Mississippi Roll

Mississippi Roll is the 24th book in the Wild Cards series published by Tor Books. There are 5 stories bound together by a segue/interlude story written by Steven Leigh. The book credits G.R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass as editor/assistant editor respectively.

I remember picking up the original books in the series in about 1987(ish) and loving the whole idea of a shared universe anthology series.  I'm already a huge fan of anthologies because there are always at least some stories that appeal at any given time and there are always new-to-me authors to follow up on after devouring the anthology.  I'm also very fond of short fiction because it provides a whole different set of problems and it's always fun (and often enlightening) to see how authors adapt to the constraints of a shorter narrative.

This book is 336 pages of well edited and curated fantasy goodness.  If you're familiar with the wildcards universe and premise, this is a good one. If you're not familiar with wildcards before now, this is a very good standalone novel to introduce the concept and some of the characters.

I loved the character Steam Wilbur ("In the Shadow of Tall Stacks" Steven Leigh). That's him on the cover. Leigh's interlude stories give the whole anthology a nice cohesiveness.

The stories are all strong, but I especially loved "A Big Break in the Small Time" by Carrie Vaughn.  I couldn't stop smiling reading it.  Deftly written and exciting and I'm a total sucker for couples who really care about one another.  Sweet!

Four and a half stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

The Linking Rings

The Linking Rings is the 4th Eli Marks mystery by John Gaspard.  I read it as a standalone and it worked very well.  I intend to chase down the first three books in the series.

The 'hook' for the series is that the main characters are, and the action happens around, magicians and their performances.  The main character, Eli, is a performer and co-owns a magic store with his famous uncle Harry, also a magician.  Harry and Eli are off to London for a special set of performances at a famous magic venue, The Magic Circle.  The performance schedule is upended when one of Uncle Harry's former cronies, Oskar, is literally stabbed in the back by a chair prop on their first night.

This is a traditional whodunnit.  The characters are maybe a bit standard (the bumbler, the femme fatale, the lush, the womanizer, etc), but they're pretty well written and the book is a fun read. The dialogue is well written and the foreshadowing and clues are presented creatively and relatively subtly. One thing I really enjoyed a lot about this book was the humor.  The main characters definitely don't take themselves too seriously and the dialogue is often sparkling and witty. I really liked the repartee and patter between Roy and his wife, Roxanne; they seemed to genuinely like one another (at least under the surface).

This is a clean mystery and the murders (though one of them is fairly horrific) are all written tamely and without graphic descriptions.  The dialogue is also clean and except for an occasional 'hell' or 'damn' has nothing which will dismay readers.

I enjoyed it very much and recommend it to lovers of classic amateur sleuth fiction.  One small caveat, the author writes at a couple of different points in the book that Eli's uncle Harry is being held because murder is 'a capital crime' in the UK.  I thought at first that the book itself was set pre-1965 (the point at which capital punishment was abolished in Great Britain), but then the author talks about clearly modern landmarks like the London Eye. It's not a huge discrepancy and it doesn't have any overall effect on the plot, so it isn't going to be any sort of issue for the vast majority of readers.

I intend to find the first three books in the series, high praise from me.

Four stars, well written and entertaining.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

Black Goat Blues

Black Goat Blues is the second book in the Mythos War series by Levi Black. I read this book out of order as a standalone and was immediately drawn into the story and wound up reading it in one sitting. After finishing it, I sourced the first book and am looking forward to reading it as soon as I can.

This is a Lovecraftian horror urban fantasy with all the trimmings.  There are elder gods aplenty, machinations, revenge, crazy (extremely creepy) cultists, a brooding atmosphere which explodes into action, and there's even a backwoods horror filled semi-homage to classics with a 'Deliverance'/'Chainsaw Massacre' vibe.  The protagonist is a wonderfully flawed character with a serious attitude and an unswerving mission.  She (yes, she's female) is deeply vulnerable and nevertheless badass.  She walks around in a flowing semi-sentient black leather coat made from the flayed skin of a fallen angel.  She winds up collecting and inspiring a 'crew' on her stated mission to track down and kill her former mentor, Nyarlathotep, a.k.a. The Man in Black.  Her crew includes a skinned hell-hound originally sent to hunt her down, a damaged young man bent on personal revenge who is accidentally sucked into her world and the goddess Ashtoreth.

This book is powerfully written.  The dialogue is machine gun fast and pitch perfect.  The writing is spare and electric.  It's literally nonstop taut creepy action for 288 pages.  The denouement is satisfying and inevitable and left me really wanting to read the next book in the series.

I'm generally not a huge fan of horror.  I make an exception for Lovecraft pastiches and I'm so glad I did.  This is high octane stuff; extremely well written.

Available in hardcover, ebook and audiobook formats, 288 pages, from Tor-Forge (Macmillan).

Five stars, super creepy and very very well written

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

The Tethered Mage

The Tethered Mage is the first book in the Swords and Fire series, by Melissa Caruso, from Orbit Books.

I really enjoyed the heck out of this book.  The world building is fascinating and detailed, the magic system is internally cohesive and believable and the political machinations for power (very loosely based on the great dynasties of  renaissance Italy and environs) are well wrought and complex.

This is a substantial book, 438 pages, but tautly plotted and it never dragged. There are several plotlines, well interwoven into an epic story arc. I was very surprised that this is a debut novel; the author has a very strong voice and a gift with dialogue.

Other reviewers have done a very good job of describing the plot and characters.  I really enjoyed the lushness of the setting (which reminded me a lot of Venice) and the way that the fire mage Zaira was not easily won over.  Her unwilling partnership with a 'handler' of a different class and background was organic and well written, it wasn't just a few paragraphs of whining and then besties forever.

There were several mystery subplots which were deftly handled and the denoument was exciting and perfectly paced.  I'm really looking forward to the next installments.

I would not precisely classify this as YA.  It would be appropriate for older YA readers, but also fine for any epic fantasy fans, whatever their age.

Four and a half stars, looking forward to what comes next!

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

A Scandal in Battersea

This is the 12th book in the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey from Berkley Publishing.

An ensemble cast including Nan and Sarah, their birds, assorted elementals, Sherlock Holmes, John and Mary Watson plus others from earlier books in the series do battle with, well, 'Cthulu lite' in an alternate-earth in Victorian London.

There are few iconic fictional characters with a more passionate following than Sherlock Holmes.  There are numerous serious groups who study the Holmes canon and meet to have dinner and debate the finer points of Conan Doyle's extant oeuvre.  For those folks, this book and the one previous (A Study in Sable, #11), would certainly bring on apoplexy.

While I love traditional Holmes and have read them many many times, that hasn't stopped me from enjoying the rich abundance of Holmes pastiches and modern narratives.  For those people who are a little stricter in their acceptance of ersatz Holmes, it can be said in defense of this installment that Holmes himself isn't really a central character, more of recurring cameo.  I didn't find his presence distracting at all.  I don't know that I would have rated him a cover appearance (though the cover art is beautiful), he doesn't appear all that much in the book.

My main problem with the book was that I found myself repeatedly jerked out of the story by the really over the top 'dialect' dialogue.  Much of the time I found myself almost having to translate phonetically to see what they were trying to say.  That was my biggest grumble with the book and it certainly wasn't insurmountable, just annoying.

This is a Mercedes Lackey book, the good characters are good, the villains are villainous and there isn't much any blending.

I found it comfortably readable, entertaining and distracting.  I loved the scene with the panto, and I love little Suki.

Four stars, it was exactly as expected, thank goodness.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.