3 1/2 Stars - The Irresponsible Reader

The Silver Arrow

Hardcover, 259 pg.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2020

Read: December 3-4, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

You really don’t appreciate how incredibly colossal a steam locomotive is till one shows up parked on the street in front of your house. This one was about fifteen feet high and fifty feet long, and it had a headlight and a smokestack and a bell and a whole lot of pipes and pistons and rods and valve handles on it. The wheels alone were twice her height.

What’s The Silver Arrow About?

Kate lives a life that she doesn’t find that interesting. It involves a lot of reading (mostly books about science, or books where people discover that magic is real), wishing her parents would pay her more attention, or that something interesting would happen. I don’t think her younger brother, Tom, is any more satisfied, but he seems generally more upbeat. They have an uncle they’ve never met—because their parents describe him as irresponsible, but incredibly rich.

For her 11th birthday, Kate writes him a letter, asking for a present. What arrives is her uncle—who may be irresponsible, but he seems like a nice guy (even if her parents have a seemingly irrational amount of anger toward him) who arranges for a steam train, The Silver Arrow, to be delivered to her (and a small line of track installed in her backyard). While Kate and Tom climb all over it, her parents demand that Uncle Herbert remove the train. Before he can, it leaves with them on board.

Not only does it start by itself and travel through places it shouldn’t—the train communicates with the children. Before they know it, they’re at a hub where they add on passenger cars (among other things) and then start picking up passengers, all of whom are talking exotic animals (fully ticketed). Sure, by definition, a talking animal is fairly exotic, but I’m talking about things like a pangolin, a polar bear, a mamba, a fishing cat, and so on.

While they travel through the world (including many places that non-magical Steam Trains can’t go) the siblings have to overcome various challenges, defy the laws of physics (but never in a way that feels like violating physics), learn to work together, and learn a few lessons about some pretty heavy topics (in an entertaining and age-appropriate manner).

This really reminded me of…

Life always seemed so interesting in books, but then when you had to actually live it nothing all that interesting ever seemed to happen. And unlike in books, you couldn’t skip ahead past the boring parts.

The marketing for the book mentions both Roald Dahl and The Chronicles of Narnia. I honestly don’t remember the Dahl books I read in enough detail to comment on that—but it feels mostly okay. But Narnia? No. Sure, there were talking animals—but not that kind of Talking Beasts. Also, there’s no allegory at work here. That comparison didn’t work for me.

Julie Edwards’s The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles came to mind while thinking about the book—the mix of science and magic, the way that adults talk frankly to children, the feel of the narration—all hearkened back to that for me.

But primarily, this reminded me of The Phantom Tollbooth—from the unexpected arrival of a magical form of transportation, to the encounters with strange realities, and lessons learned, the occasional feel of absurdity (that never feels absurd)…it speaks Tollbooth to me.

Neither of these books have the marketing pull of Dahl or Narnia, so I get why the Publisher went with the ones they went with, but it irks me that they were so far off.

The Things Beyond the Story

Deep in her heart Kate knew that. She knew that her problems weren’t real problems, at least not compared with the kinds of problems kids had in stories. She wasn’t being beaten, or starved, or forbidden to go to a royal ball, or sent into the woods by an evil stepparent to get eaten by wolves. She wasn’t even an orphan! Weirdly, Kate sometimes caught herself actually wishing she had a problem like that-a zombie apocalypse, or an ancient curse, or an alien invasion, anything really-so that she could be a hero and survive and triumph against all the odds and save everybody.

As Milo did in The Phantom Tollbooth, Kate (and, to a lesser extent, Tom) learn a lot from their travels and the atypical people they encounter. Some of the things I noted they experienced—and that young readers will encounter include maturity/embracing responsibility; engaging in life, not merely observing (via smartphone or books); animal preservation/conservation—notably of threatened or endangered species; and a strong hope in the future of and for Humanity. I don’t usually see the latter two themes paired together but I found Grossman’s use of the two to keep the book from being too heavy or too light.

This is a Book to Read Aloud

The best part of the book for me was Grossman’s use of language, his style, and voice. He sucked me in with the way he told the story before Kate and The Silver Arrow got their hooks in me. There’s a charm to the language that would attract (I can only imagine) middle-grade readers in a similar way that Norton Juster did me decades ago.

The other thing that kept coming to mind was just how fun this would be to read aloud to a kid of the right age. There are several lines that just beg to be hammed up while reading to a receptive third-grader, like:
“Herbert,” he said. “What the blazes is this?” He didn’t really say blazes, but you can’t put the word he did say in a book for children.
[After several sentences of the mamba speaking full of “ssssss”s] (I’m not going to keep typing all the extra s’s, so just keep in mind that the snake hisses a lot when he talks.)
Weird how boys had feelings, too, but pretended they didn’t.

Those probably work better in context, but he breaks the fourth wall enough to add plenty of opportunities to have fun while you read it.

So, what did I think about The Silver Arrow?

She’d almost forgotten that the train could talk. There’s a lot going on in your life when you have more urgent things to think about than a talking train.

I think if I was about 40 years younger, I’d probably rate this at least 4 Stars, or maybe if I’d actually read it to someone, that might have done the trick. But I’m an old(er) crank and I could only imagine what it’d have been like to read to my kids.

This is a fun book, a kind of adventure that I’d want to give to kids, I’d want kids to be exposed to. And, yeah, it’s good for the inner child of older readers who like to remember how much fun certain books can be.

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Mostly Human 2 by D. I. Jolly: The Further Adventures of the Rock Star Werewolf

By HCNewton

On December 3, 2020

In Urban Fantasy

Mostly Human 2

by D. I. Jolly
Series: Mostly Human, #2

Kindle Edition, 343 pg.
Tinpot Publishing, 2020

Read: September 28-October 25, 2020

What’s Mostly Human 2 About?

On the heels of the dramatic events at the end of Mostly Human, the werewolf rock star, Alex Harris has to leave town for a while. He needs to stay out of the limelight before people figure out how his nephew was rescued and start asking too many questions about the “dog” that freed him. He also needs to get his head on straight after it. So he takes off incognito, eventually winding up in a wolf sanctuary in Norway, where he finds work (and where he can take off every few weeks and fit in).

He settles in and establishes a home there, at some point, he strikes up a friendship/borderline romance with an intern, and things really come to life for him.

Eventually, circumstances force him to leave and he answers an inner call to go to Russia to find out more about his lycanthropy. From there, he’ll return home and try to re-establish his life with family and bandmates. If only the mysterious (magical?) voice in his head and a fellow werewolf with an agenda will let him.

To Re-cap or Not?

So, Mostly Human was the first book I read in 2017, I started this at the end of September of 2020. There’s a lot of months and a lot of books between those two (sure, most readers won’t have as many books between these two, but they might share the time gap), and I’ve gotta say, I had a lot of trouble remembering details/names/plot points from the first one. Jolly didn’t do a lot to help.

It’s a tricky thing (it seems) to decide how much of a recap to work into the early chapters of a follow-up book. Generally, I’m in favor of a minimalistic approach—unless it’s a situation of “remember that character who showed up for 3 chapters in Book 2? Well, they’ll be a major player here in Book 9.” But when there’s this much time between the publication of the two books,* you’ve got to toss readers a bone.

* December 2016-November 2020, officially.

Yes, eventually, he gave enough bread crumbs that I could piece together enough of what happened—especially once I read my original post—and, yes, between this release and the re-packaging of the first book, hopefully he picks up new readers that won’t have to reach back 35 months for their memories. It’s not a deal-breaker, by any means, but detracted from the experience.

A Very Talky Urban Fantasy

While there are some good scenes of werewolf action, some nefarious goings-on, and a respectable amount of violence. But man, there was a lot of talking. A lot of banter. A lot of emotional naval-gazing.

Which is a very pleasant change of pace compared to your typical Urban Fantasy. Jolly focuses on the relationship (in various stages) between Alex and Cassandra, Alex and his sister, his sister and her boyfriend, and so on. There’s more space devoted to developing and evolving the relationship between Alex and Cassandra than anything about Alex and his wolf nature.

The book is notionally about Alex, his curse/lycanthropy, and his growth in knowledge about other lycanthropes, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. It seems to be more about Alex understanding and accepting himself, how that will the relationships around him and his future. His lycanthropy plays a huge part in that, and its shadow looms over everything, but that doesn’t seem to be where the heart of the book is. He may have set out to write an Urban Fantasy, but I don’t think he fully succeeded and ended up writing a Lad Lit-kind of book with Urban Fantasy flavoring.

I’d pay money right now to see a straightforward Lad Lit novel from Jolly, I think he’d do great with it. Or something like Mike Chen does with SF, using that setting to tell family stories. Jolly purposefully doing that with UF (rather than accidentally as he seems to have done here), would be something to get excited about.

So, what did I think about Mostly Human 2?

I enjoyed this, I like the story he told and the story he set out to tell. The best part of a werewolf character is seeing how the wolf affects the human and the human’s life.

This is a great world, full of interesting characters. I don’t know if this is the end of Alex’s story or not. It could easily be that. Or it could be the launching to a new phase of Alex’s story with a greater understanding of his condition and a new path for life. I think it could go either way, and I’d be fine with either outcome.

It’s a fine tale, a solid (and different) take on lycanthropy, with a lot of things to grab a reader in addition to the protagonist growing extra hair on occasion. You should check it (and its predecessor) out.

3.5 Stars

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this novel from the author in exchange for my honest opinion and this post.

Venators: Legends Rise (Audiobook) by Devri Walls, Daniel Thomas May: The Venators Have Their Hands Full in this Packed Adventure

By HCNewton

On October 17, 2020

In Audiobook, Fantasy, Fiction, Venators, YA/MG/Children's Books

For the last part of my Tour Stop, I’ll be talking about the Audiobook version of Venators: Legends Rise, as I have with the first two books in the series this year as part of The Write Reads Tours for them. And, as before, I largely copied what I said about the paperback-but tweaked things a little bit and added something about the narration (just in case you read the earlier post and think I’m repeating myself, you’re right, I absolutely am.)

Venators: Legends Rise

by Devri Walls, Daniel Thomas May (Narrator)
Series: Venators, #3

Unabridged Audiobook, 18 hrs. 9 min.
Tantor Audio, 2020

Read: October 6-9, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

“How long ago were we here?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Two weeks? Three? I’ve lost track of the days.”

She sat with that for a moment, trying to reconcile the timeline. “Why does it seem like forever ago?”

“Because it was.” Grey rested his forearm across the saddle horn, face pensive. “We’ve lived a lifetime since then.”

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who couldn’t believe how little time went by in the first two books.

What’s Legends Rise About?

At the end of Promises Forged, Tate is taken by the Fae and is sent back to the Gladiator games that he’d escaped from not that long ago. He’s doing this so he can get his wife and son to safety (and maybe see them for the first time in years, too).

But our heroes, Grey and Rune, need to get him free from that—preferably without letting the Council know he’s been taken. So while they’ve been assigned to go rein in the remnants of the Werewolf pack they let get away in Magic Unleashed, and maybe bring another pack to order, they’ll use that assignment as cover for their real concern.

A neat trick if they can pull it off.

Along the way they get to train, they get to experience more of their new world and abilities than they’ve been able to thus far in their crash-course introduction to the ways and mores of Eon. The training, obviously, is really important if we’re to continue to believe their success in combat. A couple of lucky breaks like we’ve seen so far is one thing, but at a certain point, we need to see some competence out of them.

Venator Development

This book sees Rune and Grey getting to know each other better—Grey shares a lot with Rune and she responds as she ought. They both settle into roles as partners, their individual personalities helping them support the other in weak spots while working together.

Grey continues to be the character I’m most invested in and most interested in for this series—his strengths—compassion, empathy, concern—are seen even more clearly than before. He’s quite the contrast to the Venators of legend on Eon. Yes, it gets him into trouble. Yes, he has flaws and stumbles into being someone I really don’t like during the final battle of the book. But assuming he can keep himself from that in the future, and stay true to who he is, he’ll be the hero that Eon needs and will keep me reading the series.

Rune on the other hand…I change my mind about her repeatedly in each book. As a character, Walls keeps developing her along the lines we’ve seen so far—particularly in Promises Forged, building on those traits and showing herself, her trainers, Grey, and the Council what she’s capable of. I’m not crazy about some of her choices and actions—but I think most of them will be good for the series, and one of them will lead to melodrama and problems (and will be a source of delight for most readers).

I’m glad that I’m not all-in with either character—it makes them feel more real, more grounded that I like aspects of them, and am troubled by others. It also points to the tendency Walls showed in Promises Forged for the Venator powers to shape the thinking and attitudes of the individuals and how much these two need to strive against that. Give me a complex protagonist any day.

Some Skin in the Game

Zio makes a move here—a lot sooner than I expected her to, too. It’s not a big attack, it’s more of a surgical strike, just to sound out her opponents and test out her pet Venator. If more happens and she gains some big advantages while she’s at it, all the better.

She’s craftier than I gave her credit for and I think that this was a smart move by Walls—both for the progression of the story and for the development of Zio as a character. It’d be easy to write her off as a Skeletor-type, just a power-hungry magic-user trying to cause chaos and destruction for her own gain. And, yes, I still think she is that—but I think there’s more to her than that.

A Bonanza of Backstory

Two of the most important figures for our Venators are Beltran and Verida. We know there was some sort of romance in their past, and that it didn’t well at all. We get that filled in a little bit, which is good. But more than that we get looks into their pasts—what brought them to the point they were at when we first encountered them.

We see a lot of what motivates Verida in her desire to train these Venators, to aid the resistance. We get some insight into what drove the wedge between her and her father. We even meet some of her family and can see that she could very easily have been a different kind of person. I walked away from this book liking Verida a lot more than I did before.

We see more of Beltran’s story, too, and come a lot closer to understanding him—I think Walls is keeping a surprise or two about him up her sleeve, though. I’d like to think that someone with his centuries of experience would possess a little more maturity, and not be quite so emotionally adolescent—but maybe for his species you don’t hit that for a few more hundred years.

An Almost Entirely Frivolous Sartoirial Question

Does anyone on Eon wear loose clothing? Every time* someone’s pants are described, the words “tight” and “leather” appear. From just about everything I’ve ever read, leather pants are really uncomfortable. Maybe society would be better, people would be more prone to get along if Rune introduced them to denim? Could Grey get people to wear chinos and with the improved blood flow help cooler heads to prevail?

* No, I haven’t done a search on e-copies of this to verify this, there may be exceptions—roll with the hyperbole here.

At the very least, from this point can’t we just take it as read that every time Walls says “pants” that she means “tight” and “leather” and trim 1-2% of her word count?

Is this petty? Sure. But Walls spends enough time talking about clothing that questions arise. If I were so inclined (and someone would have to pay me to be), I think I could do an entire post on the clothing of Eon.

My Big, Not-Frivolous Question

What are people (the Council/Zio/Resistance) fighting for? Control of Eon? Power? Sure, that’s obvious. But Power for the sake of Power is dull and hard to care about as a reader. If you look at Panem, you can get an idea why people are fighting for it (on either side), ditto for The Society in Red Rising, Luna from The Lunar Chronicles—you get the idea.

What are the ideals of this society? What has the Council betrayed? Are they pretending to uphold something from the past that they’ve actually abandoned and that the resistance are trying to restore? (see the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars)—while at the same time, Zio has another idea entirely?

What’s the point of this Resistance movement? What are their goals? When are we going to finally meet them?

Where’s the joy in this world? Where’s The Good (or just good)?

We spend some time in a city and in a village here—they couldn’t be less similar, so we’re getting two separate looks at Eon society. The city puts Mos Eisley to shame, and the poor village is just…well, poor. Even before tragedy hits (thanks to the Venators, in a way) this village, I don’t see that there’s a lot going for it or its citizens.

I guess that I was just struck by the question, “why?” Why are these factions working so hard to gain control of this place? I don’t doubt for a moment that Walls has a handle on this question—she knows it. I just hope she clues her readers in soon.

How was the narration??

Daniel Thomas May really impressed me this time. He balances the action and emotion well, keeping the focus on the characters. Walls gave him a large cast of characters to work with in these pages and he handles it well. I feel like I should have more to say, but I really don’t. He does a good job and kept me entertained.

So, what did I think about Legends Rise?

This was by far the most ambitious of the Venators novels (I know it’s only book 3, but I read two versions of book 1, so I’m counting this as the fourth), and I applaud Walls for taking a big swing here. I wonder if she maybe tried to do too much, though. I’ve tossed this idea around a lot over the last few weeks and I’m undecided. I’m hoping that listening to the audiobook for the upcoming Book Tour will help me decide.

We got some good backstory on pivotal characters, we see a lot more of the world and have a better understanding of parts of it, the Earthlings get a chance to acclimate a bit more to Eon and spend some time with citizens. And, yeah, there are some pretty great action sequences. There’s even some romance for those who want that sort of thing—and I’m certain almost every reader of this series will be very pleased by it (I actually don’t mind a romantic subplot, I just can’t stand this one and think it’s a bad move for everyone involved).

Regardless of what the stars may suggest—I enjoyed this book and recommend it. Furthermore, I like this series, I’m really curious about what’s going to happen next and I think anyone who reads them will, too.

3.5 Stars

My thanks to The Write Reads for the invitation to participate in this tour and the materials they provided.

Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi, Zachary Quinto (Narrator): When You Can’t Kill Someone Anymore, Criminals Have to Get Creative

By HCNewton

On September 28, 2020

In Audiobook, Fiction, John Scalzi, Urban Fantasy

Murder by Other Means

by John Scalzi, Zachary Quinto (Narrator)
Series: The Dispatcher, #2

Unabridged Audiobook, 3 hrs., 33 min.
Audible Studios, 2020

Read: September 18-19, 2020

A Sequel to The Dispatcher?

I think the last thing on my mind as I finished The Dispatcher was that there’d be a sequel. It seemed fairly stand-alone (but, I guess, I can see that the door was open). But now that I’ve heard this? It seems only natural that there’d be a follow-up to The Dispatcher and the door is open for more.

What’s Murder by Other Means About?

So, in this world 99.9% of the time, if you’re murdered, you come back to life in your home/somewhere you feel safe. If you die of natural causes, in an accident, from suicide—you stay dead. But if someone intends you harm and you die, you’re most likely safe. This started a few years before this book is set, and no one knows why.

But that doesn’t stop people from taking advantage of it. There’s a new industry, our protagonist/narrator is part of it, Dispatching. Licensed killers who shoot people when death is all but certain to give them another chance at life. In the time since The Dispatcher, it seems that some new and creative uses for them have become common. Most of them straddle the line between legal/illegal or moral/immoral.

Tony Valdez starts this book hurting for money, and takes one of those not technically illegal jobs. Soon after, people around him—loosely connected, but not really friends or colleagues—start dying from unnatural causes. Not murders, obviously, because they stay dead. But as the bodies start to accumulate, the police have to look at the one common denominator—Tony. Tony starts investigating himself—if only because he figures it’s going to be long before he’s one of the dead that doesn’t come back.

How was the Narration?

Quinto makes Tony come to life, and is able to humanize this licensed executioner enough that you don’t think of him as a killer for hire, you think of him a beleaguered private contractor on hard times. Quinto’s great at the rest of the job, too—I’d absolutely listen to more audiobooks he narrates.

So, what did I think about Murder by Other Means?

I was less than enthusiastic about The Dispatcher back in 2016—which I didn’t remember until I just glanced at my post. I’m not over the moon about this, but I enjoyed it, and hope there’s more to come (I’m not sure I want to wait four more years, however). If there is? I’m jumping on it eagerly.

It was clever, it is honest about the human condition and the ways we find to hurt and destroy (and comes up with a few that are custom-made for this no-murder reality), yet remains a very human, very real thriller. It’s a good way to spend a couple of hours.

3.5 Stars

Venators: Legends Rise by Devri Walls: The Venators Have Their Hands Full in this Packed Adventure

By HCNewton

On September 15, 2020

In Fantasy, Fiction, Venators, YA/MG/Children's Books

The surest sign that the end of July and all of August got away from me is this: I haven’t posted about Venators: Legends Rise yet. I wanted to get my initial impressions of this out before now, closer to the e-book release date, but now with the Paperback release this week, this will have to work. I’ll be taking part in a book tour for this book in a month—and will have new thoughts, second impressions, and things to say about the audiobook then (as I have with the first two books this year). But here’s where I am at this point.