And I am closing out October properly by finishing up a daily re-read of Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October, which I highly, highly recommend. It’s a fun story, with references to so many other stories and movies and characters that it takes more than one read to really appreciate it all. Zelazny’s prose is sparse and wonderful, and there’s a lot of humor in it. I’m glad to have finally read it again.
Category Archives: Reading
Review: Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe
A Facebook ad brought this comic to my attention two days ago, and it really pulled me in (as in, I made Poor Life Choices and stayed up until 2am on a work night getting caught up on it).
Lore Olympus is a modern/alternate take on Greek mythology, centered around the story of Hades and Persephone, but including the full cast of Greek gods and goddesses. The basic premise of the comic is that Mount Olympus and the Underworld are modern cities, while the mortal realm is at the time of Classical Greece. Demeter, Persephone’s mother, doesn’t like many of the other gods, and has chosen to live in the mortal realm, and that is where Persephone was born and raised. At nineteen, she has recently come to Olympus to study at the university, to get some freedom from her mother, and to learn about the more high-tech world that is open to the gods and other mythological creatures (nymphs, centaurs, etc.). Persephone is staying with her friend Artemis.
Hades (at 2000-something, as he puts it), is the King of the Underworld, ruling his night-time kingdom alone while his brothers Zeus and Poseidon are long married and have at least superficially happy families. Though he doesn’t necessarily like to admit it, Hades is lonely.
The story opens with Hades being stood up by his date for one of Zeus’ parties, and going anyway only to be very taken by Persephone, who has come to the same party with Artemis. Hades then proceeds to Say Stuff about how beautiful Persephone is within hearing range of Aphrodite, which leads to the Goddess of Love enlisting her son Eros to pull a prank on Hades. The prank ends up giving Hades and Persephone a chance to meet and to talk, and to discover that there is something that clicks between them, though neither is quite willing to acknowledge it.
The story proceeds from there, with Persephone slowly meeting more of the Olympian gods (for good and ill), slowly getting to know Hades, and slowly getting to know herself a bit better, looking for confidence and purpose and struggling against a conviction that her powers are “not very important.”
I like a lot of things about this comic. The art style is bold and fun, both in the drawing and in the use of color to differentiate characters; the artist plays with the idea that as gods, these beings might have very differently colored hair and skin (Persephone is all pink, for example, and Hera all golden) rather than having the usual mortal tones. There are some scenes showing the modern city-scapes of both Olympus and the Underworld that I thought were truly amazing, and there are many more gorgeous moments throughout.
Another thing I like is that the gods and goddesses, while certainly empowered with a certain amount of modern technology and ideas, are still recognizably their characters from the traditional stories, with all the shenanigans, shape-shifting, relationship drama, and sexual escapades that implies.
And, perhaps most of all, I really like Hades and Persephone as characters, and I like the relationship as it is starting to grow between them. There is more to either of them than most of the other gods see or acknowledge; Hades is hated and feared by many as the King of the Underworld, and Persephone is seen as young, naïve, and unimportant. In each other, they find someone who sees them more for who they really are: Hades as a gentleman (wavering often between dignified and dorky), with much greater depth of feeling than most understand, and Persephone as a young goddess who is very intelligent and has not yet begun to tap the depths of her potential. I also personally enjoy stories about relationships with a notable age difference, so that aspect of them is interesting as well.
The story is gripping, and also made me laugh aloud many times as I was reading it. The artist is exploring some darker themes as well as the humor, but Greek gods and consent issues are not new. Although Persephone and Hades are the main characters, we meet and get stories for many of the other gods as well, which fills in the world and pulls in more of the original stories. I would recommend this comic to anyone who likes modern and/or alternate takes on mythology, or who is looking for a good romance.
Kindle Unlimited SFF
For anyone following me who is subscribed to Kindle Unlimited, here is a list of some science fiction and fantasy books that are available for borrowing (including those by yours truly). The list updates monthly, so you might want to check back regularly!
Review: The Dragonoak Trilogy by Sam Farren
I believe I came across this trilogy first on Tumblr, and primarily because the author, Sam Farren, keeps ball/royal pythons, and I followed them for posts about their snakes. On seeing that Farren was also a self-published author, however, and being intrigued by the description of the first book, I decided to give it a try, and was glad I did; this is one of the more unique fantasy worlds that I have read in recent years.
(Some spoilers past this point.)
The series follows Rowan Northwood, a young woman from a rural village who has recently failed to hide the fact that she is a necromancer: someone with the power to snatch death away from or push death into other living beings. While her family stand with her and the local villagers are tolerating her presence as long she stays out on her family’s farm, life is not comfortable for Rowan. Taking a chance when one of her country’s famed Knights comes through the village, Rowan goes with her, following her to the neighboring country of Kastelir.
The title of the first book, The Complete History of Kastelir, struck me as a bit ambitious when I first read it, assuming that it was meant to be taken literally. The entire history of a country in a single book?
But the complete history of the country of Kastelir is exactly what I (and Rowan) learned through the course of the book. As a nation, Kastelir is relatively new, formed only a few decades previously out of a land of warring groups. By the end of the book, Rowan has (just barely) survived Kastelir’s fall, and has lost the woman whom she was beginning to love.
The Sky Beneath the Sun finds Rowan far to the south, in a completely different part of the world, along with the handful of friends and allies who escaped Kastelir at the end. Everything is new (and hot), and Rowan finds it mostly a welcome distraction from her grief. Unexpectedly, it also gives her a chance to learn more about herself, to learn that the commonly-used word “necromancer” does not at all begin to encompass the truth of her powers and the kind of being that she is. Through these revelations, a betrayal, and the eventual realization that their work in the land that was once Kastelir is not done, Rowan must decide where she will set the limits on her own power.
The final book in the series, Gall and Wormwood, sees Rowan and her friends returning north across the sea first to what remains of Kastelir, and then eventually back to her birth country of Felheim, where the heart of the conflict truly lies. It takes not just a better grasp of her own powers for Rowan and her allies to unravel the war that has been going on much longer than any of them realized, but also a rediscovery of their world’s more distant past.
The author of the Dragonoak trilogy created a truly unique world, that has breadth and depth enough that it is easy to feel the weight of its history even as the characters do. Farren’s take on what at first seems like a straightforward fantasy element like necromancy, turns into something unlike any other version of necromancy that I’ve seen. There are dragons and phoenixes, though even they are not quite what one might at first assume. This may be the first time that I have read a story in which the main character is dyslexic (though she does not use that particular term for it), and must work around her inability to read, though it is largely something that she just accepts about herself.
I enjoyed the whole trilogy, and would recommend these books to anyone who likes fantasy stories with original worldbuilding, queer characters, or a good story about the heroes fighting for (and winning) the right to live their lives in peace.
Quick Review: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
I recently finished the first of Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series, and as with his other work that I have read (mostly the Mistborn trilogy) it really pulled me in. It took me a little time to get into it at first, but after that it was difficult to put down, even the supposedly “slower” parts. Sanderson has created a large, complex, and very interesting world, and I’m now eager to read the rest of the series!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jasnah Kholin and Kaladin are my two favorite characters so far, although I like Shallan and Dalinar as well. Jasnah is a very interesting person, and I like her thoughts and attitude, her deep love of learning, and her determination to get to the truth about her world. I like Kaladin for his determination to not give up, and to make the most of whatever situation he finds himself in. Revelations at the end of this first book now make me especially eager to know what happens next.
Sanderson does a good job of building different cultures in the different geographical parts of his world, and showing how they vary depending on their distance from some of the world’s dangers (such as the highstorms), and how they interact with each other and have influenced each other over time.
I would recommend this to anyone who like long, epic fantasy stories, with many characters and complex world-building.
Library Book
It’s really exciting to see your own book on the shelf at the library! *___*
(Thanks to my mom for the picture; I completely forgot to go look for it after the Author Fair back in October!)
~Ethelinda
“Practical Magic”
It is always exciting to discover that an author you like has written more books than you realized! This is apparently true of Joan Aiken, who wrote The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, one of my favorite children’s stories that I still re-read from time to time.
A friend shared this article about Aiken on Facebook today, which taught me many things that I didn’t know. For example, I did not realize that The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (and the other books in that series) is set in an alternate history for England. As the author of the article describes, the book is certainly full of all kinds of tropes, but Aiken uses them with such obvious delight, and is such a good story-teller, that I can’t say I ever really noticed them.
I think I’ll start by looking up the other books in The Wolves Chronicles, and then try some of Aiken’s other work as well. It all sounds wonderfully imaginative!
~Ethelinda
;_;
I’m extremely sad to learn that Victor Milán passed away earlier this year. I was deeply enjoying his latest series, The Dinosaur Lords, and it’s heartbreaking to know that he had planned at least three more novels, as well as short stories/novellas/etc. in that universe, but didn’t get the chance to finish them. Cancer sucks. If you are a dinosaur and fantasy fan and haven’t read the existing three books yet, do it anyway – they are worth it.
RIP, Mr. Milán, and I wish you a dinosaur-filled Paradise.
~Ethelinda
In honor of print copies being available…
…it makes sense to run a sale on the ebook, right? XD
Countdown Deal on The Wizard of Suomen starting today at $0.99. Or, if you prefer to read a physical book, those are $12.99.
I hope you enjoy it!
~Ethelinda
This is turning out to be an excellent October read, as I suspected:
ethelinda writes 