Daughters of Doubt and Eyerolling

Month: January 2022

The Counterclockwise Heart

The Counterclockwise Heart is a middle-grade fantasy by Brian Farrey, published by Algonquin Young Readers on 01 February 2022.

Short summary provided by the publishers:

Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .


Time is running out in the empire of Rheinvelt.
 
The sudden appearance of a strange and frightening statue foretells darkness. The Hierophants—magic users of the highest order—have fled the land. And the shadowy beasts of the nearby Hinterlands are gathering near the borders, preparing for an attack.
 
Young Prince Alphonsus is sent by his mother, the Empress Sabine, to reassure the people while she works to quell the threat of war. But Alphonsus has other problems on his mind, including a great secret: He has a clock in his chest where his heart should be—and it’s begun to run backwards, counting down to his unknown fate.
 
Searching for answers about the clock, Alphonsus meets Esme, a Hierophant girl who has returned to the empire in search of a sorceress known as the Nachtfrau. When riddles from their shared past threaten the future of the empire, Alphonsus and Esme must learn to trust each other and work together to save it—or see the destruction of everything they both love.

The ARC for this book was offered to me, with the words:

Perfect for fans of Lalani of the Distant Sea by Erin Entrada Kelly and The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill, THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART demonstrates that, in the words of Esme, “stupid compassion must be contagious.”

Perfect might be overstretching it, but I enjoyed my time with the book, once I sat down and read it. (My fault, I kept pushing the book back onto the virtual #MountARC.) It’s definitely perfect for the kind of middle-grade reader who likes to read more mature books and can handle darker topics of death, grief, violence; those are done gracefully not gory and too dark.

Although I am a native of German, I actually struggled with the German words within the story. They pulled me out of the flow of the story more often than I liked. This might be a problem for younger readers, too. Even more so, since most of the words are not explained or translated. Young readers might not bother about the hidden meaning of those words, but I was wondering what Germanic folklore exactly Farrey was hinting at. So I checked the word “Nachtfrau” (night woman), for example. It’s been out of use for a long time, and I was only vaguely familiar with the term. It used to refer to a female ghost-like creature that was supposed to drain the blood from children’s bodies; a bo(o)geyman story told to children to make them behave well. The Nachtfrau in The Counterclockwise Heart isn’t a ghost, nor does she drink children’s blood, nevertheless she is a figure people are afraid of.

My favourite character is Esme. She’s strong. She was brought up in a small community of Hierophants in the North who blames the Nachtfrau for their problems. Despite having been told to loathe the sorceress, Esme is strong enough to trust her own instincts. She weighs what she learned growing up against what she learned during her travels. She uses her brain and heart to determine whether what she had been told is actually true, and makes an informed decision based on facts, rather than ‘fiction’.

The magic system Farrey came up with is wonderful. It’s a system of balance: if you use energy for your spell that means you have to give back something. Some sort of energy conservation. This way magic actually added to the story, since it couldn’t be used as a panacea for all sorts of problems; using magic carelessly might cause more trouble.

A good middle-grade novel that, since that’s the one I read and liked, fans of Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon will certainly enjoy.

3/5 Harpy Eagles (or Goodreads stars)

About the author:

Brian Farrey is the author of The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse, winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award, and the Stonewall honor book With or Without You.  He lives in  Minnesota with his husband and their sweet but occasionally evil cats. You can find him online at brianfarreybooks.com and on Twitter: @BrianFarrey.

Quick Reviews – January ’22

Daughter of Smoke and Bone (GER edition) by Laini Taylor, 2011.

The first book of a YA fantasy romance trilogy featuring angels and demons and a blue haired girl with lots of tattoos. The human girl Karou grew up among chimera. She's an arts student in Prague, but she's also dealing in teeth for her 'adoptive' father, the chimera Brimstone. 
When, on one of her errands for Brimstone, an angel attacks her, and subsequently all the doors to Brimstone's workshop are magically burnt shut, Karou has to face the angel Akiva to find answers about her life and a way back to the shop. 
I've read Karou's and Akiva's story several times. This time I read it in German with my daughter. 
The story is still as good, the translation leaves room for improvement though. 

5/5 Harpy Eagles – because we enjoyed the mistranslations very much


The Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons by Kate Khavari, expected publication 7 June 2022. (ARC provided by the publishers through NetGalley)

A murder mystery set in London in the 1930s with a strong female heroine. 
Saffron Everleigh is working on her PhD in botany. As a woman in academia, in the 1930s, she has to fight a lot of uphill battles already. When the wife of one of the professors of the department is poisoned at a party, Saffron is determined to proof the innocence of her mentor. 
There are some really villainous villains and a lot of very dumb detectives; and there's chemistry between Saffron and her sidekick. 
Brimming with botanical information that isn't at all dull, and, most importantly for me, not too obvious plot twists.

5/5 Harpy Eagles


Evershore. A Skyward Flight novella by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson, published 28 December 2021.

This is Jorgen's story and it's taking place at the same time as the third Skyward Flight novel Cytonic. 
Jorgen is trying to master his cytonic abilities. He's training with the alien Alanik. This is how they pick up a transmission from Evershore, the Kitsen home planet. Jorgen and part of Skyward flight travel to Evershore, where they meet Kitsen, see clouds, the sea and beaches for the first time; and find out - among a lot of other things - that sand truly gets everywhere. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles


Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows by James Lovegrove, published 2017.

Lovegrove knows how to spin a yarn, just as well as Dr Watson. 
Three manuscripts, by Dr Watson, were found. Those manuscripts are the true accounts of what Holmes and Watson faced. 
In 1880, logical Sherlock Holmes comes up against the occult for the first time. Lovecraft's Elder gods are roaming Victorian London. Can Sherlock Holmes' rational reasoning handle the inexplicable? Magic? 

Has this been done before? Sure. 
Did it entertain me? Couldn't put it down. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles


Cackle by Rachel Harrison, published 5 October 2021.

Annie, after being dumped by her BF of ten years, moves from Manhattan to a small town in a rural area. The quaint town offers her a new start. Alas, Annie is a doormat and hence gravitates towards the self-confident and charismatic Sophie, who surprisingly wants to be Annie's friend. She wants Annie to recognise her true self. Annie wants her ex back, wants a man in her life, wants to drink her body's volume in alcohol. Honestly, this woman drinks a lot.
Tension? Horror? Not really. 
Female empowerment? If that means you should be obnoxious and rude, then no. 
Best character, even though he was more like a children's book character, the pet-spider Ralph. 

1/5 Harpy Eagles

Chinese Sci-Fi

The first book I finished this year was a collection of Chinese short sci-fi: Sinopticon 2021: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction, curated and translated by Xueting Christine Ni.

I received an ARC by Netgalley ages ago and started reading way back in 2021, but only managed to finish the last 3 stories this year.

This collection features a broad span of different science fiction subgenres, and there were some I really liked, and some that did not click with me at all. I like space and AIs, time travel not so much.

I especially liked the stories “Tombs of the Universe” by Han Song, which is an interesting story about death in a society sprinkled through space, and Starship: Library by Jiang Bo, which is about a library starship – that’s my kind of story right there!

One thing that threw me off was some casual remarks about the “nature of woman”. Kinda eyeroll-y, from my standpoint. One star less for this and the stories I did not like.

4/5 duckies

A Brightness Long Ago

A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay is one of the books that has been sitting on my shelves for some time. Patiently waiting. Or more likely silently judging me. Like most of its kind, it turned out to be a “Why did I wait so long” kind of book.

Set in a fantasy version of Renaissance Italy, it is alive with really effortless world building. Because it does not hide the fact that it is kind of Italy but different, everything already feels kind of familiar when you enter the story.

It boasts a big cast of characters, changing perspectives frequently. Sometimes storytelling like this can really annoy me, but in this case it made every aspect more interesting. While parts of the story are told by a first person narrator, he is not necessarily the main character of the story. I’m not even sure there is one. Instead, complex political and personal relationships take the main role.

The writing style was compelling, and at times even a bit self-aware. It felt like the author was winking at you, right before dismantling typical storytelling tropes.

Ultimately, this is a book about the ways people both glorious and seemingly unimportant can shape history. Its place is somewhere between fantasy and historical fiction. But the fantasy elements are more an underlying feeling than, you know, dragons. It still scratches the high fantasy itch. With this book, Guy Gavriel Kay has immediately become an author I need to read more of. Seems like historical fantasy, if we want to call it that, is right in my wheelhouse.

5/5 Magpies

Last year had quite a lot of shitty books

You might not believe me, but I actually did manage to reach my 100 stories goal mentioned here. Most of this is thanks to the amazing Powder Mage universe by Brian McClellan and its short stories and novellas. I fell in love with them again, and I will start 2022 by FINALLY reading The Autumn Republic. Probably.

I have a couple series to catch up to, which will be my prime reading goal, even if it means buying some books. Murderbot 6 is currently not on my shelf and even though I want to buy less books, some things can’t be avoided. These series include:

  • Murderbot by Martha Wells
  • Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
  • The Hollows by Kim Harrison
  • The Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire
  • The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
  • Ink & Sigil by Kevin Hearne

I’ve got a shit-ton of books here and I am excited about most of them. But somehow, my reading last year has come to a giant reading slump, similar to the Marquess Magpie. I believe most of the slump was cause by a) me actively learning stuff and working, so less time for reading and b) there were quite a lot of really shitty books this year.

My resolution is twofold: First, I will preemptively purge my TBR (I’m looking at a certain vampire book here) of books that I have less interest in reading. I tend to have a “work first” mentality and pick the books I don’t really want to read instead of those I really look forward to.

Second: DNF is an option and there is no shame in putting down a book that does not fit, or does not fit my current mood. Those books will have a second chance later.

I would list “more audiobooks” as another resolution, but I am currently watching Critical Role, and I have about 600 hours of content to watch/listen to before me. So I doubt that Audiobooks will work.

I think my kittens are responsible for me reading more at the end of the year, because one just ca not move if there is a kitty sleeping on top of you. So, I might as well read just one more chapter!

I do hope for some Buddyreads with my wonderful friends, but we will have to find books that are right for all of us, and that will prove quite a challenge.

And now I am off to purge the TBR! Cleanse it! Down with the unbelievers!! (What?!)

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