I was really looking forward to The Witchwood Crown after I got back into the world of Osten Ard earlier this year with Tad Williams’ excellent short novel The Heart of What Was Lost. It’s properly doorstop-sized and it follows a bunch of characters from the original Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy!

It’s been about thirty years since the events of the previous books and Osten Ard, ruled by High King and Queen Simon and Miriamele,  has been enjoying peace and stability. Things have been growing steadily worse as the terrible war of the Storm King begins to fade from memory – several kingdoms are facing internal political strife, contact with the Sithi has been lost, and Utuk’ku, the dark queen of the Norns, has woken and once again plots the destruction of humanity.

We follow several protagonists across Osten Ard as events come to a head: Osten Ard’s monarchs (and our old friends) Simon and Miriamele, their grandchildren Prince Morgan and Princess Lillia, other people from the Hayholt including the chancellor Lord Pasevalles, court members (and also old friends) Tiamak and Count Eolair, Norn engineer Viyeki (who we last met in The Heart of What Was Lost), his human concubine Tzoja and half-human daughter Nezeru, a couple of characters from the grasslands of Thrithings, a servant of the Duchess of Nabban, a mysterious Norn-hunter named Jarnulf… I might be forgetting some. This is an epic story affecting the whole world and it’s told through people living through events in a bunch of different places, and only the readers know the whole story of how they may all be connected.

I expected to plow through this book and stay up all night reading it but it was actually slow going. For the first few hundred pages of the book, it didn’t seem like anything was happening, I felt like I was reading a slice of life story, except not as interesting because it was actually about twenty different slice of life stories and we didn’t stick with any viewpoint for enough time for me to develop a real investment in the characters. The last third of the book is much better paced; things start to change rapidly, we get answers to burning questions, and we start to see all those disparate threads come together.

Another thing that disappointed me was how the characters from the first trilogy had aged and how that impacted the plot. Simon and Miri are old and grief-stricken from the loss of their son a few years prior to the events of the book, they seem almost unforgivably gullible to have not noticed all the trouble brewing around them – not a good quality for monarchs. Their grandson and heir Prince Morgan is utterly insufferable, he’s spoiled and petulant, and Simon and Miri don’t seem to know how to deal with him at all – everything they do is obviously going to fail, and I don’t know how they don’t realize that. I’m not saying this is bad writing, in fact it’s probably realistic that Simon and Miri aren’t going to be good at politicking or dealing with people that don’t have the inherent drive to be good (like Morgan), but it’s not very much fun to read about our old heroes being incompetent.

Other than those two (admittedly major) gripes, I thought The Witchwood Crown was a pretty good book. It’s certainly more nuanced the the original trilogy. I’m especially glad that the Norns are being given some definition and not just treated as faceless villains; between Tzoja, Nezeru, and Viyeki, we get a variety of perspectives into their culture and motivations. The prose is good, of course. And by the end of the book, I was intrigued by most of the plotlines enough to eagerly await the next book.  I hope it has better pacing and more competent characters, though.

The Witchwood Crown by Tad Williams (The Last King of Osten Ard, #1)
DAW Books, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.

This review of Red Sister is long overdue, I read it way back in April but never got around to reviewing it since I was already backlogged on reviews. Luckily, it’s one of the best books that I read this year and I still remember it very well.

Red Sister follows Nona Grey, a young girl accused of a heinous crime and sent away from her home. She ends up at the Convent of Sweet Mercy, where children with the right heritage are taught to be deadly killers and powerful mages. She finds more than just a place to live, she is truly challenged for the first time, she uncovers parts of her personality she never knew had and makes friends closer than family. But Nona’s considerable talents and violent past put her in the middle of long-simmering power struggles within the church and the empire, and she makes quite a few enemies as well.

This book is one of my favorite sub-genres of fantasy, the coming of age and training of the main character. Most of Red Sister is set entirely in the convent, which seems likes it could get boring fast but ends up being utterly riveting. Nona is a great protagonist –  she can be pretty intense at times which makes her both scary and vulnerable, she’s got an interesting backstory, and she reacts like a real person to the things that happen around her (unlike many fantasy characters). It is a pleasure to watch her slowly transform from a mistrustful and hurt young girl to the confident and formidable person that she is at the end.

The most unique thing about this book is the way it depicts female friendships. I can think of a bunch of different books that have great male friendships (Riyria’s Royce and Hadrian, the Gentemen Bastards’ Locke and Jean, to name a couple) but I really can’t think of many books that draw attention to women who are friends. Red Sister doesn’t just focus on them, it makes them the core of the book – Nona’s friendships drive her to grow, provide a source of tension (without melodrama), and make for some pretty heartwarming moments. Yes, there’s a lot of intrigue and action, but none of it would matter if we didn’t care about these relationships so much.

I also really liked the world that this book was set in. It reminded me of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth books – it’s a world that’s slowly dying, and the people living in it now that have access to technology but any understanding of how it all works has been lost for generations.  So far, the state of the world hasn’t made much of an impact on Nona’s life, but I assume it will become more relevant in the next two books.

I can’t wait for the next book, Grey Sister, to come out! At least I haven’t read most of Mark Lawrence’s other work, so I have something to tide me over.

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence (Book of the Ancestor, #1)
Ace Books, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.

Todd Lockwood is one of my favorite fantasy/science-fiction illustrators, and I especially love the covers that he did for the Memoirs of Lady Trent series (which are all about dragons – see here and here for cover images!) When I found out that he was writing a new fantasy series featuring dragons, I was pretty excited to read it.

Growing up on a dragon aerie, Maia has long looked forward to having a dragon of her own, and this might be the year. She’s old enough to start training a dragon, and there are more dragons qits than are needed to fill the usual government quota – even if they are at war. The routine yearly visit from the Dragonry to pick up their qits gets complicated when Maia sees the Summer Dragon, a symbol of an ancient faith suppressed by the empire. And to make things worse, the empire’s enemies are targeting aeries, so Maia’s home has suddenly become a dangerous place to be.

It took me a while to get into this book (as with most books written from a first-person perspective), but I ended up liking it quite a bit. Maia is a terrific protagonist, she’s smart, stubborn, and brave. Her stubbornness drives much of the story, and sometimes it makes her a little bit insufferable, but that’s okay because most people are. We see all the other characters from her perspective so they’re not as developed as her, but they’re still fairly nuanced. Some characters seem like standard archetypes at first but end up surprising you later.

I enjoyed the worldbuilding, there are layers of history that all interact with each other in a realistic way, and that makes the world feel lived in, rather than just being there to support the story. There’s a lot of political intrigue, which I love in fantasy, and I thought it was well done here. The plot is mostly predictable, but there are a couple of interesting turns that I didn’t see coming. One of the things I appreciated was that even though the book featured a teenage protagonist growing up in an isolated area of the world, Maia didn’t actually have to leave home or go on a long journey to find adventure, she did it while having her home and family nearby. Oh, and of course I have to mention the illustrations, there are several of them and they’re by the author, so they’re fantastic.

I’m looking forward to reading further books in the series. I hope the next book comes out soon!

The Summer Dragon by Todd Lockwood (The Evertide, #1)
DAW Books, 2016 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the previous books in the Realm of the Elderlings series.

Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings books are one of my favorite fantasy series’ ever, and the ones featuring Fitz even more so. Assassin’s Fate is the ninth book featuring Fitz (and the sixteenth book overall), so I already knew what it was going to be like and that I would love it.

Assassin’s Fate picks up where Fool’s Quest left off – Fitz and the Fool are in Kelsingra on their way to Clerres (the home of the White Prophets and their Servants), seeking revenge for Bee’s abduction and presumed death. Bee is also on her way to Clerres, dragged along against her will by the Servant Dwalia. This has been the longest journey in the books so far, but the events of this book makes it all worth it. We’ve been seeing the corruption of Clerres and its effect on the Fool for many, many books now, and the conclusion of that arc is deeply fulfilling.

I’ve been worried about where Fitz would end up in this book, I intuited that it would be the end of his story (although I was desperately hoping I’d be wrong) because of the title of the book as well as some of Bee’s dreams from previous books. I don’t want to the spoil the book so I’m not going to confirm or deny my suspicions, but I will say that the ending is more than satisfactory, and that this is one of the rare books that I’ll admit made me cry (and it’s not just me, the Assassin’s Fate discussion on the Robin Hobb subreddit was full of people saying they cried).

I’m not sure what Hobb is writing next, but I hope it’s another book in this world. I’ll happily read whatever she writes though.

Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb (The Fitz and the Fool, #3)
Del Rey, 2017 | Buy the book

I enjoyed the first two Divine Cities books (see my reviews of City of Stairs and City of Blades) so I was looking forward to see how City of Miracles wrapped up the story.

This series changes protagonists in every installment, and this one is narrated by ex-spy and ex-royalty Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, who was a secondary character in both the previous books. After the events of City of Blades, Sigrud has been working menial jobs and trying to stay hidden, waiting for Shara to find him somehow and give him a new assignment. When Shara is suddenly assassinated, he gains a purpose at last – finding Shara’s killer – but following that trail tumbles him into a covert war against a angry young god.

Just like the earlier two books, this one tells a self-contained story. It also wraps up the overarching plot arc of the six original Divinities in a satisfying manner. I wasn’t even sure what the overarching plot arc was, since the books seem designed to be standalones, but it was obvious by the end of the book and a lot of things from earlier made sense in retrospect.

I didn’t find Sigrud to be a particularly compelling character in the last two books so I was dreading his point of view a little bit. I should have trusted the author, though, because Sigrud from the inside is quite different from observing him through other characters’ eyes. We get to see what goes through his head when other characters only see him being silent and emotionless, and he’s much more sympathetic than I originally gave him credit for. I was similarly skeptical about the idea of Shara being dead (especially offscreen!), but the author handled that very well, too.

One of the things I love most about these books is the world – the Divinities and the way they manifest are unique and weird and wonderful. City of Miracles expands our understanding of the world and the mechanics of how the divine powers work even more, which was great. And the setting itself is interesting – a post-colonial era where everything has recently industrialized, and new engineering projects are far more likely to be brought up than magic, even though magic is more obviously present.

I feel like my enjoyment of these books kind of snuck up on me, but now I think of the series as one of the most innovative and original fantasy I’ve read. If you haven’t read this series already, I recommend starting with City of Stairs for the full impact.

City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett (The Divine Cities, #3)
Broadway Books, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.

Anthony Ryan has been on my wishlist for a long time, so I was excited to receive a copy of The Waking Fire from Ace recently. I’ve been reading a lot of books about dragons recently (Within the Sanctuary of Wings, and The Summer Dragon by Todd Lockwood, which I still need to review), so I wasn’t sure I wanted to read this one just yet, but I succumbed to the back cover blurb.

We follow three protagonists – Lizanne, a covert agent for the Ironship company, Hilemore, a naval officer serving on a cutting-edge new ship, and Clay, a petty criminal recruited by Lizanne’s company for a dangerous expedition. Drake blood, which grants “Blood-blessed” humans special powers, has been dwindling in potency rapidly. To avoid a disastrous economic collapse, the Ironship company is organizing an expedition into the interior of the colonized Arradisian continent to find a fabled new variety of drake. This new White drake isn’t just a simple animal, though, and waking it up proves to be dangerous.

There’s a lot going on this book, all three protagonists have pretty different stories, and I don’t think my summary covered it all.  Clay is on a standard fantasy quest, Lizanne’s plot is all about espionage and war , and Hilemore seems like he’s straight out of a more traditional military fantasy. All three of them tie together to tell a larger story about a rational and ordered world that’s suddenly going crazy. The world really pulled me in, there’s a bunch of corporations pursuing profit, a simple but versatile magic system, an ambitious empire, cunning pirates, fearsome warriors, and lots of cool dragons. The action scenes were particularly well-done, I could almost see the movie in my head, and I usually just glaze over those kinds of scenes in books.

I did have a couple of issues with the book, mainly with the characters. Sometimes I felt like they just did stuff, and I didn’t have any insight into why they were making the decisions they did. It was never bad enough to take me out of the story, but unlike more character driven books, I can’t really describe the characters’ personalities, just their actions. The book also wasn’t as tight as it could have been – Hilemore’s story didn’t tie into Lizanne and Clay’s until the last minute, and I’m still not sure what the significance of his experiences is to the larger story. I also hope the initial premise of drake blood losing potency will be explored in future books, it ended up being overshadowed by larger events.

I feel like I’ve read a lot of the great fantasy authors writing today, so I’m always excited to discover someone new, and Anthony Ryan seems like he could definitely be one of them. I’m glad I only have a little over a month until The Legion of Flame comes out, and I’ve also ordered Blood Song, the first book of the author’s previous trilogy, to help me wait.

The Waking Fire by Anthony Ryan (The Draconis Memoria, #1)
Ace Books, 2016 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.