Year One, Of Blood and Bone, The Rise of Magicks by Nora Roberts

[lightreads]

Year One, Of Blood and Bone, and The Rise of Magicks

2/5. Apocalyptic fantasy about the special girl born as disease wipes out billions. She will lead us all out of darkness using really terrible rhyming couplets and magicks (never magic, always magicks, that's how you know it's extra serious).

Nora Roberts is not good at fantasy, you guys. Parts of this are unintentionally hilarious – magic sparkly pregnancy test, anyone? – but parts are just cringey – see the poetry. Don't get me wrong, I read all of this, but it is probably relevant to note that my excellent sleeper baby is having a rough few days, snoozle-wise, so. Take that as you will.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

She's really not good at fantasy. Near-future SF, either (the In Death books, which really show up the way she's second-generation feminist and hasn't gotten past that). But I take the existence of these books as strong evidence that she hasn't hung it up and turned it all over to ghostwriters; if she had, I don't think they'd be publishing these left turns.

If/when you're ready for her standalone romantic suspense books again, I like The Search (training search and rescue dogs), The Witness (rebuilding your life while you're hiding from the mob under deep cover), and The Liar (rebuilding your life after your husband dies and leaves you with a shit-ton of debt). If I recall correctly, The Search has rape but not the other two; I'm glad to check to confirm.

[cathexys]

Wow, I'm very impressed. I made it through the first one, which we read for my SFF book club and didn't even feel interested in trying the other two. It was just so not good. (I love me some post-apocalyptic survival, but it weirdly smushed together genres and the different narrative strands didn't balance and...bah!)

(Though I'd forgotten about the sparkly pregnancy test, so I'm glad you brought that up!)