Tag Archives: fantasy

Book Review of Pick Your Teeth With My Bones, by Carrie Newberry

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I won a copy of Carrie Newberry‘s Pick Your Teeth With My Bones through LibraryThing.

Description from Goodreads:
Tattoos. Scars. Wild black-and-silver hair. A near-permanent scowl. A collection of knives, and a vocabulary to make an oil rig captain blush like a virgin. Not to mention the tail. No one ever accuses shape-shifter Kellan Faolanni of being beautiful, but she’s very good at her job. Until now.

Kellan is a member of the secret Sankhain society, protectors of a deep and ancient forest magic, and their most devout warrior. When a man appears, smelling of Earl Gray tea and old books, he unravels secrets of the Sankhain that should no longer exist, secrets Kellan lives to protect. With the help of Tony, another Sankha, and her dog Galen, Kellan uses her unique sense of smell to follow the trail of lies leading to the traitor bartering Sankhain secrets. Answers hide in the very heart of the forest. What she uncovers there will shake her world to the core.

Kellan is over two hundred years old, and she’s living proof that you’re never too old to learn who you are.

Review:
This wasn’t wholly bad. It had an interesting idea, but it also had several elements that irritated me. The most obvious of which was the “strong woman” equals emotionally stunted, angry woman. I see this all the time. Authors want to write a strong, warrior woman, but they don’t know how to craft a warrior, except to give them male characteristics. As if a woman can’t possess female qualities and still be strong and warrior-like. The result is a woman so angry, sarcastic and emotionally illiterate that the reader is left wondering how she’s lived 200+ years.

What’s worse, she’d been in a sexual relationship with her boss for 180+ years without ever realizing that she wasn’t an equal in that relationship. She was so incapable of forethought and rational behavior that a 24(ish) year old boy showed up and she basically handed all decision-making off to him. Pair all this with the fact that she had lustful thoughts about every pretty man she encountered and formed unwanted attachments, and it made her feel stupid and child-like, as if she couldn’t control her temper, her thoughts, her actions, or her libido.

I’ll grant that a lot of the banter was funny and I do like the idea behind the world. I also appreciated the presence of some racial and sexual diversity in the cast. Even if of the four LGBT characters, the only gay man was mauled, one of the lesbians died and one turned out to be a villain. (That’s not really a resounding success for the LGBT crowd. There’s a trope named Bury Your Gays for a reason. This is sadly a rather common outcome of LGBT characters.)

All in all, I liked the idea of this book but thought it’s presentation was clumsy enough to detract from my enjoyment of it.

Shadowshaper

Book Review of Shadowshaper, by Daniel José Older

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I bought a copy of Daniel José Older‘s Shadowshaper.

Description from Goodreads:
Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra’s near-comatose abuelo begins to say “No importa” over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep…. Well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on.

Sierra soon discovers a supernatural order called the Shadowshapers, who connect with spirits via paintings, music, and stories. Her grandfather once shared the order’s secrets with an anthropologist, Dr. Jonathan Wick, who turned the Caribbean magic to his own foul ends. Now Wick wants to become the ultimate Shadowshaper by killing all the others, one by one. With the help of her friends and the hot graffiti artist Robbie, Sierra must dodge Wick’s supernatural creations, harness her own Shadowshaping abilities, and save her family’s past, present, and future.

Review:
First off, that cover is beyond beautiful, just stunning!

Second, I love that the main character’s heritage is from a Puerto Rico, but her friends and other characters are Haitian, Cuban, and from Montinique. It reminds readers that black and brown culture is a varied and important as white cultures.

Third, the narration and dialogue is wonderfully realistic. No one really speaks in fully formed, proper English all the time. Especially not those from communities where English isn’t the only language spoken. I really appreciated this.

Fourth, as a prior anthropology student, I cringed to see the antagonist abusing the study as badly as they did. But the fact that what they were engaging in was basically the ultimate act of appropriation was not missed by me.

I truly enjoyed this book. However, I also found the plot moved too fast. Especially in the beginning, when Sierra accepted and acted on very little information. Additionally, there’s a bit of a deus ex machina climax. But overall it’s a win and I’ll be passing the book to my daughter.

Review of Jade City (The Green Bone Saga #1), by Fonda Lee

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I borrowed a copy of Fonda Lee‘s Jade City from the library.

Description from Goodreads:
Magical jade—mined, traded, stolen, and killed for—is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. For centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion.

Now the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon’s bustling capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market, and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this rapidly changing nation.

When a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone—even foreigners—wield jade, the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones—from their grandest patriarch to the lowliest motorcycle runner on the streets—and of Kekon itself.

Review:
I wouldn’t say I loved this, though I liked it very much. It has a really rich world, with history and depth and politics warring with duty and personal desires. It explores the consequences of violence, gender politics, and greed. There are interesting grey characters, ones who do horrible things for what they think are the right reasons, ones who do the right things only to fail, and others who can’t see beyond their won victimhood. For all that, I found it a tad ponderous and, though there are plenty of fights, it didn’t feel particularly action oriented.