Winter’s Gifts, by Ben Aaronovich. Subterranean Press, 2023

I was delighted to find the library had the latest (I think- at least until November) installment in Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, because I love this fictional world and the fictional detectiv that inhabit it. I was a little disappointed to find that these rivers were not actually in London (this one is in northern Wisconsin), which means a different narrator from the main series.  This time we get a woman (FBI Special Agent Kimberly Reynolds). She knows significantly less magic than main narrator Peter Grant, but is a cut above the one in the book set in Germany.

The FBI’s ‘Mulder’ called in an event, which really should have been paid more attention to. No one knew what to do about it… so it made the rounds until someone *did* know that the FBI does indeed have an x-files sort of division. Sadly, it’s only a couple of people, and one is retired and missing. So it falls to Reynolds to head to Wisconsin in mid-winter, to face she knows not what. First off she’s facing a tornado (and this is not tornado territory) that tore apart buildings with surprising accuracy. It keeps snowing and the roads are closed, the tornado keeps appearing and going after people with surgical precision, and it looks like an event from more than a hundred years ago is at the heart of this problem.

I did enjoy this book. Not as much as the ones set in England, but more than the Germany one. Kimberly is an interesting and lively narrator, not slow at all in figuring things out; great fun to read. With a mix of Native American lore, early American history, and magical things going on, it’s a good mix. It could have stood to be longer; the ending comes in bang! And that’s it, in a rather hectic way. Four stars.

 

Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher. Tor Books, 2023

Shades of fractured fairy tales! Kingfisher has taken the tale of the sleeping maiden in the tower, surrounded by brambles and briar roses, and humanized – albeit by using a not entirely human protagonist.

When a baby is born to the ruler of a tiny backwater kingdom, a fairy steps in. Within minutes of the birth, when the baby is left unattended while the servants looked after the queen, a switch is made. A fairy is left to be raised as a princess, while the human baby is given to some fairies that live in the brackish waters of the lake to raise. They give her some magical abilities, including the ability to transform into a toad, hence her name: Toadling. And, unexpectedly, they, the lowest of the low fairies, love her. She grows up feeling secure and safe.

The princess is a beautiful child, and much is forgiven her. But she drives her family and most of the servants to suicide. Finally, Toadling is called on to use her magic on the princess, and is supposed to recite a spell over the child. But nervous Toadling screws it up, and the child becomes monsterous. It’s sort of a “you had one job…” situations.

Then a curious knight appears. Halim is not your average knight; he’s educated and does not like blood shed. Thus begins an odd relationship between the supposed evil enchantress and the savior knight, and things don’t go as fairy tale readers expect.

I loved Toadling and Halim. Halim is not the average fairy tale knight; he’s curious and has read history, and he just wants to know what’s going on, and make things right, if possible. He treats Toadling with respect and courtesy, and she responds with trust. The climax was rather unexpected. What happened seemed out of character for the two, but it did not seem totally out of line for the story itself; the world of the story is a little grim and this fits right into that. This is a novella, so it comes in at only a little over 100 pages, and reads fast, too; it could easily be done in one afternoon. Four and a half stars.

 

The Golden Enclaves: Lesson Three of the Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Del Ray, 2022

Starting just minutes after the end of Lesson Two, Lesson Three starts with Galadriel “El” Higgins having just gotten all grades of the students in the Scholomance out alive- all except one. The door way has closed, forever, with one person left behind- Orion Lake, her love. And, given the circumstances, he has almost certainly been eaten by a maw-mouth. A death which is not actually death, but an eternity of conscious suffering. El feels she cannot leave her love to suffer like that; she- the only one who can kill a maw-mouth- must somehow return to the decaying Scholomance and kill the maw-mouth, freeing Orion to die completely. But she can’t do it alone. Re-enter her allies from the previous book, for a brief return to the Scholomance. Then the action moves to the existing Enclaves. Someone is attacking the enclaves, tearing them down, one after another. El has never even been in an Enclave, and has no idea how they are formed. The answer to that is pretty horrifying.  But she has her precious book of sutras about creating Golden Enclaves, and figures she can put the world right, with her allies supplying the mana she needs.

I had problems with this volume. There isn’t the kind of character growth we saw in the first two books. As a narrator, El is still sarcastic and amusing, but she’s become someone who is never once tempted by taking the malia road for ease, and she keeps thinking how much better than other wizards she is because of this. Then she has sex with a girl she doesn’t even like, and never gives it a thought. The first time, she believes Orion is dead, but the second time they are just sort of bored and have the spare time. Now, I have no idea what the wizard world thinks about sex. It is stated that the girl and her partner have an open relationship, but I don’t think El and Orion have even had a chance to talk about it. Or I missed it when they did.

Then there is how disjointed the action is. When El gets Orion back, there is a (very) brief idle, and then there is non-stop running from one enclave to the other, killing mals, learning about how enclaves are formed, meeting Orion’s skeevy parents, making alliances that El really doesn’t like… it’s almost too much. Coming back to the book after a pause in reading, I frequently found myself having to go back a few pages to try and figure out where El was and what crisis she was currently taking charge of. The pacing is sort of “info dump- fast and sudden action- info dump- fast and sudden action” which I just found difficult to get into.

Was I disappointed? Yes. The first two volumes are definitely better. If Novik wrote a fourth novel to continue this story, would I read it? Definitely!