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Fantasy. Fiction. HTML: "The Native Star is engaging, atmospheric, and lovely. I was quite taken by the concept of an Old West built on a foundation of magic and zombie slave labor. Oh, and giant raccoons. Bring on the coons! And how spectacular is the name Dreadnought Stanton? This book utterly absorbed me from start to finish--these days you have no idea how rare that is. You have something special in your hands--no pun intended.". HTML:"M. K. Hobson dazzles! The Native Star is an awesome mash-up of magic and steam-age technology--call it witchpunk. This debut novel puts a new shine on the Gilded Age." --C. C. Finlay "Splendid! In The Native Star, M. K. Hobson gives us a Reconstruction-era America, beautifully drawn and filled with the energy of a young nation--and magic! Her heroine, Emily Edwards, is outspoken, rash, loving, and true; a delight to spend time with. Could there be a sequel, please?". HTML: In the tradition of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, this brilliant first novel fuses history, fantasy, and romance. Prepare to be enchanted by M. K. Hobson's captivating take on the Wild, Wild West. The year is 1876. In the small Sierra Nevada settlement of Lost Pine, the town witch, Emily Edwards, is being run out of business by an influx of mail-order patent magics. Attempting to solve her problem with a love spell, Emily only makes things worse. But before she can undo the damage, an enchanted artifact falls into her possession--and suddenly Emily must flee for her life, pursued by evil warlocks who want the object for themselves. Dreadnought Stanton, a warlock from New York City whose personality is as pompous and abrasive as his name, has been exiled to Lost Pine for mysterious reasons. Now he finds himself involuntarily allied with Emily in a race against time--and across the United States by horse, train, and biomechanical flying machine--in quest of the great Professor Mirabilis, who alone can unlock the secret of the coveted artifact. But along the way, Emily and Stanton will be forced to contend with the most powerful and unpredictable magic of all--the magic of the human heart. From the Paperback edition..… (more)
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The cover says "this brilliant first novel fuses history, fantasy, and romance." Emily is almost a great character--but the demands of the romance tropes prevent her, I think, from achieving greatness--that and the lack of maturity of the writer. Hobson has great ideas, almost too many as they are crammed in on top of each other so tightly that there is no room to appreciate them. The basic plot itself is fairly formulaic, even as the settings and magic structure are original. The writing can be very pedestrian at times. However, it is a GOOD first novel, and I think this will be an author to keep an eye out for in the future. If she is able to polish her writing craft to match her imagination, she will produce some very good books.
Dreadnought Stanton, a warlock from New York City whose personality is as pompous and abrasive as his name, has been exiled to Lost Pine for mysterious reasons. Now he finds himself involuntarily allied with Emily in a race against time—and across the United States by horse, train, and biomechanical flying machine—in quest of the great Professor Mirabilis, who alone can unlock the secret of the coveted artifact. But along the way, Emily and Stanton will be forced to contend with the most powerful and unpredictable magic of all—the magic of the human heart.
My Rating
Worth the Cash: I'll admit, I started this book while in the hospital, doped up on painkillers, and I was a little worried at first that I wouldn't make it through. However, I set it aside and tried again later when painkillers weren't quite the issue, and I was very pleased at how quickly the pages turned and how enjoyable the world-building was. Hobson interjects the right amount of all her genre-ific elements to keep me on my toes and keep me guessing as to just how the nature of the story will work out. Emily, for the most part, is a heroine to cheer for too because she's so resourceful and determined to get what she wants, even though her motivations can lead her to make mistakes. I'll admit it wasn't until I finished with the book and re-read the prologue that I realized how said prologue related to the rest of the book, but that's a me-on-painkillers issue rather than a writer not working the prologue in well. In fact, in retrospect, the prologue might be a wee bit obvious, but others who read this book with a clear head are better fit to comment on that than I.
As for me, Hobson is promising a sequel slated for next year called The Hidden Goddess, and while I was a bit scared of The Native Star because I was afraid the romance would overwhelm the rest of the story, I'll show no such hesitation for the sequel. This book was fun, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what further adventures await our heroine in this magic-infused alternate history. The Native Star is a happy hybrid of Emma Bull's Territory and Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series (and for giggles, let's add a splash of Cherie Priest's Boneshaker too), and if you enjoyed two or more of these books, you should have fun with this one too.
Review style: Because this review is mirrored over at Dreams & Speculation, I'm going to keep it short (okay, maybe not THAT short) and sweet by discussing what I think are the roots of this book in terms of what's come before (publication-wise), and then talk about what this book adds and why it stands out. No spoilers, because that would be mean. The full review is at my journal, for those of you interested. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome. :)
REVIEW: M.K. Hobson's THE NATIVE STAR
Happy Reading!
This fun historical frolic has a definite urban fantasy vibe even with the Old West setting. Some aspects reminded me of Cherie Priest's Boneshaker even though the authors do very different things using the same steampunk-tinged Reconstruction period. In some spots the book felt uneven--such as the very beginning and the end--but once Emily steps into the story, her situation immediately grabbed me. The romance with her and Dreadnought felt predictable, but the story had enough twists and turns to keep everything fun even if it felt like too many fantasy elements were crammed in sometimes. I enjoyed the book and would like to read the sequel (it seems to come out today) but I'm not in a rush.
Before I talk about the story I have to gush a little over the cover. I ended up having to order this book on my Kindle because our library didn't have it and I wanted to read it quickly - so I'm missing out on displaying that gorgeous cover and that is a bit disappointing. That said, isn't it beautiful? And it does a great job of portraying the spirit of this novel.
Emily Edwards is a spunky, back-town witch involved in charms and various remedies and she was doing just fine until a warlock named Dreadnought Stanton arrived on the scene. This isn't the wild west that is portrayed in John Wayne movies - no, this wild west has magic and several factions of magic users along with an incredibly unique way of looking at the system of belief and magic as being connected to one another.
While I thought the book was fun, I also have to say there were parts of it that were a little too slow and bogged down to fully enjoy. But those parts were few and far between and I thought the pace of the book was, overall, well done. Fantastic addition to the list for Nebula nominees!
Emily Edwards is
Make no mistake, this book is workmanlike in some regards, but I'm of the opinion that competence is wildly under-rated these days. Hobson has built a solid novel that shows evidence of careful plotting, thoughtful characterisation and a mythology that stimulates rather than sedates.
The over-arching plot and character arcs are not exactly unpredictable, but she throws in enough right turns to keep the reader engaged and interested in finding out more about this world. There's a prosaic directness to The Native Star that I found quite refreshing - the book takes itself exactly as seriously as it needs to: a bit, but not too much - and things are explained without fuss.
This no-nonense approach extends to the characterisation, not the weakest part of the book, but perhaps the least dynamic. Emily and Dreadnought, and every other character, are pretty much exactly as they appear to be. That's fine - there's nothing wrong with getting what you order at the restaurant - but don't expect any surprises in this regard.
Thankfully the helter skelter plot doesn't leave too much time to focus on it. The Native Star sets a brisk pace that is successfully maintained until its suitably grand climax, replete with time-tested narrative devices that readers should appreciate.
The prose is likewise pragmatic, limpid, and easy-on-the-eyes. Hobson is no great stylist, per se, but she successfully evades the lure of showing off. The text doesn't draw attention to itself, letting you concentrate on the story and characters instead, who are in the main likable and frequently amusing.
Some people might find the above amounts to a wan recommendation, but honestly it's not intended that way. I enjoyed this book, and I'm of a mind to read the next in the series. This was Hobson's debut novel, and it's very rare to read a debut where the author so clearly understands the nuts and bolts of novel-writing, and possesses a respect for the reader and the reading experience - over their own need to get a story out or some such. Certainly, this means the book may not scale the dizzying heights of more personal and particular books, but it avoids the crevices they frequently plunge into as well. An enjoyable romp.
in the morning. I think that it was predictable and I felt like it was a love hate relationship drama with action to fuel it along that I have read many tines before and yet I found myself giggling at some of the Witty dialogue that Stanton and
THE NATIVE STAR, M.K. Hobson’s debut novel, is an original blend of witchery and the Wild, Wild West. It didn’t leave a particularly long-lasting impression on me, but was definitely an enjoyable and well-written romp of a read.
For me, the strength of THE NATIVE STAR lay in its inventiveness. Just when I thought I had Emily and Stanton’s world figured out, Hobson throws in another twist and element that takes me by surprise and forces me to reorganize my thoughts about the story’s world. The book combines steampunk and magic with the post-Civil War American West, resulting in an exciting new subgenre for magic and steampunk lovers.
And yet these surprises also contributed to my slight skepticism of the story. Oftentimes, new elements were introduced with seemingly little forethought: the characters are just walking along when all of a sudden—BAM!—oh, hey, interlude while we describe this new twist to the world. This just didn’t agree with me in this book, perhaps because I wanted more of a setup of the foundations of the world at the beginning of the novel.
Furthermore, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Emily and Stanton. She gave me the impression of being one of those pinch-faced ladies who look and act older than they really are, and he was standoffish the entire time. Their romance still seemed to come out of nowhere for me, despite how much the back-cover summary pimps it. They—the book summary and tagline—set me up to expect a great, life-changing romance, but I didn’t quite get it here.
Overall, THE NATIVE STAR is a good and interesting mix of magic, steampunk, and the Wild, Wild West. If that sounds even half as intriguing to you, then I definitely recommend that you check it out!
What an adventure! I felt like I was there. When Emily and Stanton were tired, I was tired. When they were scared, I was scared. It was so much fun. This novel takes place in 1876. Their journey takes them from California all the way to the east coast. It is an America where magic is used everywhere, even in the government. This magic is powered through faith and belief in it. You do get the occasional anti-magic religious town. This world is filled with secret societies, radicals, zombies, and flying machines. The story has an old western feel to it-so much so that I visualized some of it in sepia. No joke, it was almost like watching a blockbuster western film. Epic.
The characters were so well-written (the whole book was!) At the beginning of the novel, Emily made a choice. It was the wrong one and everything that happens to her after that is the consequence of one small decision. Hobson explores choices and their consequences throughout The Native Star, for almost every character. Emily is a very human character. She makes mistakes and she is not perfect in any way. But she tries to do the right thing. Emily gets stuck with the "insufferable" Stanton, who has made it his life mission to show off his magical knowledge. Stanton was a fascinating character. At the beginning, I agreed with Emily on his annoying and supercilious attitude and comments. I remember thinking "It's going to be a long ride." But over the course of the book, the reasons for his actions and personality are revealed and I (and Emily, of course) started to fall in love with him. The romance wasn't overpowering though. It started out as hate then turned to love over time-basically a growing attraction. Stanton reminded me of Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. He's definitely the strong smart guy, but there is no doubt that he is tortured. These two are the central characters of the novel. There are a whole bunch of others including an Indian Holy Woman, an evil soul that possesses people, a radical warlock who happens to run the American military, and a paranoid feminist witch.
This is the first book in a series. The Native Star is an exhilarating adventure that will leave you wanting more.
Magic is real, and it is being paired with science to make it more effective. Stanton is a talented credomancer who has been exiled to the backwater of Lost Pine, California for mysterious reasons. Emily is the resident witch
I really liked this book. Emily is the main POV, and she's very believable. Stanton is also believable, tho some of the other characters are a bit flat. But I will look for the sequel "The Hidden Goddess".
I was intrigued from the beginning - the prologue threw me a little, but once the main storyline started with Emily in Lost Pine, I was hooked. She was a great character to get to know - not perfect and not fully formed. She had a lot of growth throughout the novel, and that is something I always enjoy reading. Actually, all the characters had layers, especially Dreadnought (unfortunate name that somehow fits him anyway). Although he gives you plenty of reasons to hate him at the beginning of the story, I could never quite pull it off. And as things progress, his background and personality come out and make him very complicated and real...I loved him by the end. He is not your typical hero.
The world that unfolds throughout the novel is an intriguing one, I loved every aspect of it. Same goes with the plot - there was a lot of action and a lot of intensity. The few breaks from the action give the characters a chance to interact - there was never any point where I was bored with the story.
Another thing I love is that things more or less wrap up at the end of the book. It is the beginning of the series, so a new conflict is referred to at the end...but the main plot of this story is wrapped up. If you aren't intrigued enough with the book to continue with the next one, you'll get a fulfilling ending. I, however, can't imagine reading this and not wanting to continue the series! I fell in love with the characters and their world, and am now anxiously awaiting the sequel, The Hidden Goddess.
You know those books that make you go "oh, that's how that happened!" about five minutes after you put it down? This is one of those. (Or, it could have been the whole staying up too late thing making me a little slow. Hard to tell sometimes.)
Well thought-out
Both Emily and Stanton are flawed characters -- educable, but flawed. This shows up in terms of Emily's development within the first chapter, when she chooses an immoral act for very pragmatic reasons. Stanton's full character gets revealed later. Despite Emily's incredible naivety about life outside her small community, there were no real TSTL moments -- unless you count the scene where I mentally shouted "feed him!" at her for a good number of pages.
The supporting characters are vivid. It's well-paced. Occasional bits of humor mixed in with the angst. No sex, but Witches are open targets for sexual harassment, which made me want to punch a few characters.
Overall, I enjoyed it a lot and am looking forward to the next one--where we'll hopefully learn more about Emily's birth parents
I do like Emily as Our Protagonist. She could
Dreadnaught Stanton (aside from his front-runner status for the best Awesome McCool name ever) didn’t really appeal to me. He’s…okay. There’s the whole deadpan snarker with a dark secret angle, but I didn’t really get anything new or different from Stanton as a character. He plays off of Emily well, but I didn’t see the chemistry between the two. And from what we do get of his backstory, I really wanted to delve more into that instead of “…Well, moving on!” Again, I don’t hate him, it’s just not doing anything for me.
The plot’s a little cluttered. There’s a couple good twists and turns, but it does get to the point where I was mixing up exactly who was chasing Emily at moments. Sometimes it works, as Dreadnaught and Emily’s escape plans boil down to hightailing out of whatever location they’re in at the moment, but with the frequency it happens, we never get to catch our breaths. (I do like that Stanton has a Bank Bag of Holding which he promptly loses. It’s a nice little detail used for a joke.) Plus, plot threads get dropped so quickly—again, due to the aforementioned hightailing—but we never get the full weight of the plot or what it means for our heroes. And I never got a sense of the world we’re reading about either. Yes, there’s witches and warlocks and they’re integrated into society and there’s fringe groups attacking them, but I never really got the impact magic has on this society. The magical organizations feel more like gentlemen’s clubs, and I really wanted to see magic being actually integrated into everyday life, especially once the setting moved toward the Eastern US. There’s a lot of potential to work with here, but it doesn’t feel realized. (But more of Penelope Pendennis and the Witches’ Friendly Society, because she was awesome. I loved her.)
My other issue with the book is the epilogue. I thought that the end with Emily proposing to Stanton was fine, and there’s enough dropped hints throughout the book to get me interested in the book. The epilogue just feels tacked on, as if the author wants to say “HEY REMEMBER ALL OF THIS STUFF WE’VE BEEN MENTIONING? LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT.” The epilogue’s not really a great set-up to the next book, as it pretty much gives away all of the mystery surrounding Emily’s past and a very real threat that was treated as a joke. And that doesn’t really make me interested in reading the next book because I already know what’s going to happen.
If it wasn’t for the epilogue, I would have really liked this book a lot more. It’s still a decent read, and does give an interesting at alternate US history. But I think there’s a lot of wasted potential, and the expositional epilogue really knocked down my enjoyment of this.
On the surface, The Native Star is fairly formulaic. There's the Austen-esque dynamic of the stubborn and headstrong (but always proper beneath it
. . . holy shit, was this fun! While the basic narrative is standard, the world building was delightful. Set in the west during the Reconstruction, the United States has always relied on magic to grease the wheels of commerce. There are three primary types of magic practitioners: sangrimancers (who rely on gruesome blood rituals to tap into their power), animancers ("earth" magicians who draw upon nature to heal), and credomancers (faith magicians who draw upon the beliefs of others to make the impossible, well, possible). There's much in-fighting amongst these magical traditions, as well as opposition to magic in the form of religious zealots and the increasing threat of science as a replacement for magic. Several reviews have labeled this as "steampunk," which is misleading as there are no gimmicky, steam-powered gizmos and gadgets. Everything is fueled by magic (as one reviewer said, this is "witchpunk"--a term that seems much more accurate). There are zombies, Native American holy women, murderous spirits, fantastic magical devices, as well as witches and warlocks of every stripe and color imaginable. There are quirky little details (my favorite being the idea of a "squink," a word created by the combination of the words "squid ink" and meaning to lessen the power of a credomancer by clouding his ability to believe in himself).
The Native Star is clever, witty, and intelligently written light reading when you just want to reconnect with the joy of a rollicking journey whose only destination is to enchantment. There are no deeper meanings, no pompous literary preening, no need to bust out the theory books to figure out what is up with the symbolism. It's just fun. And sometimes that's more than enough.
I loved Stanton from the moment walked on stage and was really glad to see that the things I enjoyed about him remained intact despite his character transformation over the course of the book. Emily took a little while for me to warm up to. She came off as a little whiny initially, but eventually I grew to like her a lot. Caul is appropriately sinister and mad, and I particularly enjoyed his savage stuttering. The underlying love story was satisfying as well.
Things I didn't particularly care for: I was really meh about the whole Aztec sangrimancers angle, with them wanting to destroy the world. I feel slightly less annoyed with it now that I've read the opening of The Hidden Goddess and see that it's more complicated than that, but on the whole I would like to see a more diversified portrayal of Aztec religion in fiction. They seem to be an easy boogy man to slap on things as mindless, border-line psychotic villians and paints Aztec religion with too broad a brush. The mass human sacrifices the Spanish saw when they arrived was the byproduct of the political philosophies of one particular Cihuacoatl that reigned in his position through 4 different Emperors, and these practices weren't widely popular with the people, even in the valley of Mexico itself. Otherwise Cortez and his band of conquistadors wouldn't have encountered so many tribes eager to aid him in overthrowing Tenochtitlan. I'm not entirely sure that the next book is going to go far enough to correct this stereotype, but I'm willing to see where Hobson takes it. I hope it's in a good, diversified and thoughtful direction.
At a certain point the story feels more concerned with showing off what this universe can do and the "neat stuff" in it than it does on resolving the plot. It even needs a prologue to tie its beginning and ending together. And nothing in the prologue has any bearing on the plot in-between. I'm surprised this got past the editors -- it's one of the worst reasons for a prologue. It unmade the story for me from the best thing I read this span.
Some of the dialogue was pretty witty and had us both laughing. Pretty cool world/faction setup but even with pretty dark bad guy
It was so, so, so like Cherie Priest's Dreadnought (& Boneshaker) in tone, plot elements and setting that I could almost have believed it was a new book from Priest - except that I don't think she'd use such a trite
It also, several times, comes thiiiiis close to getting really preachy about its environmental and socially progressive messages. Not to a Sheri Tepper degree (although I was also reminded of Tepper at moments), and I can't say that I don't agree with the messages: industrialization is not actually progress (even when the industrial pollution is "magical"), but I found myself going, "oh come on, well that's just a bit OBVIOUS" about her metaphors at several junctures.
But yet, I kept reading. Quickly. It's a fast-moving, engaging, fun story. I very well might even go seek out the sequel.
She is not a likeable character. It is excused as extreme pragmatism, the tendency to set aside everything else in favor of what is necessary. For example, though she does not want to do it, and in fact dreads the consequences, she determines to place a love charm on a young man of decent fortune in order to keep herself and her adopted father from the depths of starvation they have recently endured. She's snappish, stroppy, and closed-minded. She's racist, too.
Harassing her and her Pap is Dreadnought Stanton, a wizard who keeps trying to instruct them in how things ought to be. Now, it's a common enough trope that the hero and heroine bicker until they inevitably become lovers (and usually after). Sexual tension is shown through sparring, when an author can come up with no better way to do it. However, this guy is introduced so negatively, with so much apparent malice, that it's very, very difficult to stomach it when these two do, inevitably, become a couple. And, of course, bad as he is, she's even less pleasant. It's not believable.
The onomatopoeia was excessive. Every action in the book makes a sound, and every sound is conveyed.
There were holes in the story that were immediately obvious. How does a hick farmer in the nineteenth century Midwest know that glucose is sugar? How is Miss Magic-Negator Emily supposed to ride in a magic-driven biomechanical device? And if it's not magic-driven, what does keep it together? The bad guy – (with an incredibly awful accent – gives Our Heroes something to drink before they realize who he is, and then he brags about how he slipped in a compulsion potion. Everyone ends up with at least a mouthful, and it has obvious and bad effects on Stanton – and it seems to take forever for anyone to worry about what that sip might have done to Emily.
It didn't take long for me to recognize a sort of a pattern in the book: O no terrible danger what will they ever do … oh. Never mind. Not so much. O no Stanton's been injured again he's bleeding … oh. Never mind. Not so much. He's fine. O no … etc. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Unfortunately, a weak narrator did not help a weak book. Pronunciations were all over the place, and drove me crazy – everything from mispronunciation of common enough words like "vestibule" and "impudence" to a mangling of "trompe l'oiel" that made me, a former art student who took an entire course painting one trompe, grit my teeth. "Black Maria" is pronounced as though it had something to do with Natalie Wood's character in West Side Story. Some of the trouble is the usual misplacement of emphasis in sentences; it's as though narrators can't hear what they're saying, and "narration" overrides natural speaking patterns. And what a shockingly bad Italian accent for "Grimaldi". And an even worse Russian one.
One very brief bright moment in the narrative was a line which – unfortunately unintentionally – made me smile, because of its absurdity: "Get yer goldurn hands offa my cockatrice." Second place in unintentionally hysterical lines goes to: "Miss Edwards – will you bring out the nut?"
But about three quarters in I swore that if I had had to hear "carissima mia" one more time I would scream. And very shortly after I made a note:
AAAARRRRGH
The
The two main characters of Emily and Stanton are colorful and interesting characters. The primary pleasure of the book was enjoying their bickering and watching their evolving relationship. Dreadnaught Stanton is a bit of an anti-hero. The author managed to make his character not only likeable but loveable, even though he starts off as a man a bit too outspoken, emotionally cool and a bit of a snob.
All in all this book was very clever and original, and it was fun to read. I will definitely be looking forward to reading more books from this author.
There's a strong pro-environmental moral in here, but I rather liked how it was portrayed. Those who believed in TNS's "climate change" responded in the same dismissive way that many non-believers in our world do. That's another thing Hobson is really, really good at: showing us true reactions, motions and/or things I could point to and say, "Yes, I've seen someone say that about climate change," or "Yes, men have said that same thing to me before," etc. For all the magic and the far-away world of post-Civil War America, mostly everything was relateable.
All in all, I'm glad I bought it and its sequel, "The Hidden Goddess," at the same time. I have every intention of diving right into the second book as well as (at some point in the future) returning to reread TNS.