Book Review: The Vengeance, by Emma Newman
The Vengeance is an enjoyable romp by Emma Newman, a flintlock fantasy about a pirate girl’s quest to find her long-lost birth mother. The publisher’s tagline calls it a “swashbuckling adventure set in a version of Alexandre Dumas’s world haunted by vampires” but there isn’t any real hint of the supernatural in the text until about two-thirds of the way through. So if you’re primarily interested in horror, or if you’re really not into pirates, this may not be the book for you. If you enjoy a feisty female protagonist getting into fish-out-of-water misadventures, plus sapphic romance, keep reading. Anna-Marie, the pirate captain who raised her, confesses on her deathbed that she had stolen Morgane from her real mother, whom she calls a monster. But Morgane finds a letter from her birth mother begging for her return and hinting at her own safety concerns. There are various other puzzlements, such as why Anna-Marie had exclusively attacked one trading company’s ships (beyond saying that the owner had ruined her life). However, since Morgane has never run into any situation she can’t handle (albeit with the backing of her fellow pirates), she decides to go and rescue her birth mother. By Chapter Five, Morgane is on her way to France. Once she gets there, she runs into trouble almost immediately; she doesn’t have any idea how many people are going to want to use her, and she knows nothing of how feudalism works. She doesn’t understand why the peasants don’t just vote out their tyrannical lords, the way a pirate crew would reject any pirate captain who wasn’t fair to them. She’s very worldly in some ways, but very naive in others. Note: Morgane tells this story (first person past tense), and she is almost entirely uncritical of the pirate code and lifestyle throughout. She’s rightly proud of how capable it’s made her, but she only feels mild regret for the deaths she’s caused after someone whose lover was killed berates her, and that’s brief. After seeing the vast inequality of wealth in France, she’s sure that trading ships just make rich people richer, so they’re legitimate targets. Anyway, Morgane eventually finds a few people who will help her navigate the treacherous tides of French society, and makes her way toward the estate where she believes her mother is being held. Things turn out very differently from how she had thought, with some shocking scenes and revelations, but with her pistols, sword, dagger, fierce will, and the power of love, Morgane achieves a happy ending. The publisher lists The Vengeance, which comes out May 6, as Book #1 of The Vampires of Dumas, but it works perfectly well as a standalone novel. There are one or two minor dangling plot threads I can think of, plus the likelihood that Morgane will encounter more supernatural and worldly threats in the future, but all the current major perils have been vanquished and the emotional arcs resolved satisfactorily by the end of this book. Content warnings: Piracy, deaths, bloody violence, long-told lies, vampires and other supernatural stuff. Comps: Scarlet, by Genevieve Cogman. Disclaimers: I received a free eARC for review from the publisher via NetGalley.
Book Review: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, by Kylie Lee Baker
It sounds like it would be a downer, and it is indeed horrific and very depressing in parts, but it’s also gripping, active, exciting, sometimes very funny, loving, and hopeful.
Book Review: THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER by Stephen Graham Jones
Jones gives each of the three main characters of the novel an exceptionally personalized voice. A large part of what captivated me through the pages was his remarkable ability with the flow of words through a diversity of styles, a variation in ways that stories can be told.
Paperbacks from Hell #4: THE TRIBE by Bari Wood
The Tribe is a novel of continued relevance, as well as intellectual and emotional depth, that makes it deserving of a broad audience beyond typical horror readers. It should have crossover appeal to fans of crime fiction, historical fiction, or religious mysticism, and its themes around Jewish identity, racism, and general humanity put The Tribe on equal footing to any celebrated work of ‘literary’ fiction.
Book Review – HOLLY HORROR: THE LONGEST NIGHT by Michelle Jabès Corpora
The first book is good, and I enjoyed it, but the sequel steps everything up in significant ways to outshine the first. And its setting around Christmas and a high school staging of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol makes this one work better for this time of year than Halloween, or the summer when both the books have been released.
Book Review: The Woodsmoke Women’s Book of Spells by Rachel Greenlaw
It’s primarily a semi-supernatural romance, blended with mystery, home renovations, inheritances, and homecoming.
