Travis

The Facefaker's Game by Chandler J. Birch has been called equal parts Dickens, Sanderson, and Lynch. It combines a fun illusion-based magic system, a gang of thieves, and strange monsters that lurk the streets at night.

Most of the book takes place in Burroughside, the slums of Teranis. It's filled with crews of child gangs and cannibalistic monsters roam the streets after dark. The elite of society possess the ability to magically compel adulation from anyone that sees them.

Instead of gods, people worship Faces. It's a bit unclear what Faces actually are, though each is named for a trait. There's the Face of Cunning, Face of Kindness, etc. This theme of faces also ties into the magic system, which is almost entirely based on illusion.

The two main types of magic users are Weavers and Stitchers. Weavers can quickly cast illusions by gathering and manipulating light, often creating false faces to wear about the city. These illusions can be anchored to everyday items, so you might find a noble with a ring that makes them look taller and more handsome. Stitchers are slower at creating illusions than Weavers, but they can craft finer details and there are almost permanent.

The book follows a relatively small cast of core characters, each with their own unique quirks and personalities. The “gang of thieves” aspect reminded me of The Lies of Locke Lamora, but with more fleshed-out secondary characters.

Ashes is a street thief with no memory of his past before he came to Burroughside. He used to be a part of a gang, but he had to leave that behind to protect his friend Blimey from Ragged. He catches the eye of a daring thief known as Candlestick Jack and is invited to join his crew, learning magic along the way.

Brent Weeks has praised this novel, and for good reason. The writing style reminds me significantly of Weeks: fun magic, likable characters, and conflict in every scene. While the prose might not be the most refined, the pacing makes this book difficult to put down.

If you like fun worlds with interesting magic systems, characters with amnesia, or a good old-fashioned heist, you will probably enjoy this book. The plot moves quickly and the author does a nice job of introducing the worldbuilding without too much exposition.

Don't go into this expecting deep themes, rich prose, or an overly complex plot. I was able to predict several of the twists near the end, but that didn't hurt my enjoyment of the book.

Overall, this was an incredibly fun read. It wasn't perfect, but I found myself reading late into the night.

Octavia Butler doesn't miss, and this was unsurprisingly a great read. But wow was it uncomfortable at times.

The main vampire is actually 53 years old, but looks like a 10-year-old girl. She has amnesia and doesn't remember anything from before, including that she is a vampire. Vampires regularly have sex with humans who are 20+ years old. Taken together, these points lead to some extremely uncomfortable moments early on.

That said, Butler excels at writing “alien” characters. The vampires here are different than any I've read before, and learning about their culture was one of the main draws of the book for me.

Overall, this was a very good book, but I fully understand why this is not what Butler is remembered for.

I like the second book quite a bit but this felt like it was just going through the motions to finish the series. The Big Bad never felt ominous, the character deaths were very easy to see coming, the plot felt like a way around taking down an enemy they didn't actually have a good idea how to defeat. Several scenes had a lot of build up and no payoff. There was also a good bit of attempting to raise emotional stakes by constantly flashing back to scenes before the series, but that often falls flat for me. It's strange to have a tense scene and then “oh hey this would be better with some emotion, lets have a flashback” thrown in.

Oddly enough once the winding down scenes at the end of the book started I was interested again. Despite this being a let down I'm actually somewhat optimistic about the Fragile Threads of Power sequel series.

Ten Reasons Why Red Sister is My Favorite Mark Lawrence Book Yet

1. Unlike his Broken Empire and Red Queen's War trilogies, this series is set in a world that feels uniquely original and distinctive from our own. The sun is dying, and its left the world entirely covered in ice, except for a narrow band of livable land around the equator.

2. For the first time, I was able to see Lawrence try his hand at a detailed magic system with clear rules and costs. Which makes sense, considering this is a “magic school” series. For those of you that prefer your magic mysterious, worry not: there's enough left unknown to keep things from ever becoming predictable.

3. Speaking of magic schools, Red Sister sidesteps many of the traditional pitfalls of magic schools, avoiding info-dumps by teaching us new aspects of magic through thwarted assassinations, political scheming, and bloody fights between rival students.

4. As always, the prose is beautiful. If you thought the opening lines were awesome (and they are!), the rest of the book will absolutely not disappoint.

5. Red Sister has all of Lawrence's characteristic flair for darkness, but this time he drops the “grim.”

6. Yes, there's a chosen one. No, it's not the main character.

7. There's a prophecy. Some people believe it, some don't. Everyone tries to twist it to their own advantage.

8. There's a deep cast of characters, with even the tertiary characters feeling fleshed-out and alive. I cared more for the lead characters in Red Sister than I have in past Lawrence series, and I hated the villains with a passion I normally reserved for Robin Hobb's antagonists. Plus, Lawrence lays to rest the question of whether he can right compelling women. Spoiler alert: he can!

9. Going against the tried-and-true adventure nature of its predecessors, Red Sister is almost entirely set in one location. This never gets boring.

10. Red Sister feels like something new and special, even by the high standards Mark Lawrence established in his previous books. It strikes an ideal balance between light and dark, making this a book that will appeal to many readers who thought Lawrence's other books too bleak.

I received an ARC of this book from Tor.com Publishing in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I think I can safely say that I've never read another book like Gideon the Ninth. Which is hardly surprising, given that the majority of the story involves queer necromancers and rapier-wielding warriors competing against each other in a haunted palace while slowly being killed off by eldritch horrors...in space.

Sounds like just another Tolkien clone hero's journey that's been done to death, right?

Muir wastes no time in establishing that Gideon is not your ordinary SFF hero. Sure, she may be an orphan with mysterious parentage who longs to escape her miserable life as a servant of the Emperor's Ninth House at the edge of the universe. But she wouldn't dream of doing that without her dirty magazines, vulgar jokes, and almost-but-not-quite occasional breaking of the fourth wall.

Gideon's chance at escape comes when the immortal Emperor summons the necromantic heirs of each of the nine houses to a deadly trial of skill and wit. Harrowhark Nonagesimus—bone necromancer extraordinaire, heir to the Ninth House, and Gideon's lifelong nemesis—forcibly recruits Gideon to be her cavalier. As cavalier, Gideon will have to use her considerable skill with the sword to protect Harrow throughout the competition...if she can avoid killing her first.

Harrow and Gideon are brilliant characters in their own right, and the murderous semi-sexual tension between them never grew old. Harrow's unbending need for total control and Gideon's irreverent inability to take anything completely seriously made them wonderful foils for each other as well. There are plenty of interesting side characters, some more memorable than others, but the core cast were some of the most interesting characters I've read in years.

For a book that so strongly centers around the characters, I was floored by the carefully structured plot and intricate worldbuilding. Muir unapologetically borrows elements of murder mysteries, gothic horror, and sword-swinging dungeon crawls, stitching them together into a beautiful abomination of necromantic awesomeness. If you like detailed, visceral magic systems that make you want to pump your fist in excitement and simultaneously take a long, hot shower...this is for you. Muir's necromancy doesn't come cheap, and sweating copious amounts of blood is nowhere near the worst cost the characters have to pay.

For much of the story, we're as clueless about what's going on as the characters. But once the pieces start to fall in place... Let's just say I'll be preordering the sequel as soon as I possibly can.

This was the perfect book to pull me out of a months-long reading slump. Muir's debut novel is bone-rattling great and will undoubtedly make waves when it releases in September 2019.

More reviews at The Fantasy Inn.