The Gilded Wolves – Roshani Chokshi

4.5 stars

Are you in the mood for a lush, richly imagined, fantastical heist set in historical Paris and featuring a team of talented protagonists with secrets, agendas and well-written depths? If so, have I found the book for you. The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi is an absolute delight.

Paris, 1889: The world is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. In this city, no one keeps tabs on secrets better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. But when the all-powerful society, the Order of Babel, seeks him out for help, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

To find the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin will need help from a band of experts: An engineer with a debt to pay. A historian who can’t yet go home. A dancer with a sinister past. And a brother in all but blood, who might care too much.

Together, they’ll have to use their wits and knowledge to hunt the artifact through the dark and glittering heart of Paris. What they find might change the world, but only if they can stay alive.

First, can we pause to drool over this gorgeous cover? Because I haven’t stopped drooling since I first laid my eyes on it. The rich green, the lovely, lush texture. /swoon

If Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows and Robert Bennet Jackson’s Foundryside were tossed in a blender and set in 1889 Paris The Gilded Wolves is what would pour out. I can’t help but compare The Gilded Wolves to Six of Crows because The Gilded Wolves fills the hole in my heart Bardugo left when Six of Crows ended. Severin and his team are not cheap copies, but rather polished contemporaries of Bardugo’s crew. That said, The Gilded Wolves is less dark, less bleak and just as fierce.

The system of technological advancement in The Gilded Wolves is called Forging and is controlled by Houses and is absolutely magical. Chokshi’s mashed up elements I’d never have thought to combine myself. Vines that bloom cocktails and champagne chandeliers. Her imagination is delightful and I loved all the wonderful things she poured onto the page. This system also serves to enable technological advancements that would have been hundreds of years out of place, but necessary to the heist plot in a clever way.

Chokshi also weaves in themes of racism, classism and sexism in interesting ways. The diversity is deftly woven into the motivations and desires of her characters.

The Gilded Wolves is on shelves now and you’ll be missing out if you don’t add it to your TBR yesterday. 

Thank you to Wednesday Books for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review.  

Creatures of Want and Ruin – Molly Tanzer

4 stars

Creatures of Want and Ruin is a sex-positive historical magical realism novel set in the roaring twenties. Creatures of Want & Ruin is apparently a sequel to Creatures of Will and Temper but stands alone perfectly. (I have not read Creatures of Will and Temper and never felt like I had missed anything.)

Amityville baywoman Ellie West fishes by day and bootlegs moonshine by night. It’s dangerous work under Prohibition–independent operators like her are despised by federal agents and mobsters alike–but Ellie’s brother was accepted to college and Ellie’s desperate to see him go. So desperate that when wealthy strangers ask her to procure libations for an extravagant party Ellie sells them everything she has, including some booze she acquired under unusual circumstances.

What Ellie doesn’t know is that this booze is special. Distilled from foul mushrooms by a cult of diabolists, those who drink it see terrible things–like the destruction of Long Island in fire and flood. The cult is masquerading as a church promising salvation through temperance and a return to “the good old days,” so it’s hard for Ellie to take a stand against them, especially when her father joins, but Ellie loves Long Island, and she loves her family, and she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure neither is torn apart.

Creatures of Want and Ruin is a book about watching people change around you. That bewildering feeling where you turn around and suddenly people you thought you knew are almost strangers and the dawning horror that when you give it some thought, you can see the slow evolution of how they came to be this way, but there wasn’t anything you could do to stop it.

Ellie is a strong woman, working hard to put her brother through medical school. She fishes and crabs and runs liquor on the side. Her father surprises her one day by spouting terrible things about how women should be in the home not working and her shock is palpable – after all, he taught her everything she knows.

Fin is the rich wife of a new money man who quits his law job to be a party boy. Her friends are perfectly happy to while away the hours having a grand old time and Fin can’t seem to go along with it all. She misses philanthropy and making a difference. Over the course of the story, she has to confront both her own privilege and her own happiness.

Creatures of Want and Ruin may be set in the roaring twenties, but it felt like it was mirroring political feelings today. One day you know someone and then suddenly they start spouting things that feel uncharacteristic and suddenly you question if you ever really knew them at all or if they have been possessed.

Creatures of Want and Ruin is on shelves now!

Thank you to John Joseph Adams/Mariner Books for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review. 

Deep Roots – Ruthanna Emrys

5 Stars

The sequel to the stunning Winter Tide, Deep Roots explores more of Lovecraft’s mythos. Aphra and her confluence are on the trail of a mist-blooded relative and find so much more than they expected.

Cover from Goodreads

Aphra Marsh, descendant of the People of the Water, has survived Deep One internment camps and made a grudging peace with the government that destroyed her home and exterminated her people on land. Aphra’s journey to rebuild her life and family on land, as she tracks down long-lost relatives on land. She must repopulate Innsmouth or risk seeing it torn down by greedy developers, but as she searches she discovers that people have been going missing. She will have to unravel the mystery or risk seeing her way of life slip away.

Deep Roots wrestles with so many of the things we wrestle with in our own lives, especially when confronted with our loved ones choosing paths we’d rather they didn’t. How do we believe that they haven’t been coerced? When is it right to let someone go, and when do we cling to them and hope they forgive us at the end? When is it right to walk away, to call someone out, or to ask them to reexamine their deeply held beliefs? Now, more than any other time in the last thirty years, many of us find ourselves wrestling with these questions within our own families as political rhetoric threatens to tear us apart by othering each other into separate camps.

One of the myths that Deep Roots tackles isn’t from Lovecraft’s mythos, but rather from current Western society. Emrys shows us that the idea that “One who has been othered, can’t also be othering” is false. I see the sentiments that “I can’t be racist, I’m black” or “I can’t be a lesbophobe, I’m gay” or “I can’t be a misogynist, I’m a woman” or “I can’t be ableist, I’m also part of a marginalized community” pretty frequently. These aren’t true statements, but I hear variations of them all the time. Deep Roots explores how even groups that have been othered can have and hold othering beliefs about groups, cultures and people not their own. This is why intersectional activism is so crucial. Despite their own experiences being discriminated against Aphra and the Deep Ones hold strong beliefs about the Outer Ones that are explicitly called out as offensive within the narrative. Aphra is forced to rexamine her beliefs in order to navigate the situation at hand.

I am SO glad to get more of Aphra, Neko, Audrey, Charlie, Specter, Dawson and Caleb. Emrys writes them so vividly, the time between books felt like missing friends. Deep Roots felt like opening a letter from someone who had gone on a long trip into a remote place without technology.

I am impatiently waiting for my next letter from the Confluence. I can’t wait to see what they get up to next.

Deep Roots is on sale now!

 Thank you to Tor.com for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review. 

Smoke and Iron – Rachel Caine

4 Stars

Happy bookday to Smoke and Iron! The fourth in the five-book The Great Library series by Rachel Caine is a strong entry in the series. Like many avid readers, I’m like a moth to a flame with books set in and around libraries.

Cover from Goodreads 

To save the Great Library, the unforgettable characters from Ink and Bone, Paper and Fire, and Ash and Quill put themselves in danger in the next thrilling adventure in the New York Times bestselling series.

The opening moves of a deadly game have begun. Jess Brightwell has put himself in direct peril, with only his wits and skill to aid him in a game of cat and mouse with the Archivist Magister of the Great Library. With the world catching fire, and words printed on paper the spark that lights rebellion, it falls to smugglers, thieves, and scholars to save a library thousands of years in the making…if they can stay alive long enough to outwit their enemies.

I previously reviewed book 3 in the series, Ash and Quill. The rebellion against the Archivist reaches a fever pitch and it’s impossible not to see the parallels between our raggedy cast’s struggle for the soul of the Great Library and the political turmoil in the United States.

How do we separate something we love from its leadership? How do Jess and Morgan and Khalila and the rest of the main cast of characters separate the Great Library from the Archivist and his cabinet of corrupt leadership? How do Americans separate love for country from a Congress and President that care more for short-term power than for the long-term good of the country’s people and land? How do you convince others of that same separation in hopes of saving the institution while dismantling the corrupt head, and hopefully garnering their aid? Or, if not aid, at least their lack of opposition?

These meaty questions are the same that our central cast must wrestle with as they move forward in their plot to overthrow the corruption at the core of the Great Library. Can they save that which they love, without losing life, limb and love?

Rachel Caine is a master at making each book in a series feel like an escalation to the Final Battle and pulling a surprise twist at the end that results in another book. Her Morganville Vampires series did this to my frustration, and I abandoned the series without finishing it. The Great Library series, however, will end in the fifth and final book. The upside of this talent is that books in the middle of series rarely feel like filler books. Rather, each is important in the larger story and really can’t be skipped.

Smoke and Iron* is in stores today!

I received an eARC from Berkley in exchange for my honest review. 

*This post contains affiliate links. Please consider supporting this blog by purchasing this book using my affiliate link. 

 

The Philosopher’s Flight – Tom Miller

5 Stars

Lately, it seems like I’ve been accidentally gravitating toward books that have an element of “reverse-sexism” in them. In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan with her gender flip in Elven society and now, The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller, his debut novel. Let me tell you, I was blown away.

 

Cover from Goodreads

 

The Philosopher’s Flight is an epic historical fantasy set in a World-War-I-era America where magic and science have blended into a single extraordinary art.

Eighteen-year-old Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy—an arcane, female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. Though he dreams of fighting in the Great War as the first male in the elite US Sigilry Corps Rescue and Evacuation Service—a team of flying medics—Robert is resigned to mixing batches of philosophical chemicals and keeping the books for the family business in rural Montana, where his mother, a former soldier and vigilante, aids the locals.

When a deadly accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert rises to the occasion and wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women’s school. At Radcliffe, Robert hones his skills and strives to win the respect of his classmates, a host of formidable, unruly women.

Robert falls hard for Danielle Hardin, a disillusioned young war hero turned political radical. However, Danielle’s activism and Robert’s recklessness attract the attention of the same fanatical anti-philosophical group that Robert’s mother fought years before. With their lives in mounting danger, Robert and Danielle band together with a team of unlikely heroes to fight for Robert’s place among the next generation of empirical philosophers—and for philosophy’s very survival against the men who would destroy it.

The Philosopher’s Flight was an unexpected hit for me. I had been told it was good by a friend and added it to my library holds list. It came in and sat on my nightstand as I passed it by to read other things. Until two days before it was due back at the library, and I couldn’t renew the book. I finally sat down to read it and I am regretting my tardiness.

I loved everything about this book, except for one little thing. I just don’t understand why sigilry is called empirical philosophy. Something like “applied theoretical physics” would have made more sense to me. Calling it philosophy just never clicked for me, and kind of turned me off from the book at first. Philosophy evokes this sense of the guys at my college who were philosophy majors and absolutely insufferable. However, that is not the case here and that small nitpick aside, I LOVE LOVE LOVED this book.

Robert Weekes is such an earnest man. His mother is his hero and he wants nothing more in the world than to join the US Sigilry Corps and fly Rescue and Evacuation in the wars. But, he’s a man. So there’s no way he can keep up with the women. It’s women’s work and he should be content to stay home and keep house.

This is where that delicious reverse sexism element comes into play. Robert faces challenges that are easy for women to relate to. They’re challenges that women have faced in society time and time again – and continue to face even now. An additional element to this is the Trenchers. They were an interesting foil to the Sigilrists. They read like religious anti-abortion activists, feeling a lot like today’s Men’s Rights Activists.

The Philosopher’s Flight doesn’t shy away from including other elements of the political atmosphere of the time. The people of color in the book still face racism and discrimination but in a twist, the civil rights movement, women’s rights movement and sigilrist’s rights movement seem to be working intersectionally, if not in unison, at least with some cooperation.

This book was just so well written and fleshed out so beautifully. I am already tapping my foot with impatience for the next book in the series, which is slated for June 2019.

 

Winter Tide – Ruthanna Emrys

5 Stars

On the recommendation of one of my favorite authors, Seanan McGuire, I picked up Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys. I knew little about the story other than it was Lovecraftian, queer and highly recommended. I have read very little Lovecraft, given his reputation for being sexist and racist.

Cover from Goodreads

Synopsis from Goodreads:

After attacking Devil’s Reef in 1928, the U.S. Government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them to the desert, far from their ocean, their Deep One ancestors, and their sleeping god Cthulhu. Only Aphra and Caleb Marsh survived the camps, and they emerged without a past or a future.

The government that stole Aphra’s life now needs her help. FBI agent Ron Spector believes that Communist spies have stolen dangerous magical secrets from Miskatonic University, secrets that could turn the Cold War hot in an instant, and hasten the end of the human race.

Aphra must return to the ruins of her home, gather scraps of her stolen history, and assemble a new family to face the darkness of human nature.

I fell in love with Aphra and her struggle to balance her safety, comfort, sanity and her desire to learn with the pressure that comes from being the last of her kind. She struggles with what she wants and what she is told is her duty to her people. She grapples with doing what is right in the short term, in the long term and what is easy. Aphra struggles with the weight of the future of all the Deep Ones on her shoulders.

 

Ruthanna Emrys paints a poignant picture of what it is to be Other. Aphra and Caleb’s tenuous existence is contrasted with the Japanese and African American experiences and set against the political backdrop of a post-WWII, pre-Cold War America. Aphra and other important characters have the additional barrier of being women to navigate.

Despite the historical setting, Emrys uses a diverse cast, not defaulting to “everyone is white because History!” and making Winter Tide more richly developed because of it.

I listened to Winter Tide on audiobook and found the narrator to be a wonderful additional layer to the story. I certainly appreciated her pronunciation of many of the words that were I to read would mentally come across as “kfslkjf” – Lovecraftian vocabulary is notoriously hard to pronounce.

I am looking forward to the next book in the series, out later this year, Deep Roots and am so glad I picked up Winter Tide. 

Win An ARC of Black Chamber by S.M. Stirling!

Earlier this month, I attended Emerald City Comicon and had a wonderful time, as always. I finally got to meet Jim Butcher, met Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson, had a book signed by Seanan McGuire and saw October Daye cosplayers and snagged many an ARC from the publisher booths. One such ARC  is Black Chamber, by S.M. Stirling. It doesn’t quite sound like my kind of book, and since I’m swamped with other ARCs and reading, I thought I’d share the ARC with you! Scroll down for the synopsis and Rafflecopter giveaway.

The first novel in a brand-new alternate history series where Teddy Roosevelt is president for a second time right before WWI breaks out, and on his side is the Black Chamber, a secret spy network watching America’s back.

In 1912, just months before the election, President Taft dies suddenly, and Teddy Roosevelt wastes no time in grabbing power as he wins another term as president. By force of will, he ushers the United States into a new, progressive era with the help of the Black Chamber the mysterious spy organization, watching his back.

Luz O’Malley–a brilliant, deadly, and young Cuban Irish American agent of the Black Chamber–heads to Germany. She’s on a luxury airship swarming with agents of every power on earth, as well as conspirators from the Mexican Revolutionary Party and the sinister underground of the reborn Ku Klux Klan, yet none know her true identity.

Her anonymity will be essential as she strives to gain the secrets of Project Loki, an alarming German plan that Roosevelt fears will drag the U.S. into a world war. To gather this intelligence, Luz will have to deceive the handsome yet ruthless Baron Horst von Duckler. She, along with naive Irish-American Ciara Whelan, has to get this vital information back to the U.S.–or thousands of lives might be lost.

Click the link below to enter! (US & Canada only, sorry!)
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Weaver’s Lament – Emma Newman

2 Stars

I haven’t been this disappointed by a second novel in a while. Brother’s Ruin, the first in Emma Newman’s Industrial Magic series was fantastic and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Weaver’s Lament, but boy was I disappointed.

 

Cover from Goodreads

 

Charlotte’s magical adventures continue in Weaver’s Lament, the sequel to Emma Newman’s Brother’s Ruin.

Charlotte is learning to control her emerging magical prowess under the secret tutelage of Magus Hopkins. Her first covert mission takes her to a textile mill where the disgruntled workers are apparently in revolt.

But it isn’t the workers causing the trouble. The real culprits are far more extranormal in nature.

And they have a grudge to settle.

Weaver’s Lament has little of the same magic and excitement that Brother’s Ruin had. The entire book is spent demonstrating how terrible the conditions are for women, and especially working women. Nobody listens to Charlotte in the book but everyone is using her. Her brother is using her while dismissing her talent and intelligence. Magus Hopkins, while pretending to help her is obviously not telling her important things. She seems oblivious to this despite obvious evidence of it.

There’s nearly no magic in this book and entirely too much frustration. I’m sorely disappointed. I’m still hoping for a third book in the series, and hoping it will be a massive improvement.

The Plastic Magician – Charlie N. Holmberg

4 stars

Is there such a thing as cozy fantasy? If so, The Plastic Magician would be a shining example of the genre. The book is so cozy, heartwarming and wonderfully written.

 

Cover from Goodreads

The synopsis from Goodreads:

Alvie Brechenmacher has arrived in London to begin her training in Polymaking—the magical discipline of bespelling plastic. Polymaking is the newest form of magic, and in a field where there is so much left to learn, every Polymaker dreams of making the next big discovery.

Even though she is only an apprentice, Alvie is an inventor at heart, and she is determined to make as many discoveries—in as short a time frame—as she can. Luckily for her, she’s studying under the world-renowned magician Marion Praff, who is just as dedicated as Alvie is.

Alvie’s enthusiasm reinvigorates her mentor’s work, and together they create a device that could forever change Polymaking—and the world. But when a rival learns of their plans, he conspires to steal their invention and take the credit for it himself.

To thwart him, Alvie will need to think one step ahead. For in the high-stakes world of magical discovery, not everyone plays fair…

The Plastic Magician is a standalone spin-off from Holmberg’s Paper Magician series and is totally readable by itself. Even if you’ve never read the Paper Magician series (you should though, it’s great!) you’ll still be able to enjoy The Plastic Magician.  

I love stories with interesting magic systems. I really love when they’re set in the time of the Industrial Revolution and the revolution is in part magical. The Plastic Magician is just such a book. The system of magic is based on materials. A magician bonds to glass, fire, plastic, rubber, metal or paper and from then on, their career is based on that material.

Alvie is a delightful character. She is often lost in her own thoughts, self-conscious, and dedicated to her craft. She’s genuine, positive and genuinely lovely to read. The Plastic Magician is a light, lovely story. It’s an easy read and a heartwarming adventure. I did knock a star off for predictability. The villain and some major parts of the plot were obvious. In this case, however, it wasn’t something that made me want to quit reading. Sometimes it’s really satisfying to read something that goes more or less exactly as you expect it to – that’s what makes it cozy.

The Plastic Magician comes out May 15, 2018. There’s plenty of time to read The Paper Magician series beforehand if you want. I really hope more books in this universe are forthcoming.

I received an eARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. 

Shadow of Night – Deborah Harkness

4 Stars

Shadow of Night is the second book in Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy and finally loses the Twilight vibes from the first novel.

 

Cover from Goodreads

 

Setting the novel in 1590 in Tudor London, and largely focusing the narrative on witches helped Shadow of Night shake off the modern shackles of the sparkly, obsessive, stalkerish Edward Cullen and give Matthew Clairmont and Diana Bishop their own space in the genre.

Shadow of Night is a strong second novel, and avoids “middle story syndrome.” Too many novels or movies in the middle of a trilogy fail to actually accomplish anything in the book. There’s often a lot of running about while making no real progress toward the story’s end goal. That is not the case here. While Ashmole 782 still holds its’ mysteries, Diana and Matthew accomplish a great deal in Tudor England and Europe.

As with the first novel, I listened to Shadow of Night as an audiobook read by Jennifer Ikeda, and once again her narration was spot on. Ikeda’s inflection and voices are just lovely, and I fully plan to listen to the trilogy’s third book instead of reading it.