"Dragon Thief" by Blake & Raven Penn

To be clear, the titular Dragon Thief is a thief who steals dragons, not a thief who is also a dragon.

This may be the only book in which I've ever seen someone use the "reckless and flirtatious protagonist" trope and actually pull it off. I think it helps that Asher (the dragon thief in question) is funny, and he does have some character depth to work with. His various crushes do get a bit annoying at times, but it's not constantly, and he's not an annoying person overall. Plus he does prove himself able to crush on only one person at a time.

It also helps that Asher never does anything outright stupid. And whenever he does things that would seem to be outright stupid, he usually can almost make them work through sheer Asherness.

Oh, and Asher isn't an orphan! One (1) of his parents is still alive! It's his dad. And his dad isn't even the annoying kind of parent who doesn't want the kid/teen protagonist to do the plot. He's just as invested in the plot as Asher is, albeit also a bit more cautious.

Dragon Thief's setting is basically a fantasy world trying to be a Western. Sort of. It uses a lot of the Wild West tropes; no trains :<, but there's random tumbleweeds and things, and there's one character (Boone) who would absolutely be a cowboy except he's in a fantasy world.

But the setting is also full of dragons, to the point that most of the animals are replaced with dragon versions of those animals. So jackalopes exist but they're drakalopes instead, their buffalo are replaced by dragon buffalo, raccoons are replaced by draccoons, et cetera. Also people ride kirin instead of horses. And there are, y'know, actual dragons.

The magic system in this is very well thought out. And you don't need to flip back to the setting guide every time they mention something (coughHandofSteelcough), which means they did the worldbuilding naturally. And there isn't a single "as you know, Bob" to be seen!

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for fantasy violence.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    "Ha!" The newer Mage Hunter pointed at me. "Caught you. Who ever said the Keeper's treasure was dragon eggs?"

    There was a moment of silence as I blinked back at him.

    "Um... you did," I said.

    "That's true, you did," Dad added.

    "Did I?" the Mage Hunter looked at his older companion.

    "Yes, you did. Come on Lothar," she grumbled.

    Page 77. Lothar is Dragon Thief's resident Comic Relief Villain.

(Endnote: There's a character in this whose name is Solrac. "Solrac" is "Carlos" spelled backwards. I have no idea whether or not this is intentional, but it's funny either way.)

"Breath of Bones" by Tricia Goyer & Nathan Goyer

This book asks a very important question: What was the Golem of Prague doing during the Holocaust?

(Disclaimer: I know the Golem of Prague was probably not real.)

Anyway. This book revolves around what the Golem of Prague was doing during a fictionalized, steampunk version of World War Two. Also an angry resistance guy who builds things like flamethrower hammers (that eventually get reworked into |rocket hammers| because he |made the fire bit too big|) and a reporter girl who keeps trying to secretly expose the Nazis' evil deeds, only to |get shut down| by her father every time |for her own safety|.

Overall, I think the idea of a steampunk / urban fantasy version of WWII is pretty cool. "Fantasy but in a non-medieval time period" is such an underused genre, and it's also one I really enjoy (to the point that I actually wrote a couple things with that premise). Or, honestly, a different location as well; I get that the standard fantasy setting being medieval Eurasia is because it works well, but medieval Africa and the Americas also have promise and their own legends, as do most other time periods. Why can't we have the Civil War with dragons? Native Americans fighting the orc armies? Mayans and Incas and all their... actually let's not go there.

Anyway, that was a tangent and I should talk about the book itself.

The writing was good, except when the two leads were in proximity to each other and cognizant of the fact that the other one was attractive; one of the authors is a married woman (her co-author is her son) so I'd assume she knows something about love, but it read like she didn't really have much experience and was just writing what she thought it would be like. It was clunky. (Now, granted, I also don't have any romantic experience so I haven't got much idea either, but I've read less clunky 'wait a sec that person is hot' things.)

I really liked the golem itself. He's clearly just trying to protect the Jews in the city, and doesn't want to hurt anyone, but people keep telling him to murder Nazis. (Granted, the Nazis could use a little murdering, but it's really sad to see this really nice robot-clay-person just sort of... snap and go on an killing spree. I get that that's how the original legend kinda is, and it makes sense here, but still.)

Oh yeah, this is also Christian fiction! Sort of. One of the main characters is Christian and one is Jewish, and the writer seems to be a Christian as well.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A stern T for graphic violence and prominently involving the Holocaust.

4 stars. Ends on somewhat of a down note, but since that's also a hook to draw people into the next book in the series, I don't fault it too much.

(Endnote: I was hoping the later books in this series would feature similar little-considered legends and not-really-understood historical stuff and urban-legendy stuff from the countries involved in WWII, like the Antikythera Mechanism or Baba Yaga or Britain's Angels of Mons or that thing with King Arthur and his guys coming back in Britain's darkest hour. Unfortunately, from reading the synopsis of book 2, that doesn't seem to be the case.)

Mini-Reviews 13: It's Not Even Friday!

Playing with Fire by Derek Landy

Book 2 of Skulduggery Pleasant. (Book 1 is here.) In this one, some new (or possibly not so new?) bad guys show up and try to resurrect an evil giant monster thing. |They succeed, and the heroes have to fight it.|

It's been like a year since I read the last one, so I don't remember how many of the villains in this were mentioned in the first one.

Oh, and the Spring-Heeled Jack shows up, which was interesting.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence and giant spiders.

4 stars. However, as previously mentioned, there are giant spiders; I can read past them, but if you hate giant spiders, you probably shouldn't read this.

Tags for this one: 4-star, cool magic, modern setting, rated T, urban fantasy

The Wondrous World of Violet Barnaby by Jenny Lundquist

This is about a twelve-ish-year-old girl, Violet Barnaby, whose mom is dead and whose dad has recently remarried. She spends most of the book grieving for her mom and railing against the injustice of change.

She also spends most of the book repressing the urge to just snap and start shouting at everything. I, too, have repressed that urge, as probably have we all.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, DRAMA!, modern setting, rated E

The Wolf of Cape Fen by Juliana Brandt

This book has a very twisty plot, and one that holds together in light of the new plot twists (I'm looking at you, Maximum Ride). Plus they're actually well-executed enough that I don't see them coming, which... either I've been reading books with untwisty plots or I've just gotten really good at spotting the plot twist.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for "deal-with-the-devil"-style magic (though not with the actual devil).

3 stars.

Tags for this one: 3-star, magical realism, modern setting, rated E10+

(Endnote: HALT IN THE NAME OF THE FRIDAY KNIGHT! Man, I really need to review Dragons at Crumbling Castle...)

Mini-Reviews 8: Oops, All Vega Jane

The Keeper by David Baldacci

In which we leave our dystopia and discover that the Intentionally Very Lethal Wilderness outside of it is that way because it's supposed to keep the dystopia's people in and everyone else out.

 

Also we find another, even more dystopian dystopia. And proceed to completely wreck the whole place and nope out of there. 

This is book 2.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence and some bad language.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, adventure, cool magic, dystopian, fantasy, rated T, series component, YA

The Width of the World by David Baldacci

In which we leave the Intentionally Very Lethal Wilderness and discover that our dystopia's dystopian-ness pales in comparison to the dystopian-ness of the dystopia that is the rest of the world. But at least the rest of the world has trains. While our dystopia was stuck in the Renaissance, the rest of the world has reached the 1920s.

Also, we get a reverse Renamed Concept Rule courtesy of getting used to the strange terminology over the last two books, then stumbling into a world where people use normal words.

This is book 3.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence and some bad language.

4 stars.

 

Tags for this one: 4-star, adventure, cool magic, dystopian, fantasy, rated T, series component, YA

The Stars Below by David Baldacci

In which we discover that I actually can take the BBEG seriously even though his name is literally just "Necro".

 

I'm not sure what's going on with that title.

 

This is book 4.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence and some bad language.

4 stars.

 

Tags for this one: 4-star, a kissing book, adventure, cool magic, dystopian, fantasy, rated T, series component, YA

(Endnote: You may have noticed that book 4 is slightly thinner than the other two. This isn't because that's how it is in real life, it's because the internet is loath to provide me with pictures that aren't squished.)

"Hall of Heroes" anthology

Behold the third (and, so far, longest) one of these collections that I've read!

"Alancia's Dance" by H. L. Burke: A technically-not-matador-but-only-because-this-isn't-Spain woman meets Totally Not Daedalus, then falls in love. The king disapproves. I didn't really like this one.

"The Hero Feat of Hannah Helstrom" by J. Philip Horne: Superheroes, including one whose power is regeneration and literally nothing else. This one is decent.

"In Plain Sight" by Arthur Daigle: A stage magician with animated (non-creepy) dolls |turns out to be a real magician slash mad scientist with animated objects that are a lot more dangerous|. One of the best ones in the collection.

"Finn MacRorie and the River Dragon" by Katy Huth Jones: Ireland/Scotland, [insert year]: A random knight-errant shows up at a village, fixes this one family's problems, and then leaves. It feels like something out of an Irish/Scottish-flavored King Arthur legend.

"Little Victories" by Karin De Havin: Local escaped-pet-whisperer accidentally discovers injured fairy. This one isn't anything terribly special, but it's a solid story.

"And Only the Eyes of Children" by Laura VanArendonk Baugh: Turns out the Fair Folk do not like {T15+ at least child sex trafficking}. Well-executed, if not very appropriate for young readers.

"The Demon Monkeys" by A. R. Silverberry: Medieval non-European-flavored village is terrorized by demon monkeys. |Who are actually just bandits carrying howler monkeys|. Then a wizard(ish person) shows up. This one is okay.

"Superhero Publicist" by Janeen Ippolito: Exactly what it sounds like. A publicist for superheroes/supervillains has to deal with a supervillain who abruptly became a superhero instead due to converting to Christianity. The premise is good. The story is okay.

"Sweet Basil" by Lea Doué: Magic Is Banned™. Our protagonist has magic. You can see where this is going.

"Darkness Follows the Light" by David Millican: I mean, if there were evil child-stealing monsters, they probably would hang around bad neighborhoods. This one is not appropriate for children.

"Presenting... The Steampendous Adventures of Josiah U. Bear and the Rubber Barons" by D. W. Frauenfelder: A vaguely turn-of-the-century-esque story involving a nation of talking bears. Requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.

"River's Edge Ransom" by Julie C. Gilbert: Apparently part of a larger series. Fantasy. It's okay, I guess.

"The Love Talker" by Deanna Fugett: There's an evil monster that goes around breaking girls' hearts for the heck of it. There are also some protagonists. This one is decent, but not my cup of cheese.

"Gem" by RJ Conte: An alternate-universe world is attempting to shake itself to pieces. Except: That world's God has given them psions that can hold it together with their brains. Except: They never actually get to be more than about seven before the world tries to shake itself to pieces again. Less depressing than it sounds.

"Leticia's Song" by Jessica L. Elliott: Sort of like that one fairytale with the guys who get turned into swans. Also somewhat involves Not!Pandora's Box. This one is decent.

"The Wooden Ruler" by David Millican: Turns out if you make sentient gnome dolls, they might get too sentient. And view you as eldritch horrors. This is definitely an interesting read.

"The Tale of Sir Ronan of Camelot" by Frank B. Luke: Strongly Camelot-flavored, with a pronounced secondary taste of allegory. Didn't like it much.

"A Fiery Gift" by A. J. Bakke: Adorable volcano otters! And some point it's trying to make, probably, but I'm just here for the adorable volcano otters.

"The Hero of Emoh: A Parent's Fairytale" by Sarah Ashwood: DNF'd this one because I could just taste the sappiness and the spelling-things-backwards and was not in the mood for that. I'm still not.

"Sacrifice to the Iara" by H. L. Burke: Sort of ancient-South-American-civilization-flavored. It's got the winged and feathered serpents for that, at least. Well-executed.

"Charla Visits Earth" by Diane Astle: Fish-out-of-water where the fish is actually a mermaid, making that phrase both metaphorical and literal for this case. This one is okay.

"Cry of the Cave Lion" by E. Kaiser Writes: Cave lions. And the hunter-gatherers who hunt them.

"Save the Day" by Page Zaplendam: Teenage superheroes. A fairly realistic take on that subgenre, in fact. This is one of the better stories in here.

"Boy of Sand and Sky" by Laura Matthias Bendoly: Ancient France! But with a kid who can do miracles, and who apparently factors into some other stuff this author's written.

"Teamwork" by Laura VanArendonk Baugh: Have you ever heard of the "Choking Doberman" urban legend? It's basically {T a dog starts mysteriously choking, and when taken to the vet, turns out to be choking on some severed human fingers}. This story is just that urban legend in short story form.

"The Ungifted Twin" by Tamie Dearen: Classic "girl with no magic power in universe where everyone has a magic power" story. This one is okay.

"Not Quite a Hero" by Arthur Daigle: The mayor's intrepid daughter and... how do I even begin to describe Sorcerer Lord Jayden? They meet for the first time in this, then fight a giant shapeshifting monster made of dead stuff. This is my favorite story in the entire collection.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for child abuse and sexual references.

On the low side of 4 stars; would have been 3, but "Not Quite a Hero" exists.

(Endnote: Arthur Daigle is fast rising in the ranks of my favorite authors. The nonexistent ranks, because I don't actually have a list.)

"Earthsea" series by Ursula K. Le Guin

(A picture at the top has been added now that I have access to a computer with MS Paint again.)

I thought this series was going to just be okay. Thankfully, it exceeded my expectations as to quality. (Well, until book 4, which is why I'm only reviewing the first 3 books. The series was basically complete at the end of book 3, and book 4 wasn't as good. It was kind of just more.)

Book 1: A Wizard of Earthsea

This has its own unique flavor, which isn't the case with many fantasy books. It's more down-to-earth than most of them, and the only sapient beings are humans and dragons (well, and some |ancient evil things|). It retains the feel of a low-magic series like Ranger's Apprentice while still having actually rather a lot of magic. 

Magic somewhat works by names here: if you know something's name, you can control it. It's pretty well-thought-out system, honestly. Names have power, illusions don't affect the real world, death magic is something you shouldn't even touch (pretty much every single problem in the entire series is caused by people messing with it), and there's various other isolated things like magelight and magewind.

According to the afterword-thing at the end of The Tombs of Atuan, this wasn't supposed to be a series. All the sequel hooks were apparently just put in by the author to assure the reader that |Ged| (he only tells like 8 people his actual name, so I'm putting it behind spoiler tags even though it's not technically a spoiler) does get cool eventually. When I read that, it suddenly made a lot more sense how his character arc is basically complete in this one.

Book 2: The Tombs of Atuan

Since |Ged|'s character arc is complete in book 1, and we need to have someone have one, this is mostly narrated by a new character. A girl this time. Which could have been lame, but Le Guin made it work. She's actually at least as much my favorite character as |Ged| is. (Mostly because they're the only two characters we ever see much of. |Ged| spends most of his time wandering off into parts unknown.)

She (Tenar/Arha/Tenar; she gets renamed a couple times) is a good mix of "pretty sure I'm cooler than you" and "what the heck is going on here" when |Ged| shows up in the tomb-city (guess its name?) of which she is the high priestess. And then starts freaking out when |the spooky death god beings that inhabit the tombs| don't do anything about him, even though he doesn't seem that powerful. (Except it turns out |he's using basically all his magic to keep them from noticing him|. Which plot point I liked.

Book 3: The Farthest Shore

Unfortunately, we don't go to Valinor in this book. We do, however, sail off into the Far Lands the unknown regions at the end of the world, where magic as we know it breaks down and stops working. So, basically the Far Lands.

With, again, a new character. Because someone has to have a character arc. Basically, something is causing magic to suddenly quit doing what it's supposed to, and also we're having issues with people taking drugs. |Ged| and the new kid wander off to go find out what's going on.

And they do. (Spoiler alert, except there are three books after this one.) But |you can't save the world without a price; in this case, it's Ged burning through all his magic to shunt himself and the new kid back out of the afterlife|, where they'd ventured to fight the guy causing all the problems. As much as I would have liked to |put the world back how it was| with no consequences, this makes it seem more realistic. And also feel like the end of the series. (And honestly, in my somewhat humble opinion, it should have been. Le Guin actually left Earthsea alone for like seventeen years before writing Tehanu, the next book. Which I have also read, and which wasn't nearly as good.)

Were this series a videogame, I'd rate it: A hard T for violence, swearing, and some drug use.

So, 4 stars for this half of the series. As I haven't finished the other half (and don't plan to), I can't rate it.

(Endnote: Apparently the second book triad was adult books instead of YA, which explains some things.)

Mini-Reviews 5: For Fighting

Actual descriptions of these books are available upon request.

 

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Welcome to Snark: The Book. It has a better explanation than most books of how the main character is able to sneak out under her parents' noses and go on adventures, and the explanation is: creating a semiautonomous mirror clone which basically goes about her life on autopilot.

Also the deuteragonist is a skeleton.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence. It could be made into a decent videogame.

4 stars. I could see this series (it's super long, like fourteen books at last count) being really good. I could also see it becoming really lame, but without reading the rest of them, I don't really know.

Tags for this one: 4-star, cool magic, modern setting, rated T, series component, urban fantasy

City of Gold by Will Hobbs

Having now read two of this guy's books (the other one is Never Say Die, which I didn't review), I think I can reasonably say that his work is okay.

On a whole, I liked CoG better than NSD. On the one hand, CoG has an annoying younger brother; on the other hand, NSD's unrealistic parts are handwaved by climate change. (It is my principle that anything that talks about climate change could reasonably have talked about other, more scientifically sound environmental causes--coughpollutioncough--instead, and been less annoying.)

The guy in this has his family's mules stolen, tracks down the mule thief, repeatedly tries to get the mules back, |runs into Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch|, and gets a crush on a girl. Not necessarily in that order.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for western violence.

On the high end of 3 stars. (It's afforded some extra points because its hero is older than 12. I am very tired of reading books about 12-year-olds.)

Tags for this one: 3-star, adventure, rated E10+, Western

Rise of the Dragon Moon by Gabrielle K. Byrne

This is a fantasy book set in a world that's been yeeted farther away from its sun by angry gods; this caused it to become covered in ice. |Except it's actually not. It's just that these guys are all living in the frozen north and have forgotten that other guys also exist and the world isn't actually entirely covered in ice.| Which... I would have |preferred if they stuck with it being all full of ice|.

(Tangent: Can we just have a straightforward dragon-slaying mission for once? Like in The Hobbit, where the goal is to slay the dragon and we do slay the dragon. But no, we always have to talk to the dragons, or feel bad about killing the dragons, or discover that the dragons are the good guys and we're the bad guys, or some stupid thing like that. I guess this is why we have the Monster Hunter videogames.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A hard E10+ for fantasy violence.

3 stars.

Tags for this one: 3-star, adventure, rated E10+, fantasy

 

(Endnote: The day may come when I run out of things to reference in the titles of these posts, but today is not that day.)

"The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes" by Wade Albert White (again)

This book is still completely hilarious. I hope this time my review will be more coherent than the last time, though. Or at least sound somewhat saner.

For a while, I thought the "fantasy world was once a modern/sci-fi/dystopian world" trope was a bit overdone, but apparently my oversaturation with it (well, "oversaturation" isn't really the right word considering that I can remember maybe three other things with that trope) has ended now. Which means that this, with its ancient robots and computers and such, feels fresh and interesting again.

There are two more books in this series, The Adventurer's Guide to Dragons (And Why They Keep Biting Me) and The Adventurer's Guide to Treasure (And How to Steal It). I might review them here too at some point, just because they're also hilarious.

 

I recapped this last time, and so did my mom, who's better at recaps than I am.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fantasy violence. It could be a pretty good adventure game, honestly, something like Tomb Raider but sans the tombs.

Still 5 stars. Still one of my favorite books.

Favorite lines (because copyright laws prevent me from just reprinting the entire book here):

I have another very long quote at the Very Long Quotes Page, as quote 2.

    "Climb the tower with no door.

    Ask the knight who never lived.

    Take the key you cannot hold.

    Claim the throne without a crown."

    Page 109. It's the "quest riddle", which means it's basically all the clues for the quest. I actually have this memorized, and |used "nodoor" (which, as well as describing the tower as having no door, is the password used to open the tower) as my password for a couple things for a while. I don't anymore, though.|

    Copperhelm pulled out a small slip of paper--the same paper he had given the guard at the front desk. It read:

    DEUS EX MACHINA CARD

    The holder of this card is hereby granted permission to unexpectedly resolve a heretofore impossible-to-solve plot issue using a sudden and/or improbable intervention.

    GOOD FOR ONE USE ONLY.

    Page 311. Just the idea of being licensed to do a deus ex machina is hilarious to me.

(Endnote: The worldbuilding here gets to shine more in the next books, but it's still good in this one.)

"A Pocket Full of Murder" by R. J. Anderson

I was first introduced to this by Kittens, whose taste in books somewhat differs from mine.

This one is about a girl whose dad gets arrested (wrongly) for murdering a guy, so she goes on a giant investigation/mission/quest/thing to prove his innocence by finding out who did murder the guy.

Its worldbuilding is quite good. It's a fantasy book, but instead of being medieval Europe with fantasy elements, it's more like late Victorian Europe with fantasy elements. (Or possibly late Victorian America? I'm not sure.) So, there aren't really any wizards or magic-users around, replaced with people having figured out how to do "Common Magic" themselves via baking.

I've also read the sequel, A Little Taste of Poison, which focuses much more on "Sagery": basically the same as Common Magic, but more jewelcrafting instead of baking. (Many of the book's nobles would be very mad at me for saying Sagery is basically the same as Common Magic, but IT'S TRUE, FOLKS.) Sagery does factor into this one, but it's explained less.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for intense situations and themes of religious persecution (it's clearly based on historical anti-Semitism, and is portrayed as a bad thing). This would make a decent open-world game. (I say open-world because the only other city-based games I know of, the Grand Theft Auto series, also get labeled open-world. This is much tamer than GTA, as is pretty much every piece of media I consume.)

(To assuage any fears people may have, no, I haven't played Grand Theft Auto. Nor, in all likelihood, will I ever do so.)

4 stars. 

(Endnote: A Little Taste of Poison is a good sequel, in that it explains things that would have been obvious if you'd read this one.)

"189" series, story by Elliott Ryan, art by Hiroshi Tajiri

I really liked this series. That said, it's fairly odd, is an original English-language work, and involves zeppelins named after Metallica songs.

Yes.

 

It's also a three-book series at the time of writing, so I'll divide the review into three parts. Also, I'm not bothering with spoiler tags. You've been warmed.

 

Book 1 (officially titled "Frenemies")

 

This one introduces our three henceforth main characters: Taku Nakarai/Pale King (the mask on the first volume's cover, and the guy on the left on cover 2), Takeshi Uehara/Lightmorph Revenant (the guy in the cat mask), and Wilhelm Schönfelder/Bone Lord/Administrator of Zerodelve (the guy on the left in the first volume cover).

The three teenagers start out playing an unmemorable Minecraft avoiding-copyright-infringement-rebrand over the Internet, and then all of their chairs spontaneously fall through the floor. They appear in a stone chamber, where it is revealed that they have been transported to another world, and here I quote Wilhelm, "for no reason whatsoever," and they're supposed to build a continent-spanning empire. Taku picks the "artificer" archetype, which revolves around creating robots and things utilizing cheat magic. Takeshi gets the "sensei" archetype, which has him building a martial arts school. And Wilhelm takes "necromancer", which leads to a whole lot of trouble.

And then they are immediately dropped into areas seemingly primed for them to take over, so they take over in one of the more awesome montages I've ever seen.

 

Taku makes a bunch of robots after commandeering a blacksmith shop, takes over a city, renames it Making, and starts industrializing. Takeshi uses his power of sand telekinesis (it makes sense in context) to create a giant sandstone city named Chrysalis. Wilhelm makes a giant fortress which walks around on conglomerated bone legs, wanders around to battle sites obtaining more skeletons, and makes a giant throne out of skulls.

And then the drama begins, as three other people (John Veritas, Kei Hirata, and Lara Janus) are also summoned to provide opposition. Specifically, John Veritas is up against Taku (who's going by Pale King at this point, but I continue to refer to them by first names), Kei Hirata is against Takeshi, and Lara Janus is after Wilhelm. 

 

John Veritas goes dungeon-crawling, acquires a pretty decent set of magic items, steals one of the trains Taku invented, and gatecrashes a board meeting to duel Taku. Then we get an epic battle sequence, with Veritas' giant sword versus Taku's bladestaff (basically a metal-coated stick with knives stuck on one end), which ends in a draw despite Taku's access to a lot more resources (and thus magic) than Veritas has. They part ways semi-amiably after realizing neither of them can beat the other, with Veritas leaving to go fight crime instead of Taku. All the summoned people are informed that "Veritas vs. Pale King" is resolved.

Kei Hirata is rather an all-around irritating jerkface, repeatedly beats up everyone like he's in a videogame with zero consequences, and is eventually curb-stomped by Takeshi riding a giant sand mech. His segment took the least time, which I was glad of, because he annoyed me.

Aaaand then Wilhelm goes rather off the rails. From his mobile city-base-thing of Deadwall, he starts wrecking innocent bystanders/forests/what-have-you, all to get at and eliminate Lara. He eventually burns down a forest, which brings the wrath of Takeshi and his sand mech down on him. At the climax of the final fight, Taku shows up out of nowhere, steals Wilhelm's unconscious body, dumps him on an island codenamed "Zero", and thus ends book 1.

 

Favorite lines:

For his entire segment, Kei Hirata is shown screaming "REVENAAAAAAANT!!!" (number of a's and exclamation points varies) during his battles with all and sundry. At the end of the book, there's a "rejected scenes" section; one of them is Kei at the beginning of his journey, screaming "REVENAAAANT!!!!" while chasing a duck through a park with a kitchen knife.

Also from the rejected scenes, we have a final battle comprising Wilhelm, Takeshi, and Lara having a slap fight while Taku looks on like "what the heck, you guys?"

Book 2 (officially titled "Mafia")

 

Apparently, whatever summoned our guys here considers Wilhelm "defeated", so it summons three new people to take his place. [Note: Just before publishing this post, I realized I should put their names here, but I'd already taken the books back by then. Silly me.] They call their organiztion "le mafia" (not making this up). They're the three guys on the cover of Book 2.

In the interim between the end of Book 1 and the beginning of this one, Taku (who, by the way, has the "obtain blueprint" spell, usable on a long cooldown, which gives him a blueprint for whatever device he wants) has developed Monitor-class ironclads and the Gatling gun in addition to his trains. Takeshi has discovered a sort of transferrable blue fire power, which he gives to the other two. Wilhelm decided to mine "Zero" out of boredom. 

 

Anyway, le mafia get into all sorts of trouble and attempt to make drugs, which results in them paying Taku a whole lot of money because he has access to chemical reagents. Takeshi obtains sentient hamsters, which show up whenever needed to provide a break from le mafia and their awfulness.

Taku obtains zeppelins, which he painstakingly fills with hydrogen and enchants to be fire-retardant. He then uses them to spy on le mafia, but as he's deploying the first one, the counterparts show up.

This time, there's Monika Sakurai (vs. le mafia), Natsuki Himekawa (vs. Takeshi), and Jonathan Wright (vs. Taku). In the interest of not having another Wilhelm "no cost too great", Taku and Takeshi bully le mafia into signing a treaty (which the original three also sign) basically ensuring they can't be evil or attack each other.

Jonathan Wright tuns out to be a brilliant lawyer, attempts to take Taku to task for breaking the law, and realizes he hasn't broken the law. Taku and Wright also part ways fairly amiably, with Wright serving as Taku's legal counsel. "Wright vs. Pale King" resolved, etc etc.

Natsuki Himekawa obtains about the same caliber of magics as John Veritas got in book 1, charges through Chrysalis intending to take Takeshi down in a blaze of glory, and does so. I was going "please don't die either of you" throughout their entire battle... which ended with a bunch of sentient trees restraining them both and sending an unconscious Natsuki by train to Deadford (it's Wilhelm's skeleton mech city after he stopped supporting it and it fell over).

 

Monika Sakurai gathers up a bunch of team members, enacts an epic Mission: Impossible-style heist to get evidence to convict le mafia of war crimes, and escapes on the wrong train so she ends up on the ferry to Zero.

 

Aaaaand then Wilhelm (now calling himself Administrator of Zerodelve) sees her evidence, invokes a clause of the treaty, and summons everyone else to put le mafia on trial for war crimes. After a long trial utilizing an entire arsenal of Chekov's guns, we have a war.

 

Which really means that le mafia, currently trying to kick Natsuki and her band of followers out of Deadford, get epically wrecked. We have giant sand people on Takeshi's end, and ironclads/trains/Gatling guns/zeppelins on Taku's. Oh, and enchanted artillery.

 

[WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH]

 

It ends with Evil Mafia Dude One (non-graphically) taking a direct hit from an artillery shell, Evil Mafia Dude Two being impaled by a giant sword made of sand (courtesy of Takeshi; all we get/have to see are silhouettes), and Evil Mafia Dude Ringleader activating a weapon of last resort that misfires and dumps him in a dimension full of darkness and creepy... things. I think he dies. That one was the most evil, though, so he kinda deserves it.

[END SPOILERS]

Favorite lines:

    Evil Mafia Dude Ringleader: "You realize you'll need something pretty powerful to compel us to sign this, right?"

    Taku: *pulls a gun on him*

    Takeshi: "Why did you decide to dig out the middle of an entire island?"

    Wilhelm: "I got bored."

Book 3 (officially titled "Proxies")

 

This one starts off with the new guy, Satoru Ohmori, playing the Civilization-copyright-infringement-avoidance-knockoff endgame. Then he saves, gets up, walks out of the room, and falls through the floor.

I won't bore you with a lengthy recap of the first bit; this post is long enough already. It did provide me with one of my overall favorite lines from the series, though. Basically, Satoru bases his world-conquering strategy on his Civilization strategy, which involves such useful-as-game-mechanics-but-super-awful-when-real-people-are-involved things such as a police state and state property. 

This leads to thing such as Takeshi repeatedly saying "Big Brother is watching you..." around Satoru, and Taku calling him "Little Bro" (tying in to that). Satoru and Takeshi get into some odd proxy wars, into which stumble the three who try to topple them: an American mechanic whose name I've forgotten, a Korean (I think) doctor named Yi Suchong, and another Japanese gamer dude named Takao Suzuhara. 

 

The mechanic guy ends up amassing a whole lot of money retooling trains and going dungeon-delving; then he buys a tank and drives straight into one of the Satoru-Takeshi proxy wars. He quickly racks up quite the killcount, which makes Satoru try to sic Taku or Wilhelm on him. This led to a fairly funny exchange, which I put in my favorite lines section.

Dr. Suchong promptly decides to settle down in Chrysalis (Takeshi's capital) and practice his chosen profession. He's a sort of general physician, and I'm pretty sure the author researched what he was talking about, but I don't know enough about medicine to be sure. He eventually ends up performing an autopsy on someone suspected to have been assassinated, figures out that (in his words) it "isn't natural, doesn't appear to be caused by anything at all, and I would have to conclude it was either chemical or radiological if I didn't know about magic now." This tips Takeshi off that he's the summoned enemy, so Takeshi promptly officially employs him.

Takao Suzuhara acts like he's in a videogame and grinds (grinding, in videogame parlance, is repeatedly performing the same action in order to advance) until he's very powerful. Then he magically nukes Making, defeating Taku.

WHAT???

Taku ends up on a flotilla of galleons, zeppelins, and ironclads which he'd intended to explore with, sailing away from his continent with most of his create material-equipped subordinates with him.

 

And then the book ends.

 

Again, WHAT??? I'm sure Taku will end up finding the magical Americas or something in Book 4, but BOOK 4 ISN'T OUT YET!!!

Angery. 

Favorite lines:

 

    (for context, the three are delivering Satoru some dire warnings)

    Taku: "Then the grave..."

    Wilhelm: "...will be..."

    Takeshi: "...your density."

    Taku: "It's 'destiny', Takeshi."

 

    Satoru: "Come on, this guy is costing me millions of gold in tanks!"

    Taku: "Y'know, this is the guy who's making me millions of gold selling you tanks. And while you are well within your rights to try to get Wilhelm to smack me for it, be aware it's not going to work."

    Wilhelm (walking into the room): "Smack you for what?"

This series gets an overall 4 stars. That's as a series average; I'd probably rate book 1 at 5 stars, book 2 at 4 (despite le mafia), and book 3 at 3 (though I am biased due to the cliffhanger).

 

Were this series made of videogames, I'd rate them: T for books 1 and 3, but the upper limit of T15+ for book 2; the villains in that one get up to some pretty creepy and awful stuff.

 

TL/DR This series does not actually exist, as this post is an April Fools' Day joke. However, the joke's also kind of on me, because now I really want the series to exist. 

I was inspired in the joke by my mom's review of a noir Hamlet retelling, which movie also doesn't exist. In that, she said something to the effect of "I know, no fair, it's not April Fools' Day or anything," which made me wonder if I could do sort of the same thing for April Fools' Day. Except nobody reads my blog posts on the day they come out, so the joke will be lost.

"Castle in the Air" by Diana Wynne Jones

That wasn't what I was expecting. (Side note: I was originally going to start that sentence with "Welp", but then I was like "I always start my posts with some form of welp", but then I looked back and realized I almost never do that.)

Anyway, don't let that dissuade you! This book has more of an Arabian Nights feel than Howl's Moving Castle (kind of English) or House of Many Ways (which I really need to review; don't know where High Norland is modeled after, but it tangentially involves mountaineering, so someplace Alpine maybe?). As such, the main love interest is named Flower-in-the-Night--seriously, I'm not making this up--and we have a main character named Abdullah. 

 

(Another side note: the king's cook from House of Many Ways shows up in this. As soon as it mentioned a guy with an irascible dog selling squid in the marketplace, my brain went "༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ heyyy i recognize you". And then it turned out his showing up in House was a reference to Castle/Air and not the other way around.)

 

The book brings in all sorts of characters from the other two, including but not limited to: Sophie, Howl, Sophie and Howl's son Morgan, the aforementioned cook, The King of Ingary, his toddler (but still princess) daughter, The King of High Norland (tangentially), Ben and Lettie Sullivan/Suliman, and Calcifer. Some of them are in different forms, including (MAJOR SPOILERS HERE) Sophie being |a cat| (fitting) and Howl being |a genie in a bottle|.

 

I also really liked Flower-in-the-Night, for all that she has a completely weird name. She's not the sort of princess you get in fairy tales who wanders around her castle all day knitting or whatever it is they do in all that spare time; instead, Flower wanders around her castle all day getting a proper education and cultivating her ability to be intelligent. Seriously, I was impressed with her. 

 

It's established fairly early on that everything will turn out okay. There's a !PROPHECY! about Flower marrying the first not-her-father man who sees her (hint: Abdullah) and another !PROPHECY! about Abdullah becoming "raised above all others in the land", so you know things will turn out okay in the end.

This book, like Howl's Moving Castle, gets four stars.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for mild suggestive themes, a couple scattered profanities, and fantasy violence. And also for Hakim, who is so stinking annoying that he would bump this thing from E10+ to T by himself. [Note: Take that last with a grain of salt.] Would it make a good videogame? About the same quality as Howl's, I think. 

Favorite lines:

    "It weakens you--having baths," the soldier said dubiously. "But I suppose I could wash Midnight [cat] as well while I'm at it." 

     "Pray use both cats as sponges if it pleases you, infatuated infantryman," Abdullah said.

This one just struck me as funny. Page 185. (To the best of my knowledge, nobody uses a cat as a sponge.)

Also, Abdullah uses increasingly flowery language to try to flatter various sentient magic things, until the genie tells him it's silly. Abdullah's response to the Genie asking him "Where's all the talk about jewels and flowers and so forth?"
     "You told me you did not like it. I have discontinued it."

Page 208.

     "Really, air!" [Sophie] said. "This is disgraceful! You are going to have to let us breathe a bit better than this or we won't last out. Gather around and let us breathe you!"

Page 282.

Link to the actual post.

"Five Worlds" series by Mark Siegel, Alexis Siegel, Xanthe Bouma, Matt Rockefeller, and Boya Sun

So, yeah. As you may see, "5" is a bit of a theme number for this series. Five books, five worlds, five authors, five different types of sand (it makes sense in context), five |races| in book 4, five |filters| in book 5... yeah. There are a lot of fives. I think the only important non-fives are The Living Fire (see the blue fire on book 5) and the main characters (which I understand, as five of them would have been kind of an ensemble cast).

But anyway, I suppose I should tell you what the series is about. Oona (the girl), Jax (the blue-haired guy who's |secretly an android|), and An Tzu (the guy with red hair) have to save the worlds from the Mimic, an evil spirit/force/corruption/thing who's trying to mind-control the worlds and, eventually, the universe. 

Oona can control sand (although, initially, she's kind of bad at it), which usually manifests itself as ribbons (see the Book 5 cover) or little sand people, the latter of which are called "aniforms". Also, if you're good enough at it, you can make giant sand people to ride around in (the Sand Warrior), and it looks really awesome. Did I mention these are graphic novels?

Jax is really really good at the fictional sport of Starball, and is as previously mentioned |an android|. He also gets a prosthetic hand that lets him shoot lasers. He also |fuses with a Salassi energy spirit/creature/thing| in the prologue of book 3.

An Tzu is slowly vanishing, can talk to plants (if by "talk to it" you mean "play music at it"), and |is actually a Felid, who are a race of uberpowerful energy beings from the sun|. He also has a tendency to start being an idiot if left alone for too long. 

Also there's Stan Moon, an evil tentacle monster centaur guy (look on the covers of books 2 and 4), Ram Sam Sam (an extremely happy little green sentient blob), the Felids (giant light people who look kind of like humanoid cats; there's one in the book 4 cover background), and a whole host of other minor characters.

Aaaaaaand the fifth world, Grimbo (E) (Yes, the "E" does get explained eventually, but I'm not going to), is covered in moss. Like, its nickname is "The Moss Ocean". Pretty much anyone who knows me knows I am borderline obsessed with moss. Needless to say, if I was in this series, I would live on Grimbo (E).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fantasy violence and the aforementioned tentacle monster and Mimic. It'd probably make a fun videogame, as long as the makers didn't royally mess it up.

The series gets to join Kiki's Delivery Service, The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes, and The Mystwick School of Musicraft in getting five stars (fitting, considering the theme number). No, this does not mean that each book gets one star, nor that there are five stars within the book (although I think there are). This rating is a series average, meaning that were I to rate each book, they would all get five stars (with the possible exception of The Red Maze, which might get four).

Favorite lines:

   The phrase "old-fuel shoeboxes". It's spawned dozens of jokes, including a hypothetical shoe company called "Old Fuel Shoes".

  Page 61, The Sand Warrior

   "Your highness? Are you feeling indisposed?". This one's also spawned a lot of jokes, mostly due to the extremely silly face and pose of the guy who says it.

  Page 156, The Sand Warrior

   "Everywhere you'll go-- urg glrg". It was supposed to be a terrifying threat, but the thing giving it started to fall apart before finishing it.

  Page 218, The Cobalt Prince

   "We no longer have an air force, sir...". I don't know why, but this line just struck me as really funny.

  Page 147, The Amber Anthem

    "Beautiful! A whole world carpeted with moss." I agree with Jax wholeheartedly on this one. (In the process of finding lines, I ended up rereading the entirety of The Emerald Gate; 10/10 would reread yet again.)

  Page 12, The Emerald Gate

 

Link to the actual post. 

"Howl's Moving Castle" by Diana Wynne Jones

 

 

I don't actually have a good opening sentence for this post, so now it's this sentence. Oh well. 

 

That aside, Howl's Moving Castle is a really good book. It's about a girl, Sophie Hatter, who's the eldest of three daughters (in the land of Ingary  cool name  where fairy tale tropes are true, and so the eldest is doomed to fail if she goes out to seek her fortune). Aaaaaaaaand then she gets turned into an old lady by the Witch of the Waste. I wasn't expecting that the first time I read it, and it was still a bit of a shock the second time even though I knew it was coming.

Sophie decides "you know what, even though this mysterious Wizard Howl is rumored to eat babies/steal girls' souls/have a jar of hearts lying around, I'm an old lady anyway, YOLO" and goes walking up to the titular Moving Castle. She then threatens it with her stick until the Wizard Howl's apprentice Michael lets her in. 

When I first picked up the book House of Many Ways and mentioned that it was the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, my mom said that she'd heard Howl's Moving Castle was a Beauty and the Beast retelling. I read it with that in mind this time around, and...

There is a guy named Gaston, but he doesn't really do Gaston stuff. Beauty (Sophie Hatter) is a normal Beauty-aged girl turned into an old lady, and the Beast (Wizard Howl) is |basically a dissolute teenager, but a dissolute 27-year-old instead|. So... maybe? I could see it as a BATB retelling, but it also stands up on its own. On the other hand, it's got an Evil Stepmother(tm)... who isn't evil, but still.

 

I really liked the magic system. It's more like taken-seriously fairytale magic than videogame, D&D, or LOTR magic, and if you do the "fairytale magic taken seriously" thing right, it outstrips the first two and is as good as the third.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T. Fantasy violence, redacted swearing (as in, "followed by a hurriedly bitten-off swear word" and suchlike), creepy turnip-headed scarecrows. If done right, a Howl's Moving Castle videogame could be good, but the narrative isn't really one that would adapt well to videogame format. The best type of game for it would probably be visual novel. (I wonder why...)

I'm rating this book four stars. 

Favorite lines:

 

  The biggest jar had a name. It was called DRYING POWER in crooked letters. Sophie was not sure whether there should be a D in that or not.

  Page 67.

  Howl shrugged. "What an outspoken old woman you are! I've reached that stage in my career where I need to impress everyone with my power and wickedness. I can't have the King thinking well of me."

  Page 77.

Link to the actual post.