'Huntress'-by-Malinda-Lo

‘Huntress’ by Malinda Lo

Black magic, action, emotional rollercoaster and romance are all over the place in this book. Malinda Lo represents Chinese literature in two praised manners: as a great writer with obvious Chinese literature and tradition influence, as well as a great female fantasy writer with obvious influence of the modern fantasy literature trends.

The mere beginning of the book sets scenography upside down. The nature is collapsing and the humanity is endangered by severe unnatural events and the emerging of dark magic and obscure creatures. The book starts within the atmosphere of endless night, since the sun collapsed and you will immediately be pulled into the tension and excitement of the mere overall setting. The main protagonists of the book are two teenage girls, Kaede and Taisin, that will spend the rest of the book in an exquisite journey through the wicked outer world, as well as through their inner worlds and intimate relation.

Taisin carries the talent and the curse of magic power, while Kaede is just a common, earthly teenage girl, destined to join her life journey with Taisin. They’re seventeen years old and sent to a journey to the cursed city of Tailili to face and fight Fairy Queen, which appears to be the last chance for humanity survival. The journey will force them to overcome numerous challenges, some in the form of an actual action, dangers and obstacles, while others will test their morality, loyalty, character traits and faith into one another. Forced to lean on each other and grow over some tough psychological challenges, two girls will bond strongly, even develop the unique form of romance.

Unfortunately, the action plot will test their relationship in so many ways, including the final test when it turns out that only one of them may save the humanity, which might tear their bondage for good. Along the long and stressful road, two huntresses will face their fellows succumb to various black magic dangers, get killed or drawn to the evil world of Queens spells and reign.

Three main strong aspects of this book refer to writer enormous talent to meticulously lead you through delicate emotional changes, talent to pull you into vividly described atmosphere with all the lush and tradition in Chine and finally the writer’s talent to keep you stuck to the book compulsively while array of actions and adventures keep you excited and astonished. It will also refresh you emotionally with numerous situations where girls’ characters are tested, temped and changed for good or worse.

As one of the highlighted sentences in the book states: “Making a decision isn’t about knowing every potential consequence. It’s about knowing what you want and chasing a path that takes you in that direction”. Although the story is thick with particular events and strong characters, it carries one etheric eternal point and numerous powerful insights that will mark you once you’re done reading this great piece of female fantasy literature.

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A darker shade of magic by V. E. Shcwab

“I’m not going to die,” she said. “Not till I’ve seen it.”
“Seen what?”
Her smile widened. “Everything.”

This sentence cropped from one of the chapters of this marvelous book will strike you as the main impression once you’re done reading. And you will read it, compulsively, just like it says – until you’ve seen it all. And you will see a lot. The book follows four paralel worlds placed in four different Londons divided by ages, each of them with specific social atmosphere, ruler, troubles, leading traits and motives. Each of them somehow colored differently, as one of the main protagonists of the book, Kell, sees them: Red, Grey, White and Black London.

Two main protagonists of the book, Kell and Delilah Bard appear at the mere beginning of the book, but it’s only in the second part of the book they actually meet and their lives interact into a truly inspiring adventure and finally some sort of intimate relation. Kell and Delilah are both complex personalities, completely opposite in some aspects and Victoria Schwab takes her time and patience to slowly and meticulously construct their personalities and private lives.

She also takes her time to take you to each of the four mentioned Londons, so you can vividly experience authentic atmosphere and the rules of everyday live in each London. Along with the plot lines following four Londons, you will learn the delicate laws of the magic. Kell is one the last Antari magicians with the ability to travel between these parallel Londons through ages and serve different roles in each of them. Mostly, he is a smuggler, trading his power for goods by taking curious and adventurous passenger from one London to another. However, Kell will portrait some strong moral laws, ethics, lust for truth, honesty, justice and bravery in spite of his smuggling way of survival. On the other hand, Delilah is a small thief stealing mostly purses to survive tough poverty, is eager to fight for her personal freedom and doesn’t stress much about moral probity or laws.

Two common traits these two have is lack of true relations and trust towards people, as well as longing to honestly connect with someone. Another common aspect that will finally unite them is a dangerous smuggled item with the power to endanger all four Londons and potentially destroy them.

Schwab united Kell and Delilah in the other part of the book in an adventurous attempt to survive in order to save four parallel worlds. Intimate relations, inner changes, character challenges and actual triller plots will occur along their adventurous road.

As quite solid fantasy book, this story has unexpectedly good character development, strong psychology background and realistic moral dilemmas, astonishing history insights, vivid descriptions and picturizing of scenography and finally – capturing exciting plot twists that will keep you stuck to the book all till the end. Until you have seen it all. And read the center point of this great book: “I’d rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”

 

 

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Also reading…

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For our seasonal themes during May, Rachel has been focusing on interplanetary sci-fi, while Joanna has been reading about time travel. We’ve also featured reviews of a climate-focused near future thriller, the start of a charming new high fantasy series, and a smart, philosophical historical fantasy.

The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish

Since we are focused onto reading science fiction novels written by great female authors, we find it inevitable to mention and recommend probably the first ever written science fiction novel, The Blazing world by Margaret Cavendish. If you have missed this ultimate best seller, now is the moment to catch up with it. This classic, pioneering sci-fi novel tells a story about the women reaching North Pole and entering the magic world of surreal creatures from there. Once in the surreal world, she becomes the ruler of it and commands the invasion of her homeland taking you to impressive adventure.

The Selection by Kiera Cass

The Selection is the process through which a prince of Illéa finds a wife: a lengthy, televised spectacle in which thirty-five young women are picked to live in the palace and get to know the prince. America Singer doesn’t want to be a princess, and is determined to marry for love. She only fills in the application form because her parents and her boyfriend both encourage her to take the chance, but predictably enough, when she actually meets Prince Maxon she finds he has a certain charm. This has all the makings of a rags-to-riches romance, and on the surface this is a gentle romantic comedy, but the setting is a dystopian future and there are hints of unrest in the form of rebel attacks and suppressed histories that look set to be expanded in the later books. I enjoyed America’s growth through the story, too, as she learns to cope with difficult, unfamiliar situations and to put her own needs first.

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

Verity Price is a ballroom dancer, cocktail waitress… and trained cryptozoologist who shares her apartment with a colony of talking mice. I adored the Aeslin mice, who have extensive religious ceremonies to commemorate anything and everything that’s ever happened to the Price family, and whose presence gives rise to a number of laugh-out-loud moments. Verity is running across the Manhattan rooftops when she bumps into a member of the Covenant, a secret organisation aiming to wipe out the supernatural wildlife Verity and her family have sworn to protect. Fun and lighthearted, with a twist of romance and no shortage of humour, a charming cast, and a complex ecosystem of supernatural beings. (Did I mention how much I love the mice?)

Fluency by Jennifer Foehner Wells

Dr Jane Holloway is recruited for a very unusual mission, one of a small crew selected to travel out to an alien vessel stranded in the asteroid belt. Holloway has a strong background in field linguistics, which isn’t the most natural background for an astronaut, but her skills are in demand: fundamentally, this is a first contact mission, and NASA wants to stand a chance of understanding and communicating with any surviving aliens. I have to confess that, as an academic linguist myself, I was looking forward to some sophisticated linguistic enquiry at this point — but instead there’s a clever shortcut that reads a lot like telepathy. The story is well-paced, though, with interesting crew dynamics including a little romance, so there was plenty to keep me turning the pages.

 

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Bessie Bell and the Goblin King by Charlotte E. English

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Series note: Bessie Bell and the Goblin King is the third Aylfenhame novel, but although the stories are intertwined, and it was nice to see that some well established characters have a role to play here, these are books that work equally well out of sequence.
Horses loomed abruptly out of the mist: a matched pair, black as night. Bess tensed, her heart pounding wildly as the equipage barrelled down upon her. The horses snorted and neighed in surprise at finding an obstacle in their path, and one of them shied. Bess heard a male voice cursing. She waited until the last possible instant before leaping aside, heart palpitating with terror — and hope, that her foolish gambit had been enough.

 

For a moment it looked as though the carriage would not stop, and Bess’s spirits sank. It bowled on, sweeping past her in a flurry of wind and the scent of sweating horse, and was swallowed up by the mist once more.

But the sound of hoofbeats slowed, and then stopped abruptly. It was not the gradual fading of the horses disappearing into the fog, and Bess’s hopes rose again. She clutched a shaking Derritharn to herself and stepped back into the road, hurrying after the coach.

When she grew nearer to the vehicle, she was able to see at once that it was not a mail-coach after all, nor anything nearly so large — or so promising. It was a gentleman’s carriage, the kind that seated but one or two, and the driver was the sole occupant. Oddly, there was no sign of the lanterns she had seen in the distance.

Bessie is a servant in a grand Lincolnshire manor house; the days are long and hard, but though her life is difficult, it isn’t intolerable… until the day she fends off a sexual assault from the master of the house and finds herself dismissed and evicted for her trouble. Thrown out in the middle of the night, without money or references, Bess has nothing to rely on except her wits and strength of character.

When she fails to find a farm or an inn, Bess flags down the first passing carriage, hoping for a lift back to civilisation. What she gets instead is the strange and infuriating Mr Green, and finds herself flung into the middle of a quest to hunt down and capture the nightmarish, flame-eyed steed known as Tatterfoal. Bess is friends with a brownie, so she knows something of Aylfenhame and its inhabitants, but though Tatterfoal is used as a cautionary tale for children, he been seen in Lincolnshire for decades. And Mr Green approaches this legendary horror without hesitation, and talks to it with no small degree of familiarity.

I loved Bess from the first page. She’s smart beyond her years and has a dry, cutting sense of humour that kept me laughing throughout the book. When Mr Green attempts to correct her grammar at their first meeting, she takes it easily in her stride and turns his words back on him with a brief sociological analysis of her own:

“That’s the way,” agreed Bess. “Find fault wi’ my speech, and you set yourself nice and high over the likes of me.” She smiled as she spoke, but her words were born of frustration. It was of no use to her for him to quibble, either about local geography or about her grammar.

The gentleman looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Some would call it unwise, to give sauce to your betters. Especially when that better is a stranger, and you are alone, and it is late at night.”

Bessie smiled, and patted the nose of the nearest of his horses. “No sauce, sir,” she said blithely. “I’m admirin’ your strategy. Tis a sound one, and I’m thinkin’ you’ve had some practice.”

The relationship between Bess and Mr Green, better known as Grunewald, is a fiery one from the start, though they quickly find a mutual respect despite their bickering. And when it emerges that Tatterfoal’s presence is linked to an apparent doppelganger of Grunewald’s, Bess is determined to do whatever she can to assist him in solving the mystery.

Charlotte E. English is one of the female fantasy writers gaining significant popularity over the last few years. Charlotte is a born English, as her surname suggests, but has emigrated into Netherlands in an early phase of her life. Nevertheless, she kept so much of England in her authentic writing style and story plotting manner. Her fantasy novels are eloquent, colorful, exciting, spiced with typical British humor and observations, as well as a lot of tea, apologies and other common British customs. If you get hooked up with this novel, we recommend searching for more from this great author. 

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Happy Birthday To Us!

In the age of fast information and sensational articles cropping the actual body of the article down to minimum not to risk losing reader’s attention, it’s hard, but also a supreme pleasure to gather old-fashion, traditional book lovers and people passionate about reading quality literature. Two of us have this kind of relation and we keep growing along as we expand our private libraries and increase the number of read and reviewed books. The internet has given us priceless opportunity to share our passion and interest with everyone reading us regularly here at the Strange Charm blog.

Strange Charm is three years old today! We’ve had an amazing years of reading, covering Alternate History, Fantasy Romance, Transhumanism, Food and Musical magic, as well as a spectacular array of recent releases. We’re so impressed by the strength and variety of women’s writing in every area of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and look forward to another equally amazing year ahead.

But for now we’re celebrating our birthday in style with plenty of cake and presents. We’ve eaten the cake ourselves (sorry), but the presents are for you. We’ve each picked out three of our favorite books from the last year, and we’re going to send them all to one lucky reader in a spectacular surprise parcel along with some handwritten notes and other goodies.

We reckon the best presents are carefully-chosen surprises, so we’re not going to tell you in advance which books are in the parcel, but it’s a really exciting selection, and together they represent the very best that the past year has had to offer (they’ve all been featured here too).

To enter our giveaway, just follow the link to Rafflecopter here. Open to all UK residents; entries will be accepted until 23:59 (GMT) on 7th November 2016.

Finally, thank you to everyone who supports Strange Charm, by reading, commenting, tweeting, and following. We’ve had an absolute blast doing this for the past two years, and you guys make it so worthwhile — we couldn’t do it without you!

Joanna & Rachel

poison-kiss

Poison Kiss by Ana Mardoll

There are a lot of clichés surrounding both female writing and every present fairytales of a mankind and this book is an exclusive game changer for all these stereotypical points of view. Many boundaries will be crossed and altered as you progress with reading. If you nurture rigid, narrow-minded opinions, this book might come as a shock to you or you may even find it repulsive, but if you loosen up your string and just let the plot take you to the journey, the story will open you for some completely different approaches to many everyday issues.

Ana Mardoll did not write an ordinary fiction centered around fairytales. Abandon your expectations that this will be a common story about fairies captivating humans to take them to some wonderland where all the Earth troubles are gone. Quite opposite. This fairytale will present you the idea of evil fairytalish world and inspire you to nourish your love for this world and all the diversity of human faulty world. Reading common literature, you wouldn’t expect any book hero to willingly escape the land of fairies. Main characters of this book will.

Rose and Lavender are two bi ladies enslaved by the May Queen, taken to through the portal into the fairy land to serve the Queen in her evil adventures motivated by her boredom, selfishness, sadism and lust for power. Both of them are promoted into the Queen’s executioners and the sins conducted during this mission will mark them for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the seductive power of evil in the fairy land would turn these two women into obeying Queen’s soldiers if there wasn’t for scarce traces of their memories from their Earthy life that kept them longing for return to the Earth and motivate their escape. Once back to Earth, these two realize they are changed irreversibly, marked by previous traumas and struggle to restore their inner and outer lives back. Rose is cursed with the venom of her poison kiss, which works as a perfect metaphor for physical distance emotionally closed people make after they’ve been hurt one too many times. Psychological background of the story complicates once the Silver man, Clarent, enters the lives of Rose and Lavender. This encounter triggers forming of mysterious community of fairyland survivors, but it also brings the polyamorous relation under the spotlight.

The rest of the story will take you through the journey of these people struggling to establish their routine earthy lives, to freely love and live again, with portals to the fairy land and their painful memories hunting them all the time. Unexpected, creative, but surprisingly logical and realistic plot twists will provide you the insight into the lives of marginalized, lonely, strange people living without support and emotional trauma scars. Mardoll’s story give a voice to all the alienated people out there struggling to live decent life here and it awakens empathy and understanding among common people for all the strangers around us we frequently expel from regular community life.