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Thursday, 13 February 2020

The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith

'In the first book in a brilliant new fantasy series, books that aren't finished by their authors reside in the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, and it is up to the Librarian to track down any restless characters who emerge from those unfinished stories.

'Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing—a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organising books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materialising as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto.

'But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifyingly angelic Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil's Bible. The text of the Devil's Bible is a powerful weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the power to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell ... and Earth.'

I think the first thing that needs to be gotten out of the way when talking about The Library of the Unwritten is that I feel a little personally attacked, as I'm sure anyone who ever thought up an idea for a book but never got round to writing it would be after reading this. A book that tells you that your unwritten stories are going to sit away in Hell for all eternity definitely feels like a kick up the butt to anyone who's ever thought about writing, and for that I really want to thank A.J. Hackwith for making me think about going back to my own writing.

In all seriousness, this was a book where I wasn't entirely sure what to think of it for a good portion of it. I knew that I was enjoying it, that the story was interesting and the characters were good, but there was a lot thrown at readers here to try and get their heads around. Thankfully Hackwith was clearly aware that there was going to be a lot of new ideas coming into play, and provided readers with Leto, a wonderfully sweet character who could act as our eyes in this magical new universe, able to ask what the hell's going on (no pun intended), and make the other characters explain things.

The Library of the Unwritten deals with a special library in Hell, filled with books and objects that were dreamed up but never created. These include stories, poetry, beautiful rugs, and even exquisitely crafted swords. Claire is a human who has gone on to become the librarian following her death, a post that means she has to run the Unwritten Wing. Not only does she have to make sure that things stay neat and organised, but she also has to maintain an uneasy neutrality with the demons of Hell, as well as stopping the characters in the unwritten stories from waking up.

However, when one of the heroes not only waked up from their book, but escapes to Earth to find his author, Claire and her small team end up on a path that sees them hunting for a powerful lost artefact; a quest that puts them in conflict with the forces of Heaven.

When I started to read The Library of the Unwritten I honestly didn't really like the characters that I was presented with. Claire was moody and confrontational, Leto was a bumbling sack of nerves, Brevity was overly cheerful and one dimensional, and Hero was a bit of a dick. Over the course of the book I was proven wrong about each and every one of these characters. I got to see that Claire had a heart, that Leto was brave and sweet, that Brevity had depths, and that Hero may actually be the most complex person in the story.

Hackwith did something that I absolutely love, she took a group of misfits that don't really work well together, that you don't even think you like, and makes them into a family that you really care about. There's no big moments where you see this happening either, no obvious points where the characters make a sudden shift; instead you suddenly find that they've slowly morphed into completely three dimensional people who you want to see survive until the end of the story.

It's not just the characters where Hackwith excels either; at first the story felt very grounded in Christian mythology, making Heaven and Hell a central focus of the story. It reminded me of Supernatural, or Good Omens (there were a number of times during the story that it made me think of Neil Gaiman). But over the course of the narrative more religions and mythologies were introduced, and in interesting ways. It would have been easy to just stick to Heaven and Hell and not get too overly complicated, but A.J. Hackwith chose to add more layers and complexity to her world, giving us something so much grander instead.

I knew I liked the book from the beginning, but it wasn't until I reached the end that I realised it had managed to sneak its claws into me, to make more invested in the characters, to want to know what happens next, and to want to read the next book in the series right away. It drew me in in such a subtle way that I'd say it was insidious if I didn't enjoy myself so damn much. A great book for anyone who loves mythology and religion, who enjoys character driven stories, and who wants a read that will inspire you to go and write yourself. Hopefully this book will lead to a few less volumes in Hell and gets us all writing our stories.

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Tuesday, 11 February 2020

The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne - Book Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

'Engagement season is in the air. Eighteen-year-old Princess Leonie “Leo” Kolburg, heir to a faded European spaceship, only has one thing on her mind: which lucky bachelor can save her family from financial ruin?

'But when Leo’s childhood friend and first love Elliot returns as the captain of a successful whiskey ship, everything changes. Elliot was the one that got away, the boy Leo’s family deemed to be unsuitable for marriage. Now, he’s the biggest catch of the season and he seems determined to make Leo’s life miserable. But old habits die hard, and as Leo navigates the glittering balls of the Valg Season, she finds herself falling for her first love in a game of love, lies, and past regrets.'

The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne is something of a strange book to try to pin down. It's a sci-fi story for sure, it takes place on-board ships that are part of a fleet orbiting a frozen earth, waiting for an ice-age to end (it reminds me a lot of Battlestar Galactica in a few ways); however, quite a bit of it also feels very old, kind of like a drama set in high society during the 1900's, it's even very similar to Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's a strange mixture of futuristic and old worldy that shouldn't work, but does really well.

The Stars We Steal follows Princess Leonie Kolburg, Leo to her friends, a member of a royal house that has fallen on hard times. Her family is running out of money, their ship is falling apart, and they desperately need to do something to help change their fortunes. Whilst Leonie has designed a new water purification system that could help improve conditions across the fleet and make them rich, her father is banking on her meeting a rich man to marry during the Valg, an event where royals and rich people enter into a Bachelor like event to pair off and get engaged.

Not only is Leo fighting against this expectation to go off and marry some rich man in order to save her family, she's confronted by a ghost from her past when Elliot arrives at the event. A childhood friend and her former fiance, their relationship fell apart when she was ordered not to marry him because he was poor. Now back, and stinking rich, Leo finds everything thrown on its head when Elliot seems determined to make her life a nightmare.

The science fiction elements of The Stars We Steal are really very subtle, and you can end up forgetting that it's actually set in space a lot of the time. The focus is instead given over to the people, with the human drama being the driving force behind the story. I have to be honest, I'm not normally one for overly romantic stories, and can find them to be a little mushy at times, but Alexa Donne manages to make Leo and Elliot's story engaging and interesting rather than over the top.

Leo isn't head over heels in love for the whole book, wanting to get together with her crush. Instead, she's a determined young woman, one with dreams and aspirations of her own that don't rely on having to get married. Thanks to this, the moments of romance between her and Elliot feel a lot more natural and nuanced, evolving due to the story rather than being the direct force behind the narrative.

The book doesn't just focus on the romance story, however, but exposes the somewhat sheltered Leo to the injustices in the rest of the fleet. Whilst living a life of luxury and pleasure there are people in the fleet struggling to survive, on ships that are falling apart, fighting to get enough food to get by. This plot is probably one of the most interesting parts of the book, and the hints at a criminal underside of this new society, and possible uprisings from the 'poorer' classes was something that I definitely wanted to see more of.

Whilst these ideas ended up playing a part in Leo's story they stayed as background details, concepts that she's aware of but doesn't really get exposed to. Because of this, it felt like there was something missing to the story. I loved the book, and found the character journeys to be engaging and interesting, but if there had been more focus given over to the rest of the fleet it would have become a perfect score.

The Stars We Steal is an engaging and enjoyable character driven story that uses its science fiction setting in fun and interesting ways. It's full of old fashioned interpersonal drama, queer representation, and big stakes. A great mashing of themes and genres that works brilliantly.

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Monday, 10 February 2020

All The Best Lies by Joanna Schaffhausen - Book Review

'The highly anticipated third novel in the award-winning Ellery Hathaway mystery series.

'FBI agent Reed Markham is haunted by one painful unsolved mystery: who murdered his mother? Camilla was brutally stabbed to death more than forty years ago while baby Reed lay in his crib mere steps away. The trail went so cold that the Las Vegas Police Department has given up hope of solving the case. But then a shattering family secret changes everything Reed knows about his origins, his murdered mother, and his powerful adoptive father, state senator Angus Markham. Now Reed has to wonder if his mother's killer is uncomfortably close to home.

'Unable to trust his family with the details of his personal investigation, Reed enlists his friend, suspended cop Ellery Hathaway, to join his quest in Vegas. Ellery has experience with both troubled families and diabolical murderers, having narrowly escaped from each of them.

'Far from home and relying only on each other, Reed and Ellery discover young Camilla had snared the attention of dangerous men, any of whom might have wanted to shut her up for good. They start tracing his twisted family history, knowing the path leads back to a vicious killer—one who has been hiding in plain sight for forty years and isn't about to give up now.'

It's been a few years since I picked up a crime book. I used to read them a lot, and really enjoyed them, loving trying to see if I could figure out who the killer was before the characters in the book did. Because I'd not read anything in the genre for a while, outside of Sherlock Holmes books at least, I was nervous to get back into it, especially with the third boon in a series. I couldn't have been in better hands, however, as All The Best Lies proved to be not only one of the best crime stories I've read, but one of the most engaging character driven ones too.

The plot of All The Best Lies focuses on FBI investigator Reed Markham, who has taken on a forty year old cold case, that of the murder of his own mother. Having been raised with an adoptive family all his life, Reed's shocked when a recent DNA test reveals that his adoptive father is actually his biological father. Suddenly worried that their might be more undisclosed mysteries hidden in his past, and afraid that his dad might have had a part to play in his mothers death, he chooses to investigate.

I loved that the main story of the book is a cold case. So many times with crime novels it's about current killings, often serial killers, or cold cases where the killer suddenly reappears after years. The fact that there's nothing new going on here, that it's a crime well in the past instantly leapt out at me as so much more interesting. There's not a slew of witnesses, masses of evidence, or a race against the clock, instead Reed and Ellery have to fight for any scrap of evidence that they can find.

The people that the two of them had to interview had to remember back over forty years, struggling to help the investigators set up a timeline, and making proving alibis near impossible. Half the officers who originally investigated the case are either retired or dead.

If it wasn't for the personal stakes involved in the investigation I'm sure that the two of them would have given up. Thankfully, this personal involvement didn't just mean that there was incentive to keep the case going, but meant that I got a huge insight into both Reed and Ellery. Even though this is the third book in the series these insights meant that I never felt like I had missed out on anything. There was always a strong sense of who the characters were, their motivations and driving force.

The strong character development also meant that I found myself being dragged into the emotional story way more than I expected to be. I didn't know about the past adventures between Reed and Ellery, and whilst some of this was filled in for me I'd missed out on two books of the two of them together. Despite this, I became invested in their relationship, wanting the two of them to be able to get together, despite the huge hurdles that they would have to make it over to do so.

All The Best Lies didn't just rely on the romance between the two leads, however, but made family a hugely important part of the story, and not just Reed trying to find answers about his mothers death. His adoptive family played a big part, and there were moments of interaction between them that nearly broke me. There was one moment between Reed and his adoptive mother that actually make me cry a little. The fact that I found myself tearing up more than once during the story took me completely by surprise if I'm being honest.

I'd seen reviews about the rest of this series of books that described them as being hard to put down, and I find myself having to agree with that. I read the entirety of the book in a single day, something that I rarely do. Whilst this was helped that I was awake half the night with chronic pain, that was only a small factor as to why I didn't put the book down; desperately wanting to know what happened next was a much bigger factor.

All The Best Lies drew me in in ways that I wasn't expecting. It had a mystery that kept me engaged throughout whilst I tired to figure out who did it, with a satisfying conclusion that made sense and lived up to the mystery. The characters felt real, alive, and the character moments were some of the best bits of the book. This might have been the first entry in Joanna Schaffhausen's series that I read, but it's not going to be the last; I'm one hundred percent going to read the first two books, and can't wait for more to come out soon.

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Tuesday, 4 February 2020

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland - Book Review

'The sequel to Dread Nation is a journey of revenge and salvation across a divided America.

'After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother. But nothing is easy when you're a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodermus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880's America.

'What's more, this safe haven is not what it appears - as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her. But she won't be in it alone.

'Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by - and that Jane needs her, too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not. Watching Jane's back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it's up to Katherine to keep hope alive - even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.'

A follow up to last year's Dread Nation was always going to be a hard book to do well. I was massively impressed with not just the fun zombie apocalypse alternate history presented in Justina Ireland's novel, but the social commentary that it made and the focus on racism and intolerance that was at its core. Any book that came next in the series would have a challenge in trying to meet the standards that book set. Thankfully, Deathless Divide seems to be the perfect sequel.

Picking up immediately after the events of the first book, we're thrown into a fight for survival straight away as Jane and Katherine try to save a small band of survivors from the massacre at Summerland. These early chapters, where the group race against an oncoming horde of the undead, trying to find a safe haven, immediately sets the tone for the book. It's a story where survival is the main drive for these characters, where they're constantly on edge, where attack can come at any time, and death can come for any character.

The first half of the book feels a lot like this, full of tension and an increasing sense of dread as you're waiting for things to go wrong constantly. And as invariably happens in stories like this, they do. There are some truly horrible moments during the story, moments that manage to pack more of an emotional impact that the first book managed, where characters that you've come to care about really suffer. It's hugely impressive that not only is Ireland able to continue on this story in a wonderfully satisfying way, but is able to make it feel more engaging and impactful.

The book takes something of a leap half way through, where events jump forward a year and a half, and we get to see how the characters evolve over a longer period. Honestly, at first I was a bit annoyed by this. I wanted to see what happened to the characters in these intervening months, and felt a little cheated that I didn't get to see this. Even the small hints we get at these events failed to fill that itch. Why would I just want to hear that Katherine travelled through the zombie infested forests of South America when I could read that adventure?

Despite this, it does feel like the more important, character driven story takes place after this time jump, and if I had to choose which I'd have I'd go for the characters stories first every time. The changes that they've been through during this time jump feel completely natural and create even better versions of them. Jane is damaged, completely broken by the world she's living in and the things that she's been through. She's skirting close to losing herself completely and needs the friendship she has with Katherine to bring her back. Katherine, on the other hand, has gone from strength to strength, and getting to see a character that was always capable, but perhaps a little naive in the first book go on to be so strong and confident is a genuine treat.

Many of the themes that Ireland had front and centre in the first novel continue here, especially the role that racism played in America at this time period. That being said, it feels less a focus than in the first book, with the characters taking more of the limelight than the social trials that they face. One of the things that was only briefly touche upon in the first book, but is given a lot more focus here, however, is sexuality. It was briefly mentioned in Dread Nation that Jane was bisexual, but here we actually get to see her in a romantic relationship with another woman. There's quite a few same sex relationships that are either obvious or hinted at in the book, all of which are treated quite casually.

I love the fact that in a world where people are having to fight just to survive against the undead that relationships and sexuality aren't considered a big thing. Who cares who someone sleeps with then you have to worry about zombies ripping you to pieces? The same sex relationships are never made out to be anything more unusual that heterosexual ones, and I absolutely adored that.

Katherine's asexuality is also given more of a focus here, and the chapters that are written from her point of view make mention of it more than once, and she takes some time to explain how it feels for her; how she's never had the inclination to settle down into a romantic relationship with someone. With asexuality often being misunderstood and underrepresented it's wonderful that Katherine and her sexuality are given an opportunity to take centre stage, without a big drama being made about it.

Deathess Divide manages to bring many of the plot threads and story elements left open by the first book to a satisfying conclusion, and feels like it could be the last time we have with these characters and this world. If it is, it feels like an appropriate ending for them. However, I adore Jane and Katherine, they're wonderful, strong women, and I kind of want more of them. Thankfully, Justina Ireland ends the book in such a way that it's totally left open for more. And I really hope she does do more with them.

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