Sammy Specter: Private Investigator, Public Terror

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

My review on Goodreads

This was a cute, quick read. Sammy Spector is a newly departed detective who has a mission to scare someone to regain his lost reputation when his colleague gets the credit for cases he solved. He settles on a young girl named Shayla who is fixated on *cough* glued to her iPad. It's not as easy as he thought it would be. In the process of trying to scare Shayla, he develops a bond with this young girl whose fixation on electronics is highly detrimental to her.

I liked the story and how Sammy would plot and plan to scare Shayla, but she'd continually outwit him.

The illustrations were lovely, mainly black and white with occasional pops of color. They definitely helped me enjoy this book even more.

This is super short, and it was nice to have something I could finish in a couple of short reads.

Advanced Review Copy provided for review by Netgalley courtesy of Jolly Fish Press.

This is How It Begins

 Witch King by Martha Wells

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

My Review on Goodreads

Kai wakes up in a watery tomb when an upstart poseur magician tries to take his magic. He has no idea how he got there, but he plans to find out. And he's pretty mad when he wakes up. That’s just the beginning as his quest to find answers leads him to forming unlikely alliances to fight a tyrannous kingdom who has taken control over everything that Kai once knew.

Witch King feels epic, yet very personal as it’s through the eyes of an unique viewpoint, a demon who has the power to inhabit the bodies of humans. Demons are not like the Christian concept in this novel. Instead, they are beings who live in the Underearth but are able to inhabit the bodies of mortal, although their eyes are fully black, and they possess unique abilities based on their nature.
So I think they are a very distinct sort of demon. Keep in mind, I am sure that more well read people in this genre may have read more stories with this kind of demon than me. Kai has magic abilities, and gains more when he takes over the body of an enemy.

I really did enjoy this book. But I won’t be dishonest. It was a bit confusing for me. The types of names and the places were hard to keep straight. It didn’t help that I would pick this up and put it down multiple times, as life has not allowed me to have much reading time (and I have so much going on, that it’s harder to focus on a book). It would take me a few minutes to get reoriented when I picked it up again, but I finally decided I didn’t need to pass an exam on what I was reading. Instead I just decided to embrace the experience. Once I did that, it became a lot lower stakes to read it as I could. I was just along for the ride.

I loved that the cultures are modeled after non-European civilizations and there is plenty of diversity (lots of shades of brown and evidence of different ethnicities), along with non-binary and LGBTQ representation.

I really liked Kai. He’s got a very wry sense of humor that I enjoyed. He’s also a complete badass. But he’s not the type whose a bragger about it. He’s just going to do the thing, and hopefully you are not in his way or the person who’s his opponent. I liked the secondary characters. I did get a little bit confused at first on who was whom, but eventually, I got into a rhythm where I was able to read their names and connect the characters to what part they played in the story. I liked how there are different kinds of magical abilities that seem to complement each other. Kai’s ability is very cool and kind of scary, and it gets magnified through different experiences through the book.

I feel like the story starts one way and ends up in an entirely different place, but there is some closure about the initial plot point. The open ending makes me wonder if this would be a series. If it is, I’ll be reading it.

This is not an easy read, in my opinion. It’s going to take some thinking through and focus to read, but it think it’s worth it. I really appreciate Martha Wells’ writing, and I definitely want to continue reading her backlist. I love her sense of humor but also the complexity of her characters.

Advanced Review Copy provided by Netgalley courtesy of Tordotcom for review.

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