Accomplice to the Villain

 

By Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Book Three in the Assistant and the Villain series.

Evie has a new job, as assistant to Trystan Maverine, whose title is The Villain. Even though Trystan is The Villain, he is not as bad as one might think. Indeed, it didn't take Evie long to fall hard for the man and try her best to get a similar response from him. But he is a busy man and even though he is very much attracted to her, he is not receptive to her signals, no matter how blatant they are. He has a lot on his hands, as it seems something is very wrong with the magic in the kingdom and the king is not on Trystan's side and Trystan also has to deal a prophecy that foretells doom and gloom due to the fading magic. The prophecy is part of the reason that Trystan is unresponsive to Evie's advances. Which makes for much tension and suspense in the love story of these two characters.

Speaking of characters, the book is loaded with them, but even more than the main characters, the most appealing is probably the little frog, Kingsley, with his funny little signs that he uses to communicate since he can't speak beyond frog croaks, I suppose. 

The book is humorous and much of that humor is provided by Kingsley's signs, along with the witty dialogue and the clash between Evie and Trystan. 

I have to admit this review is based mostly from what I read about the book online. Because I really didn't like it, managing to read to only Chapter 5. I also have read no other books in the series, I didn't know it was a series so I didn't know what I was getting myself into. 

Two things I didn't care for was that it lacked an even flow and I often didn't understand who these people were and why they were acting the way they were. I also really didn't like the way Evie was throwing herself at Trystan, it just came off as unattractively aggressive. I set the book aside and thought I would eventually pick it back up and give it another go. But every time I thought I should go ahead and power through my distaste, I just did not want to. So I gave up and gave to someone else who was familiar with the series and was looking forward to reading it.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Poisoned King

 

By Katherine Rundell

Book Two of Impossible Creatures

Christopher is once more back in the magic lands of the Archipelago, this time summoned there by a small dragon who needs his help to save a girl from her uncle who is going to kill her in order to secure his right to the throne of her and her father's kingdom.

The uncle, Claude, thinks his older brother, Argus, is too liberal. He has talked the king, their father, into making expensive upgrades to the kingdom and increased the size of the military. Although where the money for all this is coming from is not public information. So Claude has decided he should be king and he has also decided not to wait for his father, the king, to die. He poisons the king and frames Argus. Argus is arrested and imprisoned and Anya is told she is to be sent away to a private school. But instead her escorts, three soldiers, were been ordered by Claude to kill her. She was told to drink poison but she tricked the soldiers and escaped.

On the run through the countryside from her pursuers, a boy on a massive sphinx flew to her rescue just in time. It's Christopher, once more back in the Archipelago for more magical adventures, there to help Mal save her father from execution and the kingdom from her evil uncle Claude. And further to save the dragons who are dying in mass in their mountain home from an unknown illness. An illness that has very much to do with the power-hungry and greedy Claude.

Like the first book in the series, it was fairly interesting. Set about a year after the events of the first book, once again the two main characters are both young teens. I was glad that the author didn't kill off Mal's little pet bird friend and that none of the good guys had to die unlike in the first book. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Impossible Creatures

 

By Katherine Rundell

Book One of Impossible Creatures. 

First there a strange green horse-thing running through the trees, followed by a beautiful silver unicorn. Next there was the cry of something in trouble which sent Christopher looking for what turned out to be a young griffin drowning the lake. Christopher rescued it and took it to his grandfather. Who took care of it and told Christopher that the lake was a hidden entryway into the Archipelago, a string of islands concealed by magic from the world, a land where the creatures of mythology survived, kept alive by the same magic that kept the islands hidden. He also revealed the he was the guardian of the portal in the lake and that someday Christopher would be the guardian after him. 

Returning to the lake with the griffin, Christopher was attacked by a demon dog with flaming ears. He tried to fight it off and would have died if a stranger hadn't appeared and told him to kill the monster by dousing the flames with mud. Together they put out the monster's fire which stopped it dead in its tracks. The girl, Mal, short for Malum, had come through the lake portal and she wanted the griffin and to return back through the lake. 

Things back at her home were not safe and Mal begged Christopher to return with her as she was on the run from an assassin who murdered her aunt and had tried but failed to murder her. But she feared he was hot on her trail and she had no one else to help her. And so he followed her into the lake and into the magical Archipelago and into a grand and dangerous adventure trying to figure out not only why Mal is targeted for death but why the magic that keeps the legendary creatures of the Archipelago alive is fading away.

Young adult or older kid's novel, the two main characters are probably about middle school age. They have lots of adventures together and encounter lots of strange, mythical creatures. Eventually they learn why Mal has been targeted for death and of her unique status in the Archipelago and in the whole world. It was a fairly enjoyable story although I did not like that the author killed off Mal's friend, the young griffin, the last of his kind. And Mal has a rather grim fate too which made for a not very happy ending. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews. 

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

 

By Becky Chambers

Book One of the Wayfarers series.

Rosemary Harper is a young woman in trouble. Running away from a notorious past that she did not create, she has spent all her considerable fortune on a new identity and an escape from her home planet of Mars. 

In her new identity, she has been hired as a clerical assistant to the captain, Ashby Santoso, of a private spaceship. She will be in charge of scheduling some stops and overseeing ordering of supplies and helping the captain organize his files and set up an archive of the captain's records.

The spaceship, named Wayfarer, is a private enterprise for hire. Captain Ashby and his crew build "tunnels" through space that are short cuts to manage the vast distances of space travel, basically stabilized "wormholes." It's a small crew, only nine members, including the captain and the built-in Artificial Intelligence that helps run the ship. Mostly composed of humans, three of the crew are not human, including the pilot, the navigator and the medical person/chef. And the AI, of course.

Of this mixed company, all are pretty much decent people with the exception of the navigator and the human in charge of the tanks that produce the algae-based fuel that helps power the ship. The navigator keeps to itself and the human is just unpleasant. Another source of power, for more the power-intensive chore to tunnel building, is ambi which a type of raw energy produced by black holes or other high energy phenomenon. 

Captain Ashby's operation is small time, compared to the huge tunnel manufacturing ships that take on the bigger projects. But a friend gives Ashby some inside info that enables him to be the first in line for a much more ambitious and lucrative project located near a planet held by the Toremi Ka, recent members of the Galactic Commons (GC). The Toremi are known to be rather blood-thirsty and their being admitted to the GC is likely based on the huge source of ambi near the planet held by the Toremi Ka. A questionable decision, certainly, given that the GC usually require that member species have reached a high level of technology and social advancement. While the Toremi are technologically advanced, their willingness to kill each other seems to indicate their lack of social advancement. But in the Toremi's case, the GC's greed has overruled common sense. And Captain Asbhy's crew and ship will be the ones to pay the price for that greed, unbeknownst to them, as they set out on a lucrative new job that will hopefully allow them to expand the capabilities of their tunnel-boring operation.

The book is mainly about the crew, how they get along with each other and work together to benefit of them all. Basically a crew of really decent and skilled persons, with very little conflict, although there are a few problems as can only be expected of people who live together for long periods of time in restricted conditions. 

The small angry planet of the title is Toremi Ka. My copy of the book was about 400 pages long and they only arrive at Toremi Ka after page 332. So the majority of the story is about the trip and the people onboard the Wayfarer and their interactions and the problems encountered on the trip. 

The story continues in the second book of the series, A Close and Common Orbit. I have put it on my wishlist because this was a pretty good story and I want to know more about the adventures of the crew of the Wayfarer.

Under the Whispering Door

 

By TJ Klune

Wallace Price is a hard man, a lawyer, partner at an important legal firm. His focus is on himself and on his success. But fate got in the way in the form of a deadly heart attack while at the office on the weekend. Which is how he ended up in the afterlife clad in sweat pants and flip-flop sandals. 

So Wallace is dead, which kind of spoiled all his plans. He did attend his own funeral, which he was rather displeased to see was so sparsely attended. But there was someone at the funeral who was completely unknown to him, a small Chinese woman, who, of all the people in attendance, was the only one who could see him.

Because she was there for Wallace. Because Meiying is a Reaper and she is there to start Wallace on his trip to his ultimate destination. Which is how Wallace ended up at a quaint little tea shop in the mountains run by Hugo Freeman who serves the dead tea and guides them through the Whispering Door and into eternity. Hugo is the Ferryman.

Meiying, when she is not being a Reaper, works for Hugo in the kitchen of the tea shop. Besides Meiying, Hugo's grandfather and his dog, Apollo also reside at the tea shop. But unlike Meiying, Apollo and Nelson, the grandfather, are both ghosts, like Wallace. Ghosts who refused to pass through the Whispering Door and into eternity because Hugo still needed them in his life. And pretty soon, the same is true of Wallace as Hugo and Wallace find companionship in each other that they have been missing in their lives. Makes for an uneven relationship, though, since Hugo is a living man and Wallace is a dead man. 

I was a bit bored with the first quarter of the novel but it got much more interesting as the story progressed. Parts of it were quite moving, especially Chapter 14, which moved me to tears several times. It also had some rather hilarious moments including at the end where Wallace ends up as a floating balloon ghost who needs to be tied down to keep him from floating away and into the, I assume, the infinite depths of Space.

Hugo is a bit too much of a goody-goody for my taste though, as I can show by this passage about him:

But it was Hugo who Wallace watched the most. Hugo, who seemed to have all the time in the world for anyone who asked for his attention. A gaggle of older women came in the early afternoon, fawning and cooing over him, pinching his cheeks and giggling when he blushed. He knew them all by name, and they clearly adored him. They all left with smiles on their faces, paper cups of tea steaming in their hands.

It wasn't just the older women. It was everyone. Kids demanded he lift them up and he did, but not with his hands. They held onto his thinly muscled biceps as he raised his arms, their feet kicking into nothing, their laughter bright and loud. Younger women flirted, batting their eyes at him. Men shook his hand furiously, their grips looking strong as their arms pumped up and down. They called him by his first name. They all seemed delighted to see him. 

A paragon, for sure. His grandfather, Nelson, was more my speed. A bit of a smart ass who wasn't above the occasional ghostly prank, including smacking Wallace with his cane when he was displeased with him. 

I think my favorite character, though, was Apollo, Hugo's ghost dog who had refused to pass on after dying and stayed by Hugo's side because Hugo still needed him. And who was not above taking a ghostly whiz on people who came into the tea shop and upset things, like the nosy phony medium who has the hots for Hugo and the health inspector who has a grudge against Hugo because Hugo spurned his advances.

The book certainly has its lighter moments, like when Wallace is learning how to manifest different clothing after getting tired of sweat pants and flip-flops and ends up dressed only in briefs and thigh high boots. But it also has very touching and serious moments, as the dead pass through the shop, dealing with their deaths and their regrets and their lost lives, of which Wallace is one of, facing the truth about why his marriage failed and how success in business became more important to him than success as a human being. And how Hugo, Nelson, Meiying, and Apollo become more important to him than anyone he left behind in life.

Here is a review by Berkeley Fiction Review. 

 

     

Artificial Condition

 

By Martha Wells

Murderbot Diaries, Book 2

After Murderbot, the rogue SecUnit, was released on its own recognizance by Dr. Mensah, it slipped away from Mensah and the others of Preservation Aux it had protected. It was on a mission: to find out the truth about the mass murder it was told it committed at the RaviHyral Mining Facility Q Station. It doesn't have a memory of it, in fact its memory only goes back to a little more than three years.

But it refuses to accept what it has been told as a fact. It knows how unreliable facts can be and how easily manipulated. Manipulating facts is how it travels through everything, ever since it hacked its own governor module and continues to hack all the security systems and data feeds that would record its passage through various locations. 

It managed to locate a place on a cargo transport headed to RaviHyral that had no humans traveling on it or other SecUnits. It was being driven by a bot, a rather nosey and intrusive bot that Murderbot thinks of as ART or Asshole Research Transport. 

ART becomes an ally of Murderbot and helps it learn how to better pass itself off as a human. A SecUnit unattached to a proprietor is considered to be a rogue and extremely dangerous and unpredictable. But Murderbot isn't interested in enacting revenge on its creators, it just wants to understand itself and believes knowing the truth about its murderous past is where to start. 

So with ART's help and advice, Murderbot gets a job as Security Consultant to a group of young scientists who are desirous of obtaining research conducted by them on RaviHyral that was stolen from them by their former employer, Tlacey Excavations. Here Murderbot introduces itself to the three young scientists as Eden, the name of a character on its favorite serial, Sanctuary Moon. But looking at the situation, Murderbot is pretty sure that the scientists really do need a security consultant to keep them from being silenced. Plus it gets it the reason it needs to be on RaviHyral.

While not quite as action packed as the first book in the series, it does let the reader into the Murderbot's past a bit more. As in the first book, Murderbot is not willing to abandon its new set of charges, the three young scientists, to whatever evil fate awaits them. As it soon becomes clear, Tlacey is a very bad person and has no intention of returning their research. All she wants is them dead. And Murderbot is going to do its best to keep that from happening. 

All Systems Red

 

By Martha Wells

The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1

Murderbot. It's a SecUnit. Its responsibility is to keep the humans under its care safe and alive. Which it doesn't have a problem with and tries to the best of its ability to fulfill that mission. It actually cares about the humans, well, maybe not so much for Dr. Gurathin who has an attitude. Murderbot has feelings about its humans which it probably shouldn't. It's not part of its job. But Murderbot is not a typical SecUnit because it figured out how to hack its own governor module. Which means it makes up its own mind about what it does or doesn't want to do. And that is something that it is definitely not supposed to be able to do. 

So Murderbot's current group of humans under its care are exploring the possibilities of a new planet, going out in small groups under Murderbot's protection. Murderbot is equipped with a range of inbuilt weapons it can access in a flash if needed. Out with two humans one day, Dr. Volescu and Dr. Bharadwaj when a huge animal lunges out of the ground and grabs Bharadwaj. Murderbot is able to rescue Bharadwaj, but is gravely damaged in the process, nevertheless gets both humans back to the base. 

Reviewing some of the incidents that Murderbot first dismissed as failures of the company contracted to supply and backup the survey group that Murderbot is protecting, it and the humans realize something is wacky. They decide to travel to another groups' base but when they get there they find everyone is dead. And they themselves are soon being attacked by the SecUnits that were supposed to be protecting the people at the base. Murderbot realizes that the SecUnits have been taken over by some hostile force and reprogrammed to kill instead of protect. But it soon finds itself in danger of being reprogrammed too.

This story doesn't fool around when it comes to action-packed science fiction adventure. From strange beasts, questionable corporations, rogue bots, and ruthless criminals, the world of Murderbot is the good stuff! Very entertaining and I am looking forward to the next book in the series, which I think is Artificial Condition.

The Raven Boys

 

by Maggie Stiefvater, adapted by Stephanie Williams, illustrated by Sas Milledge

In the town of Henrietta, a private school for boys is known for the wealth and privilege of its students, who are called the Raven Boys.

Blue Sargent is a local teen girl who knows all about the reputation of the boys who attend the school, Aglionby. She doesn't set out to defy her mother's strictures about those boys, but meets a small group of them when they stop in for some food at the diner where Blue works part-time. They get off on the wrong foot with Blue but she finds one of the boys' journal that they accidentally left behind. Snooping, she discovers that the boys are trying to locate in or near the town of Henrietta, something called ley lines which are supposed to be conduits of magical energy. One of the boys, Gansey, is trying to track down the final resting place of a Welsh rebel, Owain Glendower, who lead an uprising against the British in Wales back in the 1400s. The journal left behind in the diner belongs to Gansey and contains writings about his search which has led him to Henrietta where he expects to find the grave of the rebel near a powerful ancient ley line.

As Blue delves deeper into Gansey's journal, she realizes she knows where this ley line is. It's known locally as Corpse Road and it runs past an old abandoned church. She also realizes that she had a vision while on Corpse Road one night of the boy, Gansey, and that some strange fate awaits him. Blue, who is not psychic, is told by a psychic that the only reason she could see a vision of Gansey was because he was either her 'true love' or because Blue will kill him. Which fits completely because Blue has been warned by various psychics, including her own mother, that if Blue kissed her true love, he would die. 

When Blue gets the journal back to Gansey and his friends Adam, Noah and Ronan, she joins them in their quest to find Glendower.  Mainly because they are interesting teen boys and because, as a non-psychic in a family of psychics, she has always felt left out of the magic. And being with Gansey and his friends enables her to be an active participant in something mystical, instead of just an observer. 

But Gansey is not the only one who wants to track down the ley lines in Henrietta. Two others are trying to find the lines and both of them are dangerous and willing to kill to get what they want.

I enjoyed this graphic novel which is based on a fantasy series by Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Cycle, of which The Raven Boys is the first book in the series. I have not read the book from which this graphic novel is crafted. 

At times, I was a bit lost though, which is typical of my experience with graphic novels. They lack the details which I need to understand what is going when reading a graphic novel.  But that's just me, I think. Another problem I have with graphic novels is sometimes the artist draws the characters to look too similar to each other and I have trouble telling them apart. But again that's probably just my problem.

One thing that I really appreciated about this book, other than the actual story, is that it is in full color. Very nice!