Customer Reviews

The Native Star

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Native Star" is, I believe, the first solo work published by author M.K. Hobson. (she has published other short stories in a collection series of fantasy works with other authors). This Kindle ebook edition is 400 pages in length.

*SPOILER*

The era is the 1870's and the location is in the American west. Fate has intervened and thrown together two very different individuals...a benevolent witch by the name of Emily Edwards and an out of favor warlock, Dreadnought Stanton. Unusual circumstances lead them to the site of a strange mining accident where Emily finds a beautiful blue gem...and upon picking it up, it becomes embedded within her hand. This gem has mysterious powers and once its presence in known, every necromancer, every magician of any renown, wants to have it for his own. Our heroes flee with the hopes of getting to New York, where the one person who might be able to provide some answers and help resides...the story begins and the chase ensues.

*END SPOILER*

Author Hobson weaves a fine tale. I had the feeling at the beginning that this would be a light hearted 'western' (romance, horses and small towns etc.) with a few zombies thrown in the mix. However, such was not the case, because not only did this turned out to have some very well developed, interesting characters, but also the 'light-hearted' (mentioned above), soon turned out to be exceeding gory and unpleasant at times. All this because of some interesting evil-doers doing whatever was needed to accomplishes their goals...in this case gain possession, at any cost, of the blue gem.

Conclusion:
Previously, an unknown author to me; I picked up this book mainly because of an intriguing cover and the high number of 5 star reviews. After a 'quiet' beginning this turned out to be an extremely well written fantasy/adventure...getting better as it went along. Some interesting characters, some unexpected turns and some chilling descriptions made this a very enjoyable fantasy read. The epilogue certainly left room for a sequel. 5 Stars.

Ray Nicholson

A fast paced, heady blend of adventure, romance, western and fantasy, I found The Native Star to be a delicious, compulsive read.

Young Emily Edwards, the local enchantress of a remote California timber camp, begins the book by making a series of very bad decisions involving love spells, a young man she's adored since childhood, mining camp zombies, and a hotly pursued magically reactive mineral that has not only embedded itself in her hand, but also seem to have something to do with her dimly-remembered murdered mother. To top it off, Emily is saddled with an irritatingly attractive New York City-slicker wizard who knows much more about magic than she does, and isn't afraid to rub her nose in it -- when he deigns to tell her anything at all.

Emily's adventure avalanches from there, chasing her from her childhood home across the United States by trans-continental train and clockwork-magical flying machine. In quick succession, this rural girl has to run from the wood-fired rustic Sierra Nevada backlands to San Francisco's red light district, and then to the glittering arcane lights and overcrowded hoopla of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Along the way, Emily must figure out where her own backwoods spell casting fits into the world economy of magic systems, and discover how cheaply life is bought and sold by the political and magical power brokers of the U.S. and the terrifying, ruthless underworld overlords.

The Native Star is original, blisteringly paced, satisfying, and compulsively readable. The author has created her own new sub-genre of fantasy (she calls it Bustlepunk but I'd name it Spellpunk Western.) She reports that a sequel is in the works, and I personally hope for many more. As quickly as possible, please!

I will start this review by pointing out I adore period pieces. I have a soft spot for urban fantasy. Urban fantasy set in a wonderfully rich historical setting? Sold.

The Native Star takes place in a slightly different late 1800's America. Witches and Warlocks are standard fare and there are competing schools of magic. The schools themselves are amazingly well thought out and each have a fascinating culture of their own. Strong world building is what pulled me in to this novel, and a wonderful cast of characters kept me reading. Apart from the magical schools (credomancy being my favorite for the sheer brilliance of it's design) there are the Aberrancies, creatures (and occasionally people) twisted by a dark matter the magical core of the earth exudes from time to time.

The protagonists are wonderfully human, with all the flaws and failings that implies, and the best of the villains are perfectly chilling. It is a love story worked very well into a grand tapestry of adventure, violence, and betrayal.

The book opens with a love charm gone terribly wrong, works its way through zombie miners that would kill to keep something buried, and the woman who unfortunately gets past them and winds up with an artifact of unprecedented power embedded in her hand.

And all of the competing magical schools would kill to have it in their possession.

What results is an excellent, fast-paced read that is very hard to put down.

Plot Summary: Emily Edwards is the resident witch of Lone Pine, California. Her homey remedies and herbal treatments have earned her a place in the community, but one day Emily uses her magic for a dishonorable purpose and before she can correct her error, she becomes burdened with a stone that zaps all of her powers. When the townspeople casts her out, the only person who can help her is an insufferable warlock from New York named Dreadnought Stanton, who thinks that Emily is a primitive, ignorant camp witch. Stanton realizes the importance of the stone, and he convinces her to visit his institute for assistance. From there the pair encounters rabid, house-sized raccoons, a holy Indian woman, blood sorcerers, and flying bio-mechanical animals. This is just the warm-up.

I think the time is ripe for novels like The Native Star. Part fantasy, part historical, part romance, and with a sprinkling of steampunk, it's a colorful mix of all of my favorite styles within one book. My goodness, there were even zombies! There have been a few of these cropping up here and there, like Soulless by Gail Carriger, and I certainly hope to see more, but what sets M. K. Hobson's debut apart is that it's set in the American West. The setting spans from San Francisco all the way to New York City, and it's hard to top that kind of big, bold, cross-country adventure. This is the type of story that can satisfy so many different kinds of readers that I have no idea where I'd shelve it in a bookstore.

The Native Star works because Ms. Hobson did not take all of these elements and toss them randomly like a salad. Her fantasy world is robust and complicated; those who possess the ability to work with magic are divided into multiple factions who operate with all the fervor of religious zealots. She also explores the method behind the magic far more than most authors are willing to do in an intro book, and it blends into the story beautifully. This is a fully realized world, and her characters are no less engaging.

The plot stays focuses on Emily and Stanton (I can't call him Dreadnought, it sounds awful in my head), which should please the romance fans in the crowd, and their early relationship has all the bitter acrimony I hope to encounter when it comes to opposites attracting. They are so mismatched that I didn't begin to see how they could possibly fall in love until the second half of the novel, and I like it when the pair doesn't seem to be fated right from the start.

According to Ms. Hobson's website, book two, The Hidden Goddess, will be released in May 2011.

This is the second of the 2010 Nebula Nominees for best novel that I've read and I found it to be a romping fun ride. Think Will Smith in The Wild, Wild West and you'll get a taste of what this novel is about. Add spaceships to it and you might even find yourself thinking of Joss Whedon's Firefly. There's just something about the wild west, corsets and magic to get this fantasy lovers imagination going.

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!

M.K. Hobson creates a fascinating combination of the old West and magic in her novel, The Native Star, portraying the realities of the late 1800s, its cultures, its cities, its horses and trains, and even its wars with just one vital addition, magic. She creates a fascinating cast of characters, from rich denizens of Los Angeles to tribal villagers, with just enough of both old world and new to make them vividly real.

University educated warlock Dreadnought Stanton finds himself saddled with awkward country witch Emily Edwards in a race against time to save the universe. As they speed from one end of the country to the other, Emily learns about different types of magic, with delightfully well-thought-out rules and wonderfully confused questions reflecting much of modern life in the light of the magical. In Emily's world, not only are science and religion at odds, but so are each with magic, adding a third point of contention to civilized, and uncivilized life. Magic practitioners will either be revered as the hope of the nation, or burned at the stake as the causers of all ills. Valuable artifacts might be captured and studied, stolen and used, or spirited away for safekeeping. But which is the right reaction when Emily tries to tie her long-dead mother's inheritance with the future world's plans and the precious stone she holds in her hand?

Of course, Emily is learning about another magic too as she travels, and the bonds of true love. But the question remains, of two loves, which one is true, and indeed, which can be true?

The exciting conclusion solves this mystery and more, bringing a pleasant sense of completeness to the tale. But other secrets lie in the eaves, waiting, I hope, for a second book in the series. Certainly these characters and their world merit more words, and the author has imbued them with such a convincing reality they're sure to stay in the reader's mind until book two comes out. Horses, trains and biomechanical flying machines will people my dreams, and the landscapes of late 1800s USA will form a beautifully described background waiting for more.

When I first started this book, I assumed it would be like any other predictable popular fantasy novel that you find on the shelves these days. But you know what they say about assuming.

The first thing that grabbed hold of me was that the book started out with Emily doing something selfish. She's not the perfect character you would expect, but is instead flawed as all humans are. She's a spunky, compassionate, fiery individual that I found myself wishing I could be friends with towards the end, although at first I didn't particularly like her. I did, however, like Stanton right off the bat, because even though he was "insufferable", I always just thought that was impatience on Emily's part. He, too, has his own flaws however, and it only makes him more likable as a character.

As far as plot goes, this book had me on my toes most of the time. There is a spot in the middle where all they're doing is riding a train--I mean, they COULD have had some more trouble along the way--but other than that it was well-contrived and brilliant. The story takes place in America in the 1870's, but rather than having just scientific and mechanical advances, Hobson creates a world of science, factories, and magic. Magic is as normal as science then, and a major form of study. I found it fascinating to uncover this new view of American history, and definitely want more.

For me, predicting books' endings is a piece of cake in the case of most books. I generally have the plot figured out by the third or fourth chapter. I don't mind, I like re-reading books, and what's more predictable than a book you've already read? But one of my favorite things about The Native Star was how unpredictable it was. Almost everything was a surprise, or if it wasn't, I didn't figure things out until the author intended it--which may or may not have been before Emily. Although the romance was predictable in the fact that it existed, it came about in an entirely believable way, and had more surprising elements than not.

I think my only problem with this book was that Stanton's first name is Dreadnaught (an absolutely horrible name...doesn't he at least have a nickname?) and I can't imagine ever giving someone that name. But that is insignificant compared to the brilliance of the rest of the novel.

All in all, it was an excellent book, and I eagerly await the second.

The Native Star is fantastic reading experience with coast-to-coast plotting that keeps its characters on fast-moving trains, dangerous mountain trails, jumping out of windows and taking off in biomechanical flying machines. But the real charms of the book lie in the bewitching characters and the unique system of magic that Hobson has developed to fuel this Wild West fantasy romance.

Emily Edwards is a mountain witch, as pragmatic and hardworking as she is beautiful. Her doings with the supercilious and sarcastic Dreadnought Stanton are so much fun to read. Yes, it's inevitable where this pair is headed, but the path is full of misapprehensions and arguments that had this reader laughing out loud in delight. The scenes in which they confront the impossibility of their attraction are full of real anguish, and beautifully written. This far transcends any easy definition of "romance."

What makes this novel stand out, however, is the combination of action and character with world-building that is so complete and fascinating that it becomes seamless. This is an America settled and developed through magic, with those who practice magic and those who denounce it working the political machine to further their aims. The actual system of magic, with the clear division of those who work with spirit, those who work with belief, and those who work with blood, is so well thought out that I actually looked for it on Wikipedia. This taxonomy is M.K. Hobson's original, and I can't wait to read more about it in the sequel.

Holy craperoni! This book was GOOD! Okay, so let me tell you why this book blew me away. First of all although this was an adult book it was done in a way that made it feel similar to a YA. It's really hard to explain that, but basically it took the best of YA mixed with the best of an adult fantasy romance. Let me be clear though, this is NOT YA! The characters are adult. But the romance was all full of sexual tension, there wasn't any sex but there was plenty of tension! And there wasn't the irritating behavior that you get in YA because these characters were mature adults. Not that they didn't make any stupid decisions, but there weren't many and they did as well as could be imagined in the situations they were thrown into.
I just felt a different vibe from this book. It took so many elements I love and it completely skipped the things I hate, or that annoy me at least. I think that's what made this one so good for me.
The second half was better then the first half, but the first half was good too. It's just the being introduced to the world and the characters that drew it out a bit longer.
The world created in this book is amazing! It's very focused on magic. Witches, Warlocks and all the different kinds of magic. Those that draw their power from blood, from the earth, and from the emotions of others (that ones hard to explain). Although we see a bit of zombies in the beginning it was a very brief thing and turned out to not really be something that was revisited. So don't read this book for just zombies. There were Steampunk elements but it is definitely not heavily Steampunk oriented.
The characters were amazing! I found maybe one point that I was annoyed with Emily but it turned out that that thing that annoyed me is what made it all the more amazing when she opened her mind to new things and accepted the world a little differently. And Dreadnought, well, the author did an amazing job making him immensely appealing. I don't recall any description of him, though I know she described him in the beginning, all I remember is that he dressed very well. And we got bits here and there. But really, I have a picture in my head and I'm sure it's probably nothing like she's described him. But I wouldn't want him any other way. Oh yes, he is a fabulous character!
I found this book impossible to put down and I'm SO glad I had the opportunity to meet the author and found her brilliant book!

I've been reading a lot of Steampunk in the last few years, and much as I enjoy the Victorian England setting that predominates in the genre, a fresh take and a new setting makes for a satisfying change.

This debut novel is set in the American West in the 1870s, albeit an America where magic works. Rural witch Emily Edwards is an appealing protagonist; she's strong, independent-minded, loyal, and sensible. When she accidentally gets a powerful gem embedded in her palm, she quickly becomes the quarry in a hunt by various groups seeking the gem's power. Her quest to free herself of the gem -- a quest that ultimately takes her from her small town in California all the way across the country to halls of power and influence in New York -- makes for compelling reading.

The novel is meticulously researched; the period details are exacting, and that verisimilitude creates a rich historical environment. The story moves briskly, and the characters are nicely-drawn. I look forward to the next volume in the series!