On 5/6/26 8:34 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
Way behind again!
As usual the links are Amazon affiliate ones.
As always, thanks for these.
===
Weird Magic (Lia de Croissets Book 2)
by Karen Chance
https://amzn.to/4smHiCS
Lia de Croissets is a trained warmage and new werewolf.
After spending her life werewolf adjacent, afflicted with a
condition that left her unable to change, she is finally
cured. Logically, being a were & a mage should give her
credibility in both communities, but as is usually the case,
it makes her suspect in both instead. Still, she is using
the opportunity offered by the ongoing vampire/mage/witch war
against the gods & fae to hammer away at the broken were social
order. She and her mate have started a new clan of outcast
wolves *and* outcast mages, and if they can make it work
it may force a rift in the corrupt old order. Unfortunately,
events are not waiting for Lia, and along with the ongoing
attacks from reactionary elements, there is a new drug on
the street causing were throwbacks, Las Vegas's magical
underclass is being preyed on, and Lia may be possessed.
I did not find this one as strong as a usual Chance book.
There was less of her trademark "farce, but you care" and
too much of her trademark "characters can't walk five feet
without being swept into some kind of vision". Even Lia's
meeting with Cassie got derailed instead of developing as
I had hoped. If you need some Chance, catch up on all the
Cassie & Dorina books before checking in here. It's not
bad -- I'll read the next one, but definitely not top tier.
I'm glad you mentioned Cassie here - in my brief poking around, it was
not at all clear that this is in the same universe. I found the second
Cassie book at a used book store recently, so that?s what I?m reading
next in this world.
<snip some stuff>
Tear Down Heaven: Urban Fantasy Action with Witches and Demons
by Rachel Aaron
https://amzn.to/3QnclkA
This is the climax of Sumerian demon Queen Bex and her witch boyfriend Adrian's battle against Gilgamesh as they storm heaven itself. As
usual, Gilgamesh always seems to be a move ahead of the pair and
they will be having the final battle *he* wants. However, neither
Bex nor Adrian are quite who they started as while Gilgamesh is
unchanging, and where he has minions, they have allies. Still,
even if they win, can the world survive it?
This was a pretty satisfying final book. Aaron convincingly took Bex
180 degrees away from her initial worldview and we got some nice character development from one of Adrian's long-lost brothers which humanized him without making him a milquetoast. All in all, a well-earned, mostly happy, ending.
Good to know, thanks. Having sort-of-recently finished the five
Heartstriker books, I think I might just pick up the next DFZ book
(Minimum Wage Magic) and keep going.
<snip some stuff>
Ashes of the Sun (Burningblade & Silvereye Book 1)
by Django Wexler
https://amzn.to/3Qo3P4N
Blood of the Chosen (Burningblade & Silvereye Book 2)
by Django Wexler
https://amzn.to/4sZvkAm
Emperor of Ruin (Burningblade & Silvereye Book 3)
by Django Wexler
https://amzn.to/47P8tPs
Four hundred years ago, the Van Vogtian supermen, The Chosen, led
a continental empire. Their direct access to the power of the
universe, known as "deiat" allowed them to build wonders of technology
and guide the mere humans they ruled to a better life. Or so they
said, and so it went until it all came crashing down in a ruinous
war with the cave dwelling Ghouls and their heretical "Dhaka" magic.
It was a hard fought battle with the Chosen finally wiping out the
Ghouls' last stronghold with a deadly sunfire bomb. It was a Pyrrhic
victory though, as just before their destructions, the Ghouls had
unleashed a plague which wiped out the Chosen while leaving their
human subjects untouched. As they left the stage, the Chosen laid
out plans for a human successor state to carry on their legacy if
such a thing were possible...
Maya & Gyre are farm kids, growing up in the borderlands of the
Republic. It's low-tech & not an easy life, but it's not awful.
The Order keeps the monsters largely away, and the family has enough
illicit Dhaka to deal with pest infestations and the like, with the
local regime turning a blind eye to such minor transgressions. The
simple rhythms of their life are disrupted however with the Twilight
Order comes for Maya because she has deiat. Young Gyre refuses to
bow to the arrogant centarch who has come to take his little sister
away and is nearly blinded and killed by the prideful man, and loses
Maya anyway. It's an incident that will change both siblings' lives
and set them on a collision course that may change the world.
Fifteen years finds Maya a candidate centarch, knight-erranting
across the Republic with her mentor, and Gyre a bitter revolutionary
scheming to tear the whole thing down, both for what it did to Maya
and because he has come to believe the restrictive and gradually
crumbling rump-state is stifling humanity. Apart in space and outlook
events are however conspiring to crash the siblings lives together
again: Maya and her mentor are finding evidence that the monsters
are not as directionless as assumed, and in the chasms around the sunfire crater, Gyre comes to think that perhaps the Ghouls are not as extinct
as advertised...
I quite enjoyed these books as I have all of Wexler's that I have
read so far. This series is a little lighter than "The Thousand
Names", but not nearly as manic (mostly!) as "Dark Lord Davi". He
says it started as a Star Wars saga, and you can see a bit of that
in the Jedi/Padawan dynamic of Maya and her centarch, but if he had
not said that, I would not have picked up on it. The setting is a
second world with features that raise a lot of questions. For
instance, people have anime hair, and while some familiar animals
are mentioned, the bulk of them are odd and unfamiliar. (Some,
though not all, answers are eventually forthcoming). It's a bit
woke in that its just assumed that women & men are equally likely
to be, say, calvary lancers, and there don't really seem to be
preferred sleeping arrangements, but it's all low-key.
The story is told in alternating chapters from Maya & Gyre's
viewpoints. I prefer Maya's earnestness to Gyre's cynicism, though
his storyline does pick up when he gets a partner with a bit of Davi's
manic spark. The ending is fairly satisfying, but does leave some
unanswered questions.
I will continue to seek out Wexler in the future.
I stalled hard somewhere in book 3 (4?) of the shadow campaigns. I
enjoyed the writing, but the plotting - I just kept waiting for stuff to happen, esp stuff of a SF-nal nature. It?s barely there at all. If I
wanted to try other Wexler, would you recommend trying the first
Burningblade book, or the first Dark Lord Davi book?
Tony
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