Have I really not posted on this thread since February? Neglectful procrastinator is neglectful...
Recent Reads:
Birthright volumes 5 and 6 (Joshua Williamson, YA fantasy/graphic novel, Nook via Hoopla): Mikey Rhodes, once an ordinary boy, was irrevocably changed when he was pulled into the war-torn world of Terranos as a prophecized savior against god-king Lore and the evil Nevermind. Now a man (though only a year has passed on Earth), he has returned home - but as a fallen hero, serving the Nevermind, as he hunts down fugitive mages from Terranos. But his family refuses to give up hope of reclaiming him... family now including his winged lover, Rya, who followed Mikey home through the bond they share via his unborn child.
The series remains intense, imaginative, and interesting, not to mention dark and occasionally gory. These two volumes bring the characters together at last, so they feel more focused. The women, particularly Mikey's mother, still feel a little underplayed, but Rya's definitely not a fainting damsel in distress. In the sixth volume, which almost could've been the finale, the reader finally learns what happened in that fateful confrontation between Mikey and Lore to turn the Hero of Terranos. I do hope the series wraps up in a few more volumes, though; even with things fundamentally changed, there's only so much longer one can avoid the ultimate final confrontation.
The Adamantine Palace (Book 1 of the Memory of Flames series, Stephen Deas, fantasy, in paperback): In the nine Realms, kings and queens ride alchemically-tamed dragons as the ultimate mark of power. But should a beast ever slip its bonds, all Hell might literally break loose... and political squabblings incited by a power-hungry princess and her royal lover have just allowed that to happen. As the dragon Snow wakes fully to her mind, she finds memories of past lives, memories that drive her to vengeance against the alchemists, dragon-priests, and royalty who have enslaved her kin for far too long...
I never thought I'd give a one and a half star rating to a dragon book (outside of Don Callander's painfully boring Dragon Companion), but I did here. Why? I hated the entire cast... even, sadly, the dragon, though at least I sort of understood where she was coming from before she became just as repellant as every other POV character. It also feels like the story fell out of a time machine from the not-so-golden age of the genre: the whole cast is whiter than white (even Snow, a pure white dragon) except for the black/Asian stand-ins, the sly evil wizards from beyond the sea who covet dragons for themselves; women are defined by their use of sex to gain power, with the one woman who isn't doing so painted as an immature fool; men are selfish backstabbers whose brains are never located higher than their belt line; and not a single entity in the book even approaches the room temperature, let alone warm end of the emotional spectrum. As a result, I couldn't care less about their world or their stories. About all I liked, kind of, was Deas's take on dragons, creatures of fire and scale and fury yet with a certain cleverness and loyalty that can be earned. TBH, by the halfway point I was only reading so I could write a review to warn others.
Currently Reading:
The Girl In Between (Book 1 of the Girl In Between series, Laekan Zea Kemp, YA fantasy/romance, Nook via Overdrive): Teen girl Bryn suffers from Klein-Levin syndrome, prone to fits of days- or weeks-long slumber that has thus far resisted treatment. Though KLS sufferers aren't supposed to dream, she always has, visiting a place stitched together from childhood memories.... a place where she used to be alone. But one day she finds a strange boy on a remembered seashore... a boy who lingers in her memory-world even when she leaves. Is this, as she fears, a symptom of her condition worsening, or is it a sign that her sleep and dreams are something she doesn't understand?
So far, not a bad story, moving decently and with some surreal imagery in the dream/memory world. Bryn's a decent enough teen girl MC to follow, and so far it's reading fast.
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World (Andrea Wulf, nonfiction, on Kindle): The story of the science prodigy Alexander von Humboldt, who revolutionized views of nature and ecology, introducing many concepts that still define our understanding of the world - and sounding alarm bells about human damage to the environment and the climate that would prove sadly prescient.
So far, it's an interesting enough read about someone we should've learned more about, but didn't... yet another oversight of the American public education system. (Seem to find more and more of those the further I get from school years...) Humboldt's holistic view stood in opposition to the common naturalist habit of the time to compartmentalize and categorize everything to within an inch of its life, challenging too the notion that nature was at its best when "tamed" by Man.
In physical reads, my hand is still hovering indecisively over my large TBR pile. Part of me wants to jump into Book 5 of the Expanse series, while another wants to wait on that longer volume until I clear a few shorter reads.
