RaveThe Nerd DailyThis gently delightful collection of stories provides new twists on old stories and maintains a much-needed tone of optimism and resilience throughout ... The links between the tales are not meant to unveil any kind of grand mystery. They’re mostly blink-and-you’ll-miss-it asides that gently suggest how very connected we all are: to each other, and to the world of spirits.
Katherine Addison
MixedThe Nerd DailyThe angelic and monstrous elements are certainly the biggest and most obvious deviations, but what do they actually add or subtract? Not really that much, as it turns out. Crow is an angel, but he acts very much like his human original, sans the cocaine and fisticuffs. He’s also cheerfully oblivious rather than ill-tempered, and genuinely curious rather than an insufferable know-it-all. This is closer to the original Arthur Conan Doyle version and I don’t mind it, but it all adds up to a very nice varnish, attractive but only insofar as the original material below was already attractive ... The book is a bit stuck between the modern and the Victorian, which is an awkward place to be. It doesn’t feel quite like a real Victorian novel, and it lacks the glee of something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which really leaned into both the supernatural and the absurd. By making angels and monsters ubiquitous, Addison robbed them of their ability to excite. They’re mundane facts of life, and we are asked to treat them as such ... Addison tended too far toward making everything very calm and normal...It’s doubly a shame because the supernatural elements are the best part ... Addison clearly has imagination by the bucketful. There are lots of moments of friction between what we think we know of Victorian England and the England on display...I love alternate Victorian settings, and this is quite a good one in its small details ... Yet again, Addison hamstrings herself with the setting: she wants to say things about colonialism, about feminism and morality, and about gender, but she’s also trying to cover the most famous Sherlock Holmes stories and maintain a Victorian setting, so everything gets a bit muddled. She can’t go deep on any one topic and so tries to do everything. It doesn’t quite work ... also missteps when it draws back from the detective work and mystery ... While enjoyable and well-written, it hews too closely to the original stories to feel truly fresh or original ... good for Holmes fans of any stripe or those looking for a diverting read, but it doesn’t entirely rise to the challenge of reworking Victorian and detective classics.
Carrie Vaughn
RaveThe Nerd Daily... marvelously compelling ... located in time but also timeless, just close enough to that ageless mythic core to get some of its magic. Robin and Marian and the rest are just slightly bigger than life, which works well for the dramatic sequences and also plays well with the experiences of the children ... Locksley feels inhabited by real people, and Sherwood feels suitably uninhabited, ghostly but not frighteningly so. It’s immediately treated as Mary’s haven and romping ground, and so her suspicions about it being haunted give it a sense of complex history rather than horror-movie menace ... a thrilling little book, and one I can’t wait to give to a surprisingly wide array of readers. Fans of classic fantasy, fans of swashbuckling, fans of YA…there’s a little something of everything for readers in this book.
Laura Lam
PositiveThe Nerd Daily... belongs on the shelf right between The Martian and The Wanderers, the hyper-mechanical and the ultra-psychological novels about deep space. This finds some really good middle ground between the two, but its greatest strength is its ability to reflect on the political realities of the modern world ... Too often, books about exceptional people don’t show them changing or learning, but another of Naomi’s great strengths is her adaptability ... There are several twists I didn’t expect but really loved ... The final confrontations, though, wobble dangerously on the edge of cartoon villainy, and the final decisions are made more for literary reasons...There are lots of moral questions raised, but solutions veer toward the pat, convenient ... I don’t think this book will convince anyone who isn’t already onboard with its political stances, but it’s a good reminder not to put our hope in billionaires or demagogues.
Nghi Vo
RaveNerd DailyThough it’s a brief novella, I was repeatedly surprised by the number of twists packed into the narrative. They aren’t \'gotcha\' horror-style twists, just moments of insight and cleverness that keep the stories from ever growing predictable, even though this is a story we all know. It’s the story of the underdog rising up, the story of justice. And it’s also the story of justice not fully done, of the inherent unfairness of empire ... The prose is subtle and lyrical, elegant but not effusive. Vo conveys depth of feeling with an absolute minimum of words and scenes: a tragic love story, a great sacrifice, a terrible duty, and plot after skilful plot. It’s a masterpiece of understatement and implication. This is the little black dress of books: it gives the impression of effortlessness while being quietly meticulous in every stitch. And it’s for everyone. I can’t think of a single person who wouldn’t like this book. The Empress of Salt and Fortune has everything, and nothing in excess.
G. Willow Wilson
MixedStrange HorizonsWith The Bird King she tries to create a new kind of retelling, one that introduces reality as a bit of color to a largely fantastical tale. It’s the fantasy that provides all the texture and grit: the story is not about how a few magic individuals fit within a larger historical setting, but how a historical setting brings into relief what are ultimately mystical and fantastical truths. It’s a very smart approach, and it’s one I appreciate even if I don’t fully believe that it succeeds ... The Bird King teeters on the edge of rendering Fatima and Hassan superfluous to their own story at certain points, since the battles are largely fought and won by supernatural entities, not human determination or ingenuity. But even when the human characters get to display their talents, they risk undoing the narrative with overpowered magic ... Wilson lavishes her attention on those inner struggles, and so the solutions are more elegant, more powerful than the instances of escape or combat. It’s clear that Wilson is trying to get at very profound themes, and by and large she succeeds on this level. Certainly the emotional core of the novel remains powerful throughout. Though it stumbles, then, The Bird King is a powerful parable of acceptance, difference, and empowerment.
