Review: The Killing Light

The Killing Light by Myke Cole
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I have to say I originally fell in love with this trilogy, with what it tried to do, with its style and pacing, with every last one of its character and its story. The first book was an utter joy to read. So was the second, up until the disappointing Deus Ex Machina at the end of it.

This one wrecked any last hope I had with half a book still to go. Its not that the ending was bad, or that the characters themselves turned tedious. I enjoyed reading about most of them, thought they were all intriguing and well-written. And I actually enjoyed the ending itself as well, if an ending can ever be considered apart from all the plot elements that drive the story into it.

What I truly hated was the choice of making the devils into the main antagonists of the story, instead of the Order, when the other two books spent themselves basically setting the Order as the enemy. It was both lazy and disappointing. In one fell swoop the author killed what I consider was the driving heart of the series, and replaced with a standard and generic 'save the world' that felt utterly flat, all the more because the devils were utterly boring as enemies.

I would have much preferred a final confrontation between Tone and Heloise, and think it would have been more fitting with the story of the two previous entries.

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Review: The Armored Saint

The Armored Saint by Myke Cole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Short, well-paced and tightly-written, I have to admit this fantasy story was a bit of a surprise to me. The ARC of Sixteenth Watch didn't really woo me, but I thought I'd give the author another go, and the eye-catchy cover of this book drew my attention the most. Boy, was I not disappointed.

From the very first chapter, the story propels itself forward, introducing in short order the most important elements of the tale. Our oppressive and zealous antagonists nominally devoted to Imperial Writ, our heroes (or heroine, really) and their chafing and foolishness beneath their oppression, the point of conflict and the general way of things in the world. The author weaves all this disparate elements into a well-constructed narrative that never stalls and is never overburdened by exposition. Just action begetting action. In one fell swoop, we are introduced to all the good and bad in Heloise, our MC, traits that will naturally keep the story turning on its wheels in a way that for the most part felt refreshingly natural and didn't rest (too much) on silly or stupid plot twists.

Personally, I liked Heloise from the start, though some of the developments she goes through did test believeability or seemed a little too shoe-horned for subsequent plot events, but they were still interesting and well-written so the flaws are easy to forgive. The rest of the cast never felt cardboard-ish, but for the most also never really gathered the same level of importance or spotlight as our main character.

The setting was also rather well developed, if a little bit too reminiscent of 40k at times in regard to powered armour, deified emperors and forbidden magic. However, this could be entirely subjective on my part, as none of those elements on their own are particularly distinctive of warhammer.

All in all it was a very enjoyable book, and I am definitely looking forward to see where the second entry in the series will take things.

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Review: Essex Colony

Essex Colony by Lia Cooper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review]

Surprisingly effective and dare I say cute fantasy scifi love story with suspense and action elements. At least, this was my takeaway after I finished reading it. The characters and plot were captivating thorough, though character exploration is ultimately where this little gem truly shines, and the plot feels more like a vehicle to get there . I really enjoyed Soran as a main character, and enjoyed looking at things through her point of view. Her relationship with Aline was also explored in an interesting way, the back and forth between present and past somehow managing to keep things interesting enough despite how easily (and often) such a tactic can become simply annoying.

Though the story was overall both satisfying and entertaining, I think the climax hung a little loose. I expected a bit more than what we go. In that regard, the denouement to me also feels like it was a little rushed for the sake of the cliffhanger-ish ending.

All in all, a very enjoyable story. I will look forward to other things from the author, and hope she continues exploring this setting, and maybe shows us more from the particular point of view of the characters we got to know here.

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Review: Sixteenth Watch

Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

[Received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review]

Summary: Set twenty minutes into the future, so to speak, Sixteenth Watch is a solid military fiction book with scifi elements, more so than science fiction book proper, one that attempts to juggle a futuristic plot concept and wrap it around a core of familiarity with the present. The idea of trying to imagine how things in the military could be based on how they are now is intriguing, and the book definitely does its best when deep in the action or in the moments of political tension between the branches. I would like to see where the author could take the setting in the future, and the way the story ends makes me wonder if perhaps he is planning to find out. However, what makes the novel is also in some ways what threatens to damn it. The over-use of acronyms in particular is like to be off-putting for people not familiar with them, and might well dilute whatever enjoyment they can get from the book as having to constantly flip over to the end of the book just to understand what the hell the characters are saying is severely off-putting to say the least.

Prose: There were a few scattered typos, but nothing terribly obnoxious or pervasive. More troublesome than that is the fact I see no reasonable excuse for an epub to not have each instance (or at least the first instance) of every acronym linked to a definition in the glossary. Obviously, people familiar with the terms will not need them, but I'd hazard to say most people who pick up the book wont be familiar with the terms, and in a book so heavy with acronyms, expecting people to go back and forth manually seems like a gross oversight. In general, while I respect what the author was trying to achieve, I feel like overall they work against the story more than for it, but again that might just be because I have little familiarity with the Service. 3/5

Plot: I have mixed feelings about the plot. Or more exactly about the way the plot peters out in the end. On one hand, as mentioned, the overall concept is really appealing, and the execution of the latter parts of the novel in particular kept me well interested. Ironically, it is as the story progresses that it starts to feel more and more like the novel has forgotten its own plot. Like the author is simply meandering from here to there until he finds an arbitrary spot he likes in the regolith. I am fully aware this is an odd complaint, as the latter parts of the book are the more action-packed and generally speaking the ones I liked best, but meandering is ultimately unsatisfying, and the bits of action ultimately don't save the whole from the feeling of... 'what' when you suddenly stumble into an epilogue that feels like the end of a chapter more than a proper cliffhanger. 2/5

Pacing: I found the first 1/3 of the book to be both rather slow and really uninteresting in comparison to the rest of it. It felt like the author wasn't really sure of the best way to start off the story. He definitely didnt know how to end it either, but once pas the introductory bit, at least, things start picking up at a nice enough rate. 3/5

Characterization: I generally enjoyed Jane's character, as well as Ho's. Their dynamic with each other is specially entertaining. The rest of the cast seemed much less developed, sometimes verging dangerously on flat. specially her team. None of them are particularly memorable or interesting, and could in most cases likely be encompassed with one or two words. 3/5

World-building: As mentioned in the summary, the concept itself is one of my favourite parts of the book. I hated the way the acronyms were presented, sure, and the acronyms were there partly to deliver a certain believability to the speech pattern of officers in the military, but thats more of a technical flaw they could easily fix, specially in the electronic version of the book. I also really enjoyed the little snippets we get at the beginning of each chapter, as they really do help to flesh out the peception we have of this slightly more futuristic earth. 4/5

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Review: Aster of Pan V1

Aster of Pan V1 by Merwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With its ironically warm, if slightly washed-out palette and charismatic art style, Aster of Pan pulls reader into a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by an as-of-yet not really delved into catastrophe, though likely military in origin. Not a lot actually happens for most of this first volume, we mostly see the ruins of the world as a duo of scavengers roam in search of relics they can sell or exchange for rations. The author takes its time in building and establishing aspects of the world while giving the reader a tour-de-force around some typical locales. This makes the volume to feel somewhat dull at first, but the arty style saves it from being boring.

Overall, there's enough promising tidbits to make up for an enjoyable read, though I have to admit the big bad being obsessed by sports stroke up the silly chord in me.. And of course, there's the pretty the arty style. Whether the title will take advantage of its pluses remains to be seen, but it is only fair to give it a vote of confidence and enough time for it to fully find its feet.

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Review: Crooked Hallelujah

Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Flawed but beautiful, Crooked Hallelujah is an intimate road trip of a book portraying the stormy life of three generations of Cherokee (though this fact actually barely features in the narrative itself) women hailing from Oklahoma. Sporadically narrated by a variety of tertiary characters, we most often look through the eyes of either Justine or her daughter Reeny as they each attempt to find their way in the world.

To my mind, two things make this book both special and poignant. One is the sweet simplicity of its prose. There's no overwroughtness here, no artificial desire to dress up the writing in more layers than it needs. Its sharp and uncompromising in parts, and it lays things bare instead of padding them up. Ironically, this results in something that is far from dry or boring or dull despite some part of me actually that it should be boring or dull. I think that is remarkable.

The other one is the characterization itself. Simply put, it feels like the author has really tapped into the minds of Lula, Justine, and Reeny, and like a magnet, we are simply drawn to learn about them. That is how I felt, at least.

Unfortunately, there are also two glaring flaws that kept this book from being truly outstanding. First and foremost, are the narrations from the tertiary (at best) characters like Moses and Ferrel that not only break away from the book's subject matter, but they don't really add anything in return. I kept hoping they would be made relevant, but by the book's end this simply did not happen. I can't help but think those chapters could have been better utilized by exploring more about Reeny, who basically carries the first half of the book and then disappointingly fades for long swathes of the second half.

The second flaw is more insidious. Up until about the halfway point of the novel, I feel like I can put a finger on what the author is trying to do, and the author herself also knows both what she is trying to do as well as how to do it. But this certainty vanishes as the book starts to resemble a random assortment of jumps between various loosely-related characters more the character-driven... something it really wanted to be.

It was sad, really. I will look forward to what the author writes next, certainly, and hope that perhaps next time she is better able to keep the writing from running off a side-path.

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Review: Spear of the Emperor

Spear of the Emperor by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

[Received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review]

Framed as the memories of an ancient thrall in service of the Mentors Chapter, Spear of the Emperor tells the story of an expedition that has braved the Straits of Epona, crossing the Cicatrix Maledictum to reach the Darkened Imperium beyond and establish communications with the Adeptus Vaelari stranded there.

Seen through the eyes of Anuradha, Helot Secundus to Amadeus Kaias Incarius, the story brims with some of the themes that make Warhammer 40k such an interesting setting to read about: Hope in the face of hopelessness, freedom in the face of slavery, defiance in the face of impossible and heart-breaking odds. It is a heartfelt and beautifully-executed look at the cogs of the machine, so to speak- the Astartes, their thralls, the worlds they come from. Their tales are painfully their own, as they always are on the best stories, but they are also evocative of the larger universe they live in, of an Imperium perpetually on the brink, and of the many sacrifices that must be made in the name of keeping it running, as one characters put it, from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.

There is no endless orgy of blood to be found here. Blatant violence, when it happens, its usually swift and brutal, a punctuation sign to that which preceded and that which will follow, but the book is all the better for it, for the focus are unashamedly the characters, not the arsenals, their triumphs and their tragedies as they strive to eke out some manner of personal meaning in such a hostile world.

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