2025/068: Bonds of Brass — Emily Skrutskie

I’m watching out for him, and no matter where he goes, I’ll be there to defend him. Even if it’s wrapped in layers upon layers of deception. Even if it can never last. [loc. 2515]

Ettian, as a child, survived the brutal invasion of his world (and the massacre of his family) by the Umber Empire. Seven years later, he's the star pilot at Rana's Military Academy -- until the day when his classmates attempt to assassinate Ettian's BFF, Gal, because Gal is the heir to ... the Umber Empire.

Oops.

Ettian doesn't think twice before saving his friend, but there's plenty of time for second thoughts later when the two of them are on the run, trying to get Gal to safety. Can Gal single-handedly transform the Umber Empire from the merciless juggernaut it's become under his mother's rule? Will he continue her quest for galactic domination? Or will he join the rebellion and fight to save Ettian's home world? (Also, will Ettian ever get to kiss him?)

First in a trilogy, this was great fun, though I did occasionally wonder why Ettian remained so devoted to Gal, who often seemed rather shallow. Much more interesting as a character was Ettian's new friend Wen, a con artist who he meets when trying to buy a used spaceship. Wen is chaos incarnate, clever and competent, a survivor to the core. She might be the most likeable person in the novel.

Huge twist at the end which was foreshadowed, but certainly not inevitable. I'm still trying to decide whether I want to read the rest of the trilogy: on the one hand, Bonds of Brass was well-written and well-paced (though everything speeded up and got twistier in the final few chapters) and the world universe-building was intriguing. On the other hand, Gal and Ettian's relationship didn't ring true for me -- though, again, that might be just me and my bad cold. (Which you will be pleased to hear has now faded away.)

2025/067: The Girl from Everywhere — Heidi Heilig

“The age of exploration is long over, amira. Now it’s the age of globalization. And once everyone agrees something is one way, all the other ways it could have been disappear.” [loc. 958]

Nixie Song is sixteen years old and lives aboard her father's pirate ship, the Temptation. This is not your usual pirate scenario, though, for the Temptation can sail to any place or time, as long as Nixie's father Slate has a hand-drawn map to that place. And given the fantastical nature of some cartography, their voyages are not limited to the mundane. Nix's best friend, Kash (short for Kashmir) seems to have originated in an Arabian Nights-flavoured city, while the ship is illuminated by glowing fish from a mythical land named Scandia. 

Nix is as much at home (or as much a stranger) in 21st-century New York as in 18th-century India. But her father, opium-addicted and probably bipolar, is obsessed by a single place and time: Honolulu, 1884, where Nix's mother died giving birth to her. He's determined to find a way back to save his lost love -- but then what will become of Nix?

I loved the mechanics of Navigation, the piracy, the ancient tombs, the tiger-smuggling and the sense of danger in the margins of the maps. (And Swag, the miniature dragon.) I liked Nix's pragmatism and competence -- she's the one in charge of trading, and she really wants to learn Navigation so that she can have a ship of her own --  though was less impressed with some of her more stubborn decisions. I liked the twisty and evolving plot, and the secondary characters, and the audacious heist in 19th-century Hawai'i, and the vividness of Heilig's locations. The romantic triangle, however, left me cold.

That said, my recollection of The Girl from Everywhere (which I bought in 2017!) is somewhat blurred by the bad cold I was enduring when I read it. I'd like to reread before embarking on the sequel, The Ship Beyond Time.

2025/066: Taking Stock — A L Lester

"…being decent about…you know.” He gestured vaguely. Portnoy nodded, interpreting his hand wave as he meant it…being a queer, shacking up with a criminal, having poor judgment in my personal life generally. [loc. 1475]

Another novel set -- coincidentally -- in the early 1970s, mostly in rural England. Laurie Henshaw has been working on his uncle's farm since his teens. At thirty-two, he has a stroke, and is struggling to accept that some things are now impossible for him. Meanwhile, in the City, Phil McManus is on extended leave after his boyfriend set him up to take the fall for an insider trading deal. He retreats to a country cottage to wallow.

They literally bump into one another at the local Post Office. (Yes, it is set in the past, when rural post offices existed.) It's nto a meet-cute, though. Laurie is mourning the loss of his strength and coordination: Phil is grieving his lost career and his London life. And it's not long since homosexuality was decriminalised: 'Phil hadn’t made a move or said anything and Laurie hadn’t liked to ask. You still didn’t, unless you were sure, despite the change in the law.' [loc. 1016]

Strong themes of found family (I liked Cat, a homeless girl who's found refuge at the farm) and echoes of a lost rural past. Lester evokes the period nicely: the possibility of simply going to ground and not being connected, the prejudice, the traces of old superstitions and beliefs, the existence of flourishing farms. A small gentle story which was just what I needed when I was in bed with a bad cold.

2025/065: Levitation for Beginners — Suzannah Dunn

...surely anyone could see that this new girl was . . . well, what? I wanted to say she was a liar, although I couldn’t think of any actual lies she’d told. It was more that she was somehow all lies, I thought: made of lies; one big lie. [loc. 1399]

The setting is June 1972, somewhere in the south of England. Deborah (who's looking back from the vantage point of her sixties) is one of a close-knit group of girls in their last year of primary school. Deborah is the clever one: come September, she'll be going to grammar school while all the rest of them go to the local comprehensive. She has a secret crush on Tutankhamun, a widowed Scottish mother given to gnomic pronouncements ('the way to make me strong, she thought, was to make me scared') and a love of swimming.

Then comes Sarah-Jayne, whose family moves into the Vicarage -- which allegedly has its own swimming pool -- and everything begins to change. Sarah-Jayne has a fancy haircut and a red trouser suit and proclaims herself in love with David Cassidy. Sarah-Jayne goes out for lunch with her sister's boyfriend Max, who lets her drink wine and buys her presents. Sarah-Jayne tries to teach the other girls to levitate. And Sarah-Jayne, Deborah realises, doesn't know the secret at the heart of her own family.

In some respects, nothing much happens in this novel: it's a vignette of rural life and undercurrents that are only vaguely apprehended by the narrator. In other ways, it's an unsettling story about lies and sexuality and adolescent friendships. I'm just a little younger than Deborah and I recognised so much of my own childhood in this novel: even the characters' names were the names of girls in my class at school. There's a marvellous passage in the first chapter (it convinced me to buy the book) about the underlying horrors of the Seventies: Deborah concludes the litany of dangers with "I’m only half joking when I say I’m surprised that any of us lived to tell the tale." 

Reading this was weirdly nostalgic, but also horrific. It made me wonder about the secrets I didn't know in our small village, the kinds of secrets that Deborah observes but doesn't understand. And it makes me glad that I was blithely ignorant.

I’ve been lucky, I’ve led a sheltered life and to this day no one else has ever looked at me the way that man did ... He knew before I did that I could see through him. Which meant I was in his way. [loc. 3271]

2025/064: The Incandescent — Emily Tesh

Demons were attracted to complexity and personhood. Laypeople assumed that this meant every magicians was on the brink of getting possessed all the tie, but really demons entering the mundane plane moved into complex and person-shaped spaces, like hermit crabs moving into shells. If you were unlucky enough to meet a magician with a demon looking out from behind their eyes, you could usually assume they'd invited it in. [loc. 225]

There are some books I read, and think about, and then review. There are others that I read, and think about, and then succumb to a reread before I review. The Incandescent is in the latter category, and I enjoyed it differently but just as much the second time through.

This is a dark academia novel, in the sense that it's set at a school for magic: but our protagonist is not a student, but Dr Walden (Saffy to her friends), 38 years old, Director of Magic at Chetwood School. Her career is her life, and she's constantly busy: teaching (the four students in her Upper Sixth Invocation group are important characters); negotiating with the demon in the staff room photocopier ('No representation without exsanguination!'); dealing with the Marshals, who police the school for stray demons; implementing a strict Personal Electronics Policy; filling out risk assessments for practical classes... 

Dr Walden is an alumna of the school herself, though she doesn't like to talk about the events of her final year: she is also a powerful magician. Everything goes pear-shaped when Nikki, one of her best students, summons something out of her league: and suddenly Dr Walden is fighting for her life, revisiting the catastrophe that happened when she was the star of the Upper Sixth, and revealing a dangerous secret to the abrasive (but attractive) Marshal Laura Kenning. 

The novel's plot is demon-heavy: none of your potions, herbalism et cetera, just invocation (demons), evocation (spells) and instantiation (alchemy). But the demons are as much characters as the humans, and more likeable than some. The school is vividly described (Tesh was a teacher, though possibly did not have to deal with a demonically-possessed photocopier) and the secondary characters -- from Walden's rather judgmental perspective -- well-observed. The magical system makes sense (though there was one element where I wondered how a magical oath might manifest; surely more efficiently than that?) and there's a strong sense of how this magical school fits into the real world: newsletters, legal responsibility and so on. 

But what I liked most was the journey from 'Dr Walden' (superiority complex, arrogance, cosplaying her grandmother, dry humour) to Saffy. I also liked the distinction between her two major adult relationships -- with Laura, and with Mark, a security advisor -- and how differently she thinks and feels about them. I loved the Phoenix, too, though I should not.

There's a point in the last third of the novel where everything changes, and it is truly shocking. Even on first read, I had to go back and reread a few pages to check whether what I thought had happened was what was on the page. It was. Splendidly done! The ending felt a little anticlimactic (but that's resolution for you) and there were a few loose strands that didn't seem resolved. (One character's employment, or rather who they're working for; another character being accepted in a new role...) But overall, an extremely enjoyable read with a relatable protagonist, a twisty plot and plenty of emotion.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 13th May 2025.

2025/063: The Tainted Cup — Robert Jackson Bennett

That’s the problem with the damned Empire these days . . . All these complacent bastards think the only thing that matters is which tiny beast is dancing in your blood, altering your brain, making you see and feel and think differently. The person an enhancement is paired with is just as important as what enhancement they get. And we get some say in what kind of person we are. We do not pop out of a mold. We change. We self-assemble. [p. 65]

I read and enthused about Robert Jackson Bennett's 'Divine Cities' trilogy, beginning with City of Stairs, though was a little disappointed by the trilogy's conclusion: that might be why I skipped the Founders trilogy (though I note I own the first volume). The Tainted Cup -- the first in yet another trilogy a new series (source), 'Shadows of the Leviathan' -- has been shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 2024, and was on offer, so I thought I'd give it a try.

In the Empire of Khanum, augmentations (temporary grafts, long-lasting suffusions) are used to shape living beings -- plants, animals and humans -- to imperial needs. Chief amongst those needs is the annual wet season, with its incursions of leviathans from the eastern ocean. The leviathans can be detected days or weeks before their arrival by the seaquakes which signal their movement out of the depths towards the continent. They are mountain-sized, unique, devastating. Walls are built to keep them out, and the Legion attempts to distract them with gunnery. (But every augmentation is sourced from the blood and bone of leviathans...)

The story opens with a death: or, rather, with the arrival of Dinias Kol, youthful apprentice to Iudex investigator Anagosa Dolabra, at the house where the death has occurred. An Imperial engineer has died in a peculiarly horrible fashion, burst apart by the explosive growth of vegetable matter from within his body. The household staff are not especially helpful, but Din, augmented to have perfect recall of every experience, returns to his master and recounts what he's seen and heard. Ana Dolabra -- eccentric, neurodivergent, constantly blindfolded ('best to keep the senses limited... too much stimulation drives a person mad') but able to read print with her fingertips -- deduces that the engineer was murdered, and that he may not be the only victim.

Din has some neurodivergence of his own (he's dyslexic, though has developed workarounds in order to keep this secret) but he can't comprehend Ana's leaps of intuition, or her rather brutal sense of humour. And this is their first murder case: until now, they've worked only on cases of pay fraud. Still, his stubborn determination pairs well with Ana's intense focus and gift for pattern recognition, and he discovers more about his own unique set of skills as well as learning to appreciate hers.

It's a pretty good murder mystery, obfucscated by the sheer biopunk weirdness of the setting: but what I liked most was the characterisation of the protagonists. Din's first-person narrative (like Doctor Watson's) gives us the chance to see Ana's brilliantly non-linear deductive process. I am looking forward to reading the second in the series (out now...).

A final thought: this is very much a society which thinks all the danger comes from outside, and has built up a framework to deal with an external threat while ignoring internal matters. This, from the author's afterword:

Regulations have their uses, but we cannot allow them to form the jar that will eventually be used to trap us and pickle us in our own brine. I wanted to write about civil servants and bold builders for that exact purpose. Keep up the fight! [p. 410]

2025/062: The Road to Roswell — Connie Willis

“Are you sure this here’s a good idea?” Joseph whispered to Francie. “In every dang Western I ever seen, people who pretend to get married end up really gettin’ hitched by the last reel.” [loc. 4613]

Tropetastic romantic comedy set in, and near, Roswell during a UFO festival. Francie is in Roswell to attempt to prevent her friend Serena marrying a UFO hunter, one of a series of unsuitable swains. She is abducted by ... well, by an alien, who she genders as male and soon nicknames Indy (for 'his' prowess with tentacles, reminiscent of Dr Jones' whip). They pick up a hitchhiker named Wade; then another UFO nut, a retiree who's a fan of Westerns, and an old lady who likes playing cards. Each, of course, has something to add to the plot, which mostly consists of driving around New Mexico and Nevada, learning to communicate with Indy, helping Indy search for a mysterious 'tsinibitai', and evading the FBI. Oh, and preventing an alien invasion.

I've enjoyed several of Willis's romcoms (though not in the last, er, twenty years, according to my blog) but this one felt rather shallow and even more improbable than my plot summary might suggest. Francie's fun, but superficial; Wade is obviously hiding something (which Francie never seems to consider is a possibility) and so is the elderly Western fan. And the elderly card-player. There is a romance which, despite apparently popping out of nowhere, was the obvious 'happy ending'. There are aliens, of varying types (but apparently at risk from rattlesnakes, despite biology). And somewhere under the romcom there's an interesting story about Monument Valley and aliens and language. Unfortunately, it's very well concealed.

I ended up returning this novel because of the plethora of unnecessary hyphenations -- 15 in the first chapter or so, including defi-nitely, uni-forms, be-cause, her-self... Publisher, do better! Author, please return to form!