Diving Universe #7: Searching for the Fleet

You found me when no one else was looking. How did you know just where I would be? Yeah, you broke through all of my confusion, the ups and the downs, and you still didn’t leave. Let’s shine a spotlight on Searching for the Fleet by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Synopsis:

Leaving Boss behind to continue diving the Boneyard, Ivoire Engineer Yash Zarlengo returns to the Lost Souls Corporation’s headquarters to analyze the data from the runabout they discovered there.

Convinced that the experience in the Boneyard proves the Fleet still exists, Yash buries herself in her work, interested in little else.

Ivoire Captain Jonathan “Coop” Cooper notices Yash’s growing obsession with finding the Fleet and joins her in her search.

For the first time in six years, the crew of the Ivoire feels real hope. Coop and Yash know all too well the dangers hope can pose. But this time their hope might just lead them somewhere no one expected.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

We’re back to the Diving Universe, but Boss doesn’t make an appearance this time. Instead, the focus is on Yash and Coop, with some flashbacks to their training in the Fleet.

The first flashback is actually to the time when Dix committed suicide; but it’s the flashback which fits least well into the book’s structure. It’s something that we already know the outcome of, since it was mentioned in the third book; and unlike the other flashbacks, it doesn’t really reveal any new information about Coop and Yash, or add to their characterizations. I actually kind of think that this part might have worked better as a novella released between City of Ruins and Boneyards.

The book isn’t entirely composed of flashbacks, though; in the present, Coop and Yash use the information they recovered from the runabout to find the location of Fleet Base E-2. There, they run into a new hostile force which seems to have been trying to reverse-engineer Fleet technology. Not much has been revealed about them so far, but they have the potential to become a strong new antagonist for this series (a role which the Enterran Empire can no longer credibly hold, given its humiliating defeat by Lost Souls).

I can’t quite give this book a perfect score, since as I said the Dix flashback felt out of place and the new antagonists weren’t introduced until the end, but I remain deeply interested in the Diving Universe.

Final Rating: 4/5

Dragon Apocalypse #4: Cinder

Hey! If this is how the world will end, well you can burn it again, because we will not go quietly. Hey! If this is how the world will end, well you can tell all your friends, that we will not go quietly. Let’s rage against the dying of the light with Cinder, by James Maxey.

Synopsis:

The stunning conclusion to the Dragon Apocalypse saga! Cinder is the daughter of Infidel and Stagger, a child conceived in the land of the dead by a living mother and a phantom father. Now an adult, Cinder possesses the power to travel freely between the realms of the living and the dead. Due to her unique talent, she’s recruited by the ghost of Father Ver to journey to Hell to rescue Sorrow, Slate, and the Romers, friends of her mother who’ve become trapped in Hell after their escape from Limbo. But when the primal dragons turn their wrath against mankind, will there be a living world left to come home to?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

So, after three books of build-up, here we are: the Dragon Apocalypse. Of course, since things never go wrong just one at a time, there are several simultaneous apocalypses threatening the word. Tempest, primal dragon of storms, has torn down the gates of Hell and allowed an army of the dead and the damned to lay siege to the living; Hush, primal dragon of cold, has enslaved Abyss, primal dragon of the seas, and is covering the oceans in ice; and the remnants of the Church of the Book are planning to have the Omega Reader open the One True Book, bringing an end to all reality.

Opposing these apocalypses are our heroes. There’s Sorrow and the Romers, of course; plus Stagger and Infidel’s daughter Cinder; but the real MVP this time turns out to be the Black Swan. The enigmatic, time-traveling crime boss has long been a background figure warning of the pending Dragon Apocalypse; now, at last, she steps into the limelight and her personal story is told.

Cinder is an exceptional closing act for the Dragon Apocalypse series, full of stunning battles, emotional character moments, and surprising twists. A great ending to a great series, this book lived up to my expectations in every way.

Final Rating: 5/5

Bloody Mary #2: Mary: Unleashed

Bloody Mary is the girl I love. Now ain’t that too damn bad! Let’s chant in front of the mirror for Mary: Unleashed, by Hillary Monahan.

Synopsis:

Mary in the mirror.
Mary in the glass.
Mary in the water.

Mary lurks in the emptiness, in the darkness . . . in the reflection. That is, until Jess unleashes her into the world. Now Mary Worth is out and her haunting is deadlier than ever.

No one is safe.

Shauna, Kitty, and Jess must band together to unearth the truth about Mary’s death to put her soul to rest for good. Their search leads them back to where it all began-to Solomon’s Folly, a place as dangerous as the ghost who died there a century and a half ago. Quick sand, hidden traps and a phantom fog are the least of their worries. To stop Mary, they need to follow a dark string of clues and piece together a gruesome mystery that spans generations.

But time is running out.

As chilling facts come to light, Mary inches ever closer to her prey. Can Jess, Shauna, and Kitty break Mary’s curse before it’s too late? Or will history repeat itself until there is no one left to call her name . . . ?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

When I picked up the first Bloody Mary book for my Hunt for Halloween Horror, I wasn’t expecting much from it, but it ended up exceeding my expectations. Can the sequel maintain that level of quality? In a word… no.

At the end of the last book, Mary’s haunting was transferred from our protagonist and first-person narrator Shauna to her manipulative former friend Jess. That’s a problem; because without our POV character being actively stalked by the antagonist, the book loses a lot of the fast pacing and tension that worked to suck me into the series at the beginning. The pressure is off; instead of being driven to desperately search for a solution to the haunting, Shauna can kick back, relax, and waste time going to school parties and other boring, non-plot-advancing stuff. In fact, for the first half of the book, most of the “scares” are just flashbacks to scary stuff that happened in the first book – no new scary stuff is happening, because Shauna isn’t haunted anymore.

Yeah, eventually Mary breaks out of the mirror and Shauna is in danger again; but by that point, the story has lost its momentum. It doesn’t help that the book insists on introducing a bunch of unrelated supernatural stuff like the phantom fog or the Hawthorne family’s deal with the devil; which, unlike Mary, never receives and explanation, and just distracts from the main story. There’s also the matter of the story’s abrupt ending – it just comes to a stop, without a proper denouement. There’s no follow-up as to the aftermath: no seeing Shauna reunite with her mother, no check in to see how Kitty and Bronx are doing. Despite the Mary situation being resolved, I was left feeling unsatisfied.

Though it does not suffer the burden of a Dead Lesbian Penalty, this book still comes up short in comparison to its predecessor.

Final Rating: 2/5

Jennifer Scales #1: Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace

We are caught in the fire, at the point of no return. So we will walk through the fire, and let it burn. Let’s turn up the heat on Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace, by MaryJanice Davidson and Anthony Alongi.

Synopsis:

She knew that growing up would mean changing. But Jennifer wasn’t prepared for the blue scales or the claws, since no one had told her that she came from a bloodline of weredragons. Her greatest challenge? Protecting herself from her family’s ancient enemies and preparing herself for fierce battles. And that’s a lot to expect of a girl just coming into her own.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

I recently read and reviewed The Talon Saga by Julie Kagawa, which I originally picked up because it reminded me of Jennifer Scales. Finishing it made me think: hey, maybe I should go back and give the Jennifer Scales books a second look. If I recall correctly, during my first read-through I ended up dropping the series after the second book – I couldn’t find the third one at the library, and I wasn’t impressed enough by the ones I’d read to spend my precious money on it. But that was years ago; since then, I have grown and matured as a reader and critic, my tastes have evolved to become more sophisticated, and most importantly I have acquired a larger disposable income. So… let’s give this series a second try.

As I’ve mentioned, I first learned about Jennifer Scales when I read Anthony Alongi plug it in one of his columns about Magic: the Gathering on the old Wizards site. Unfortunately, that kind of resulted in me going into it with the wrong idea: I was expecting it to be an epic fantasy like the Magic novels when it’s actually urban fantasy. That took a little getting used to.

The plot concerns ordinary teenage girl Jennifer Scales discovering that she is in fact the daughter of a were-dragon and a dragonslayer, and struggling to adapt to her new powers. Of course, wouldn’t you know it, but she’s also the Chosen One of Prophecy – which you know is one trope I generally hate, but it didn’t bother me in this case. First, because I originally read this book years ago, before countless lazy invocations of prophecy as an excuse for nonsensical plot and sloppy characterization had pushed me past my breaking point; and second, because the main impact the Prophecy has on the plot is not about Jennifer being set up for a super-special world-saving destiny, but rather that her blood is a precious MacGuffin being sought after by the villains. Basically, it’s not one of those prophecies which kills all tension by effectively spoiling the ending of the series and guaranteeing the hero’s victory; or which everyone fights but fails to prevent from coming to pass because fate is immutable and what even is the point; or which the villain is trying to fulfill but it’s obvious to everyone but him that it’s “ironically” going to turn out to mean the opposite of what he thinks; or which exists solely to fill the void of character motivation and make people do things they normally wouldn’t because the prophecy says so – the point is, it dodges all my biggest pet peeves.

Overall, I found Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace better than I remembered. Maybe I’ve grown to appreciate it more over time.

Final Rating: 3/5

The Nightmare-Verse #1: A Blade So Black

Over the bend, entirely bonkers; you like me best when I’m off my rocker. Tell you a secret, I’m not alarmed. So what if I’m crazy? All the best people are. Let’s go snicker-snack with A Blade so Black, by L.L. McKinney.

Synopsis:

The first time the Nightmares came, it nearly cost Alice her life. Now she’s trained to battle monstrous creatures in the dark dream realm known as Wonderland with magic weapons and hardcore fighting skills. Yet even warriors have a curfew.

Life in real-world Atlanta isn’t always so simple, as Alice juggles an overprotective mom, a high-maintenance best friend, and a slipping GPA. Keeping the Nightmares at bay is turning into a full-time job. But when Alice’s handsome and mysterious mentor is poisoned, she has to find the antidote by venturing deeper into Wonderland than she’s ever gone before. And she’ll need to use everything she’s learned in both worlds to keep from losing her head . . . literally.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

A dark fantasy take on Alice in Wonderland, huh? Perhaps there was a time when that would have seemed new and innovative, but we’ve already gotten American McGee’s Alice, and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass; was anyone really clamoring for more? These days, news of a dark and gritty reimagining is more likely to make me roll my eyes than to catch my interest. Still, I read a positive review of A Blade so Black on some site I frequent – io9? The Mary Sue? I can’t recall which, exactly – so I figured I’d at least give it a try.

The story got off to kind of a rocky start. It began with Alice first meeting Addison and learning about Wonderland, as you’d expect; but then jumped forwards in time over Alice’s training to the point where she was ready for her final exam; then jumped forwards in time again to Alice considering retiring from her position. All these time-skips really disrupted my ability to get into the flow of the story at the beginning.

Other things in the story bugged me as well, such as the stupid melodrama between Alice and Courtney about Alice missing her birthday party. Look, it’s one thing when Muggles like Alice’s mom are aggravated with her acting erratically; but Courtney knows about Alice’s secret job protecting the world from monsters. If Alice doesn’t show up as scheduled, Courtney should be worried that Alice has been torn apart and devoured by hell-demons, not all pissy and self-centered. It stinks of artificial conflict, and I don’t care for it.

Something else I didn’t care for? The romance subplot between Alice and Addison. Addison is supposed to be this story’s version of the Mad Hatter, I think; unless he’s the rabbit and Maddi is the Hatter. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter; the point is, with him being reimagined as an immortal with a dark and troubled past, all I can think of is Edward Cullen. …Alright, honesty compels me to say that he’s not that bad – no “romantic” stalking, for instance – but the cliches still make me wince. Suffice to say, I was not moved by this tale of forbidden love.

I don’t want to give you the impression that I completely hated this book, though. It did have its good points. The fight scenes against Nightmares and Fiends tended to be well-written, for instance; and I liked the characters Xelon and Odabeth. Plus, I try to go a little easier on the first books of series, because sometimes it can take a little time for them to really get going. And I am interested in the sequel – hopefully, with the stakes now established and the villains in motion, it’ll focus more on the cool fantasy stuff in Wonderland and less on squabbles over party attendance.

Final Rating: 3/5

Sir Henry Merrivale #18: The Skeleton in the Clock

Skeletons in my clock. I said woah-oh, woah-oh yeah. Skeletons in my clock. Ooh, I see bones, I see bones, icy bones. Ooh, I see bones. Say say bones – say boys don’t you see them bones? Let’s take a bare-bones look at The Skeleton in the Clock, by John Dickson Carr writing as Carter Dickson.

Synopsis:

That old expert on supernatural phenomena, the famous Sir Henry Merrivale, prods the police into re-opening the Fleet case twenty years after it has been written off as a death by accident, and has himself a rollicking time tracking down the most vicious killer in his long and colorful career.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

And with this, I have exhausted my local library’s collection of Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries. If I want to keep reading Golden Age classics, I may have to seriously contemplate returning to Philo Vance.

The Skeleton in the Clock begins with a complicated tangle of romantic relationships: Ruth Callice is in love with Martin Drake, who is in love with Jennifer West, who is engaged to Richard Fleet, who is in love with Susan Harwood. It seems like the setup for a romantic comedy, but then enters Sir Merrivale. He has come to believe that an accidental death which occurred 20 years ago was in fact murder, and that the murderer may strike again. He is proven right when a local girl is killed and an attempt is made on Martin’s life, after which the hunt is on for the culprit.

The result was a strong and interesting story which I found to make for an enjoyable read. After finding the past few Sir Merrivale mysteries I read to be somewhat disappointing, it’s good to at least finish on a stronger note. It’s not one of Carr’s best, mind; but it was an interesting puzzle that kept me entertained and had a sensible solution. That’s enough for a passing grade.

Final Rating: 3/5

Bloody Mary #1: Mary: The Summoning

I won’t cry for you. I won’t crucify the things you do. I won’t cry for you, see. When you’re gone I’ll still be bloody Mary. Let’s check in a mirror for Mary: The Summoning by Hillary Monahan.

Synopsis:

There is a right way and a wrong way to summon her.

Jess had done the research. Success requires precision: a dark room, a mirror, a candle, salt, and four teenage girls. Each of them–Jess, Shauna, Kitty, and Anna–must link hands, follow the rules . . . and never let go.

A thrilling fear spins around the room the first time Jess calls her name: “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. BLOODY MARY.” A ripple of terror follows when a shadowy silhouette emerges through the fog, a specter trapped behind the mirror.

Once is not enough, though–at least not for Jess. Mary is called again. And again. But when their summoning circle is broken, Bloody Mary slips through the glass with a taste for revenge on her lips. As the girls struggle to escape Mary’s wrath, loyalties are questioned, friendships are torn apart, and lives are forever altered.

A haunting trail of clues leads Shauna on a desperate search to uncover the legacy of Mary Worth. What she finds will change everything, but will it be enough to stop Mary–and Jess–before it’s too late?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Bloody Mary has always struck me as a particularly stupid urban legend, because the ritual is so simple and thus so easily debunked. If it called for sacrificing a goat in a graveyard at midnight, not many people wold actually do it; but anybody can go into their bathroom, say “Bloody Mary” three times, and observe that nothing happens. It’s like when a story talks about the dangerous occult power of Ouija boards, without mentioning that they’re toys sold by Hasbro.

Still, Goodreads did recommend this book for me; and it being October (at current writing), I’m doing my best to explore as much horror as I can in the Hunt for Halloween Horror. So, despite my low expectations, I decided to give it a try – and found it much better than I’d been anticipating.

The story follows four girls – Shauna, Jess, Kitty, and Anna – who perform the ritual and actually manage to call up the ghost, only for it to overcome their protective measures and begin haunting them. They subsequently end up in a race against time, trying to find a way to banish Mary before she can claim their lives and souls. This is pretty much what I expected based on the back-cover blurb; but the story does a lot of things right in the execution. For one thing, it dispenses with the long, slow build-up that a lot of horror stories bore me with at the start and has things get real serious, real fast. Yes, there are stories which do well establishing an atmosphere of unease and gradually increasing the suspense over time – this book wisely recognizes that the story it has to tell is not at all suited to that style, and skips the cat scares to get straight to the good stuff as early as possible. The quick start and fast pacing did a lot to get me over my initial reservations and suck me into the narrative: if it had taken half the book just to build up to Mary’s first appearance, I would have checked out long before then.

The story also did a good job characterizing the girls. Usually, the long wait before the horror actually starts is justified as necessary to introduce the characters and get the reader invested in them; but this book did a fine job throwing them straight into the fray and then exploring their characterization on the fly. Shauna is the main protagonist who draws the brunt of Mary’s attention; Kitty is the insecure and skittish one who you expect to panic at an inopportune moment and thereby cause things to go wrong; Jess is the adventurous and reckless one who actually ends being responsible for causing things to go wrong when she too-readily ignores safety precautions and common sense; and Anna is the most level-headed and sensible of group, who struggles to keep the group cohesive so they can fight together rather than dying alone.
All four of the girls thus ended up being enjoyable to read about.

Yes, this book was turning out great… and then Mary had to go and kill a lesbian. Dammit, Mary! Why is it always the lesbians!? For the death of Jamie, I hereby hit you with a Dead Lesbian Penalty. For shame, Mary; for shame.

But that issue aside, the book was in fact rather good. I was expecting to have to pick up the sequel merely out of an obligation to finish that I started, but now I find myself actually looking forwards to it a little bit. Guess we’ll see if it meets my now-raised expectations.

Of course, we all know what the best ending to the story would be:

Final Rating: 3/5

Shutter #1: Shutter

The bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame. Let’s release the control art restriction system for Shutter, by Courtney Alameda.

Synopsis:

Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat—a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She’s aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera’s technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever.

When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain.

As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn’t exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she’s faced before . . . or die trying.

Lock, stock, and lens, she’s in for one hell of a week.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The Hunt for Halloween Horror continues with the latest young adult horror book recommended to me by Goodreads. The story this time is set in an urban fantasy world plagued by undead: zombies, vampires, and ghosts. Our protagonists are members of the Hellsing Organization, which exists to hunt the dead.

…No, wait. That should be “Helsing”, with only one L. Dammit, that’s going to take a while to get used to.

Anyways, our protagonist this time is Micheline Helsing, a young but capable reaper who specializes in using a camera to capture ghosts. However, after an exorcism gone wrong, she and her friends are cursed by a vengeful spirit. They have seven days to track down and defeat the ghost, or they’ll end up joining it on the other side.

Of the books I’ve read so far for the Hunt for Halloween Horror, this one is definitely the best. It presents a detailed and interesting world, and has gripping and suspenseful action scenes. I cannot, unfortunately, say that it was outstanding: my biggest problem with it being the tedious, by-the-numbers love subplot with Ryder. Micheline’s in love with him, but can’t be with him because she’s supposed to have an arranged marriage to somebody from a high-class family; and I don’t need to say anything more, because it’s so cliche and formulaic that you can guess all the rest from those details alone.

Oh, and speaking of guessing, I should not have been able to call as early as I did that the main villain would be the ghost of Dracula. The book tried to claim early on that vampires don’t have souls and thus can’t leave ghosts; but I wasn’t fooled for a moment. And then he showed up using the alias “Luca” – come on, Vlad, buddy, that’s no better than Alucard. Truly, Discworld was right: the true fatal weakness of vampires is not sunlight or stakes, but their belief that everyone will be fooled if only they spell their names backwards.

Anyways, those issues I said, I did like this book and would be interested in reading a sequel, if one came out – Goodreads lists it as number one of a series, but it’s been three years and there’s no sign of a follow-up yet. Well, one can hope. In the meantime, I’ll be continuing looking through Goodreads’s horror recommendations, with this being the new high-water mark.

Final Rating: 3/5

Fiendish

Oh, my darling, oh, my darling, oh, my darling, Clementine. You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine. Let’s excavate Fiendish, by Brenna Yovanoff.

Synopsis:

Clementine DeVore spent ten years trapped in a cellar, pinned down by willow roots, silenced and forgotten.

Now she’s out and determined to uncover who put her in that cellar and why.

When Clementine was a child, dangerous and inexplicable things started happening in New South Bend. The townsfolk blamed the fiendish people out in the Willows and burned their homes to the ground. But magic kept Clementine alive, walled up in the cellar for ten years, until a boy named Fisher sets her free. Back in the world, Clementine sets out to discover what happened all those years ago. But the truth gets muddled in her dangerous attraction to Fisher, the politics of New South Bend, and the Hollow, a fickle and terrifying place that seems increasingly temperamental ever since Clementine reemerged.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

It’s October, so Goodreads is recommending a bunch of horror books; I’ve decided to take it upon myself to read through a bunch of them and see if I can’t find a good one. I’m calling it the Hunt for Halloween Horror; and after my dissatisfaction with And The Trees Crept In and The Dead House, I’m trying out another author with Fiendish.

The story of this book concerns Clementine, a young girl from a family with fiendish blood that gives them magical talents. When a superstitious mob began burning the houses of families from fiendish bloodlines, someone cast a spell on Clementine and placed her in a cellar where she remained trapped but undying for ten years until she’s finally discovered and set free. As far as premises for a horror book go, it seemed like an interesting one.

While I say that I’m reading books from the horror genre, there are of course many different types of horror. Fiendish begins with what I’d characterize as gothic horror: a setting full of old, rotting, moldering buildings; old-blood families with dark secrets, a pervasive atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. I found it quite good at setting up a feeling of suspense. Then, once Clementine and Fisher went into the hollow, it transitioned more into monster horror by introducing the hell hounds, which was effective at ratcheting up the tension. Everything was going really well – up until the point where it wasn’t.

You see, as is often the case, the book’s synopsis isn’t quite accurate. The part I take issue this time is the sentence “Clementine sets out to discover what happened all those years ago”. Because, Clementine does absolutely nothing of the sort. Her whole plotline revolves around her falling in love with Fisher, the boy who unearthed her from the cellar. Oh, he’s a bad boy, everyone warns her away from him; but even though she knows their relationship is dangerous, she cannot resist the attraction drawing them together, bleeeeeargh. If Clementine eventually discovers the hidden secrets of the past, it’s only because she trips over them while moony-eyedly staring at Fisher. Suffice to say, their trite and cliche-filled romance did not impress me. Also, I couldn’t help but think: Since she spent ten years basically asleep in the cellar, isn’t she mentally nine despite being physically nineteen? She probably shouldn’t be rushing into a romance – that’s a kind of creepy I could do without in my horror.

Then there’s the climax, which just didn’t work for me. It’s revealed that there are five magic-users in the town aligned with the five elements, and that their proximity threatens to bring about a magical apocalypse called the Reckoning. One of them, Davenport, gets revealed in the big surprise twist to be the villain of the novel. Except… she doesn’t quite work as the ultimate villain, because she’s not actually responsible for anything that’s going on in the narrative. With the big magical apocalypse pending, you’d expect the villain to be responsible for that – but it was already established that the five elemental craft-users just living in the same town is enough to start up the Reckoning; Davenport isn’t actively doing anything to bring it about any more than the other four. With the big mystery about Clementine having been sealed in the cellar for ten years, you’d expect the villain to have some connection to that – but no, that was all Isola’s doing, Davenport had no relation to it whatsoever. I feel like Davenport could have worked as a surprise villain, with just a few minor changes; but the way the plot is structured now, it just doesn’t quite fit.

So, in the end, I’m left disappointed again. Let the Hunt for Halloweeen Horror continue.

Final Rating: 2/5

Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #4: A Map of Days

I tried to leave it all behind me, but I woke up and there they were beside me. And I don’t believe it, but I guess it’s true: some feelings, they can travel too. Let’s unfold A Map of Days, by Ransom Riggs.

Synopsis:

Having defeated the monstrous threat that nearly destroyed the peculiar world, Jacob Portman is back where his story began, in Florida. Except now Miss Peregrine, Emma, and their peculiar friends are with him, and doing their best to blend in. But carefree days of beach visits and normalling lessons are soon interrupted by a discovery—a subterranean bunker that belonged to Jacob’s grandfather, Abe.

Clues to Abe’s double-life as a peculiar operative start to emerge, secrets long hidden in plain sight. And Jacob begins to learn about the dangerous legacy he has inherited—truths that were part of him long before he walked into Miss Peregrine’s time loop.

Now, the stakes are higher than ever as Jacob and his friends are thrust into the untamed landscape of American peculiardom—a world with few ymbrynes, or rules—that none of them understand. New wonders, and dangers, await in this brilliant next chapter for Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children. Their story is again illustrated throughout by haunting vintage photographs, but with a striking addition for this all-new, multi-era American adventure—full color.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

So, after writing up my review of the first three books of this series way back when, I figured I was done with it. Ah, but there is one thing I didn’t count on: that well-known literary phenomenon, Trilogy Creep. Sometimes, when a trilogy is successful enough, three books no longer seem like enough; and so, we start getting follow-ups.

So, the plot this time concerns Jacob getting into contact with an old comrade of his grandfather’s and learning about a peculiar child in danger in America. All fired up from his recent victory in the Library of Souls, he recruits some of the other children to go behind Miss Peregrine’s back on a rescue mission without properly preparing or researching the situation he’s getting into. Complications ensue.

It was a pretty enjoyable ride, for the most part. Then came the ending, where it’s revealed that saving Noor is so important because she is one of the chosen ones of prophecy. Ah. Prophecy. Hoo boy. You all know how much I just love prophecies, right?

…I mean, I shouldn’t be too surprised: seeing the future was already established as an existing peculiar power back in the original trilogy. So it’s not like the series is breaking its own rules or anything. It’s perfectly internally consistent. It’s just… I hate prophecy as a plot device. I used to be able to tolerate destiny and prophecy and chosen ones; but at some point – about when I wrote my review of The Wake of Vultures, I think – I just hit my limit. Now, whenever I see “prophecy”, I read “lazy plot device”.

But hold on, I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. I mean, the prophecy doesn’t actually figure into this book all that much; we aren’t even told what it is yet. So there’s still the chance that the future books might actually pull it off well. And I shouldn’t hold something that hasn’t even happened yet against this book. I should judge this book on its own actual merits. And this book was good.

Oh, actual criticism, though: most of the photographs in this one aren’t all that “peculiar”, with most of them just being kind of ordinary. I think the series has reached the limit of its gimmick and is now trapped in a corner: on the one hand, the photographs are a major thematic element of the series and part of its unique charm; but on the other hand, there has to be a limited quantity of suitable old photographs, so finding relevant and interesting ones can only become harder and harder.

Still, on the whole, I did enjoy this return to the peculiar world of Miss Peregrine.

Final Rating: 3/5