Guess who started this post a couple of months ago and didn’t finish until today? While, of course, reading even more that I want to review in yet another future post. ;)
My reading pace for 2024 looked good at the start, but then it slowed down markedly as I filled my schedule with way too many dog trainings and dog shows. Those re-reads I didn’t finish last year are still hanging around, though I certainly made room in my schedule for Mark Lawrence’s The Book that Broke the World, which will get its own post eventually. I also ended up picking up a Kindle reader when my Surface Go decided to die on me, so I’ve had a bit of an adjustment period. Its definitely much nicer to read on, though its not great for browsing for new books.
Some of the books I want to comment on I finished before the end of last year, but I might as well get properly caught up. I don’t remember the precise order, but lets start with The Tainted Cup, first in a new series by Robert Jackson Bennett.
Bennett has previously written two fantasy trilogies which definitely fall into the category of avoiding the classic fantasy mold. The Divine Cities features a society that one could call late 19th- or early 20th-century, though the world is in no way our own. A nation that once was the leading power thanks to its gods, has been reduced to a colonial outpost of the new world order following the death of said gods. Except, maybe not all of them are dead. And in The Founders Trilogy Bennett creates a world where magic is a powerful technology. The scope of this trilogy feels smaller at first but quickly grows into a world-changing epic. Again, its a relatively “modern” society by standard fantasy measures, yet with strong fantastical elements.
The Tainted Cup, first in the Shadow of the Leviathan series, also features a setting that one might compare to the late 19th century, especially as it also draws a fair bit of inspiration from the literary partnership of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. It starts out as a murder mystery in a distinctly alien setting, and then the plot expands to hint at the larger threats to the world. I’ve seen it described as Sherlock Holmes meets Attack on Titan and while I had to quiz Elio about Attack on Titan, that does seem like a pretty good description.
As in his previous books, Bennett crafts a very alien world that you will definitely be intrigued by if you like unusual world-building. He also has a great sense of pacing and crafts interesting characters that aren’t your typical fantasy protagonists. The latter can be both good and bad in my book, since some authors try too hard to be different and sometimes you want that feeling of recognition, but the way Bennett does it works well for me.
Someone who (for me, anyway) falls into the category of trying a little too hard to make the characters stand out from the fantasy norms (unfortunately, I could almost see the author ticking off various “woke” checkboxes) is Hannah Kaner in Godkiller and its sequel Sunbringer. I first tried an excerpt of the first book and was intrigued but not entirely hooked. As I hit my reading binge earlier in the year, I went back to it and found myself sticking with it despite not really warming up to the initial protagonist. The premise of the world, a medieval-inspired setting where gods have been outlawed and are being hunted and killed, and the core plot of the story was enough to keep me invested. And after a while, a young girl with an intriguing companion is introduced, which makes for a nice change in the character dynamics.
The ending includes some interesting plot twists and after finishing I went straight into the second book in the series, Sunbringer. It does a fine job of broadening the scope of the story and weaving together various plot strands featuring the different protagonists, as well as complicating the picture of the relationship between gods and men in the setting. I am certainly looking forward to the final book.
In a completely different wheelhouse altogether, and happily playing with all kinds of tropes, is Empire of the Damned, the second book in Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire series. Just like the first book it is lush and bloody, with purposefully baroque prose (drinking blood seems to have the side effect of making you speak in ‘thees’ and ‘thous’) and plenty of over-the-top characters. Gabriel de León continues to tell his story to his vampire captors, though partway through the telling a new narrator enters the picture and the two strands of the story are slowly woven together to reveal the fate of Dior LaChance, the Holy Grail.
Getting too attached to characters continues to be a terrible idea, as Gabriel is bad news for almost everyone that gets close to him, in one way or another. But even expecting that things will go badly, Kristoff still manages to twist the knife an extra turn or two on quite a few occasions. There are also some twists revealed in regards to world-building and the occult elements at the heart of the story that I quite delighted in; they felt like just the sort of twists you’d get in a gothic horror story. I am both dreading and looking forward to the final volume, the setup at the end promises more twists (and more heartache).