Tanya Lisle

Category: Reviews

  • Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks Review

    It’s a strange day when Cole starts teleporting between doors. He could never do it before, and now that he is he doesn’t know how to deal with it. More than that, the cutest boy in school has decided that Cole is the one who he wants to talk to now that he’s questioning his sexuality.

    The second half of that would normally make me put the book down, but there’s ace rep in this book and I wanted to give it a chance, even if it’s only in a side character. And the first half was interesting enough that I wanted to see what was going on and how they dealt with it.

    The story is interesting. It is structured a little like a paranormal romance, with the bulk of the supernatural stuff happening in the last third of the book1 but it is interspersed decently throughout. I thought there were a few times when it could have come back into play a little sooner to make the personal drama and the supernatural stuff work a little more together and it felt less like everything happened all at once at the end. At least, introduce the concept of who the bad guys were a little earlier so they weren’t just looming mystery figures until the end, then reveal the secret society in the last couple chapters.

    With the background of the Rainbow Club, the sheer amount of representation that is in the book feels like it makes sense for the narrative. I really liked how they dealt with the different sexualities, the race stuff, the gender stuff, the disabilities in the book. Namely, they didn’t. The story was not about any of them, so they existed in the book without it stopping everything to explain what asexuality was, or enby or how you should be treating deaf people. They just existed in the story and when it was brought up, it was brought up in a way that makes sense.

    For instance, the love interest, Malik, has the exact same reaction to being ambiguously brown as I did as a kid. And I greatly appreciate it.

    The only time there’s any explaining is done in the context of the narrative. A character thinks they might like boys and girls, but is confused about the distinction about bi and pan. Which Cole doesn’t have an answer to, so he looks it up and asks about it. It makes sense in the context of the story.

    And, because I came here to see the ace character, I liked him a lot. Particularly in how it’s dealt with, namely that someone in the queer community had a problem with it which made him veer away from the community, and the bridges being repaired were done without much fanfare. The situation is more accurate to my experience, and the lack of focus on that resolution works well in the narrative because it isn’t his story. Alec’s story getting more attention than it did would have felt like a distraction to the main plot.

    I really enjoyed this book. The story of the teleporting through doors and how Cole dealt with it was interesting and Cole as a character is different than a lot of other ones I’ve been exposed to in the past. Namely, he’s not spontaneous2 and has multiple hobbies, which makes him feel much more rounded as a character. It’s a bit more romance-y than I typically like, but I didn’t feel like the romance was a distraction from the main plot, and I had fun with it overall.

    Get Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks on Amazon!

    1. No houses eating people or the ocean murdering anyone this time [↩]
    2. He bullet journals, which is another really interesting detail to the narrative [↩]

  • We are the Catalyst Review

    And once again, I pick up the second book in a series without reading the first! I am very good at this. This time, however, Tash McAdams themselves recommended starting here because I am obnoxious and asked for where they wanted me to start. So any problems I might have had was all their fault.

    However, there were no problems! This is the least second book-is of any second book I’ve read. And I meant hat in a good-yet-confused sort of way. There is a lot of rich world building done in this, inclusding a storyline that absolutely feels like it’s a sweeping epic, but the story is framed very much like the first in the series. The alternating perspectives include one character that is new to the world and we see through his eyes how the universe works, which is very much a first book pattern, and a more wizened character who is more familiar with the universe and explains her parts of the universe with familiarity.

    What I’m saying is that it’s written in such a way that I have no idea what came before it. And I’m intrigued.

    As for the book itself, it was a lot of fun! In that way I describe fun. On the one side, we follow Toby, who leaves his comfy life as a rich kid in the city only to be immediately mugged as soon as he leaves, have his finger cut off, and develop incredible super powers. On the other we follow Epsilon 17, who is a child soldier with incredible powers that has to track him down while at the same time really not wanting to find him at all.

    The story follows the two of them as they both struggle with the Institute, who want to catch Toby and do… something with him. The question mark is less interesting than the chase and how the story comes together. It’s well paced, not forgetting about the human element of the post-apocalyptic world, and it ends in a wonderful showdown between just who it should be between. In my opinion, anyway.

    I have a couple small issues with the book, but nothing that detracts from the experience of reading it. The prose is very dense, and there were a couple reveals at the end that felt like they wasn’t led up to enough, but overall it was a lot of fun and I would highly recommend checking it out.

  • Pulp Literature Review

    Short stories are a weird spot for me. On the one hand, I’ve written a lot of them and I appreciate them as a form of narrative that’s a lot harder to write than most people give them credit for. On the other hand, my memories of short stories growing up are the ones I had to analyze for school and angsty fanfic one shots. I’ve always had a lot of trouble finding good genre shorts that I like and that don’t leave me severely wanting in the world building department.

    Enter Pulp Literature. It’s a local short story publication, a magazine that comes out with a regularity that I’ve yet to ask about.1 This is a science fiction, fantasy, and all those genres in between magazine that accepts and publishes short fiction, poetry and comics.2 Despite the diversity, or because of it, there’s a lot of high quality content in the issues. Maybe not everything for everyone, but certainly something you can latch onto in each issue that makes it well worth it.

    There’s a very distinct feel and aesthetic to the works, despite them being all very different. They all work surprisingly well together in each issue and, between the few that I’ve read so far, I’ve managed to find more than my fair share of books that I enjoyed among the collections.

    Rather than an Amazon link this time, I’ll send you right to their site and their Patreon. Go check them out!

    1. I’ve met JM Landels several times and I have yet to remember to ask how often. [↩]
    2. And they have a decent pay rate. If I could write short things that actually stand alone… [↩]

  • Urban Heroes Review

    I picked up Urban Heroes back at Creative Ink, but I heard TJ Lockwood reading from the book back at VCon. Side note, if you ever get the chance it’s worth going to see her read. I think she’s doing that more often now, and I came in knowing just as much as the first chapter reveals about the book. Which is to say not a whole lot, but I was interested.

    The story follows a woman named Cal as she navigates a world where humans and androids are not so peacefully coexisting so much as humans are distrustful of androids after an incident. Complicating the ethics of the matter is the fact that humans are often cybernetic ally enhanced to the point where the lines between the two are conceivably blurred. After rescuing a young girl, she and her partner, Axton, are on the run from the life Cal once had. You don’t really get the details of why they’re running for a while.

    The book does feel in large part like it is a middle book, which apparently it is. The girl they rescue doesn’t play a very large part in this story, but there’s hints dropped that there’s something special about her. Cal’s father is only mentioned and never shown. Her friend, Bree, mentions that she has allies but we only really see one of them. This whole story seems to be setting up Cal on a path to redemption and this book focuses largely on the narrative of  that first step.

    I particularly liked her usage of Canada, which is a weird thing to latch onto. The city names are used in the same way I’ve seen American cities used in other media, with the expectation that the names mean something and are enough to orient you. It feels natural and uses Canada in the way I wish it would be used in more media. As a Canadian, it just makes me happy.

    Overall, I really enjoyed the story. The world and the way it unfolded throughout the narrative was interesting,  and the story kept me engaged. I could sympathize with Cal’s choices1 and I liked the dilemmas that it came up. The sci fi is much more urban, and the focus stays very much on the characters, which I’m a fan of. If you like the sound of any of that, definitely check it out.

    Get it on Amazon!

    1. Though I disagree with a couple personally [↩]

  • Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond Review

    So first and foremost, Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond is not at all an Alice in Wonderland story. That’s what I was expecting, some sort of steampunk reimagining of the classic following along with maybe the Mad Hatter’s daughter. So before we get too far into it, this is not that.

    What we have instead is a murder mystery where we follow intrepid reporter and steam lord’s daughter in hiding Maddie Hatter as she tried to solve the case so that she can finally earn her byline and escape the world of fashionista reporting. A mysterious mask has been uncovered and stolen, the dead man washing up on shore and what follows is intrigue as Maddie tried to get into as many places as she’s not supposed to in order to figure out what’s happening and report the story back to London while not being recognized by the upper crust of society.

    One of the things that I had trouble adjusting to in this book was the language. There’s a certain flavour to steampunk that always takes me a little longer to adjust to. I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting it, but it surprised me nonetheless and it took me a fair few chapters before I properly fell into the rhythm of the story to start trying to pick out the clues along with our heroine.

    Maddie is a lot of fun to follow through her journey. She’s witty and insightful, quick and eager to try new things. She had an interesting perspective on the world she is living in and watching her try to puzzle together the pieces of the mystery’s been great.

    I did like this story, though it wasn’t what I was expecting. I think a younger audience would likely enjoy it a lot more. There’s a lot of great stuff in here, from the touches of world building throughout to the mystery itself. You feel for the character and there’s a good story underneath it all.

    Get it on Amazon!

  • I’ll be Gone in the Dark Review

    I didn’t know what I was getting into with I’ll be Gone in the Dark. My impression was that it was a documentary book about a serial killer, the Golden State Killer, and how he eluded the investigators time and time again until present where his case still has not been resolved. I was very surprised and happy to find that was not what I was getting into at all.

    I love the true crime stuff, but I’ve become a little jaded in that I almost expect the killers to be held up on this pedestal, to be made figures of wonder and awe to idolize for their cunning and their ruthlessness. This book does not do that. Instead, the focus is largely on the victims and the events that happened told through a stunning narrative lens that brings you much more into the scene of the attack and focuses squarely on the victims rather than the killer.

    McNamara does a fantastic job of painting the picture of these victims and their encounters with the killer, and of how their lives are rocked by the attacks. The people who find the bodies, the people who are in the house at the time of the attacks, everything is entered largely on the people whose stories we know. It’s respectful and keeps your attention where we know the story as opposed to speculating too much on what we don’t.

    Even when she follows the investigation, it largely focuses on what the impact of the investigation was on the people instead of idolizing the killer.1 He’s treated as a puzzle that people are coming together to solve, as more of a hypothetical and she draws a line between what we know and what is only speculation. There’s no real dancing up to a line to make him seem like more than he really is, he is just a thing that exists, a puzzle to solve and no one has yet. Nothing more, nothing less.

    McNamara died before the end of this book and you can definitely tell where her writing stops and other people have stepped in. There’s something more human and lively about how she talks about the murders and attacks that is lost when she is. But it’s still a fantastic read throughout, and if this is the start of thing you like then I would definitely recommend checking it out.

    Get it on Amazon!

    1. This is a problem with true crime and I don’t know if I’m making myself clear here [↩]

  • White Rabbit Review

    So I don’t normally pick up books when I can tell there’s going to be a romance subplot dominating parts of the book from just the back cover. I do really try to only read stuff I think I’m going to like, honestly. But I find for the most part, queer characters know how to focus on the task at hand and I liked the sound of the rest of the story, so I gave white Rabbit a shot.

    It was definitely worth it, with a few bumps in the road. The story follows Rufus as he tries to solve the mystery of what happened at a party he wasn’t at between people he doesn’t like, all while his ex tags along and tries desperately to have a conversation about how sorry he is until they get back together.1 It’s fast paced, fairly well structured, and pretty entertaining. The mystery is well set up and finding the answer didn’t feel too convoluted. I thought the initial victim turned out to be a little comically evil, but besides that I generally liked the story.

    But, like I said, there were bumps. There’s a reason I generally tend to give queer romances more of a pass and that’s because generally queer characters can focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately, right in the opening with a dead body right over there we have a chunk about Rufus hoping that his ex boyfriend realizes how hot he’s gotten. I put the book down for a bit, then skimmed back to where the story picked back up because it felt too early to give up, but the break in action was so frustrating. There is a dead guy in eyeshot, your sister’s been drugged, you have someone else’s blood on you, and insist on focusing on your ex right now?

    There’s other bits that felt a little strange. There’s an injury that Rufus gets later in the book that stops being an issue after a chapter, and the narrative is basically broken into the plausible wrong answer, followed by the actual correct answer. I’m not mad about it, since I’ve used it myself before and quite enjoy it, but I would have liked a little more foreshadowing about that twist earlier so the two halves of the book didn’t feel so separated.

    Overall, though, I really did enjoy the story. The romance was better woven into the rest of it and, while it did overpower the narrative at parts, I did appreciate that it was used mostly to enhance the tension in the later parts of the book over just being there as a distraction. If it sounds like your thing, definitely check it out!

    1. That is not a spoiler, you knew that was going to happen from the back cover. [↩]

  • Every Heart a Doorway Review

    Check it out, it’s the first traditionally published fiction book of the year and one with some asexual representation! Not only that, but it’s about a school full of kids who went to another world and had to come back to their own world and didn’t adjust well to it, which I may have some thoughts on. So going into it, I was pretty excited.

    The story follows Nancy as she’s brought to a boarding school where she and several other girls who have traveled to other worlds are given a place to remember where they were and acknowledge that it did happen while their parents get to think that they’re getting counselling to understand that it was all an elaborate delusion.

    As a premise, I love it. A lot of the characters were interesting and I found myself interested in the worlds that they came from and how they were coping with the fact that they probably couldn’t go back. Going into the world and understanding where the characters were coming from was interesting. I did enjoy the dynamic between most of the cast and how their experiences interacted with one another.

    The ending, though. That ending. It’s one of those things where it just kind of happens more than it’s built up towards. None of the characters really change or grow as a result of it and everything is wrapped up a little too neatly.

    Spoiler

    Jack was just always able to go back? Really? And who didn’t see that someone was building a perfect key as soon as Sumi’s hands disappeared? You only needed hands, eyes, a brain, and a pretty person to build the perfect key? Plus, Nancy learns something by way of reading a note that Sumi left for her? That whole ending is just so unsatisfying.

    [collapse]

    Now. The ace rep. It’s interesting to see how other people do it. This makes this book the second one I’ve seen and this one treats it very differently than the last one I read. Nancy knows going in and the first conversation where it’s brought up feels very unnatural. It’s smoother in the rest of the book, but that first conversation with Sumi feels really awkward, kind of like it was put in there purely so that they could get the word in there, and some of the other mentions feel a bit off. For a book with almost no mentions of people being in relationships, Nancy brings up sex in her internal monologue more often than feels natural in order to reinforce that she’s ace.1

    I feel like the trans rep might have been done better with Kade, but I can’t really say definitively on that front.

    Overall, though, I did enjoy it. Apparently it’s a series, but the first book stands well enough alone that I probably won’t go back to it this year.

    Get Every Heart a Doorway

    1. But not aromantic. The book makes it very clear that she’s fallen in love. [↩]

  • Laurence & Chico Cafe

    Keeping on brand, I went to a high tea place that is very inspired by Alice in Wonderland with just that bit of Lovecraft. This place is actually right by the day job and I’ve been staring at it for ages, but I finally managed to get a bunch of other people to come with me to go check it out.

    This is an experience. I feel like that’s something to know going in. You’re going in so that you can have something cool to take photos and post to various social media afterwards. There’s an aesthetic to the place and the food that means you’re in part paying for the ability to take photos of cool looking stuff.

    But the food isn’t bad! At least, I didn’t find it that bad. It’s a strange mix of flavours and a lot of them are a lot stronger than I was expecting. I remember mostly the egg cracker, which was a black rice cracker, quail egg, caviar, and roe, mostly because roe has an aftertaste that I’m not a fan of. The other strange one of note was the chocolate tart with a smokey cream on top that tastes almost like bacon, which was very strange and a little unsettling for the vegetarian in the group.

    They can, on that note, change things to be vegetarian if you give them a little warning in advance! We did not, but they did try to accomodate us anyway as best they could.

    Overall, I really did enjoy the experience.1 It was fun to go to and there was a lot of really cool things to check out. Even the bathrooms are decorated in the aesthetic and it was a lot of fun.

    1. I also ate everyone else’s food. [↩]

  • Hot Chocolate Festival Reviews!

    So. There’s a hot chocolate festival happening in Vancouver right now. This would be fine, but I have a bit of a problem and I have been trying to hit as many of the places as I can. Some of them have been fantastic and some have been nearly impossible to get to, so I haven’t tried them yet. And, since no one asked for it, here’s my thoughts of the ones I’ve been to.

    49th Parallel – Dark Chocolate Love

    I do love a dark chocolate, and this one is delightfully dark. 49th Parallel was my favourite of last year’s very few hot chocolate festival drinks I’d tried, so I was looking forward to this years offering.1 It is made with cocoa powder, though, so there is a little bit of that grainy-ness to it that comes with not having someone carefully stir it as the milk is being heated up, but it’s not that bad.

    The first time they were out of the doughnut, but it wasn’t that much of a detriment. They have these doughnuts year round, so they aren’t that incredibly special of a treat to go along with it.

    Bel Cafe – Prettier in Pink

    I am a sucker for anything floral, so this one with the rose and fruity tastes was right up my alley. It’s quite sweet, which is a given since it’s white chocolate, but there’s still a good amount of flavour there to latch onto. It isn’t very chocolatey, though, which is unfortunate. It might have been nicer as a milk or dark chocolate instead of the white, but then it wouldn’t have the same aesthetic, so…

    This one came with a macaron that I was not a huge fan of, mostly because I don’t like the non-cream fillings that they chose. The jammy stuff just doesn’t do it for me. Your milage may vary, though.

    Soirette – Mining for Vibranium

    Do you like black things? I am suspicious of any food that is black.2 Still, I am more suspicious of pea white chocolate, so I went with the black drink and truffle instead.

    The drink is more sweet than anything else. Some of that is likely due to the rim, which is covered in ganache and sprinkles, but also possibly due to the mixing. I found that the drink tasted different the further down I got, with a lot of the sweetness pooling at the bottom and a lot of the chocolate being near the top, which is a strange shift that I wasn’t expecting.

    The truffle was fine. It comes with a chocolate truffle, which isn’t really anything special, although it is pretty. Overall, it’s kind of an average experience.

    East Van Roasters – The Umami Experience

    So first off, don’t go down Hastings to get here. I know better, but my ability to pay attention to where I’m going and not get lost are both awful.

    To start, this is a drinking chocolate as opposed to a hot chocolate. An important distinction to anyone who has had drinking chocolate before. It’s warm, significantly heavier and thicker, and impossible to drink quickly. This one was a little salty and strangely meaty in a way I can’t quite describe, but still really nice. It felt homey eating it, even though it was wrecking my insides the whole time.3 It’s one I think I would have enjoyed more with a friend, since it is intended as a much slower experience than the rest of them.

    This is paired with chocolate wasabi almonds, which mercifully aren’t too spicy. There’s a nice flavour to them and they go really well with the drinking chocolate. It even comes with cute chopsticks that you definitely aren’t going to use at all. They are only for the aesthetic. And I’m okay with that.

    Cadeaux Bakery – Cocoanut

    I don’t normally choose the vegan option voluntarily, but at this point I was in pain from the amount of dairy I’d consumed. And this one had a few strikes against it already because I do not like coconut and avoid it normally.

    However. However. It was actually pretty nice. The dark chocolate is a nice counter to how sweet the coconut milk was, and it didn’t have a coconut-y aftertaste until I was a good way through the drink. Of all three drinks Id had that day, this one was my favourite. Possibly because it didn’t hurt me like the others had.

    They also gave me a vegan cookie which was less nice because it was also coconut and this time I could taste it. Also, it was all in togo stuff instead of the cute for here dishes I saw around me.

    Mink – Who you calling a conehead?

    Aside from the presentation, it’s honestly nothing special. It’s a standard hot chocolate served in an ice cream cone that has a very thick layer of chocolate inside of it so that it doesn’t melt through it to the wafer. It was nice, but it’s less than a full cup of hot chocolate and not really worth the price.

    Dishonorable Mention: Perverted – Young, Dumb, and full of Kumquat

    I have had so much trouble with Perverted to the point where it wasn’t open when we went to get it. A coworker ended up getting one of these and, well, she wasn’t impressed. I’ll skip the tale of their service, which is always a bit of a crapshoot, and right to the drink. It was white, weirdly thick and lumpy in appearance, and apparently tasted of steamed milk that had read about white chocolate on Wikipedia once. The merge that came with it tasted like sugar and nothing more. So… skip.

    Anyone try  the other ones? How is it?

    1. It’s also not far from the office, which is helpful [↩]
    2. Activated charcoal, the thing that makes things black, tends to also interact very badly with medications [↩]
    3. Have I mentioned I’m lactose intolerant? [↩]