The Evaporation of Sofi Snow

Ever since the Delonese ice-planet arrived eleven years ago, Sofi's dreams have been vivid. Alien. In a system where Earth's corporations rule in place of governments and the humanoid race orbiting the moon are allies, her only constant has been her younger brother, Shilo. As an online gamer, Sofi battles behind the scenes of Earth's Fantasy Fighting arena where Shilo is forced to compete in a mix of real and virtual blood sport. But when a bomb takes out a quarter of the arena, Sofi's the only one who believes Shilo survived. She has dreams of him. And she's convinced he's been taken to the ice-planet.

Except no one but ambassadors are allowed there.

For Miguel, Earth's charming young playboy, the games are of a different sort. As Ambassador to the Delonese, his career has been built on trading secrets and seduction. Until the Fantasy Fight's bomb goes off. Now the tables have turned and he's a target for blackmail. The game is simple: Help the blackmailers, or lose more than anyone can fathom, or Earth can afford.

I really hate rating this book so low for two reasons. First, Mary Weber’s Storm Siren trilogy is one of my all-time favourite fantasy series and I had high hopes for her next duology. Second, the themes, diversity and messages in this book are so, so important. I really admire what the author was going for here. From the ethnically and sexually diverse cast to the thorny subjects of human trafficking and political corruption, this series aimed high and deserves kudos for doing so. The problem was I just didn’t connect with the characters and found the story hopelessly confusing at times.

The book kicks off in the midst of the games; a partly computer generated and partly real fight between child gamers representing various corporations. But it was never really clear what was going on. The descriptions and information came so thick and fast that I struggled to keep up. It didn’t help that one moment characters were saying that players couldn’t get hurt by the games, but a few chapters later were talking abut actually injuries and potential death. Add into this the mentions of corporations that rule earth in place of a government and an alien planet floating nearby, and there was just too much going on, especially for a first book. It didn’t help that the details of the corporations, what they did and how they’d seized power, were never fully explained. Nor was the sudden proximity of an alien planet, either its history or how a new mass could suddenly appear next to earth without wreaking havoc with its environment.

The story moves at such a fast pace there really isn’t much time to get to grips with the society and world it’s taking place in. Random future words and non-sensical tech speak pepper the story ("hacking" is apparently another word for magic - that's the only explanation for some of the things computers can do here). Add to that the mystery of just what happened to Shilo, Sophie and Miguel’s tangled past and flashbacks to a sinister past Sophie can’t quite remember, and I was too confused by the story to be engaged by it.

I didn’t feel Sophie’s relationship, such as it was, with Miguel. Their backstory was too vague and briefly touched on (they almost had a thing, but he walked away and broke her heart) to make much impact. The relationship between Sophie and her brother Shilo fared much better. Their sibling bond was strong enough to make the lengths Sophie was willing go to to get him back believable, and it was nice to see the sibling relationship take priority over the romantic one. I wasn't a huge fan of Miguel's pov chapters either. Because the author had to withhold crucial information from the reader, his character constantly felt dishonest and I felt like I was being cheated.

If a character has information - especially the kind that Miguel did - it doesn't feel real when they go out of their way to avoid mentioning it, even in their internal dialogue. I lost count of the amount of times Miguel would start to think about his past, only to then stop dead in his train of thought and refuse to think any more about it. Maybe it was this that kept me from connecting with Miguel as a character and made his perspective on the story a low point for me. He also joins the ranks of YA characters with job ludicrously implausible given their age; in this case; Earth's ambassador to the alien ice planet at 16 years old! 

I really admire this book for the themes it tackles and the message it conveys, unfortunately these were wrapped in too many storytelling knots for me to enjoy it.

 

The Last Namsara

In the beginning, there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit, who carried love and laughter wherever he went. But where there is light, there must be darkness—and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death-bringer.

These are the legends that Asha, daughter of the king of Firgaard, has grown up learning in hushed whispers, drawn to the forbidden figures of the past. But it isn’t until she becomes the fiercest, most feared dragon slayer in the land that she takes on the role of the next Iskari—a lonely destiny that leaves her feeling more like a weapon than a girl.

Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. When she’s offered the chance to gain her freedom in exchange for the life of the most powerful dragon in Firgaard, she finds that there may be more truth to the ancient stories than she ever could have expected. With the help of a secret friend—a slave boy from her betrothed’s household—Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her. 

Ass-kicking, dragon-hunting protagonist? Say no more, I’m there! That’s pretty much all I knew about this book going into it after receiving a copy in a subscription box, but it was all I needed to know. I was anticipating action and adventure, fierce females and far-away fantasy. And this book delivered it all, and then some!

Protagonist Asha is a dragon-hunter. She hunts and slays dragons to atone for inadvertently summoning a dragon that destroyed her city when she was a girl. Her people fear her. Her father, the king, names her Iskari after a vengeful goddess and uses her drive the last of “the Old Ways” from his kingdom. She’s betrothed to a glory-hunting jackass and only ‘one last (dragon-hunting) job’ can save her from his clutches. That’s probably as much detail as I can go into without starting to run off a synopsis of the book, but suffice to say, she’s badass.

It was up to the supporting characters to draw the real Asha out though, and they were a great cast! Asha’s slave-blooded cousin, Safire, was my personal favourite. Her brother Dax seemed like to much of an idiot through most of the story for me to believe as the heir to the dragon king’s throne, until revelation later in the story revealed that to not be the case. Of course, no such book would be complete without a love interest, which is where things started to unravel a bit for me. Torwin was…fine. Just…fine. He’s a slave to Asha’s royalty, so they had the whole Romeo and Juliet thing going on, but it felt a bit too by-the-numbers to be organic. I think I’d have preferred to read them as friends rather than would-be lovers. Asha’s relationship with her pet dragon Shadow – and later, *named redacted because spoilers* – was more believable. Torwin was a great character and played out the other side of Asha’s world perfectly, but their burgeoning romance felt forced. I wasn’t a huge fan of the way Asha turned to mush around Torwin. I get their slow burn romance and the author was showing the real Asha starting to emerge from the hardened shell she’s built around herself, but I just have a dislike of female protagonists going gooey ever time they’re in close physical proximity to the designated love interest. A love interest that, of course, smells great no matter what’s just happened to him. Seriously, is it too much to ask that a character acknowledges that their partner smells like they really need a wash?

The world-building in this book is absolutely fantasy perfection; enough to create a rich, vibrant world without bogging itself down in irrelevant details. Asha’s refined kingdom of Firgaard and the wild, free scrublands are pretty much the only places we hear about, but their history and cultures shine through, woven through the story seemingly effortlessly. The ancient stories that peppered the book itself were a lovely touch. As well as letting the reader see the tales which inspired such awe and fear, they were a clever way of sneakily feeding the reader the history of the world without glaringly obvious infodumps. 

The book is action-packed from start to finish and it ends pretty much perfectly. There’s plenty of scope for a sequel, but it also reads stand alone without dangling plot threads or unanswered questions that serve to annoy more than they entice. My kind of ending!