I love a good, dark twist on classic fairy tales, and on that front, “Second Hand Curses” definitely delivered. Our main characters (Jack, Frank, and Marie) have formed a mercenary band that tackles the jobs that are deemed “morally grey” by the Narrative—which is this land’s more active god figure, swooping in to help princesses and good guys in danger. In this land, beings like the Blue Fairy are not good, where their boons are curses (usually barely in disguise) and our mercenary trio will not stand for that. So, tell me why then, when you have a story that sounds like it should be an exciting, twisty adventure that’s read by a group of great narrators, was I not having more fun?
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I’ve never read a purely cozy fantasy before. I didn’t know that such a genre existed, but it was a nice departure from the high stakes “the hero has to save the world from destruction” narrative that most high fantasy stories adopt. “Legends & Lattes” follows Viv, an orc who has retired from the adventuring life in order to open a coffee shop in an area where coffee and lattes are foreign words and abstract concepts. Can she do it? Will her little café survive? Those are the stakes. They are low and endearing and, even though a good portion of the book is just Viv and her friends literally building and setting up her shop, it was never boring and surprisingly sweet and engaging. “The Vassal of Falhara” is a whimsical “chosen one” story featuring a cast of characters all derived from different animals. You have the Purebreeds—humanoid animals that are just one type (racoon, bear etc.) and then you have the Chimera—humanoid animals that combine different breeds. To say the two races don’t like each other is a bit of an understatement, as the Purebreeds often raid the villages of the Chimera and turn them into slaves. That’s where this story starts: our MC, Morgan, has her village raided, her father killed, her mother taken as a slave, and she left to die. Determined to fulfill her father’s dying wish and save her mother, Morgan sets out to find where they have taken her, only to discover along the way that the dying goddess, Falhara, has made Morgan her Vassal. Thankfully saving her mother and bringing Falhara back are closely tied together. But despite the dire circumstances of Morgan’s quest and the danger she finds herself in as she crosses Purebreed territory, I never once really worried for her or questioned that she would succeed. So, if you are looking for low stakes, whimsical, very YA fantasy book, you may enjoy this one. Here we are, back again in the Grishaverse where our Grisha favorites and their demon King are on the verge of all out war. “Rule of Wolves” picks up pretty much right where we left off in “King of Scars”, but Bardugo really understands that there are readers (like me) who take obscenely long to finish a series so she sprinkles subtle reminders of the big events throughout the first 30% of the book, so even though it’s been a while, very quickly I was immersed in the world again and head down in the story. Seriously, for this book being so intimidatingly long, it was a smooth and easy read; Bardugo is master of knowing when to switch POV’s so that I constantly want to keep reading to progress each individual character’s story lines! Plus, the way she handles the conflict between Ravka and Frejda and the horrors of escalating war with bigger and bigger weapons was perfectly done, and that’s on top of the smooth way the author is able to include a diverse cast and the prejudices those characters deal with. I was thoroughly impressed with both the story and the characters in this second book to say the least! In fact, there were only a few things that bothered me, which were made all the more frustrating because they were things I used to love in this universe. I loved the first book in the Skysail Saga, “The Apotheosis Break”. But I read the first book in 2017, not terribly long after it first came out, and the sequel, “The Gestalt Job” was published at the end of 2019. So, to say there has been a lapse where I had a hard time remembering important details would be an understatement. Which wasn’t helped by the fact that this book starts with our main character, Vasili, having forgotten big chunks of what occurred in the previous adventure as well. It’s part of the mystery woven throughout the whole story, so it is by design, but even so. Vasili remembers bits and pieces of his past adventure, the theft of the shard at a nobles party, the betrayal, a lost friend, and his own harrowing escape, but what he doesn’t remember is how he got from that escape to being back on the airship with the same crew who might have been the cause of that betrayal. The same crew who still don’t seem to want to, or are able to, tell Vasili about the one thing he craves above all else: stories of the father he never knew. A lot of the themes in this book are the same as its predecessor: innocent, naïve little Vasili fumbling in a world he doesn’t understand but is determined to be Vasili the Brave all the same. So, what I wanted were the answers Vasili has been on a quest for over the course of this series. Instead, the mystery only got deeper. |
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