Declan Finn's Blog, page 14

Mildra the Monk: Interview with Declan Finn

A new interview from a new interviewer.









If any of these sound good, just pop on over to SilverEmpire.org and check out my books.



And of course



Remember to vote in the Dragon Awards.

Review of The Unbearable Heaviness of Remembering (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 5), by L. Jagi Lamlighter

[image error] Here we go again. 



If you haven't seen the other books of Rachel Griffin ... this is a very long story. And I have other reviews that you're going to want to look at.



Book 1: The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin



Book 2: The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel



Book 3: Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dream Land






Book 4: Awful Truth about Forgetting



By this point, we should all realize that I'm still reading them at book five, so it's a good assumption that this book, too, was awesome, and you should read it. And if you don't read it, you are a bad person. 

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For those of you who are not up to speed on this series: we have a magical girl from a magical family at a magical boarding school with her magical friends. Her best friends include how a Dickens character should look after going through the foster care system (less like Oliver Twist, more like the Artful Dodger), a magical Australian with a magical stick up her ass, and Victor von Doom -- I mean Vladimir von Dread.



Imagine if JK Rowling had done a deep dive and actually built a world from the ground up, and every character had a full range of emotions and conflicting thoughts and agendas, while there are actual stakes that amounted to more than just the existence of the school, but existence itself.



That's the Rachel Griffin novels. 



Also, it's so nice to find a fantasy novel that includes other magic traditions and mythology outside of the UK and continental Europe. If there's a myth or lore or type of fantasy magic that Jagi hasn't thrown in yet, I haven't heard of them. 



I'm going to avoid posting the description of the book here for one simple reason: It spoils events in the second half of the book, something I've found jarring since as long as I can recall.



When Book 5 opens, Rachel's school, Roanoke Academy, has a problem: the local wild fey are loose. The wizards were supposed to keep the local wild fey psychopath under lock and key. But now it's loose, and the local fey no longer need to adhere to their bargain. If the Heer is not imprisoned again, and the fey put back in their place, Roanoke Academy will close.



One must admire Jagi's restraint with book five. It opens a whole two days after the end of book 4 -- usually the next book will open the same say as the last book ended, giving Terry Goodkind a run for his money on "the morning after" opening of The Sword of Truth. And there is so much blowback here, yikes.



What can one say about the book that I haven't already in prior reviews? Her brother is Lord Peter, her family estate is in Dartmoor -- they have a local beast that is not specifically referred to as a dog, a hound, or even a Great Dane. Rachel's family use microexpressions both to read people and to mislead them. 



The pace is only slightly more relaxed than usual. The opening threat wasn't lethal, which is about as relaxed as the book gets. The rest of the novel has an undercurrent of multiple threats, spread out along the length of the book. The pacing hurries along at a quick gallop, slowing here and there for world and character building. And then get out of a way before being run over. As I've said in previous reviews, if Rachel's days go any faster, she'll have to change her name to Jack Bauer. Hunting fey on the Roanoke Academy grounds makes for a wonderful subplot. It ties in nicely to the second subplot later on.



No, I'm not sure if there is a main plot anywhere along here. There are basically two major subplots jammed together, but they fit so well you don't care that the only main thread is the series plot, not a main plot for the novel.



We have Ankh-Morpork style football, a magical government that makes sense, sports team names that don't (show of hands: who wants your sports team to be named The Maenads?), Jim Butcher Scooby-Doo jokes, and students armed with a Bowie knife... which is an odd complaint given that they're all armed with wands, but seriously, who let that guy have a Bowie knife? Heck, Jagi even spells out the difference between the Seelie and the Unseelie... which I don't even think Harry Dresden explained.



It's so nice to see that in a world of magic, hydrogen peroxide is still used to remove blood from clothing. 



Oh yes, and Death? Death shows up. And of course, HE SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS. BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES, TERRY PRATCHETT HAS PROVEN IT TO BE SO.



There are problems, of course. Mostly with some of the characters being ... themselves. At least one magical princess needs to be smothered with a magical pillow; then they issue her a bodyguard with Omega beams. Rachel's best friend (of her own age) might be one kid who needs mild sedatives for everyone else's safety ... or he need to learn restraint, perhaps with a butterfly net. 



I think the problems of the book can all be summed up as, well, high school is one big problem. 



Rachel also has flaws ... largely in that she has to stop reading classic romance novels; when she starts thinking romance, the narrative voice goes into prose so purple, I swear the text color changes. And she is such a kid. Despite saving the world enough times that even the adults listen to her when she says there is a problem, Rachel has very definite ideas of what should happen. She has this idea that she should have a womanly figure ... at 14. (pardon me while I head desk).



And then her PTSD kicks in, because really, after the skeleton baby incident, we should be worried if she didn't have PTSD.



Also, seriously, in a world where magic is a day to day thing, you'd think someone would have taught them to be really REALLY careful, and very specific, about the wishes one makes.



But you can say one thing about their characters flaws -- these people characters have characters to actually develop, which is more than I can say for certain other books. Heck, there are some characters in this series who I didn't know they had characters to develop.



Anyway, 5/5 stars. Go buy the book now. Thanks.



Paperback here



Amazon Kindle link here

2020 HELICON AWARDS

I apparently ended up with another award.




Who knew?

Review: in Death's Shadow

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This is one of those books this is one of those books where I cannot tell you how it came into my consciousness. For all I know, Kal could have mentioned asking for reviewers in one of our groups and I just volunteered.



However I am glad that I volunteered to get this particular review copy, even though I cannot tell you for the life of me how it came into my possession. 



This book has so many fun entertaining elements to it, it is hard to know where exactly to begin.






You have Metallurgy on bullets that I have not seen since the first Monster Hunter novel. 
It brings in Creative elements that would make Jim Butcher wanted to take notes. 
And frankly I also believe that there is a Quantum Leap reference just thrown in for good measure. (When you have a entity that no one else can see except our protagonist and he is called Sam I try to remember back to Quantum Leap to remember which character was played by Dean Stockwell Al or Sam.)





Welcome to In Death's Shadow.

Ari lives in the shadow of death.
Ari is a combat veteran who has chosen to leave the military behind and live a quiet, normal life.  He's got a few problems though.  For one thing, the cops think he's a serial killer.  For another, a vengeful politician has put Ari in his crosshairs.  To make matters worse, Ari has a guardian angel... and not just any angel, Ari's protector is the Angel of Death.  When his life is in danger, people start to die, and Ari's guardian can sometimes be indiscriminate whose life he takes when protecting him.

That's not even the worst problem.  Death wasn't assigned to him by mistake.  An ancient werewolf wants Ari dead and even with death on his side, Ari might not survive.

Ari needs to find a way to stay alive, to clear his name, and most importantly to get out from under the shadow of death and live a normal life... even if it kills him.

Yes, a reaper playing guardian angel. I appreciate how Kal has avoided making our hero utterly indestructible by giving him a guardian angel who is akin to a weapon of mass destruction. 



Also appreciated? The execution and showing us the point of view of how at this reaper operated within his rules and regulations. 



Overall the book is so much fun I didn't put it down from the moment I picked it up. Right now I am only waiting for book two to come out (and I suspect book 3) so I can just buy all of them in hardcopy and then spread them among my friends and family.



Kal brings a lot of wonderful little touches to his writing style. He has one of the better opening lines I've seen since "the building was on fire and it was not my fault." The very off-hand casual easy descriptions and backstory feels effortless -- largely executed with nice sharp background notes that leave a nice little sting and then moves on with the rest of the story almost casually throwing them out however the reader does feel them. 



There is also a lot of very intentional casual humor such as how Sam (our Guardian Reaper) chooses to protect our hero. Sometimes to laughable degree that I have not seen since some of the more outlandish deaths from the Final Destination franchise -- though Kal never resorts to that level of Rube Goldberg mechanic. In terms of little touches lines like "I'd managed to avoid ruining this set of clothing with blood at least." 



As I said, it's the little things.



Due to the nature of the Guardian reaper, the nature of Sam's protection of Ari has led to him having more than a few run-ins with the police. 

Kal even manages to have to make use of the old canard 

"Do you have plans for the day?" "No, I can't make plans, then they can throw around words like premeditation." 

I've been waiting for someone to use that in a novel for years. He just slid it in like a nice stiletto to the back and moved on.



And no, even though Sam is very thorough about his job, he never turns into a deus ex machina. Never. That's freaking impressive.



I even like the little bit about how Sam really enjoys he 24 hour news cycle as "like an athlete staying up on sports news". Also, Sam's commentary on CNN is beautiful.



Great one liners include

"Are demons common in Detroit?" "Clearly you haven't been to Detroit lately.""Angels are the police of the Supernatural world" "What does that make Sam?" "Designed sniper."

There are several elements that almost feel like nods to other genre novels. For example one could be forgiven for thinking that Harry dresden's werewolf / Terminator scene is slipped in this one or having supernatural beasties encountered in Afghanistan feels a little bit like Monster Hunter. And again, little touches like casually mentioning a werewolf and "how thermite grenades work wonders." 



Again, it's the little things.



As I said above, some of the metallurgy is so good, I intend to steal a lot of it. Including silver and mercury arounds, as well as electrum.



We have great action, dark humor, easily executed backstory that is all relevant to the plot, along with some great world-building at a pace Mickey Spillane would have loved.



I will also admit to highly enjoying Kal's version of werewolf mythology and lore. He does some nice variations that I personally have never seen before. And he comes up with perfect reasons and rationale for werewolves to be 100% pure evil all the time. After all, one of the enemies is literally a soul sucking werewolf from Hell.



And these are one of the lesser problems our hero will have to deal with. Because on top of a wonderful first novel, Kal has effortlessly set up a sequel without any actual sequel baiting. There is no Empire Strikes Back level BS. There is no "to be continued." And there is only an ending that would have worked perfectly well with the final line of a comic book movie. I mean a good one.



Spriggs is such a good author that it was nearly halfway through the book before I realized how many tropes and cliches that Kal had made good use of without them feeling at all like cliches or even troops. Including: a dead fiance, memory loss before a certain age, et al. However it feels more like the sort of that brought us something as brilliant as Jim butcher's Codex Alera novels. 



At the end, we even get a little of the "hero of the borrowed heart."



Anyway, 5/5. This book was excellent. I look forward to the next one. Hopefully, it comes out soon.

The return of the Planetary anthologies

So, Pluto is out



Luna is out.



And the returning anthologies are already up and ready to go.



Mars is up for pre-order, and it has a new editor. 











Mercury is back for pre-order 








As is Venus.









You can pretty much order or pre-order the entire series as of right now. Just click here. 



But yeah. They've got editors and they've got covers, and they have release dates and everything.



Tuscany Bay is such a nice, efficient publisher, and they run a tight ship.



It's so nice working with people who know what they're doing.

Fighting the Void: A Sliver Empire Rises

This is one of the guys from Catholic reads interviewing my publisher, Russell Newquist, about the Silver Empire Book Club.



If you're interested in joining the Silver Empire Book Club. You can click here at any time.

Review: Psycho (and Psychic) Games

[image error] I've already reviewed Amie Gibbons' Psychic Undercover (with the Undead)[image error], a law enforcement UF novel that really makes Laurell K. Hamilton look like an amateur (okay, LKH does guns better, but since LKH has even managed to make Edward a useless character, I'm not feeling charitable).



And now, we have Psycho (and Psychic) Games (The SDF Paranormal Mysteries Book 2)




Psycho (and Psychic) Games is ... 



Well, let's just say this is what happens when southerners make a Hannibal Lecter.

And they thought catching the serial killer was difficult...

Psychic Ariana Ryder just completed her probationary year and is now a full agent in the FBI's Special Division Force, a semi-secret branch that investigates paranormal crimes. She's got a great, if strict and strictly yummy, boss, a vampire for a boyfriend, and yeah, that has its issues and politics, but overall, life's lookin' pretty good.

The director, in a bid to score political points, puts Ariana on interrogating famous serial killer JB Truck, aka The Puzzle Master. Truck's been in prison two years and the authorities still can't figure out who all his victims were or where his vast resources came from.

Ariana's mission is simple, get visions off the psycho until they get the information they need.

But nothing's ever simple when there's magic afoot. The vampire queen's gunning for Ariana, there's a mysterious new shifter in town who needs a psychic's help (and is way too flirty considerin' she's a lady with a boyfriend), and Truck's got a few tricks of his own.

And he didn't end up in Nashville by chance.

Frankly, this book already has a very nice summation of the novel.

"This isn't Silence of the Lambs, it's freaking Nightmare on Elm Street."

I think this sums it up nicely.



I would say that this is as good as the first novel, though there are some minor issues. You don't "sick people" on others. There were one or two moments where I was concerned we were going to enter into squicky Anita Blake BS. Don't worry: while the sex did get heavier into detail, it's still better (and easier to skip) than the Hamilton books. In fact, it's more like how I with Hamilton would write her books. Maybe I could get back into them.



But as I said, this was is just as good as Gibbons' first novel in the series. It has elements of fantasy microbiology (which was my favorite parts of Grimm, and I would like to see more of that in fantasy in the genre in general).



And Gibbons' does some cute bits of business with the psychopath du jour. There was a good deal of 3D chess going on that reminded me of the Joker. And then he turns into Deadpool (from before he became a popular character)



This one even solved a lot of my problems with the first one. Because this was the book where our heroine is a full agent, and it was time for her to just grow the hell up.



And then she ends by setting up book three.



I've only got one noticeable problem with the series in general so far and this individual book in particular.



With the book, it's a bit unbalanced. About 75% deals with the serial killer. Then we have a break and we switch tracks, where it turns into a relatively good variation on an Anita Blake novel (a bit of soap opera, a touch of melodrama, and let's talk about feelings -- though that was in service of actually FURTHERING THE PLOT, so it gets a pass).



With the series. I don't have a really good sense of place. This is something that is occasionally a problem with even Jim Butcher. I don't get a sense that this is Nashville. I like to get an idea of where the heck I am. But aside from some of the accents, this could be almost any city and state in the union.



To be perfectly honest, this is still a 5/5. The problems in the book are easily overlooked and forgiven. If I were being more nitpicky, I'd penalize the overall score. But I'm not. And the book was still enjoyable.



So if you're interested into a nice mystery, something that harkens back to the days before Anita Blake before it became Penthouse letters, you're going to want to read this one.

Villain As Hero?

If I have to hear one more BS statement about how "Villains always think they're the good guy," I think I'm going to hit someone.


This is a lie. Because it assumes way too much about what happens inside of the villain's head.


Let's face it, every real world vile sumbitch has not, does not, and never has consider "good" or "bad" in their equations. They considered what was good for them. You can always say that they're the hero of their own story, but never, ever say that they think that they're the good guy. 


Why?


Because "I'm the hero" is the sort of narcissism you can see in ... anyone selfish enough to pull off villainous deeds. Because each bad guy must start with the premise that "I need to do X to Y because my needs are more important than Ys."


Evil thinks that it is the center of the universe. Of course it's the hero. But the only good they see is their own. 


Let's take the Devil...


Work with me here, I've got a punchline...


Traditionally (no, not Lucifer's non-Christian heresy) Satan literally thinks he knows better than God-- even though it is impossible. Satan sees humans as so beneath angels it's ridiculous. 


"Oh, but Satan was the good guy of Paradise Lost." No, he was the protagonist. There's a difference. So was Dexter in the Jeff Lindsay books. But at the end of the day, Satan would rather reign in Hell, because serving is beneath him. Because "he knows better."


Notice, I am being very picky in my word choice. I'm talking about people who are villains, not necessarily antagonists. I've done this blog before, I'm not doing that again. 


Villains are evil. To think that they believe themselves as "the good guy" is idiotic. Hell, in most versions of the Joker I've ever seen, he will out and out boast that he's evil and just having so much fun.


Pick a serial killer. Jeffery Dahmer is my usual example. He had a perfectly healthy middle class background growing up .... killed his first victim when he was a teenager. Grew up to be a rapist sodomite and cannibal murderer. Ted Bundy, another psychopath, was a total narcissist who even blamed his victims -- who he strangled to death as he raped them.


Villains don't care about good or bad. Just what they want. They might add some self-justification from time to time ... but that's only for the highly reflective jerks.


And yes, this is not to say that villains are Johnny one note all the time. Perhaps one of the better bits from Man of La Mancha is where we find a caravan of thugs singing to a bird "with the gentility of truly brutal men."


Don't believe me? Hitler was a vegetarian who painted roses. Eichmann -- despite every filmed attempt to make him look sinister -- was the most boring bureaucrat ever tried for mass murder, who out and out said "Every time I thought about what I was doing, it made me ill. So I just didn't think about it."


... If you ever want to know what goes through the mind of a low level minion, Eichmann's your guy. The answer being "Very little."


Of course, when writing, do try to give your villain as much background as you give your hero. You don't necessarily need it, but we need to get a sense of the character.


Heck, use some of my own bad guys lately. It's possibly the least amount of background I've given a villain.



Hell Spawn  featured a possessed serial killer -- most of the time, everyone interacted with the demon. But the ultimate reveal is that the demon and the host were in sync, and that tells you everything you need to know about that psycho. 



Death Cult  had a truly political animal. It's amazing how much power for its own sake can go.



Infernal Affairs ... well, let's just say that the villain monologue does help.



City of Shadows , Crusader and Deus Vult  actually did a fairly good job with their villains.



And yes, they are unremitting evil, AND they think they're the hero of their own little worlds. Heh heh heh.

Clerical Error: out now

Clerical Error is out.



This one is going to be interesting.



There are no fights.



There are no explosions.



There are no ... okay, there's one murder.



Maybe one or two people are just a wee bit injured.



But no one is shot. Or stabbed. Or poisoned. 



A lot of this book falls under your traditional cozy. There's a lot of talking and maneuvering. There's a lot of local politicking and environment...



It helps that this is a historical novel dealing with local issues and murder in 1976.

James is a college philosophy professor with too much time on his hands. When an old classmate asks for a favor, he drops in with little notion of what’s ready for him.

The year is 1976, during the dark times – for both the Catholic Church and New York City.

James’ college classmate is Father Gus Sadowski, the pastor of Saints Gabriel, Columcille, and Rocco church in the middle of Bed-Sty, where there drive by criminals are on one side of the parish, and the mob is one the other. Father Gus is all alone to run the parish, and needs some help – because the live-in priest in the attic, Father Timothy A. Lessner, is worse than useless.

When Lessner takes a tumble down the stairs in the middle of the night, the casual favor has turned into a nightmare.

Can James solve the mystery of who killed Lessner before he finds himself the main suspect?

So, obviously, this is different for me.



The joke I've been using has been "If things go wrong, I'll just blame the co-author."



Since the co-author is my father, that's part of the joke.



Anyway, it's out. I think you can even return e-books if you don't like them. So give it a shot.



Be well all.

Review: Adam Lane Smith's Valkyrie Doll and the Ashen Brotherhood

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You may previously remember Adam Lane Smith from his work in Burrito Avenger and Making Peace (reviews in the links)



Adam has moved on to Christian Fantasy dystopia.



You have to be pretty flipping awesome to make me get through dystopia of any type. Mostly, you have to be named John Ringo.



If this sounds interesting, then you can get out Adam's main series of Deus Vult Wastelanders. The featured character is Gideon Ira -- imagine Judge Dredd as a crusader knight in powered armor. 



I wasn't a fan of book one. I blame the poor editing -- It opened with a fight with a demon, then tried to make us care about Gideon Ira, then put us with a fight against random thugs. Which isn't how you do story structure. Book two of Deus Vult Wastelanders was better.



The one I really liked is Valkyrie Doll and the Ashen Brotherhood. It's a spin-off from the main series, but I think it did a better job of introducing the world through character interactions than the first two books.

The Valkyrie revives in a coffin.



As she climbs from her tomb, she finds the end of the world has come and gone. Demons roam the blasted wasteland of what was once America. Humanity hangs by a thread and she, one of the last surviving Valkyries, is tasked with driving the rampaging legions back into Hell.



As she battles waves of demons, raiders, and mutants, the Valkyrie faces far darker questions: Does a created being have a soul? What does it mean to protect mankind as humans prey upon each other? When she confronts the cult of Moloch hidden beneath the ruins of an ancient abortion clinic, her burning need for justice may just prove more powerful than her orders to protect mankind.



The last survivors of humanity need her. Will she be our protector, or our destroyer?

Valkyrie Doll and the Ashen Brotherhood has multiple advantages over the main series. 



To start with, the Valkyrie has a personality. She's almost charming in her observations. She has a character arc and development.



And let's just say that she has an inventory system that feels like a very meta comedy about video game systems.



Another advantage this has over the main series is that our heroine is working with a team of various personality types. Adam's already got team dynamics down from Making Peace , and it really is one of his strengths. 



Overall, this was better than the last two. And if you want better than Larry Correia's Son of the Black Sword, and looks like a cross between Solomon Cane with a protagonist out of Nier: Automata (if Neir Automata was, you know, GOOD), then give Valkyrie Doll and the Ashen Brotherhood a try.