Another month, another batch of books read and shelved. Let’s start with the lone book I reviewed for SFFWorld, In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellan
In the Shadow of Lightning is an enormously entertaining, inventive, and smart novel. As a series starter, it does everything perfectly…lays the ground for the world and the people, invites speculation about where the plot can go, provides some closure, but leaves the door open for the inevitable second novel. I was a fan of Brian’s Powder Mage Trilogy and this book reminded my why I like his writing and storytelling so much…it is FUN! I could feel how much Brian enjoyed crafting this magic system and have his characters play in it, the feeling was infectious. That’s something he has always infused his work with and reminds me I need to catch up with the sequel trilogy to Powder Mage Trilogy.
I’ve slowly been making my way through Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series and I tore through the fourth book, Thunderbird early in the month in about a day or two. With each book I read from Chuck Wendig, he climbs my top 10 list of favorite writers. This series is a horror/mystery/noirish hybrid that focuses on title character Miriam Black who can tell you when you die. In this fourth novel, Miriam is even more broken. This installment finds Miriam hoping to get rid of her ability to see people’s deaths, which she considers a curse. Of course, it isn’t that easy for Miriam because she gets caught up with drug dealers in the Southwest and bad things happen. I’ve got two more books in the series and I’m vacillating between consuming them quickly because they are so damned good and stretching out that consumption because well, then they won’t be new to me any longer. DAMN YOU WENDIG!
After bouncing off of Ava Reid’s newest novel, Juniper & Thorn, I dove into S.P. Miskowski’s The Worst is Yet to Come. This one is a few years old (2019), but I’ve been seeing it mentioned with some frequency in some of the horror social media circles I’ve been following. None of that prepared me for what was in store in this dark, sort-of-coming-of-age story. Tasha is a 14 year-old girl who befriends Briar, a new girl in town, much to the chagrin of her mother. Miskowski brilliantly tells this story from multiple points of view and each layer of dread that unfolds reveals a new layer of dread. Miskowski has more stories set in this town of Skillute and I think I need to get my hands on them. Also, that cover is just hauntingly gorgeous.
After a couple of dark tales, I jumped into a book I’ve had sitting on Mount Toberead since late 2017 – Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft, the first novel in his Books of Babel. This book was a self-published sensation when Orbit republished it and the second book, Arm of the Sphinx, in 2018. What makes this novel so enchanting is how it is everything an Epic Fantasy novel should be, but has similarities to so very few Epic Fantasy novels I’ve read. The closest two novels that come to mind for me are Alastair Reynolds’s Terminal World and Gregory Frost’s Shadowbridge. Those comparisons really don’t do justice to the magic of what Josiah Bancroft has done with this novel and world. Bancroft sets his story in a world that has many similarities to our own, but is clearly just echoing that familiarity, the story has a fable-like feel too it, as well.
Title character Thomas Senlin takes his wife Marya to the Tower of Babel for their honeymoon. The tower is an enormous, continuously growing structure with each vast level, or "ringdom," essentially a world unto itself. Thomas and Marya are separated almost immediately and he spends the bulk of the novel searching for her. Bancroft’s prose is elegant, it lulls you in like a comforting blanket, but the stories it reveals over the course of Senlin’s journeys through four of the forty "ringdoms" are harrowing, enchanting, and often dark. The fourth and final novel published November 2021, so I may have to binge the three remaining books I’ve yet to read.
If there’s one author I’ve “discovered” in the sense that I hadn’t read them before the last year or so who has jumped up my must buy list it is Jonathan Janz. The third book I’ve read by him over the last year, The Raven is a post-apocalyptic/horror/adventure hybrid. Prior to the events depicted in the novel, in order to avert what was thought to be a guaranteed nuclear holocaust a group of rogue scientists played with human genes that triggered monsters of legend, like werewolves, zombies, cannibals, and vampires, to reemerge from our “junk DNA” in the world. They were always real in the world of The Raven, but mankind all but erased them from memory. The titular character, The Raven, is Dez, a man trying to survive in this broken world and find the woman he loves. Dez
is guilt-ridden for the lives he couldn’t save, which drives him to find and hopefully save her. This one is a blast and Janz is releasing a second book (hopefully of many) later in the year.
Audio Books
I mentioned last month I was in the home stretch for Lindsay Buroker’s fantastic Star Kingdom saga and I finished the last book in the series, Layers of Force about halfway through the month. I can’t recommend this series highly enough, fun, light-hearted, and optimistic with some interesting SF tropes on display. The narration by Fred Berman is awesome. After that, I tried a new series from a trusted author: Seanan McGuire’s Discount Armaeddon, the first novel in her InCryptid series. If the first book in the series is any indication, I’m going to enjoy these books. They focus Verity Price a ballroom dancer and part of a family of Cryptozoologists, who were once monster hunters. Verity's family realized a couple of hundred years ago that hunting and killing innocent monsters might not be such a good thing. There are some similarities with Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International series, but those are mostly superficial. McGuire’s series, at least based on this first book, is far less militaristic and a little more upbeat and flavored with more romance. Enormously fun in every way.
I went back to The Wheel of Time with book six, Lord of Chaos. I’ve only just begun, but I think this is one where the bloat starts to creep into the series. I’m enjoying it on what is either my third or fourth re-read. The audiobook is 40 hours so I may not finish it in July!
