Hullo, dear reader! I’ve been blogging a lot this past week — unfortunately, none of it has been on my personal blog, The Grimoire Reliquary. I did put three new reviews out into the world, over at booknest.eu. I’ll toot my own horn here and share them with you, following the late, great axiom of #everythingiscontent!
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Thся was someting else, something special. A novel about an English teacher who goes back in time to stop Kennedy’s assassination should be challenge enough but King’s not about to deal with anything less than five different genres in this 850 page novel. For the full review, click here but if you’d like an excerpt, have at it:
Stephen King is the rare kind of author who does not allow himself to be bound by the staples of any one genre. He’s been writing a book or two a year for so long that the tools he once borrowed for his early works have now become so seamlessly his that in combining conventions of different genres he weaves stories quite unlike anything else out there.
Take for example the victim of this review, 11/22/63. I could label it as sci-fi, of course, because the central plot point of this novel is time travel. I could label it a thriller twice over, because during two—three, even—parts of the novel, it certainly borrows from murder mysteries, spy-craft novels and the like. I could easily call it a great romance because…I think you can figure that one out. Hell, it’s an excellent introduction to the history behind Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of Kennedy, with a number of artistic freedoms. It’s all this and beyond; an 850-page novel that’s more than the sum of its parts. This is one of those books that you owe to yourself to experience.
Thorn of the Night Blossoms (Scions of the Black Lotus #1) by J. C. Kang
This was a really fun novella because of the action and the China-inspired setting…but it’s also got a half-elven ninja-spy protagonist! A lot is done in a mere 93 pages, and I’m looking forward to digging into the next novellas in the series. Lookit here:
horn of the Night Blossoms is an excellent introduction to a world that’s beautiful and hideous in equal parts. This is best illustrated by “The Floating Wind”, the finest among many houses of pleasure both in its riches and in its finely trained girls. But the splendour and finery hide a cutthroat world of flesh peddling, information trade and manipulations both physical and magical in nature. The women of “The Floating Wind” are trained in the art of seduction from young girls but that’s far from the only skillset they learn; from a secret sign language to a myriad of abilities that would make a ninja blush, both in combat and outside it.
Our half-elven main character is Jie, the finest (or at least, most talented) operative produced by the Black Lotus clan in recent years. To the eyes of the uninitiated, however, she’s a Floret, a young woman who is still a virgin. But even then, Jie is special; because of her exotic blood and looks, hers is the most valuable “virgin price” not only in “The Floating Wind” but in all the province.
And the last review I penned over this last week is, drumroll, please…
Ch05en: Ivy by William Dickstein
I love superhero stories. This wasn’t quite what I expected and although I didn’t love it, I did have a decent — even good — time reading it! The review is here:
What is strangest about this novel is that I felt it was a prequel to the novel I came to expect based on the blurb. Here is a portion of the blurb:
“Ivy and Lochlan’s worlds collide in the small town of Choudrant, Louisiana—where the residents have more secrets than shopping malls. The lead Cape in Choudrant has defected, and an android might be the only one who can find out why. If he’s going to succeed, Lochlan will have to look for help in unlikely places and unlikely genes.”
This collision between Ivy and Lochlan takes place only in the last chapter of the novel. A lot of what happens before feels like inflated filler. This holds particularly true about Lochlan’s (he’s an android agent of the World Government) sections, which go into minute detail about anything and everything to do with android functionality, agent politicking and more. Well thought out, and I admire the effort…but it’s true what they say about magicians – if they show you everything about how their trick works, it’s no longer magical. Too many of the descriptions, in particular those that involved the android agent Lochlan, suffered from that; they made me conscious of someone doing the writing. Often, descriptions didn’t flow, leaving me aware of the words on the screen instead of allowing me to immerse myself fully into the world. Some of the dialogue between agents Lochlan and Khard (who seemed about as important to the overall Lochlan arc but slightly more likeable) came across as stilted, as well.
There you have it! What I was up to over the last week over at booknest.eu. If you’d like to check the full reviews, the links are above; and if not, I hope these excerpts might’ve given you a semblance of an idea as to what you can expect.
This week, I hope to write my review of Monstress Vol 2, The Blood! An essay on Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan is also in the works. Stay tuned!
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