Blade Reforged by Kelly McCullough

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 63 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

The present is the past. Every today is built atop the mounded corpses of a thousand yesterdays. Mine was no exception.

That’s the beginning of Blade Reforged by Kelly McCullough. I’m Erika Ensign, and this is Recently Read.

If you listened to episode 56 of Recently Read, you heard me talk about how I was embarking on a re-read of my friend Kelly McCullough’s Fallen Blade series. I had intended to record episodes about each book in the series, but as you may have found yourselves, 2020 and 2021 have been rough years for productivity. So while I did reread and enjoy Bared Blade and Crossed Blades, the second and third books in the series, I didn’t have the wherewithal to podcast about them.

Cut to now, having just finished the fourth entry in the series, Blade Reforged, and I just couldn’t let this one go by without talking about it. As I said, I do like the first three books, but I feel like this novel takes a significant leap in terms of the depths of storytelling, the depth of character, and the depth of my love of this world Kelly has built.

In fact, if you find the idea of a six-book series (with another on the way) to be too much of a commitment, I encourage you to jump into the series here at Blade Reforged. There are some references to what came before, but they’re always brief and explain exactly what you need to know without digressing.

At this point in the series, Aral, the assassin once known as the Kingslayer, has crawled out of the gutter and the bottle and hits a point in putting his life back together that, to me, is more interesting than the earlier stages of that process. The first three books dealt with Aral pulling himself together (amidst international politicking, battles with the undead, and dealings with strange and fantastical creatures and people). This book deals with the concept of *keeping* himself together.

And he really needs to because in order to save a friend, he has to topple a regime, find a way to kill another king, and place his sometimes-lover on the throne. All while dodging one of his childhood best friends who has turned traitor, a terrifying historical figure he thought was long-dead, and his own addictions.

It’s also worth pointing out that other than Aral and his childhood best friend, almost all the important characters — the movers and shakers of the book — are women. And it’s refreshing that this is a world where that’s just a no-big-deal thing. This isn’t one of those high-fantasy settings where women are generally subservient and the few who overcome that are special in some way. Women hold positions of power within the city and as the heads of state both in neighbouring countries and throughout the hierarchy of the nation where the action takes place. Women also make up plenty of the random side characters. If Aral is being chased by a squad of the city guard, he’s just as likely to have to slip past a woman as he is a man.

Also worth noting, Aral is bisexual, and that’s no big deal. Another character is asexual, which is also no big thing. And because the city of Tien is a hub of commerce with residents from far and wide, there are people with a variety of skin colours. In fact, people with skin as pale as mine (I am quite pale) seem to be in the minority.

Sometimes I do want a book that deals with race and gender and sexuality and reflects the real-world issues that go along with them. But other times, I really want a fantasy world where everyone can just be themselves, and the strife and drama come from people being giant a-holes or evil or possibly even the risen dead.

So if that kind of thing sounds tempting to you, join me in diving into the Fallen Blade series. Whether you start at the beginning with Broken Blade or jump in here at Blade Reforged, I think you’ll enjoy the ride.

I’m Erika Ensign, and this has been Recently Read.

 

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 61 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

They’re coming.

It’s early morning, the end of the Bi-Hour of the Cat–and Thanh has been awake for most of it, staring at the wall and trying to cobble together thoughts in the emptiness of her mind.

If she closes her eyes, she’ll see Yosolis again, smell the snow and ashes on the night the palace burned–when everyone was too busy evacuating the real princesses to give much thought to the dark-skinned one in the attic room, the “guest” from the South who had been little more than a glorified hostage.

That’s the beginning of Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard. I’m Erika Ensign, and this is Recently Read.

Everything Aliette writes is beautiful, and this novella is no exception. Princess Thanh has been back at home in her home country of Bìhn Hi for two years after 10 as a political hostage in the court of the distant, more powerful nation of Ephteria. Her strict, harsh mother, the Empress, has agreed to allow Than to take point on negotiations with the nation where she spent so many years — and almost died in a huge fire that destroyed the Ephterian castle.

The last thing Than expected was for her erstwhile lover, Princess Eldris, to be part of the Ephterian delegation. And Eldris makes no bones about being there for her. If her complicated romantic feelings aren’t complicated enough, then why not throw in a fire elemental that’s been occasionally burning small items around the palace. Oh, and mix in some light blackmail for extra seasoning.

If any of those elements sounds like your thing, I definitely recommend checking out Fireheart Tiger. It was a very quick read, and honestly, if I have one complaint about it, it’s that it’s too short. I wanted more interactions between these characters. Especially between Than and Giang. If they have more adventures together, I’ll be hitting that pre-order button with alacrity!

I’m Erika Ensign, and this has been Recently Read.

 

Tea and Sympathetic Magic by Tansy Rayner Roberts

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 60 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

If anyone had told Miss Mneme Seabourne that she should grow up to be the sort of person who was bored of garden parties, she would have declared then and there that growing up was off the table.

That’s the first sentence of Tea and Sympathetic Magic by Tansy Rayner Roberts. I’m Erika Ensign, and this is Recently Read.

After a rough week (let’s face it, a rough year) and after reading some dark and tragic books, I decided to treat myself to one of my friend Tansy’s novellas. Tea and Sympathetic Magic did not disappoint. It was an hour of my time well spent that cheered me greatly at a time I really needed it.

And if you happen to be listening to this podcast before June 20, 2021, check out the show notes for a link to where you can get this story for free from bookfunnel. (No, that’s not how I got it — I’m a subscriber to Tansy’s Patreon, so I got it via my patronage there, and I just happened to read it right before it became available for free. Lucky for you! Unless you’re listening in the future, in which case, I hope it’s nice there.)

Anyway, regency-plus-magic isn’t a genre I’ve really dived into before, and I guess I still haven’t because this isn’t technically a Regency setting. I’m pretty sure “The Teacup Isles” don’t exist, nor does the kind of magic that will allow you to enchant a whole wedding full of guests using spells cast on desserts, but this setting feels very Regency.

Miss Seabourne is forced to attend yet another garden party where her marriage-pushy mother hopes she’ll snag the eye of the Duke, but she wants nothing more than to retire to the library with a cup of tea and a good book.

The fellow who does catch her eye is the Duke’s “spellcracker” — the person hired to find and dispel any love charms or potions the marriageable ladies may have brought to the gathering. It’s very important, after all, for the Duke to choose his own wife.

If that little bit of information doesn’t hook you, then this story won’t be your bag. If it’s intriguing, I highly suggest you brew your own cup of tea and settle in with this delightful book. By the end, you may want to skip the accompanying pastries though.

I’m Erika Ensign, and this has been Recently Read.

 

Brightfall by Jaime Lee Moyer

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 59 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

In the middle of the greenwood stood an oak, broad as it was tall, with roots the Fae believed wrapped around the heart of the world. People on the farms outside Sherwood still told tales abut that tree; most called it Robin’s Oak. Few spinning takes about Robin and Marian’s adventures knew I shared a cottage there with my children. Much as it pained Robin to claim Kate and Robbie, they were his children too. Only a few close friends and the monks in St Mary’s knew he’d left us on our own almost twelve years ago.

That’s the first paragraph of Brightfall by Jaime Lee Moyer. I’m Erika Ensign, and this is Recently Read.

Having loved Jaime Lee Moyer’s Delia Martin series, which starts with Delia’s Shadow, I was excited to pick up this new novel, even though it’s not remotely related to the events in that series.

This book is a poignant take on the aftermath of the Robin Hood myth, told from Marian’s point of view. It’s roughly 18 years since the events popularized in story and song, and, as you may have gathered from the first paragraph, it’s been 12 years since Robin left Marian and their two unborn children, had the marriage annulled, and retired to Friar Tuck’s abbey.

Yeah. Bit of a twist right off the bat there.

Also, Marian is a witch. She knows magic, can contact the Fae, and even has a Great Dragon for a friend. I love every one of these elements.

The action in the book gets started when Abbot Tuck comes to visit to ask for Marian’s help. Several of their friends of old have died in mysterious circumstances — including, most recently, Will Scarlet, who is Marian’s lover and has raised her children with her for more than a decade.

She’s heartbroken at losing her love and partner, and equally appalled when she learns that Little John’s 11-year old son Ethan is one of the poor souls to die from what Tuck believes must be a curse. And because it’s a curse, Marian is the only one who can figure out who cast it and how to stop them. He begs her to journey to the scenes of the crimes and pull the threads to solve the mystery and — more importantly — stop the killings.

So Marian sets out to try to save the day. Unfortunately, Tuck has set Robin of Sherwood himself the task of protecting her on the journey. Neither of them are pleased about the situation, though they do gain a few colourful, and truly fantastic, companions along the way.

That’s the setup, and I won’t say much more about the plot, but I will leave you with a word of caution. If you’re looking for a swashbuckling Robin Hood story with a lot of lighthearted fun and banter, this is definitely not that. Brightfall is a fairly dark story about wrestling with grief, making tough choices, doing what must be done because nobody else can do it, and coming to terms with loss and change.

And it deals with these things very well. So if you’re in a place for a serious examination of life and loss through the lens of a strong but tired middle-aged woman of power, this is absolutely the story for you.

And, like I said, it’s got faeries and dragons, which for me is always a win.

I’m Erika Ensign, and this has been Recently Read.

 

Broken Blade by Kelly McCullough

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 56 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

Trouble wore a red dress.

That’s the first sentence of Broken Blade by my friend Kelly McCullough.

When I jotted that first line down for this podcast, I thought to myself “That sounds more like the start of a noir detective story than a fantasy novel with mages, assassins, and gods, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized Broken Blade shares an awful lot of DNA with a classic private-eye mystery. Aral is a down-on-his-luck “shadow jack” who escaped into the bottle after the death of the goddess he served.  Falling from professional goddess-blessed assassin to a poor, unsavoury almost-all-purpose freelancer isn’t a million miles away from the stereotypical ex-cop who becomes a seedy private eye.

And this story has several mysteries. Who is this mysterious woman in red? What does she really want? How does that tie into the future of the city? And what does Aral’s old friend (who’s supposed to be dead) have to do with it all?

A nice departure from the detective stereotypes is that the femme fatale isn’t the type who needs constant rescuing — she mostly needs help from someone who has a slightly different set of skills. Maylien’s relationship with Aral is one of equals — or rather, each is superior to the other in important ways, and this balances nicely. They rescue each other, they each struggle with their own personal demons, and they both have adorable familiars — hers is a tiny gryphon.

I can’t believe I’ve gotten this far without mentioning Triss. Triss is Aral’s shadow — literally. He’s a creature from the “everdark,” and he is bonded to Aral as his familiar. I adore Triss. The relationship between Aral and Triss is the heart of the book for me. They love each other, but Triss is saddened and ashamed at what Aral, who was once known as Kingslayer, has become. Triss is part best friend, part grumpy-judgey uncle, part conscience, and part dragon. Yep — that’s right, he’s a miniature dragon. Well, dragon shadow. But he can manifest enough to get scritches on his scales from time to time.

Another thing I enjoy about this book is how it feels like it’s taking place before the backdrop of a well-developed universe, but it’s not shoved in our faces. It’s very clear that the author and the characters know a ton about the world, but we don’t stop the action for an explanation of anything unless it’s important to the plot at hand. This book feels lived-in in the best way, so every time we learn something new it feels like it’s unspooling naturally.

Also, apropos of nothing, it’s clear this book was written by someone who really gets librarians.

This was my second time reading Broken Blade. Kelly is working on a new Blade novel, and before I dive into the new chapters he’s posting on his Patreon, I wanted to re-read all the previous books in the series. I went in with a teeny bit of trepidation because I loved it the first time through, and you never know if the suck fairy will have visited in the intervening years. I was mightily relieved to discover I enjoyed this book even more the second time through. Having read the rest of the books in this series (which I think gets better and better with each book), it was really fun to re-visit Aral’s origin. I noticed things I’d slid over my first time through that pay off later. That’s always fun.

So if you need a distraction right now as much as I do, you could do much worse than diving into the world of Broken Blade. You could stop reading after this book — it has a satisfying ending, but if you do want to go on (and you probably will), there’s lots more great stuff ahead.

 

Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 55 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

I killed my first man today…

That’s the first sentence of Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

If I had read a description of Guns of the Dawn, I probably wouldn’t have read the book. So I’m pretty glad I never bothered to do that. It came highly recommended by some friends, so I bought it and dug in without seeing anything more than the cover.

This is a book about war. Not my favourite topic. It also has a very regency novel vibe to it — another thing that doesn’t tend to strike my fancy. If those things are up your alley, I urge you to run, do not walk, and nab this book because you’ll probably like it even more than I did.

It follows Emily Marshwic during and before she is drafted and sent to the awful, swampy front lines of a war between her country, Lascanne, and its neighbour, Denland. Lascanne has run out of men to send, and while it is quite unthinkable, the king has begun drafting women to be soldiers.

As I mentioned, this novel, while in a fantasy country where the king can anoint warlocks to shoot fire from their hands in service of their nation, feels very much like a regency novel. The trappings of society are of great importance to Emily and her sisters. They live in a large house on an estate. The Marshwic name is noble and well-respected, for all that the family has fallen in stature after the suicide of Emily’s father — a fate he was driven to by the deplorable Mr. Northway, who became the mayor-governor when it should have been Emily’s father. Skirmishes of words with Mr. Northway are the only battles Emily is familiar with before she “takes the red” and becomes an ensign in the King’s army.

The book chronicles her life both at home and on the front lines, by starting each chapter with Emily’s letters from the front. The rest of most chapters take us through her life, starting well before the draft, covering her training, and then we watch her grapple with what it means to be a soldier, a woman soldier, and a woman.

While this book’s topics may not be my usual fare, I’m very glad I read it. This is most definitely a book about war, but it in no way glorifies war. It examines war through a variety of lenses and comes to very reasonable and realistic conclusions about it. The characters are well-drawn and likeable. And most importantly, Emily’s inner life and struggles are compelling and relatable.

If any of these elements sounds like your thing, I will again exhort you check it out because I expect you’ll be glad you did.

Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 54 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

My earliest memory of her smells like blood.

I remember just enough.

I woke in twilight, a violet dimness, and looked at the hospital bed next to me: reek of dried blood and disinfectant, the unfamiliar profile of a pale girl visible through a clear mask.

That’s the beginning of Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed.

Ok, right up front, I’ll cop to the fact that one of my favourite things about this book is that part of it is set in Edmonton, and it’s where both the main characters live. I’ve never read a book set where I live before, and that in itself was a really delightful experience. I could tell it was in Canada right away when Nick offers to use a toonie to buy a vending-machine drink for Johnny. But it wasn’t until later, when Johnny mentions a couple local colleges (Grant Mac and NAIT) that I was sure we were here in my own adopted city.

But this book isn’t about Edmonton, it just happens to be set here–probably because I think the writer lives here. No, this book is about friendship–a friendship forged in blood. It’s about inequality. It’s about the different ways people navigate through the world depending on their class, race, and gender. Oh. It’s also about monsters. Terrible, eldritch elder creatures, infinitely more powerful than puny humans, from before the dawn of time. And you might have guessed it, they want in, and they want to rule.

Nick is a just-turned-18-year-old. He’s of Indian descent, by way of Guyana, so imperialism and conquest are a part of his family’s heritage. He was born in Canada, but still deals with the racism that comes of being a poor brown person in Canadian culture. Johnny is practically Nick’s exact opposite. She’s a petite blond waif of a 17-year-old white girl who is an utterly brilliant and uber-rich scientist. She started inventing miracle products when she was three.

So while yes, this book is about evil monstrosities trying to tear their way into our world, what grabbed me about it was the journey these two heroes take–how they each struggle to accept the other’s worldview, and how globe-trotting to solve ancient mysteries necessarily shapes and takes a toll on their unlikely friendship.

I won’t say how the book ended, but I will say I found it  satisfying and well earned in terms of the decisions each character makes.

If you want a little piece of Alberta with a healthy dose of magic and monsters, check out Beneath the Rising.

 

Spirits, Spells, and Snark by Kelly McCullough

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 34 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

“Are you sure this thing is magical?” Dave slowly turned the Crown of the North under the bright basement lights. The seven diamonds adorning the simple silver circlet barely flickered. “It doesn’t look it.”

That’s the first paragraph of Spirits, Spells, and Snark by Kelly McCullough. Last week I wrote about Magic, Madness, and Mischief, and how much I loved that book. I feel like I can keep this post short because Spirits, Spells, and Snark, the sequel, does everything the first book did, but continues to deepen and develop the characters and relationships, while widening the breadth of what we learn about magic and how it works.

We even get a few new characters with solid page time. The three that stood out to me were all women or girls—well, mostly—one of them is also *something else*, but I won’t spoil that. (It was a little thing I loved that provided some nice perspective on what it’s like to be a high school girl.)

Before I go on, I’d like to share something the author tweeted a while back.

Hi, if you have a kid in your orbit who might need a fun book about magic & myth & dealing with a parent with severe mental illness, you might try my duology which starts with Magic, Madness, and Mischief. I tried to write the book I needed when I was 10 https://t.co/Gk2ge29keV

— Kelly McCullough (@KellyDMcC) February 22, 2019

I heartily endorse this sentiment. My struggle as a child was more with my own mental health than with that of my parents, but I still think these books would’ve provided me with comfort, support, and an acknowledgement of craptastic brain chemistry that I didn’t come to until much later in life.

As I said last week, these books take mental illness seriously and they treat it in a way that manages to be sensitive with a healthy dollop of pathos—while also treating it as something that can be dealt with and lived with and managed if you are careful and thoughtful and get the right help. Crucially, mental illness is not something you can just “magic away”. I felt like Spirits, Spells, and Snark tackled this even more directly than the first book did (due, in part, to the way the plot progresses from the first and into the second book), and this was all to the good.

I have so many more things that I love about this book—how best-friend-Dave deals with the world of magic, how Sparks the fire-hare-familiar deals with being bound to a tween boy, and how that tween boy, Kalvan, learns to navigate both the world of magic and the “real one”. But suffice it to say, if you read the first book and liked it, you’ll definitely want to continue with Spirits, Spells, and Snark.

Magic, Madness, and Mischief by Kelly McCullough

[For an audio version of this article, please listen to Episode 30 of Recently Read on The Incomparable podcast network.]

Fire ran through all my dreams and I ran after it, the blackened ground crackling beneath my feet.

That’s the first sentence of Magic, Madness, and Mischief, by Kelly McCullough. Before I get into the book, let’s do the obligatory full disclosure: I had the pleasure of meeting Kelly a few years ago at a convention, and he is a truly lovely person with adorable cats and a great twitter feed, and I very much look forward to the next time I see him. However, I suspect all of that has very little to do with how much I enjoyed this middle-grade fantasy.

Wait! Before you tune out at the phrase “middle-grade”, let me assure you this is the kind of middle-grade book that is also appealing to many fantasy-loving adults like myself. I’ve certainly read some middle-grade fiction where the writing was so simplified and the plot was so dumbed-down that I didn’t enjoy the experience at all. This is not that.

On the contrary, I zipped through this book—twice, in fact—without wanting to put it down. The prose is simple enough to be accessible to a young audience, but it’s also snappy enough to hold the interest of an adult like me. And, importantly, the story is easy to follow while still being engrossing and tackling some heavy topics.

The term “madness” is placed in the title very deliberately. The main character, 13-year-old Kalvan Munroe, has to deal with the discovery that he’s a “child of fire” and has budding magical powers. But he also has to deal with a mother who suffers from severe mental illness. This topic is one that is close to my heart, and I feel it is handled sensitively and realistically.

This book does *not* do the thing I hate and chalk mental health issues up to magical interference or some nonsense like that. Mental illness is real, it’s serious, and magic can’t just cure it. And on top of dealing with all that, Kalvan still has to do the usual kid things like show up for school, do homework, take tests, hang out with his best friend Dave, and deal with a stepfather who is taciturn at the best of times and scary at the worst. None of that is easy when you’re trying to learn to control magic flame powers and are never more than 30 feet from a sarcastic, magical fire-hare.

Oh yes, I must mention Sparx, who is now one of my favourite sidekick-companion-familiar-type characters of all time. He is stuck with Kalvan, and Kalvan is stuck with him, and that leads to exactly the kind of delightful antics and banter I hoped for when Kalvan accidentally conjured Sparx. Their relationship deepens throughout the book, and it just gets better and better.

One thing that sets Magic, Madness, and Mischief apart from some of the other middle-grade and young-adult fiction I’ve read is its very distinctive sense of place. It is set in and around a slightly fictionalized version of St. Paul, Minnesota. As a transplanted Midwesterner, I’m always a bit of a sucker for books set in the flyover states, so I’ll admit my bias there. But I haven’t visited the Twin Cities often enough to really know the geography, so it’s not like I was wooed by recognizing a bunch of landmarks—other than the Mississippi River. (I’m familiar with *its* work—or, “her” work, as the case may be.)

McCullough conjures a very grounded setting with enough description to make me feel like I understand what’s happening where, but not so much that I get bored with lengthy explanations. While I’m definitely a fan of fantasy novels set in fantasy realms, there’s a special frisson that comes with magic when it’s overlayed upon a familiar, earthbound environment. And here it’s not a spooky countryside or an intimidating metropolis; it’s a Midwestern city that most people would find pretty ordinary. (Don’t get me wrong, I like St. Paul, but it’s not like it has much of a thrilling reputation far and wide.)

If you’re a regular listener to Recently Read or the book-club episodes of The Incomparable, you may know that I’m a bit of a connoisseur of fictional magic systems. Magic, Madness, and Mischief doesn’t really build out the magic system enough to totally engage that part of my nerd-brain, but I get the feeling this is on purpose. Kalvan is just barely scratching the surface of this new-to-him world of magic, so we as readers are also not fully versed by the end of the book. It’s clear that magic is elemental—fire, earth, water, air—but we don’t get a lot of detail about how each works or how they interact. That said, there are plenty of hints that McCullough knows exactly how this all fits together and that we’ll eventually learn more just as Kalvan does.

And that brings me to the last bit of full disclosure: the reason I’ve read this book twice is because the sequel is already out, and I wanted to dive back into this magical version of St. Paul to re-live the magic of this book before starting the next. I’ve already burned my way through Spirits, Spells, and Snark (pun intended), and loved every moment of it. Consider that a teaser for next week’s post.