Book Review: K.A.T. Antiques

~ crossovercreativechaos

K.A.T. Antiques, by Pam Uphoff. I’d give this one a 4.5 out of 5 stars; it’s shorter than I’d like, I could have read the hijinks, house fixes, and attempted murders for quite some more time, but OTOH it doesn’t drag or dawdle. A very good take-you-out-of-your-own-head story!

It’s technically book 5 in her Chronicles of the Fall series, but also a stand-alone novella. Which, honestly, is one reason I got it, rather than, say, book one of any of her longer series. (Some are very, very long!) I hadn’t read more than a sample or two of her works before, and I just wanted a taste before I dove headfirst into what might be A Large Universe With Lots of Characters.

This is a good taste.

This is an SF set in the future, with a culture in some ways very unlike our own. If you think being under the thumb of abusive family until you’re eighteen is bad, try a world in which yes, people might reach two centuries, but your father or guardian has a legal say in your marriage and other affairs until you’re fifty. If you want to be a legal citizen, you have to win the right… by killing a government-chosen opponent hand to hand (mental powers allowed). And if your legal guardian doesn’t choose to allow you to be Presented for that fight, you end up a chipped slave. Which is… well. Worse than slavery as we know it here, because the chipped can be mind-controlled. Among other things.

Imagine being sixteen-year-old Karl Traeger, waking up to find your responsible, loving, but much older father dead, and knowing that you’re going under the guardianship of his nearest brother, who both hates you and is deep in debt. Meaning he could solve two problems by having you chipped and sold.

Well. Cue shutting down the tears – tears come later – and immediately taking the much-less-than-legal steps needed to fudge the paperwork and get to that fight, so you can become a legal person before any cops can show up….

I love responsible characters. I love characters who think, and plan, and try to protect people they care about. This is a good story for that; and also for showing how people can be very irresponsible, and how that creates nasty fallout for everyone around them. On top of that, it shows both lazy cops and good ones, and notes how some good cops may suspect that Karl did something a little hinky… but it wasn’t related to their murder investigation, so they’re not going to ask.

(Because they can see exactly what kind of mess a sixteen-year-old would have been in if he hadn’t messed with the paperwork, and no. No kid deserves that.)

I think I may be getting a bunch of these other stand-alones as I get the chance. This story was fun!

16 thoughts on “Book Review: K.A.T. Antiques”

  2. I definitely appreciate responsible characters, especially since they’re so rare.

    I understand the fantasy appeal of “freedom,” which almost always just means they avoid responsibility at all costs, but when they have a responsibility and blow it off, it annoys me.

    Like a fanfic of a school setting, where a character is inserted as a teacher, and they brag about how they have no preparation for class or any lesson plan, and they never take the time to do it.

    All you have to say is “he spent the evening putting together a lesson plan” but even that’s too much for most authors!

    Or if they have a pet or a child (treated the same in most stories) and they go charging off for 16 hours on some adventure.

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    2. Among the many other reasons why young adult protags are so popular in high fantasy is that they are older enough to adventure without either having responsibilities they have to slough off or raising questions why they have no responsibilities.

      Of course, the issue can be finessed — the hero’s story is to avenge his dead family is a cliche exactly because it finesses it all — but not stories benefit from that.

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  4. When you start reading the main series, don’t let book three (titled Black Goats) put you off the rest. There are some pretty nasty things that happen in that book, done by some pretty nasty people. But most of her series isn’t like that. I found book three difficult to get through, but book four rewards your patience with a very lighthearted read, and characters you quickly learn to love. And the plot tends to follow those characters for lots and lots of books.

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    1. I also liked the 3rd stand-alone, though it has some very whoof moments.

      (As in, it starts with the main character having been surgically mutilated. He copes… but when he and his father later find the guy responsible, oops, that guy must have hit his head a little too hard….)

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      2. Many more.

        …Heh. We also need more encouragement for people to want to be married. I was thinking of the Hua Mulan c-drama I watched, where in one of the final episodes the Emperor’s honoring a soldier, and Mulan informs him that there have been 8 heroes in his family (read, soldiers who served honorably and died in combat), and he and his grandmother are all that’s left of the name.

        Horrified Emperor says that’s it, you’re out of the army – go home and raise a big family for me!

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