Author: firstbreaths

It’s always idyllic in the village until the landlord comes to call.

Because the landlord is an Ogre. And Ogres rule the world, with their size and strength and appetites. It’s always been that way. It’s the natural order of the world. And they only eat people sometimes.

But when the headman’s son, Torquell, dares lift his hand against the landlord’s son, he sets himself on a path to learn the terrible truth about the Ogres, and about the dark sciences that ensured their rule.

Publication details: 15 March 2022, by Solaris. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Rating: 4/5

Tchaikovsky is fast becoming one of my favourite novella writers, and not just because he’s so prolific. It’s clear that he really understands the format and how to use the limited word count to his advantage, telling the reader exactly what they need to know to get hooked in the world and the story, without it feeling too bloated, or too thin.

Part of this is that he’s really good at telling what are, on the face of it, simple stories that follow well-recognised archetypes, and then peeling away the parable’s layers to reveal something deeper underneath. Ogres is no exception to this rule. The premise is a basic one: humans live in what is essentially a serfdorm, ruled by a race of ogres. Our main character, Torquell, is a rebellious child, not at all interested in politics, but before long he is spun into a tale of actual revolution, that draws on both examples of the historical oppression of the working classes and the perils that await us thanks to late-stage capitalism and the climate crisis.

The use of second person narration (a trick I love, but one that I know can rub others the wrong way) is often a pretty clear marker that parts of the character’s identity will only be revealed over time, since there must be some reason why we are being asked to experience the story directly. But I will say, without spoilers, that I was surprised by exactly how the story unfolded (even if I could predict the general direction), but that it also made complete sense in hindsight. Again, Tchaikovsky knows what he’s doing when it comes to picking his moments to reveal information throughout the story.

After the successes of Ogres, Elder Race and One Day All This Will be Yours, I am really looking forward to seeing what Tchaikovsky does next – and the good news is, we likely won’t even have to wait that long!

It should have been the perfect summer. Sent to stay with her late mother’s eccentric family in London, sixteen-year-old Joan is determined to enjoy herself. She loves her nerdy job at the historic Holland House, and when her super cute co-worker Nick asks her on a date, it feels like everything is falling into place.

But she soon learns the truth. Her family aren’t just eccentric: they’re monsters, with terrifying, hidden powers. And Nick isn’t just a cute boy: he’s a legendary monster slayer, who will do anything to bring them down.

As she battles Nick, Joan is forced to work with the beautiful and ruthless Aaron Oliver, heir to a monster family that hates her own. She’ll have to embrace her own monstrousness if she is to save herself, and her family. Because in this story . . .

. . . she is not the hero.

Publication details: 17 February 2022, by Hodder & Stoughton. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Rating: 4/5

Honestly, the blurb for Only a Monster sounds a lot like generic YA-fare. A girl with a monstrous power, a love triangle… thankfully, it’s actually one of the more unique YA books I’ve read in a while, in that it actually takes a look at some of the tropes in a critical light.

It helps that I love time travel stories, but the premise of this story is basically: what if time travel was limited to a small number of powerful families with magical abilities, and only made possible by shortening someone else’s lifespan in exchange? All those fun jaunts back to the 1920s for a garden party now essentially involve taking months off someone’s life… making those that travel in time rather monstrous, indeed.

It’s an interesting and different way of looking at the ethical conundrums of time travel, and it also sets up an engaging story where travelling through time to escape those who hunt monsters is no longer a morally simple activity. It also establishes the basis for the relationships between Joan, our half-monstrous MC, her monster-hunter crush, and the boy she’s reliant on to teach everything she needs to know about time travel (even if his family would like to kill her too). While that sounds like it could easily descend into trope-laden madness, Only a Monster is very clear that the murderous intent of both boys is a barrier to romance, and the focus is instead on Joan figuring out her own boundaries and how far she can trust each of them, as well as coming to grips with her abilities.

In case that also all sounds painfully heterosexual, this book is also very casually diverse. Joan is half-British, half Chinese-Malaysian, and there are several queer characters – for some of them, this is quite relevant to the plot.

I will also acknowledge that I was very impressed with Vanessa Len’s writing abilities. I was a little worried at the beginning as the protagonist read a little young (though admittedly this was a nice change from all the 17 going on 70 protagonists in YA), but once the story got going, Len has a fantastic scene of pacing, knowing when to dole out information to the reader and when to just let the scene unfold. I won’t say it’s the most evocative story ever written as the prose is fairly simple, but it reads very quickly as a result, and there is still enough detail to fully imagine this version of London.

Given how events unfold, Only a Monster definitely feels complete as a story in its own right, but there are some unanswered questions, and I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel.

1768. Charlotte arrives in Naples to marry a man she has never met. Two years later, her sister Antoine is sent to France to marry another stranger. In the mirrored corridors of Versailles, they rename her Marie Antoinette.

But the sisters are not powerless. When they were only children, Charlotte and Antoine discovered a book of spells – spells that seem to work, with dark and unpredictable consequences.

In a world of vicious court politics, of discovery and dizzying change, Charlotte and Antoine use their secret skills to redefine their lives, becoming the most influential women of the age.

But every spell requires a sacrifice. As love between the sisters turns to rivalry, they will send Europe spiralling into revolution.

Publication details: 17 February 2022, by HarperVoyager. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Rating: 3/5

Review

Firstly, The Embroidered Book is a very comprehensively researched account of the lives of Marie Antoinette and her older sister Maria Carolina (Charlotte). Marie Antoinette’s life is well-chronicled, but I knew basically nothing about Charlotte coming into this book, and there were lots of interesting tidbits that had me pulling up Wikipedia. (Though I am still struggling a little with the concept of her giving birth 18 times, especially given what an awful person her husband was). There’s also some cameos from other historical figures, most notably Lafayette.

Overall, I thought Heartfield did a good job with making her subjects seem like the flawed humans they were; she doesn’t shy away from the failures of all of Europe’s monarchs during this period, while also acknowledging that the challenges that female rulers faced in terms of sexism and their lack of preparedness to rule. I both felt bad for them, and completely understood why their subjects hated them. The relationship between the sisters isn’t quite as passionate (for good or bad) as the blurb suggests. Heartfield tries her best, but there’s only so much that can be done when the characters in question only interact by correspondence and enchanted portraits for three decades, and have greater interactions with characters that are ultimately secondary at best. But for the most part, it’s an interesting character study.

Where this book fell flat for me is… well, I’m still not sure why this was a historical fantasy, because the magic system and the associated conflicts don’t really add anything to the story except a cool concept, and a few hundred extra words. The magic system is genuinely one of the more interesting ones I’ve come across, as it requires the magician to make a sacrifice, typically in the form of an emotional connection or a memory. The more powerful the magic, the greater the sacrifice. There’s some interesting musings about what this might mean, but for the majority of the book I’m not actually sure it means much… except that occasionally the characters might forget a previous conversation, or feel no real love for a pet.

The Embroidered Book also tries to introduce a broader conflict – between those who want to keep magic secret tightly controlled, and only taught to a select few, and those who want to throw open the floodgates and make magic more freely spoken about. There’s lots of skulking about, and threats to both queens’ lives due to their knowledge of magic, but it ultimately goes nowhere. The network of magicians and the consequences of their actions for the wider world are too broadly sketched to be really meaningful, and the book introduces people who could be dangerous, but then forgets about them. And meanwhile, the real problems that led to the French Revolution truck along, and we end up exactly where real history took us, without magic really changing a thing.

All of which led to a book that for me was interesting, with real potential, but ultimately not as satisfying as I might have liked.

The girl knows she has a destiny before she even knows her name. She grows up in the wild, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake come to her on the spring breeze, and when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she knows that her future lies at his court.

And so, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and, with a broken hunting spear and mended armour, rides on a bony gelding to Caer Leon. On her adventures she will meet great knights and steal the hearts of beautiful women. She will fight warriors and sorcerers. And she will find her love, and the lake, and her fate.

Publication details: 19 April 2022, by Tordotcom. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Rating: 4/5

Review

Spear was one of my most anticipated books of 2022, despite the fact that I’ve never read any of Nicola Griffith’s other works (because of, really; a shiny new book is always the best way to get me into an author, at which point I know I will then dedicate myself to their backlist). I also really love Arthurian myths. Thankfully, it didn’t disappoint.

This is a lyrical story about Peretur, a Welsh girl with an uncanny connection to nature, who sets out on a quest to find her true self. The highlight is definitely the prose; it’s rich and ethereal, much like the main character herself. Griffith smartly blends inspirations from the original text (of note, this story adopts the relatively free-form structure of ancient ballads), with more modern language that brilliantly creates a sense of time and place. Spear feels a lot like a fine, hand-knitted garment; the finished piece is smooth and faultless, but you can also sense the amount of time and effort that went into every word.

The story itself is a simple one, but it’s easy to get swept up in Peretur’s adventure. For those looking specifically for a queer retelling, it’s both an important part of the story and just another part of Peretur’s life; the women she loves shape her story, but she certainly doesn’t give a lot of thought to examining her sexuality, which is want for the time period. Spear does suffer a little from the fault borne by many of the Arthurian legends – Peretur’s magical gifts do make her a little too perceptive and skilled at times to really connect with, despite Griffith’s best efforts to hone in on the challenges she faces in her emotional journey as a counterpoint – and some of the side characters are very lightly sketched. But those are my only real complaints in an otherwise wonderful story.

There’s a very extensive author’s note at the back (it made up about 10 per cent of the e-book ARC) where Griffith’s talks about her research into Arthurian Britain and the wide array of myths and stories about Peretur (known under various names) that influenced Spear, and which made me appreciate the care with which this story was crafted and told even more. Though my favourite part of the author’s note is this comment that: ‘… for me, historical accuracy also meant that this could not be a story of only straight, white non-disabled men’, because it’s straight to the point but also sums up Griffith’s efforts to draw upon the widest possible understanding of the Arthurian legends: both as they originally were, and as we re-interpret them in our modern world.

This year, I’ll be participating in Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by thatartsyreadergirl.

This is a mixed list of books – some of them are genuinely too good to review properly, but most of them are actually too difficult to review. This is (in part) my list of books that are so caught up with a specific time, place or feeling, it’s difficult to put such a personal experience into words.

1. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
   Part of the reason this book is hard to review is because it’s best to go into it knowing as little as possible, and to let yourself be swept along with the main character. It’s definitely an experience best lived without expectation – making Piranesi very hard to review for other readers.
2. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
   It’s equally hard to review a book where the pitch is just ‘it hurts. You need to read it’. Plenty of people have put into words why Butler is a master of the genre, so luckily I didn’t have to.
3. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
   This one is so specifically caught up in a time period for me that any review would struggle to articulate why it’s objectively good. I read this in the middle of a global pandemic, sad about celebrating my birthday alone – at any other time it may well have been too twee, but in that moment, it was exactly the soft, quiet balm for my soul that I needed.
4. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
   I read this book when I was just getting back into epic fantasy after a long absence, and a large part of its meaning for me was in reminding me that there is a place for women and queer people in the general after all. Someone actually wrote a 900 page tome (that, admittedly, totally should have been a duology) with people like me in mind.
5. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
   This is the book that made 14 year old me want to be a writer (still a dream, if I ever find the right plot). I’ve read this several times and I always find something new in the richness of the language and the way the story unfurls over time. I’ve also met the author (this is my most treasured signed book) and he’s a total gem of a person.
6. The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty
   I binged my way through all 700+ pages of this two years ago, and never wrote a review. Looking back, I’d struggle to review this book because I’ve forgotten a lot of the details, I just remember being completely immersed in the world and feeling a desperate need to keep reading and find out what happened next.
7. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
   Another book that I read at the right time when I was desperately in need of something optimistic. It’s also hard to review without mentioning the highly formal prose – but I worry that would turn many readers off when, imo, it’s one of the most creative and fun parts of the book once you get your head around it.
8. To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers
   I find Chambers more hit and miss than many do, but this is by far my favourite of her books. It’s technically very competent – good prose, well-rounded characters, story fits nicely in the restricted novella length – but what it really does well is capture the sheer awe and horror of space exploration, and really bring back all those childhood feelings about how cool it would be to explore the great unknown, but with an adult tinge of better understanding the difficult ethical questions that come alongside it. I’m glad I read this pre-pandemic when I was less jaded.
9. A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
   These books are actually fairly easy to review individually – Lady Trent charms us with her narrative voice, plot things happen – but this is a series where the whole is more than the sum of the parts, for me. Each book is fun on its own, but the real joy is in seeing the mystery unfold across the series, until the jaw dropping moment in book #5 where you realise exactly what Isabella is seeing, and all the clues slot into place. I don’t typically re-read, but I’m very tempted to revisit this series this year.
10. The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal
    Another book that should be easy to review; this is basically the textbook example of how to write a science fiction thriller that uses all the elements of the genre to best effect. But I spent most of the book with my heart in my mouth, making it very difficult to form coherent sentences when I was first done.