Grade A #BookReview: Picks and Shovels by Cory Doctorow

Grade A #BookReview: Picks and Shovels by Cory DoctorowPicks and Shovels (Martin Hench, #3) by Cory Doctorow
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: financial thriller, historical fiction, science fiction, thriller
Series: Martin Hench #3
Pages: 400
Published by Tor Books on February 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow returns to the world of Red Team Blues to bring us the origin story of Martin Hench and the most powerful new tool for crime ever the personal computer.

The year is 1986. The city is San Francisco. Here, Martin Hench will invent the forensic accountant--what a bounty hunter is to people, he is to money--but for now he's an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way around a city still reeling from the invention of a revolutionary new technology that will change everything about crime forever, one we now take completely for granted.

When Marty finds himself hired by Silicon Valley PC startup the Three Wise Men to investigate a group of disgruntled ex-employees who've founded a competitor startup, he quickly realizes he's on the wrong side. Marty ditches the greasy old guys running Three Wise Men without a second thought, utterly infatuated with the electric atmosphere of Magenta Women's Enterprise. Located in the heart of the Mission, this group of brilliant young women found themselves exhausted by the predatory business practices of Three Wise Men and set out to beat them at their own game, making better computers and driving Three Wise Men out of business. But this optimistic startup, fueled by young love and California-style burritos, has no idea the depth of the evil they're seeking to unroot or the risks they run.

In this company-eat-company city, Martin and his friends will be lucky to escape with their lives.

My Review:

When I picked up Red Team Blues two years ago, it looked like a standalone. I absolutely LOVED it, but I just didn’t see how it could ever be more than a one-off. Forensic accounting just isn’t all that exciting – but the story did an excellent job of playing into that assumption. To the point where forensic accounting in general might not be all that thrilling, but the situations that Martin Hench gets himself into while doing his job certainly are.

That Marty is a terrific raconteur telling his own story made the whole thing work – and work WAY better than I expected. But I still expected it to be a one-off. Two books later, it’s pretty clear that I was wrong – and I’m glad about it.

The Martin Hench series reads like it’s been written backwards. That first book, Red Team Blues, took place in the present. The second book, The Bezzle, turned the clock back to 2006, when Marty was very much in his prime. (Meaning that this books takes place before either of the others and a new reader could start here and be just FINE.)

This latest book, Picks and Shovels, goes all the way back to the beginning. This is Marty’s ‘origin story’, the story of how Marty became the man that readers know and love from Red Team Blues.

So it begins with Marty flunking out of MIT because he’s discovered the one, true love of his life. Just as so many people did in the mid to late 1970s, Marty was introduced to personal computers at the dawn of that revolution – and it swept him away.

It also swept him out of MIT, into an Associates Degree program at UMass Boston where he was introduced to the Apple ][ Plus and the revolutionary program VisiCalc. As it turns out, spreadsheets made Marty’s world go round, and his rare combination of skills, the ability to create complex business models AND the accounting background to engineer or especially reverse-engineer a company’s financial statements, turned what most saw as a ‘hobby’ into a satisfying, sustaining and surprisingly fascinating career.

The story in Picks and Shovels also sets up the pattern of Marty’s life – at least as he tells it. Because, this origin story, like the stories of the life that follows after it, is the story of how Marty dives head-first into a job, discovers that his employers are not on the side of the angels, and then puts himself on the side of the angels by the most expedient method possible.

Unfortunately for Marty, but fortunately for the reader, Marty’s expedient methods of switching sides usually piss off the villains in a way that is exponentially worse than if he’d been professional about the whole mess. He ends up making lifelong grudges while thinking that he’s the good guy. Which he mostly is even though his self-righteous cluelessness creates even more enemies than he needed to. On the other hand, it creates good friends, too.

That, along with telling the story of how Marty got to be the Martin Hench of Red Team Blues, Picks and Shovels is also steeped in the early ‘glory days’ of the Silicon Valley ‘gold rush’ and the whole thing is told in Marty’s wry, witty and often self-deprecating story, combines two great stories into one terrific tale.

Escape Rating A: I fully admit that there’s a certain amount of nostalgia in just how much I enjoyed this book. I built my first computer out of a kit. In 1979. Meaning that I remember this period entirely too well. I even lived some of it. Scarier still, I’m realizing not just that Marty and I are about the same age, but that he’s exactly the sort of guy I dated back then. And I’m a bit freaked out about all of that. I’m also VERY weirded out that a time period that I have adult memories of has become historical fiction.

Because this is stuff I remember as it happened, I found Marty’s story about the early days of personal computing and the rise of Silicon Valley to be a bit like the fable about the frog in the pot of water that is slowly turned up to boil. Not that the situation is quite as bad as that poor frog’s, but rather in the way that Picks and Shovels is very much grounded in real events in the way that what started out at least seemingly sane got overwhelming surprisingly fast but the people in the soup were too busy to notice. Those years were every bit as chaotic as Marty describes.

Where the water really starts boiling, to stretch the metaphor, is the way that the story adds in the fictional elements in ways that are utterly plausible. Because, while this particular crap didn’t happen, crap like it very much did. To the point where I had to look to see if the setup was based semi-obvious on a real company, although if it is I couldn’t find it.

But there were plenty of situations of the kind of built-in customer lock-in and the jacking of prices because companies and organizations were held hostage, not just during the 1980s but even into the 1990s in some niche applications. It was all as wild and wooly as portrayed.

The situation does eventually fly right over-the-top, but until that point most of it parallels stuff that really happened, if not necessarily all in one single combination.

The story, and the series as a whole, works because of Marty’s voice as a character. Marty is the one telling this story. So, of course, Marty is the hero of his story, as we all are the heroes of OUR own stories – even the villains. But Marty is a likable, intelligent and a thoughtful character. His head is an interesting place to be – at least as he tells it. And this story makes it easy to see how the Marty we met in Red Team Blues got to be that person even though he’s not fully baked in Picks and Shovels.

That’s what origin stories are for, after all. This particular origin story turned out to be a doozy.

OTOH, it’s hard to imagine the series diving back any further into Marty’s past. Meaning that the one-off could be a three-off and be done. Howsomever, based on what we’ve learned about Marty over these three books, I’m confident that Marty has PLENTY more stories to tell about his escapades in the years between Picks and Shovels and Red Team Blues. And I’d be happy to read them all!

A- #BookReview: The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton

A- #BookReview: The Fourth Consort by Edward AshtonThe Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction
Pages: 288
Published by St. Martin's Press on February 25, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A new standalone sci-fi novel from Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (the inspiration for the major motion picture Mickey 17).
Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.
That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.
Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.
When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.
Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?

My Review:

I have to admit that when I started this book I had absolutely no idea where it was going – because it wasn’t like any of the author’s previous books, Mickey7, Antimatter Blues or Mal Goes to War. I started this one, tried to figure out where it was going, set it aside, came back, started over and then suddenly – I kind of got it.

Or at least I got the ways that it actually was sorta/kinda like the author’s previous work – particularly Mickey7 and Antimatter Blues. What those two and this book have in common are a similar sideways view of a scene that has been oft repeated in SF and generally follows a whole trilogy’s worth of standard tropes.

For Mickey7 and Antimatter Blues it was a VERY sideways and twisted take on so-called ‘golden worlds’, very-long-haul colony ships and establishing human colonies.

In The Fourth Consort it’s about the interplay of mercantile space empires with first contact and it manages to go some places that no one has gone before – as well as some places that usually go a whole lot better than Deacon Graves’ experience with the minarchs and the stickmen.

What sets this story apart is that it is told far, far, far from any position of human superiority. Deacon Greaves seems to be utterly clueless about his and humanity’s place in the grand scheme of the universe even after three years aboard the Unity ship the Good Tidings.

But then, the system seems to be designed to pretty much keep him as a blank slate for as long as he manages to last. Cannon fodder doesn’t need to be all that well-informed, after all. Too much information might lead to critical thinking – and the powers that be, meaning the top-of-the-mercantile-empire-food-chain ammies who run the Unity, can’t have that.

But the ammies have left Deacon and his senior human partner, Neera, stranded on the minarchs’ home planet in a face off with the stickmen who represent the ammies’ mercantile enemy, the Assembly. The two factions are in a contest to get the native civilization, the insectoid minarchs, on their side and into their alliance.

The three factions, the stickmen, the minarchs, and Deacon, understand each other’s words but not each other’s cultures and contexts. They have biases and assumptions and prejudices. They might have common ground but they might not be able to find it.

Meanwhile, the native minarchs are in the midst of what could be a civil war, a coup, or just their normal if violent method of changing governments.

But both the stickmen and the minarchs have made one really big mistake about the humans. The minarchs and the stickmen are both insectoid species. They understand each other’s chitin as armor, and see each other’s mandibles and claws as weapons.

They both see humans as clear and obvious prey. An assumption that will bite both species, perhaps not with mandibles, but still, in the ass.

Escape Rating A- : There’s a high probability that this will remind a lot of readers of the famous, classic, beautiful, marvelous Star Trek Next Gen episode Darmok. And honestly, any writer who manages to get even in the neighborhood of the feels that episode struck is doing a good thing.

The Fourth Consort may even remind readers a bit of The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler – which is a bit more apropos than I thought at first because of the ammies who are, indeed, ammonites.

But the real comparison is that all three stories, Darmok, The Mountain in the Sea and The Fourth Consort are all stories about the difficulties of communication between species that do not share frames of reference, and just how easily communication can get far off-track because of what each party believes they know about the others that turns out to be oh-so-wrong.

Ironically, the ammies are relying on those miscommunications when it comes to their human employees/clients/patsies. It’s pretty clear by the end of the story that the ammies have a very low opinion of humans but then it seems like they have a similar low opinion of all the other races they come across.

But I could be making an incorrect assumption as well.

What makes this story finally work – and what makes it so hard to get stuck into in the first place – is that the three parties, the humans, the stickmen and the minarchs, have mistaken or conflated word by word translation for interpretation. They need to understand the cultural basis of each other’s communication and simply don’t. Every interaction is fraught and goes awry even when the participants walk away not knowing that it did.

What makes the situation even more difficult is that it seems like everyone who has ever told Deacon anything about the situation in which he currently finds himself – everyone who is supposedly on his side that is – has deliberately misled him. He’s certainly capable of lying but he seems to be a fairly straight shooter. But the unreliability – to say the least – of all of his sources of information makes him appear to be a liar to both the stickmen and the minarchs when the truth is that he simply doesn’t have enough real info to work with.

Which means that a good bit of the story leaves the reader wondering when or if Deacon is going to wise up, at all or ever. That he does in the end leads to an unexpected – especially to Deacon – ending that is as surprising as it is satisfying.

A- #BookReview: The Serpent Under by Bonnie MacBird

A- #BookReview: The Serpent Under by Bonnie MacBirdThe Serpent Under (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure #6) by Bonnie MacBird
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sherlock Holmes Adventure #6
Pages: 375
Published by Collins Crime Club, Harper Collins on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Holmes and Watson face treachery and danger in the latest full-length thriller by Bonnie MacBird, author of the bestselling Sherlock Holmes novel Art in the Blood . Murder, jealousy, and deceit underscore three interlocking mysteries as Holmes and Watson take on a high profile case at Windsor Castle, a boy drowned in the Serpentine, and a crusading women’s rights activist who suspects a traitor in her organisation. The cases send them into danger into locales as varied as the palace itself, a dockland cannery, an arts and crafts atelier, and a gypsy encampment. But is there peril underfoot as well – right at 221B Baker Street? The twisting, breathlessly plotted conjoined mysteries that Bonnie MacBird is known for provide a thrill ride that will delight Sherlockians worldwide.

My Review:

There are a whole lot of serpents in this latest entry in the Sherlock Holmes Adventure series (after What Child is This?), of the reptilian as well as the human kind. A disconcerting number of them end up dead – again of both kinds – in this mystery that includes a surprisingly high body count for a detective who keeps his partner around, at least in part, because it’s Watson who is good with a gun.

On the other hand, there’s a BOMB, and those always cause a lot of collateral damage.

It begins with a dead body – as so many of the best mysteries do. The ‘Palace’ comes calling at 221b Baker Street, in the ‘person’ of a royal carriage and a coachman fully prepared to whisk Holmes and Watson off to Windsor Castle, whether they have other plans or not.

Which, come to think of it, describes more than a little about how this case progresses. The ‘high and mighty’ – and not just those at court – believe they can drag Sherlock Holmes around, order him to provide solutions at times of their choosing, all the while refusing to answer his questions so that he can FIND those solutions.

It’s both fun and frustrating, both for Holmes and for the reader, as we’re used to seeing him as the master of his domain – because he generally was. But this Holmes is still in his early 30s and isn’t quite there yet. He’s still at the ‘faking it until he makes it’ stage more than a bit. But he’s getting there and this reader at least is wondering if cases like this one are what gave him the push to get there as fast as possible.

I digress, but only a bit. I’ll do it again later.

The Palace has commandeered Holmes because they’ve got a nasty puzzle on their hands and need to get it solved before the circumstances get out – as they inevitably will. One of the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting was found at Windsor, stone-cold dead and seemingly the victim of suicide.

And that’s the way the Palace Guard wants to play it – so they can bury it and her as fast as possible. Literally sweep the dead woman under the rug.

The problem is that Miss Jane Wandley was extensively and extremely professionally tattooed just before her death. With a snake. Two snakes, actually, both eating their own tails in the ouroboros form, including a significant amount of the tattoo on her face with the heads of the snakes inked on top of her head and hidden under her artfully dressed hair.

She didn’t do THAT to herself. She didn’t kill herself either, as Holmes easily proves in spite of the palace functionaries having cleaned and moved the corpse and the crime scene while destroying an unconscionable amount of evidence.

And it is from that shocking point that the case sends out tendrils and tentacles (yes, I know that snakes don’t have tentacles but it still fits) as well as a whole lot of deadly fangs and death rattles all over the country as Holmes looks into every nook and cranny and snake’s nest to figure out who the real snake in this case is and what part of their own past tail, or tale, they are attempting to eat in their utter destruction of Jane Wandley and her entire family.

Escape Rating A-: The ouroboros image, that snake eating its own tail, turned out to be the perfect metaphor for this book! At the center of this insane mystery is a plot – and a pain – that twists through the story and back on itself – even as it reaches into the long ago but clearly not dead enough past of its perpetrator as well as its many victims.

Even as it also twists through some fascinating bits of history, as this takes place as the Victorian Era is winding towards its inevitable close while the fruits of the Industrial Revolution shape what is to come – and a bit of what comes in this mystery as well.

The Wandley family, as the current victims of this insane mess of a case, represent the crossroads between the old and the new. Jane seems to have been a paragon of the old female virtues even if she was a bit of a tyrant – or especially because. But her younger sister is VERY active in the women’s suffrage movement, while her brother is an artist working for Christie’s auction house and gallery – then an influential force in the lucrative Arts & Crafts artistic movement and still extant today.

The design inked on Jane’s face was drawn by her brother Clarence for Christie’s, while the women’s rights group that her sister Kate belongs to has been the target of a snake of its own, setting them up for violent encounters with the police designed to discredit their movement as a gaggle of hysterical females.

While it’s clear to both Holmes and the reader that someone has it out for the Wandley family, it’s only when he dives deeply into the past that he is able to follow the twisted path of an even more twisted mind to find the dark beginning to this old, cold plan for revenge.

This case, like the previous cases in this series, is every bit as twisty and even confounding as those of the original canon. Howsomever, what makes this variation interesting in its own right is just how much it owes to more recent portrayals of this archetypical duo.

Through Watson’s eyes, we’re allowed to see a bit more of what makes Holmes tick – and occasionally, pardon the pun, tock. Because Holmes is portrayed as being neuroatypical – even if it wasn’t called that in his time – and being aware that he marches to the beat of a slightly different drummer. Just as Watson is aware that Holmes needs him as a sounding board and audience even if he never takes Watson’s advice. Occasionally, Watson doesn’t take Holmes’ advice either, as they both demonstrate in this case.

Also, one of the things that is clear if you go back and read the original stories with a fresh eye, is that Holmes in the original was very much a man of his time – with all the predilections and prejudices thereof. In the case of The Serpent Under, as has been true for the other books in this series, we observe Holmes in situations that make it clear that this Holmes has been written a bit more for our time in his respect for people that late Victorian society did look down upon with extreme prejudice. He never leaps to what would have been the easy conclusion about the perpetrator of this particular case, that either the Roma people did it, or were at least guilty of something that precipitated it, that Clarence Wandley or his male lover were responsible purely because they are homosexual, or that Kate Wandley must have caused it all because women’s rights advocates are all hysterical. Or even worse, that Jane Wandley must have provoked her own murder merely because she was female.

There’s none of that and it makes the case that much more complicated because this Holmes does not succumb to taking any of the easy ways out.

I did say I’d digress one more time before I close, and that digression regards the timeline of this series. The original Holmes stories were not published in chronological order, and this series does not seem to be either. Which led me to a deep dive about when they were set and whether or not Mrs. Mary Watson (née Morstan) was still alive at this particular point in time. Which she was but Watson never mentions why he seems to be rooming with Holmes at 221b while he’s got a wife somewhere. Previous books have at least mentioned the poor woman being off visiting relatives!

The second part of my timeline digression has to do with one of the usually fixed points in the Holmesian timeline. Specifically, Holmes’ encounter with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, which took place April 24-May 4, 1891. That’s barely a month after this story takes place, but there isn’t even a Moriarty in sight in this particular interpretation. Which means that I’m wondering really, really hard about just how that’s all going to work out in the next book. If it does at all. We’ll certainly see in the hopefully not too distant future.

Of course, this Holmes’ Moriarty might have been encountered in the one earlier books I haven’t read yet,  The Three Locks. (I absolutely cannot believe that Vidocq is Moriarty. If THAT turns out to be the case I need to go out and buy a hat so I can eat it!) Clearly I need to find out post haste. Which means I’ll be picking up that book even sooner than I thought!

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 2-9-25

This was certainly an excellent reading week, with A+ books to kick off and close out the week. I adored The Silverblood Promise, and it’s the first thing that gave me real readalike feels for In the Shadow of Lightning. Now I’m stuck waiting for book two in BOTH series. That’s ARRGGGHHHH but it’s a good ARRGGGHHHH. Symbiote just plain gave me the chills, not just for the setting but for the whole entire story. I think I’m glad the author left the door open for a second book, because I want to read what happens next while at the same time I don’t want to know what happens next because I expect it to make the Alien movies look like the proverbial ‘Sunday School picnic’ in comparison.

I needed a cuddle after Symbiote – and you might too so consider that a warning – so this week’s (not just) cats picture is of ALL my boys cuddled close, with a blissful Tuna head-washing a rather sleepy George in the shelter of Galen’s slippered feet.

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the January Wellness, Super Bowl & Valentine’s Day Giveaway Event!
$10 Gift Card or $10 Books in the Winter 2024-2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Blog Recap:

A+ #AudioBookReview: The Silverblood Promise by James Logan
B #BookReview: The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen by Yuta Takahashi, translated by Cat Anderson
Grade A #BookReview: Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood
B #BookReview: At the Fount of Creation by Tobi Ogundiran
A+ #BookReview: Symbiote by Michael Nayak
Stacking the Shelves (639)

Coming This Week:

The Serpent Under by Bonnie MacBird (#BookReview)
The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton (#BookReview)
Picks and Shovels by Cory Doctorow (#BookReview)
Do Me A Favor by Cathy Yardley (#AudioBookReview)
I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming (#BlogTour #BookReview)

Stacking the Shelves (639)

This week’s stack needs a new category! The two creepiest covers are Girl in the Creek and The Knight and the Butcherbird, although I’m also giving some side-eye in that department to Hemlock & Silver.

The prettiest covers, also the two books with the completely opposite titles, are Heir of Light and Written on the Dark, with the most adorable cover award going to Bodies and Battlements. Heir of Light is also one of the books I’m most looking forward to, along with Thaumaturgic Tapas. Although I’m technically not looking FORWARD to Thaumaturgic Tapas because I was looking forward so hard that I’ve already started it!

For Review:
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
Bodies and Battlements (Ravensea Castle #1) by Elizabeth Penney
Everything is Probably Fine by Julia London
The Game is Murder by Hazell Ward
Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner
Heir of Light (Lessons of the Academia #2) by Michelle Sagara
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow
Love at First Sighting by Mallory Marlowe
Thaumaturgic Tapas (Hidden Dishes #3) by Tao Wong (eARC and audio)
The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam (Hart and Mercy #3) by Megan Bannen
Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay


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A+ #BookReview: Symbiote by Michael Nayak

A+ #BookReview: Symbiote by Michael NayakSymbiote by Michael Nayak
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: horror, science fiction, technothriller, thriller
Pages: 400
Published by Angry Robot on February 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

World War III rages, and the scientists at the South Pole are thankful for the isolation – until a group of Chinese scientists arrive at the American research base with a dead man in their truck. The potential for a geopolitical firestorm is great, and, with no clear jurisdiction, the Americans don’t know what to do. But they soon realize the Chinese scientists have brought far more with them than the body…
Within seventy-two hours, thirteen others lie dead in the snow, murdered in acts of madness and superhuman strength. An extremophile parasite from the truck, triggered by severe cold, is spreading by touch. With rescue impossible for months, it is learning from them. Evolving. It triggers violent tendencies in the winter crew, and, more insidiously… The beginnings of a strange symbiotic telepathy.
From an exciting new voice comes this propulsive SF-thriller, infused with authentic details about life in one of the world’s harshest, most mysterious landscapes, Antarctica.

My Review:

Four years from now – just think about that for a minute. Four years from right NOW. The world is on the brink of World War III.

And that’s not necessarily the most frightening part of the story!

The fears and frights and scares and outright terrors are layered in this OMG DEBUT novel, to the point where the reader’s heart is pounding alongside all the rest of the characters. I say ‘rest’ of the characters because frankly, if this is that close then we’re already in it and it’s already all of us.

A map of Antarctica showing the location of the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station (circled)

But those layers of fear may start with just thinking about how close this might be, but the part of the story that grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go is the part that happens far, far away, in the remotest place on Earth.

Over an entirely too short 72 hours in the midst of the long Antarctic winter, the tiny overwinter crew at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is reduced from 41 scientists, technicians and support crew to just FIVE scarred and scared survivors after the station is invaded.

In the midst of the Third World War that is happening in the world at large, the crew at the U.S. controlled South Pole fears that the vehicle heading their way from the Chinese-controlled Dome A is the vanguard of that invasion.

And it is – but not in the way that anyone thinks. It’s not the three starving Chinese men who are the threat – it’s the dead man in the back, the one who dashed himself against the walls until he died.

He had a passenger. (Technically, the dead man had a host of passengers.) In the best SF horror thriller tradition, those passengers, a lab experiment gone much too successfully and entirely too wrong, have plans of their own.

Geographic South Pole

Escape Rating A+: There are so many ways to think/talk/write about Symbiote – and they ALL work. The whole thing was a WOW. (Admittedly, a WOW I had to stop reading at 1 am, even though I had less than an hour left. I could have finished. And I’d probably have been awake for the rest of the night as a result. It’s that kind of WOW.)

The horrors, as I said, are layered. There’s the World War III aspect, which is touched on just enough to give the reader the shivers, which then gets subsumed in all the other horrors, only to rear its ugly head again at the end.

Underneath the World War III scares and the political maneuverings that go with it is the horror so brilliantly pointed out in the first Jurassic Park movie, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” The results are not actually dissimilar, although part of the horror leans a bit on another famous, and much older quote from Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

One of the biggest, and most in the moment layers of the horrors in Symbiote is very definitely the human equation.

An aerial view of the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station taken in about 1983. The central dome is shown along with the arches, with various storage buildings, and other auxiliary buildings such as garages and hangars.

The small crew of overwinter “polies” is, as they are every year, alternately hard working and bored, often introverted but stuck in the enforced intimacy of a VERY TINY small town, isolated from the whole entire rest of the world and quite possibly just a bit – or a lot – cracked in one way or another.

There’s also a deep, resentful divide between the scientists – the ‘beakers’, and the techs and support crew – the ‘loggers’. On top of that there’s a huge gender imbalance, three men for every woman. It’s a pressure cooker on multiple axes and the stew gets aside to cook for a nine-month season. It’s not really a surprise that it boils over at the best of times – which this particular overwinter absolutely is not.

In other words, the story in Symbiote had more than enough stress factors to go to the ‘dark side’ from the human parts of the equation alone. And to some extent those human factors continue to drive events even after not all the humans are exactly still or just merely human.

And it’s those human factors that give the story its compulsive, breakneck pace. Because it’s the humans that we care about – and we do. We absolutely do. From the beginning, when it just seems like the scares come from humans just being human and some of them being shitty humans, we already have our hero, our sidekicks and most definitely our villains.

A photo of the station at night. The new station can be seen in the far left, the electric power plant is in the center, and the old vehicle mechanic’s garage in the lower right. The green light in the sky is part of the aurora australis.

As the snow gets deeper and the shit gets WAY more complicated, so do the motivations of ALL the players – and the reader gets even more invested as each character learns something new and shitty about themselves – and stands or folds under the weight of that knowledge.

I got so caught up in this story I barely stopped to sleep while I still could. When I finished, I found the ending cathartic enough – and yet still open. Because it reads like this chapter may be done, but there is plenty of story yet to come.

As there should be. Because the survivors have merely managed to survive the horror they faced in their isolated base. The huge, horrifying issues that brought this mess to their snowy doorstep are out in the wider world – and have yet to be addressed. Even though one of those messes already clearly has plans to address them.

#BookReview: At the Fount of Creation by Tobi Ogundiran

#BookReview: At the Fount of Creation by Tobi OgundiranAt the Fount of Creation (Guardians of the Gods, #2) by Tobi Ogundiran
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, historical fantasy
Series: Guardians of the Gods #2
Pages: 224
Published by Tordotcom on January 28, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The fate of the Orisha will be decided in the concluding volume of the Guardian of the Gods duology, inspired by Yoruba mythology.Perfect for fans of N. K. Jemisin, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Daughters of Nri, and Godkiller.For four hundred years, the world's remaining Orisha have fought to survive the rapaciousness of the soul-stealing Godkillers and the charismatic words of the singular, mysterious figure who leads them, known as the Teacher. Now they seek to kill the one person whose existence defies their very mandate.Now that Ashâke carries within herself the spirits of the surviving Orisha, she is on the hunt for allies who can help her defeat the encroaching army of Godkillers. But their influence is everywhere, and no one is immune―not even Ashâke. If she is to succeed, Ashâke will need to answer the question the Godkillers pose―are the Orisha even worth saving?

My Review:

I think I’m going to have to talk ‘around’ this story before I can get to talking ‘about’ this story because that’s the problem I had with reading the story and, as it turns out, with writing this review.

For a short book, it took me a rather long time to get into it, and it’s only now that I can see why that happened as well as what made it work in the end.

The first book in the Guardians of the Gods duology, In the Shadow of the Fall, drove me batty because it didn’t feel like a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. And even though it was clearly part one of a duology, that part still needed an ending – which it didn’t feel like it got.

I expected a cliffhanger, but instead the book read like it fell off a cliff – and took the reader right along with it.

It was a LOT of setup – necessary as background but frustrating in the character development. Then suddenly both Ashâke and the reader learn that everything she was taught was a lie and that all of her actions based on that lie were a deadly and dreadful mistake.

Now, in the duology’s conclusion, we learn the truths behind the lie that Ashâke was taught, the cost of her mistaken belief, not just to herself but to her entire world, and the revelation of the trick that lay behind it all.

In this particular story of discontented trickster gods and the manipulations they wield to get their way, it’s still a bit of a two-man grift – even if both are deceiving each other as much, or more, than they are the world at large.

Escape Rating B: For this reader, just as with the first book, it felt like the beginning of this half of the story was drifting rather than moving forward. After finishing, I realized that the story felt like it was drifting because the protagonist, Ashâke, was herself in a state of drift.

She’s not acting, she’s reacting, and she’s reacting to the drives and whims of the four active gods, for whom she is the combination of guardian, avatar, and only living channel. She was taught to see the gods, called Orisha in the West African myths in which this story is rooted, as all-powerful over the individual aspects that each individual Orisha represents.

And they ALL exploit that belief mercilessly because they have, in truth, lost control and are desperate to maintain some semblance of it.

Meanwhile, the social and political situation is out of control. The Orisha – and Ashâke – have been reduced to desperate straits because a charismatic ‘teacher’ has swayed the hearts and minds of the people who once worshiped the Orisha. Ashâke and the gods she guards are on the run and running out of room in which to keep running.

No one makes good decisions in such conditions – not even gods.

The final confrontation is huge and cathartic and is a truth that sets the people and even the Orisha free. Everyone, it seems, but Ashâke herself, who finally takes the position that was always meant to be hers. All she needed to do was rise to it in spite of all the things and people and even gods that stood in her way.

Grade A #BookReview: Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood

Grade A #BookReview: Dead in the Frame by Stephen SpotswoodDead in the Frame: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery by Stephen Spotswood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Pentecost and Parker #5
Pages: 384
Published by Doubleday on February 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The most dramatic installment yet in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost and Parker series, as Will scrambles to solve a shocking murder before Lillian takes the fall for the crime.

NEW YORK CITY, 1947: Wealthy financier and ghoulish connoisseur of crime, Jessup Quincannon, is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Means, motive, and a mountain of evidence leave everyone believing she's guilty. Everyone, that is, except Willowjean “Will” Parker, who knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it.

With Lillian locked away in the House of D–New York City’s infamous women’s prison–Will is left to root out the real killer. Was it a member of Quincannon’s murder-obsessed Black Museum Club? Maybe it was his jilted lover? Or his beautiful, certainly-sociopathic bodyguard? And what about the mob hit-man who just happened to disappear after the shots were fired?

With the city barreling toward the trial of the century, each day brings fresh headlines and hints of long-buried scandals from Lillian’s past. Will is desperate to get her boss out from behind bars before her reputation is destroyed. Because the House of D is no kind place, especially for a woman with multiple sclerosis. Or one with so many enemies. Her health failing and targeted by someone who wants her dead, Lillian needs to survive long enough to take the stand.

With time running out on both sides of the prison walls, Will and Lillian must wager everything to uncover who put their thumb on the scales and a bullet in Quincannon’s head. Before Lady Justice brings her sword down, ending Pentecost and Parker's adventures once and for all.

My Review:

The Women’s House of Detention at 6th Avenue near West 9th Street in 1939.

This fifth entry in the Pentecost and Parker series begins with celebrated, hated, envied, feared, private investigator Lillian Pentecost on her way to the Women’s House of Detention at 6th Avenue near West 9th Street in New York City, under arrest for a murder that she surely did not commit.

Not that either the NYPD or the criminal justice system can see their way to that conclusion – at least not yet. The frame around Pentecost fits much too well, and there are too many people in the NYPD who have been itching to see this successful, intelligent woman fall. Of course the press is having a literal field day because everyone loves a scandal, and people especially love seeing the high and mighty cut down to size.

Pentecost’s right-hand woman, Willowjean Parker, comes back from her first-ever vacation to find her boss in handcuffs, their property being ransacked, and cops and reporters besieging the place. It seems as if the entire city wants a piece of Lillian Pentecost – only because they do.

This is the job that Will Parker has been training for, to become the lead investigator of Pentecost and Parker Investigations. That has been inevitable from the very first, marvelous book in this series, Fortune Favors the Dead, when Pentecost took Parker on as her assistant. Not because she wanted an assistant, but because Lillian Pentecost had been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and she knew that her time as the lead investigator of her own agency was inevitably running out.

Now that it has, possibly temporarily but certainly abruptly, while Pentecost is behind bars and bail has been denied, it’s up to Will to ask herself what Lillian Pentecost would do – and do it. No matter how high the deck is stacked against them both. Pentecost is depending on her, and Willowjean Parker will not be found wanting. Whatever it takes.

Escape Rating A: The entire Pentecost and Parker series has been an edge-of-the-seat thrill ride from the very beginning in Fortune Favors the Dead, through Murder Under Her Skin, Secrets Typed in Blood, Murder Crossed her Mind and now this latest page-turner, Dead in the Frame.

What initially drew me into this series was its homage to a classic mystery series that isn’t talked about much anymore, and that’s the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout. A series which I fully admit probably doesn’t wear well in the 21st century for all sorts of reasons.

But the concept of the Wolfe series was a partnership between an older detective who mostly refuses to leave his New York City brownstone and his younger assistant who does all the legwork and brings the case back to his boss. In the case of Pentecost and Parker, as the series began Pentecost was aware that she SHOULD be sticking to her brownstone, but can’t make herself do it as much as her doctor would prefer.

On the one hand, Pentecost and Parker are very much in the style of the noir fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, and Parker’s first-person chronicles of the cases resembles Wolfe’s junior partner Archie Goodwin in style and often substance. Howsomever, the lens through which Parker sees the world is VERY different from Goodwin’s. Parker is both female and queer, and grew up in as far over the wrong side of the tracks as possible as she literally ran away and joined the circus.

(If you’ve enjoyed Pentecost and Parker and you’re curious about their antecedents, the first book in the Nero Wolfe series is Fer-de-Lance. If you’re looking for a readalike for Pentecost and Parker, take a look at Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen.)

This particular entry in the series does a fantastic job of straddling the line between Parker’s now and ours, speaking both to the case itself and the reasons for it while at the same time using that vehicle to highlight issues that are very much a part of our present. Including, but very much not limited to, the way that Pentecost is tried in the press LONG before her actual trial because there are just so many powers-that-be that can’t bear to see a woman be independent, successful and show them up when they deserve it.

After taking a couple of days to think about this one, I think that what’s at the heart of this entry in the story is the issue of inevitability and the human response to knowing that an ending is coming. In a way, it’s all about, to paraphrase the poet Dylan Thomas, not going gently into that good night, and the form that the rage against the dying of the light takes. It’s about the conflict between revenge being a dish best served as cold as, and from, the grave versus “I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

All of that may seem a bit on the philosophical side, but it’s in there. And so is an absolutely cracking good mystery that sends both of our detectives through walks in the valley of the shadow of death and brings the inevitable changes that Pentecost has been staving off for years much closer much faster than her early hopes would have had it.

I have to say that the parts of this story where Pentecost is in the Women’s House of Detention are harrowing and also feel much too real – as the House of D most certainly was. Her treatment while incarcerated was entirely too typical of the treatment of prisoners in that nightmare of a place, and we go through that nightmare with her and feel her get both scared and scarred by it.

I was utterly caught up in the mystery, as I have been with every single one of their cases so far. I knew Pentecost was innocent but couldn’t see how she was going to get out from under – and for the longest time neither did she or Parker and it ratcheted the tension up to 11 the entire way.

The one thing that kept niggling at me is probably a result of my 21st century perspective having a disconnect with her post WW2 circumstances. I certainly understand why she hated the victim, and vice versa. But the information he was holding over Pentecost wasn’t about her, it was about her parents. I understand why no one would want that history dug up, but not why it was such a potentially huge scandal for Pentecost herself. Whatever the truth of that old matter, she herself can’t possibly be guilty of any of it as she was a child at the time. I expect to see that mess resolved, or at least as resolved as the dead past can be, in the next book in this series. Because that’s the story that Lillian Pentecost herself promised to work on next!

#BookReview: The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen by Yuta Takahashi, translated by Cat Anderson

#BookReview: The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen by Yuta Takahashi, translated by Cat AndersonThe Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen (Meals to Remember at the Chibineko Kitchen, #1) by Yuta Takahashi, Cat Anderson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: magical realism, sad fluff, world literature
Series: Meals to Remember at the Chibineko Kitchen #1
Pages: 192
Published by Penguin Books on February 4, 2025 (First published April 14, 2020)
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Your table awaits at the Chibineko Kitchen, where a soul-nourishing meal in the company of the resident kitten will transport you back in time to reunite with departed loved ones—for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and The Midnight Library.
In a remote seaside town outside of Tokyo, Kotoko makes her way along a seashell path, lured by whispers of an enigmatic restaurant whose kagezen, or traditional meals offered in remembrance of loved ones, promise a reunion with the departed. When a gust of wind lifts off her hat, she sees running after it a young man who looks like her recently deceased brother. But it’s not her brother; it’s Kai, the restaurant’s young chef, who returns her hat and brings her to the tiny establishment, where he introduces her to Chibi, the resident kitten, and serves her steaming bowls of simmered fish, rice, and miso soup—the exact meal her brother used to cook for her. As she takes her first delicious bite, the gulls outside fall silent, the air grows hazy, and Kotoko begins a magical journey of last chances and new beginnings.

My Review:

As I’ve been saying for the past couple of weeks, I’m looking for comfort reads right now. The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen looked like it would take care of that particular desire, and it certainly did.

The cover looked oh-so-familiar, so I had to look back, and it IS familiar. It’s very similar to the cover of What You Are Looking For Is In the Library, and the story is similar as well – although there’s no cat in the library. That would have made that lovely story perfect – which it nearly was anyway.

The story about this curious kitten, Chibi, and the kitchen (and café) by the sea that provides her with a home – and fish! – is as lovely and charming as Chibi herself is. It’s also more than a bit reminiscent of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, so if you liked that you’ll love this, especially if you think that a good story is made just that bit better by the addition of a cat.

In this particular story, or rather set of stories loosely linked by Chibi and her kitchen, the stories are all wrapped around love and loss and especially closure. They’re all hurt/comfort stories, even though for the most part, both the hurt and the comfort are provided by a loved one who has already passed.

The Chibineko Kitchen specializes in ‘remembrance meals’, meals that are prepared to invoke the deepest memories of the person who is gone. They’re not supposed to be ‘fancy’ meals – although they might be. It all depends on what tastes and smells will best and most bring the memory of their lost loved one to life, one final time.

Because that’s the magic of the Chibineko Kitchen. For the length of time that the freshly prepared meal steams in the air, the dead return, just long enough for a short but meaningful conversation.

In the case of Kotoko and her desperate need to speak with her brother Yuiti one last time, it’s Kotoko’s need to deal with her survivor’s guilt that prompts her to come to the Chibineko Kitchen. Her brother shoved her out of the way of the oncoming vehicle that killed him instead of her. He was the bright star in their family and she doesn’t believe she was worthy of his sacrifice and doesn’t know how to live without him. It’s his words that help her move on and help her to help their grieving parents as well.

In return, in gratitude, in shared connection or perhaps all of the above, Kotoko returns to the Chibineko Kitchen to help Kai, the owner of the little cafe, find his own closure, even as he gives that gift to others.

A sad, sweet and lovely story of hurt, and comfort, and paying it forward. It’s the quintessential ‘sad fluff’ story, that’s a bit sad, a whole lot fluffy and leads to a cathartic if not always happy ending. This was just the comfort read I was looking for on a misty, moisty, cloudy day.

Escape Rating B: I picked this up because I knew exactly what I’d be getting into. Even though I wasn’t familiar with the concept of ‘remembrance meals’, the idea of the whole, that by some bit of ‘magic’ or imagination people who had experienced a loss could get some closure through the concept is very similar to Before the Coffee Gets Cold. So if you liked that you’ll like this.

The format is very much like that book as well, along with What You Are Looking For Is In the Library, mixed with a bit of my personal favorite book of this type, The Kamogawa Food Detectives. In fact, if the idea of these books sounds interesting but you’re not so sure about the magical realism bits, definitely take a look at The Kamogawa Food Detectives because that particular series doesn’t rely on magic, but on research. Which is magical in its own right, but not of the foolish wand waving or visits from the beyond type.

The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen is all of those in a very big book blender, with a few ‘miaows’ from The Full Moon Coffee Shop added for extra adorableness – and cat hair.

What made this one end with just the right note was the resolution at the end. Both the revelation that it’s never worked for Kai himself because the preparation of a remembrance meal isn’t something one can do for oneself. It must be done out of love and care, and the problem that each of the visitors to the Chibineko Kitchen is that they don’t have a lot of that for themselves when they visit – and that’s true for Kai as well.

That a story that is filled with hurt and comfort and closure managed to have a happy ending after all wrapped this comfortable and comforting read up with a lovely bow. Which means that I’m delighted that this is the first book in a series, and that the second book, The Calico Cat at the Chibineko Kitchen (because of course the kitten will have grown up), will be available in English this summer.

A+ #AudioBookReview: The Silverblood Promise by James Logan

A+ #AudioBookReview: The Silverblood Promise by James LoganThe Silverblood Promise (The Last Legacy, #1) by James Logan
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy mystery
Series: Last Legacy #1
Pages: 521
Length: 17 hours and 2 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on April 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Lukan Gardova is a cardsharp, academy dropout, and - thanks to a duel that ended badly - the disgraced heir to an ancient noble house. His life consists of cheap wine, rigged card games and wondering how he might win back the life he threw away.When Lukan discovers that his estranged father has been murdered in strange circumstances, he finds fresh purpose. Deprived of his chance to make amends for his mistakes, he vows to unravel the mystery behind his father's death.His search for answers leads him to Saphrona, fabled city of merchant princes, where anything can be bought if one has the coin. Lukan only seeks the truth, but instead he finds danger and secrets in every shadow.For in Saphrona, everything has a price - and the price of truth is the deadliest of all.

My Review:

To take a page from a story not nearly as different as I expected it to be, “So naturally, our story begins where all great stories begin; with the seediest bar in town,” not with a missing contact but with a man attempting to piss his life away one drink and one shady card game at a time.

Lukan Gardova believes that he’s merely in the process of completing a job he started years ago, when he killed a man in a duel, his family paid the price with what little was left of their fortune, and Lukan left home in a storm of regret and recriminations.

He thought he had nothing left to return to. He wasn’t quite right seven years ago when he left, but he is when the story opens, when his past catches up with him. When he learns that his father was murdered and that the old man’s last words, written in his own blood, were Lukan’s name, the name of a glittering city far, far from his home in Parva, and a third word that might be a place or might be a name but almost certainly represents both a mystery and one last chance to do right by his father. A task that Lukan always thought the old man believed him incapable of.

But needs must and Lukan needs a purpose even more than he needs air to breathe and wine to drink. Not that he hasn’t done entirely too much of the latter over the years he’s been on the run from his past. From himself.

There’s one talent that Lukan Gardova has, above all others, a knack for getting himself into ever deeper piles of shit and trouble – and getting himself out alive. He’ll need all of that, and more than a little help from friends he hasn’t even met yet, to find his father’s murderer.

His quest begins in the fabled city of Saphrona, searching for a person, place or thing named Zandrusa. Lukan thinks what he has is a clue, but what he really has is a key. The key to a long-bubbling pot of corruption and conspiracy, facilitated by figures out of myth and nightmare.

A key to his father’s past. And, perhaps, a key to his own future. If he can manage to survive the pile of shit and trouble that his dubious gift has placed in his path. The odds are against him. Exactly what he expected.

Escape Rating A+: Some stories are very much “out of the frying pan and into the fire”, some are frying pans and fires all the way down. Lukan Gardova, on the other hand, the moment he lands on yet another already hot griddle the flames lick around the edges and he throws himself right into their path. Again, and again, and AGAIN.

Reading this felt like watching TV from behind the couch, with my hands covering my eyes to keep from seeing the onrushing disaster while peeking through my fingers to see if the hero might manage, yet again, to escape that onrushing disaster.

I found myself caught between the book and the audio, over and over again, because, as much as I really, really, really, NEEDED to find out what happened next, I also really didn’t want to see Lukan crash and burn – yet I expected it at every turn, much as he himself does. (Also, the audio voiced by Brenock O’Connor is EXCELLENT.)

From the very beginning, The Silverblood Promise had me hooked on its mystery and its protagonist every bit as much as Lukan himself is hooked on finding his father’s murderer. This story also scratched the itch left from my epic book hangover after finishing In the Shadow of Lightning. (I’m still waiting for the second book in that series. It’s been nearly three years. Come on already! PLEASE!)

But as much as Lukan reminds me of Demir with the similar openings of the two stories, with both men rotting their brains as fast as they can in very low places, not quite suicidal but not quite looking out for themselves either, trying to outrun their own demons and secretly hoping the demons will catch up anyway, Lukan also reminds me more than a bit of Kihrin from The Ruin of Kings and Kinch from The Blacktongue Thief. The story, OTOH strikes me as a readalike for City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky with a touch of the upcoming Idolfire by Grace Curtis. These are all stories that I loved so it’s not a surprise that I fell hard for this one as well.

I’ve read that it reminds a LOT of readers of The Lies of Locke Lamora, but I haven’t read that – YET. Let’s just say that the repeated comparison has moved that story considerably up the virtually towering TBR pile.

Back to Lukan, who is, in spite of his cynicism and snark, really just a big softy under his fractured and fraying armor – both literal and figurative. He’s on his last nerve pretty much all the time, and it shows. He’s the fool that rushes in where angels and demons would both fear to follow, someone who leaps over and over again never assuming that the net will appear. He leaps assuming that it will be pulled out from under him if it bothers to shimmer into existence at all – however briefly.

It’s just a part of what makes the story so compelling as the reader is always on the edge of their seat waiting to see what mess Lukan is going to fall into even as he escapes the previous mess by the skin of his teeth.

He’s one of those characters whose heart is in the right place even as entirely too many opponents are attempting to reach it between his fourth and fifth ribs. He doesn’t merely feel the fear and do his damndest anyway, he feels the fear, fucks himself up over it, and still does his damndest anyway even though his road to good intentions is paved with trapdoors.

I had an absolute blast following Lukan and his friends and frenemies as they find their way into the rot at the heart of Saphrona and out the other side – more or less intact – on the run yet again. I’m on pins and needles waiting for the next book in The Last Legacy series, The Blackfire Blade, coming in November. I’m definitely NOT waiting most of a year to read, or more likely listen to it this time around. Because Lukan’s journey has clearly just begun, and I can’t wait to see what trouble it leads him into next!