Roger Hyttinen

Review of Twice Dead (Necromancer’s Song) by Caitlin Seal

September 18, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

Twice Dead is the first installment in a new series titled The Necromancer’s Song.

The book follows our main character Naya, a naive trade merchant’s daughter from the country of Talmir, who is on her first trade mission in the country of Celamor. Her father waits for her on their ship while she ventures off to meet with the client. On the way there, she’s murdered in an alleyway and later brought to back to life as a wraith by a necromancer. After her resurrection, she learns from the Talmirian embassy that she was brought back in order to spy on Celamor.  Now it’s worth mentioning at this point that Talmir is morally opposed to necromancy and because of this, Talmir and Celamor are bitter enemies on the brink of war. There’s not a lot of trust between the two countries. Neya is coerced into spying for her country, but as she quickly learns, things are not as they seem and not all of those she deemed trustworthy can be trusted.

This is a fast-paced, action-filled novel with fantastic world building. I enjoyed the backstory between the two enemy nations, though it took me a bit to get a handle on what was going on. But once I did, I found the intrigue, the politics, the spying and the backstabbing to be quite an enjoyable journey.  The magic system in the story was refreshing — the necromancy as presented here was not the type of magic system you often see in stories. When someone is resurrected, they are bound to their former body by runes engraved on their bones. The resurrection process also involves “singing” the soul back to the body, which is a complicated and rather lengthy procedure. I found this system not only unique but genuinely fascinating (and perhaps just a tad creepy!). This is the first book I’ve read about necromancy, and the system as it was presented here was intriguing. It was fun accompanying Naya on her journey as she discovered her new powers, adjusted to her wraith-body, learned about wraiths and necromancers, and overcame her long-held prejudices.

I found the writing to be crisp, sharp and clean, and well-edited (I didn’t notice any errors), and the storytelling and characterization were expertly done. The characters were well-fleshed out, the pace was spot on, and the storyline kept me flipping the page until it ended.

Twice Dead also had some exciting twists and surprises — it definitely packed some punch. The story, in my opinion, was well-thought out and well planned. There wasn’t one point in this book where I was confused as to what was going on. Naya was an interesting, dynamic character, and almost immediately, I felt comfortable in her head.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy, action-packed thrillers, spy novels, paranormal adventures and worlds with intriguing magic systems. This was a fun ride that I’m glad I got to be a part of. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for the next book in the series.

Note: A big thank you to NetGalley, who provided me an Advanced Reader Copy of “Twice Dead” in exchange for an honest review.

You can check out Twice Dead here at Amazon or at The Book Depository

Review of The Overstory by Richard Powers

September 9, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

This was another long list finalist for the 2018 Man Booker awards, and the premise of the book really grabbed me, so I took a gamble. And I’m glad I did.

The Overstory starts by introducing us to a variety of everyday people, nine of them, each with their own separate story and all of whom have a connection to trees (though they may not be aware of it). We have a scientist who studies trees, a young Chinese woman whose father leaves behind a curious heirloom, a young computer genius, a Vietnam vet, a young woman who dies and comes back to life with a renewed purpose, an artist who inherits a multi-generational tree photography project and others.

At first, it seems like this is a book of unrelated short stories, which kind of surprised me given that the Man Booker, as of this time, does not allow for short story collections. But once we meet everyone in the first part of the book, we then see how they are or will become linked by their connection to trees and in the process, their lives will be changed forever.

This was such an interesting approach to storytelling — linking a group of disparate characters via trees and through this link, telling a remarkable and unforgettable story of the relationship between trees and humans. And along the way, we as the reader learn some pretty amazing facts about trees, data that have only recently been confirmed by scientists. I recall reading about one of the findings outlined in this book several years ago and found it utterly amazing. Yes, I’m an old tree hugger from way back.

The Overstory paints a vivid picture of the effects of humans on the planet and what that might mean for our future. Through our nine characters and the poetry of Powers’ writing, we dive deep into the old ancient forests, the lives of individual trees, our connection to the trees and the forests, and the connection of trees to each other and the entire planet.

There are a plethora of themes to this book: life, death, connection to the world around us, people fighting for what’s right, greed, tragedy, our place in the natural world and hope. After reading this book, I can say that I’ll never look at trees the same way again and in this way, it’s sort of a wake-up call — a call urging us to try and see life from a different perspective to back the balance.

The Overstory is not a book with a fairy tale ending; in fact, it will break your heart. But it’s not entirely without hope either. The Overstory will make you angry at times and is a story that will stay in your mind for a long time after having closed the book. It has for me, and I don’t think I’ll forget it anytime soon.

Though it was at times a difficult book to read, it was also one of the most beautifully written books that I’ve read in a long time: lyrical, poetic, moving and enlightening with the potential to be life-altering.

Hell, it might even make you want to run out and a hug a tree afterward. All in all, a powerful thought-provoking story that I ended up loving.

Purchase The Overstory at Amazon

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Review of The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 1) by Rick Riordan

September 9, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

I read the first couple of books in this series years ago when they first came out, but I don’t remember too much about them. So I wanted to reread this series, especially since I want to read a couple of the other series by Rick Riordan and figured I probably should read Percy first.

For those of you who haven’t read it, it follows 12 year old Percy Jackson, who, after one of his teachers transforms into a terrible monster and tries to kill him, learns that he is a half-blood meaning that he’s half human, half god and that his father is one of the Olympian Gods though we don’t learn until later which one. He also learns that his best friend in school, Grover, is a Satyr – half human and half goat.

When Percy’s mom finds out what happened to him at school with the evil teacher creature, she and Percy hop in the card, and she takes him to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods – the 1/2 children of gods. Oh, and along the way, there’s a fierce battle with a minotaur.

While he’s at camp, there’s an unthinkable crime: Someone has stolen Zeus’ lightning bolt, and unless the true thief is found, the Gods will engage in a catastrophic war amongst themselves, resulting in the potential destruction of earth.

So now, along with the help of a satyr and a daughter of Athena, Percy must journey across the United States to find the thief. Along the way, he faces a host of mythological monsters and old gods determined to stop him.

So I ended up loving this book, as I did the first time I read it. The Lightning Thief is everything that I love in a story: great characters, great villains, and plenty of non-stop action. I can’t wait to get to the next one in the series.

Purchase The Lightning Thief at Amazon

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Review of Still Life by Louise Penny

September 8, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

I’ve been wanting to read Louise Penny for a while now as the people in my book club rave about her books. So I picked up the first one in the Gamache series called Still Life.

The story opens when Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called to the scene of a suspicious death in the rural village of Three Pines, south of Montreal. Jane Neal, an elderly woman and beloved longtime resident of Three Pines has been found dead in the woods. The locals are positive it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache doesn’t necessarily agree and is soon convinced that Jane Neal death was not an accident. She was murdered.

This book has a fantastic cast of eccentric, complex and likable characters, each with more than their share of faults. There were numerous red herrings peppered throughout the story, and as Gamache deepens his investigation, possible suspects began to emerge. By the end of the book, we’ve pretty much gotten to know everyone, along with their faults and their foibles, in the small town of Three Pines — including the murderer. And everyone has layers upon layers of secrets.

Now even though many people refer to this as a cozy mystery, I’m not entirely sure that I agree. While it did take place in a quaint little artsy town, there was a darker feel to it then you see with a lot of cozies. There was long-standing hatred, fear, homophobia, revenge and, as it turns out, multiple murders. Though it certainly wasn’t gloomy, it doesn’t have that light, almost playful atmosphere you see in the cozy mystery genre.

As is the case with mysteries, one cannot say too much without spilling the beans as it were. Let me just say that this was an enjoyable mystery that kept me guessing until the end. This one I did not figure out.

The only niggle that I had with the book was the depiction of the gay couple. The author relied on stereotypical representations in which they ran a B & B and collected antiques. And then there’s the scene where they were singing “It’s Raining Men” in the kitchen, which caused me to roll my eyes so hard that I saw my brain.

If it hadn’t been for this insulting stereotyping, I probably would have given this book five stars. That being said, this is a solid 4-star read for me, and I hope to continue with the series and see what other kinds of trouble our Chief Inspector gets himself into.

Purchase Still Life at Amazon

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Review of Liam Davis and The Raven by Anyta Sunday

September 7, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

Anyta Sunday is one of those authors that I get all gushy over. In fact, in the M/M genre, she’s an insta-buy author for me.

Liam Davis and The Raven is a New Adult M/M Romance that follows Liam Davis, a serious student journalist writing a political column for the campus magazine called The Scribe. His goal is to eventually to gain apprenticeship at his father’s firm, so his life is almost totally focused on his career in journalism. Much to his horror, the editor of The Scribe forces him to relinquish his politics page and reassigns him to The Party Page. Now, this is problematic because not only does it jeopardize his chance of getting into his father’s prestigious newspaper company, but being an extremely serious non-nonsense and no drama type of guy with no friends to speak of, he basically has no idea how to party much less write about it.

But one night when leaving the party, a person dressed as Freddy Krueger comes stalking out of the shadows and attacks him. Luckily the Raven, who is the campus vigilante comes to save the day. Now what’s interesting, is that this vigilante has been getting hate mail sent to Scribe’s opinions page and now Liam takes it upon himself to find out who the Raven is so that he can warn him of the potential danger.

Along the way, due to his Raven research and his new party-going agenda, he ends up making some friends – and someone who may turn into much more than a mere friend. So in this way, this book is a sexual self-discovery tale in which Liam begins to question his own sexuality though he hasn’t given it too much thought.

What I find interesting about Liam, is that he is blunt, honest to a fault, insensitive, standoffish, a tad detached and clinical even – with absolutely no social skills whatsoever but with a keen, critical eye for observation. Though it took me a bit to warm up to Liam — and I really did — he ended up being quite an endearing characters, and I loved his deadpan humor. It was also lovely to watch his sexual awakening as he began to have deep feelings for a someone — in this case a boy — for the first time ever. The entire book is told from Liam’s POV which made the story all the more fun.

Along the way, he amasses several delightful and lovable characters as friends: there’s the dreamy Quinn who takes Liam under his wing and even agrees to become his roommate, the sexy and hysterically funny Hunter who is disabled and in a wheelchair following a brutal gay bashing though that certainly doesn’t stop him from actively pursuing his latest crush, and then there’s Shannon, Hunter’s overprotective sister.

So in this book, Liam not only discovers love for the first time but also true friendship and devotion within friendship.

True to Ms. Sunday’s form, there is a romance in this story, but of course, it is an extremely slow burn one, my favorite trope, to be truthful. I loved watching Liam’s evolution from a clinical social misfit to a passionate lover though he before declaring that he was gay felt that he needed to “gather data before drawing a conclusion.”.

But the romance isn’t the only theme to the story: there is a mystery to be solved. Who is the Raven and why is someone out to get him? And who is the hideous being behind all of the recent attacks on campus?

All in all, I loved this humorous, uplifting and entertaining book with its quirky, adorable characters and a compelling plot. And the romance was super-sweet. So in my opinion, Anyta Sunday hit another home run for me. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can purchase/check out Liam Davis and the Raven HERE

Review of Running with Lions by Julian Winters

September 5, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

First off, the cover is gorgeous. In fact, it’s what initially attracted me to this book.

The Story

Running with Lions revolves around a soccer team called The Lions, and pretty much the entire book takes place while the players are at summer sports camp. The main character is Sebastian Hughes, the team’s star goalie who has aspirations of becoming captain. Sebastian is bisexual, and several of his other teammates are also gay or bi. They are all fortunate in having a coach who provides a welcoming and safe atmosphere where the players do not have to hide their sexuality.

So Sebastian is all set to have an epic summer at sports camp when he is blindsided by his childhood friend, Emir Shah, who shows up to camp, planning on joining the team. The problem is that something happened between the two of them years ago and Emir now hates Sebastian, and he doesn’t go out of his way to hide his dislike.

Emir is also somewhat of a loner — kind of a misanthrope — as he doesn’t get along with anyone at school, including the other team members. So he keeps everyone at a distance and makes no effort to close the gap between him and the other guys on the team, even at camp.

Sebastian decides to try to reconnect with Emir for the sake of the Lions, and he sets out to regain Emir’s trust. But in spite of Emir’s increasingly lousy attitude, Sebastian finds himself not only attracted to Emir but also developing feelings romantic feelings for him.

So as you can probably guess, a romance develops between the two of them, but it’s not easy going and there are several obstacles they’re going to have to overcome.

What I Liked

I really liked the relationship between the team members — there was a strong bond between all of them which kind of made me think of how we often choose our own families, and those bonds of friendship can sometimes be stronger than families bound by blood.

That’s the feeling I got from the team — that they were one big inclusive family. This was especially true with these guys, I think, in that they were able to express their sexuality without any judgments. All in all, I thought that a novel about an LGBTQ inclusive soccer team was brilliant, though I was thankful that the book didn’t go into too much detail about the logistics of the sport. Some books go a little too far with game play-by-plays which can be annoying for me as I’m not much of a sports person.

Sebastian’s character growth was also something that resonated with me. Initially, he lacked self-confidence and had rather a negative self-image no doubt due to the bullying he experienced at school.

There was his struggle with feeling unworthy to be team captain. He was also not happy with his body, feeling that nobody could be attracted to him. I found it refreshing that this story handled body image issues from the point of view of a boy as this isn’t something we often see in YA fiction.

I enjoyed seeing Sebastian progress and grow throughout the story to a more self-assured and confident character. His relationship with Elmir helped to boost his self-confidence, especially in regards to body acceptance.

I thought the romance between Sebastian and Elmir was sweet and well-done. I am kind of a sucker for the frenemies to lovers trope so this especially worked for me. Well, this was more of a best friends to enemies to reluctant teammates to lovers, which still worked nicely IMHO.

What I Didn’t Like

There was one female character in the book, Gray and she was treated horribly by Mason, the boy she had a crush on. He was rude and mean to her throughout the book, and there were never any consequences to the way he treated her.

Yes, his behavior was explained as “he’s mean to her because he really likes her” but this old clichéd trope doesn’t work for me; in fact, I hate this trope. Gray was also kind of a cardboard cutout of a character, and all we see is her almost desperate one-sided crush on a boy who isn’t very nice to her. This whole thing kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

Another thing I didn’t like was that the story was told in the third-person present tense: “Mason replies, “No.” Elmir takes another dip at the ball. He looks at him. Bastian beams. etc., etc.” I never like this tense in a book, and I’ve DNF’d books because of it. I personally find it jarring, and it tends to pull me out of the story, and sometimes I find it difficult to get past it.

I know many authors write in this tense and it doesn’t bother everyone; it’s just a personal preference of mine, and I tend to shy away from books that use this tense. So this might be why the writing felt stilted and disjointed to me from time to time.

There also wasn’t a whole lot that went on. There was some mild angst but no serious dramatic conflicts. I have to admit that I was waiting for some explosive event to take place but there wasn’t much to speak of. There were no surprises, no plot twists and it ended up being somewhat predictable. I hate to say it, but I did get a tad bored from time to time as the story progressed.

Verdict

This was an adorable character-driven story with a likable cast of diverse characters. Give that this was more driven by the characters than the story, there’s not a whole lot of action going on so if you like your novels to be nail-biting roller-coaster rides, you won’t find that here. Luckily, the characters were multi-layered enough to hold my interest, and I did find myself invested in what happened to them.

Running with Lions was a light, fluffy summer story about friendship and love that was a fun read. Though it was somewhat of a light-hearted romance, it also dealt with several other important issues such as bullying (both Sebastian and Elmir), homophobia and racism.

If you enjoy sweet summery romances or stories about gays sports teams or summer camp, then you’ll want to check out this book. Though it was a little light on plot, I ended up enjoying it, and I’m glad I read it. It’s a worthy effort for a debut novel, and I’m looking forward to seeing what Mr. Winters comes up with next.

You can check out Running with Lions HERE