Bookdragon

Secretly, yaoi is my guilty pleasure and the other day I was just hooked on reading an mlm story again. With vampires. A friend recommended "How to Vex a Vampire" by Alice Winters, and it was a very good recommendation!

The novel is the first in the VRC: the Vampire Related Crimes series, which, with a changing cast, is always somehow about crime and vampires - and of course two sexy men who fall in love. Sometimes it doesn't have to be deeper than that, I confess. The first part is about the human Finn and his vampiric partner in crime Marcus. Finn is desperate to get into the VRC department of the police, which is actually 100% vampire staffed, as they deal with criminal cases that somehow involve vampires. He is assigned Marcus as his partner, who is not at all enthusiastic about this at first. Together they set out to uncover who is trying to sow discord between vampires and humans and, how could it be otherwise, slowly become closer.

I have to admit that I wasn't interested in the case that Marcus and Finn are supposed to solve at first, I had so much more fun with the two characters. At some point, however, I was interested in how their case would turn out. After all, there has been a rather tense agreement between humans and vampires for not too long, which is supposed to allow peaceful coexistence. Should the mood tip against the vampires, this could lead to bloody revolts.

But clearly the two detectives are and remain the main course. At times I felt a bit reminded of the series Lucifer, if anyone knows it. Sunshine boy (Finn) attaches himself to grumpy boy (Marcus) and just won't let go until grumpy boy goes soft (one of my favourite tropes, I confess). The bickering between Finn, who can turn anything into a dirty joke, and Marcus, who somehow tries to counter it and it always backfires, is so incredibly funny! I laughed out loud several times.

The sex scenes are tasteful and definitely pretty hot, if a bit vanilla. However, I read fanfiction and have a few friends with certain preferences when it comes to their literature, so I'm probably not a benchmark for that, ahem. In short: The sex is well written. No horrible metaphors for genitals and still tasteful.

We also have disability representation as Finn is missing one arm and one leg. He has prostheses that function almost without problems like his missing limbs and with which he can grip and run so well that it is almost unnoticeable. Again and again, we hear about how Finn deals with his prostheses, what quality of life they give him and how he deals with them mentally. I myself am not physically disabled, so I don't want to presume to judge at this point whether the representation is good or bad.

What bothered me personally, however, were the constant comments about Finn's short stature. He's not growth-restricted, he's just short. I'm not even 1.60m tall myself and I've heard every single one of these sayings Finn gets to hear enough myself. They are neither funny nor original, but simply annoying. It's no more appropriate to make comments about other people's weight than it is about their height. Also, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory has crept into the book. There is a group of conspirators claiming that vampires secretly control humanity, and therefore want to "expose" them as "monsters". This leads to several innocent deaths, both human and vampire. Surely another motivation could have been found instead of reproducing anti-Semitism.

We won't talk about the cover at this point. It is awful and fulfils every cliché of this genre. Just ignore it, the content is really good.

If you like grumpy one falls for sunshine boy as a trope, you will definitely enjoy this novel! The characters are immensely entertaining and won me over almost immediately. The story certainly hasn't reinvented the wheel, but it's not badly told either. If you liked Lucifer, you will definitely get a taste for this one too.

Potential triggers:

- Death, violence against people

- imprisonment

- drugs

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Series information

Author: Alice Winters

Title: VRC: How to vex a Vampire

Language: English

Series: Volume 1

Pages: 314

Original price: 15,00€

Publisher: Piper

Genre: Fantasy

ISBN: 978-3-492-28090-7

Christoph Marzi was one of my favourite authors in my youth. In recent years, however, I have had to realise that his Uralte Metropolen has unfortunately not aged well. But what about his newer works? So I grabbed Mitternacht and headed to London once again.

Nicholas lives a typical student life: Making ends meet somehow, sometimes this, sometimes that low-paid student job and generally taking a relaxed view of life. He is all the more thrown off course when he suddenly finds himself in an alternative London and then also has to learn that the ghosts of the dead linger in this London until no one in the world of the living remembers them and they fade away. Someone in hiding, however, is trying to influence the world of the living from the realm of the dead, and Nicholas, with his ability to shift between worlds, may be the only one who can turn events around for the better.

Christoph Marzi likes London as a setting and he likes a magical setting, that should be well known by now. And a nebulous London in which the dead of various times linger is pretty cool.

In this London, there are so-called Whisperers, who are ghosts hired by other ghosts to enter the stories of the deceased in their sleep from an in-between world of artists, so that their stories are not forgotten and thus the ghosts can continue to exist. The inspiration to tell certain stories does not (always) come from the authors themselves, but can sometimes be given to them.

So far, so good. I actually didn't think this was a bad idea at all and enjoyed reading about it. I am more at war with the technical aspects of the narrative. What bothered me right at the beginning was an unnecessary hetero drama when Nicholas catches his girlfriend Erica cheating and breaks up with her. Erica adds nothing to the actual plot and could have been dropped without replacement. As it was, it was just annoying and exhaustingly heteronormative.

The narrative style, too, what once fascinated me so much about Marzi, struck me as rather tiring here. I don't know if my reading habits have changed so much over the years, or if Marzi is simply weakening. But I just found it exhausting how characters sometimes repeat things several times and only reveal information in very small steps (after all, Nicholas also finds this annoying at one point, so it was probably intentional, at least in parts, for Chesterton to have everything pulled out of his nose). In general, I think the story could have been told in far fewer words, some of it drags on for a long time and takes time to get to the point.

And then there is the end of the novel. It's just a big, disappointing nothing. Marzi tells us in the epilogue how it came about: He had a severe stroke while writing, which left him paralysed on one side. This made it immensely difficult for him to write and I can absolutely understand if he then doesn't want to type tens of thousands of words when he can only manage it with great effort. Unfortunately, the novel was not yet finished at that point, and accordingly Marzi could only sketch out the ending so that the novel would come to any kind of conclusion at all. However, "any kind of conclusion" is accurate, since the last chapters are really little more than a few short sentences each, roughly telling what should have happened in these chapters. In other words, a very disappointing ending, but in this case there were simply higher powers at work, so it is actually quite remarkable that Marzi finished the novel anyway. I wish him all the best!

Those who like ghost stories can definitely give the novel a chance. For me, the narrative remained too bloated and long-winded in places (despite the fact that I read through the novel in one day) and the characters didn't leave a lasting impression either.

Potential triggers:

- Death (off page, topic)

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Series information

Author: Christoph Marzi

Title: Mitternacht

Language: German

Series: No

Pages: 314

Original price: 15,00€

Publisher: Piper

Genre: Fantasy

ISBN: 978-3-492-28090-7

Time + Brandon = books is probably an equation that most of his fans should be familiar with by now. As we now know, we'd better not leave Brando Sando alone, or one day he'll come up with something he has to tell us "with regret", only to put not one or two or even three, but four manuscripts on the table. Admittedly, I have rarely laughed as hard as I did at his announcement for his crowdfunding campaign for his four Secret Projects. What a Brando Sando does when he suddenly has a lot of time during all the lockdowns: write. The first of the projects that came into being during this time is "Tress Of The Emerald Sea".

Tress lives in the Emerald Sea on the planet Lumar, where the seas are made of dangerous spores. If they come into contact with a catalyst, in this case water, they begin to grow explosively. Some types of spores grow into tendrils, others form deadly spikes and still others even form something like a proto-intelligence and can replicate living beings. When Tress' lover Charlie disappears, she decides to rescue him from the clutches of the sorceress who is holding him. Yet Tress herself is really just a girl from a humble background who washes the windows in the Duke's mansion. Tress, who has never left home, embarks on a perilous voyage on seasyet untraveled, making many unexpected and new friends along the way, including Huck the talking rat.

"Tress of the Emerald Sea" is, in Brandon's own words, a fairy tale for adults. And indeed it has many fairy-tale elements, a certain "once upon a time" flair, princes who need rescuing and seemingly unremarkable heroines who have so much more in them. (In fact, it's not a fairy tale, maybe with eyes squeezed just an art fairy tale, but I'm not going to dust off the subject of my bachelor thesis and analyse this again for pages and pages ^^)

Anyway, Tress is an extremely likeable protagonist. She is down-to-earth and blessed with common sense, as our narrator also likes to point out. Unlike the heroes of other stories, Tress sits down for a moment and thinks through her plan and options before embarking on an adventure. Considering how many annoying plot twists could have been avoided in other novels, this is a commendable quality. And even otherwise, Tress doesn't seem like the typical protagonist of a novel at first glance. She comes from a fairly humble background, is happy with her overall situation, likes to collect mugs, has a loving home with two supportive parents and is actually quite content with her job. And then, of course, there is Charlie, the "gardener" (although everyone knows he is actually the Duke's son), with whom Tress so enjoys exchanging stories. Tress doesn't really seem like someone who is driven to go out into the world. And yet she embarks on a hero's journey.

On this journey, she not only discovers the world, but also herself. On her world, people are extremely cautious to the point of fear when dealing with spores, as even the smallest drop of water can sometimes have deadly consequences (just imagine accidentally swallowing a few spores and they grow into tendrils inside you, not exactly appetising). Nevertheless, on her journey Tress becomes a sprouter, which are people who can grow spores specifically and even manipulate them in some ways.

Tress easily falls into hyperfixations. At first it's mugs, which she collects from all over the world. Together with Charlie she makes up stories about these cups, and during her journey she takes a bag full of her cups with her to take them out and look at them regularly. She discovers she has what it takes to be a sprouter when she feels pressured to make herself useful aboard the Crow's Song and takes the vacant post of the previous sprouter. Like all other people, she has an enormous fear of spores, yet she soon dares to experiment with them, so much so that she easily forgets the time. It's not officially confirmed to my knowledge (at least the Coppermind Wiki doesn't say anything about it at the time of writing), but it certainly seems like mild ADHD traits to me.

By no means should the narrator go unmentioned here. I don't want to reveal who it is that tells us the story, as I was spoilered and that took some of the joy out of discovering it, but I'll say this much: it's an old acquaintance who is also revealed relatively quickly, so it's no big secret. The story is told by a first-person narrator, who in turn tells us Tress' story. Whereby "us" here is also a point that remains open. Who is the "you" that the narrator keeps addressing in the story? Personally, I have the feeling that it doesn't necessarily have to be Brandon's readers, but could perhaps also be characters in the Cosmere who are being addressed.

Hoid, by the way, is once again involved and it's a great pleasure as every time! This time he has put himself in a bit of a predicament. But he claims that he deliberately took the gamble. For he has been cursed by the sorceress and since then has only been able to say gibberish. His taste in fashion has also suffered, resulting in some very amusing creations. Nevertheless, Tress realises that Hoid plays an essential role in freeing Charlie and is determined to break his curse.

After all these years of Brandon keeping so low key about his Cosmere, this is clearly a book deeply woven into the Cosmere. I can imagine why Brandon took the step of self-publishing this first, on his own terms, and only later having it traditionally released through his publisher (I myself could only afford the publisher's version, unfortunately), as it is so much more fun to read this novel when one knows at least something about the Cosmere. The story works excellently even without this knowledge, but the narrator makes an incredible number of references to other worlds in the Cosmere. I recommend having read at least Elantris and the first, better still the second Mistborn series, then many of the references make much more sense.

I just love Tress as a protagonist so much because Brandon breaks so many "traditional" narratives with her as a character, and the narrator also plays again and again with narratologically unconventional means and breaks with the expectations of the readership. My literarily studies educated heart loves such shenanigans! And in other respects, too, Tress is just such a kind-hearted person. The crew of the Crow's Song are pirates who do not really keep Tress on board with her consensus. However, Tress finds out that Captain Crow is up to no good and is taking advantage of the crew, so she decides to stay on the Crow's Song, even when she has the chance to escape, because she wants to help them. Tress is just a nice, down-to-earth person, not necessarily the typical heroine for a hero's journey, but for that very reason just the perfect protagonist for the kind of story Brandon wants to tell here. (Whereby the narrator is not Brandon, of course, but an old acquaintance *zwinki zwonki*).

Long story short: I just love everything about this novel! Brandon has once again succeeded in creating an enchanting, entertaining story that captivates its readers and boasts endearing characters and a fascinating world. And those who have already delved a little deeper into Cosmere will find many, many Easter Eggs.

Did I mention that this is the first time a dragon has made an open appearance?

Possible triggers

- Death, violence against people

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Series information

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Title: Tress Of The Emerald Sea

Language: English

Cover illustration: Carlos Guimerà

Series: No (but part of the Cosmere)

Pages: 369

Original price: $29.99

Publisher: Tor

Genre: Fantasy

ISBN: 978-1-250-89965-1

What would you sacrifice to achieve your goal? This is the theme of the second volume of Shelley Parker-Chan's Radiant Emperor duology, "He Who Drowned The World".

Zhu has crowned herself Radiant King and now calls herself Zhu Yuanzhang. Now that she has seized power over the Red Turbans, she has her eye on her ultimate goal: the imperial throne, to wrest it from the Mongol conquerors. But she is not the only party in the race for the throne. She pins her hopes on her only enemy, Ouyang, whom she forces into an alliance in order to gain power over his army. With this force, she marches towards Dadu and is prepared to do anything to achieve her goal. However, she does not realise how much she will have to sacrifice. Not yet.

What I like so much about Zhu is her ruthless character. She has a goal in mind and is willing to do anything to achieve it. It started in her time at the monastery, when she blackmailed one of the other monks for something he hadn't even done, in order to protect herself. By now she leads whole armies. The sacrifices she is prepared to make are correspondingly greater, and she does not shy away from human lives.

That definitely doesn't make Zhu someone I would personally want to spend time with, but reading about it I love! There are plenty of shining heroes. But reading how Zhu still manages to use her indomitable will to get her people to voluntarily drown and then be revived, for example, is incredibly captivating.

And then there is Ouyang, who murdered the man he loves to avenge his family. He also strives to overthrow the Mongol ruler in order to finally avenge the murder of his entire family by ending Mongol rule. This is now Ouyang's only goal in life and he literally lives as if there is no tomorrow for him after that. He pushes forward relentlessly and his whole being is focused on this goal. When he is captured by Zhu, and Zhu takes his army away from him, it almost drives him mad. In order to be able to live with the emotional pain and conflict, at least long enough to reach Dadu, Ouyang turns to self-harm, which very soon takes on addictive traits. However, Zhu is able to control him over this when she learns to inflict exactly the kind of pain he craves.

I love the frenemy trope because it opens up such wonderful areas of tension. Even though it's not so much the "friends" part. More like allies against their will, because Zhu is able to convince Ouyang that their goals are aligned and that they can be more successful together.

We know how the story ends because it has a historical source (albeit quite freely interpreted). Zhu Yuanzhang will found the Ming Dynasty, which means she will succeed. So the suspense is rather on the way there, and it wouldn't hurt if Zhu doesn't have to sacrifice very much on this very blood-soaked path to reach her goal. There is no real happy ending for the characters in this series. For Zhu and Ma it is rather bittersweet, for many others it ends in tragedy with nasty surprises. Ouyang literally ripped my heart out. He may have reached Dadu, but must realise a bitter truth there. 

Much of what I have already praised so much about volume 1 I find again here. However, I personally would have hoped for a little more time with Ma. At some points, the events also seemed too deus ex machina and give the impression that they happen because Shelley Parker-Chan wanted them to, rather than because things turn out that way. A small weakness compared to Part 1, but one that hardly detracts from the overall picture.

The Radiant Emperor is completed with this volume. Shelley Parker-Chan has proven that they can write incredibly well. Their strength lies above all in the incredibly good introspection of the characters. I also particularly enjoyed the queer look at gender and gender roles. With that, it's pretty certain that this won't be the last one I read by Shelley Parker-Chan.

Possible triggers

- Death of animals

- blood

- Death, murder, violence against humans

- war

- Mutilations

- Self-harm

- Queer hostility, partly internalised by characters

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Series information

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan

Title: He Who Drowned The World 

Language: English

Cover illustration: Lucy Scholes

Series: Volume 2

Pages: 486

Original price: £14.99

Publisher: Mantle

Genre: Historical Fantasy

ISBN: 978-1529043440

I might have a weakness for morally questionable characters who will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. Spice it up with a little gender fuckery and I'm so on board! After Iron Widow, I think it was predictable that I would love She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan almost as much!

In a remote village in China circa 1345, a girl outlives her entire family in a famine. Her brother was prophesied greatness, but she was prophesied nothingness. When she is the last survivor, she takes not only her brother's name, Zhu Chongba, but also his destiny for greatness. Thus begins her journey from a girl of no significance to the founder of the Ming Dynasty, which is to end the Mongol rule of the Yuan Dynasty.

Sometime in the distant past, I don't even know how long ago, I got hold of "Storm of Wings" by Chris Bunch, the first part of the Dragonmaster Trilogy, a fantasy series from the early 2000s. Dragons always get me, no matter how unappealing the premise may sound at first. I guess I'm quite predictable when it comes to that, ahem. The only question then is whether the book is any good. Hal Kailas is the son of poor miners somewhere in the middle of nowhere. What his area has besides ores, however, are dragons, which have fascinated Kal since childhood. He knows: his destiny lies not underground, but high in the heavens. When war breaks out over the land, Hal is drafted and somehow manages to survive the infantry. A new weapon is set to change the tide of war for good, as for the first time dragons are ridden by humans and led into battle. Hal is determined to become one of those dragon riders.

"Identity does not determine the things we do, but it does determine the things other people do to us." (S. 410)

They still exist, the novels that turn one's worldview completely upside down. "Identitti" by Mithu Sanyal is one such novel. Immediately after I finished reading the novel, I rushed to my PC to type these lines, so as not to lose the feeling that the novel had created in me. It has been working in me for days. The story has opened up a field of themes for me that is completely contrary to what I assumed up to now.

Scandal! The famous professor Saraswati is in fact white and has only lied to everyone about her Indian identity. Is it even a lie? Her student Nivedita, at any rate, is shocked by the revelation, she feels cheated and deceived. She immediately goes to her professor to get answers. Answers to the question of why Saraswati did what she did, but also to find herself and her tangled identity.

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die", said Cersei Lannister to Eddard Stark, and it is probably the most telling saying of the entire series. Westeros and its Seven Kingdoms are in constant conflict with each other, each prince spinning his own intrigues and playing the game of thrones according to his rules. Losing is synonymous with one's own downfall.

The Stark family has to experience this painfully when they try to bring the Lannisters to justice for the attempted murder of their son Bran. In addition, Eddard Stark, Prince of Winterfell, finds out a dark secret about the twin siblings Cersei and Jaime Lannister and thus gets further caught up in the Lannisters' machinations. At the same time, overseas, Viserys Targaryen is willing to pay anything to regain the Iron Throne, of which he is the rightful heir and which had been taken from him by Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. He leaves no stone unturned, even if the price is the freedom of his sister Daenerys.

Like no other, Martin knows how to develop his world as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He explains little, rather everything unfolds through the characters themselves, something few can do as well as he does.

You have to continually stay with the story to keep track of all the houses, their allegiances and their relationships to each other. A glossary at the end of the book helps with this, especially when reading for the first time. However, it is precisely the complexity that makes the series so appealing. Martin knows his characters down to the last detail; each of their actions evokes very individual reactions in the other characters. What was a rolling stone at the beginning is a thundering avalanche at the end. For this reason in particular, it is worth not only reading the series once, but also taking it off the shelf again later. If you are still busy sorting through all the names the first time, you can enjoy the depth of the world much more when you read it again.

And not to forget all the wonderful quotes and great moments. Martin is a master at building impressive scenery, as well as bringing it down again just as impressively. The emotional ups and downs that the reader experiences are also not likely to be passed over. You either hate Martin's characters - and he can develop truly hateful characters - or you love them, no matter what abominations they actually are. As is rarely the case with a book, you root for, fear, hope (mostly for the sake of otherwise), cry and curse with the characters. George R.R. Martin is merciless with them - and his readers.

If you love fantasy, you can't avoid A Song of Ice and Fire. However, when reading it for the first time, one should be prepared for the countless names and their relationships to each other. Complex worlds are often not reader-friendly for a first read. Once you get over that, however, it is definitely worth a read and won't let you go until the last page.

Dates A Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire #1: ISBN 978-0-553-57340-4, Bantam Books, 2011, 7,40€.