Within This Darkness

[cornerofmadness]

Within This Darkness by Chris Tomasini

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was one of my netgalley arcs that somehow slipped through the cracks, didn't show up on my list until August. It debuted in February.

I liked this a lot. There are some clunky passages and it has that head hopping style (that doesn't bother me but I know it does bug some people). It's in two different time periods, one being from WWI through to WWII and the other is 2017 Canada.

The interwar period storyline centers on five Polish sisters, the Obaras who can do magic. They can teleport between locations like the X-Men's Nightcrawler (if they can picture it they can go there) and the rest of the magic seems to be if they can imagine it, they can do it (within limits, for example they never master flight). Eva, especially, is working as a spy for the military. Agata is as well and it opens in media res with them trying to save her.

Only Agata has done some spell that has put her in suspended animation, alive, unaging but unable to awake. Her sisters are looking for the near mythic Walker who might be able to save her.

In 2017 Jeremy is a teenaged boy trying to deal with some heavy things. His great aunt Kasia's beginnings of dementia, his mother's over protectiveness and his father, a wildlife biologist studying wolves, being on a job far away. The latter two are trauma responses after the death of Jeremy's sister, Anne, a few months before. Jeremy luckily survived the car crash.

Jeremy also has a way with wolves and tries to rescue them. He's also not in school (bereavement leave) and spends a lot of time in the woods, leading to a discovery about his family, his past and himself that he wasn't expecting.

Also there is Agent Shambling, military, who knows about the sisters and their magic and believes the Douro legend involves them and he can solve it. He might know more about the sisters than their remaining family does. This also means that he is so obsessed that he has no qualms about trying to force Great Aunt Kasia into things and kidnapping some kids.

Jeremy and the sisters are all interesting characters. I liked how the story unfolded. I very much liked the stuff in the wars with the sisters. I don't know how much more we'll get of that in the next two books but if Tomasini decided to write a prequel with just them, I'd be there for it.

I thought the ending might have been a bit too easy but in the end, Shambling is more obsessed and making bad, rash decisions than he is truly evil (for now at least) I would like to see book two.



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Atlas of Unknowable Things

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Atlas of Unknowable Things by McCormick Templeman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One of my netgalley arcs

This one is deeply weird and solidly in the gothic story realm (with a mix of dark academia but only with faculty, no students). Robin Quail is both deeply in mourning and beyond furious when her (now ex) boyfriend steals her phD thesis in folklore and witchcraft and publishes it as his own and gets the job in academia she coveted (as someone IN academia, this is an awful betrayal and also I wouldn't wish academia on anyone). After a bizarre split with her cousin Paloma, Robin gets a summer job offer from Hildegard College in rural Colorado, the very place she wants to go because she believes a professor there has an artifact that will actually disprove her own thesis and embarrass her ex but this professor has disappeared.

If the book nails anything it's the gothic, old school, isolated nature of the college. Robin meets several others and quickly learns that even though the school is out for the summer the faculty are still on campus and act like an odd family (seriously, they eat together, have gliterati style parties etc). On the face of it, Robin's there to study witchcraft via herbal spellcraft and healing and alchemy (which is rather my own subspecialty and field of study from the biology side of herbal healing) but she's really there to find that missing artifact and to learn where the missing professor went.

But as she's there, unspooling a series of clues and sleepwalking out of the cabana they put her in (which was the other professor's space still with all her clothes), Robin finds herself wondering about her fellow faculty members, all of them seem to have something to hide. The suspense rachets up nicely as it edges from mystery to eldritch horror.

There are some really neat twists to this though I think the other characters could have been fleshed out a bit more (always a trial with a first person pov) and the ending felt a little rushed.

As I mentioned this is first person pov and conversational at that, like Robin's in the room telling you this story.

I very much enjoyed it (but again it had a lot of my personal areas of interest) but I can see this not being for everyone.



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Pantomime

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Pantomime by L.R. Lam

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A 3.5 read (pacing issues) that I rounded up because over all I liked the world and I liked Micah.

This world seems to have grown up in the shadow of a distant more advanced culture that disappeared. There are artifacts of power (vestiges) scattered about that almost no one knows how to fix any more and they are pricey (this becomes important later)

Gene was born into a family of wealth (think aristocracy) and had a good enough upbringing with two major exceptions. One it's a world where women are nothing more than wives/mothers and Gene is about to be a bargaining chip for more money/power. Two Gene is fully intersexed and is developing more masculine but being raised female. When her mother makes a decision that horrifies Gene, they run away.

Right to the circus (living the dream) Gene presents themselves as Micah Grey and the circus folk take them as male. Micah stays when one of the vestiges a ghostly thing starts talking to them, hinting at that past culture and about what is to come, such as the return of the chimera (and the circus does seems to have some chimera folk in it)

Befriending Aenea, an aerialist, Micah begins to train with her to learn to be an aerialist as well. The other most influential person in the circus to Micah is the head clown, Drystan, who like them came from the ruling class.

Naturally Micah begins to fall for Aenea but there are obstacles (not the least of which is Micah's intersexed anatomy) Their ringleader/circus owner is becoming more and more an abusive drunk. Not to mention Micah's family isn't going to just let their child disappear so people are looking for them.

The world is richly drawn as are the characters. What made me set this aside for a while was the pacing. For the first 50% of the book we flip back and forth from present day to Micah's past. We're being given context for their abilities and why they ran and then flipping to the training sessions. Both felt like a little bit too much so even though I liked the book I went and read a few other things before coming back but once we hit the 50% mark we stop that and the pacing evens out.

I am curious to see more. I liked Micah and Drystan especially. It'll be interesting to see what comes next.



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A Dark and Deadly Journey

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A Dark and Deadly Journey by Julia Kelly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One of my netgalley arcs

I am a sucker for historical mysteries and this WWII era one was excellent (enough that I want to go back and read the first two which I have not yet seen). Evelyne Redfern is a smart, independent woman which already got me on the hook. Evelyne finds herself with dual assignments, one she must keep from her partner, David.

Their main duty for the Special Investigations unit is to help track down a missing agent in neutral Portugal but how long the country (and their destination city of Lisbon) will remain so is anyone's guess as the Nazis rachet up their interest in the country. To complicate matters, after forgetting something on the plane, she goes back in to find a dead man who might actually tie into the case.

The other case is more personal. She's been tasked with finding out what her ne'er do well father is up to. Mr Redferne prefers to drink, sleep and gamble his way around the world, depending on his sister to kick him money. Father and daughter haven't seen each other in years. To make matters worse, Evelyne realizes he's lied to her about something important, that he might be in with the Nazis and if she's caught investigation this, her boss (who hasn't told her handler who already doesn't like her) he will disavow her and hang her out to dry.

Once in Lisbon there are plenty of clues to follow each making her more anxious as all three cases begin to dovetail and if they do and she's found out, she doesn't think David will understand.

I do like Evelyne and David very much. It's a solid mystery and it uses its setting to its advantage. I love when a book makes the setting almost a character in its own right.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending though but I will definitely be looking for the next book.



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The Wood

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The Wood by Chelsea Bobulski

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I got this one a few years back from the author at Ohioana book festival and then promptly put it 'somewhere safe' and lost it until now. It's a really interesting YA fantasy (I chucked it into my rural fantasy shelf vs urban since so much of it is set in the woods)

Winter's family has been appointed for generations to watch this patch of woods in Ohio. Among other things the Woods can host fairies and other supernatural folk but more importantly to Winter is that it also has time rifts and people come through and her family leads them back to the right portals to get home. Other families and woods exist all over the world.

Only a while back her father did something guardians are not supposed to be able to do: leave the paths within the woods. Once in the woods they must remain on the path (outside the woods they're fine) Winter is struggling with her depression (and her mother's overprotectiveness) as a result of his loss. She holds out hope he's merely lost in the supernatural wood and her father's fairy friend, Joe is there to help her.

So balancing school and guardianship, Winter has new worries. The woods look poisoned and something that shouldn't have happened has: a young man from another time period is running from portal to portal.

Henry is from eighteenth century England but instead of sending him back there, he has convinced her to help him find his parents, guardians like her who have become lost; he suspects because of foul play so Winter does what she shouldn't, she brings him home and teams up with him.

Naturally you're going to get a YA romance subplot and it's well handled with all the angst of he must go back home mixed in. It had some nice plots and I really liked Winter and Henry. She's smart and independent and actually thinks things through for the most part. Henry's fish out of time stuff works well as it introduces some of his old fashioned ideas but he doesn't become a patronizing misogynist along the way.

The ending did feel a bit rushed but other than that, it worked really well. It seems like this is a stand alone book (since we're 8 years out now) which is fine. That said I would have liked to see Winter again.



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