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WoGF Review: Ice Forged by Gail Z. Martin
Steff S. (MMOGC), is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in books. While just about anything can catch her eye, she has a particular soft spot for fantasy and science fiction, and especially loves space operas and stories with interesting magic systems. Besides reading, she enjoys adventuring in the virtual words of MMORPGs, and first started blogging about games before branching out to contribute her book reviews at The BiblioSanctum with her friends.
I’ve long been curious about Ice Forged. Though I also own The Summoner from her Chronicles of the Necromancer series, for some reason I just knew I wanted this one to be my first Gail Z. Martin book. They’re both stories set in high fantasy worlds, but lands of ice and snow have always fascinated me, I don’t know why. Maybe because I think these harsh settings are often fertile ground for exceptional protagonists, driven to be harder in an environment marked by extreme temperatures and scarcity. I love to read about characters becoming shaped by those experiences and overcoming those challenges.
So it was a pleasant surprise when the book began by throwing its main protagonist into a situation that was even more harrowing than I’d expected. Blaine McFadden is convicted of murder, and though his reasons for the killing were honorable, the young nobleman is sentenced to live out the rest of his days in a penal colony on Velant, an icy wasteland at the edge of the world. Six years later, Blaine (now known as “Mick”) is a new man, emerging as a natural leader in the eyes of the other convicts and colonists. Still, they are kept under the thumb of an oppressive governor, and are at the mercy of the mages who are always too keen to administer their swift and often cruel discipline.
WoGF Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Steff S. (MMOGC), is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in books. While just about anything can catch her eye, she has a particular soft spot for fantasy and science fiction, and especially loves space operas and stories with interesting magic systems. Besides reading, she enjoys adventuring in the virtual words of MMORPGs, and first started blogging about games before branching out to contribute her book reviews at The BiblioSanctum with her friends.
Let me just start this review by saying how glad I am to have finally picked up this book! Now that I’ve finished reading it, I can’t help but wonder just what on earth had kept me waiting so long. It also just occurred to me that 2013 has been a great year for me when it comes to Young Adult paranormal fantasy novels featuring angels.
The interesting thing I found about Daughter of Smoke and Bone is that it really reads like a book with two distinct parts. The first part introduces us to our main protagonist and narrator Karou, a blue-haired young woman studying at an art school in Prague. Her sketchbooks are filled with drawings of chimeric monsters and other fantastical beings, which all her friends think are the products of an excessively-active imagination. None of them know the truth, that the strange creatures are in fact all very real, and Karou is a very special girl. In her secret life she runs mysterious errands for her foster family, led by the demonic looking Brimstone, the chimaera whose shop opens a portal between two worlds.
WoGF Review: Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough
Steff S. (MMOGC), is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in books. While just about anything can catch her eye, she has a particular soft spot for fantasy and science fiction, and especially loves space operas and stories with interesting magic systems. Besides reading, she enjoys adventuring in the virtual words of MMORPGs, and first started blogging about games before branching out to contribute her book reviews at The BiblioSanctum with her friends.
Interestingly enough, well before this book came into my life, I’d happened to be browsing through the many publishing-related newsletters in my email inbox one day when a deliciously creepy animated gif banner in one of them caught my eye. In fact, it was an announcement for this very title, bearing the tag line:
“Jack the Ripper is terrorizing London. Now a new killer is stalking the streets, the victims’ bodies are dismembered and their heads are missing…the killer likes to keep them.”
It gets even more intriguing than that. The book’s blurb also describes it as a supernatural thriller, and given my penchant for historical horror novels (particularly those featuring a paranormal angle) I just couldn’t resist. So you can imagine my excitement when I received Mayhem for review from Jo Fletcher Books, and remembering that banner with its promise of a hunt for a serial killer in Victorian London, I needed little convincing to start this right away.
Still, Mayhem isn’t really a story about Jack the Ripper. Between 1888 and 1891 there were a series of murders in or around the Whitechapel area, and the modus operandi of some of these were different enough that investigators theorized that they could have been committed by another person other than Jack. The idea of a separate “Torso Killer” in these “Thames Mysteries” is what forms the basis for this book, and in Sarah Pinborough‘s version of the events, he takes his victims’ heads as trophies.
WoGF Review: Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal
Steff S. (MMOGC), is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in books. While just about anything can catch her eye, she has a particular soft spot for fantasy and science fiction, and especially loves space operas and stories with interesting magic systems. Besides reading, she enjoys adventuring in the virtual words of MMORPGs, and first started blogging about games before branching out to contribute her book reviews at The BiblioSanctum with her friends.
I think 2013 has seen me branching out into more sub-genres of fantasy than any other year, thanks to participating in events like the Worlds Without End’s Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge. Once, Mary Robinette Kowal fell into the category of “An author I’ve never read before, but would really like to” and so the book I chose for the challenge was 2012 Nebula Award nominated Glamour in Glass.
Someone once told me that when writing a review, it helps to think about what makes a book different and why readers should care. For this one, the thing that struck me right away was the setting. But while I may have read fantasy fiction aplenty that takes place in this time period, this is the first time I’ve actually ventured into something with strong elements of Regency romance, complete with the stylistic conventions that bring to mind the works of Jane Austen. This is also the first time I’ve ever heard the term “Fantasy of manners”. Hooray for discovering new things!
WoGF Review: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Steff S. (MMOGC), is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in books. While just about anything can catch her eye, she has a particular soft spot for fantasy and science fiction, and especially loves space operas and stories with interesting magic systems. Besides reading, she enjoys adventuring in the virtual words of MMORPGs, and first started blogging about games before branching out to contribute her book reviews at The BiblioSanctum with her friends.
I’ve always marveled and pondered the many ways authors handle the subject of dragons. In Rachel Hartman‘s Seraphina, they are intelligent, possess advanced technology, and have a magical ability that lets them take human form. The book takes place in a world where humans and dragonkind exist in a constant state of mistrust. After warring with the humans for time eternal, the leaders of the two races had finally come together to agree upon a peace treaty.
Now forty years have passed, and while dragons walk amongst humans at court and in their cities as scholars and ambassadors, bitter feelings still exist between the two sides. The tension reaches a fever pitch in the days before the dragonkind leader arrives to commemorate the treaty’s anniversary, and a human prince of Goredd is found dead, his head missing–presumably eaten by a dragon.
These events hold terrible implications for our protagonist Seraphina Dombegh, a half-dragon hybrid who has struggled to hide her secret for most of her life. Circumstances draw her into the murder investigation, and she finds herself working with handsome Prince Lucian, Captain of the Queen’s Guard, despite her position as the court musician’s assistant. With the day of the anniversary celebrations fast approaching, they have limited time to tease apart a dangerous conspiracy plot.
The world-building in this book is phenomenal; as in, a lot of thought seems to have been put into every aspect of the setting. For example, its rich history adds a lot to the story, and to a certain extent, the reader has to understand the significance of past events to fully appreciate the impact they have on the present. Then there is the complex religion, which encompasses a fair number of saints to which the people of Goredd look to guide them. The religious aspect certainly isn’t central to the book, but at the same time, it adds a layer of context to the story and characters, making them feel more refined.
WoGF Review: Miserere: An Autumn Tale by Teresa Frohock
Steff S. (MMOGC), is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in books. While just about anything can catch her eye, she has a particular soft spot for fantasy and science fiction, and especially loves space operas and stories with interesting magic systems. Besides reading, she enjoys adventuring in the virtual words of MMORPGs, and first started blogging about games before branching out to contribute her book reviews at The BiblioSanctum with her friends.
Books like Miserere are why I’m glad I make it a personal rule to finish reading all books I start. It’s always tempting to put a title away for something else when the story doesn’t capture me right away, and certainly I had my doubts that this one would be right for me when I first began. But sometimes, a book can be full of surprises.
I ended up loving Miserere. All I needed was some time to get into it, and part of the reason is its pacing. It’s the kind of book that takes its time revealing itself to you, doling out details about its world in a trickle as you read. I was unable to make heads or tails of the story until I understood a bit of the context, that the universe of Miserere is made up of four planes: Heaven, Earth, Woerld, and Hell. Woerld is sort of like the first line of defense against Hell and its demons, as it were; all the religions there work to keep Fallen hordes from breaking through to Earth. It is in Woerld where the book mostly takes place.
Exorcist and man of faith Lucian Negru has been in exile for sixteen years, banished for abandoning his lover Rachael in Hell in exchange for the life of his twin sister, Catarina. Catarina, however, didn’t want to be saved, as she’d sold her soul to the Fallen for the chance to rule Woerld. Lucian was crippled and imprisoned when he refused to go along with her plans, until one day he escapes and endeavors to save Rachael, who has since made it back from Hell, albeit possessed by a demon that is slowly taking over and killing her.
