Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht

Publisher: Night Shade Books

Date: January 2011

Description (From Indiebound): Liam never knew who his father was. The town of Derry had always assumed that he was the bastard of a protestant - his mother never spoke of him, and Liam assumed he was dead. But when the war between the fallen and the fey begins to heat up, Liam and his family are pulled into a conflict that they didn't know existed. A centuries old conflict between supernatural forces seems to mirror the political divisions in 1970's era Ireland, and Liam is thrown headlong into both conflicts! Only the direct intervention of Liam's real father, and a secret catholic order dedicated to fighting "The Fallen" can save Liam... from the mundane and supernatural forces around him, and from the darkness that lurks within him.

One of the things that I really like about having this blog is that it forces me to admit and cure my ignorance on a number of subjects. For instance, I can tell you that I truly didn't have a clue about what took place in the 1970s in Northern Ireland. Thankfully, education through fantasy books has struck again, and Stina Leicht's Of Blood and Honey cleared that problem up in a hurry. If you'd like to know more about The Troubles, then you can refer to this quick guide here, or better yet, just go and buy Stina's debut novel from Night Shade Books.

I definitely didn't realize how interesting and dangerous the 70s were in Ireland, but Leicht captures it wonderfully. Liam's story meshes incredibly well with real-world events, and the tragedies that befall him really help the reader understand just how crazy this period in history was.

Liam's story is incredibly tragic. His fight against the darkness in him, and how that darkness keeps causing both he and his family to suffer is heart-breaking. Things DO NOT go well for Liam, and it makes for great reading. I didn't expect a single thing that happened to him to go quite the way that it did, with the exception of the end of the novel. Even then, I didn't quite get it right. And that's a very good thing folks. This book was utterly unpredictable to me, and so it should provide you with plenty of great story.

If I had to knock a couple of things in this book, I'd pick the fact that it was a little lighter on the supernatural aspects than I had imagined, and that the middle was just a tad too slow for me. The lack of magic was only a letdown for me because the fantasy aspects were very cool when they happened, so I wanted more. For some, this combined with a slightly slower middle of the novel might make for a slow read because there's just not enough magic to keep you going. But in the end, I was able to get past that and realize just what a great story was lurking on these pages, fantastical magic or no. NOTE: I have the personal guarantee of Stina Leicht that the second book has more magic in it, so fear not!

I loved

• The utter unpredictability. I was truly surprised by a number of things that happened to Liam. Leicht really knows how to put her characters through the ringer.
• The demon-fighting, whiskey drinking, psycho-analyzing father Murray. I'll be interested in seeing more of him in the sequel, which is the next book on my planned reading
• The fact that Leicht did her homework, on everything from The Troubles to racing cars, and it shows. Nothing felt like she was winging it, or relying on the reader to know less about the subject than she did. I looked up The Troubles after reading the book, and it mirrors the every detail of the book.
• The message this book is sending about violence and fear and how they make for some really terrible decisions. Look into The Troubles, and you'll see the seeds of the same thing in America today, and it's somewhat terrifying.

I hated

• The middle of the book was a little slow for me, even with magic starting to take more of a role, and it slowed my reading of the book somewhat.

Of Blood and Honey gets 8.75/10. This is a VERY good debut from an author that I'm looking forward to reading again soon. The mesh of fantasy and history  is excellent, and Liam's life is tragic and incredible. If you like fantasy and love history, go and buy this book, and get the sequel while you're at it (released just this week!)

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

A woman wakes up in another woman's body. Oh, and she has amazing superpowers. Awesomeness ensues.

Publisher:Little, Brown and Company

Date: January 11, 2012

Blurb (From Rookfiles.com):

“The body you are wearing used to be mine.” So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.
She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Checquy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.
In her quest to uncover which member of the Checquy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.


The Rook is told through two different peoples' eyes, Myfawny (sounds like Tiffany) Thomas, and Myfawny Thomas. Sounds crazy? Well, the main part of the story comes from New Myfawny Thomas, the person in the body during our opening scene in the rain with the weirdos with latex gloves. The rest of the story comes in the form of letters and entries in a large binder by Old Myfawny Thomas, Rook of the Checquy, a seemingly mousy and somewhat pathetic paper-pusher.

The very first thing I want to comment on is how well I felt the female characters were done. I don't always pay attention to this in books, but I came away impressed with what I thought were well-written females. They weren't men with breasts. They also weren't all emotional wrecks or nagging housewives or Martha Stewarts (the baking kind, not the insider trading kind). Good work, Daniel! Now, with that out of the way, let's move on to some of the things that might cause readers trouble in this novel.

I enjoyed the letter portions of the story immensely, as that's something that I really like to see in novels. It was also a clever way for O'Malley to work his way around that old "show, don't tell" chestnut. But for some, these letters might be overlong and not give enough to the current plot to keep the reader interested. The only time I had a problem with any of the journal entries were when the came directly after a cliffhanger in the current plot.

As far as the excellent background O'Malley gives us in these letters is concerned, I was left feeling like it was a necessary evil. While this story does start our character out in a place of weakness (loss of memory, under attack) it doesn't start her out low on the food chain. Instead, The Rook starts the main character off in a very high position of authority, scrambling to get her legs under her and figure out what's going on. The letters are the only way this character could possibly impersonate Old Myfawny. Thus, necessary evil. For some readers, though, it might make the novel drag just enough to make it feel too long. On my Kindle, it shows that The Rook is roughly the same size as The Lies of Locke Lamora, while other one-lead urban fantasies are about 75% of that. For me, the letters added a lot of color to the story, and explained why other people didn't immediately realize she had lost all her memories, but your mileage may vary.

The characters of The Rook were very well done. Everyone that shows up in The Rook feels real, living and breathing. Even those characters that died during some of the action scenes were people we had developed some sort of connection with. No Red Shirts in The Rook, and that's a very good thing.

I was very impressed with the ending of the book. O'Malley finished The Rook in a way that was very comfortable, and will not lead to massive fanboy ranting for a sequel. But rest assured that there's plenty of stuff going on at the end of the book that warrants one. The ending was sharp, enjoyable, and fulfilling, like a wheel of cheese.

I loved:

• The letters between Myfawnys. But this could go in the other column for many people.
• The superpowers. We've got 4 bodies with one mind, a crazy flexible dude, a human squid and much much more.
• Female characters that aren't just men with breasts.

I hated:

• The length. It was sort of necessary for all the worldbuilding he did, but it felt just a tad too long.

The Rook gets 8.75/10.  If you enjoy Larry Correia or Myke Cole, this is the slower, more British version of those, and it's great. There's plenty to enjoy here, and I suggest you go out and enjoy it very soon.