"The Legendary Scarlett and Browne" by Jonathan Stroud

This guy knows how to end a series.

I mean, think about it. How should a series end? In my opinion, it's as follows: the author should tie up the outstanding plot threads (but not too neatly), the villains shouldn't get away with it, and the characters should finish their quests and get closure. And that's exactly what happens.

Scarlett |finds her missing brother|. Albert |gets to visit the ruins of the evil science institute he used to be imprisoned in|. I |redact a bunch of stuff behind spoiler bars|. The bad guys, |while not entirely defeated (this is not the sort of series where one topples an entire government), have at least been roundly smacked about|.

Oh, and we also get enough hints dropped about what happened before the apocalypse to figure out that it was probably |a nuclear war but with post-nuclear sci-fi weapons|. And honestly, that's all we need to know; it would have kind of messed with the book's pacing to suddenly get a giant lore dump on the subject.

I don't like this cover as much as I like the covers of the other two. It makes them look like kids. (Which I guess is because it is a middle-grade-to-YA series, but in the book, they're both like 18.) If there were an extant cover for this book that matched those, I'd use it; however, there doesn't seem to be, or if there is I can't find it.

As it turns out, I'm a bit of a sucker for post-apocalyptic things where |the old civilization had sci-fi tech and used it in a war, destroying itself|. Like, I even wrote one (that's the basic lore behind the world of my Ward-verse videogames).

There are some new villains in this. Well, I say "new"; they're really more like new enforcers for the old villains. They wear white bowler hats and are thus somewhat ironically called the White Hats, and they're somehow preternaturally good at fighting (like, snatch-a-throwing-knife-out-of-the-air good) and tough (like, survive-|getting-telekinetically-yeeted-halfway-across-a-city| tough). Plus they're armed with |pre-apocalypse weaponry| salvaged from |a pre-apocalypse bunker complex| the villains found.

The |previous book's villain|, Mallory, also |returns in this|; this may be due to Jonathan Stroud's seeming difficulty with |killing off characters|. Thankfully, despite |Mallory's edgy-psionic-boy| status, the narrative doesn't bend over backward to |accomodate him and make him look cool; he's lost most of his telepathic and telekinetic powers| thanks to getting |roundly defeated by Albert| in the previous book, and |he's actually kind of helpless| compared to Scarlett |(who's been surviving in the wilderness for years and knows how the world works)| and Albert |(who hasn't, but he has had two whole books of character development)|.

I could probably exposit for a while about how good a writer Jonathan Stroud is. He can plot. He has a way with words, especially dialogue, especially snappy and sarcastic dialog. He subverts expectations. And -- and this is probably the most important bit -- he doesn't put inappropriate content into his books.

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

4 stars.

(Endnote: If I had a nickel for every time I've read a YA or YA-ish series where the villains wore bowler hats and were named after them, I'd have two nickels, one from this and one from Vega Jane. That isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.)

"The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne" by Jonathan Stroud

So you know how I reviewed The Notorious Scarlett and Browne back in February of 2024? That was actually book two of a trilogy. This is the first book.

The evil organized universalists aren't as prevalant in this; neither are the not-Mafia. The plot mostly focuses on the evil science organization (mostly evil, not a lot of science) that Albert escaped from, and their attempts to recapture him. Both the evil organized universalists and the not-Mafia are present in this one, though, and the evil science organization is still a part of the next one.

Albert is rather useless in this. I suppose someone must have a character arc. He does get better over time, though.

 

I'd actually read this before, but I never reviewed it, and I'm not sure why I didn't. Maybe I wasn't in a reviewing mood. I do know that I read it before I had my collected series posts page, which means I wouldn't have been prompted to review it by the desire to see the series all nicely lined up on there. 

Jonathan Stroud has a knack for writing snappy dialogue.

I'm not entirely sure how old these characters are, in part because they aren't either. My best guess is eighteenish.

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

4 stars. I like this one's villain better than that of TNSaB, but I like Albert better in that one. He's less useless.

(Endnote: There's also a third book, The Legendary Scarlett and Browne. It was never released with a cover that matches the covers I've used in these reviews, which is somewhat of a shame, because I like this style of cover better.)

"The Chaos Grid" by Lyndsey Lewellen

The author, in her acknowledgements, describing when she picked up this as a half-finished product after leaving it alone for two years: "It was only halfway written. I had no idea how to end it."

*looks at ending*

Me: "Yeah, that tracks"

And that, I think, is the core of the problem with this book. It has a strong vision going for the first half, but then the main character completes her first journey, and... then what?

The author answered that question with a course of action that felt more like it should have been a second book.

Basically, the story takes place in an alternate future Texas where humans tried to fix global warming (or something) but accidentally broke the world instead, causing all sorts of weird mutated things and crazy weather to take over the land. They then built a bunch of cities inside giant domes, kicked out anyone they didn't like, let the farmers do their own thing because they still needed food, and started doing drugs.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the drugs are a recent development, but yeah. The main antagonist of this book is an evil company that makes drugs, and its minions and drug dealers are the secondary antagonists.

There's also rebels trying to blow up the domes and failing because the domes have their own army, and a bunch of Mad Max wannabes who do nothing but hunt the more giant of the weird mutated things.

Into all this steps our main character, Juniper, a teenage girl with a mysterious triangle necklace and a pair of dead parents. She doesn't want to be in any of the domes, but particularly in one specific dome because her parents died there, so she joins a bunch of monster truckers (who haul food between the domes and the farms-where-people-do-their-own-thing) to escape. Along the way she fights evil drug dealers, her mysterious necklace does mysterious things, there's this guy named Dax who's extremely abrasive and constantly wears sunglasses, and a couple of the monster truckers die.

Then she reaches the farm, and I think that's where the author left off the first time, because it sort of flails around for a while and then starts up something entirely different. Juniper wanders around the farm for a while, then after acquiring a two-headed bird of bad-omen-ness, heads back to a city and... infiltrates the rebels who keep failing to blow up the domes? And then returns to the farm? And then some more evil drug dealers show up, Dax-with-the-sunglasses removes his sunglasses and reveals that he's actually a cyborg supersoldier or something who can stop time, Juniper does more mysterious things with her mysterious necklace to take down the evil drug dealers (just this band of them though), Juniper blacks out for four days, she finally wakes up, and... the book ends.

Did they defeat the evil company that makes the drugs? Nope. Did they do anything to get closure for Juniper's parents' death? Nope. Did we ever find out what happened to Dax? Nope. Did they even make a start at defeating the evil drugs company? Not really.

I would have accepted that last one as an ending, because "actually completely defeat the evil drugs company" would be very hard to do in the last three-eighths of a 250-ish-page novel; the saga of Juniper versus Orange Pipe (or whatever the company is called) could easily have taken a five-book-series to fully flesh out. An ending of "let's get the band together and start pushing back against the drugs" would have tied up the story's themes pretty nicely. Unfortunately, instead we have "We're going back to the dome city and, uh, maybe we can do something there?"

(So she did sort of do what I was expecting, but only sort of.)

The second half almost felt like she was just throwing things in to advance the plot along, similar to how I plotted my first novel. (That book as it now stands will never see the light of day.)

In conclusion, the author's assertion that she didn't know how to end the story was actually pretty spot on.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A strong T for sci-fi violence and some veiled sexual references.

3 stars. If the plot had followed its original direction, it probably would have gotten 4, but as I explained above...

(Endnote: The hardcover editions of all the Enclave Publishing books I've seen have some sort of design embossed in shiny metallic stuff on the cover. I think The Burning Tree had a leaf, and Winter's Maiden had a cool rune circle thing.)

Mini-Reviews 14: It Starts With "The"

Title because the last four macro-reviews I've done have been of books whose titles start with the word "the", and the first two in this collection also do that.

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" by Edgar Allan Poe

This is a short story about hypnotism (the Victorians had a thing about it). Basically, it's a (fictional) recounting of what happens if you hypnotize someone right before they die. It's also, as befits Edgar Allan Poe, pretty creepy.

Also, apparently this was first published without explicitly claiming to be fiction? That would have been really creepy to read in the newspaper.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for body horror. I don't think it would make a very good game.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, fiction but historical, horror, rated T

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London

If this book hadn't been written in 1912, it would be rather suspect. For one, it uses the term "Aryan," which the Nazis ruined ("Aryan" has nothing intrinsically wrong with it, but the Nazi connotations make it practically unusable), and it's about a catastrophic plague that depopulated the world (thanks, Covid scaremongering).

Oh, and this actually superlethal plague? Happened, in-universe, in 2013. One year off from the whole "the world is ending in 2012" thing, and seven years off from the actual mass-panic-causing not-all-that-lethal still-kinda-around-but-no-one-cares plague we had.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for discussion of abuse.

3 stars.

Tags for this one: 3-star, post-apocalyptic, rated E10+

Hideout by Watt Key

You've had a bunch of classic SF, now get ready for true crime! But not actually true crime, because this is fiction. False crime.

Basically, a twelve-year-old boy discovers the secret swamp hideout of another twelve-year-old boy. The second one is waiting for his dad and his older brother to come find him once his dad gets out of prison. Unfortunately, |the dad is dead and the brother does criiiiiiiiiiime (i.e. grows marijuana) for a living (and is also not a nice person)|. It's a good thing that the first twelve-year-old boy has a police officer for a dad.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft T for drug reference (|that guy and his marijuana farm|), though nobody actually uses any.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, modern setting, rated T

(Endnote: All the 19th- and 20th-century SF I've been doing lately is thanks to an anthology I got. It has all that in it, plus a couple I didn't bother reading because they sounded boring.)

"Fantastic Creatures" anthology

This one isn't as good as the other one I reviewed, but I'm reviewing it anyway.

"Three Steaks and a Box of Chocolates" by A. R. Silverberry: Kind of boring, about a country doctor and a mountain man who has a mysterious monster friend. Its time period is somewhat ambiguous.

"Snapdragon" by Lea Doué: Local mom gets wronged by a man, overreacts, curses both daughters so they can technically never be wronged in that way but also their lives are super terrible now because the curses are poorly executed. Also kind of a retelling of Princess and the Frog.

 

"The Golden City Captives" by Julie C. Gilbert: A guy and his girlfriend get enslaved for the arena and then turn out to both be shapeshifters. Ended too abruptly for my taste.

 

"Seekers" by Intisar Khanani: A little girl has a knack for locating hidden things. |Turns out she's a selkie|. My synopsis is bad, but the story is decent.

"Mystery of Asgina Lake" by Caren Rich: Nobody believes the lake monster is real, except the sheriff's twin daughters. Who find the lake monster. It is not friendly. This one was fairly good.

"Skin Deep" by Morgan Smith: The first one that made me go "Welp, this is not as family-friendly as Tales of Ever After." Basically some girl has to get married to the prince, who's a horrific monster because fairies are jerks. And then {T15+ they play Strip Fantasy Dice Game}. There are so many other things that could have happened, my man! (well, woman, actually.) Did not love this one.

"The Last Chronicle of Pete Mersill" by David Millican: Evil life-draining beings have taken over the world and wrecked most of it. One guy murders a bunch of them. Then he dies (would spoiler tag that, but come on, look at the title.) Too bleak for my taste.

"Priscilla, the Magnificent, Flying Giant Squid" by L. Palmer: About a woman who honors her dead colleague by transporting a sentient kraken via dirigible, despite the fact that pretty much everyone else says A) sentient krakens don't exist and B) if they did, you couldn't transport them via dirigible. This one is okay.

"An Adventurer's Heart" by Nicole Zoltack: A vaguely Greek Mythology-flavored one with jewels that do magic stuff. Didn't love it, but it's not bad.

"Destiny's Flight" by Frank B. Luke: Needs more worldbuilding. Has a vaguely Old Testament flavor, but also a vaguely Medieval Crusades flavor. And some evil guys. Apparently written by a pastor, though I can't speak to what kind of pastor. This either needs to be more or less like Narnia.

 

"The Kappa" by Lelia Rose Foreman: Short, relatively pointless story that reads like a Japanese folktale (and may actually be one). It involves a kappa, because of course.

 

"Celebration" by Arthur Daigle: A king dies. Everyone's sad. Then a bunch of goblins steal the corpse, bury it, and celebrate because said king was actually decent to goblins (who aren't evil in this). This guy wrote my favorite story in the other one, and this story is similarly good.

 

"The Nether Lands" by David Millican: Yeesh. The one that involves demon hunting, and also 85% of the inappropriate-for-children content in the whole anthology. Did not like this one.

"Talori and the Shark" by Jessica L. Elliott: Feels like several fairy tales mashed into an unidentifiable paste and then formed back into a story. It's not my favorite, but definitely better than the previous one.

"Reviving the Sword" by Kandi J. Wyatt: A centaur attempts to re-empower her magic sword. Kind of boring.

"Mothers' Night Out" by D. G. Driver: Graphic violence! Basically the new hire at the daycare gets stuck babysitting all the employees' babies at night while their moms go do stuff. |Turns out they're all werewolves|. Did not like this one either.

"The Mage and the Spotted Wyvern" by Craig J. Price Jr.: A solid story, if not one with anything particularly special about it. Its plot is oddly hard to describe.

"The Very Last Dragon" by Katy Huth Jones: Imagine St. George and the Dragon, but told in a somewhat silly and satirical fashion. This one is okay.

 

"The Adventures of Zero: The Quest for Wormsroot" by Vincent Trigili: A kid attempts to go find a rare root so the village doctor/healer/alchemist will take him on as an apprentice. Fairly entertaining.

"Ishka's Garden" by Bokerah Brumley: A princess's fairy friend gets abducted, so the princess goes after her. Has a decent plot twist at the end.

"Absolutely True Facts about the Pacific Tree Octopus" by H. L. Burke: Little girl gets taken in by Internet hoax that turns out not to actually be hoax. Not great, not terrible.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for sexual references (I'm looking at you, The Nether Lands) and graphic violence ("Mothers' Night Out", anyone?)

3 stars, overall. Most of the stories are fairly okay, there's just a couple that are nyehhhhhh. I'm glad this is the first book in the series, as that means it improves as time goes on.

(Endnote: I'm willing to bet some fake internet points that there are very few other blog posts which use nyehhhhhh as a predicate adjective inside a dependent clause.)

"Edge of Extinction: The Ark Plan" by Laura Martin

What if this wasn't Jurassic Park? 

What if we resurrected dinosaurs anyway?

What if dinosaurs were actually super huge?

What if they killed almost everyone when they escaped captivity?

What if dinosaurs were now the dominant species?

What if everyone lived underground now?

What if your leaders were secretly evil?

 

What if you left the underground city?

 

What if you were terrible at surviving aboveground?

 

What if some people actually didn't live underground?

 

What if your former leaders wanted to recapture you?

What if you eluded them?

What if this were a videogame? What if I rated it E10+ for violence?

What if I gave this book 4 stars?

(What if I had an endnote? What if I wrote this entire post in what-ifs?)

"The Notorious Scarlett and Browne" by Jonathan Stroud

Well, we're back in the land of relatively good books again, everyone. (At least for a bit. I'm not sure if my luck will hold.)

 

Basically, it's about a couple of late-teens outlaws (Scarlett McCain and Albert Browne, because we had to have our color-names theme) who wander around in dystopian post-apocalyptic England robbing the rich to feed the poor (at Albert's insistence; giving Scarlett money is a good way for that money to find its way into an unknown void). They're pretty much your classic fighter-and-mage duo; Scarlett is good with guns and pretty much any other weapons you hand her, and Albert has various apocalypse-induced anomalous powers like reading minds and occasionally telekinesis (in stressful moments).

The book kicks off with the pair of them breaking into the underground treasure vault of a not!church run by le badguys. (More on them later). It continues with them trying to escape le badguys (henceforth the not-Inquisition) and some other villains (I'll call them the not-Mafia) as they try to get at the main characters for various nefarious reasons. The not-Inquisition apparently has been collecting up psions like Albert to... I don't actually know what they want with Albert and the rest of the psions. Buuuut they keep throwing this one guy at Albert, and by extension Scarlett because she's connected to Albert and doesn't have enough caution to not pick fights with edgy weirdos.

There's also a bunch of stuff with a |sunken city| that the not-Inquisition controls and the not-Mafia wants to loot. So, naturally, our main characters get sent there by Scarlett's friends/contacts/handlers/nemeses in the not-Mafia.

As promised, more on the not-Inquisition. At first glance, these guys seem like a textbook example of Organized Religion Is Evil™. However, while that normally feels like a cheap stab at Christianity, these guys (well, their parent organization) are more like universalists. ("Evil organized universalists" isn't a phrase you hear every day, is it?) Since my stance on universalism is "wouldn't it be nice, but unfortunately it doesn't work like that," this doesn't bother me as much.

Also, these guys aren't even good at universalism. It's hard to be bad at something that's basically the Calvinball of religion, but they manage it. It's like if they looked at the medieval/Renaissance Catholic church and said, "What if this, but universalist." So on the one hand, they're even terrible at heresy; on the other hand, they're basically running most of dystopian post-apocalyptic England via the not-Inquisition and executing people for defying them.

Yep. This has been Silly Songs with Larry a long-winded explanation of why despite its villain being of a type that I don't usually like, I rate this book 4 stars.

And were it a videogame, I'd rate it: A very stern T for content: swearing. (Man, it's nice to be doing a content warning that's just swearwords. I used to think those were all Inappropriate Content that adults talked about.) It's mostly traditional and/or British-specific language; I can think of maybe one instance anyone uses a modern obscenity, and that one's fairly mild.

(Endnote: I rather liked that the two title characters have a completely platonic friendship. That was nice. Although, I looked back, and most of the books I've been reviewing have had pretty much no romance in them? Maybe it's just the expectation that when your protagonists [or protagonist and deuteragonist] are a boy and a girl, they'll obviously get together or at least liiiiike each other? If you have any thoughts on that, let me know.)