A Treachery of Swans

I saw A. B. Poranek's new book, A Treachery of Swans, at the library and of course had to get it. I enjoyed Where the Dark Stands Still a lot and wanted to see what she came up with next. I have to admit, I was not expecting a France-inspired story, but I was still along for the ride. I did have a bit of a hard time getting into it (I'd say it took around 50 pages), but once I got hooked I didn't want to put A Treachery of Swans down!

This time around, Poranek wrote a sapphic romance based on Swan Lake. In this world, a king's sorcière advisor drove the Three Mothers, goddesses who control life, death, and change/magic from their country. Morgane, the Mother of magic, cursed the land as she fled so that nothing beautiful would grow. She left behind a single magical crown that allowed the king to keep the crops growing. But the magic comes at a price, for every time he uses it he falls more steadily into madness. Due to the sorcière's actions, anyone who can use magic, who happens to have gold in their veins instead of the regular red, is shunned, blamed for the blight on the land.

Into this world is born Odile, a girl with golden blood who was taken in, along with her non-sorcière brother, by a sorcière named Regnault. He has been sending Odile on missions to steal Goddess gold, the only thing that can still allow sorcières to summon magic. After many, many years, they have enough for one final heist: Odile will take the place of Marie d'Odette, convince the Dauphin to marry her, and, on their wedding when the magical crown is brought out, they will steal it to summon Morgane back and heal the land! Except....things start to go sideways when the Dauphin's father, King Honoré, is murdered, and Odile's estranged brother is accused of the murder. Odile starts to investigate, wanting to clear her brother's name. She starts to get closer to the Dauphin, as well as to Marie, who witnessed the murder, all the while trying to convince herself that these people are her enemies, and she must stay to her task of stealing the crown.

I honestly quite liked the story (once I got into it). I liked the characters, especially the Dauphin. He is a kind-hearted gentleman, someone who many of the other nobles, his father included, think is too weak, but who has a quiet strength in genuinely caring about the people around him. I also quite liked Odile and how she grew through the story, slowly coming to realize what her father, Regnault, had been doing to her over the years (and what she had lost as a result). I also liked how the other characters, especially Marie, saw the good in Odile, no matter how much Odile insisted she was the villain of the tale.

I will admit that I was able to predict some of the twists and turns of the plot, like who the beast was and the truth of Regnault. But I still enjoyed how the story unfolded and how the characters discovered these things on their own. Though it did feel like there should be a part two to this story (which probably won't happen based on the epilogue), I quite enjoyed A Treachery of Swans as a standalone tale. 

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

I read Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers last October (and apparently forgot to blog about it - whoops!) I really enjoyed it, and was looking forward to reading more by Chambers. So the last time I was browsing at Chapters, I stumbled on The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which sounded good. So I bought it and was excited to start it....

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is about a group of spacers on board the Wayfarer, a ship that creates hyperspace tunnels to connect different areas of the galaxy together. There's Ashby, the captain, who is in love with Pei, the badass alien captain of her own ship who comes from a very xenophobic society (if their relationship is discovered, she could be exiled from her entire species, not just her family). Sissix, his Aandrisk pilot (she's from a reptilian species). Kizzy and Jenks, his human mech techs. Corbin, their algae/fuel specialist, who is really good at his job but isn't very pleasant to be around. Dr. Chef, one of the last Grum who loves gardening and cooking for the crew. Ohan, a Sianat Pair (an alien who is infected with a virus that lets them understand and navigate through the universe, but at the cost of years of their life). Lovey (Lovelace), the ship's sentient AI. And newcomer Rosemary, the clerk Ashby hired on to help them secure better jobs. The crew are given the job of a lifetime: create a hyperspace tunnel to Hedra Ka, home of the Toremi Ka, a previously violent species newly entered into an alliance with the Galactic Commons (GC). They need to make their way to the planet then punch a hyperspace tunnel back to known space, a journey that takes them nearly a year (or a Standard, as the GC calls it). 

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was a hard read for me. I actually stopped reading it to read Blind Date with a Werewolf (and I really considered not continuing The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet at that point) because I was really annoyed at how slow going the book is. The plot meanders, taking its sweet time to get anywhere. The crew makes stops in various places and meets various people. But for the most part there is little to no conflict. Pretty much all of the crew has secrets, but very little normally comes from them being revealed (for example, Rosemary lied about who she was. But it came to light because she didn't want to lie anymore, and pretty much everyone was okay with it. Ashby was apparently a bit upset, but we didn't get to see that in any real way). This was how almost the whole book operated: every chapter was a new destination or incident, which would have some (in most cases) minor conflict that was usually resolved at the end (but often not resolved in a real satisfying way either - there were a number of times where I thought "oh good, here comes the story" only to have the chapter end and a new adventure begin).

I also felt like we were following the wrong characters. The most interesting crew members (with the exception of Sissix) had more minor roles in the book. When Pei and her ship showed up, I was left wondering why we weren't following her as she went off on her more exciting adventures.

But there were some really good moments. I liked how Kizzy had trouble dealing with some boarders; I liked how that was handled by Chambers, and I like how it was resolved with help from Pei. I liked the Corbin story line, once we got there (I honestly wish that had happened sooner - I think the changes in him were interesting and I would have loved to see him grow with the rest of the crew more). I liked how most of the crew accepted Ohan's decision, at least through most of the story. Yes, they weren't happy with it (Sissix and Ashby had some words), but they were still ready to accept what he chose. And I really liked what happened after they finally arrived at Hedra Ka (though in some ways that also felt like the plot finally starting, but then it wrapped up right after).

I also want to say that the worldbuilding in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is great. The alien species were both interesting and different. They had different cultures and different ways, and it was great how the different characters interacted and came to terms with those differences.  One thing that did annoy me though (and I admit that this is super nitpicky of me) was how all the people of one species seemed to speak one language. Yes, the humans had trouble understanding some people who didn't speak their one language. But, say, all the Aandrisks spoke one language and no one ever had trouble understanding someone else who spoke that one language.

So that was The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in a nutshell. It had some great moments, and some really interesting characters. But unfortunately it's a slow meander to get to anywhere interesting.  I had much higher hopes for this when I started. :(

I'd also like to note, the other books in the Wayfarers series don't seem to be connected specifically with these characters (the second book follows people who were introduced in this one, but doesn't seem to have the Wayfarer crew in it). So maybe I'll give it a try one day. 

Blind Date with a Werewolf: a Novel in Stories

It's been awhile since I read anything by Patricia Briggs, so it seems fitting that her new book, Blind Date with a Werewolf: a Novel in Stories is the first book I read in 2026! 

In Blind Date with a Werewolf, Asil, the Moor, one of the oldest and scariest werewolves, is given the "gift" of five blind dates for Christmas (which, as he keeps repeating to his "Concerned Friends," is completely unnecessary as he doesn't celebrate Christmas). Asil has been barely controlling his wolf for a long time, after the death of their mate (and has been begging his Alpha to kill him, though the Marrock has always refused), and so thinks this is a bad idea. But his friends are betting against him (the rules are that he must stay with his date for 2 hours, no one must run screaming from the other, and Asil is not to kill anyone) and Asil likes a challenge, so he agrees. The five stories in this book tell the tales (or the aftermaths) of his five blind dates.

Prior to starting Blind Date with a Werewolf, I had been struggling my way through another book (which I put aside in order to read this). I was so happy at the speed in which I got into this book; I finished it in about three nights! Asil is a really fun character: he's full of interesting knowledge because of his age, but is still interested in the people and happenings around him. He's physically gorgeous and likes to play this up, but he never seems arrogant (he's just accepting of it as a thing, and often just wants to get past it). While a very dominant wolf, he is very protective of innocents.

His dates themselves are also very entertaining. He starts out with a vampire LARPer; while Asil isn't into men, he has no problems continuing on the date and even dancing with him. From there he meets someone who loves cats (an interesting option for his "Concerned Friends" to choose for a werewolf!), a platonic date with a fellow gardener, a ghost hunter, and a high society swinger. Of course, nothing goes as planned as vampires, witches, wyrms, fae, and other creatures make their way into his dates.

But along the way, Asil also starts to heal, and even finds his wolf talking to him once again! This is largely thanks to his fourth date, Ruby; something about her calms Asil's wolf, and even though they just go on one short date, Asil's wolf is convinced that she is "their" Ruby. I was really happy with how that all developed, and I hope to one day read more about them. :)

I absolutely loved this book. It was such a fun read and a great start to my year. :D 

Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds

I read the original Legion by Brandon Sanderson almost a decade ago, and honestly didn't even really remember reading it. But I bought the collected edition Legion: the Many Lives of Stephen Leeds at Chapters the other day because it sounded good and I like Sanderson stories; it was only when I looked it up on Goodreads to see if this was the whole story that I discovered I had read the original story! 

As previously mentioned, Legion's Stephen Leeds has many hallucinations of people (what he calls "aspects") who carry information for him, showing up as he needs them. His main aspects are Ivy, a psychologist, Tobias, a historian, and J.C., a Navy SEAL, though there are nearly 50 other aspects (and more come into existence when Stephen flips through books to learn topics of interest for his missions).

But through all three stories, Stephen is seeking Sandra, the woman who first taught him how to create the aspects. Before her, there were shadowy voices and nightmares. But with her guidance, Stephen was able to make sense of them. But there is always the risk that they will go rogue and become nightmares, especially if Stephen starts to lose control. Which is what starts to happen through the three Legion stories collected in this volume.

The first story is the story of Stephen trying to recover a scientist who made a camera that can look through time.  I covered that in my previous review 9 years ago, so I won't say anything more about it here. The second story has Stephen working for I3 (Innovative Information Incorporated), a corporation that is trying to hack the human body to store and access data. But after their top scientist dies in an accident and his body goes missing, I3 hires Stephen to track the corpse down and dispose of the corpse so their competitors can't crack the secrets in his DNA. The final story in the collection (and the final Stephen Leeds story) starts with Stephen getting a call for help from Sandra. Unfortunately, his control over his mind and his aspects is failing; will he be able to help her while keeping himself and his aspects safe?

While these are three novellas that take place over a period of years in Stephen's life, Legion: the Many Lives of Stephen Leeds very much reads like one big story (especially between novellas two and three, which I read together in one day). Overall I really enjoyed all three stories, though I will admit that the ending was a bit tough to read (I cried at the end). While we're told over and over again that the aspects are just a hallucination of Stephen's mind, they are masterfully written and you care about them (especially the main three) a lot by the end. They also seem like real people, having relationships between themselves that Stephen didn't necessarily envision. And it was interesting how the loss of an aspect affected Stephen - how the information that aspect held disappears completely from his mind (down to not being able to recognize something iconic like the Eiffel Tower).

While the end is a little hard to get through if you're grieving, overall I enjoyed Stephen's story. As usual, Sanderson hasn't disappointed me, and I look forward to reading more from him soon. :)

Cat Dragon

I sawSamantha Birch's  Cat Dragon when I was wandering around Chapters (sorry, it's now Indigo). It looked super cute, and sounded like a fun cozy fantasy, which was exactly what I wanted to be reading, so I decided to give it a try.

Cat Dragon is the story of Aloysia Papplewick, a magicobotanist witch who lives in Tangleroot Valley. Aloysia has never been able to bond with a cat dragon, the one animal who makes witches' magic more communal, and so has been doing her own thing on her farm. But when the valley's magical guardian sickens and the valley's Council blames her (and honestly, Aloysia blames herself as well), Aloysia sets off on an adventure with her best friend's brother, Hollis, and the cat dragon kitten she found to try to gather three magical ingredients needed to craft a potion to hopefully heal the guardian.

While this is the basic plot of the book, it's not at all what I expected from reading the synopsis. I was expecting a lot more of Aloysia at her home, dealing with the prattling pumpkin patch (that was an interesting bit of worldbuilding - some witches decided to save their soul in a soul seed rather than passing on when they died. So each year they would regrow as a pumpkin, which Aloysia then carved their faces so they could talk. Admittedly strange, but an interesting part of the world because the pumpkins who were related to Aloysia kept commenting on and trying to interfere with her life). But the trouble with the guardian happened pretty quickly, and then Hollis and Aloysia went wandering around from place to place looking for ingredients (I didn't feel like they were "whisked off to a mysterious mountain" - they deliberately went to another country (there was a border crossing) and several different towns and cities). Then after they got the ingredients and put the spell together, it didn't work, so they (unexpectedly) had to go have a magical standoff against magical plants in an ancient tower. Again, not what I was expecting to be reading, and a little all over the place. But interesting nonetheless. Birch created a very neat world of witches and their familiars and it was fun seeing different parts of it.

Some of the characters Aloysia and Hollis befriended along the way were quite interesting, too. Lan was probably my favourite: she was a blind basically treasure-hunter who used her cat dragon, among other things, to lead her around like a seeing eye dog.  She's smart and fun, and definitely (in my opinion) the best character of the book. Another character I really liked was Crow. He was funny and I wished he was in the book a bit more (being a crow, he kept being sent back to Tangleroot to bring the ingredients the party found).

Aloysia was, honestly, a bit annoying to be following. She blamed herself for everything, even when things weren't her fault. And through most of the book I never felt like she was growing or changing - she kept doing her thing (which she was good at) and blaming herself when things weren't working.  

I also have to say: the book's name is a bit weird in context of the story. Yes, Aloysia does find a cat dragon, Littlewick. Yes, he is there with her for most of the adventure. But the story was never really about Littlewick, or his bond with Aloysia. Littlewick was more a part of the setting, giving it some flavour. But the title could have very easily been something more fitting than "Cat Dragon."

So while I found Cat Dragon interesting, I will admit that I struggled with reading it at times. It has some really neat ideas in it, and some great characters. But it wasn't what I expected, and I was sad that I didn't get what I had been hoping for. 

Jolene

It's been quite some time since I read anything by Mercedes Lackey, but while wandering around the bargain book section of Chapters, I stumbled on Jolene, the 15th book in her Elemental Masters series. I've only ever read one other book in her Elemental Masters series, The Gates of Sleep, so I'm not super familiar with the series, but I thought that Jolene sounded interesting and decided to give it a try (The Gates of Sleep was a long time ago, too - I wasn't writing this blog yet when I read it).

Jolene tells the story of Anna May Lewis, the daughter of a coal miner who has been sick since she was young. Her Aunt Jinny sends for her, telling her parents that she can heal Anna if Anna will come and stay with her for awhile. After a bit of convincing on Anna's mom's part, her dad agrees. And so off Anna goes, leaving the only home she's ever known. Under her aunt's house, Anna discovers that she has magic ("the Glory," as her aunt calls it), and Jinny starts training Anna in the ways of magic and potion-making (as well as farming). Along the way, Anna meets Josh, a young carver who lives next door and who takes a fancy to her, as well as Jolene, a mysterious red-headed enchantress who starts to teach Anna a few magical things as well. But when Billie McDaran, a local mine foreman with a twisted Glory of his own, takes notice of Anna's power, it will take the help of her friends and her magic to outwit him.

The one thing I realized fairly early on was that the main plot wasn't going to happen until the end of the book. I'm pretty sure that's what happened in The Gates of Sleep as well (though it's been a long time so I don't really remember The Gates of Sleep). But most of the book was Anna and her aunt figuring out their lives together, then Anna learning from people, and finally Anna and Josh getting closer and starting to court. I don't think Billie McDaran was even mentioned until about halfway through the book, and at that point he had no idea Anna even existed. So that was kind of annoying because it felt like the book's blurb wasn't completely honest about the story (even though the things it mentions do eventually happen, kind of - Billie McDaran's interest is very quick and sudden, there was no real build-up to it happening). 

Another thing that needs to be said: the accents are really, really annoying. Most of the time, people in the book talk with a really thick accent that can be tough to read (there were a few times where I was left puzzling out what someone was saying). Most of the time it's understandable, but I think a few select words would have better gotten the accent across, rather than the whole, thick, every-word version that Lackey went with. The book lost a star on my Goodreads rating for the accent alone, it was that annoying (if you're interested, I gave it a 4/5, rounding up from 3.5).

I did enjoy reading Jolene. There were some interesting things happening in the story, and I liked the characters. But it wasn't really anything exciting - it mostly felt like the story of a young woman falling in love (wow did she pine for Josh when she couldn't see him for a day or two) while also learning a few useful skills. I remember feeling like that with The Gates of Sleep, too; for that reason, I much prefer Lackey's Heralds of Valedmar books to the Elemental Masters ones that I've read.

The Summer War

I was really excited to see a new Naomi Novik novella was out! I hadn't heard anything about it, and was really happy to see that it was more of the fantasy-style like Uprooted and Spinning Silver (it really reminded me of the world of Spinning Silver, so I was rather surprised that the two aren't connected, even by being in the same world).  

In The Summer War, when Celia is 12 years old, she discovers that she is a sorceress when she curses her brother to never find love again. Desperate to try to undo the curse, she has only a little time to find him before she is wed to the crown prince of the realm. But when the prince and the king pull a double cross, she finds herself at the whims of the mortal's ancient enemy, the immortal summerlings.

I really enjoyed The Summer War. It was a fast read (I read it in a day because it's fairly short). I liked the characters, especially how Celia learned and grew as a person as she grew up. The dynamics between her and her brothers were interesting as well 

I also liked the summerlings and how they thought so differently from the mortals in the story. For immortals, they were very much willing to die in glory so their names could live on in story. Their revenge plan was also kind of funny in that they expected a mortal to do something the way they expected, and were so surprised and angry when they didn't. It was a neat touch that they could only do things in the mortal realm during summetime, and would go running back to their world when the autumn winds hit.

All in all, this was a super fast and enjoyable read (especially after my last few reads).