REVIEW: The Galloway Road (e-novella) by Catherine Adams

The Galloway Road is a fantasy story published by Less Than Three Press. It's only 19,000 words long.

Review: 

Renna is a young mage on her way to her first job. Her traveling companions include a pair of musicians specifically requested by Renna’s new employer, plus Brett, the mercenary hired to protect them all. Brett is closed mouthed about himself and his past, and Renna has secrets of her own. However, none of that may matter if they can't manage to survive the Galloway Road’s deadly horrors.

This story takes place over the course of 11 days and mostly features the group traveling from one inn to another. The beginning was boring, dull, and a little confusing, although the Galloway Road’s creepy atmosphere eventually grew on me, as did Renna and Brett (sort of). A word of warning: some of the descriptions are gruesome. The Galloway Road is called that because it's lined with gallows and gibbets. Sometimes the people Renna, Brett, and the musicians pass are dead, and sometimes they're not. Honestly, if I had been Renna or the musicians, Galloway Road alone would have had me questioning the wisdom of agreeing to work for Lord Galloway.

Okay, on to the characters. The musicians made so little of an impact on me that I had to check the story just to make sure I had the number of characters right - I had thought there were three musicians, not two. Brett was an intriguing character, apparently competent and yet prone to self-destructive behavior (he’d been banned from at least one or two inns because of his drinking). Renna...was just there. I never felt like I really knew her beyond the most surface level. I did gasp at the big revelation about her, but that was in large part because I hadn’t noticed any sign of it in her behavior or thoughts up to that point. This bugged me a bit, because the event had happened so recently. I suppose it could be explained away as emotional numbness on her part, but still.

The main reason I got this story was because it was one of Less Than Three Press’s recent releases in their “asexual” category. Renna was asexual, possibly homoromantic depending on the specifics of her feelings for her best friend. There was a hint of something that might have been ace-related angst - at one point, Renna wondered if she was “stone-hearted, cruel-hearted” (37). It was a bit ambiguous, though, and might have also been inspired by the thing that happened shortly before she was hired by Lord Galloway. I honestly don’t know.

I appreciated what this story tried to do, but overall my reaction was just “meh.” I didn’t care enough about the characters for the ending to have the kind of emotional impact that it should have had. Also, I hate to say this, but I laughed a bit during some of the events in the tomb. I know that stuff was probably supposed to be horrifying/scary, but I kept imagining B-movie special effects.

REVIEW: Mayday: A Kaiju Thriller (e-book) by Chris Strange

Mayday: A Kaiju Thriller is a sci-fi thriller with a bit of a hardboiled detective story mixed in. It's self-published and 83,930 words long.

Review:

About 19 years ago, enormous monsters that were later dubbed “Maydays” appeared all over the world. Over the course of 9 years, they killed 1.1 billion people. Nothing anyone did seemed to have any effect on the Maydays, until Professor Nikolai Volkov unleashed his newly invented mind control technology. Humans still couldn’t harm Maydays, but now they could at least control them. Volkov decided to combine entertainment and punishment and created Volkov Entertainment Incorporated, a company specializing in broadcasting “Mayday vs. Mayday” battles.

The company has been doing pretty well for the past 10 years. Then something shocking and supposedly impossible happens: Yllia, one of the Maydays, dies. Jay Escobar, head of Volkov Entertainment’s Investigative Division, declares that Yllia was murdered. But who could murder a Mayday? Nukes couldn’t put a scratch on them, and even other Maydays are only able to do a little damage.

Mayday: A Kaiju Thriller was one of my impulse buys. The premise sounded interesting and the excerpt seemed readable, so I figured why not?

The beginning read like a hardboiled detective story. About halfway through, the story morphed into a sci-fi thriller that reminded me of Jurassic Park (the movie more so than the book), complete with deaths, severed body parts, and the booming footsteps of enormous and deadly monsters. I loved the book’s premise, the Mayday battles were loads of fun, and the Maydays themselves were each unique and fascinating.

I wish I’d gotten a chance to see Yllia as a living being, since she was probably my favorite of the bunch - my mental image of her looked a lot like Mothra. Serraton was another Mayday whose design I liked: a slim and agile snake with legs, a lot like a Chinese dragon. I don’t think there was a single Mayday I didn’t enjoy reading about (in the sense of getting to see them in action), although I liked Tempest (spider-like), Nasir (squat and humanoid), and Grotesque (crocodilian, with poison-filled pustules along its back) less than Yllia and Serraton.

The mystery could have been better, since I figured out a large part of it only a third of the way through. However, the action helped make up for the weak mystery - even if Escobar and the others had managed to figure things out faster, they’d still have had their hands full trying to keep from being killed by the Maydays.

That said, one of the book’s biggest weaknesses was Escobar. Everything was written in first-person POV from his perspective, and I really, really disliked him. He was overconfident, misogynistic, and unnecessarily violent. His inability to dial down his general jerkishness hurt his investigation and led to the deaths of maybe thousands of people. I frequently found myself wishing that someone else had been the main character. Healy would have been great, or maybe Priya. Healy seemed like a decent enough guy, and he was certainly steadier and smarter than Escobar. Priya’s POV would have removed a few of the book’s surprises, but I’d still have preferred her determination and anger over Escobar’s...everything. I really hated that guy.

I saw one review in which Escobar was referred to as “self-aware,” but that was only later on, after several people had had cause to tell him that he was a ham-handed investigator and terrible human being. And the thing was, he didn’t change his ways after he realized how awful he’d been - he just made more conscious use of his terribleness. I couldn’t really blame him for killing one particular character, but shooting another character he’d hoped to interrogate further was just plain stupid.

One bit that really bugged me was when Escobar was trying to distract Tempest. The best thing he could come up with to keep Tempest’s attention was to comment on Tempest’s lack of a penis and apparent inability to have sex (either due to a lack of a partner or a complete physical inability). Those two long paragraphs didn’t seem to have much of an effect on Tempest’s emotional state, but they did say an awful lot about Escobar.

The mystery was interesting, even though I was able to figure out a good chunk of it early on, and the Maydays and Mayday battles were wonderful. I just wish the book had been written from some other character’s POV.

Additional Comments:

At one point, a character bit a chunk out of Escobar's left hand. Later, Escobar broke what I assume was his right wrist. I don't recall Escobar ever getting proper treatment for his left hand (no time), so it bugged me that he kept using what I assumed was his bitten hand to hold his broken wrist against his body with no mention of his hand hurting. Even if the pain in his wrist was overshadowing the pain in his hand, his bitten hand would have still been difficult to use, and I'd have expected that, at least, to be mentioned. Other than that, though, I didn't notice much in the way of errors.

REVIEW: Tales from Outer Lands (e-book) by Shira Glassman

Tales from Outer Lands is fantasy.

Review:

My edition of Tales from Outer Lands was published by Torquere Press. The author has since rereleased it as part of Tales from Perach.

This collection contains two stories, which I’ll write about separately.

“Rivka in Port Saltspray”

This takes place a year and a half after Rivka left her home, so I think it’s maybe a year and a half prior to the events in The Second Mango. Rivka is stuck in Port Saltspray with no way to get her dragon-horse to Zembluss, where she’d been hoping to fight in a civil war and earn a much-needed paycheck. A man named Waterweed seems to be the answer to her problems: he wants to hire her to fight in a competition for him. The prize, he says, is his beloved’s hand in marriage - because he’s missing an arm, he’d never stand a chance on his own.

This was a bit predictable, but still enjoyable. Rivka was my favorite character in The Second Mango, so it was nice to see her again. She hadn’t managed to make a name for herself yet and was in dire straits - nearly broke, stuck in a corrupt town, and in danger of losing Dragon, her loyal companion, if she couldn’t earn some money fast.

I loved that Rivka spent so much of the story basically looking out for others, both unconsciously or on purpose. She’s very much a “protector” sort of character. Not even her terrible financial situation could get her to compromise her morals, and I was really glad that she asked the questions I felt she needed to ask - I had suspicions about one particular character and was worried that this would be one of those “the main character doesn’t see the trap coming until it’s too late” stories.

Rivka’s analyses of the various fights were interesting, although I found myself wishing that the fights had been more vividly described. The absolute best part of the story, though, was probably when Rivka and Stella had some time alone together and, even though they didn’t speak the same language, figured out how to communicate via their shared religion.

All in all, this was pretty good. If I remember right, this story was what prompted me to buy a couple of Glassman’s works in the first place. I had heard that it contained an asexual character. If I interpreted things correctly, that character was probably Stella. The way her aunt described her made me think she was probably aromantic:

“‘No, she really doesn’t ever want to get married!’ said the aunt. ‘I even thought, you know, maybe she doesn’t like a man, then she can have a female companion. I had someone like that once. But no, not even that… she says she’s complete with family and friends.’”(28)

It was a nice little detail, although I had sort of been hoping for a bit more from the story. Ah well, at least I enjoyed getting to see more of Rivka.

“Aviva and the Aliens”

This takes place about 7 months after the end of The Second Mango. The people of Perach are preparing for Passover. Aviva is getting ready for the royal seder, putting away ingredients in her kitchen, when she and her entire kitchen are abducted by aliens. They’re tired of their flavorless ship food, and they want Aviva to cook them a good meal. However, if Aviva isn’t careful, she might end up being forced to cook for them forever.

The first story was about 30 pages long, whereas this one was about 15 - very short. It was bizarre and silly, too much so for my tastes. If the Mangoverse is going to be odd, I’d much prefer it to stick to fantasy oddness. Locust-like aliens abducting a random human in order to make her their new cook just didn’t seem to fit. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the story had ended with “it was all a dream,” but no, as far as I could tell it was all supposed to be real.

It also didn’t help that the story’s logic didn’t hold up very well. The aliens’ reasons for abducting Aviva didn’t make much sense. What if the random person they chose had been a terrible cook? How did they know that Aviva’s definition of tasty food would fit their definition? What had they planned on doing after Aviva ran out of ingredients? The aliens’ reason for letting Aviva go again wasn’t much better.

Of the two stories, I only really liked “Rivka in Port Saltspray.” It’s probably for the best that Glassman’s newly released collection contains more stories, since I don’t think I’d recommend this two-story collection on its own to anyone except big Rivka fans and Mangoverse completists.

REVIEW: The Second Mango (e-book) by Shira Glassman

The Second Mango is fantasy containing both f/f and m/f romance. It's very short - I don't know the word count, but it came out to 140 pages on my Nook Simple Touch.

Review:

The Second Mango is the first book in Glassman’s Mangoverse series. I’m reviewing the Torquere edition. The author has since gotten the rights back from that publisher and rereleased it, and I don’t know if the two editions differ in any way.

The Second Mango stars Shulamit, the new queen of Perach, and Rivka, a female warrior for hire who travels disguised as a man. Shulamit’s father died two months prior to the start of the story, and since then she has both been trying to deal with her grief and find herself a lover - a difficult task, since she’s a lesbian and the only other lesbian she’d ever met was Aviva, who’d been her first and only lover and who had left her without explanation. Rivka agrees to help Shulamit find a woman who might love her and who she might love in return. Their journey brings them to a temple filled with nuns who have been turned to stone by an evil sorcerer. Rivka and Shulamit are the only hope the nuns have of breaking free of their curse.

Several aspects of this book intrigued me: the Jewish fantasy setting, the lesbian main character, and Shulamit’s food sensitivities. I enjoyed Shulamit and Rivka’s discussions comparing their two cultures - they both celebrated Chanukah, for example, but associated different foods with the holiday. I didn’t understand all of the Hebrew and Yiddish words the text was peppered with, but the context usually gave me some idea of what was being said, and I googled whatever else I wanted to know more about.

As far as Shulamit’s food sensitivities went, I can’t recall ever reading something dealing with similar issues. The closest I can think of, at the moment, is C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series, in which Bren, the human main character, has to be careful about what and how much he eats, because he can’t tolerate the same things his atevi hosts can. Shulamit’s biggest problems were 1) finding out which foods were the problem and 2) convincing everyone that she really did need to avoid certain foods (wheat and poultry) and that her sensitivity wasn’t just in her head or evidence that she was a spoiled princess hoping for more attention. Aviva, the person she eventually fell in love with, was the only one who believed her and made absolutely sure that her food never even touched surfaces contaminated by wheat or poultry.

I liked how sweet and fluffy the overall story was. The beginning of Shulamit and Rivka’s adventure was a lot of fun, and I particularly enjoyed the bittersweet flashback to Rivka’s earlier life, defying her uncle and gradually falling in love with Isaac, the wizard who secretly taught her swordplay.

Unfortunately, I did have a few issues with the book, mostly centered on Shulamit. It seriously bugged me that, only two months after her father’s death, Shulamit’s biggest concern wasn’t finding her footing as the new queen and ensuring her country’s continued stability, but rather running off to find herself a new lover. Shulamit herself felt a bit bad about this later on in the story, but that didn’t negate the fact that she’d done it.

Granted, she was young and sheltered, but she still came across as flightier and, well, hornier than I’d have liked. She told Rivka that she needed to join her in the search for a potential lover for her because she wanted to make sure that the woman was someone she could love in return, but I got the impression that she’d have given any pretty lesbian Rivka managed to find a shot. During the course of the story, she tried to find a potential lover at a brothel, hit on Rivka at least once, almost landed them both in a trap due to her attraction to a pretty stranger, and found herself attracted to a pretty nun in statue form. All of that, combined with my assumption that Shulamit had probably just been too focused on her own emotions to notice what was bothering Aviva enough to make her want to leave, made it difficult for me to enjoy how her romantic storyline turned out.

My other issue with the book was that the writing felt simplistic, which meshed oddly with some of the sexual content. It also made Shulamit come across as being even younger than she might actually have been. I can’t remember if her age was ever stated, but for a while there I assumed she wasn’t much older than maybe 16.

Despite my issues with the book, I’m glad I already own a collection of Mangoverse stories. I’m looking forward to reading them, especially since I already know that one of them features Rivka, my favorite character in The Second Mango.

REVIEW: The Mysterious Lady Law (e-novella) by Robert Appleton

The Mysterious Lady Law is a steampunk thriller. It's published by Carina Press and is 31,600 words long.

No read-alikes this time, because I don't feel like it. Also, the very end of my review includes some spoilers.

Review:

This takes place in late 19th century London. Julia works as a waitress and dancer on an airship, while Georgina, her sister, cleans houses. Julia is utterly shocked to come home one evening and find her sister dead. Although Constable Aloysius (Al) Grant gives her as many updates on the case as he's able, there isn't much for him to say. The police keep hitting dead ends.

Just when it looks like Georgy's killer will go free, Lady Harriet Law shows up on Julia's doorstep and offers to take the case pro bono. Julia accepts the offer. After all, Lady Law has a phenomenal success rate, having solved 100% of her 650 cases. It's that same success rate that, in part, inspires Grant's distrust. How does Lady Law come to her conclusions? Why did she offer her services to Julia in particular? And how does the disappearance of Josh, the young assistant of the famed explorer Horace Holly, figure into all of this?

Lady Law was presented as a Holmesian sort of character, except that her one on-page instance of making deductions in a manner similar to Holmes was never closely examined. She simply told Julia “This is what I can conclude about that person way over there, based on this, this, and this detail” and then expected Julia to accept what she said as fact. Julia, to her credit, knew that Lady Law hadn't proved anything, but she decided to keep working with the woman anyway because she didn't have any other options if she wanted to find her sister's killer.

Appleton laid out a lot of reasons for readers to be suspicious of Lady Law. In addition to her lack of proven on-page deductions, no one had ever been able to replicate her leaps of logic, even though her final results always turned out to be correct. Then there was her ridiculous success rate. Absolutely no one is that successful that often. Clearly there was something fishy going on. This being a steampunk story, there seemed to be a couple likely explanations. I rejected one of them early on, and the other one turned out to be Lady Law's secret. So that was kind of disappointing. I had hoped that Appleton would manage to throw something at me that I hadn't even considered.

Because I didn't bother to check the how the publisher had tagged it, I had sort of expected there to be more romance. Instead I got Al Grant acting a bit standoffish towards Julia during their first date, until he suddenly wasn't. It was a bit weird, although I was grateful Appleton didn't push them into bed. Still, it was primarily an okay story. The chase scene in the airship was a bit hard to follow, but I loved the chase scene through the giant mechanical solar system.

The problem was the ending. First, what was the point of everybody coming across the villain while they were engaged in an enthusiastic foursome, complete with a bit of bondage? The person's sexual preferences weren't important to the story at all, so it just gave everyone something to blush over and be shocked by. Second, what the hell was with that ending? How was that a good outcome? “Oh, we'll put this person in prison for doing X, but they can get early parole if they teach a bunch of other people to also do X.” Brilliant. And how do Julia and the rest deal with it all? By leaving everything behind and going to Africa. Where in Africa? I'm going to guess Namibia based on prior mentions in the story and some quick googling of “Ovambo.” Still, would it have killed the author to have mentioned Namibia even once in the epilogue? Instead it was just Africa, over and over. Finally, I wish Appleton had had the good grace to leave the name “Holmes” out of the ending. I assumed he meant Sherlock, and I hated the idea of Sherlock Holmes becoming the protege of a morally bankrupt fake detective like Lady Law.