La Belle Sauvage

Book Title: La Belle Sauvage

Author: Philip Pullman

Series: The Book of Dust #1

Date Started: March 28th 2021

Date Completed: April 2nd 2021

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

La Belle Sauvage builds on the original His Dark Materials books as a prequel but lets its protagonists be their own heroes and have their own story. While very much in the vein of its predecessors with its whimsical adventures and secret organisations, it was definitely a lot of set-up for what will presumably come later in the Book of Dust series.

The two halves of the book have very different vibes; we have a murder mystery thriller with science and secret agents at the beginning, and then we have a more traditional adventure to fantastical islands in a biblical flood during a cat-and-mouse chase to escape the baddies in the second chunk. While I enjoyed both, it was a bit of a weird pivot that left quite a few threads hanging untied by the end of the novel.

Pullman has once again written good characters to frame his narrative. My personal favourite was Dr Hannah Relf, who mirrors Mary Malone from His Dark Materials. In hindsight, there are a lot of similarities with the character roles in the two trilogies, but each has their own personality in this new instalment that it's only looking back that I'm noticing all the structural crossovers. Maybe it's deliberate, maybe not.

I do have to admit that the cliffhanger ending was a bit of a let down for me, especially since I know that The Secret Commonwealth (the next book in this series) doesn't directly follow on from the events of this one. While the goal of the book was achieved, there's very obviously something else to be done - I trust Pullman enough as a storyteller to know it'll be solved eventually, but I'm not a massive fan of narratives that jump around their own timeline to withhold information just to make you read the next one.

The Wolf and the Woodsman

Book Title: The Wolf and the Woodsman

Author: Ava Reid

Date Started: March 7th 2021

Date Completed: March 27th 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Romance, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Reid's novel felt very YA beside the books it compares itself to. That's not necessarily meant as a bad thing, but I do think the modernist, teenage style interferes slightly with the traditionally timeless fairytale tone. I don't think the 1st person present tense helps either; Èvike comes across rambly and preachy when giving away lore and worldbuilding, as well as presenting her as knowing everything there is to know for the sake of the prose, but then of course not letting her behave in that way for the sake of the plot.

This book is like four different stories in one; the last two are compelling, the first two not so much. Reid integrates a lot of really nice fantastical aspects from Hungarian and Jewish history and mythologies, but they're all used as placeholders to hurry the story along. In trying to do an epic akin to Novik or Arden in one book, Reid has lost the magic of folklore and wonder that make those stories such spectacles.

As much as I moan about comparing books to one another, Évike and Gáspár essentially follow Nina and Matthias' story from Six of Crows. I love that storyline and I think there's lots of room for variation, but I just wasn't convinced enough by the characters (who are frequently inconsistent and sometimes passive) for them to even begin treading a new path.

The Wolf and the Woodsman is worth the read if it sounds like something you'd like, but ultimately some creative choices left me underwhelmed and much preferring other authors in the same genre that execute their stories with more finesse and heart.

Abhorsen

Book Title: Abhorsen

Author: Garth Nix

Series: The Old Kingdom #3

Date Started: March 15th 2021

Date Completed: March 18th 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

I enjoyed Abhorsen the most out of The Old Kingdom series; having been a little underwhelmed by the previous two books (despite still enjoying them), Abhorsen was pure magic to read and enjoy.

Nix has written such a cool universe, with on-point world-building confidently executed, expanded on expertly with each instalment without taking over the story. Lirael and Sam are great protagonists, both powerful and engaging in their own right, worthy of being passed the torch from Sabriel and Touchstone (who both have their own little snippets which were probably my favourite parts). And what an ending! It ties together the old and the new, empowers the right people but allows everyone to have a heroic hand in it too.

I felt a little down at the end of the last book's cliffhanger but Abhorsen made up for it with its well-rounded narrative. It didn't feel like a bigger book chopped in half, it was its own story and had the right momentum and pay off to bring the trilogy (that yes, is expanded further, but really these are the core three) to a satisfying end.

Sorcerer to the Crown

Book Title: Sorcerer to the Crown

Author: Zen Cho

Series: Sorcerer Royal #1

Date Started: March 1st 2021

Date Completed: March 10th 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Historical

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

I had high hopes for this book, and while it was an okay story with glimmers of originality - and a whimsicality to it that I love and wish would be more common in fantasy novels - it was a little slow and dense for my tastes. Part murder-mystery, part magic school (somehow some romance ends up in there), there's a lot of things going on that all weave into each other a little too conveniently for me.

I have a note in my book about the flippant way the narrator talks about women being delicate, blatant classism, and how freely use racial slurs, even though it's all portrayed as bad - and yes, I understand it's commenting on the backwards attitudes of the world it's set in. As this shifts later into the book as the characters become more mature, I'm not going to fully go into it here, but the first chunk of the book gave me pause and wasn't the most fun to read because of it.

What I think made this book inaccessible for me was how awkwardly the prose was written. There are some sentences that nail the old-fashioned language and rhythm, but the rest of it is so jumbled and dense that the characters' arcs and meaning come across as second best. It makes the whole thing, though written in a very complicated way, actually come across quite childish as everyone seems way more shallow than they're intended to be.

There's actually a wonderful diversity in this book, and nice dynamics between the characters - I just wish there wasn't such obvious, pedantic and over-explanatory narration plastered all over it and that we were given the space to watch the characters do their thing instead.

Sorcerer to the Crown was a fun, kinda-easy read, but it would've been more enjoyable for me if the writing had been smoother. I was given the sequel for review by the publisher, so will likely continue the series if only to complete that - but with this story wrapped up (conveniently) very well, I'm interested where Cho will take the characters next.

Soulbinder

Book Title: Soulbinder

Author: Sebastian de Castell

Series: Spellslinger #4

Date Started: February 1st 2021

Date Completed: February 20th 2021

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Action

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

Whenever I need something to just pass the time, the Spellslinger books are one of the go-to options; they're definitely sold more on the exploration of the world and some witty dialogue more than their individual stories, which makes them perfect to dip into every now and then. The thing is, at this point in the series, it feels like it's trying to begin to wrap up a story that was always episodic, and doesn't necessarily need fully wrapping up.

Soulbinder is perfectly entertaining while you're reading it, but plateaus early and never shifts tension again. In this instalment, things are a little different, with Kellen having separated himself from his companions at the end of the last book. It's interesting to mix it up a bit, but honestly I come more for the banter than the plotline, which is then a bit stumped. This book was significantly less enjoyable without Ferius (and Reichis, who is also absent for most of the book).

Ultimately, the series has accumulated a lot of cast and worldbuilding over the last three adventures, and with things trying to become more streamlined for what I expect will be a final climax, it feels like maybe there's too many recurring ensemble characters and clans and cultures to keep this sort of white-knuckle action-adventure in place. Part of me wonders if a more Sherlockian-style ending would suit, in that there almost isn't an ending, we just perhaps stop hearing about them.

There aren't many books left in the series, and as I say they are definitely enjoyable while reading, so I will hopefully finish the whole series. I am curious to see just how de Castell ends the whole thing as he clearly is trying to lay the foundations for some sort of concrete finale. I just hope we still get to have the fun of Kellen and the gang until we get there.

She Who Became the Sun

Book Title: She Who Became the Sun

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan

Series: The Radiant Emperor #1

Date Started: January 17th 2021

Date Completed: January 29th 2021

Genres: Historical, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

She Who Became The Sun was a massively anticipated book for me this year, and I'm so glad I got to read it early. It was ultimately pretty dense; a sprawling epic that moves a bit too fast to appreciate, but I did enjoy turning the pages.

The last 10% of this book was actually fantastic, but everything else had been constructed to make those final events (and moral points) happen, rather than an organic story coming to fruition. In general, there were a lot of things that were great in principle, or when they actually happened, but only from some angles: the characters all had different morals, values and tactics, but their dialogue all read exactly the same. And the fantastical element with the ghosts and elemental magic was really cool - but obsolete for much of the story.

In many ways, what I believe will draw many people to this book is its representation and point of view. And wow, it was so nice to see such varying and fluid sexuality, and without it having to be a character trait; it was the character's identity, wrapped up along with their own individual desire and goals layered on top. But I did also note it felt like it was written for a man in the way that all the feminist things were over-explained. You can tell Parker-Chan has a political background because there's a lot of providing excess evidence and analysis to prove a point.

This book was enjoyable to read, but it didn't have enough of a humanising edge to the characters to make me root for them when they did terrible things. At the end of the day, even though you know their origins, they're all horrible, manipulative people that always seemed like horrible, manipulative people. It made me think of R.F. Kuang's The Poppy War, not just for its Chinese historical inspiration, but also it's very questionable protagonist. But I felt much less empathy for Zhu here, and it made a massive difference to the story.

This is a good example of why I don't like blurbs that compare books to other stories. Yes, it's easy to draw comparisons to Mulan, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Song of Achilles; and sure, they're not bad comparisons. But none of them are really good parallels to the essence of this story, and it creates an expectation in the reader that can't be met and sells this new story sort of itself.

The Amber Spyglass

Book Title: The Amber Spyglass

Author: Philip Pullman

Series: His Dark Materials #3

Date Started: December 31st 2020

Date Completed: January 17th 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Of all the books in the His Dark Materials trilogy, it's what I remember least of from my childhood. Rereading it again as an adult was a weird mix of the novel and fragments of my own memories scattered through. It's not really what I remembered, but that made it all the better to rediscover.

I can't help but feel this review is going to be less of a review and more of an afterthought having finished my reread of this trilogy. Lyra and Will remain fantastic protagonists, and while I'm not here to compare the novels with the BBC show, I definitely appreciate Mary Malone more as an adult and having watched Simone Kirby's wonderful portrayal.

It's so good, and in a lot of ways I find it hard to grasp why, but it has to do with being honest and not underestimating its (mostly younger) audience. It did not disappoint but I am at a loss of what to say about it. I only know that I am glad I grew up with these books, and am excited to begin the sequel trilogy now that I truly remember the original story.