It is occasionally difficult to define why you don’t like a book. It might be otherwise well written and the story might be interesting, but there is something about the book--something in the narration or characterization maybe--that feels a little off. This was largely my reaction to Black Swan Rising. It was a difficult book to start, a difficult book to continue, and I didn’t much care for the ending which is of the “everything goes back to normal wrap-up” variety.

We start with our non-genre-savvy heroine, Garet James, who wanders into one of those stores that turn up and then disappear. She is in a very bad financial situation due to some bad business deals made by her art-gallery-owning father.

Black Swan Rising

Mother of Demons is one of my favorite books. The novel is a “braided timeline” style novel that tells the stories of a disparate group of people--human and alien--who become allies in a conflict with an enemy tribe. One timeline follows Nukurren, a mercenary currently serving as the body guard to a slave merchant. (This being the only job she can get since she is a “pervert.”) One timeline follows the leader and followers of a religion that is currently being persecuted by the main religious institution of a city-state. Another timeline follows a young infanta of a barbarian tribe about to go into battle for the first time and who is desperate to save her tribe from an invading tribe of cannibals. Yet another timeline follows a struggling human colony that has been adopted by a dwindling and nearly extinct species related to the dominant intelligent species.

Braided timeline novels can be a little tricky to read since the timeline within each point of view tends not to be entirely concurrent. Though there are many characters in this story and a lot of interaction between these characters, the pivotal characters are Nukerren and Indira, one of the human colonists; Nukerren because she has the skills that the young human colonists need in order to fight, and Indira for the knowledge of history that she possesses. (In fact, much of the resolution of the novel depends on Indira and Nukerren making the correct choices.)

Mother of Demons