3 Book Reviews

Warrior & Witch by Marie Brennan

This is the sequel to Brennan’s Doppelganger, and it does a fantastic job of expanding the world and the characters within it. This chapter of the overall story deals with the very fundamentals of magic, politics within the witches’ kingdom as well as other realms in their world, and mirroring the main character’s own internal struggle, conflict and cooperation between the witches and the Hunters, highly trained mercenaries.

I don’t want to say much about the plot of the book, because it would spoil Doppelganger for those who haven’t read it, but I was very impressed by how Brennan has improved her craft. The world is fleshed out satisfyingly, and I love how she’s veered away from the more traditional medieval European ideal that many fantasies are based upon. Her world is based more on Asian culture, with the witches’ names obviously inspired by Japan. Other touches in the world, such as characters writing on rice paper and the food that they eat, are also very Asian in feel, which brings a fresh perspective to high fantasy.

There’s a bit of a deus ex machina at the end, but it didn’t ruin the story for me, thank goodness. Now… when’s the third book going to come out?

Valiant by Holly Black

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I did the first in Black’s series, Tithe. It fell victim to what the first book threatened; dark drama for the sake of darkity darkness. Sex, drugs, homeless kids, head shaving! It… toed the edge of being appropriate for the main character, but honestly, it felt more like Black was deliberately trying to be edgy and cool rather than to write a good, well-developed character. Even the main character, Valerie, seemed to lack motivation, for not for lack of trying. Her teammates think she’s a lesbian (oh noes!), her mom’s screwing Valerie’s teenage boyfriend, and… well, life sucks. I just had trouble relating to Valerie, and the plot seemed to have been cast aside in favor of Black’s admittedly creative integration of the faerie world and drug culture.

But Black’s ability to construct an incredibly rich, macabre world saves the book from being completely eyeroll-worthy. I absolutely love her descriptions, and she brings the melded city alive. This book makes me want to go to New York and look for gargoyles that move.

Wired by Liz Maverick

This book was… interesting. Convoluted, confusing, but definitely interesting.

L. Roxanne Zaborovsky finds herself in the middle of a very dangerous situation, one that could alter the course of history, and she also finds herself between two very dangerous men. Mason Merrick is the all-American boy next door with whom Roxanne shares a past; Leonardo Kaysar is a dark stranger. Both men want something from Roxanne: code that she will write in the future. And Roxanne has no idea who to trust.

Maverick brings an interesting twist to the idea of time travel in romances. No one falls through a stone circle and ends up in medieval Scotland here. There are wire-crossers, people who can rewire time in order to change something that happened in the past in order to affect the future, and Roxanne, poor Roxanne, gets caught up in the middle of their intrigues.

The story structure is confusing in and of itself, but considering what Roxanne is going through, it works. She jumps between realities without warning, so that one moment she might fall from a building, but land in her bed instead of on the pavement far below. I spent half of the book trying to wrap my mind around the shifting realities, and I like that. It kept me on my toes. The book’s ending, however, felt like the author was trying to wrap things up with a happy romance novel ending that just didn’t quite ring true to me. The book is a very non-standard romance, and I’d have preferred it ended without the storybook love.