Tag: historical fantasy Page 1 of 4

Sorcerer to the Crown

On September 14, 2023

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, published 01 September 2015. The first book in the Sorcerer Royal series.

Set at the times of the Napoleonic Wars/Regency Period in England, magic is slowly disappearing and the Unnatural Philosophers (magicians/old white men) blame their new Sorcerer Royal. Zacharias, the Sorcerer to the Crown, is the son of Caribbean slaves who was adopted by the Wythes and followed in his adopted father’s footsteps when he became the first black Sorcerer Royal. Since anyone who is not a white male is inferior and can’t do magic properly it is because of Zacharias that Fairyland has cut Britain off the magic.

When we get to meet the female main character, Prunella, an orphan living in a school for witches, we see more sexism and racism. Women are inferior and hence high born magical girls have to attend schools for witches to get rid of their magic; servants, by the way, may do magic, since it’s handy around the house. Though Prunella, as the daughter of an Indian woman and an English gentleman, should never even attempt to use magic, she’s inferior not only by her sex, but also her race. You can guess where this is going.

Due to her heritage Prunella has magical abilities in abundance, she only needs to unlock her abilities and learn to control them. With the help of Zacharias and his adoptive mother, Prunella wants to learn magic properly and find a husband in London’s society. Not easy since everyone and their grandmother judge her by her sex and the colour of her skin.

The racism/sexism morale of the story was dealt ham-fistedly, it could have been woven into the story in a subtler way. The world-building had holes, in my opinion. I was looking for explanations as to why women shouldn’t do magic, other than they are the weaker sex; which is why I liked that Prunella stayed strong and insisted on learning. Lastly, the story dragged. This might be due to the writing style which emulates the style of the Regency era, but can’t quite pull it off.

2.5/5 Harpy Eagles

Mesoamerican Zorro retelling

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On August 1, 2023

In Dungeons & Bookdragons, Reviews

Sun of Blood and Ruin by Mariely Lares, expected publication 28 September 2023.

The cover is stunning, was one of the first thoughts I had about this book. The blurb was promising. The final product wasn’t at all what I had hoped it would be.

The first half of the book was hard to get through and made me put it off several times. The story starts right away, no initial explanations and hence hard to follow for someone who has only had limited contact with indigenous cultures of Mexico (quite frankly, all of the Americas). Yet, some explanations were inserted later on, and here I want to point out the word inserted; the info-dumps felt like they were copied from an encyclopaedia and didn’t gel with the general style of writing.

Throughout the book the more two dimensional characters were difficult to distinguish from each other, which was especially vexing when reading pages of stilted dialogue. It got a little better in the second half of the book, though.

Sun of Blood and Ruin is a gender reversal Zorro retelling with a lot of fantasy elements that will certainly gain fans. Unfortunately, I had the impression the core story was actually the latter part of the second half of the book and the first half was later added to create a novel out of a novella.

2/5 Harpy Eagles

How To Avoid the Guillotine

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On July 1, 2023

In Dungeons & Bookdragons, Reviews

From the cover it might be clear that this book is set at the time of the French Revolution. Cogman retells the story of Orcyz’s “The Scarlet Pimpernel” by adding vampires and magic. The French nobles are vampires which is why they need to be killed with the guillotine. The Scarlet Pimpernel, a British nobleman who uses disguises and, together with a group of equally daring people, rescues people from the Reign of Terror in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

The main character of the story is Eleanor a young English maid who works for one of the acknowledged noble vampires. This lady notices the resemblance between Eleanor and Queen Marie Antoinette and basically volunteers Eleanor to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Eleanor must now learn how to behave like a noble and a spy in order to help free the Queen and her children from the Bastille. A daring undertaking in and off itself, especially once Eleanor has to go undercover in enemy territory.

A fast paced fantasy story that has a new twist on vampires and offers an interesting reason for why the French Revolution happened.

Truly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next book in the trilogy.

4/5 Harpy Eagles

Nive Cover, But…

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On June 28, 2023

In A Game of Tropes, Dungeons & Bookdragons, Reviews, The Power of Love

Shanghai Immortal by A.Y. Chao, published 01 June 2023.

As a contestant for the most stunning cover 2023 this novel is in the lead. I applied for the ARC especially because the cover caught my attention. Yet, the story behind the cover and the interesting blurb didn’t deliver.

Shanghai Immortal seems to defy all genres that I would have assigned to it, is it an adult (urban) fantasy with Chinese mythology elements or a paranormal mystery/paranormal romance?

I’m not sure what this book’s genre actually is, but it read too modern for a story set in the Jazz Age. The MC, Lady Jing, acted like a spoiled teenager rather than a nearly 100-year-old immortal princess/half-vampire-half-fox-spirit with ties to two high courts of the mythical realm. Lady Jing is acting up just for the sake of annoying everyone around her, which shows how the author is using Jing’s childhood trauma as a plot device, it’s the only reason given for Jing’s behaviour. Furthermore, Jing doesn’t listen to the advice from the people around her, which the author tries to hide under the cloak of the “miscommunication trope”.

Where Lady Jing is presented as the anti-hero hero who wants to prevent the theft of a certain dragon pearl from the King of Hell, the secondary characters are depicted as typical paste-board romance novel characters. There’s the uber-beautiful bestie and her love-interest. There is the overly protective, yet obnoxiously annoying father-figure and his cronies, the “turd for brain bitches” who have been bullying Jing all her life, there is an avuncular figure who we get to see two three times but they have to make the deus-ex-machina work, and there is the handsome, clueless and hard to crack mortal love-interest.

Ugh! I thought I’d get an Urban Fantasy with Chinese Mythology woven into it not a hot mess of a story that I’d rank as a bland romance story that has the maturity level somewhere between middle-grade and YA. It definitely isn’t an adult paranormal/mythological urban fantasy mystery.

2/5 Harpy Eagles

Quick Reviews – March 2023

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On March 30, 2023

In Reviews

Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton, published 14 March 2023.

Mickey 7 is back, or should I say he’s still alive? It’s two years after Mickey bartered for his “freedom” from being an Expendable by hiding a bomb with the Creepers. Spring has come to Niflheim and there are problems with the reactor core. To ensure everyone’s survival before the next winter comes, Mickey has to get the bomb back from the Creepers, but it’s gone. What follows is a road trip to recover the bomb from a different tribe of Creepers.

The novel has a plot, but it’s not important. Mickey will save the day, because he is the Chosen One. 
Blech!

1/5 Harpy Eagles

What Angels Fear by C.S. Harris, published 2005.

The first novel in a dark mystery series set in Britain in the early 19th century, right around the tumultuous time when the Regency was about to be declared. Sebastian St Cyr is implicated in the murder and, knowing himself to be innocent, takes it upon himself to find the murderer. 

Truly liked to see a mystery set in the early times of the Regency. St Cyr is a likable hero and there are interesting secondary characters. The writing is engaging and the chapters are short, which made the novel a pageturner for me.

4/5 Harpy Eagles

Weyward by Emilia Hart, 02 February 2023.

The cover is gorgeous. The writing is excellent. The three storylines are well-interwoven. That should all make this a five star reading. Do. Not. Be. Fooled. By. The. Cover. This book is darker than you’d think. It’s full of domestic violence, sexual assault, male abuse and subjugation of women, furthermore stillbirth, abortion, miscarriage, mutilation, suicidal intentions.
 
Three timelines. Three women. Three, let’s call them, hedgewitches are fighting for their independence by using insects or birds to free themselves from their male oppressor/s and/or use the animals for their vengeance.

There is nothing new in these three stories. We’ve read it all before. Women being oppressed by the men in their lives, be it father, husband, family members, neighbours, clergy, men of law. Women being at fault just because they are women. 

I appreciate what Hart did here, interweaving the three stories, but even at the end of the book we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. The end of the book is the circle closing, to make sure the three stories can interconnect.

2/5 Harpy Eagles

CutLass at the ready!

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On March 4, 2023

In Dungeons & Bookdragons, Reviews

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty, published 02 March 2023.

From the cover of the US edition you might conclude this is a YA fantasy novel. The UK edition cover might make you revise that idea. Whatever idea you come to in the end, did you think of a tall, brown skinned, middle-aged female pirate who leaves her ten-year-old daughter behind to rescue the daughter of a former crew mate?

It’s a swashbuckling tale of Amina’s first adventure after having left her pirating ways when her daughter was born. You’ll encounter a woman torn between the love for her daughter and family as well as her first love her ship and the sea. There are mythical creatures, sea monsters, magic, fights with mythical sea creatures and, we’re among seafaring people, cussing and drinking.

If you liked Pirates of the Caribbean and are more than ready for another pirate adventure with a daring captain and her middle-aged crew in the Indian Ocean at medieval times, then get this book as soon as possible.

4/5 Harpy Eagles

Don’t annoy the Frost Fae

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On January 30, 2023

In Dungeons & Bookdragons, Reviews

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett, published 10 January 2023.

It’s the autumn of 1919 and professor Emily Wilde of Cambridge has travelled to the far north to research faeries. She’s a curmudgeon and manages to aggravate the locals within days of her arrival. Not ideal, since she’s the definition of the well-off city girl not used to fending on her own. Pride and pure stubbornness outweigh comfort; she’d rather freeze than ask someone to show her how to chop firewood. Still, she makes a friend among the local smaller fae. Then her colleague and rival, the handsome Wendell Bambleby, arrives and pushes his way into her research. The both of them soon discover dark fae magic afoot and have to help the villagers rescue fair maidens and exchange a possible changeling. The research mission then turns into rescue missions; especially after Emily gets it into her head to help a trapped local high fae.

The novel reminded me of Brennan’s The Memoirs of Lady Trent series and Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell series. Strong female academic at the helm of the story. Some kind of romantic entanglement with the male sidekick. Getting into scrapes and out of them with wits and female guile.

I’m looking forward to the next book in the series.

4/5 Harpy Eagles

A Practical Guide to Conquering the World

By TheMarquessMagpie

On December 26, 2022

In Dungeons & Bookdragons, Hidden Gems, Reviews

K.J. Parker is one of the a-bit-under-the-radar authors we at Sceptical Reading have grown to like quite a bit. And in A Practical Guide to Conquering the World, his mix of humour and cleverness works its charm again.

It is the third and final instalment in Parker’s The Siege trilogy and follows Felix, a translator stuck in another country while his home is conquered.

But what would a Siege book be, without an outsider / unlikely hero saving not only his own, but everyone‘s bacon? And that‘s exactly what happens. Again. But let me tell you, the formula does not get old. This time, the whole world is the playing field. It really makes you appreciate the power translators may wield.

4/5 Magpies – a solid piece of fun

Let’s tear down the tower of Babel

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On November 21, 2022

In Dungeons & Bookdragons, Reviews

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang, published 23 August 2022. Yes, the title is a mouthful, but in keeping with the story and definitely one of the reasons I wanted to read this dark academia alternate history/historical fantasy.

The tower of Babel, the heart and centre of the Royal Institute of Translations, is also at the heart of this fictional early Victorian era story. Like the TARDIS it is bigger on the inside, housing more than eight floors of libraries, laboratories and lecture rooms. It is the centre of silver-working, engraving translations into bars of silver to cover all aspects of a certain word or topic, so that nothing gets lost in translation, for magical effect.

The story is told from the POV of Robin Swift, who is a half-Chinese orphan brought to Britain by Professor Lovell, a member of Babel, when he was about ten years old. He’s been learning languages since to prepare him for enrolling at Oxford University.

At Babel, Robin learns that silver-working is Britain’s main tool for its industrial revolution and imperial expansion. Which is why the secret society Hermes is trying to tear down Babel, because it enables the British Empire to keep colonising and exploiting other countries. That Hermes is doing so at all costs, resolving to violence, is what makes Robin waver about whether he’s doing the right thing over and over. What is Robin willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Will he resort to violence or find a different way to stop Babel?

What I liked about the book is that despite it being a dense read, it is a page-turner. It was easy for me to get immersed in the story and sympathise with the characters. The writing is easy to follow and I enjoyed reading every footnote and agreed with Kuang’s assertions about translations and the hard work of linguists.

Yet, the main message of the book, colonisation is bad, made for a tough read from about the half-way point of the book. It is being ham-fistedly hammered home at every opportunity and I found myself rolling my eyes more and more often.

Furthermore, and this is already hinted at in the subtitle, Hermes doesn’t shrink back from the use of violence. Violence that would be seen as terrorism these days. I’m not a big fan of ‘the ends justify the means,’ which is why it took me nearly two weeks to actually finish the last part of the book. This is not due to the writing suddenly lacking, it is just because the questions Robin faces and the decisions he faced made me uncomfortable. However, that was supposed to be the book’s purpose, to make you think while enjoying a good story.

3/5 Harpy Eagles

Be Gay – Do Magic

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On October 25, 2022

In Reviews

Yes, I shamelessly stole the headline from TorDotCom’s Instagram feed. Sorry-not-sorry.

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske, expected publication 01 November 2022.

The sequel to A Marvellous Light, the first book in The Last Binding trilogy, is set on an ocean liner travelling from America to Great Britain. This time Robin’s sister Maud is in the spotlight, she’s working ‘undercover’ trying to find the second piece of “the Contract”. [“The Contract” is a fae artifact made up of three magical items that allow the user to syphon magic from other magicians.] That’s why she’s accompanying an elderly lady, and her rather rude parrot, who supposedly has this second piece. But before Maud can find out anything, the elderly lady is killed using magic.

It’s clear that Maud needs help solving this ‘locked room mystery’. Fortunately for her Lord Hawthorne is aboard and grudgingly agrees to help her. She makes further allies in Violet Debenham, a magician and actress who’s wreathed in scandal, as well as the young writer Ross, who carries a suitcase of scandalous material. The group has to find out where the piece of the contract is hidden while also trying to avoid attracting the attention of the murderous magicians hiding among the passengers.

I truly enjoyed this LGBTQ+ historical fantasy/mystery/romance. It was a real page turner and, although I solved the mystery of where and what the second piece of the Contract was fairly early on, I enjoyed how the four amateur detectives puzzled it all out. Tiny note at the end: the cover is gorgeous!

5/5 Harpy Eagles