Circle of Fire by Keri Arthur

It occurs to me that I've been doing a lot of high fantasy on this blog, but nothing in the way of urban fantasy, which is just a crying shame because there are some damn good paranormal authors out there.

The book I'm reviewing today is Circle of Fire, which is the first novel in the Damask Circle trilogy and involves a woman with psychic abilities trying to save missing children from a supernatural threat. While not the best urban fantasy I've ever read - that honor goes to Kim Harrison's Hollows series - it does have its own light charm. 

The story is fairly interesting, involving kidnappings and dark rituals, but is unfortunately overshadowed by the less-than-compelling sexual tension between the two main characters. Note that this might be due to my own bias, as I can't stand 'true love' that happens over a course of twenty-four hours and a single sexual encounter where one of the participants was drugged...

....and I just made it sound a whole lot worse than it really is. Okay, backing up. 

The supernatural elements are the best part of the book, as the main character Madeline steps deeper into a world she's only been peripherally aware of. There's just enough hints to give us a taste of what's to come, while leaving plenty of fodder for the next book. 

As a character Madeline is a bit of a doormat, but considering her background you can understand why. Not only does she have a power she can't control, she's the survivor of an abusive relationship, is estranged from her family, and the suspect in a murder. And all of this is prior to the events in the book. Fortunately the plot is about her growing out of her shell and fixing back together her shattered self-confidence, so things do get better for her. 

The main male character Jon was a rather generic love interest as supernatural novels go: mysterious, brooding alpha male with hint of danger. As a lot of the tension in the book centered around his interactions with Madeline, that's probably part of why I wasn't overly invested in the romance. If I don't care for one of the characters, I can't care about the relationship. The one thing I can say for him is that he treats Madeline with respect, which is something a lot of love interests in paranormal novels struggle with (I'm looking at you, Edward). 

To sum it up, I've read a lot worse urban fantasy - do not get me started on Stray - and at least the characters were attempting to act with consistent logic. The action starts slow, but picks up speed around the halfway point (noting that that isn't a particularly long book in the first place). So long as you don't take it too seriously it'll do you no lasting harm. 

Which, in all honesty, is pretty good advice concerning most urban fantasy.

Circle of Fire can be ordered in digital form on Amazon, and in phyiscal form on Booktopia and Book Depository. Otherwise, Keri Arthur is fairly popular at the moment so just check the paranormal section at your local bookstore. 

Myrren's Gift by Fiona McIntosh

You know how you can hear good things about an author, then read one of their books and find it totally ordinary? That was my crushingly disappointing experience of Royal Exile by Fiona MciIntosh. I really wasn't looking forward to reading her other work, but I'd promised myself I'd give her another chance, so I finally bit the bullet and bought a copy of Myrren's Gift.

And boy am I glad I did! Myrren's Gift managed to surprise me, and that barely ever happens anymore. 

The premise is that a witch bestows a gift upon the honourable but unfavoured companion to the Prince, and this gift will later come into play during the deadly political struggle for the throne. The very nature of the gift - and no, I'm not telling because that would spoil the plot - is brilliantly simple, working consistently but throwing a monkey wrench into the standard high fantasy story. You almost feel bad for the antagonists who can sense something is off but never manage to put their finger on the true problem. And fair enough; why should they? I'm the mostly-omniscient reader and it still threw me for a loop. 

The setting is usual medieval fare but who cares. The plot is so interesting that I barely even noticed. The characters are both engaging and sympathetic, even characters like the king who perform ethically questionable actions for political expediency. The main character Wyl has the potential to be extremely dull, but his steadiness is actually the perfect offset to the insanity of his situation. Anyone else would have gone mad, but he manages to be as clear-headed and logical about it as it's possible to be. The tragic aspect of it is that in any other story he'd be the loyal background second-in-command and content with that, but is forced to assume a position of resistance.

I'd like to talk about the character Romen, but it's difficult to do so without spoiling anything. Suffice to say, the connection between him and Wyl is powerful, compelling, unexpectedly tragic, and extraordinarily original.  This is the kind of imagination I like to see in my speculative fiction and barely ever find. I won't mention other characters, because Mcintosh has a way of developing apparently one-shot characters into ongoing ones, and taking out others that you'd swear were in for the long haul.

I highly recommend Myrren's Gift. I enjoyed it so much I'm having second thoughts about not reading the sequel to Royal Exile. That is how good this book is. 

Racial Relations in the Axis Trilogy, or The Death of my Teenage Nostalgia

I love nostalgia as much as the next girl. It's one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place; there are so many good books from my teenage years that aren't getting enough exposure. But looking back at my old favourites, it's inevitable that I'd find flaws that I didn't see the first time round.

Most recently, I was trying to write a review for Enchanter, the second book in the Axis Trilogy, which delves heavily into the world's fictional races and their interactions. But on flicking through the book, I was confronted with troubling racial overtones that had completely flown over my head as a teenager. I couldn't continue until I'd explained what I'd found and why it was so disturbing. Consider this a form of catharsis so I can go back and finish my review.

*Please note that there will be SPOILERS below, so skip if you want to remain unspoiled for the Axis and Wayfarer trilogies*

To give some context, there are three major races in Tencendor; the Avar, whose mysterious origins are never revealed, and the Icarii and Acharites who share a common ancestor. Each are ethnically distinct with their own customs and culture. The Acharites are unequivocally the worst sinners regarding racial injustice, having attempted genocide and driven their neighbours out of Tencendor. However, the Icarii and Avar are not completely innocent either, with the Icarii in particular having some troubled views on inter-racial unions.

Icarii and Acharite pairings are not common but not outright forbidden. Rivkah and Stardrifter's marriage caused "more than a few raised eyebrows" but was accepted.It's difficult to say if mixed parentage is usually cause for shame among Icarri, as although characters like Azhure and Axis never have to deal with any stigma for it, they occupy such exalted positions in Icarri society that it's unlikely anyone would be brave enough to say it to their faces.

Fanart of an Icarii by Illirik

More illuminating is the Icarii belief that "in every case of mixed parentage, the Icarii blood has proven the stronger". While StarDrifter speaks approvingly of the "vitality" of human blood, Icarii also believe that it must lie in "subjection" to Icarii blood and that all mixed heritage children will have purely Icarii characteristics. This has unfortunate similarities to the one-drop rule that was once prominent in the US, wherein the degree of mixed ancestry determined a person's racial classification regardless of how they identified themselves or what community they partook in.

Even worse is StarDrifter's casual admission that "in ages past Icarii birdmen simply took the babies of Human-Icarii unions and never spared a thought for the women they bedded". If you know anything about Australian history, this has extremely uncomfortable parallels with the Stolen Generations, wherein half-caste Aboriginal children were stolen from their mothers and raised 'white'. This wasn't a pleasant realisation for me; suddenly Azhure's anxiety about Caelum being taken from her was less an attempt to inject unnecessary drama and more a horrifically real-world fear.

However, I will admit that the narrative does not support this particular reading. Even Axis, who is a thoroughly unlikable person, condemns the practice of stealing children, and you know if even Axis is against it, it must be vile. The Icarii belief in dominant blood is played straight during the Axis trilogy, but is arguably subverted in the Wayfarer Redemption, where tapping into their Acharite heritage is the key to salvation.

What is truly impossible to overlook is how the narrative treats Gorgrael and Avar-Icarii unions.

Ironically, although the Avar are close allies to the Icarii (much closer than the Acharites) unions between them are completely taboo. There are no marriages and sexual encounters are only permitted on a specific religious holiday "when both people relaxed sufficiently to carry interracial relations to extremes never practised throughout the rest of the year". The one positive Avar-Icarii union we ever see is between Shra and Isfrael, whom Zenith muses had changed so much "it was as if his Sunsoar link was gone".

Children of these unions are explicitly prohibited, under the belief that they would be "abomination". Gorgrael's mother actually left her people because she "would not have been allowed" to carry her child to term. And the narrative supports this view because sure enough when Gorgrael is... born (don't ask, just don't) the naysayers are proven completely correct. He's hideous and irredeemably evil.

Fanart of Gorgrael from MissWiggle 

To make this even more explicit, an Avar man called Brode has an epiphany that Gorgrael's evil is due to his Avar heritage. Not because he was raised by monsters in the wilderness, or he wanted revenge for his rejection, or he was brainwashed by Wolfstar, the one supportive humanoid presence in his life. None of these valid and justifiable reasons. Gorgrael was evil because the Avar are inherently violent. Here is the passage:

"The Avar were people of innate violence...His Icarii blood may have given him the means to access the power to achieve his ends, but it was his Avar blood that had created the need to destroy in the first place."

The implication being that the only reason that the Avar aren't a race of sadistic, blood-thirsty murderers is because they don't have the means to do so. Apparently if they could get their hands on real power like the Icarii, they'd be the same monsters that the Acharites always accused them of being. This is pretty awful in and of itself, but if you take into consideration the other characteristics of the Avar like their connection to nature and ambiguously brown appearance (being described as "dark" or having "smooth olive skin" in contrast to the Icarii's "fine pale skin") it gets exponentially worse. It's very easy to read them as an expy of real Indigenous people, which makes these implications all the more disturbing.

I certainly don't believe this was intentional on Sara Douglass' part. If she were still around today, she'd probably be horrified and insulted if I implied as much. However, the text leaves itself open to a very uncomfortable interpretation, which I'd have liked to see subverted the same way the Icarii superiority was in the Wayfarer Redemption. If nothing else, I suppose it's a lesson on how carefully you have to watch what you're writing and what could be taken away from it.

Hopefully now that I've gotten this written down, I can go back and finish that review for Enchanter without these uncomfortable ideas hanging over my head. And maybe put some flowers on the tombstone of my teenage nostalgia because that's not going to be coming back any time soon.

Jupiter: Illusions of Faith by Kynan Waterford

First off, let me say this off my chest: Supanova is awesome.

I went last weekend not really expecting it to be very good (the last few years were pretty dull) and ended up doing half my Christmas shopping and picking up a tonne of indie books from local authors. I don't know whether my tastes have changed or there was a different crew this time, but this year Supanova got fun again.

Therefore it looks like I'm going to be reviewing a bunch of indie books over the next few weeks. I'll get started right now with Jupiter:Illusions of Faith by Kynan Waterford.

This is the first book of the System series, which apparently will have nine books, each one based around a different planet in our solar system. Each book will work as a stand-alone, so you won't need to read the whole series to understand what's going on.

On Jupiter, energy is harvested using a process that is claimed to be deadly to the world's native inhabitants. The problem is that no one can agree if the inhabitants are real or a hallucination. The main character, Garen, has dedicated his life to the fervent belief that they are real. During an escape from custody, a fleeting encounter with a third-class woman Leisa will change both their lives - and his mission - forever.

This is hard-core science fiction, which I don't usually get into, but I actually quite enjoyed this book. It was fast-paced, the tech talk was just enough to get across the information I needed without bogging down the text, and the characters faced genuinely difficult decisions and conflicts. One of the big questions posed is whether Garen is a freedom-fighter or a terrorist. You could argue both ways, and the answer for me probably lies somewhere in the middle. It makes him a compelling character to read because you're never quite sure about him.

Leisa, the other main point-of-view character, holds up her end of the narration extremely well. I think I connected better with her because she wasn't obsessed with the cause like Garen. She was just an ordinary person trying to survive the crap getting thrown her way. Her storyline also centered around all these ideas of agency and identity, which came with a good strong dose of body horror. Be warned; this book borders on gruesome at times, and other times waltzes across said border into outright nightmare fuel. (That's not a criticism, btw).

I did have an issue with Garen and Leisa's relationship, which was a shame because the plot hinges on it. The way I understood it, Garen's difficulty connecting with people is a physical problem due to... spoilery stuff. It's not that he won't, or isn't used to it, or is suppressing something; he physically cannot make that chemical leap in his neurons that makes love happen. And yet half an hour with Leisa is enough to overcome it. Don't get me wrong, I liked both characters. They were smart and decisive, and did what they had to in order to survive. I just needed a bit more explanation as to why she could have this effect on him and no one else.

Other than that, this was a good read; an exciting action-adventure story with romance, imaginative futuristic technology and some challenging questions at the core. Definitely a good choice for the first indie book from the pile on my floor.

It can be found at Amazon.com in electronic form, or hard copies ordered from the author's website.

Battleaxe by Sara Douglas

Battleaxe is the first book of Sara Douglas' Axis trilogy. It also is - or was - a brilliant innovation in high fantasy.

Prior to this book, my experience of the swords and sorcery genre was very black and white; David Eddings, Robert Jordon, Tolkien. They were all innovative in their own ways, but otherwise stayed true to a certain formula. A great evil looms, idealistic innocent rises to the challenge, and princesses are in need of saving and/or marrying.

In Battleaxe, the characters certainly start off believing they are in this kind of story. Axis, the unacknowledged prince, is charged with escorting his hated half-brother's fiance to her wedding, while rumors spread of the return of the horrifying Forbidden. Very quickly though, appearances prove deceptive. Axis is no innocent idealist but an arrogant, ambitious jerk. The fair maiden, Faraday, cannot avoid disaster by marrying the right man, but the wrong one. The Forbidden turn out to be very different from myth and harboring a very legitimate grudge against humankind.

These types of twists are a dime a dozen nowadays, but back then - at least to me - it was a game changer. The hero doesn't have to be a good guy, grand quests don't always turn out how you want them to, and authority figures that are supposedly good and trustworthy can be lying through their teeth. Add in a sensual immediacy and a dash of gruesome horror, and you have Sara Douglas at her finest.

Battleaxe is definitely for older teens and above. I'm not exaggerating the horror aspect; there's some fairly disturbing violence in this book. The protagonists' extremely questionable morality might also be difficult for children to deal with; adultery and fratricide are discussed in a positive light, while a good deal of the plot revolves around religious and racial genocide.

However, it contains some of the most imaginative world-building I've ever encountered, with the most interesting racial tensions since Legolas and Gimli started sniping at one another. The characters' moral gray makes for intriguing reading, and even when the antagonists slip into two-dimensional villainy, there's a tragically pathetic edge to them that keeps them sympathetic.

Battleaxe can be found on Booktopia, Amazon.com, Book Depository, and just about any bookstore in Australia.