wait until shortly before the release date to read it and devoured it in a single day. Ruin Falls is a thriller novel done right and I loved it!

Set over a two week period, Ruin Falls tells the story of Liv Daniels. A mother, wife and business owner, she shares a farm with her professor husband and two children. Following her husband's eco-friendly lifestyle, they avoid consumer culture as much as possible. Leaving on vacation, Liv's world is torn apart by the disappearance of her children. But it is the identity of the kidnapper that really sends Liv reeling as she is forced to reexamine everything she thought she knew and every belief she held dear in the light of a horrendous betrayal.
I don't think I will give away any major spoilers if I reveal that the kidnapper is Liv's husband, Paul. The reveal itself happens very early in the novel, an  the true mystery is not who took the children but why and where he has taken them. The fact that Paul is the one to be behind the abduction allows Milchman to play around with the standard kidnapping storyline as the police relegate it to a domestic dispute, leaving Liv alone to try and recover her children.

Milchman does a fantastic job of creating tension - right from the first page we are dragged into Liv's frame of mind as more and more events ramp up her feeling that something is wrong. Even before we discover the kidnapping, Liv is stressed, convinced that something is wrong or about to happen. From an agressive truck driver to her son disappearing in a crowd, Liv is constantly on tenderhooks and so is the reader.

Having your children taken is any parent's ultimate nightmare and Milchman does a fantastic job of portraying that in Ruin Falls. That is made even worse by the aforementioned fact that the police will not do anything because the father is the one who has taken them. Liv's feeling of helplessness fills the pages and it is great to see her slowly gain the confidence she needs to save her children. She really develops through the course of the novel, and I loved the fact that despite the presence of a male character who assists her, at the end Liv is totally alone when it comes time to face the true villain of the piece.

Of the supporting characters, most are well developed, though unfortunately Paul comes across as a bit of a cipher whose aims and motivations are left quite fuzzy. His parents are much more interesting characters, and the truth about his past is done in a very nice way, keeping you guessing and putting together the various pieces all the way through. I would have liked there to be a little more closure to his storyline, though what does happen to him is definitely well deserved.

As I mentioned above, the conclusion is worthy of the build-up, pitting Liv against everything she has feared and forcing her to stand up and fight for her children. The book ends with a hopeful twist, though one that remains bittersweet when you consider the implications of everything that has happened.

Ruin Falls does not break any major ground when it comes to this kind of family-in-danger thriller, but it does do what it set out to extremely well. Edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting tension from the first page to the last, it is not the kind of book that I found myself laying aside without a tug of reluctance, wanting to read a little bit more to find out what would happen next or how a situation would resolve. The mystery was well done and did not ever feel drawn out, and the conclusion was worthy of everything that had been set up until then. I felt for and related to Liv and the other characters. At its heart, Ruin Falls is about motherhood and the lengths any of us (mothers or fathers) go to protect our children (although I have to admit that Dads do not come out of this one particularly well!) I will definitely be adding Jenny Milchman to my Must-Read List. I gave Ruin Falls 4 shoemaking psychopaths out of 5.

Ruin Falls will be released on April 22nd.

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The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier

The young men completed their training row in record time.

All her life, Diana Morgan has been obsessed with Amazons. Told stories of these empowered female warriors by her grandmother when she was a child, she has devoted her career to proving that they actually existed. Dismissed by many as a deluded fool, Diana jumps at the opportunity that is presented to her by a strange old man who claims to need her assistance at an archaeological dig that may just prove all of her theories. What she discovers, though, will take her on a journey from Algeria to Greece to Turkey to the far north on a quest that includes bronze bracelets, a secret society and the truth about the Trojan War...

Although the cover for The Lost Sisterhood did not really catch my attention, when I read the blurb describing Amazons, Troy and a quest that spans the globe, I couldn't resist giving it a go. And boy am I glad that I did! Combining historical fiction and a thriller-type quest, The Lost Sisterhood is a sprawling novel set in two time frames and filled with great twists and exciting set pieces.
 
The modern part of the novel follows Diana Morgan as she chases clues left behind for her by her grandmother across the world in search of the 'real' Amazons. Caught in the middle between two powerful men - each with their own reasons for trying to find the mythical warrior women - Diana must stay one step ahead of them at all times, with the help and support of Rebecca, her best friend from childhood, now an archaeologist, and Nick, the obligatory love interest, a man who is at first antipathic to her and her quest but gradually becomes an ally and more. The love story between the two, while well done, was the least interesting part of the novel to me, mainly because the thawing out between the two of them did not strike me as all that realistic based on what happens to them.

Where the novel excels, though, is in the historical part of the story. Following two young women from the deserts of modern-day Algeria, this section of the book - with chapters interspersed with the modern-day ones - combines what little is known about the Amazons from ancient sources with a masterful retelling of a number of ancient myths and legends, primarily the fall of Troy and the Trojan War. Fortier does a fantastic job of reinventing all of these stories and characters, giving them a new twist. What she does with Paris and the story of Helen was especially well done.

I found the beginning of the love story between Myrina and Paris to be slightly more believable than that between Diana and Nick, although the way it develops caused me problems. Myrina's willingness to - at first - take on a more submissive role in the relationship grated with her personality as seen up until then, and yet Fortier was able to make sense of it as the story progressed and bring Myrina back to the strong female character she had been in the earlier chapters.

The Lost Sisterhood does a great job of combining historical fiction and a modern thriller, bringing some neat twists to age-old stories and reinventing them for a new audience. Overall the female characters are worthy of the subject matter - each one of them is an Amazon in her own right, although the love stories for both main characters tarnish that slightly by taking away some of their freedom and power. Still, a fantastic read and I will be looking out for the next book Anne Fortier may write. I gave The Lost Sisterhood 4 bronze bracelets out of 5.

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Eden in Winter by Richard North Patterson

 

For three days, Adam Blaine and his family had entered the Dukes County Courthouse, a modest two-storey brick structure with white trim and doors, and passed through a double door to a spiral staircase that rose the courtroom itself.

In the aftermath of his father's apparent suicide, Adam Blaine has taken it upon himself to hide the truth - that the man who raised him was in fact his uncle and that his real father is the murderer who pushed his own brother off a cliff. As he struggles to protect those he cares about from the fallout, Adam also begins a relationship with his dead father's mistress. With the police and a journalist closing in on the truth, though, it seems that his dead father's reach may extend beyond the grave...

Ever since I read Balance of Power back in the early 2000s, Richard North Patterson has been a writer whose books I devour as quickly as I can. Though many of his earlier works were more straight-up legal and political thrillers, in the past few years he has been releasing a loose trilogy that depart from his status quo. Called the Martha's Vineyard Trilogy and starting with Fall from Grace back in 2012, these three books are more literary than what Patterson has written up until now. Following the fates of the Blaine family and those they have affected, Patterson has slowly developed a family saga with complex characters and a tangled web of lies and betrayals.

Eden in Winter is the final book in the trilogy and returns to "modern" day after the flashback to the 1960s presented in Loss of Innocence. We find the Blaines caught up in the immediate aftermath of the events of the first book as Adam's "uncle" - his real father - and brother are called to court in order to give their versions of what happened the night Benjamin Blaine ended up at the bottom of a cliff on Martha's Vineyard. As their testimony is given, we see how Adam has been manipulating events in the background, giving us a glimpse into just how good Adam is at what he does. As the story progresses, we follow Adam's struggles with his own life, and see as he tries to change it. A large part of that change involves Carla, his father's mistress, pregnant with his child. What begins as Adam wanting to make sure that his baby cousin has a better life than he does turns into much more as he and Carla draw closer.

Adam as a character develops in some interesting ways throughout the novel and we get a front seat to that as a large part of his storyline is taken up with his discussions with a psychiatrist friend. Forced to look into his relationships with his parents, his brother, his lovers and his job as a CIA contractor in Afghanistan, Adam comes to some major realisations about what he wants out of life and most of the impetus that keeps the pages turning revolves around seeing how and if he will be able to make different decisions than his father did.
Patterson's writing is crisp and at times lyrical. The skills gained writing more thrilling material in the past transfer well, making sure that what is at its heart a character piece delving in to the complex relationships of this - admittedly screwed-up - family is also a page-turner. Being so heavily invested in these characters from the previous novels also helps, obviously.

The one negative is that the final resolutions are a tad pat, especially when it comes to the relationship between Adam and Carla. Although the set-up is such that the ending seems in a way logical, it also demands a suspension of belief on the part of the reader that what should be such a totally dysfunctional and even slightly twisted relationship should work. Patterson lays the ground work, though, especially thanks to Adam's conversations with the psychiatrist throughout the early chapters.

A family saga full to the brim with deceit and lies, Eden in Winter delves deep into the characters of the Blaine family and manages to create a page-turning yarn that is hard to put down. With hints of the political and legal thrillers that Patterson is well known for dribbled throughout, the book is a nice resolution to a departure trilogy for the writer. As usual, a great read that cements Patterson for me as a must-buy whenever he brings out a new book. I gave Eden in Winter 4 bodies at the bottom of a cliff out of 5.

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Tower of Babel

 

"...So we can all see the benefits to such an alliance," intoned the burly Orion at the head of the meeting table, his gaze taking in each of his two guests in turn. "Working alone, the Vulcans were powerful enough to drive both of your organizations into retreat. Now they are part of a larger, even stronger Federation whose Starfleet patrols increasingly interfere with your efforts to stay in business. What better revenge," the green-skinned man went on in a polished baritone," than to form a partnership of your own to stand against them?"

In the aftermath of the Earth-Romulan War, the fledgling United Federation of Planets is taking its first steps into the wider galaxy. Growing pains soon set in, though, as relations between two factions with the government grow steadily more tense in the run-up to a presidential election that may decide the Federation's course for years to come. As Admiral Archer attempts to complete delicate negotiations with the Rigelians to bring them into the fold, an alliance of former enemies gather in the shadows to derail Starfleet's every attempts to keep the peace. Using deadly viruses, assassination attempts and kidnapping, they will stop at nothing to see the still fragile Federation fail...

Star Trek: Enterprise probably won't win many fan's plaudits for best Star Trek series ever, but the prequel series has some redeeming features that become more apparant in rewatch. Thankfully, these redeeming qualities have been brought to the fore in the series of books that have continued the story of Captain Archer, Commander T'Pol and the other characters of the first ever starship Enterprise beyond the controversial series finale. After laying the stage for the Earth-Romulan War in the first few books, the chosen authors have seen our characters through that conflict and beyond, bringing us what most fans were hoping for from the television series: the first years of the Federation.

Tower of Babel picks up where A Choice of Futures left off, with an alliance of Orions and other alien races seen in Enteprise trying to derail the Federation's first tentative steps. The Rise of the Federation has done a great job of advancing the characters of Enterprise in logical directions, so while the Enterprise itself has been turned into a museum, we find her crew spread across two main vessels: the Endeavour and the Pioneer. T'Pol has become a captain, as has Malcolm Reed, and it is interesting to see the two of them work together and apart. Bennett uses the situation in the Rigel system to ramp up the tension between the two captains, giving us a glimpse into how T'Pol has evolved, but also into the uncertainty Reed feels especially when working with both his former commanders.

An added complexity to the story comes from the presidentiel race that is heating up as Tower of Babel begins. Whether it was intentional or not (I would imagine that it was), Bennett was able to use this presidential campaign to reflect the beginnings of the United States, with a clear demarcation between those who wish to see the Federation expand and grow (called Federalists) and those who wish to protect the rights and priviliges of the individual planets (called Planetarists). Anyone who has any knowledge of the first few presidencies of the US knows that this was a key component in the discussions of the time, giving rise to the two-party system that continues today. These debates still go on in modern America, often portrayed now as the argument between "Big-government" Democrats and "States-rights" Republicans, so it will be interesting to see how Bennett or another author portrays this going forward. However it develops, as a huge fan of Political-Trek, I loved these glimpses into the early politics of the Federation.

Bennett never loses sight of what we all love about Star Trek, though, and we get some interesting glimpses into the Rigel system in this book, giving us a number of races I for one had not yet encountered much in my Star Trek novel reading. We also are given a number of space battles, trekno-babble and cool winks to the future of the Star Trek universe (I doubt many fans won't feel a shiver of pleasure when they realise who T'Rama is!)

Tower of Babel wraps up the storyline of the presidential race and the Rigelian talks, while leaving a number of storylines open, and ends on a pretty large cliffhanger which seems to nod back to a season 2 episode. Continuing in the line of the majority of recent Trek novels, this is great fun, combining a good story, characters we already love and the glimpses into the past of Trek that we hoped for from Enterprise. Bennett is a great writer and he pulls off another triumph here. I gave Tower of Babel 4 Saurian saunas out of 5.

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The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare by MG Buehrlen

This is the way my story begins. Not with a bang but a whimper. Nothing more than a calm voice, a careful smile, and a pair of spectacles perched on the tip of a thin nose.

After a series of very precise visions that seem to take Alex Wayfare back into the past leaves her a social pariah in high school, she is sent by her parents to consult a psychiatrist. When her talks with that psychiatrist get back to a strange old man named Porter, though, Alex finds herself pulled into the world of Descenders and Transcenders, a world where reincarnation and access to Limbo allow her to travel back through her past lives. Soon realising that she is being pursued by a powerful man with the same abilities as her own, Alex must learn not only how to use her powers but also the truth about her own past lives...

Although I have read a number of YA books over the years, mainly the more popular and well known like The Hunger Games or more recently the fantastic Red Rising, I can't say that I am much of an expert on the form. So it is rare that this type of novel comes across my radar in a way that encourages me to pick up a book and read it. When I saw the blurb for The 57 Lives of... though, I was immediately hooked on the description of time travel through reincarnation and the possibilities offered by the concept of travel through past lives. And I am really glad that I was, because the story of Alex Wayfare is great!

After discovering that she is the latest reincarnation of a Transcender - able to travel back through her own past lives while remembering who she is - Alex Wayfare begins to work with her mentor, Porter, in order to thwart the evil machinations of Durham Gesh. So far so cliche, but where The 57 Lives of... excels is in the descriptions of the past as Alex travels back to Prohibition Chicago, the 1960s and the Wild West. Each version of Alex is very different and the way that Ms. Buerhlen allows some of these different incarnations to filter through to Alex both while she is inhabiting their bodies and once she is back in her "Base Life", was very clever indeed. It was nice to see Alex geek out in each different time period, and watch as she compares them either favorably or unfavorably to her Base Life.

Base Life is complex for Alex - she has a loving family, but the fact that her older sister is suffering from cancer puts a lot of tension into all of her relationships. Buerhlen does a great job of keeping all this realistic and gives us a nice glimpse into how the way she lives her life changes as she is able to apply her experiences to her 'mundane' problems. Her friendship with Jensen is an especially nice touch as she is forced to reevalute what she thinks about the 'popular' boy who may be a more interesting person than she expected.

Throughout, though, the keystone to Alex' voyages is her relationship with 'Blue', a boy who may be her actual soulmate. That is another soul who follows her through time, dying and being reincarnated along with her. Blue's appearances in each of the time periods she visits forms a central part of the mystery Alex is facing and the way that this is - partly - resolved works well.

Buerhlen also deals nicely with some of the trickier aspects of time travel - the dreaded paradox. Right from the first page, we know that the concept of alternate timelines is going to be dealt with, but the way this is resolved by the end was a nice twist to the idea from my point of view. Not hugely original, but enough so that I liked it.

Alex Wayfare's adventures end on a nice cliffhanger, with enough of the mysteries and relationships resolved while leaving the overall arc far from ended. Though not breaking any major new ground, this YA SF novel played around with some great ideas and takes the reader to some of my favourite time periods. I can't wait to see what else Buerhlen has in store and what other time periods we will be taken to (considering that according to Porter, Alex' previous lives stretch back to 5 centuries BC!). I gave The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare 4 glowing soulmarks out of 5.

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The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

That Cheri Stoddard was found at all was the thing that set people on edge, even more so than the condition of her body. One Saturday in March, fog crept through the river valley and froze overnight. The morning sun crackled over a ghostly landscape across the road from my uncle’s general store, the burr oaks that leaned out over the banks of the North Fork River crystallized with a thick crust of hoarfrost. The tree nearest the road was dead, half-hollow, and it leaned farther than the rest, balanced at a precarious angle above the water. A trio of vultures roosted in the branches, according to Buddy Snell, a photographer for the Ozark County Record. Buddy snapped pictures of the tree, the stark contrast of black birds on white branches, for lack of anything better to print on the front page of the paper. It was eerie, he said. Haunting, almost. He moved closer, kneeling at the water’s edge to get a more interesting angle, and that was when he spied the long brown braid drifting in the shallows, barely visible among the stones. Then he saw Cheri’s head, snagged on a piece of driftwood: her freckled face, abbreviated nose, eyes spaced too wide to be pretty. Stuffed into the hollow of the tree were the rest of Cheri’s pieces, her skin etched with burns and amateur tattoos. Her flesh was unmarked when she disappeared, and I wondered if those new scars could explain what had happened to her, if they formed a cryptic map of the time she’d spent missing.

Two disappearances, a generation apart, linked together by one girl – sixteen-year old Lucy Dane. One was her mother, believed by many to be a witch, who just up and vanished one day when Lucy was a little girl. The other is a young slow-minded girl named Cheri who Lucy has befriended. Determined to figure out what happened to both of them, Lucy begins to uncover mysteries and secrets in the community of Henbane, some which she is not prepared to face...

The Weight of Blood came across my radar through a number of fellow bloggers – it has been mentioned and reviewed a lot recently, for very good reason! Compared in the blurb to Gillian Flynn, it is a very well-crafted mystery, but more than that it is a sharp-eyed commentary on life, family and the secrets we all carry around. After seeing the cover – which is fantastically evocative – and hearing all the good everyone was saying about it, I shot it to the top of my TBR list.

A key idea dealt with in The Weight of Blood is delivered towards the end of the book as Lucy talks to Ray the lawyer:

“You’ve got to be sure you can trust whomever you’re telling, that it won’t come back on you.”

“How can I be sure?” I asked.

“He smirked. “You can’t be, in Henbane.”

As Lucy investigates the disappearance of Cheri – and by extension that of her mother so many years earlier – we the reader realise just how true that last is. You can never be sure about anybody in Henbane. Neither can Lucy, which creates a lot of the tension in the book. Unsure who she can trust and who is telling her the truth, she finds herself delving into family secrets that will change her life forever.

Through a clever use of first and third-person narration, as well as a number of viewpoint characters which expands as the story progresses, Laura McHugh manages to weave a complex story of betrayal, murder and secrets through two timeframes. Overall, she pulls this off with brio, giving us the story of these characters a generation apart, teasing us with the past while she sets things up in the present, before providing the answer to a number of questions in a tense and breathless final few chapters.

The stakes for both Lucy and her mother grow as the story progresses. For Lucy, especially, she is forced to reimagine the family history she had always believed in, especially when it comes to her father and her uncle. The two brothers’ relationship is central to the book and Ms. McHugh does a great job of portraying them at different points in their lives while shedding light on just how far some people are willing to go for those they love.

Though few of the people we meet are necessarily likeable, nor the truths pleasant, it is impossible not to become enthralled and caught up in the town of Henbane and the secrets hidden there. Though the resolution of both mysteries do not hold many surprises, the revelations are handled deftly. More of a sweeping portrait than a true thriller, it was a great read that kept me hooked through to the end. I gave it 4 Old Scratch Caverns out of 5.

 

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Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach

"You said no?" the girl shrieked, crushing the letter in her fist. "You didn't even think you should ask me first?"

 

Following the events of Fortune’s Pawn, we find Devi Morris, the kick-ass mercenary who is the hero of the Paradox trilogy, recovering from a mysterious attack that has left her a fellow merc dead and some major holes in her own memory. As she struggles with her own issues (which include seeing things no one else can such as a black stain spreading across her hands whenever she gets angry), Devi tries to make sense of the people she is serving with and to close the gap in her memories.

Rachel Bach had been on my radar for a while through her alter-ego, Rachel Aaron and The Spirit Thief series. Although I have yet to actually read that fantasy series, I did read Ms. Aaron’s book on her writing process 2,000 to 10,000 and loved her voice as well as her great advice. So when I read on her blog that she had a new series coming out, that it was a self-contained trilogy to be released over a six-month period and that it was a space opera starring a mercenary... I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it!

I thoroughly enjoyed Fortune’s Pawn, which reads like a space opera revisited by an urban fantasy author. The collision of tropes worked a treat and when the story broke off on a HUGE cliffhanger, I couldn’t wait to get back to Devi’s weird, wonderful, complicated universe.

Honour’s Knight does not lose any of the momentum that Ms. Bach ended Fortune’s Pawn with. Instead, she picks up all of the story threads and launches them into orbit. I was a little worried that the entire book was going to be Devi trying to get her memories back, but thankfully that specific storythread was nicely wrapped up relatively quickly, allowing the book to explore a lot of interesting territory. We learn a lot about what is actually going on with Devi’s mysterious employer, the huge galaxy-wide threat he is facing and the lengths he is willing to go to fight off that threat, while putting Devi into a complicated moral conundrum – just how far is too far when it comes to sacrifying the few for the many?

Devi herself is put through the wringer in this one, from her complicated relationship with cook Rupert (a romance that is handled extremely well and very believably considering what each of them are willing and able to do the other as the story progresses without a pat solution at the end), to the shattering of her belief system as we get a glimpse at the deified royalty of Paradox mentioned in the last books. As all of this is going on, though, Devi continues to kick some serious ass, which is one of the great successes of this trilogy and a wonderful ‘steal’ from the urban fantasy genre: the depiction of a strong, powerful female character. Devi is not someone anyone should ever piss-off.

Alliances shift, surprises are sprung and things end with Devi and Rupert alone in the unknown, the book ending on another cliffhanger nicely setting up the third book, Heaven’s Queen, which is due in April. Honour’s Knight took everything that worked in the first book and shifted it into warp speed, continuing a fantastic space opera trilogy. I gave this 4 strange blue invisible bugs out of 5.

 

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The Tyrant's Law by Daniel Abraham

Milo slipped in the darkness, falling to one knee. The stones of the beach cut his skin, and the blood darkened the oiled wool of his leggings. The old fisherman, Kirot his name was, paused and looked back at him, lifting his lantern and one white eyebrow in query. Are you coming, or staying here? To the north, the waves cracked with ice. To the south, the deep darkness of the village waited for their return. Milo forced himself to stand. A little more blood would do him no harm. He'd lost enough, God knew. Kirot nodded and turned back to the long, slow trudge along the shore.

Dragons slumber as a tyrant rises in Camnipol. Following the events of The King’s Blood, The Tyrant’s Law finds our four main characters – Marcus, Cithrin, Geder and Clara – pretty much where we left them. Marcus is accompanying Kit on his quest to kill a Goddess, Cithrin is apprenticed to the lady who runs the Medean Bank in Porte Oliva, Geder is planning his war under the guidance of the priest Basrahip, and Clara is trying to survive while looking for a chance at revenge against the man who had her husband killed. The Tyrant’s Law follows all four of these strands as they twine together through Geder’s war, notably his army’s assault on the city of Porte Oliva.

Daniel Abrahams hooked me with his four-book debut series, The Long Price Quartet, a cunning mixture of epic fantasy, with a generous helping of George R.R Martin’s character development, all set in a quasi-Asian world. When his new series, The Dagger and the Coin, was announced, I immediately set out to read the first book and have enjoyed each successive volume.

Abraham has managed to bring a fresh look to the epic fantasy genre, notably by paying more attention to the political and economic implications of his worlds, without losing sight of the sense of wonder and magic needed in any good epic fantasy. In The Tyrant’s Law, this continues, though at a slower pace since this is basically the middle volume of the five-volume series. As with many middle volumes, the story has gotten to a point where the characters are already set, so there are not as many surprises as in the first two volumes. However there are some unexpected twists, notably in the Marcus and Cithrin storylines. I enjoyed the way Abraham continues to make it difficult to decide whether to root for or against poor Geder, though by the end of this volume it seems clear where he stands. The other characters continue to be fully fledged and interesting – I especially enjoyed the Clara chapters in this novel, as her intriguing and spying get her to a place she was not expecting.

While suffering from the inevitable middle volume blues, The Tyrant’s Law is a self-assured, thrilling epic fantasy novel, full of moments of wonder, fantastic world building and great characters. The next volume, The Widow’s House, is slated for next year, with a breathtakingcover. Can’t wait!

 

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Influx by Daniel Suarez

"I'm gonna hunt you down like a rabid dog, Sloan." Albert Marrano clenched his teeth on an e-cigarette as he concentrated on a tiny screen.

As Influx begins, we are introduced to a young scientist who has just made a terrific discovery - a gravity mirror that can not only reverse but actually control gravity. On the cusp of this breakthrough, though, Jon Grady finds his lab attacked by a religious fanatic. A bomb is placed, he is tied up and a white light flashes...

What may seem like the end, though, turns out to be only the beginning as Grady is introduced to the world of the BTC - or Bureau of Technology Control - the secret agency to end ask secret agencies, charged with controlling the course of human innovation. Fusion generators, disintegration guns, gene manipulation, robotics, the cure for cancer, even immortality - they are all invented and utilised by the select few, who keep these technologies out of mankind's hands in order to 'protect' us.

I came across Influx on a blog list of upcominge novels a few months ago and was immediately attracted to the cover, as well as the quote on the front calling Daniel Suarez a “legitimate heir to Michael Crichton”. Although I’m not sure, based on this, that the quote is valid, I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of advanced technology, secret agencies, government conspiracies and chaos.

An obvious homage to the Count of Monte Cristo, Influx takes place over a few years of time, allowing the characters to learn and change without either of those actions seeming forced. Mr Suarez does a good job of creating rounded characters and even the villains are developed to a point where they do not seem like card-board cutouts or moustache-twirlers. One of the “villains” in particular has a really interesting character arc that takes her to some interesting places as she begins to question where her loyalties truly lie.

The stakes gradually get higher and higher and the dangers more and more real, allowing our hero Grady to rise to the occasion as he needs to. The advanced tech allows for some pretty impressive action scenes, especially towards the end. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but if you liked the physics-defying fights of Matrix or Inception, you will love what they do with Influx.

One place where I can definitely see the comparison to Michael Crichton is that it is impossible not to imagine Influx as a summer blockbuster movie. The book practically begs to be adapted and I for one would be queuing up for tickets to see it.

Although the epilogue was a little bit of a let-down for me – I would have preferred for it to delve a little bit more into the larger consequences of the climax rather than giving us a coda to the characters – overall the book really worked. More of a sci-fi adventure than a Michael Crichton-esque thriller, it was still a rollicking read that I really liked. I gave this 4 shattered gravity mirrors out of 5.

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