46. THE JASAD HEIR and THE THIRD DAUGHTER reviewed over at Tor.com
Plus Locus has a few of my recent reviews up online too.
I reviewed Sara Hashem’s The Jasad Heir for Tor.com, and I wish I’d enjoyed it more:
Told primarily in the first person from Sylvia’s point of view, The Jasad Heir has an appealing energy and an emotional vividness that will, I suspect, win over plenty of readers, particularly those drawn to the high emotional stakes and earnest, passionate sensibilities common in YA, of which it reminds me. The youthful heroine with a traumatic past and dark secrets, some secret even from herself, determined to live for herself alone but betrayed to selflessness by the human connections she can’t deny; the antagonist-hero, handsome and puissant, haunted by his failures and his overbearing father, cursed with a unique ability; a religious contest of strength, cunning, and survival; the fate of kingdoms hanging in the balance. It’s a winning combination.
Alas, for me, the reading experience is marred by a number of flaws.
I also wish I’d enjoyed Adrienne Tooley’s The Third Daughter more, but maybe next time, right?
Right up until the novel’s final quarter, I was absolutely enjoying the ride. Tooley has a strong voice, and the slow unspooling of attraction between Elodie and Sabine is delicately and skillfully drawn, which makes up for a number of issues I would otherwise find frustrating . Sabine’s growing confidence and willingness to confront her own feelings is dealt with well, and so are Elodie’s complicated love for, and jealousy of, her sister and her reluctant realisations about her privilege and the state of her mother’s kingdom.
Over at Locus, here’s a sample of what I’ve been writing about:
S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws, an excellent book. Huang just keeps getting better:
Huang has written a gloriously cinematic novel, one that delights in martial arts tropes. The Water Outlaws’ bandits remind me a touch of the Robin Hood mythos, while being rather more complex and rather less straightforwardly heroic than many renditions of the Heroic Outlaw myth often are. The novel zips along like a high-wire act, feeling faster and shorter than its nearly 500 pages, with characters drawn in vivid strokes
M.C. Carrick’s Labyrinth’s Heart, a fantastic conclusion to an excellent trilogy:
The setting is richly detailed, with a deep sense of place. Carrick evokes atmosphere deftly, and Nadežra draws from the same well as Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint and Melissa Scott and the late Lisa A. Barnett’s Astreiant series, where duellists and brawlers, con artists and revolutionaries and fortune-tellers (false and truthful) rub up against aristocrats and scholars, and slums and sewers provide counterpoint to lavish fetes and the upholstered parlours of the wealthy: the kind of sensibility that’s always struck me as a working in a very Renaissance vein, even when it doesn’t draw directly on the aesthetics of late medieval Italy.
And K.B. Wagers’ The Ghosts of Trappist, which brings some space opera and some (mostly metaphorical) hauntings:
The Ghosts of Trappist is a novel that enjoys playing with metaphorical hauntings, as well as with the ghost ships that are the title’s most obvious referent. The past and its consequences are a palpable presence for all of the characters, one that leaves imprints on who they are and the choices they make in the present. One of the titular ghosts of Trappist is a piece of the past older than any of the characters expect, and it means they – and Sapphi in particular – are going to have to reckon with some dangerous revelations that have the potential to disrupt… everything about the Trappist settlement.