book review: Passion Play, by Beth Bernobich

I did not expect to like this book.

I certainly didn't expect to love it the way I did.  Passion Play begins with a standard fantasy trope: a poor little rich girl is betrothed against her will, exercises her strong and slightly anachronistic will, and runs away. So far, so bleh.

But then Therez, the protagonist, gets into trouble, gets a new name, and gets a job as an accountant in a brothel. And then the book really hits its stride.

I'm not going to give anything away, but this is character driven fantasy at its best. Secondary-world character driven fantasy with a female protagonist and an intricate magic system-the sort of book I love. Yet I nearly didn't pick it up. Why not?

The problem, Dear Reader, was the cover. It's beautiful, but it shows a not inconsiderable amount of tit and together with the title gives a really erroneous impression of the book. The Amazon review has a lot of comments along the lines of 'I was expecting a fantasy Fifty Shades and then I got four hundred pages of BROTHEL ACCOUNTS WHERE IS THE SEXXING?' From the title I was expecting something racy, maybe set in a fake medieval Europe with the guild plays or something to do with a fantasy Oberammergau. 

What I got rocked enough that I immediately bought the sequel and all the short stories the author has ever written. So it's not fifty shades, and that's a good thing. It's a great thing. Buy this book!

book review: author: seth dickinson

This isn't a book review so much as an author rec. Seth Dickinson's the author of two excellent short stories on Beneath Ceaseless Skies: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Her Field-General, And Their Wounds and Worth of Crows.

Baru Cormorant tells the story of a warrior accountant (yes accountant) dealing with the aftermath of a political and personal betrayal. Worth of Crows features a pair of very different wizards fighting a dragon who draws its power from the magic of thermodynamics.

Both stories have female protagonists, they're both bleak, and have a very pragmatic worldview which I appreciate. And both stories are available for free download via the links above, so all they will cost you is a few megabytes and a moment of your time.It's well worth while. I'm tired so this post is pretty short, but trust me when I say that the length of the post is by no means proportional to the awesomeness of both tales.