Review - The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam

The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam

Megan Bannen
Orbit, 8 July 2025
Available as: PB, 388pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356521947

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam to consider for review.

This, the third and I think final (pity!) of Bannen's fantasy Western romances, revolves around Tanrian Marshal Rosie Fox (who is also a demigod, and therefore immortal) and haughty, aloof inventor Dr Adam Lee, the man who invented the portals that give access to the magic-touched world of Tanria.

Always a bit error-prone, as we've seen before, now the portals seem to be failing completely, and Rosie and Adam may hold the key to restoring them. It's a shame that something - oh, say, unresolved romantic tension - is stopping them working together smoothly...

The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam is, I think, the best book yet in this series (which is saying something, given how good The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy and The Undermining of Twyla and Frank were). Not only is there full-blooded, smouldering romance between Rosie and Adam, but Rosie's difficult backstory is sensitively shown. Just imagine being a demigod, daughter of a good-for-nothing trickster god and a sentimental but mortal mother. The passage of time means you'll lose anyone you ever get close to - first, your adored parent, then any lover, friend or colleague, all will go the same way. Apart from that abandoning father who always turn up just when he's not wanted.

Bannen has taken care to give this world, the archipelago of the Federated Islands of Cadmus and its surrounding continents, a true sense of reality and a history and culture - the last hundred years, which Rosie recalls, have seen development so that her memories of her early life with her mum have a sepia tinge, a kind of fin de siècle quality that evokes well both the rose tinted view we often have of childhood, and the quainter pleasures of a more gilded age to which modern day Cadmus looks back wistfully.

If Rosie's missing her mum, who died decades ago, she she's resentful of her dad, not least as she blames him for the grinding poverty in which she grew up (well, he is a Trickster).

This book is I think the most unapologetically "fantasy" of Bannen's three stories. As with Cadmus, she's so far sketched in and shown the mythological background to her works, and there have been a few divine or semi divine traces, but in The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam reality, at least in Tanria, begins to shift and it's all traceable to the doings of the gods and powers. There are obscure rules in play, debts and prices have been incurred, and Rosie's about to have to deal with the consequences, even though they're not her fault. As if her complex love life, and her difficult relationship with her boss weren't enough (each time Rosie dies on duty it's such a pain for her boss! Think of the paperwork and the H&S issues!)

At the same time it's thoroughgoing romance as the two bickering protagonists are forced together in a chi-chi rural destination retreat, albeit with some unwelcome colleagues for company. Unless they can work out what's gone wrong with the portals, none of them will ever get out!

All in all, great fun, with an ending I didn't see coming. I will be sad to have to leave Cadmus (though, hopeful to find my way back there one day).

Finally, now the sequence is finished, I'd just like to give credit to Lisa Maria Pompilio for her beautiful covers. Just look at them next to each other and you'll see a pattern - a brilliant interpretation of the themes of the books.

Hoping for more like this from Orbit!

For more information about The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam, see the publisher's website here. 

#Review - Dragonfall by LR Lam

Dragonfall
LR Lam
Hodderscape, 2 May 2023
Available as: HB, 429pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy and audio subscription
ISBN(HB): 9781399715485

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Dragonfall via Netgalley to consider for review.

Dragonfall is a hard one to sum up, as there is so much going on with this book. Just to name a few things, while it's got a fairly audacious plot in itself it's also establishing a bigger, wider story than just this volume (yes, it's part of a series), it introduces us to Arcady and Everen, two fascinating and deep characters (but to some others as well) and it gives a glimpse of an intricate and convincing world (well, two worlds actually).

Central to all this is I think the Arcady-Everen relationship. 

Arcady is a familiar kind of fantasy chancer - a thief and a con artist living by wits, an enemy of the authorities in the city of Vatra but also of its underworld, and necessarily half a dozen steps ahead of both (or it would be a short book). He also has secrets, including kinship to the Plaguebringer, the most reviled magician of recent times, a relationship for which Arcady would be proscribed and shunned were it known. Arcady is determined to vindicate his grandfather, and will do whatever it takes - theft, dark magic, betrayal - to achieve that. 

Or at least he believes so...

The first step he takes on this road - a forbidden spell worked late one night - sets events in motion.

Everen is a dragon, exiled with his kind to a bleak, dying world and believing that he is born to save his people. Caught up in the backdraft of Arcady's magic, he falls into Vatra in human guise. His relationship with Arcady is based on a magical entanglement that remains mysterious through much of the book. That entanglement is variously a source to both of strength, of weakness, of knowledge, and of great peril. 

The balance between Everen and Arcady, underpinned by equal parts of fascination, dread, longing and hostility, is a kind of barometer of this book, the main event (apart from some episodes of showy magic and a heist that brings Arcady unwillingly back into the fold of his former criminal associates). It's a complex, fascinating affair, one that certainly has romantic overtones but which is also deeply, richly explored in terms of their backgrounds and motivations, of the evolving power difference between then - all of which makes any kind of Happy Ever After rather problematic. Indeed, the relationship has complications that would make Romeo and Juliet seem one dimensional, as both Everen and Arcady have personal and immediate, rather than just familial, reasons for fearing the other. The drive to betrayal, as well as a powerful urge not to, is strong and I was genuinely uncertain how things would turn out.

The relationship between the two is only made more tricky by the fact that others on the periphery of the story may be aware of events and manipulating them: or they may themselves be deceived, manipulated. It's not clear. There's a lot hinted at that doesn't exactly come to fruition here, rather the story closely follows the two central characters as they come to terms with who and what they are (or may be - there are no certainties!) But what is clear is that Arcady and Everen lack complete, or even much, knowledge of what's going on, being, rather, fed scraps by others: and not all these others are actually in plain sight. (I'm being a bit vague here to avoid spoilers).

It all makes for a powerful, involving, even if at times frustrating, novel which shows signs of growing into something rich, strange and fascinating. 

I read this book partly in print and partly by listening to the audio. The audio presented a bit of a problem for me in that the sections as told by Arcady and Everen are read in their entirety by different actors - but as at times each is recounting things the other says and does, there is a fair bit of reported speech in the other's voice. While the actors do try to convey this by varying accents, this does mean that it can be difficult to follow the point of view. I think both actors are brilliant, but things might be clearer if the book had simply used one voice, or matched actor to character. 

For more information about Dragonfall see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Dark Archive by Genevieve Cogman

The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library, 7)

Genevieve Cogman

Pan, 26 November

Available as: PB, 318pp

Source: Advance PB copy 

ISBN: 9781529000603

I'm grateful to the publisher and to Jamie Lee Nardonne and Stephen Haskins for an advance copy of The Dark Archive to consider for review.

A Great Detective...

I am delighted to report that, seven books in, the Invisible Library series still roars. In particular, Peregrine Vale is back - after being scarce in The Secret Chapter, as I noted in my review, he's at the centre of things here (maybe Genevieve was reading it!) in a book set largely in his world and mainly in London at that. Can it be that the Great Detective is about to find his match at last?

A Master Criminal...

London's criminal circles whisper of a new Napoleon of Crime, a person known only as "The Professor". Might they be the mysterious hand behind the attempted murder and kidnapping of Irene, Catherine, Vane and Kai? The forces of the British Empire, the dragons, the Library and even Catherine's Fae principal, the Cardinal, come together to crack the problem - but puzzling clues only abound.

A Librarian in peril

This time, Irene's not chasing down some key book. Rather, something seems to be chasing her. The Dark Archive is a rather different book, rather more focussed than previous volumes, less a heist than a cat and mouse game, a hunt. The politics between the dragons and the Fae is less important (though ever there in the background tension, especially as Catherine tries to be the first Fae to enter the Library). Instead, personal motives are to the fore. Irene's relationship with Kai is vulnerable to the whims of her masters and the prejudices of his family. Vale is always on the cusp of pursuing that Great Detective archetype and being contaminated, again, by chaos. Irene herself has family issues which come back to bite here. Any of these levers may be used - will be used - by the shadowy antagonist who seems to be coming for them - and for Irene in particular. 

Is she, finally, out of her depth?

One of the things I love about this series - besides the delicious characters, the balance between real, blood-and-thunder adventure and peril/ irony/ humour - is the way that Cogman keeps reinventing her format and giving us something new. The first book, The Invisible Library, was itself a delight and I vividly remember both reading it (on the Eurostar from Brussels, as you ask, the gilt from the cover wearing off and making my business suit rather sparkly) and the feelings I had then. Every instalment since has touched the same places, but each is slightly different.  Rather than becoming formulaic, the series has grown and deepened. Irene herself has grown in self-confidence and status but without becoming an "insider". Kai's become less stiff, Vale more dependable - and now we have Catherine, Irene's new apprentice, and also Kai's brother Shan Yuan who rub each other up wonderfully. Catherine, in particular, is turning out a nicely complex character who subverts the expectations we might have of a Library apprentice as well as of a Fae, a race who have been depicted so far mainly as shifty antagonists.

Add to them Vale's mysterious sister, who is something very important in Government, and a reappearance by Inspector Sigh of the Yard, and it's almost as if Irene's building an army of her own...

In short, if you've enjoyed the preceding books I think you will love this one, knowing that it will be like them but will also give something new.  There are some hints of where everything might be going, but they are still only hints. The origin of the dragons, the eventual fate of the Library, Irene's own history - these all seem to be linked, but we don't yet know how. 

Clearly there are more adventures in store and I'm very glad of that.

Finally, I just have to comment on that gorgeous purple cover. It's a beautiful thing, it really is.

For more information about The Dark Archive, see the publisher's website here.

#Review #Giveaway - The Fires of Vengeance by Evan Winter

Design by Lauren Panepinto,
illustration by Karla Ortiz

The Fires of Vengeance (The Burning, Book 2)

Evan Winter

Orbit, 12 November 2020

Available as: HB, 528pp, e, audio

Source: Advance e-copy

ISBN: 9780356512983

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance e-copy of The Fires of Vengeance to consider for review. I also have a spare copy of the hardback which I'll send to one randomly chosen sharer of this review - see below for details.

CW warning for descriptions of the effects of torture.

Sequel to The Rage of Dragons, The Fires of Vengeance delivers the same gut-wrenching mix of extreme combat, peril and - I honestly don't know how to describe this - a sort of reckless, nihilistic battle-fury.

Except it's all dialled up to 11, or more. Whatever The Rage of Dragons was, this is it with the gloves off, with real blades not training ones, with the safety disabled.

Tau, who we met in the earlier book, basically fought all the way through it. Despairing of his goal - joining the military and winning the right to challenge the man who murdered his father - he found a way to fight, and die, hundreds of times a day, to practice, to become better, a perfect warrior for the Omehi. Always driven by revenge, yet also retaining a loyalty to his people, Tau also found himself embroiled in politics and diplomacy, defending the young Queen Tsiora against a coup at the same time as an invasion.

In The Fires of Vengeance things get even more complicated. This is a very hierarchical world, a world of Lessers and Nobles, both part of the Omehi society which, fleeing the enemy known as the Cull, colonised the land of Xidda, expelling its natives who wage constant war to regain their homeland. Tau is a Lesser, despised by the Nobles and by all the others above him in the hierarchy: being named Queen's Champion, an unheard of development for a Lesser, puts him outside the normal structures of his society and earns fresh enemies - for him and the Queen. There's an irony here in Tau's swearing to defend the Queen who presides over the structures that oppress him and those like him, more irony in his discovery that the "Guardians" - the fierce and beautiful dragons who guard his people - are themselves enslaved.

This is a world of endless moral complexity. Largely told from Tau's viewpoint, we see his physical suffering, the sheer mental cost to him of battling the demons of Isihogo nightly, its toll on his sense of reality. In one horrific passage we see the aftermath of torture for which he blames himself (this is a particularly visceral passage which I found very hard - but I felt it was absolutely justified in context), heaping guilt on physical pain and fear for the future.

There are only a couple of short interruptions to Tau's perspective, where we see things from another's point of view - and each time, it's someone who has good reason to fear and hate Tau. Even our hero, then, may justifiably be seen differently, and that's even without factoring in whether he is allowing himself simply to be a mighty fist for the Empire that's oppressed him.  

Winter doesn't offer any easy answers or platitudes in response to this - there is a since in which Tau does his best in circumstances not of his choosing, always though with revenge as his goal, and as you might expect, this does lead to him inflicting real harm and accumulating divided loyalties: it's not clear for example how far his support for the Queen is simply because his enemy is her enemy, and how long this can last in the complicated politics of the Omehi. There's almost no rest in this story, as Tau runs  from one, apparently hopeless battle, to another, enemies rising hydra-like at every turn, plans torn to shreds, always a haste, a need to hurry, to improvise. (I say runs, but he does now have use of a rare and precious beast, a horse, and watching him learn to ride is in e of the funnier parts of the story).

Through it all we - slowly - learn more about the origin of the Omehi, and about the magic with which they're bound. The threat, it becomes clear, is even greater(!) than Rage of Dragons let on and it is one which all the martial prowess of the Ihashe, the Indlovu, the Ingonyama and the learning and courage of the Gifted, may not be able to overcome. As so many of Tau's sword-brethren fell in the battle at the end of Rage, so it seems his entire world may be burned away, mere swords and spears useless against the heat and rage that has been set loose.

The writing here is compulsive and apocalyptic but nevertheless, often beautiful and moving. It can also be funny: the great Champion Tau Solarin may be an accomplished warrior but there's a lot about life which he doesn't know and as he moves further and further from the known, the familiar, his baffled reaction to the ways of the world can make the reader smile, understanding more of what's going on than he does.

In brief: Winter tackles that difficult task, the second book in a series, with aplomb, creating something that will satisfy both the reader who wants more of that Rage of Dragons thing and the one who wants to go further and deeper. There no sign of things flagging, even if one rather wished they would slow down a bit so Tau can get some sleep!

Recommended to those who loved Rage and to those who haven't read it yet (though this is one of those cases where you really do need to read the first book first).

If you would like a hardback copy of the book then share this review - tagging me in @bluebookballoon - and I will choose one person at random on Sunday 15th November. (Can only send to GB or Ireland, I'm afraid). 

For more information about The Fires of Vengeance, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour review - Highfire by Eoin Colfer

Highfire
Eoin Colfer
Jo Fletcher Books, 28 January 2020
HB, 373pp

I'm grateful to Jo Fletcher Books for a free advance copy of Highfire and for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.

This book comes with high expectations - it's Eoin Colfer! - and I'm glad to say it fully met them. That's not as foregone a conclusion as it sounds - not only this is Colfer's first adult fantasy (authors don't always transplant well) but he has gone for quite a tricky genre mix here.

Vern is an old guy living in a swamp in a beyond-the-back-of-nowhere corner of Louisiana. He loves his vodka. He's irritable, reclusive and Heaven help anyone who trespasses on his island and disturbs him...

Vern is also the last dragon in the world, living in a swamp in a beyond-the-back-of-nowhere corner of Louisiana. He loves his vodka. He's irritable, reclusive and Heaven help anyone who discovers he exists - because then he will have to kill them...

Also nosing about that swamp are the bright, but underrated, boy Squib Moreau who runs errands on the river, and murderous parish constable Regence Hooke who wants Squid out of the way so he can move in on his mother, Elodie. As you can imagine it gets very complicated. All kinds of things might happen out on the bayou and no-one would be any the wiser. Hooke has wider plans than those concerning Elodie, and there are no limits to what he might do.

I just loved this book. I can't classify it in genre terms. It's not a slick urban fantasy, with an intricate world of supernatural creatures. Yet it's patently of this world, with a convincing setting and powerfully evoking place (from the polluted chemical runoff in the water to the humid air, the mud, decaying vegetation and the alligators stirring). It also has a heartbreaking backstory, in Vern's memories of how his species were wiped out (there are reasons he hides from humans).

At its heart is the encounter between the old dragon and the teenage boy, which is often humorous - they understand each other very well. This is, however, continually disturbed by the grandiloquent scheming of Hooke, who has a military background, a cache of weapons that wouldn't disgrace an average sized state, and plans to employ both. Hooke is a masterpiece of characterisation, a monster and a bully who has always got what he wanted - until he met Elodie. We see a lot inside his he'd, and it's not a nice place to be.

That might be the moment to repeat a warning the publishers have included in the press release for this book - yes, the book does have adult content. There is lots of violence and some gruesome deaths, and also some sexual themes (both comic - we learn what a dragon does with his bits to keep them safe in combat) and less so. While there's nothing really explicit, it really isn't a YA book, a point I suppose that has to be made when marketing a crossover book like this.

It is, though, incredibly fun. We see things through Vern's, Squib's and Hooke's eyes and the plot is pretty straightforward so one can pretty much anticipate what's going to happen. How it happens is though different - Colfer has produced a compelling and action-packed narrative that demands you keep reading and reading: there is no place you can stop, any more than a dragon fully loaded with oil and screaming in for the burn is going to bank away and retreat...

I hope we hear more about Lord Wyvern of Highfire. He must have quite a backstory to explore.

For more about Highfire, see the Jo Fletcher Books website here.

You can buy it at your local bookshop, including via Hive Books, or online from Blackwell's, Waterstones, WH Smith, Foyles or from Amazon.

Review - The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman

The Secret Chapter (Invisible Library, 6)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan Macmillan, 14 November 2019
PB, e, 336pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance e- copy of this book via NetGalley.

I've loved Cogman's Invisible Library series from the start. As an avid reader, the idea of a pan-dimensional Library staffed by kick-ass librarian-spies who play a valiant role in keeping the forces of chaos at bay across multiple words is just compelling. And Cogman's hero, Irene - a cross between book-lover and ruthless assassin - is wonderful. I think I've lost a bit of my heart to her.

So a new instalment is an eagerly awaited event, and I devoured this one once I got it on my e-reader. It's essentially a heist story - Irene and Kai have to team up with a pretty shady bunch (a gambler, a master thief, an IT guru, a scorching driver...) to steal... an object - not a book this time - from a tightly controlled museum. The team consists of both Fae and Dragons, and there are trust issues besides - some of them haven't even heard of the Truce! - so lots of scope for misunderstandings and mistakes, and it seems to fall to Irene to hold things together.

In this book Cogman is deliberately bouncing her story off classic heist tropes, walking a narrow path between, on the one hand, taking them too seriously and, on the other, just sending them up. So we have the Casino Scene (Irene done up in a little black dress and playing the gambler's moll), the crime boss's Island Base (complete with shark tank), the Getaway, the Shakedown, and many more. They're all handled deftly, dramatic and tense but just a little bit knowing - reflecting the fact that Cogman's Fae are creatures who by their nature aspire to fulfil archetypes, the more successful ones drawing others into their stories. They're opposed to the dragons, who stand for Order and Stability but - as gradually becomes clear in The Secret Chapter - not always in a way that leaves much scope for the freedom of the individual.

Amidst the almost nonstop action, this book begins to tease out such those underlying strains in Cogman's universe (Libraryverse?) revealing some new rivalries and teasing ethical dilemmas (Irene, worrying, reflects that nobody - Fae, Dragons or even the Library itself with its cheerful disregard of others' property - really possesses any moral high ground). We learn more about Irene's family (annoying, but dear to her) and - perhaps - glimpse the well-guarded history of the Dragons themselves.

And besides that we have Cogman's trademark wit ('An attempt by vampires to take over the Conservative party in Great Britain', 'The United Kingdom... did attempt to leave the European Union last year, but apparently that was prompted by demonic interference...') and some sharp writing ('as elegant as mathematics and as perfect as frost', 'Paranoia raised flags in Irene's mind and threw up fortifications'). It makes for a book that is simply a joy to read - deeply atmospheric where it should be, properly exciting when anything's going on as it generally is, and tender too. This is a series that shows absolutely no sign of losing pace, and I'm already impatient for the next.

Only two things I regretted.

First, not enough Vale.

Need. More. Vale.

Secondly - Genevieve, just what did you think you were putting Irene through in that scene towards the end? Doesn't she deserve a bit of dignity? I was almost shocked. Honestly.

For more about The Secret Chapter, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Bone Ships by RJ Barker

The Bone Ships (The Tide Child Trilogy, 1)

Cover: illustration by Edward Benson,
design and lettering by Hannah Wood, LBBG

RJ Barker
Orbit, 26 September 2019
PB, 466pp

I'm grateful to Orbit (hello Nazia!) for a free advance copy of The Bone Ships to consider for review.

Tell of the sea, Topboy...

Well.

This book wasn't just a read, it was a journey.

A voyage.

A passage.

If, like me, RJ Barker burst onto your SFF radar a couple of years ago with his Wounded Kingdom trilogy, stories of assassins and cursed magic, then you will be expecting good things - and you won't be disappointed. But you might not be expecting something quite so nautical as The Bone Ships. It seems a risky thing for an author to take to something so different - such. different element - but it's a risk that has paid off here, in a rollicking story that succeeds, and more than succeeds, that triumphs, with bags of aplomb, heart-thumping tension and (of course) much dark humour.

Barker has, you might say, conquered the seas.

The Bone Ships is set in an oceany world, a world of islands and reefs where two powers - the Hundred Isles and the Gaunt Islands - are perpetually at war. In this world there is no wood: ships - necessary for trade and for war - are built from the bones of great sea-dragons, Arakeesians, which have, inconveniently, been hunted to extinction. So the two nations' fleets squabble, seizing ships back and forth as the stock of bone for beams and spars dwindles. Other things are seized as well. It's a harsh world, where child sacrifice is bound with the safety of the Fleet and the place of every woman and man is determined by fitness for breeding or for service in the Fleet.

Barker really gets under the skin of his invented world, laying out details of the bone- built, slate-decked vessels, of the culture, the religion, the taboos and shame. Walking that world is his hero Joron Twiner, condemned, like many others, to service on a Black Ship, to infamy and eventual death. Joron has suffered a loss that leaves him fearful and addicted to drink and he leads a crew of murderers, thieves and scoundrels - yet it's this beggarly lot who are chosen to hunt the last Arakeesian when rumour of it comes back to Shipshulme. But not before Joron loses his command and finds a mentor, the redoubtable and mysterious Shipwife, Lucky Meas, herself condemned to the Black Ships

As the crew are hammered into shape by Meas, RJ embarks us on a great adventure, complete with naval battles, spies, treachery, and strange alliances. Reading this gave me a feeling I haven't had for years, the same sense of space and possibility and achievement as when I first read CS Forrester's Hornblower stories. Like those books, The Bone Ships is as much about the building of human connections as it is about spars, wind or salt waves. It's about forging trust, about men and women developing competence, learning to work well together, overcoming differences and creating routines that will withstand the ultimate tests of battle and storm. It's about a crew forming, and how you can make that happen. This is all, at first, mysterious to Joron - he begins as a rather self-pitying creature - so the story is very much also about his growing up.

Barker captures all this perfectly, as he does the particular rhythms and cadences of a whole way of life. I don't know how but in writing of Tide Child and the other ships he has created an authentically nautical language, full of wind, waves, orders, shipboard terms and behaviours that simply convinces but - and this is the important bit - without coming over as sub Treasure Island pirate talk. It's a recognisable language but doesn't use terms you will have heard. The ship's sails are "wings", the ships have "seaward" and "landward" sides, sailors are "deckchilder" and so on.

Barker makes it all so real, whether he's describing how to handle one of the great crossbow mounted on Tide Child's deck, how the ship is cleared before battle, or the rituals and moments of ship life - the Shipwife leading prayers, or the singing of a shanty:

I've always loved the sea, my love
So deep and blue and true
I've always loved the sea, my love
As much as I loved you

Barker could - as much as Melville, Forrester or London - be reporting what he'd seen and heard aboard ship himself, so convincing and engaging is it. I don't think he's served three years before the mast, but you never know...

And that's not all this book has! It has layers and layers besides. There is the pitiless, endless war. There is (some) chance for peace. There is suspicion. There is a whole aspect of the plot to do with the origin of the arakeesians, and the strange, and sad, weather-manipulating creatures called the Gullaime.

And there is the most involving, gut-clenching naval combat I'd read for years.

The Bone Ships simply took my breath away, especially in its second half, where we face one shock after another and see Joron, no longer a cast-off wretch, facing dark choices and taking responsibility. It's an enthralling read and is one of my favourite books of 2019 so far.

For more about The Bone Ships and to buy a copy, see the Orbit website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter

The Rage of Dragons (The Burning, Book 1)

Evan Winter
Orbit, 18 July 2019
HB, 523pp

Today I'm joining the blogtour for Evan Winter's fantasy debut, The Rage of Dragons. I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for sending me an advance copy of the book and inviting me to take part in the tour.

I tend not think of myself as a reader of epic fantasy but I can be persuaded if the book's something a little different, so I took notice of this.

The Rage of Dragons is indeed very much a work of epic fantasy, and viscerally military fantasy at that - it's also a bit of a break from the Northern European template that's often assumed. Winter's story draws instead on different mythologies, settings, language and characters to give us something arresting and fresh.

Tau is a young man in a deeply hierarchical, military-focussed society, that of the Omehi, who are locked in a bitter war with their enemies the Hedeni - enemies whose land they took hundred of years before.

Defending their barren land, backs to the sea, the Omehi wield both military strength and deadly supernatural gifts.

But still, they are slowly losing the war.

I enjoyed meeting Tau and following his journey from shambling young man to powerful, driven warrior. Well, maybe 'enjoyed' is the wrong word. As Tau's life unravels and he takes his first steps down a grim road - a road of discipline, effort and darker, and yet darker, experiences - we see how he changes, what he holds on to and what he lets go. It's a gripping, arresting progress, psychologically true and at times heartbreaking. Winter's writing is never less than vivid, whether describing a battle or evoking the awkward friendships of young men or the arrogance of the gentry (Tau is a Lesser, despised by the Nobles for all that they rely on him and his kind to lay down their lives in the war). And this vivid writing carries the story forward, leaving the reader both dreading and anticipating the next fight, the next humiliation, the next injustice.

It's a pitiless story in some respects, with a great deal of loss and sadness, but it is redeemed by moments of tenderness, loyalty and even self doubt. For most of the book, Tau is consumed by and focussed on his own quest for revenge - not so much trying to find his place in his society as survive it and conquer. At times the things he does, the risks he runs, in this cause almost made me gasp - but while it may not be a new device, the search for justice is one that Winter uses very well to open up this world to us. In any book that, like The Rage of Dragons, seeks to portray a whole society and show how large scale events and the personal intermesh the reader needs an anchor, someone to identify with and both challenge and love the world that's shown. Someone to be our channel to understanding what's going on. With Tau, Winter succeeds magnificently: there really are only a few moments in this story where it feels as though one is being briefed, and mostly we're left to absorb the structures of Omehi society organically (there is a glossary if you find yourself forgetting the difference between Ihashe and Indlovu).

Overall, an exciting, pacy and involving debut, a very strong start to a trilogy - and, yes, just to be clear: here be dragons!

For more info about The Rage of Dragons, and an excerpt, see the Orbit website here.

You can buy the book from your local bookshop, including online via Hive Books or online from Blackwell's, Waterstones or from Amazon.

The blogtour continues, and there are many more excellent posts and reviews to catch - see poster below for details.

Review - The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman

Cover by Neil Lang

The Lost Plot (Invisible Library, 4)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan, 14 December 2017
PB, 342pp

Many thanks to Pan for an advance copy of this book.

As the fourth instalment of her adventures opens, Irene Winters is in trouble. In quest of a book, she's stumbled into a nest of vampires and is about to have her veins opened.

And it only gets worse from then on...

I think I can safely say that these stories of Irene and her desperate, book-seeking journeys are - alongside anything by Emma Newman or Charles Stross - my favourite ongoing series.

It's something about Irene herself: the kick-ass librarian who drills like a laser through reams of alternate realities pursuing the precious books that will bind the universe together, once gathered in the multidimensional Library. Irene has a dream job and I envy her (despite the inevitable peril).

It's also something about that Library itself, the ultimate book pile, protruding into this street on one Earth, that quad on another, enormous, serene, self-contained, safe. (Or perhaps not so safe - as we saw in the previous three books that it could be menaced and Irene was only able to save it at some personal risk - and cost).

But most of all it's Cogman's writing. The pithy, sharp references, such as how, to befuddle pursuers, Librarians have adopted that pop culture phrase "These are not the [whatever] you're looking" in their ur-Language that can alter realities. The unbridled violence and chaos that follows in Irene's well-meaning wake. The perfectly realised alternate Earths (and other worlds).

Most of all, though, it's the joy that Cogman takes in her creation, like a genial deity who has made a world and seen that it is good.

If that whets your appetite, this book would be an excellent jumping-on point (is that a thing?)  It doesn't require any knowledge of the earlier plot and is basically a standalone adventure for Irene and her dragon apprentice Kai. Drawn into murky dragon politics (rather than the machinations of the Fae) Irene is co-opted by Security to track down a Librarian who may be endangering the hard-preserved neutrality of the Library. She has to face off with mobsters, the police, molls and, worst of all, rogue dragons, in a 1920s New York analogue. There are speakeasies, artefacts and museum stacks together with lashings of mayhem

Taken together, these give the book something of an Indiana Jones crossed with Doctor Who vibe. It's deliriously captivating reading, real cliff-hangery, page turning stuff. Behind this, it is, though, the dragon politics that and their ultimate impact on Irene that I sense are driving this story and setting up future events. Irene is anxious to demonstrate the Library's neutrality, but has to confront the fact that Kai's presence seems to suggest something else. And Irene's personal feelings are engaged as well so that she begins to feel doubly compromised. What is she to do?

Cogman stokes the tension and attraction between Irene and Kai as a counterpoint to the main adventure until you just wish they'd let neutrality go hang and just... well, this is a respectable blog so I'll go no further. Let's just say there are Feelings here and leave it at that.

If you're looking for a present for the (urban) fantasy geek in your life, this may just be the one. And if you find they don't love it, well, perhaps that's telling you something about them.

One final thing. Reading this book I found actual silver glitter on my fingers. I think the magic's rubbing off on me!