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#BookReview This book is the first in a completed trilogy, written by two authors under the pen name of M. A. Carrick. It follows the stories of multiple characters as they try and negotiate the turbulence of life in the Renaissance Venice-inspired city of Nadežra.

Our main protagonist is Ren, a city native (who are of Vraszenian race), who has returned to Nadežra after being forced to flee it after betraying the sinister leader of their group (knot) of child thieves. Together with her sister Tess, she is trying to move up in the world by executing a con trick passing herself off as the daughter of an estranged relative of one of the ruling Liganti-race gentry families - the Traementis family - in order to be taken in by them officially.

However, as Ren negotiates her con, helped along by her marvellously fun, and sometimes scandalous, appearances as a fashionista (all delightfully enhanced by Tess’s skill as a seamstress and ‘imbued’ make up), she ends up more invested in the dealings of the Traementis. Of course, this means she is inevitably dragged into the complexities of the city, as she, along with our many many secondary characters, come up against the interests of the powerful Indestor family and some dark forces.

As just a flavour of the stand outs among our cast, there’s Leato, the outwardly happy-go-lucky Traementis heir, his friend Captain Grey Serrado, a rare Vraszenian member of a mostly corrupt police force, the crime lord Vargo, who has unlikely specialised knowledge of numinatria, a geometrical magic system practiced by the Liganti, and a hooded vigilante, know only as the Rook, who is a hero to the Vraszenian populace. Of these, Vargo is a notable highlight - neither us as readers, nor indeed Ren, the gentry or the criminal underworld, are able to quite follow his motivations as he both ruthlessly uses others and yet also seems to take real risks to his own safety in pursuit of an unknown goal.

It’s indeed remarkable that everybody is fully realised and that the authors manage to link everybody, and every place, to their various factions with the necessary subtly. The different races, different classes and different magics (there’s a Vraszenian tarot-style magic system that’s is contrasts nicely with the numinatria) interweave with true expertise. However, the shear number of characters, and the varied political, religious/magical and social interconnections, do make initially make this an intimidating read.

Although the authors have provided a helpful Dramatis Personae list, you have to be very much on it at all times to follow who’s who - for me, it would have been easier going if official roles were included as part of gentry titles. This would prevent much flicking back to check details in the glossary/character list. Mind then again, I also enjoyed that the book didn’t hand hold you through it all too much. In a strange way, the reader’s confusion helped me feel at one with Ren trying to keep the different threads of her life apart as the story progresses.

All in all, I find this is an exceptional tale, with vibrant characters expertly set in a beguiling city. Although we have some changes of pace, and the first half of the book is notably slower, I was never frustrated, but rather revelled in extra time to catch up my thoughts. Despite a very few negatives, such as a couple of unnecessary scenes (including a whole section on a curse that’s not explained and too easily resolved) and that the city seems just a bit too self contained (meaning Ren can pull off some aspects of the con a bit too easily), the authors manage to captivate you for over 600 pages. One to read, re-read, and then move onto the sequels quickly before you forget the nuances

This final book of the Scholomance trilogy starts as our heroine, the wizard El (now about 18), is plunged back into an isolated present-day Welsh commune. There she has to deal with her grief at being forced to see her boyfriend Orion left to an eternity of being eaten by a beast known as a maw mouth and uncertainty that she will after all fulfil the prophecy that she will turn in an evil ‘malcifer’ witch. It’s not long before El is called, somewhat bitterly and begrudgingly, to use her exceptional abilities to help rescue enclaves, the residences of extremely privileged wizards. During these escapades, El teams up with the academically minded Leisel, now also an ‘enclaver’, and together with one of El’s friends from the previous books they work to discover Orion’s fate. [Aside: there’s a physical relationship between El and Leisel here - I didn’t find this at all a problem, the explanations feel realistic for the characters experience.] I was a bit frustrated at the end of book 2 that, because the location of the books were cut off from the outside world, we really couldn’t progress at working out what the menace targeting the enclaves was. Well rest assured, there’s a twist as we learn the enclavers’ malevolent secrets and watch our characters struggle against those determined to hang onto power at whatever cost. In fact, an underlying theme here is just not the advantages of privilege, but the lesson of just how evils in society can be perpetuated by justifying actions as a lesser evil. There’s also some really interesting descriptions of the joys and burdens of family and friendships, especially across cultures. The book has sections set everywhere from London, Mumbai and New York, to Dubai and Beijing, meaning there’s a lot of international travel between the action. These sections suffer from some uneven pacing (a flight to New York is described in intricate detail, which jars against a section of travel from Portugal to Wales that just passes in an ‘El was distracted and didn’t remember it’). [Aside: as a young adult book, I’d have liked to think our characters would have been a bit more concerned about just roaming around the world via long-haul flights too.] The other main negative is that you can definitely pull holes in the magic - not everything said about how it works is consistent with the final resolutions (it’s nearly there but not quite). That said, the twists, the struggles and the outcome provide a satisfying conclusion to this coming-of-age story. I’m mostly going to remember the character of El, she remained somewhat annoyingly angsty to the end, but she sure knew how to pull off a big fight, whether that was against evil monsters or the more-complicated enemy - people.

#BookReview This book, second in Naomi Novik’s young-adult dark academia fantasy series ‘The Scholomance’, starts exactly where we left off in the first book (ramblingreaders.org/user/clare_hooley/review/558898) with our two main protagonists, our narrator El and and her perhaps boyfriend Orion, now seniors in the deadly school. The end of the senior year is when both of them will face ‘graduation’ - a literal gauntlet run through a room filled with wicked hungry magical monsters (always deliciously well-described by Novik’s writing) that, in a standard year, only about half those entering survive. Of course with El and Orion both being so exceptional, we know this isn’t going to be a standard year. El has mellowed out (grown up) from being quite so whiny and angsty, although her sarcastic streak remains undimmed, and now even has friends. Owing to events at the end of book one, she also can’t be invisible to anyone anymore. This character development makes the book stronger and more engaging than before. I will say though, that the ongoing romance between El and Orion is a bit hormone-driven for me, but that’s not out of keeping with the context and age of the characters. After the first third of the book sees El fighting her way through difficulties much as per book book one, we get a change in the second half, as lessons end and it all becomes about practice for graduation, with plenty more school politics as alliances are formed, then broken, then formed again. At least at first, the overriding theme of the series so far, how different it is for haves and have nots, is continued. In the last third of the book, the twist is gradually revealed; it’s not a give away to say El is expected to save the day. It’s also fair to warn there’s a cliffhanger ending - we don’t know get to learn the precise fate for El and Orion here. Overall, once again, there’s a lot of fun to be had here in our characters’ struggle against the malevolent school, although this still doesn’t feel a very likely world. Our information as to what is really it is going on ‘outside’ has been limited to dialogue with incoming freshman hinting at something very ominous. At two-thirds of the way through the trilogy, it does feel a bit late in the day to only now start exploring the ‘real’ goings on and dark prophecies that have been fed as titbits throughout both books. As good as the writing in it is, I’m hoping we’ll get start to get insight that actually moves the story on beyond heroes versus monsters early in the next book.

Young-adult fantasy told in first person through the eyes of El, a 3rd year (~16 years old) female student in the ‘Scholomance’, the magic school of the series title. We as reader are thrown directly into her life at the school, which is completely cut off from the outside world of the adult wizards (there are no teachers here). In this first book of the series, we are then taken a-pace through a series of the school’s non-stop horrors as we learn most of the students die in increasingly gruesome ways; there’s magical monsters at every turn, work assignments that turn deadly, contaminated food, bullies and cliques, and a good dose of adolescent angst. In fact, it’s all quite a good deal of macabre fun, and told with much delightful malice. One of the main themes is how much easier life is if you come from a position of privilege, in this case meaning that you enter the school from a specific ‘enclave’, and thus have a ready-made support network. Without this, students such as El need to find or join such a network by brilliance, drudgery or even offering themselves as cannon fodder. El, however, is so cantankerous, she pushes everyone away and can’t get into the position to show that she is brilliant, namely she has very powerful spells. Although that makes her interesting, it is definitely frustrating that we have an awful lot of text dedicated to her self pity, stubborn pride and even her trying to talk herself out of both. As a counterpoint, we thankfully have the ‘enclaver’ Orion, also acting as romantic interest, who has a gift that means he is courted by all rather than being seen as a person, showing that privilege isn’t necessarily all wonderful either (or at least in this school). The book would be better if we directly switched to other points of view to contrast with El’s everlasting sardonic inner monologue, but I can see that would be complicated for the intended audience. The other negative is that the world is just a too far out there to be believable - as bemoaned by El, it is really is just far too non-stop - but suspend all that because I just need to know how are characters are going to survive graduation, and that’s the next book… #BookReview

After setting up such an amazing world, I struggled with this sequel. The book this time focuses on the development of Kellhus, the warrior-prophet of the title, as he continues to exert his manipulative control on the Holy War. I mostly enjoyed his sections, and found the theology and philosophy interesting. Sadly, everyone else is just far too superficial, even more so when we lose much of the mage Achamian as a countering character. As we march across the continent lurching from battle to battle, anything which is fresh and pithy, and properly grim (there’s an excellent section on finding water), becomes ploughing on through a repetition of the same again and again, so there’s little that really advances the plot or keeps us immersed in the horror, it’s just the killing off another 30% of one or another army. I just seemed to be skimming a lot of text to get to each victory/defeat and another hundred miles or so closer to the destination town! I’m truly hoping we finally get some of the over-arching political dimensions of the world back in the final book.

Emily Wilde is a scholar from a 19th century Cambridge (UK), but in a world where the Fae are elusive but very much accepted as real. While continuing her work to complete the Encyclopedia of Faeries of the title, she travels to investigate the Fae of Scandinavia, and we follow her tale through her journal entries. What’s clever is an unusual and sensitive portray of Emily, who we see finally able to overcome some social ineptitude and start a slow-burning romance with her dashing academic rival and Cambridge colleague, Wendell, who of course has a mysterious background. My favourite parts were the Fae stories themselves (including the interludes outside the plot - literal stories within the story presented as journal footnotes); there’s nothing particularly new there, everything is very traditional folklore - it’s just very well done. What does jar is that the author clearly has no idea of Cambridge academia (tenure is a concept that is neither Cambridge nor period), although we don’t spend too much time in that setting for it to be the problem it could be. For an expert on the Fae, Emily does also find herself trapped and take odd actions just a little too easily. A lighter read, but with some memorable darkness and some humour, but not enough for me to instantly want to buy the sequel.

A light quick read set in the small American coastal town of Ordinary, a town that acts as the residence of vacationing gods. Because they are on vacation, the gods we meet cannot use their powers and they, although not their powers, can die. Among the few human mortals that are in on the town’s secrets, are the three sisters of the Reed family who form the real-life police department, with the chief, Delany Reed, being our main character. Delany’s duties include transferring the power of any gods who die while on vacation to a new person. Thus, when one of gods does die, we have a murder mystery (a little too mundane as we really don’t have much stake in the outcome) and a search for a new host for the god power (which irks because it’s supposedly urgent but is not treated as so by Delany until it’s critical urgent) taking place against the backdrop of the annual rhubarb festival (too stereotypically cutesy, especially with the time devoted to explaining again and again that Delany dislikes rhubarb). The rest of the story involves a romance with a childhood sweetheart who is obviously not quite who he seems (not resolved here), and that’s actually handled nicely (there’s only one intimate scene) if with naive mooning that doesn’t quite fit the character; this has just the right amount of mystery to get invested. Then there are fun interludes with Death, newly on vacation, providing humour; it’s actually perfectly credible that Death would wear tourist t-shirts, always get served an over-the-top drink etc. etc. There are faults aplenty - not just those mentioned above, but also a serious injury that is flippantly resolved by just getting up out the hospital and saying ouch a few times - however, as the first in nine-book series, I’d still give the benefit of doubt to see where it goes, but not if paying a lot for the sequel.