Lindsay Smith (1) (1984–)

The year is 1970, and the city is Prague, where CIA and KGB agents are maneuvering around each other, fighting the Cold War. But, unbeknownst to most of them, there is also another war going on, a war between two magical factions, and people who are on the same side in one of these conflicts may be on opposite sides in the other... as American intelligence agent Gabriel Pritchard finds out when he accidentally gets a supernatural entity half-stuck inside his mind.

This is an unusually show more constructed book, because it's modeled on the structure of a TV series. This volume is labeled "season one," and it consists of thirteen "episodes," written by five different authors. In principle, I think this is kind of a fun idea. Hey, modern television often has something very much like the structure of a novel, and why shouldn't the borrowing go in both directions? In practice, though, I don't think they've quite made it work. The result, at least for much of the book, feels disjointed, weirdly paced, and sometimes mildly confusing. (More than once, I found myself flipping back to see if I'd missed some important piece of exposition.) And I think that would be true even if you lifted the story from its pages and transferred it to the TV.

This does get better towards the end, at least. The last four or five "episodes" feel like a smoother, more coherent story, and feature a bit of decent suspense and an interesting twist or two. But that's not until something like 400 pages in, and, to be honest, by that time I was already feeling tired of the whole thing, so I was never quite as engaged with it as I should have been. Which is a pity, because I think the spies-and-sorcerers premise is really cool. Although it's never really developed as much as I'd have liked. We're basically given cliched one-line descriptions of what each of these magical factions wants (basically, destruction vs stability), but never get a good sense of exactly who these people are, why they want what they want, or how their world works. Which means that, ultimately, the plot feels like a fairly shallow McGuffin hunt: we want to get our hands on certain things (or, in this case, people) because if our enemies got them instead, that would be bad, because our enemies are bad people who want bad things, and never mind the details. Well, likely the writers are planning to delve a bit more into things if there's a "season 2," as well as picking up some of the ends that are left loose at the end of this one. But I think this was probably enough for me.

Rating: I'm going to be generous and rate this 3/5, giving it a half-star more than I might have, just because it does get a lot better as it goes along, and because the premise is fun. show less

A silly, but engaging spy romp in 1970's Prague. With magic added, literally. Most of the spies here are also magicians, fighting another, older war between Fire and Ice underneath their capitalist/communist one. Of course, most of the tension comes from the fact that Fire and Ice don't match up with East and West. So we have *gasp* CIA and MI6 agents having to consort with KGB in the magic war, while trying to hide their liaisons from their respective economic ideological sides.

So yeah, show more pretty silly.

Originally published as a serial, it's an interesting idea: basically high-end television, but in reading form (if you were to read it as a serial, as opposed to me who got a copy from Netgalley and read it all at once). As such, there are times where it feels more like teleplay than fiction, but not often. The main issue is that it's just so much. I guess I've never really binge-watched television. Binge-reading The Witch Who Came in From the Cold was a bit of a task, especially, in doing so, it tends to magnify some of the plotting issues. Each chapter is a different day, and while they are chronological, the jumps aren't smooth and, while the story sets them at days, the character and plot development that happens off-page often makes it seem like the jumps are weeks long. What happens in these gaps often seems more interesting than the mundaneness of espionage (like what exactly is Gabe doing to himself with the mercury?) Having, it seems, every character leading a double-life as spy/magician starts to feel very, very unlikely. The magical villains are all fairly predictable villains of the Snidely-Whiplash-twirling-mustaches-variety; for a story that goes out of its way to humanize both capitalists pigs and commies, there is no attempt to humanize the "bad" side of magical war.

But it's a romp. A big, blockbuster series/summer movie sort of romp. Try not to take it too seriously and maybe it won't matter. It killed a few days of reading time.

The Witch Who Came in From the Cold by Lindsay Smith, Max Gladstone, Ian Tregillis, Cassandra Rose Clarke, and Michael Swanwick went on sale June 1, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. show less

There are so many parts of this that I love egregiously. The Cold War and colder magical war overlaid and interwoven is a fantastic concept, and it's delivered with spy-shenanigans much more of the Smiley than Bond school, which is always a lot more fun to read. I enjoyed the characters, with all their personal levers and problems. And in general, the writing was great.

My only real niggle was pacing again. The episodic nature of the original work is still not quite sitting right with me, and show more that's far more a problem with me than a problem with the material, which was designed to be read in a different way than this. I'm a little annoying with myself for not getting with it: after all, I don't expect the same pacing out of a binge-watched TV show as I do from a movie. But I'm just stuck on novel-pacing when it comes to the written word.

Anyway, broadly, I loved this. show less

Trigger warning: self harm, suicide

Reiko is carving a path of hatred. After a stint in a psychiatric hospital, Reiko’s been sent to stay with relatives in Japan and work on her emotional issues. But Reiko is still consumed with hatred and anger for all those who she perceives as having wronged her – her ex-girlfriend, her brother, and her cousin who’s forcing Reiko and the other employees at her uncle’s graphic design firm to help her build a lifestyle brand.

When Reiko’s cousin show more Akiko decides the next step in building her brand is a culture festival at a historic village preserved to reflect the Edo period, Reiko is dragged along as a photographer. But she soon finds herself slipping backwards in time, into the life of Miyu, a young woman who shares Reiko’s obsession with vengeance.

By far my favorite thing about A Darkly Beating Heart is Reiko. She’s a dark, angry anti-heroine with lots of sharp edges. The full story of what led her to come to Japan is slow in the unveiling, and Reiko twists it to fit her own narrative of herself being the innocent victim of other’s manipulations. She’s possibly my favorite anti-heroine who I’ve encountered in a YA novel. While she’s not a likable person, I think we need more female protagonists who get to be dark, unlikable, and complicated.

The time travel aspect is more paranormal than science fiction or fantasy. It works mainly as a vehicle for Reiko to become subsumed into Miyu’s life and to undergo some character development. The fantastical elements were overall on the low side.

I’m also glad that A Darkly Beating Heart chose to explore mental health issues, but the portrayal seemed off when it came to meds. For one thing, there’s a scene where Reiko dumps all her pills down the toilet…. and she doesn’t get any side effects from suddenly going cold turkey on her medication! This is absolutely not the experience I’ve had with being on anti-depressants. In general A Darkly Beating Heart seemed to have a negative opinion on medication, which is something else I wouldn’t agree with given my own experiences.

I don’t have enough experience to say how well Smith handles Japanese culture, but reviewers of Japanese heritage seem to have positive things to say about it. I haven’t yet seen a review from someone of Japanese heritage raised in Japan, so opinions may vary.

Does a time traveling story about a hateful and vengeance obsessed bisexual Japanese-American girl in Japan sound appealing? If so, you should read A Darkly Beating Heart. I for one found it to be even better than I’d expected.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

I received an ARC of A Darkly Beating Heart from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. show less