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From: ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Looking Back: RI 2024
Date: 1 Jan 2025 03:05:41 GMT
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Looking back over the year, and going through the reviews I've
posted, I think the following are my best RI 2024 books.

These are in more or less chronological RI order, not rank order.

==
Butcher seems to have really slowed lately.  I believe he's had
some family shakeups.  That said, when he *does* come out with something,
I have really enjoyed it:

Warriorborn: A Cinder Spires Novella (The Cinder Spires)
by Jim Butcher
https://amzn.to/42pw2dw

The Olympian Affair (The Cinder Spires Book 2)
by Jim Butcher
https://amzn.to/3SH9cek

Just as Butcher eased back into the "Dresden Files" with a novella,
"Warriorborn" leads off his return to the world of the "Cinder
Spires".

Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster is a "Warriorborn" lieutenant in the
service of Spire Albion.  It's been so long since the first Cinder
Spires book that I can't recall if the Warriorborn were introduced
there or not, but basically they are semi-weres: stronger & faster
than normal humans, and also more subject to impulsive and instinctual
behavior.  War is brewing in the setting, and the Spirearch is
concerned that he hasn't received vital intelligence from the new
Albion colony at Spire Dependence, so he sends Benedict and a "dirty
dozen" team of Warriorborn criminals to asses the situation and do
whatever it takes to retrieve a dispatch case.

Arriving by airship and dropping in stealth Benedict's team finds
that it's not a case of the Spirearch's agent being held or killed:
The whole spire has been massacred by unknown and apparently
impossible means.  Perhaps the war has started, but as far as anyone
knows, Spire Aurora has no weapon that could have done this.  As
it develops, there are witnesses who it is vital to bring back to
the Spirearch along with the dispatches, wherever they are, but
that won't be easy in the hellscape of a ruined Spire, the hostile
native life of the Spires setting, and enemy action.  At least
Benedict understands *that* part of it..

This was a very satisfying return to a setting I really enjoy.  I
would say the only nit was a speech given by Benedict's (convict)
second-in-command, an excellent character, which did not have the
payoff I expected later.

_The Olympian Affair_ takes up directly after "Warriorborn", and
Benedict continues to feature, but the three main characters here
are Auroran Colonel Renaldo Espira, a Warriorborn in a society less
friendly to such than Spire Albion, Albion Captain Francis Madison
Grimm Captain of the AMS Predator, the Spirearch's personal ship,
and Albion Lady Abigail Hinton, scion of an important Ablion merchant
House, and the Spirearch's personal representative to the diplomatic
goings-on at Spire Olympia.

What are the goings-on?  Well, war with Aurora is coming, may already
have arrived, and Albion is going to need all and any allies it can
get.  The conference is full of backstabbing, sometimes in a literal
sense, and Lady Hinton is having a difficult time of it.  Not helping
matters is that her lover, Albion's most famous duelist has also
been sent to Olympia, with strict instructions not to duel *anyone*
while his Auroran counterpart is also there and is determined to
provoke same.  Helping matters even less is the fact that Abagail
finds herself involved in a duel of her own, and the menace from
Spire Dependence is bearing down on everyone despite all Espira can
do to stop it.

I really like the Cinder Spires setting.  Its quasi-Elizabethan
characters all live turned-up-to-eleven lives, fighting harder,
loving larger and friending stronger than in our own workaday world.
We get a few new pieces of information on the setting in this book,
which tend to make me think I was wrong in my initial assumption
that it takes place in the same multi-verse as the "Codex Alera"
books.  We also get an interesting twist at the end of the book
which puts in in the mind of a similar turn in the first of McClellan's
"Glass Immortals" books.  I also like Butcher's portrayal of having
cats as allies:  It doesn't help as much as you might think.

==
The Andrews are generally rock-solid, and if I would rather have
more Inn Keeper or Kate books, the HL books are quite good as well:

Emerald Blaze: A Hidden Legacy Novel
by Ilona Andrews
https://amzn.to/3SZKfto

Unsurprisingly as it's an Andrews, this was the standout of the
month.  Like the "Edge" books, the "Hidden Legacy" books are a bit
more romance-y than the "Kate" books, but not a lot much more so --
there's always plenty of plot and action and very little sex by
current standards.

The Hidden Legacy books take place in a world very much like ours
(realistically, too much like ours, in the same way the Marvel
Universe is too much like ours, but that's not the focus here),
except that a couple hundred years ago a serum, since ruthlessly
suppressed, was discovered which gave people (those whom it did not
kill..) something extra.  Call it "magic", or call it "super-powers",
but the gifts largely breed true leading to a semi-overt system of
great houses, Byzantine house politics and marriage alliances all
co-existing, mostly, with a mundane government of nation states and
ordinary humans.

The series follows the doings of Clan Baylor, a new house, who make
their living as private investigators, and the books are first-person
narrated by different sisters who are leading the house at the time.
After eldest sister Nevada stepped down (for reasons that weren't
quite what they seemed), the last couple books have been told by
Catalina Baylor, whose Siren powers have kept her from relationships,
as she can never be sure she's not influencing her suitor.  Well,
there was that one time..

Currently she has quite a bit on her plate.  Apart from ordinary
investigations like finding stolen therapy monkeys, someone is
suddenly trying to kill Clan Baylor, the Warden of Texas, whose
covert deputy she is, has dumped a potentially world ending murder
investigation on her, the first non-human intelligence has arisen,
and it's not friendly, her evil grandmother is trying to make
Catalina her creature, and you know, that one time?  He'ssss Baaack!

As always with the Andrews, there's humor, action, relateable,
grounded, characters, and high stakes.  You don't have to have read
the previous books to enjoy this one, but why wouldn't you?

==
I might rate this one as the most-fun book I read this year.
You wouldn't give it to your maiden-aunt, but Davi will keep
you listening while she reddens your ears & talks them half off:

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying
(Dark Lord Davi Book 1)
by Django Wexler
https://amzn.to/3VRC7fZ

I first encountered Django Wexler with his Flintlock-Punk series
The Thousand Names.  Well, this is completely different, but just as
good.

Davi (if she has a last name, she has apparently forgotten it) thinks
she is from Earth, and was probably a nerd, but now, after over a thousand
years of lives, she has trouble remembering anything about her first life.

All she knows is that her troubles started when she regained consciousness
in a scummy pond in the woods where a wizard pulled her out and announced
that she was the chosen one prophesied to save the human kingdom from
the marauding "Wilders".

She could just never figure out *how*.  Every path she took led her to death
(often prolonged & painful) at the hands of "The Dark Lord", exiting life
with the Kingdom falling and reawakening in that damn pond.

After several hundred lifetimes, she has had her belly-full of it and decides
that *this* time things will be different.  To start with, while she always
dies at the hands of the Dark Lord, it's not always the *same* Dark Lord,
so there's obviously some kind of choice point out there somewhere: Why not
Dark Lord Davi?  She kills and robs the wizard and sets off into Wilder
territory.  It takes her a half dozen quick & painful trips back to the
pond before she figures out how to make a Wilder band accept her (it helps
that unlike most humans, she can eat the magical Thaumite stones as Wilders
do) and set out on her path to Dark Lordship.  In the beginning she is
helped by her general knowledge of the shape of coming events, but past
that, she must depend on her ability to wing it (aided by the fact that
despite her odd and devil-may-care aspect, she is smart and vastly experienced)
and judge character.

Not that she's perfect at that, the knowledge that she's probably heading
for an early and protractedly painful death have made her prone to take
pleasure where she can find it, and while she knows that she probably shouldn't
sleep with the help, the understanding that she will be around to face the
consequences this time comes a bit late to her.

Still she has, against all the odds, increased the size of her little
band and made it to the Conclave.  Well, every now and then, a dog
catches the car -- now what?

This book is one of the most fun I have read this year.  Davi's story
is told in snarky first person, with the most footnotes(*) I have encountered
since _Happy Hour of the Damned_ (more than Vance, for sure).  She is
shielded somewhat from the full realization of all her betrayals by her
conviction that everything will "reset" with no-harm-no-foul, and when
she comes to see that might not be the case this time, it does give her
pause, but fortunately does not dampen her narrative for more than a few
pages.
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