Where Alchemist Gangs Turn Everything into Trouble

Red City by Marie Lu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a birthday present, so I was already predisposed to liking the book. And I was glad to find it was a good read. :)

Sam and Ari are shy kids who become best friends in school without ever revealing anything personal about their lives and where they come from. Both are gifted in different ways and recruited by alchemist syndicates. There they are trained under pretty harsh conditions to be able to use alchemy to transform things into different states. There are many magic-type things they both learn to do, all in the service of the nefarious businesses their syndicates are involved in. But neither tells the other that they're in rival gangs.

The story tells about their childhood and their progress in alchemy and the business of organized crime, showing how they become useful and important in their separate organizations. This includes both of them being coached and pressured into committing some pretty horrible acts. It's all aimed at other gang members, rivals, career criminals, people we aren't supposed to care about all that much, but it's not awesome, and as a reader you start to wonder of either one is redeemable--because they're both still likable, in a way, and I was rooting for them. (Is this another Breaking Bad situation where the author is seeing how much we'll put up with and still root for the character? I'm not sure. Are we meant to pardon them their crimes because they've clearly been both coerced and groomed from an early age? Maybe.)

All through, you're hoping Sam and Ari get to break free of their rival gangs, and the ending has a sort of answer to that, though I'm sure the sequels will have a lot more to say about it.

It's a very compelling alternate world that Marie Lu has created. The rules governing the magic system (though it's something like a science in the book) make sense, and the societal impact adds up, too. Well thought out. I think there's a lot more to explore in future novels, maybe among the regular, non-alchemist population, and I hope we see more of that in whatever sequels she may write. I want to see more from the main characters, too, obviously, so I hope those are in the works.

Four stars. Recommended.

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Where a Roman Legion Finds Themselves in a Strange World

The Misplaced Legion by Harry Turtledove
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A solid portal fantasy (I think it'd be classified that way) with lots of excellent research and knowledge behind it. Four stars.

It's better than "pretty okay," which is what a 3-star book is, but it's a slightly optimistic 4 coming from me. I'm rooting for the book and series, TBH. It's not as exciting through the middle section as I would like, though it's still interesting, and it doesn't have a true ending, which I would much prefer, and those things make it a little less fun for me. It's not precisely a cliffhanger (IMO, I mean, though I admit I quibble) because the book ends at a natural break in the story, a chapter end anyway, where there's a slight pause in the action, but the next book in the series will find our heroes in a tough spot and have to start on the following day for sure. They have their backs up against a cliff, let's say, though they aren't hanging from it...

See, I quibble.

But I like the characters and the premise and the setting and I suspect the second novel will be able to get going with less throat-clearing and world-building. I hope.

The premise is that a whole Roman legion finds itself in a new world (after magic accidentally happens) and they have to learn how to survive there. It is a world that looks a lot like a later Byzantine empire does in our world, with nations that resemble Normans and Vikings and Greeks, though there's lots of magic and other elements unique to that place. The Romans are special here because they have a system of discipline that isn't matched in Videssos, though the author doesn't play that up too too much. In fact, the biggest disappointment in the novel is waiting for the Romans to be awesome, to make a big difference, and though they have a few small successes in that line, they don't kick ass the way I hoped. I think, I imagine, I expect we'll see that in different ways in the sequels.

I like Harry Turtledove and think he's very creative and skillful, so I'm hoping he comes through in the rest of the books. Swords crossed.

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Where Watson and Sherlock Solve Fantasy Mysteries

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very entertaining and somewhat flawed book. 5 stars for the fun and -1 star for the bits of disappointment. Let me explain.

This is Sherlock pastiche, with Sherlock as a kind of crow-winged angel in an England full of supernatural beings, including hellhounds, vampires, werewolves, and so on. Dr. Watson returns from Afghanistan with a spiritual and physical injury inflicted by a fallen angel and, as in the original stories, meets Sherlock and becomes his roommate. I find this combination of weirdness (though there's more, obviously) works very well. The story is told like a series of short stories, all of which are reimaginings of some of the original Sherlock stories, and they are all held together by an overall arc concerning Jack the Ripper.

The stories are clever and entertaining, both in their originality and in the way they follow the contours of familiar stories, and I'd love to see more of that. Dr. Watson figures more prominently in these than in the originals, and while Sherlock is still brilliant and capable, he's far less so in this book than we are used to seeing. However, this is balanced by a greater intimacy between the characters, which I appreciated and found very touching.

I didn't love everything. I was disappointed that Dr. Watson had a secret that seemed important but turned out to be irrelevant to the story. I kept waiting for something to come of it, but the author never used the secret for anything significant, and it felt like Chekhov's gun was never taken down and fired. (Maybe there'll be a sequel?) And the unifying arc was ended abruptly in a way that didn't reward the reader's patience. It seemed like something big was gonna happen, but instead it just got solved and packaged up in a super straightforward way, like a TV show planned for 10 episodes that gets canceled early and has to wind everything up in 7.

That said--I really liked it, and would love to read another. Lots of room in this particular universe for some fun stories.

Recommended for Sherlock fans and fantasy readers, especially those in both groups.

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Romans in America

Clash of Eagles by Alan Smale
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a wonderful alternate history adventure, and I loved it, but it's also a character-driven novel that is surprisingly affecting, with people you want to meet in real life.

Like Sintikala. She's awesome. Great character.

This is a what-if novel, positing a couple things: the Roman Empire still exists in the 13th Century, having incorporated the Norse and other peoples; with Viking help, they can travel to North America, where they encounter and defeat some of the native peoples; searching for gold, they fight all the way to the Mississippi, to Cahokia, where (spoiler, but it's in the blurb, so...) they are defeated by an organized resistance using theoretically-possible devices related to images and themes of the actual material culture of the real-world people of Cahokia.

That's act I. Act II is about the only surviving Roman, Gaius, who is kept alive through his depression and regret long enough to reach the point where he wants to change. His interactions with the Cahokian people is my favorite part of this, the way he meets and gets to know individuals as unique humans as well as discovering the merits of another civilization. The author doesn't preach, IMO, but in 21st Century terms, Gaius is a colonizer who has his eyes opened to the horrors and evils of his actions, of empire and conquest, and tries to right his many wrongs, at many levels.

It isn't that easy; there are many conflicts--many people he has hurt, many who cannot and will not trust him--and the explosive action in the final act removes the possibility of simple solutions. It is brilliant world-building and conjecture and extrapolation, and I found it moving and entertaining in equal measure.

Recommended, of course.

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