Review of The Weaver and the Witch Queen, by Genevieve Gornachec

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Weaver and the Witch Queen

by Genevieve Gornachec
read by Nina Yndis

Books on Tape, 2023. 16 hours, 26 minutes.
Review written March 9, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Weaver and the Witch Queen is a story set in 10th century Norway. The word “Viking” isn’t used, but most of the men make their livelihood going on raids. This story focuses on Gunnhild, an actual historical figure who became one of the most powerful women in Norway. An Author’s Note at the end tells about what the author knew from historical documents (often conflicting) and what she imagined.

The book begins when Gunnhild is a child, the youngest in her family and subject to constant abuse from her mother. But she has two dear friends who are sisters, Oddny and Signy. They swear an oath to always be there for one another. But when a seeress comes through and declares that their fates are tied together in a bad way, Gunnhild sneaks away to be an apprentice of the seeress — with the goal of becoming a powerful woman like she is.

However, twelve years later, Gunnhild is traveling in the “way witches do” in the form of a swallow, and she witnesses a raiding party attacking and destroying the home and family of Oddny and Signy. Oddny escapes, with the help of the swallow that is Gunnhild, but Signy is carried off to be enslaved.

The rest of the book is mostly about Oddny and Gunnhild in their determination to rescue Signy. The first big obstacle is that it’s winter. So they both spend time in the camp of the king’s son and heir Aeric in order to leave as soon as the weather allows them to travel again. Gunnhild hopes to travel to the underworld and learn where Signy has been taken. Oddny hopes to get silver from a man captured from those who raided her family and be able to afford to go after her.

But much happens that winter. Gunnhild is presented with another option for gaining power. Aeric is set to inherit the throne of Norway, but he has gotten that position through violence, murdering his brother at the request of his father because his brother was influenced by witchcraft. But his remaining brother is seeking to destroy Aeric through witchcraft — and the witches in his employ are seeking to destroy Gunnhild and were behind the destruction of Oddny’s home.

Sound complicated? The plot moves along at a gentle pace and it all makes sense, but there’s plenty of drama underneath it all to keep you interested. The method of witchcraft seemed completely plausible, though the author invented it. And Gunnhild’s insecurities about her apprenticeship being interrupted and all the other emotional undercurrents seemed authentic. The narrator Nina Yndis does a wonderful job with the Norwegian names. I also appreciated that there was what we would call a transgender Viking, and his existence and motivations were all handled well. The word “transgender” was never used, but we learn that his father gave him a girl’s name at birth.

In all, this book gives a richly detailed, obviously well-researched world and a wonderful story of a woman claiming power in that world.

genevievegornichec.com

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Review of The Isles of the Gods, by Amie Kaufman

Adventure, Audiobooks, Award Winners, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Isles of the Gods

by Amie Kaufman
read by Nikki Patel, Homer Todiwala, Donnabella Mortel, Vidish Athavale, and Steve West

Listening Library, 2023. 12 hours, 49 minutes.
Review written February 14, 2024, from a library eaudiobook
2023 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Speculative Fiction
Starred Review

I listened to this book because it was a Cybils Award Finalist (even though I’m not on the panel this year), and I was mesmerized. In the first place, the production is very well done, with one of my favorite narrators, Steve West, reading a large portion. The book has five viewpoint characters, with a narrator for each one. This enhanced the experience and made it easier to realize when a different character was telling the story.

Our main character, though, is Selly. She’s a merchant’s daughter and has grown up on ships. Now, she’s gotten the disappointing news that her father isn’t coming back for her after a year apart. So she plans to sneak aboard the last boat heading north before winter. She plans to get her things off her assigned ship and go in the night. But before she can get off the ship, her captain tells her the whole ship is leaving quietly in the night. The prince, whom everyone thought was leading a procession of ships to various allies, is actually traveling undercover on their ship.

Every twenty-five years, the royal family of Alinor must make a sacrifice at the isle of their goddess, the Sentinel. Well, Prince Leander has been putting it off, and now he’s a year late — and war is brewing. He’s a powerful magician, but for this one important task, he’s been a slacker.

And it turns out there are people and powers who want to stop Leander so that Alinor’s goddess will not have power, and their own god can awaken and they can start a war.

Two of the five narrators are among the group trying to stop Leander. Let’s just say that the voyage does not go smoothly. There is plenty of danger, plenty of tension, and high stakes.

Because of the high body count in the other Amie Kaufman book I’ve read, Illuminae, I was not surprised that there’s also plenty of death in this book. Don’t get too attached to any character, because all lives are in danger and those who want to stop Prince Leander are ruthless.

I must admit, at the start I rolled my eyes a little, thinking it highly unlikely that our two main characters, Selly and Prince Leander, could fall in love with such dramatically different backgrounds. I wasn’t rolling my eyes at all by the end. Amie Kaufman pulls off a tender slow-burn romance based in character, and it’s exquisitely done.

Now, I’m not completely sure I wanted to know all the motivations of the people working to thwart Prince Leander, and maybe five different viewpoint characters wasn’t entirely necessary. But the other characters had short segments so I was never impatient to get back to the main story, and it did add depth to my understanding of the politics of the two countries and how much was at stake.

Though this book stops at a good place, there are some big loose ends that are not tied up, so I will be waiting impatiently for July’s release of the next book, The Heart of the World. It is already on a list to order for the library.

amiekaufman.com

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Review of Prequel, by Rachel Maddow

Audiobooks, Current Issues, History, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Prequel

An American Fight Against Fascism

by Rachel Maddow
read by the author

Books on Tape, 2023. 13 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written February 29, 2024, from a library eaudiobook

Wow. This book was eye-opening. Prequel is a history of Fascism in America in the decade leading up to World War II. And I’d had no idea how deeply entrenched, how scripted by Nazi Germany, and how nearly successful it was. I do not recommend that any of my Jewish friends read this book. You probably already know how horrible anti-Semitism is in America, but I needed my eyes opened, and I was honestly shocked. Rachel Maddow quotes Americans who wanted to go further than Hitler against the Jews. And they say so in descriptive and hate-filled language.

They had detailed plans, with thousands of followers on board. Plans to kill Jews and stockpile weapons and bombs and overthrow the government. Of course, they claimed Roosevelt was a Jew, all Jews were Communists, and all Communists were Jews.

A few turns of luck helped foil their plans, though I feel a little guilty saying that, because one of those turns of “luck” was an assassination of a key figure. Another bit of “luck” was that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, taking the wind out of the sails of isolationists.

Rachel Maddow has dug through the abundant documentation and gives us a grim story. Yes, private and government investigators got to the truth — but most of the Fascists were never brought to justice, mainly because of politics — and because many of them were Senators and members of Congress. In fact, one major plot successfully carried out was that the German government was able to distribute propaganda postage-free by using members of Congress and their free postage for official mailings.

The whole thing is well-researched and well-documented, thoroughly shocking (at least to people who don’t believe in white supremacy), and eerily resonant with events of today.

And that’s why she gave the book the name Prequel — these events were a prequel of the rise of white nationalism in our own time. Sadly, the results of the tireless investigators who uncovered the fascist plots were not widely known in the time the work was done. But now, more than eighty years later, we have access to all the details and can take note.

Something that struck me was that actual Senators and others who called themselves American patriots were literally giving speeches and sending out mailings quoting verbatim from scripts and talking points written in Nazi Germany. The Nazis had to use an elaborate scheme to get free postage from Congressmembers. But today — sending information over the internet is already free. Do we think for a moment that foreign propagandists won’t use that power?

This wasn’t a particularly happy book to listen to. But it was certainly eye-opening. And extremely educational.

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Review of Stateless, by Elizabeth Wein, read by Moira Quirk

Audiobooks, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Stateless

by Elizabeth Wein
read by Moira Quirk

Little, Brown Young Readers, 2023. 10 hours, 38 minutes.
Review written February 27, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review
2024 Odyssey Honor

I shouldn’t be surprised by how good the books I’ve read lately are — because I’ve been reading award winners. Stateless won an Odyssey Honor, which is the award for best audiobook, and this audiobook was indeed wonderful. The book is also by the author of the amazing book Code Name Verity, so, yes, I expected brilliance.

This book is set in Europe in 1937, when the Nazis are already in power and there’s already war in Italy, but World War II hasn’t broken out yet, and people are still hoping for peace. So much so, in fact, that a young people’s air race across Europe is organized to promote peace. Competitors from many different nations are flying across Europe in timed flights, with stops in various places for socializing and promoting peace.

Stella North is representing England even though she doesn’t carry a British passport. Her parents were killed by Bolsheviks in Russia when she was three years old, and her aunt and uncle got her out of Russia. So now she has a refugee passport stating that she was born in Russia but the Soviet Union doesn’t claim her. She is essentially stateless.

And it turns out that Stella isn’t the only competitor in the Youth Air Olympics who is stateless. She is the only woman, though, and is hounded by the press. They’re not sure she’ll be able to handle the pressure of the race — so when she sees two planes far ahead of her come close together — and then one of them falls into the English channel, Stella tells about the crash, but she’s afraid to let anyone know she saw the other plane that may have been responsible for the crash. She’s not sure whom she can trust, even among the experienced chaperones.

And that’s not the only incident of sabotage and dangerous threats in an epic race that’s supposed to be for peace. Stella must learn whom to trust and whom to avoid — and then how to keep safe during their day and night in Nazi Germany.

There’s lots of tension, suspense, and drama in this amazing story, along with a sprinkle of romance and international friendship. And an author’s note at the back gives you key background details such as there were a higher proportion of female pilots in the early days of aviation than there are now. The only sad part is that it’s hard to imagine a good future for these young people with World War II right around the corner. But I was glad to share in this exciting part of their story. So good!

elizabethwein.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of How Can I Help You? by Laura Sims

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Suspense 0

How Can I Help You?

by Laura Sims
read by Carlotta Brentan and Maggi-Meg Reed

Books on Tape, 2023. 7 hours, 38 minutes.
Review written January 26, 2024, from a library eaudiobook

I was completely delighted with the premise of this book — a psychopath gets a job as a circulation aide in a small-town public library. Margo used to be a nurse, but after a few too many unexpected deaths, she fled her most recent hospital and got a job at the nice, peaceful library.

And it’s all going well until their new reference librarian, Patricia, shows up. Patricia didn’t want to be a librarian — she wanted to be a writer. But her book wasn’t finding an agent and she packed it up and vowed to give up writing.

Those two lives begin to get entangled when a patron dies in the ladies’ restroom. Was she dead before Margo got there? Nobody questions that. But Patricia walked in on Margo doing something odd. And later she learns that Margo was once a nurse — and finds a story that gets her writing again. She swears she’s just making up her story….

Now, did I get some satisfaction about some annoying library patrons getting a comeuppance? I plead the fifth. The author did portray some common behaviors in library patrons that might well drive a psychopath to murder.

Some details about working in a library didn’t quite ring true for me, the most notable being that I don’t think the only reference librarian in a library, no matter how small, could get away with intense writing time with notebook and pen. It’s up there with folks who believe librarians get to read all day. (Wouldn’t it be nice if we could write a novel!) There also was no staff entrance and no desks in a staff room (Where did they keep their purses?) except the library branch manager who for some odd reason never worked on the public desk — not even before they hired the reference librarian. And there were more little things — but as for annoying patrons, they nailed it! And that is probably what was most important in this story.

Now, the plot did kind of go over the edge. But hey, she was a psychopathic killer, so the author wasn’t going for ordinary. And I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

This book isn’t so much a mystery as a thriller, set in a small-town library. I hope you won’t worry about me when I say listening to it was a lot of fun.

laurasims.net

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Review of A Promised Land, by Barack Obama

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

A Promised Land

by Barack Obama
read by the Author

Random House Audio, 2020. 29 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written January 20, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Okay, when I heard about this book, I preordered my own copy — and then, with one thing and another, I never did get the big fat book read. So finally, after finishing my Morris Award reading, I placed a hold on the eaudiobook version. I enjoy listening to Barack Obama speak anyway — the president who spoke in full, articulate sentences.

There isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t have an opinion of Barack Obama. If you already hate him, you won’t want to read this book anyway. If you’re a fan, let me encourage you that it’s well worth reading. Let me tell you about what you’ll find here.

Yes, it’s long. It covers from his start in Illinois politics to the point in his first term as president when the Seal Team killed Osama bin Laden. Yes, he goes into great detail — but a lot of that is to give attention to the many people who helped along the way. He gives the stories of probably hundreds of other people he met along the way who influenced his thinking or whose stories touched his heart, as well as the stories and qualifications of many people who worked with him — from the butler at the White House to his chief of staff. He appreciates the people around him and gives them credit for all the ways they helped.

Some ways I appreciate Barack Obama anew after reading this book:

He doesn’t blame others for his mistakes. That was an attitude he tried to build into his White House from the start. He gives others credit for good things, but doesn’t blame others for bad things. Yes, he talks about many situations where he had to give up some things he wanted in order to get bills passed. But he took responsibility for the decisions he made.

He genuinely wants to help people have better lives. I got the same impression from reading Elizabeth Warren’s book and Katie Porter’s book. It’s not something you can fake when you write a whole book. That was exactly why it hurt him to have to compromise to get some bills passed, but ultimately, he wanted to bring some people some help instead of bringing nobody perfect help. It struck me that Ronald Reagan did the whole country a disservice when he mocked the line “I’m from the government; I’m here to help.” Because if government isn’t here to help people, then what is government for? Obama talks about how as a community organizer, he talked with people who were struggling after a factory shut down, or people who weren’t able to pay for the healthcare that would save their lives. And he went into politics because he wanted to be able to do something about the systemic problems that caused that.

He doesn’t take human life lightly. He regularly attended soldiers’ remains being returned. He visited soldiers in the hospital. He agonized over choices as president of whether to send more troops and what steps to take — all because of the price of human lives.

He listened to people. He had his office send him a selection of letters every week. He’d answer them. Some he’d visit. And he can still tell some of those stories today.

I was also reminded just how bad the recession was that Geroge W. Bush left him with. And all the work he did to mitigate its effects. And the worry about H1N1 and how he believes working to protect the nation from that helped them when ebola threatened.
Also, how Obamacare almost didn’t get passed and how glad I am that pre-existing conditions are now covered. He knew the bill as it ended up wasn’t perfect – may we continue to improve it! – but it is so much better than what was in place before.

Okay, there’s lots in this book — 29 hours of it! If the things I like about Obama sound like criticism of his successor — well, yes, the contrast is big and I’m still sad about some of the things that got reversed, but glad for another person of integrity in the White House now. May we elect people who seek to make lives better for the many, and not just to get power for themselves. This book is an eye-opening look at the astonishing amount of work that goes into being president of the United States.

barackobama.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty

Adventure, Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi

by Shannon Chakraborty
read by Lameece Issaq and Amin El Gamal

HarperAudio, 2023. 17 hours.
Review written 2/4/24 from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Oh, I enjoyed this book so much! First, I have to say that it was refreshing to read a book written for adults where the protagonist is fully an adult. Amina Al-Sirafi is a retired pirate captain, but now she lives in a remote location with her mother and her 10-year-old daughter.

But then a rich old lady tracks Amina down and blackmails her into finding the lady’s granddaughter who was kidnapped by a Frank (the Muslim world’s name for Christians in medieval times). Amina suspects it wasn’t exactly a kidnapping, but when she learns the teenage girl is the daughter of her former crewman who died in bad circumstances, Amina feels she should take the job for his sake.

This means rounding up her ship and her crew. And that alone requires swashbuckling adventure, as the man she left her ship with has gotten into a bit of trouble. When Amina realizes magical forces are involved, she tries to back out of the deal, but her daughter’s very life is at stake from the blackmailing schemer.

The rest of the book includes dramatic adventures on the Indian Ocean, with both natural and supernatural dangers. You can see from the cover this includes a sea monster. There are dark magical forces at work, and it turns out that Amina needs to save not only the girl but the world as well. On her team, she has a wonderfully varied crew, each with prodigious skills, and her latest husband even shows up with his own set of magical talents.

Recently a couple of my friends started reading Fourth Wing, and both told me it felt like a Young Adult novel. Both times I answered that they must not have gotten to the sex part yet. With that book, the sexy parts felt like the main reason it was marketed as a book for adults. So I appreciated that in this book, the adventurer herself is a middle-aged (well, maybe 40s) mom. Yes, there’s some mind-blowing sex, but she respects her faith and only has married sex — and she closes the door on the reader when it happens, leaving the details to our imaginations.

The book is steeped in history I’d known nothing about, told from the perspective of a faithful Muslim with a checkered past. The adventures get bigger and more magical as the story goes on. Great fun.

sachakraborty.com

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Review of Ruthless Vows, by Rebecca Ross

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

Ruthless Vows

by Rebecca Ross
read by Alex Wingfield and Rebecca Norfolk

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2023. 14 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written January 9, 2024, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Ruthless Vows is the second half of the duology begun with Divine Rivals, and finishes up the story. If you’ve read Divine Rivals, you’re absolutely going to want to read the next book, so I don’t have to say a whole lot, and don’t want to spoil anything. I will say that Rebecca Ross pulls off a satisfying ending, with the second book bringing us to an even deeper understanding of that world and the two gods who are fighting the war that’s decimating this world.

The biggest thing I loved about the first book was the romance begun in letters between the two main characters with one of them not knowing the other’s identity. I thought unfortunately that couldn’t continue now they’re fully in love. But ha! One of the characters suffers memory loss, so their letter-writing can begin again, still a beautiful romantic connection.

In fact, I was uncomfortable for most of this book because that character with memory loss is being held by the god Dacre. As their memory returns, aided by the letters, I was terrified that they would be caught. So yes, the author keeps the tension strong.

And the war gets close to “home” in this book, with soldiers and bombs closing in on Oath, the city where the story began. As the story progresses, all the characters we’ve come to love begin to figure out what they can do to help innocents and save the city and the people from destruction.

Is that vague enough? I highly recommend this wonderful duology, full of suspense, romance, and heroism. I also recommend listening, because the wonderful British accents of the narrators transport you to this wartime world. Yes, at the library I keep having to order more copies to help our Holds ratio, but I can’t begrudge them because this book is simply that good.

rebeccarossauthor.com

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Review of The Girl with the Louding Voice, by Abi Daré

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Girl with the Louding Voice

by Abi Daré
read by Adjoa Andoh

Penguin Audio, 2020. 12 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written January 10, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Oh my goodness, this book was a treat to listen to. In this case, I highly recommend reading the book with the audiobook version, because the story is told by Adunni, a Nigerian girl with a thick accent and some quirky ways of using English. I think it might have been a little hard to follow in print, but Adjoa Andoh read it for me delightfully. She was easy to understand via listening, and I quickly got used to those quirks. For example, a “louding” voice is a voice getting louder and more influential so that other people can hear her.

Adunni has always wanted to be a teacher. She wants to help girls and women find their voices and get a louding voice herself.

But life is not kind to Adunni. As the book opens, at fourteen years old she has had to stop going to school, because her family can’t afford it after the death of her mother. And then her father finds a way to pay the rent — by selling Adunni to be the third wife of a rich old man.

Adunni had heard her father promise her mother that Adunni could stay in school, but he’s breaking that promise. And that’s only the beginning of the troubles Adunni goes through. Something terrible happens in her new household, and she knows she will be blamed, so she has to flee her village. And that doesn’t end her troubles, either.

There were times when the book was almost too sad, but the resilient character of Adunni kept me going, as she kept going. I think it’s fair to tell you as readers not to give up, that it does have a happy ending. (And it would just be unbearable if it didn’t. As it is: Hooray for Adunni!)

Some of the parts I love are when Adunni discovers a dictionary and starts reading the “Collins.” Also, after she finds a book of facts about Nigeria, each chapter opens with one of those facts. It’s that way that Adunni learns about human trafficking and that much of what has been done to her is against the law.

I haven’t been reading many adult books lately because I was on the Morris committee last year, and I’m not sure where I got the recommendation to read this one, but what a delight it is!

abidareauthor.com

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Review of Rough Sleepers, by Tracy Kidder

Audiobooks, Biography, Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, True Stories 0

Rough Sleepers

Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People

by Tracy Kidder
read by the Author

Books on Tape, 2023. 8 hours, 42 minutes.
Review written January 3, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 More Nonfiction

I’ve read a few of Tracy Kidder’s in-depth biographies now: Among Schoolchildren, Strength in What Remains, and Mountains Beyond Mountains. Like those amazing books, this one takes a deep dive into a man who has given his life to helping people who need it.

In this case, we’re looking at Dr. Jim O’Connell, who got drafted into a program of providing medical care for the homeless in Boston after he’d finished his internship. His plan was to simply help out for a year, but the people there and the need pulled him in, and his work has gone on for decades.

Tracy Kidder traveled along with Dr. O’Connell and gives a picture of the day-to-day and night-to-night work he and his organization do. They’ve got a van that goes out to rough sleepers, bringing blankets and cocoa. They’ve got a home where people can go when they’re discharged from the hospital but not yet able to care for themselves. Most of all, the homeless people of Boston have doctors looking out for them, caring for them. I’m honestly a little envious – but at the same time glad that this vulnerable population has people in their corner.

And the portrayal of Jim O’Connell makes him shine like Mr. Rogers — someone who sees people, who cares about his patients. He sees them as wonderful people, looking far beyond their difficult circumstances.

The book doesn’t sugarcoat the situation. Many of their patients die, and sleeping rough is still associated with shorter lives. Even efforts to get them housing doesn’t always work because the patients don’t necessarily know how to conduct themselves in that situation. We also get stories of some of the striking characters, with all their complexity, whose lives have been touched by Dr. O’Connell’s work and whose lives in turn touched others.

This doctor shines because he sees the beauty and wonder in vulnerable people and cares for them. This book shines because it helps the reader see that, too.

tracykidder.com

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