Showing posts with label Asian fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asian fantasy. Show all posts

Friday, April 24, 2015

Ming Li and the Charmed Phoenix by Marina Bonomi


Title: Ming Li and the Charmed Phoenix
Author: Marina Bonomi
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

If you think this sounds like a Chinese rip-off of a Harry Potter Story, think again. It's a nicely-written tale set in a fantasy land where there is a war of wills between two magical beings, one of whom is the feared Dragon King of Dongting Lake, and poor Ming Li is trapped in the middle of it.

For someone as smart as Li, you would imagine he would be able to keep himself out of trouble, but when he passed his exams with flying colors and then some, he naturally went out to celebrate with his friends, and who can blame him for wandering home late at night and a little worse for wear?

Even so everything would have been fine except that in a deserted street, Li finds himself kidnapped and taken to a cavern in the forest, where someone asks for his help and Li, not remotely sober yet, volunteers it. He wakes up in the morning expecting to have fond memories of a weird dream, but in practice, he's still in the cavern and now he finds himself bound by honor to go up against this dragon or suffer the shame of having his word taken to be worthless.

There's an error in the text where someone offers Li to do their "outmost" to help. What's really meant is that this person will do their "utmost". There were also some instances where a word ran into the one preceding it because there was a comma after the previous word, but no space after the comma.

The story resorted to a really old challenge presented to Li, whereby he can leave an area only by one of two doors. One of the doors leads to safety, the other to death, but the doors are guarded and of the two guards, one on each door, one always lies, the other always tells the truth. Li can ask only one question to determine which door he may safely choose. This is a well-known (although perhaps not by this author) 'Fork in the road' type of puzzle. It was also used in the movie Labyrinth.

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That aside, the story is inventive, charming, warm, sweet, and beautifully written. I recommend it.


Monday, April 20, 2015

Kabuki Dreams by David Mack


Title: Kabuki Dreams
Author: David Mack (no website available)
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WARTY!

According to Wikipedia, kabuki is a word made from three Japanese kanji characters ( 歌舞伎 ) which in English mean sing, dance, and skill, but the word itself may be more closely related to ‘kabuku’, which is taken to indicate what we in the west might term ‘experimental theater’. None of this has anything to do with the story being told in this graphic novel, however.

This is a sequel to Kabuki Circle of Blood, a relatively long graphic novel which I did try to read, but which turned me off by its vague rambling sparsely-written text and a story which seemed to be going around in circles. This graphic novel I viewed differently, however. It is much shorter and is depicted in full color, and it's very well illustrated. It featured the woman who was badly wounded at the end of volume one, who now lay across her mother's grave marker, lost in reverie.

I decided to treat this as an illustrated poem, because it really wasn't a novel in any meaningful sense. Viewed in this way, I was able to enjoy it and this is why I am rating this positively despite having rated its predecessor negatively. The art work was beautiful. Much more effort had been put into this than had been expended on the first volume, which consisted, pretty much, of black and white sketches.

The story really doesn’t go anywhere, as I've indicated, but the art in Dreams was really well done, very true to life in some instances, while being much more abstract in others. There was something really appealing about it that I did not find in the first volume. It’s for this reason that I recommend this, and you might want to try it at the library before you decide if you want to buy it. There are many images from this series available online, too, so you can check them out there before you even decide if it’s even worth a trip to the library for this!


Kabuki Circle of Blood by David Mack


Title: Kabuki Circle of Blood
Author: David Mack (no website available)
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WARTY!

I found this in the library, and a quick flip through the pages made it look interesting, so I took it and the companion volume home to read. I was very disappointed. Actually the companion volume was not bad if you thought of it as illustrated poetry which is how I decided to treat it, but this graphic novel was a complete mess.

It’s rooted in Japanese culture. According to Wikipedia, kabuki is a word made from three Japanese kanji characters (歌舞伎)which in English mean sing, dance, and skill, but the word itself may be more closely related to ‘kabuku’, which is taken to indicate what we in the west might term ‘experimental theater’. None of this has anything to do with the story being told in this graphic novel, however, which is more along the lines of Yakuza and gang activities.

I honestly can’t tell you what the story was really about because it was scrappy and disjointed, and it made no sense to me, so I quickly lost interest in it, but in the beginning we’re introduced to eight young, highly sexualized Japanese women who are evidently assassins, but who have western names, so the story already started downhill, yet managed to go further downhill from there.

Like is aid, by this time I’d pretty much lost interest, so I skimmed the rest of it, and I have to say that the art work, black and white line drawings for the most part, is really rather good, but then the creator had to offer something to make up for the fact that the tale-telling is sparse and far more like poetry than prose, yet it wasn’t improved for all that. It explained very little, and that’s why I gave it very little regard. I cannot recommend this.


Thursday, April 9, 2015

Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart


Title: Jade Dragon Mountain
Author: Elsa Hart
Publisher: MacMillan
Rating: WORTHY!

Possible erratum:
Page 272 "indicate" is used where "implicate" would be more appropriate. Either can be used here though, so maybe this isn't an error.

There was a prologue which I skipped as I do all prologues. Chapter one begins on page seven, so the book is some 315 pages long. It's set in China either at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or the beginning of the twentieth, thinks I, depending upon which Prince Frederick of Saxony is referred to in the text. There were three. I was wrong: it was actually set in 1780.

There is nothing in the text per se to show in what year this takes place, not until page 131, where we see a letter which was dated December 1707. We're told that this letter's date is "...only several months ago...", yet the book blurb assures us that this is taking place in 1780! One character mentions Prince Frederick of Saxony. The Kingdom of Saxony existed only between 1806 and 1918, and the only prince Fredericks were: Frederick Augustus I 1806 - 1827, Frederick Augustus II 1836 - 1854, Frederick Augustus III 1904 - 1918.

There was an Electorate of Saxony prior to this, and there was an Elector Frederick Augustus III was in power around 1780, but not in 1707 and anyway, to call him a prince is mistaken and misleading, but aside from that, I noticed no other glaring errors - and they would have had to have been glaring for me to see them since my knowledge of eighteenth century China is non-existent!

Author Elsa Hart is a genuine Roman! She was born in Roma, Italy and has lived in Russia, and in the Czech Republic, the US, and China. This novel was actually written in Lijiang, which used to be known as Dayan, the setting for this story.

It begins with Li Du, a once respected librarian who fell into disgrace because of his association with malcontents in Beijing. He was exiled from the capital by the Emperor himself, evidently lucky to have retained his head. Now Li Du spends all his time traveling alone, and on the very edge of the Chinese borderlands, he stops at the city of Dayan, an outpost which is becoming ever more crowded as people gather to see the all-powerful god-emperor hide the sun. Li Du has to report in to the magistrate, who happens to be a cousin, who is none too pleased with the disgrace Li Du has brought upon the family.

His cousin would normally send him on his way into the mountains, but the emperor is coming to the city to perform his miracle - seemingly to precipitate this eclipse which in reality he knows is coming because it was predicted by Jesuit scholars. Li Du's cousin doesn't trust all the foreigners crowding into his city, and demands a favor of Li Du: spend a few days here, talk to the foreign guests, find out what their attitudes and purposes are, report back, and then he can go on his way with his cousin's blessing.

The first night he's there, one of the two Jesuit Priests, an elderly astronomer, is murdered. Li Du discovers that he was poisoned, but no-one seems to care, not with the emperor due to arrive in only six days. Li Du's cousin becomes annoyed at Li Du's potential for stirring up trouble over this murder, so he signs his papers early and pretty much runs him out of town without even giving him the courtesy of providing him with a rail.

Unable to live with the idea of someone getting away with murder, Li Du abruptly halts his journey and resolves to return to the city from which he was ejected by his own cousin, and solve this murder. He has less than a week to do it and he risks of the wrath of the Emperor should he fail.

As writers we're told to write what we know, but no writer really ever does that when you get right down to it. Joanne Rowling never met a dark lord and she certainly never attended a school for witchcraft and wizardry, yet she wrote seven best sellers in the subject. Jack McDevitt never traveled between the stars, yet he wrote not one but two (mostly) excellent series of novels on that very topic! Elsa Hart never lived in China in the eighteenth century, but she sure lived there when she wrote this, and I think that shows.

You don't have to be Chinese or to have lived in the eighteenth century to write a good novel on the topic. You don't even need to be accurate to write it well, not for me, at least. The truth is that very few people would be in a position to call you out on errors - unless, of course, those errors are glaring. Typically I really don't care that much because for me, she's written it convincingly, regardless of how spot-on accurate or how far adrift from the truth she actually is. That's what's important for me. The only reason I looked up the prince was to try and figure out exactly when this was supposed to be taking place!

Unable to live with the idea of someone getting away with murder, Li Du resolves to return to the city he's effectively been tossed out of by his own cousin, and solve this murder. He has less than a week to do it and the risk of the wrath of the Emperor should he fail.

What follows is a really excellent story, which I enjoyed immensely. The author is a skilled writer and while she did drop into a bit too much detail for my taste here and there, overall the story moved well. It moved intelligently, and the plot definitely thickened! I'm usually bad at figuring out who dunnit, so I was rather thrilled in this case to narrow it down to two people one of whom was the actual killer. I even figured out what the motive was, but what I didn't see coming was not one, but two twists at the end, one of which was big, and both of which I really appreciated. This was an excellent and speedy read, and I fully recommend it. I'd love to have read more about Lady Chen and Bao, but that's a minor complaint.


Thursday, April 2, 2015

A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall


Title: A Crown for Cold Silver
Author: Alex Marshall (no website found)
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Rating: WARTY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Erratum:
Page 26 (in ADE - no page numbers in the book itself!) "...bad at that road is" Should be "...bad as that road is"

This is your standard fantasy, and it runs to some six hundred pages of very dense text, so I was prepared for a hard slog, but in Adobe Digital Reader although it shows itself to be 606 pages, when I clicked from one page to another, for example from page 290, the next page showed as page 293, so I have no idea what's going on there. Clearly it's not six hundred pages. It just feels like it is.

The novel is written rather oddly. It starts ought as though it's an eastern fable, with Chinese or Korean or Japanese influences (it's hard to tell from the wild mix of names used), but these are also mixed in with more western names, so it's a bit of a mess, like the author couldn't decide which fictional culture he wished to be influenced by which real culture, or maybe he wanted it mixed on purpose, but it was too jarring for my taste.

Also some of the phrasing he used was odd, such as "more princesses at the ceremony than stars in the sky". This made no sense since the number of stars in the sky is traditionally used to indicate a massive number. Clearly there were not that many princesses. Obviously the author is trying to indicate a very large number, but this felt like a really poor choice of metaphor and flies in the face of traditional usage. Sometimes it's good to break a mold or two, but in this case it simply did not fit with the culture we were supposed to be in.

The story was very rambling, and I couldn't get into it. It went off at tangents, and it jumped around from one thing to another, and one character to another before you ever get a real chance to get to know them, and to understand or empathize with them. Consequently they all remained strangers to me, and I had no real interest in what they were trying to do, what they thought or felt, or what became of them.

Some chapters, like chapter four, for example, begin as though they're written in first person, whereas they're not. In this case, the chapter began:

Goatsdamn, but grandfather was a pain in the arse. Or rather, the small of the back.

Instead of beginning:

"Goatsdamn, but grandfather was a pain in the arse. Or rather, the small of the back," thought Sullen.

This didn't help me to feel comfortable with the novel, and the apparent random use of terms made for confusion about what the writer was trying to do, or say. In the example just given, you see the use of the English word "arse', whereas in and earlier phrase, the term "ass-end" was employed rather than "arse-end", and also the phrase "punk-ass' which seemed completely out of place, as did the phrase "in cahoots" used elsewhere. This kind of thing made little sense to me, and contributed to my sense of this novel being a mess.

This problem went further than that though, because although while it appeared to be set in a country reminiscent of one of Earth's Far East nations, the language, terminology and speech patterns were very much western, so they failed to fit the ethos. This was jarring and kept reminding me that I was reading a story. I could never become immersed in it because of this.

I gave up on the novel at chapter five, where in rapid succession I got the names Duchess Din, Maroto, Purna, Cobalt, Diggleby, Hassan, and Zosia. It felt more like United Nations than ever it did ancient culture and I couldn't take it seriously any more. I cannot recommend this novel.


Saturday, March 14, 2015

Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein


Title: Daughter of the Sword
Author: Steve Bein
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Rating: WORTHY!

We have a new strong female character in town: Mariko Oshiro – and I love her! This is the start of a series, of which Year of the Demon is the sequel. I'm not a fan of series, but of this one, I could become one based on volume one. Series, too me, seem like a lazy and convenient way of milking money out of readers by offering nothing more than retreaded stories, bypassing any real creativity. Whether this series will end up that way remains to be seen.

Mariko is a Japanese detective – the only one in her elite police unit, and her life isn’t easy. Since only about 10% of the Japanese police force is female (officers and civilians) this is entirely credible. She doesn’t automatically command respect as a man would in her position, and her boss really doesn’t like her. Nor does he believe she belongs there, but there's a reason for this other than mere chauvinism. He will not cut her a break, but she gets a break in disguise when she’s moved against her will from the narcotics squad to take on the investigation of an attempted theft of a sword.

There are three known Inazuma swords extant in the world, and these are named: Tiger on the Mountain, Glorious Unsought Victory, and Beautiful Singer. One of these is owned by Professor Yasuo Yamada, an aging and almost blind scholar, and a master swordsman. Mariko isn’t thrilled by the investigation or by Yamada, but he grows on her as she learns more about him and the sword. It seems that an ex pupil of Yamada’s, known as Fuchida Shūzō, works for the 8-9-3, which is what ya-ku-za means (based on the worst hand you can get in a card game). This criminal organization works hand-in-hand with the police, the latter turning a blind eye to some of its business activities as long as the organization does not let, hard drugs like Cocaine into the country. Fuchida has other ideas and believes he can trade a deadly and valuable ancient Inazuma Samurai sword for a cocaine shipment, and launch himself into a criminal career of his own.

What Mariko doesn’t grasp to begin with - and only reluctantly comes to accept - is that there are three swords in play and each of them not only has a name, but magical qualities associated with it. She sings to him when he draws her and she wants to control him. She will not tolerate rivals. Fuchida is literally in love with her. He refers to his sword as a female and sleeps with it in his bed at night. When the drug dealers under his oversight become a bit too loose-tongued about Fuchida’s plans, the city of Tokyo starts seeing a body here and there which has evidently run through by a sword, and Mariko begins to realize there’s more going on here than a simple sword theft.

There are some technical problems with the writing. I saw "straitened" instead of "straightened" at one point, and a phrase like "Mariko’s re-read the same paragraph" which made no sense, but in general the writing was good. Also I had issues with the flashbacks. There are several of them and the first one really annoyed me. I wanted the story here and now, but the author insisted upon retreating multiple times into various points in Japanese history to tell stories of these swords.

These really brought the story to a grinding halt, and were not nearly as interesting to me as the story told in the present. It was annoying to get repeatedly torn out of a story I was really into and flung back into the past for tens of pages. After the first flashback, the others were not nearly so annoying, but rest assured you can skip them and not miss anything - with the exception of the last of the flashbacks, set in World War Two, which is important if you want to fully understand the main story's conclusion. That said, the flashbacks were intrusive and too long.

Another annoyance was the goze - a blind female "seer" - whose "predictions" were - just as with modern charlatan psychics - so useless as to be a parody. I don't mind psychics in stories where they fit (as she does here), in a fantasy story, but it's such a ridiculous cliché that they can never actually say anything clearly, that they're usually more annoying than they are beneficial from my PoV, and are practically worthless.

Those quibbles aside, I very much enjoyed the story overall, and really I liked the main character Mariko who seemed totally realistic to me. I loved the way the ending was written, so in the end, I fully recommend this novel.


Thursday, February 12, 2015

Eon by Alison Goodman


Title: Eon
Author: Alison Goodman
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Rating: WARTY!

Read acceptably by Nancy Wu

This was an oddball audio book - on its own discrete device. You can see from the images on my blog the recto (shown as the cover above) and the verso (below). I had problems with this device - of control and of volume, which was very low. This was on loan from the library - the borrower to supply battery and ear-buds - so perhaps I wasn't seeing it at its best!

Eon is twelve. Eona is sixteen. They're the same person! Her master is desperate, and the only way he can get someone into the dragon training with a hope of getting a position as one of the highly esteemed and powerful dragon-eye lords is to go with the flow, which in this case means maintaining Eona's deception that she's four years younger and of a different gender!

She and her rather cruel task master, whom she later idiotically mourns, hope for success but don't really believe it, especially not when the ascending rat dragon that year turns away from her. No one expects that the mirror dragon will put in an appearance given that it's not been seen in 500 years. And now it's adopting Eona despite her gender, despite her badly injured leg, and despite her inexperience.

This novel seems to have had more titles than Prince Charles. It originally started out as Two Pearls of Wisdom before becoming Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye or just plain Eon. This just goes to show that Big Publishing™ really knows how to screw up a good book. Or a bad one in this case. Having said that, even in their self-righteous ineptitude, they can sometimes blindly stumble onto a success.

I think Eon is actually a better title than Two Pearls of Wisdom ever could be, even though it’s way over-used in the sci-fi and fantasy worlds, and so it follows that Eona is the perfect sequel title, even as I have to observe that within an Asian context, simply removing an 'a' from a name to render it male really has no meaning. This business of mixing-up Asian and western culture sometimes works in this novel, but it often does not, and instead ends up rendering the story nonsensical.

I've seen some delusional reviews which pretend that the author is pushing some sort of transgender agenda(!). Clearly these reviewers are ignorant of how true to life this story is when it comes to certain cultures, such as the Hijra and Kathoey cultures in Asia. They seem to fail to grasp that gender is not a binary thing. It’s not one or zero, on or off, plus or minus, either / or. Gender is a sliding scale with female at the start and male at the end, and anyone can find themselves anywhere along that scale as a result of genetics, biochemistry, hormonal influences, and other processes.

It’s not just a matter of whether you have one X or two; it’s far more complex than that, especially in the animal world beyond that of our limited and largely ignorant human perspective. There are organisms in nature which can change gender based on environmental cues. It happens in plants, but also in animals. For example, amphibians such as the common reed frog, and fish such as believe it or not, clown-fish (Nemo finding?), as well as gobies, moray eels, Parrot-fish, and wrasses. The blue-banded goby, Lythrypnus dalli can change either way. Other animal groups also display these features, or are outright hermaphrodites - that is, intersexed, such as some gastropods and jellyfish.

If you're mistakenly coming at this from a designer or a creator PoV, then you need to understand this and realize that this creator of yours had no sexual preference whatsoever. "Ah," you say, "but the Bible says…" - nothing! The Bible was not written by any god. It was written by a host of primitive men who were scientifically ignorant, and who had been brainwashed under a strict patriarchal society all of their lives - a society where a woman could be bought for a few cows. They are as far as you can get from a reliable source, and you're truly foolish if you take their blind words as gospel.

This is not a children's book - it’s a young adult book and it's dishonest to try and portray it as some sort of pedophilic subterfuge, as some have done by hand-waving at characters such as the eunuchs and at mixed gender people such as Lady Dela. This is a wo-man who plays an important role. She befriends Eona, and in the same way that humans serve as conduits to transmit dragon energy into the human world, so Lady Dela, a 'contraire', serves as a conduit for Eon to understand that women are not as powerless as society tries to render them. The fact that it takes Eona forever to get this isn’t Dela's fault.

In passing, I do have to say that I didn’t get the 'contraire' thing. Yes, I know what it meant - Lady Dela was a man living life as a woman - 'his' natural calling as it happens - but why use the French word 'contraire' instead of the equivalent Japanese or Chinese word? This novel evidently prides itself upon melding Japanese and Chinese culture to establish its Asian ethos, so why a French word? That made no sense to me.

Moving on. I seem to have read a lot of stories lately where the Chinese zodiac came into play in one way or another! This is yet one more, because there are twelve dragons, plus an additional Mirror Dragon which adopts Eona - and for good reason. Indeed, the reason is so good that Eona simply cannot figure it out. She's not the smartest smartie in the box, unfortunately.

Nor is she at all proactive. She knows, at one point, that one of her friends is being poisoned, but she does nothing. She has the ear and good will of the emperor and the emperor's son, but instead of any of them taking charge and dealing with known threats, Eon and the son are cowering like they have no power and they're on the verge of extinction. I am not a fan of royal privilege or any privilege which comes through accident of birth alone, but in the context of this novel, the emperor's power is absolute, and for these idiots to act like they're powerless is pure bullshit and not remotely credible.

At one point, Eona plays down a known theft, under the stupid position that there's no evidence, when there is certainly enough to support an investigation at the very least. At a later point, she plays down the death of that dear friend who was poisoned, and there's almost no investigation into his murder, with everyone flapping their hands and almost saying "woe is me for there is no evidence". Yet she refuses to take a book of power that we know will be misused under the position that it will be investigated! It's either one or the other.

This novel is an example of what a writer does when they have an agenda (and not the one of which the fundies have accused it), but no good idea on how to get there. The whole point appears to be to show how Eona grows and becomes her own person, but there's no sensible or logical effort to get her there. She's very needy and whiny to begin with, which is hardly endearing, and it didn't improve in the part to which I listened. On top of this, she's unjust, which is exemplified embarrassingly when she inherits a home and servants.

'

One of these servants was cruel and physically abusive to Eona, and it's clear that she has not changed, yet Eona fails to punish her and so very effectively lets her get away with this abusive behavior - indeed, by her inaction, condoning it. She gives freedom tokens to two slaves and makes a developmentally-challenged child her heir, which is ill-advised at best. I'm sure the author thinks this is a wonderful way to show how generous and just she is, but it doesn't work! At the same time as she's doing this, Eona keeps on all of her other slaves as slaves. That's hardly endearing. Not to me, anyway.

In the end, what defeated this novel for me was its ponderous length and tedious narrative. It's a first person PoV which isn't pleasant to listen to when the narrator (not Nancy Wu, the reader, but the character: Eona) is so self-centered, so clueless, and so whiny, but worse than that, the story just goes on and on with very little happening, and that very little is padded with acres of descriptive prose that's just not that interesting. I can't recommend this and I won't be reading the sequel.


Tuesday, January 27, 2015

The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly


Title: The Great Zoo of China
Author: Matthew Reilly
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Errata:
page 42: "CJCJ" should be simply "CJ"

"They have a top flying speed of one hundred and sixty miles an hour...-That's one hundred miles an hour for those of not used to the metric system…"
(page 53) - someone's getting miles and kilometers mixed up! Unless "metric miles" are shorter!
"A Chinese woman joined Hu on stage"? They're in China - why specify a 'Chinese' woman?!

The first thing I noticed about this novel was how many trees it was wasting! You can see form the sample page on my blog that only about 40% of the page is used for print - the rest is white space.

This is a chapter start page, so it leaves more white space than usual, and no one on in their right mind would try to suggest that every inch of the page be covered in minute text. Indeed, in ebooks, it's not even relevant, but if a book is going to run to a print version, then it's worth expending some thought - nboth by writers nad publishers in considering how many trees are going to die for this fiction to appear on a bookshelf in this era of catastrophic climate change. Every little helps.

That aside, let's look at the writing.

This novel, very much a redux of Jurassic Park (we even have male and female siblings, but in this case they're adults) is a somewhat different take on dragons. It’s set in contemporary times, and begins with a reptile expert, CJ Cameron, and some other people, including her brother, being sent on a visit to a zoo in China - a new zoo wrapped in secrecy. It turns out that the secrecy was because the zoo was set up solely for one type of animal: dragons!

An oddity about his novel is that it's replete with illustrations - not of the dragons, but of the facilities! There's even one illustration of a trace on a computer monitor! The illustrations were reasonably well done, but I'm not sure I got the point of them. It actually seemed rather insulting - that we readers wouldn’t be able to grasp what we were told, so here’s a pretty picture to help? Either that or the author wasn't sure of his ability to write adequate descriptive prose. It was just a little weird.

The worst thing for me however, was that the science was really poor. To begin with, the dragons are impossible even by fantasy standards. They come in three sizes, the smallest of which, we're told, weighs about a ton and the largest of which is the size of an airliner, yet despite these hefty sizes and weights, the dragons seem able to break the laws of physics and become airborne by means of inadequate and rather flimsy wings. The largest flying creatures of which we're aware were some species of the pterosaur order which have long been extinct. The biggest of these was only 150 pounds in weight (~68 kilos), and to get this human adult scale creature airborne, they required a wing-span approaching forty feet (~12 meters).

That's not even the most absurd part of it. These dragons are supposed to be related to dinosaurs, but they’re hexapods (the author got the prefix of the name right at least!): four legs plus two wings. The problem is that there's no precedent for hexapod vertebrates - let alone dinosaurs - on Earth, so the evolutionary history of these creatures is nonsensical at best. Your problem going into this then, is that you have to leave science at the door if you're going to have a hope of enjoying the story. That's not a nice thing to do to a reader, but it’s a requirement here.

We're told on page 87 that crocodiles are the only surviving members of the archosaur line (which includes dinosaurs and pterosaurs), but this is wrong. Even if we assume 'crocodiles' includes alligators, caimans, etc, this still excludes birds, which are also archosaurs. Despite the size of the pterosaurs, the largest creatures on earth have never been flying creatures, and herbivores tend to be large and grounded. What would be the point of their evolving an ability to fly when what they eat is on the ground and they're large enough to avoid being prey animals themselves? It made no sense. Ostriches, for example, are evolved from birds which could fly, but as soon as they grew large, they stopped flying.

The dragons' only "weakness" is saltwater, we're told, yet we’re offered no reason at all why a reptile would be scared of, or vulnerable to brine. It’s especially nonsensical given that we’re expressly told that one species loves water. Other than that, it seems that the dragons are larded-up with one super-duper trait after another to such an extent that the story becomes a pretty much a parody of itself. I fully expected one species to be named 'Mary Suasaurus'. These dragons don’t breath fire, but that's the only thing they don’t have. Had it been an Austin Powers story, they would undoubtedly have had lasers on their heads….

We’re told that they can see in pitch-darkness, which is completely ludicrous, tapetum lucidum or not. No being can see in pitch darkness if they're relying on an organ which processes light, since the definition of pitch-dark is that there's literally no light to process! If we’d been told that they can detect infra-red, or process sound, then that would be a different matter, but we’re specifically told that it's light.

Few people have truly experienced pitch-darkness because we’re such an energy-profligate world that there's always some stray light, spilling out from somewhere. Once, I was in a cave in Virginia and the guide had us hold onto the rail on the walkway as a reference point, and then she turned off all the lights. Now that's pitch darkness! You quite literally could not see your hand in front of your eye. The darkness felt almost like a substance you could actually grasp in your hands. It was downright creepy, and the reason for this is quite simply that we are not at all used to being without any light at all.

When CJ the "scientist" is told that dragons can see magically, she accepts this with a simple nod of her head. At that point I lost all faith in her credentials as a scientist! Neither does she have issues with the dragons having ampullae, which are the electrical organs which sharks, platypuses, and other aquatic creatures have, enabling them to detect living things by their electrical output. This only works in water, yet we’re expected to believe the dragons have them! Author Brad Thor is quoted on the cover describing this author as the king of hardcore action, and while that isn’t the same as science, it did make me seriously disinclined to read anything Brad Thor has written if he thinks this novel worth raving over.

It’s not just the science that's bad, unfortunately. Bad science with a good story might just be readable, but the story has dumb woven deeply into its fabric. One thing CJ does notice is that the dragons are being controlled by some kind of electronic pain-infliction device. We're later told that there's a chip grafted onto their brain which can send a signal directly to the pain center, so if a dragon tries to breach the electromagnetic dome within which they're confined, it gets hurt so badly that it will black out and plummet to the ground. This is supposed to teach them to stay within their confined area, but if you have an animal weighing upwards of a ton, and it blacks out while in flight and ends up plummeting to the ground, it’s not going to learn anything, because it will splat and that's the end of that! How come any of the dragons are still alive?

This is the kind of novel you end-up writing when you're so hell-bent on 'dramatic' that all it gets you is 'drama queen' (which is the ridiculous CJ saving the world single-handedly). Sometimes that can even work, but here it just makes me sad that something like this could get published, and the powers that be cynically expect it to sell because it's hitching a ride on the coat-tails of something much better that came before it.

Of course once you know that this is to be a cross between Jurassic Park and Jaws, you also know exactly what’s going to happen, so all of the mystery goes flying out of the window (as indeed do some of the characters). So what's left? Well the only things to look forward to would be original situations, really great characters, and humor, but none of that was evident in the part of this novel that I read (which was about one third of it).

The biggest problem once the creatures let loose is the same problem shared by all of this kind of predator story: why are the predators suddenly insatiably and perennially hungry, and why do they instantly think humans are prey and pursue them to a brain-dead extent when easier prey is readily available? It made no sense. Despite the animals being very well fed, they attack the humans for no reason and start to feed as though they've been starving for weeks. It makes especially little sense given that, as we’ve been inanely told, these dragons can 'hibernate' for a thousand years in their eggs! So at that point it pretty much fell apart completely for me.

The only thing which kept me reading - at least for a short while, was that we’ve also been told how intelligent these animals are, so I was curious to see if there was some other motive at play here other than the author's desire to simply write a gratuitously graphical blood and gore-fest of the quality of a B-grade slasher flick. It turned out to be the latter, because the writing made no more sense than such a picture does. For example, we’d been told earlier that the emperor dragons - the largest - are largely herbivorous, yet when the escaping group of humans encounters one, they're scared that it will eat them! Worse than this, it becomes very territorial yet it’s defending neither food nor mates!

I made it to page 117 and that was all I could stand to read. This novel was far too cartoonish to take seriously, and that's all there was to it.


Bitterwood by James Maxey


Title: Bitterwood
Author: James Maxey
Publisher: Quality Press (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Bitterwood by James Maxey pub. Quality Press

Erratum:
"…an unjust law may be disobeyed in good conscious" should be "…an unjust law may be disobeyed in good conscience" (page 97)

Well this book is different! I'm not a big fan of dragon stories, but once in a while one comes along and entertains me. Neither am I a fan of series. Call me npc, but I prefer the new rather than the recycled old, so it was interesting to read a story about dragons that had a new approach. The problem was that this novel became really boring about two-thirds the way through, and I lost all interest in it.

There's a prologue in this novel which I skipped as I always do. I've never regretted not reading a prologue and if the author doesn't feel it’s important enough to go into chapter one (or beyond), I surely don’t feel it important enough to waste time in reading. That said, the opening chapter was a grabber. A hunter is sitting by his forest camp fire eating dragon tongue. The dead dragon is lodged in a tree above his head, brought down by his expertly placed arrow, but this dragon has a backpack… Okay, it’s satchel, but wouldn’t a backpack have been way cool? However, this is one of those traditional fantasies, where backpacks don’t exist, so satchel it is.

The satchel shows that this dragon is a sentient being - a scholar, even. The man burns the notebook the dragon had been keeping. He is old and gray, and is headed for a dragon ceremony which the hunter is evidently seeking to disrupt, a sun-dragon ceremony at which the first human to ever witness such an event and live to tell of it, is awaiting its start with anticipation.

Despite being human, Jandra has been raised since childhood by the dragons and fully empathizes with them if not all of them with her. Actually, it was one dragon, Vendevorex, a sky dragon (like the one in the tree), and the king's personal wizard, who raised her. Why dragons would have such institutions as the monarchy is not explained, and I found it most peculiar.

I'm not a fan of monarchies and privilege of birth, but I realize that they are part and parcel of this kind of fantasy. It would be nice, though, once in a while, to see writers step off the path most traveled and carve out some new routes; however, this author certainly takes a half-step, because story is rife with interesting perspectives on dragon-lore, and he doesn’t leave it solely at that.

This story could, in some ways, be described as modeling itself after Planet of the Apes, since there are three types of dragon. The sun dragons, like the chimpanzees, are the nobility. Their guards and soldiers are the earth dragons who fulfill the role of the gorillas. Finally there are the urang-utans, which are the sky-dragons, who are scholars and scientists.

The sun dragon ceremony, which was rudely interrupted, is how a new king is chosen. The king's first-born male offspring is banished from the dragon's presence, and forced to live by their own means until they reach a point where they feel they can challenge the king. If one of them can do so successfully, he becomes the new king. In this case, there are two contenders, but one of them - the more scholarly one - rejects the barbaric hunt of enslaved humans - a frivolous ceremony which precedes the main event. His brother goes after the human as tradition demands - and is slaughtered in the forest from a brutal rain of well-aimed arrows, all from the bow of the lone hunter. "Bitterwood" cries the king, and lets loose the dogs of war. But Bitterwood escapes by means of a sewer cover which lies in the middle of the highway!

Yes, if that grabbed you as it did me, you'll want to know more, but I'm not going to tell you because the rest of the novel conveniently pretends that never happened! I guess you have to go to volume two or three to find out, and I'm not playing that game! I will tell you that one thing I found really odd in Bitterwood was the prologues. I don’t do prologues. I routinely skip them and I never miss them. That ought to tell you plenty.

In this case, I skipped the one at the start, but when we reached part two of the book, there was another prologue! I'm like, "Wait, wasn't part one the prologue to part two? I don’t get this authorial OCD with prologues! If it’s important, then put it into chapter one or later! If you don’t consider it material that's worth including in the body of the novel, I don’t consider it’s material that's worth reading.

This turned out to be great - an original novel looking at the world from the dragon PoV where humans are mere subjects, and I was enjoying it until Jandra quit being a pet of Vendevorex's and became a pet of Petar (Peta?!) Gondwell, who promptly man-handled her and treated her very much like property - and not once did she object or even have qualms about it. So much for a strong female character!

At one point, being brave when others would run, Jandra gets her throat slit. Not her jugular, but her trachea, and there's a lot of blood. When Vendevorex tells her he's going to magically close the wound, she nods her head. WHAT? Her throat is slit deeply and she's nodding her head? I think this is a case of a writer not paying close attention to what it is they're writing!

Oh, and it's "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" - not "Origins of Species" as it's rendered on page 207! But by that point I was skimming pages because the story got lost and was not in the least bit interesting to me. I can't recommend this and will not be following this series.


Saturday, January 17, 2015

Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin


Title: Starry River of the Sky
Author: Grace Lin
Publisher: Listening Library
Rating: WORTHY!

Beautifully read by Kim Mai Guest.

This is the companion novel to Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and was published first. If you've read one, you'll recognize some of the references in the other. I really liked this one, perhaps better than the first volume, which I read first because well, that's just me! It doesn't really matter in which order they're read. This audio book was beautifully read by Kim Mai Guest

I typically pay no attention to a book's cover because it rarely has anything to do with the author, and my blog is about writing - which is what the authors do. In this case however, I could not help but note that this marks the third book I've read (or in this case listened to) recently which are tied to the Chinese zodiac, or the "Shēngxiào" (which means "birth likeness"). The zodiac runs in this order, the first two animals of which (you will note) are on the book cover: Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig, Rat, Ox, Tiger.

The story here centers on Rendi, who ran away from home because the Moon is missing, and the sky is crying, and no one but he seems to notice. He wants to find out what's going on, so hiding amongst the large jars or "gangs" of wine in a merchant's cart he leaves home and ends-up working as hired help at a roadside inn in a tiny and isolated village aptly named 'Clear Sky'.

As he works his day away, increasingly dreaming of moving on and getting away from the dead village, Rendi becomes intrigued by the people, events, and stories which haunt this inn. He only got the job because the innkeeper's son disappeared, so what happened there? What's the deal with the innkeeper's daughter Pei-yi? What's at the bottom of the well? Why is there an absolutely massive stone pancake near to the inn? Why do Master Chao and Widow Yan detest each other so vehemently? How is it that Mr Shan, who seems as wise as he appears crazy, not be able to tell if his loyal pet is a rabbit or a toad?

The story becomes even more interesting when a woman, Madame Chang, appears at the inn apparently having walked there alone, and who knows a whole host of stories, because, well, half a host of stories just doesn't cut it in China...! The story titles in some cases struck me hilarious, such as "The story of the dancing fish" and "The story of the three questions" which reminded me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail! In other cases they're simply intriguing, such as "The story of the man who moved a mountain" and "The story of the jade bracelet".

The stories together, plus Rendi's own story and quest, combine to make a charming and engrossing tale which is rich in Chinese folklore. I highly recommend this volume.


Where the Mountain meets the Moon by Grace Lin


Title: Where the Mountain Meets The Moon
Author: Grace Lin
Publisher: Listening Library
Rating: WORTHY!

Read charmingly by Janet Song.

Today is Grace Lin day on my blog! This is the companion novel to one I reviewed recently , and was published first. If you've read one, you'll recognize some of the references in the other. As I inadvertently proved, they don't have to be read in order. I really liked this one, perhaps better than the second volume. When I say "read" I mean "listened to" since I had the audio book version. It was charmingly read by Janet Song.

Min-li is a young girl who lives in poverty with her mom and dad, referred to only as Ma and Ba. Ba is in the habit of relating stories, which Ma hates. The only "wealth" the family appears to have is Minli's two copper coins kept in a rice bowl which has a rabbit design in the pottery.

Minli's world is colored and fruitless - literally. Her Village is known as the Fruitless Mountain village because nothing grows there, and few animals live there other than some desultory fish in the river. The whole area is a grey and brown mud and dust zone, which is all the color they have.

One day Minli decides to buy a goldfish from a traveling vendor, but even this is considered a waste by ma, because all it does is eat their precious rice. Minli eventually kow-tows to pressure frees it in the nearby river, whereupon the fish tells her a story which precipitates Minli leaving home and embarking upon a quest to find the Old Man in the Moon. Her plan is to ask him how she can change her fortune.

During her journey she meets - or at least learns of - the Buffalo Boy, the Green Tiger, the black tiger, dragons, a king, the twins, Da-Fu and A-Fu, and the very rabbit that was depicted on her rice bowl.

This story in engaging, and in parts hilarious, and I recommend it.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Daomu by Kennedy Xu


Title: Daomu
Author: Kennedy Xu (no website found)
Publisher: Magnetic Press
Rating: WARTY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Ably illustrated by Ken Chou.

Based on the novel Dao Mu Bi Ji by Kennedy Xu, this graphic novel tells the story of Sean Wu, a young Chinese man who reunites with his long absentee father only to be shocked as the man is executed right in front of him in broad daylight in the café in which they've just met.

So far so good! The problem is that for me, this story went right downhill from this point onwards which is ironically amusing because the story literally went underground at that point, too! I freely confess right up front that I may have missed something here, but it seemed to me that Sean's dad's profession was essentially a grave robber, and with little to trigger his behavior, Sean embarks upon a similar career.

Yes, he was shocked by, and bereft of an explanation for what happened to his dad, but given that he hated the guy anyway, it was hard to see why he so readily hooked-up with his uncle, and voluntarily descended deep underground to ancient graves where bizarre mutant creatures or incarnations of spirits from what appear to be China's worse cultural nightmares live and move and have their being!

Sean seems to have an aptitude for this work, but I could not figure out exactly what 'this work' actually was. It seemed to consist solely to raising the dead and then, well, er, razing the dead. While the illustrations were, in general, well-done and in some parts impressive, the text left a lot to be desired, which I found to be almost paradoxical given that this story originated as a novel.

Worse, the art was consistently dark, and relentlessly so, such that despite its quality, it actually became monotonous and uninteresting, and eventually just depressing. It also didn’t make full use of the page, each of which was pretty much thickly black-bordered - a pet peeve of mine given how wasteful it is of trees. Of course, this is irrelevant in an ebook, but it does bear upon print books. What with both the relentless tone of the art, and the text not really appealing to me as I read on, I found myself skipping bits and pieces, and then whole pages and then skimming sections. Pretty soon, I was asking myself why I was even skimming it at all?

This novel may appeal to you, but to me it was no better than a really bad horror movie, and I can’t recommend it. I saw no story to recommend. Perhaps eastern audiences will get a lot more from this than we westerners, or perhaps you have to have a certain mind set, but whatever it was, it was not for me.


Monday, August 18, 2014

Tempt the Devil by Jill Braden


Title: Tempt the Devil
Author: Jill Braden
Publisher: Wayzgoose Press
Rating: WORTHY!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Wayzgoose Press. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my favorite editor at Wayzgoose for the sneak preview of this.

This is the third in Jill Braden's 'Devil of Ponong' series. I already reviewed the first The Devil's Concubine, and the second The Devil Incarnate both back in June.

The problem with choosing a novel title with the word 'devil' in it is that it's probably already been used. That's why you have to make sure that yours stands out more brilliantly than other books which might have a similar - or the same - name. Jill Braden has proven three times in a row now that she has the skill and ingenuity to accomplish this and not even make it look like she had to work for it. And yes, I'm shamelessly biased - and proud to admit it!

I'd like to thank DJ Rogers for the cover design which allowed me at last to place my eyeglasses over the image of the main character and amuse my kids since they fit the cover so well. Now the eldest wants to read this series too. At the time I did this, I had no idea that eye-wear would play an interesting part in the novel! There's a spoiler (but not much of one).

My only disappointment in this novel was that my favorite character, QuiTai, was a bit sidelined (by her own choice in pursuit of an elaborate scheme she's cooked up). I adore QuiTai, and always want her front and center. I guess since she took the reins in the last volume, it's only fair to lend them to the other main character in this one, but I don't find him anywhere near as fascinating as I do her. QuiTai is now my second favorite fictional female of all time, surpassing even Molly Millions of William Gibson's Neuromancer

But I digress. In this volume, QuiTai is pissed-off, and her reaction to this is to get herself arrested. She's in jail for a goodly portion of this novel, but that does not, in any way, shape, or form, mean that she's idle. She has an amazingly cunning plan and it turns out that she's exactly where she needs to be to see it through.

Meanwhile, poor beleaguered governor Kyam is stuck trudging through Levapur's heat trying to solve the murder of his predecessor before QuiTai is unceremoniously - and without trial - hung for it at sundown. Like I indicated, I would have preferred it if Kyam were jailed and QuiTai involved in investigating the crime, but to be perfectly honest, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as thrilling for me had that been the case, as it actually was the way it was written. Besides, QuiTai already knows who did it, and she has another agenda....

I have to say this is technically the best-written of the three volumes, but I can't make up my mind which is my favorite. In each volume there are new things to learn, and some new characters to explore. I particularly liked the introduction of Kyam's wife, Nashruu here. This is yet another strong female character tossed into the mix, and she promises to be quite a handful in future volumes. Certainly she proves herself her to be more than Kyam can handle in this one.

The world of Ponong continues to grow and to be filled-in with ever more fascinating detail, becoming increasingly intricate and absorbing. I have no doubt that this will continue with each volume, and I am very much looking forward to the next one already. Meanwhile, Ill leave you with the opening few lines from this volume:

She was vapor: insidious, addicting, forbidden.
She was QuiTai, the Devil's right hand - and often his left one, too. Former actress, former prostitute, former mistress to kings and prime ministers, she was a dangerous mixture of ruthlessness, charm, intelligence, and cunning.

What better introduction could you ask for? Now go read it!


Wednesday, July 16, 2014

The Secrets Of Jin-Shei by Alma Alexander


Title: The Secrets Of Jin-Shei
Author: Alma Alexander
Publisher: Harper
Rating: WORTHY!

erratum:
p102 "...they would all sit subside on the ground..." I suspect that either 'sit' or 'subside' is superfluous and didn't get deleted when the other word was substituted.
p337 "...all except Cai's death, with she left..." should be "...all except Cai's death, which she left..."
p345 "...and if you friend is right..." should be "...and if your friend is right..."

In some ways this novel reminds me of Kiyohara Nagiko, aka Sei Shōnagon, Japanese author of the thousand-year-old The Pillow Book (makura no sōshi), and of Lady Murasaki, aka Murasaki Shikibu, author of the equally ancient The Tale of Genji. Not long ago I read The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby, a fictionalized version based on Lady Murasaki's own diary, and it was charming. I put this novel in a class with that one. It has that same 'different era' vibe, and the same idealistic view of life in the Far East. I recommend reading that novel, too, especially because it's based on an actual person and actual events.

Alma Alexander put a heck of a lot of effort into this and it shows. This novel is poetical, easy on the ear, and engrossing, but it is also long and complex. Perhaps too long, but not too complex if you pay attention! She does jump around like a rabbit however (does like a rabbit, bucks like a rabbit? - I use the word advisedly given the behavior of the emperor in this novel!), going from one character to another, with some of them carrying the story for a long time whereas others appear only briefly here and there.

The novel is set, effectively, in ancient China, but Alexander removes it from that reality by naming the nation Syai. She also employs some ancient Chinese realities, such as the secret language, named Nüshu (nü meaning 'woman' and the rest meaning writing). This was employed between women in China until the last speaker of it, Yang Huanyi, died in 2004, although who she talked to in those waning years is not known! In this novel Nüshu is renamed jin-ashu, and the Chinese concept on non-blood sisterhood, named LaoTong ("old sames") is used under the name of jin-shei. Two such sisters would be jin-shei-bao to each other.

Tai is the daughter of a palace seamstress until a chance meeting with Antian, a member of the royal family, and a consequent chat about art and poetry leads the princess to offer Tai a pact of jin-shei - unbreakable sisterhood - between them. Unfortunately, this tie with Tai is not to last since virtually the entire royal family is killed in an earthquake in their mountain retreat.


Tai survives, and Antian with her dying breath, begs her to take care of her sister. The only sister of which Tai is aware is Liudan, the one who stayed at home and therefore never experienced the earthquake. She is an unwanted third-in-line sister who is resentful that she never had a shot at the throne - until now, but when she steps up, she does so in grand style, refusing to take a husband, and choosing to rule as an unmarried "dragon empress".

In chapter three, Alexander jumps from the story of the very rocky relationship between Tai and Liudan and introduces us to two more girls: Xaforn, in her early teens, is an orphan who is training very hard to be the youngest inductee into the palace guard. Xaforn ends up unexpectedly befriending Qiaan, the daughter of one of the guard captains, who herself has no interest in joining the military.

Continuing these abrupt jumps, we're next introduced to Nhia, who has a 'withered leg', but who is mobile. She spends a lot of her time at the temple wasting her life begging for the non-existent gods to help her, but she actually becomes the author of her own destiny, as all people do, no gods needed. One day in the temple grounds, she's sitting next to an acolyte, and a woman comes asking for advice. While the acolyte is still pondering what to say, Nhia offers a story which brings solace to the woman, and from this humble start, she grows to the point where she is telling stories to children in the temple grounds even though she has no official right to be there.

Nhia is befriended by Khailin, who has her own agenda to get herself an education and who sees Nhia as the vehicle by which to achieve her aim, but the two become friends and jin-shei. This jin-shei spreads amongst these women like wildfire, each of them slowly becoming more and more entangled with the others like elementary particles in some physics experiment. Two more girls show up, in the form of Tammary, and Yuet, the healer's apprentice.

The way Alexander develops this is very natural and organic. There is no falsehood to this story - no "Wait, what?" moments. As I mentioned, it takes longer than I think it ought, but she tells a very engrossing story and tells it beautifully.

Things become complicated in unexpected ways, such as when the mysterious and artistic Tammary shows up, living with the traveler people, and such as when Khailin ends up married to a sorcerer and becomes imprisoned in his literally living house, and such as when Yuet starts noticing the remarkable likeness between Qianna and the young empress Liudan....

One of my pet peeves with this is not with the novel per se, but with the pinyin pronunciation, which was formalized in the late fifties by the Chinese government to facilitate representing Chinese words in Arabic script. God only knows who actually came up with this nonsensical system, but it's completely nuts.

Alexander gives a brief overview of pinyin in the back of the novel, but it should have been in the front, because the names, the way they're written, make zero sense and are in fact completely misleading as compared with the actual pronunciation. Here are the eight characters again, with the pronunciation for each name:
As Written _ _ As Pronounced
Khailin _ _ _ Kay Leen
Liudan _ _ _ _ Lee O'Dan
Nhia _ _ _ _ _ N'ya
Qiaan _ _ _ _ Chiaan
Tai _ _ _ _ _ Tay
Tammary _ _ _ Tammary
Xaforn _ _ _ _ Shaforn
Yuet _ _ _ _ _ Y'et

Nuts, right? As I mentioned in my review of Between Two Worlds which also had pronunciation issues, the only important thing in this is to make the name sound right! Since there's no connection at all between Chinese scripts (or in this case Syai script!) and the Arabic alphabet used in western nations, there's no reason at all to depict the words in any way other than phonetically.

But that's a minor point. I loved this story and I highly recommend it. Alexander is one of the rare YA authors who knows how to write intelligent and engrossing female characters who are strong and memorable and who are not in the least dependent upon men to validate their existence. She also has a trilogy which is really good (yes, from me, who detests trilogies!)


Tuesday, June 24, 2014

The Devil Incarnate by Jill Braden


Title: The Devil Incarnate
Author: Jill Braden
Publisher: Wayzgoose Press
Rating: Worthy!


DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Errata:
p126 "...wreck havoc..." should be "...wreak havoc..."

p149 "...ever piece of furniture..." should be "...every piece of furniture..."
p185 "...council..." should be "...counsel..."
p210 "...limited into..." should be "...limited to..."
p249 "...he could tell it she'd forced it..." should be "...he could tell that she'd forced it..." perhaps?
p260 "Kym" should be "Kyam"
p265 "...her let her go..." should be "...he let her go..."
(Hint to Jill Braden recruit me as a beta reader! I'll catch this stuff!)

This is the second volume in The Devil of Ponong series. I have already reviewed the first and I also plan on reviewing the next one, the first chance I get, because this series is that good. I am not a fan of trilogies/series because I find it rare that an author can sustain the passion and attraction over such an "extended novel" so it speaks volumes(!) that I am enjoying this one so much and willing to recommend it.

In passing, and as I did for the review for volume 1, I advise you to visit the author's web site, which is a joy. Contrary to what all-too-many authors use their web pages for, this is not a shameless self-promotion site, but a place where a real writer shows how much she loves to put words on paper (or on screen!). For anyone interested in the art and process of writing, it's a welcome breath of sweet scented air, believe me.

In volume one we met a rare, rather startling, and very unusual female protagonist in the shape of QuiTai, a complex and intriguing woman of the Ponongese people - a race of beings which is humanoid in form, but which carries certain traits typically found, on Earth, in the viperid snake family. You may think it odd that I find such a woman - one who has venomous fangs folded away in the roof of her mouth - appealing, but I found QuiTai to be irresistible, even more so in volume two than in volume one. She is smart, capable, fearless, and relentless.

She is a member of the Qui group, which has special powers. In particular, QuiTai is gifted as an oracle, something which she only slowly comes to realize. She lives on the island of Ponong, which was, some time before this series begins, invaded by the Thampurians, a race of sea-dragon people who are shape-shifters. Maybe you can guess into which shape they shift. Also in this world are the Li, a race of people with cat-like traits, the Ravidians, a race reminiscent of lizards, the Ingosolians (a race of indeterminate gender!), and finally a race of werewolves, which now appears to be extinct on Ponong, although their legend lives on - something which both benefits and plagues QuiTai.

This woman is not your usual action hero. She's more like James Bond, but a James Bond who has gone over to the dark side - yet not completely gone over. QuiTai can be viewed as a recipe which melds James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, with a dash of The Dark Knight added for piquancy - I kid you not. By the time volume two begins, she's simultaneously seen by the locals as both an underground hero and a dangerous villain.

She sidles around in the shadows, collecting information, processing it in her sharp and incisive mind, and arriving at conclusions which others would reach slowly, if at all. Once she determines what needs to be done, she does not hesitate to act. In short, she's the very epitome of what I search for almost fruitlessly in novel after novel: a strong female character where strength isn't blindly equated with the ability to kick someone's derriere. QuiTai is a strong female character where strong = the opposite of weak. She's the kind of woman who does not need rescuing, who relies on her own mind and body to take care of business (whatever that business might be), and who goes after what needs to be done like a greyhound at the track.

That doesn't mean that she's always running. Indeed, in this novel, she starts out largely incapacitated after a life-or-death struggle with a werewolf in the first volume. Now she has an infected leg and is forced to lay low until she recovers. Laying low, however, should in no way be equated with keeping still. QuiTai does not keep still, not even when sick.

She needs to learn who it is who paid to have her assassinated in volume one, and as she pursues this inquiry, she discovers that something really odd is happening on this occupied island: a new Thampurian militia is stealthily moving into place and all Ponongese activities are slowly being suspended and thwarted. Their right to meet and exchange goods in the market place is abruptly canceled for example, and their fishing fleet is prevented from putting to sea.

This new military wears non-standard black uniforms, without insignia, not even of rank, and the soldiers never use names when taking to each other. So what the heck is going on now in QuiTai's homeland? This is something which she cannot let pass.

And that's the sum total of spoilers you're going to get! I will tease you, however, by saying that, very early in this novel, there's an exquisite encounter between QuiTai and Lizzriat, the androgynous Ingosolian owner of the Dragon Pearl drug den, which I found delicious. Jill Braden is a tease and that's all there is to it. I said it first! Lizzriat reminds me a bit of the character Pie'oh'pah in Clive Barker's Imajica, and I demand more of her (or him) in volume three. Do you hear me Ms Braden?

Almost as hypnotic is her relationship with RhiHanya, a woman who, at no small risk to her family, opens her home to QuiTai and takes her in until she's recovered from her fever. The slowly rising tension between these two, and QuiTai's amusing and frustrated thoughts about it are precious.

A word to the wise (or to those who wish to be): if you're expecting a tedious trope romantic novel, don't look here. You won't find it. You'll find amorous allusions, and teasing thoughts, but there are no fluttering breaths or "be still my beating heart" gasps here. If you want a wilting maiden you're in the wrong novel. There are scores of other adult and young-adult novels out there with which you can numb and stunt your mind in that regard. If, on the other hand, you want a woman who is meaningfully strong, and a story which is unpredictable, and which is full of intrigue, shifting political affiliations, and unexpected alliances, then Jill Braden's beat is the place to be.

I honestly cannot judge if this is better than volume one, or if the first volume just edges this one out. I think it's a tie. This is a different story with the largely the same cast, but with some wrenches gleefully tossed into the works by the author. It organically builds upon the first story (and despite what the author claims on her web site about her writing style, I suspect there was planning going on here - at least in the rough, to get this to flow so well! Either that or Jill Braden is even more brilliantly off-the-cuff than I at first assessed her to be.)

I highly recommend this. If you liked the first you will enjoy this, and if you don't, remember that QuiTai is out there, fangs folded, stalking silently, and she's a woman who does not suffer fools lightly...!

(On a personal note I should very much like to thank Dorothy of Wayzegoose Press for her kindness and support and for allowing me a chance to get an early look at this novel)