[Lisa’s Take] The Book of Lost Things (John Connolly)

Imagine The Wizard of Oz: a young child experiences trauma and gets whisked away to an alternate, magical world inside his brain. Instead of munchkins and scarecrows, mix in a handful of well known fairy tales – the gruesome Brothers Grimm versions, not the squeaky clean Disney kind. Add a dash of philosophical dithering on destiny and growing up, and you pretty much have a solid picture of the plot and themes in The Book of Lost Things.

It’s a really promising premise, and John Connolly delivers a solid book. The plot moves along nicely; his takes on the classic fairy tales are interesting, dark, and sometimes humorous. And yet... I’m having a hard time coming up with the rousing endorsement that you’d think would logically follow. I’m not really sure what the cause of the disconnect is – I just didn’t get as caught up in the plot and characters and stories as I wanted to be.

I suspect there are a couple of contributing factors here – first is that I’ve read Tad Williams Otherland books, which are really the master work in fantasy when it comes to taking existing folk and fairy tales and mashing them up. Once you’ve seen it done so well, it makes later works feel less original; much like trying to go back and read Neuromancer after reading contemporary cyberpunk.

The other problem is that my internal heuristic for when the book would end was thrown off in The Book of Lost Things. You know how when you’re reading a book you get a feeling for the pacing of the end of the story by how many pages you have left? If you have 20 pages left to turn, you figure “wow, the end is really near! Things are going to happen quickly!” but if you have 100 pages left, you think “this can’t be the big climax – I still have chapters and chapters to read!” Unbeknownst to me, The Book of Lost Things had about 100 pages of author interviews, reprintings of the original fairy tales, and discussions of the author’s use of the tales. So as I was nearing the end of the story, I kept thinking I had a hundred pages left, so surely there would be so much more to tell—then I turned the page and it was over and I was confused and disappointed.

Neither of these items is really Mr. Connolly’s fault – only my own preconceptions and expectations coloring my enjoyment of the book. As such, I’ll neither recommend nor discourage you from reading this book. I think it could be enjoyable and entertaining (perhaps even rewarding) to the right reader in the right mindset, and I think it was a good work – just not for me right at this moment.

[Lisa’s Take] The Nessantico Cycle Book 2: A Magic of Nightfall (S. L. Farrell)

Even though my reaction to A Magic of Twilight was rather lukewarm, when I saw A Magic of Nightfall in the bookstore I was excited and picked it up right away. For all of the flaws in book 1 it still left me wanting more, so Nightfall got prioritized pretty quickly in my stack.

I’ll say one thing for A Magic of Nightfall – it’s ballsy. Book 1 didn’t exactly end of a cliffhanger, but it did leave off in the midst of some action, and I was fully expecting Book 2 to pick up right where that action left off. Farrell, however, had other ideas, and Nightfall starts after about a 25 year gap in time. Needless to say, I was quite surprised…. but Farrell pulled it off pretty well. I was impressed by how naturally and organically the jump in time was executed. The characters had all aged and changed and developed in the intervening period, and I think the gap was necessary to move the story a long and really take it to the epic level that Farrell was aiming for.

Speaking of ballsy, the author makes a couple of moves within the first few chapters that left my jaw hanging open – I won’t elaborate since it would be impossible to do so without spoilers, but I will say that Farrell really stepped up to the plate and showed that he’s not afraid to take charge of his characters. Very Martin-esque in that regard.

For all the panache and promise that Nightfall started out with, I had high hopes for the book. Unfortunately, a lot of my gripes from the first novel wormed their way back into play. The biggest trouble surrounded characterization, yet again. Much like in Twilight, I didn’t feel all that attached to any of the characters and I felt like they had some inconsistencies. Farrell did a better job this time around of making his characters motivations make sense (and some of the motivational ambiguities from the 1st book were cleared up), but I just didn’t feel an emotional “umph” around any of the characters. Even some of the characters that I had started to sympathize with in the first book just didn’t quite make a connection with me during book 2. It was frustrating – I wanted to be emotionally wrapped up in the characters and their plight, but there was just something missing.

Character gripes aside, the story itself was (much like the first book) pretty solid, pretty engaging, and pretty good.
“Pretty” is cropping up a lot in this review – I should work on my synonyms. Fairly solid. Somewhat engaging. Moderately interesting. Reasonably good. A decent variety of words to express how I felt about the other aspects of the story. It had a nice ebb and flow with good buildups and lulls, all climaxing towards a solid finish. That said, by the end of the book I was kind of ready for it to be over. I raced through the last 80 pages not because I was on edge about how the story would end, but because I just wanted it to be done with already. I think this might be a personal problem, rather than a problem with the book itself – I do know better than to load too much epic fantasy into one month, so it may be that I just didn’t get enough variety in literature the last few weeks since I packed in both Twilight and Nightfall.

Well. A lot of that text sounds mediocre-to-negative, but believe it or not, A Magic of Nightfall was a good book. If you enjoyed A Magic of Twilight you’ll certainly enjoy its sequel, and (like me) will probably appreciate some of the polish to the characters and the risks that Farrell was willing to take as an author. I very much approve of the epic scope the Nessantico Cycle, and I look forward to seeing where the author takes his readers for book 3 – since just at this moment I have no idea where the plot could be headed! The bottom line: read it, but maybe give yourself a sufficient breather between books 1 and 2. Fill the gaps with some nice funny Pratchett or clever Doctorow, then be ready to plot head-long into the more dense epic fantasy that Farrell provides.

[Lisa’s Take] Last Watch (Sergei Lukyanenko)

I kind of never thought this book would come out in the US. After all of the drama with the movie side of things, and after the release date getting pushed back so many times, I had pretty much given up hope on ever getting to read the final book in the Night Watch series. I was down about it, but more or less resigned to my fate.

So you can imagine the sound I made when I saw Last Watch on the shelf – or rather the string of excited curses that were entirely inappropriate for a quiet little bookstore, but that escaped before I could contain myself. This was the 3rd fantasy release in a week that caught me totally off guard, and definitely the most thrilling of the 3.

It occurs to me that many people might not be familiar with this little gem of the fantasy, so let me explain a bit. The Night Watch quartet is a series of books by Russian fantasy author Sergei Lukyanenko. They qualify for my mental niche of “massively multi-genre fantasy.” The books are set in modern day Russia, so they have a dash of “urban fantasy.” The books are built on the premise that in addition to humans, there are people who are called Others who have other-worldly powers. These Others fall into two factions – Light Others and Dark Others. The Light Ones have the powers that we usually equate with high fantasy – witches, prescience, healing, spell casters. The Dark Ones have powers from the “fantasy horror” end of the spectrum – vampires, werewolves, dark wizards. A truce was made between the Light and Dark to prevent them from warring each other into oblivion, and the Night Watch was set up as a coalition of Light Ones to watch over and monitor the Dark Ones, while the Day Watch was set up as a coalition of Dark Ones to monitor the Light Ones. Maintaining the balance of power is paramount, and the main character spends a lot of time playing a political balancing game while philosophizing about the nature of good and evil. Add that dash of political fantasy and philosophy, and you have a book series that touches on practically every fantasy sub-genre there is.

The books garnered enough claim in Russia to inspire a movie that smashed all sorts of nation-wide box office records. In 2004 the movie was subtitled for an English audience (with awesomely engaging text, I might add – lots of interesting after-effects and interplay with the on-screen action). It was pretty well received, though it never saw more than a limited release in independent theaters. The film did well enough to secure the US-release of the second movie, Day Watch, which also gained the attention of Fox Searchlight. Good old Fox secured the rights to the 3rd movie and promptly ditched most of the original cast and ran the project into the ground.

Luckily, the movies did well enough to inspire Miramax to pick up the novels, translate, and publish them in the US. I loved the movies for their somewhat bizarre, abrasive, but engaging approach to dark fantasy, and I especially loved their take on magic. As such, when I saw the books on the shelves I picked them up right away. I never got around to writing full reviews for any of the books in the series, but I figured that I should at least highlight them in this blog as I finished up the final installment.

I really can’t say enough good about the Night Watch books – they are an incredibly fresh breath of air amidst all of the ho-hum, been-there-done-that fantasy on the market these days. They make me wish that the US saw more foreign translations, because it’s just a marvelous experience. The premise of the series at first glance seems a little “comic bookish” (not to disparage any of the excellent graphic novels out there) but the deep characterizations and human aspects of the main characters, as well as the keen examination of “good” and “bad” really elevates the whole shebang to a higher level. For all their depth the books still read incredibly quickly, but manage to be both emotionally engaging and have a dash of self-aware humor that keeps it interesting. All four books are great, but I will say that Last Watch was the strongest, and finished off the series on a high note for me.

Well, this has gotten longer than I expected, so I’ll wrap it up. Procure these books. Read them all in a long weekend. They’re so very worth it, and a great change from the established fantasy norm in the US. Also, if you happen to read them without seeing the movies first, I’d love to hear your feedback, as I’m not sure how much my prior exposure to the films influenced my opinions. Happy reading!

[Lisa's Take] The Black Company - Glen Cook

Allow me to start off this review by saying, loudly and passionately: Damn it. I'll get back to why in a moment.

The Black Company is a dark, gritty, military fantasy following a group of elite mercenaries as they are pulled into a struggle between good-- well, no, not good. Between evil and potentially more evil. Published in 1984, The Black Company is definitely one of the pioneers of the military fantasy genre and it wouldn't surprise me if a number of current authors who are a fan of R-rated gray fantasy (*cough* Joe Abercrombie *cough*) looked to this series for inspiration.

I'll admit that even though The Black Company only clocks in a little over 200 pages, it took a bit to engage me. The first 3 or so chapters read as though they came out of a magazine serialization - repeating of character information we'd already been presented with, odd re-stating of plot points in each chapter, and a very story-like quality to the chapters, with each presenting its own introduction, conflict, and resolution. This seemed to abate a bit by the mid-point of the book - either that or I just got used to it.

As I mentioned, The Black Company clocks in at about 218 pages. Today so much fantasy seems to be judged on the thickness of the book, rather than the quality between the covers - and this book pointed out to me just how much I've fallen victim to the stereotype of "thicker is better." When I picked up The Black Company I assumed it was a big, fat tome of a fantasy novel, but discovered that it was actually the first 3 books of the series republished in one volume. I immediately soured on the book, but continued reading - and I'm extremely glad I did. Cook manages to pack more plot, conflict and characterization into 200 pages than most contemporary authors do in 500. He has a way of laying out the plot in what seems a stark, plain telling, but that in reality has layers of implications and a lot of depth. When I first started reading I actually had a hard time because I was charging through the text so fast that I was missing important plot details - he really expects you to pay attention to every word, every sentence, and every character nuance. Cook trusts his reader's intelligence and plows ahead through the major plot points assuming you'll be able to keep pace.

At first I was a little put off by the stark styling of The Black Company, but by the end of the first book I found myself very emotionally engaged. I didn't mean to start in on the second book right away, but I was 10 pages in before I realized what I was doing. Somehow, unbeknownst to me, Cook had tied me up in his characters - made them deep and complex and compelling in spite of the spare words used to describe them. The fantasy genre has changed a lot in the 25 years since Cook published the first book in The Black Company, but I think a lot of contemporary authors could take a couple of pages from Glen Cook's book (so to speak).

Now - back to why I started this review off with a bit of passionate cursing. From the time The Black Company really hooked me, about half way in, I kept having a niggling sensation that it felt a lot like The Book of Amber (10 short fantasy novelettes published in one big omnibus. Well worth reading). However, I kept assuring myself that this was only a trilogy - after all, I had all 3 books in one volume! Then I started this review and did a bit of digging about the books' history and discovered that The Black Company is, in fact, the first of 10 books. I didn't mean to throw myself head long into another huge series, dammit! (read: Woohoo! I have another 9 books to enjoy!)

Goodness, this review really go lengthy, given the relative shortness of the book in question. The bottom line here is that in spite of its bumpy start The Black Company is a really great read.

[JD's Take] Domino Men (Jonathan Barnes)

Wooo! Barnes wrote another book! This is the good fellow who brought us The Somnambulist, which I loved. It was a great pulpy Victorian mystery with a healthy smattering of the occult, the supernatural, the alien, and the downright weird.

Domino Men is set in the same world as The Somnambulist, something that took me a while to figure out since the time has been moved forward to modern day London. Still, even my legendarily bad memory was prodded before too many chapters had passed me by, which was a nice surprise. I have now ruined that surprise for you. Sorry.

Though some of the players are the same, this is a very different novel. It's less a mystery and more a horror story. Not one of those namby-pamby horror stories you get these days. There are no evil dogs or sleep deprived men wielding axes. This is more like Lovecraft with a decidedly British bent (you'll get to a point in the story, stop reading, and think "did Adams write this?". Honest!) and less of the racism. It ignores literary tropes, classic story arcs and the like. You know from the beginning how it will end (more or less), and then it does (more or less). Though he kept some elements from The Somnambulist (a surprise narrator, for instance!) it's clear that this isn't so much a sequel[0] as another story in the same world.

The bad news: some of the characters were disappointing. There were at least two (maybe more like three) parties that were described, pretty much everywhere, as these elaborate schemers. Masters of the long game, slowly setting up their plots to change the fates of men and gods. That sort of thing. None of that really... came up though? Like they set up all these elaborate plans and they were largely totally meaningless. I'd tell you more, but I think I'd spoil some things. However, to prod my memory after you read it, I'll give you keywords[whited to avoid minor spoilers]: [glass gun][old man waking up][domino men]. Here's the counter-argument keyword: [child actors].

That kind of segues to my other complaint, which is that nobody's actions ever seemed to make any difference. The story reads as a series of things happening to the world, and then resolving themselves, and none of the many character's many actions mean a damn. Of course, that plays into the whole Lovecraft thing, so it might be a wash.

In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the solid writing, the engrossing story, the imaginative world. Though not a perfect gem, it's still a worthy use of your time and money, and I recommend it.

[0] Actually, my memory is bad enough that the events in this book *might* have been set up in the first, but I don't think so.

[Lisa’s Take] A Magic of Twilight (S. L. Farrell)

I wasn’t overly impressed by the first S. L. Farrell book I reviewed, so I haven’t been going out of my way to pursue his work. But a couple of weeks back I found myself on a business trip having grossly underestimated the number of books I needed to keep me entertained, so I had to hit the airport bookstore (which are hardly known for their impressive fantasy selection). Pickins’ were slim, so I went with an author that I knew would probably be at least marginally entertaining, and ended up with A Magic of Twilight.

A Magic of Twilight reads a lot like something by Jennifer Fallon, which is to say that it’s solid political fantasy with good characterizations and plenty of drama, betrayal, and intrigue. The setup is pretty classic for this sub-genre: there are POV characters, a magic system, governmental factions at odds, strong but aging monarchs, and persecuted minorities. Hmm. I’m making a lot of lists, which never codes well for the overall tone of my review. Let me skip to some details.

Characters, delicious characters! First and foremost, I have a question. What is it with S. L. Farrell and sexually abused young girls? Sorry, I just had to put that out there – both books I’ve read by him have involved exploitative sex, which seems an odd recurring them. Anyway, glib questions aside, there was good and bad to be had in regards to the characters in A Magic of Twilight. My biggest complaint is that while there were a whole handful of PoV characters, only one or two of them really felt all that real. Even though we were inside a lot of different heads, the tone and emotions didn’t change very much. The only truly distinct voices where Dhosti and Ana (and later the commandant), which is a shame since they all had so much potential.

The other big character gripe I had is that… hmm. How to express this. I feel like the author wanted to create “gray” characters, rather than ones that were distinctly black and white, good and evil. This worked out ok with one or two characters, but with some of them it just made them seem wishy-washy or underdeveloped. I feel like Farrell needed to establish a stronger character personality baseline before he tried to muddy the waters with ambiguity. Still – all of that said, the characters managed to be interesting and engaging. I was emotionally invested in their wellbeing, and I found myself picking rather unexpected favorites towards the end of the book.

The story itself was quite good, though for the most part it can be codified down into major political fantasy archetypes. Regardless, it was still entertaining, and save for a lull in the middle it moved along quickly. There was one particularly neat aspect: I felt like most books would have stretched the first half of the book longer, and ended it at the major plot turning point near the middle of the book. AMoT kept that first half more condensed instead, and moved along from said Big Plot Point into a whole second chunk of story. It was kind of cool, and definitely shook up what I expect from the standard “trilogy” breakdown. I’m really interested to see where book 2 goes.

I do have one serious gripe about the plot: without being too revealing, the “big twist” at the end put a sour note on the entire book for me. I felt like it broke a couple of characterizations, lacked motivation, and was included more as a way to make the reader want book 2, than as a well considered story progression. Honestly if not for the last few pages the tone of this review would have been much more positive overall – but finishing that way put me in a grumpy place.

Regardless, for all of the negatives I found to harp on, I did enjoy A Magic of Twilight. I may not run out and buy the sequel immediately, but I’ll be looking to it to tide me over until the next Jennifer Fallon book makes it to US shores.

Lisa’s Take: The Sword (Deborah Chester)

Ok, I’m going to state right up front that I didn’t give this book a particularly fair shot. Honestly I never intended to from the start. Call me a bad person and a naughty book reviewer, but it’s the truth. I’m doing my best this year to get some of the chaff cleared off my shelf, which means trying really hard to not pick up the newest, shiniest book that I just bought, but rather take out some things that have been sitting there for years.

I’m not actually sure how The Sword made its way onto my stack. I know that it cropped up new sometime during my junior year at Tech, so… about 6 years ago? It doesn’t look like something I’d buy – the back and first few pages are very trite, and there’s nothing about it that would have drawn my interest. Who knows, maybe I grabbed it solely because it was pretty and blue. Needless to say, its lack of immediately interesting features didn’t give me any particular compulsion to pick it up whenever I went back to the shelf for a new book.

Then last week I was packing for a business trip and feeling a little belligerent. General “I have to go out of town” testiness. I went over to my bookshelf and said “you know, I think I’m going to pick something that I know will be awful, just so I can write a particularly vicious review!” Like I said above, I wasn’t really looking to give anything a fair shot. So I picked up The Sword.

I gave The Sword my usual 100-page grace period, choking it down in a couple of hours one evening on my business trip. By the time I started it I was in less of a mood, so I was approaching it with a much more open mind, but the book was determined to live up to all of my preconceived notions. The plot could have been from an instruction manual about how to write a fantasy novel – some complex names, a king who gets predictably betrayed, elves, precocious children, terrifying beasts and handlers with mythical talents who can calm and harness them. Throw in a couple of magical artifacts and you’ve pretty much got a textbook fantasy plot.

It’s not really that there was anything particularly bad about the book… sure, the author’s description of the King’s body guard started as “protector” then moved to “possible betrayer” and finished up as “best friend in the entire world and I can’t believe he’s DEAD DEAD DEAD” but other than that one little bobble the plot and characters were consistent - just… very shallow. Chester toed the line of painting some evocative images, but always fell short because of her propensity for “telling” the reader, rather than showing them. The text was often a bit stilted and even when describing great beauty it didn’t flow. The result was a distinct lack of emotion for the characters and their peril on my part, and an overwhelmingly blasé reaction (is it even possible to be overwhelmingly blasé ? Seems like an oxymoron, but I don't know how else to describe it) when I reached the end of my 100 page trial.

So, there you have it: my completely unfair and biased appraisal of The Sword. If someone out there wants to speak up and tell me I made a mistake, I’ll be happy to pick it up and finish – I was left with the impression that if I had read a bit more the plot might have gotten meatier, but I just didn’t care enough to persevere. One more book knocked off my distressingly large stack, and probably -10 points to my reviewer credibility score! Hoorah!

Lisa’s Take: Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)

Tigana has some issues. The author pulls some tense-switcheroos that are a device to try and pull the reader into the current action; these switches don’t work. The prose at times gets choppy. Kay sometimes puts his words to the paper in such a way that it’s hard to really sink into the text and go with the flow. The editor missed some seriously glaring grammatical issues. There was one minor plot hitch that seemed a teensy bit contrived. One of the characters rang ever-so-slightly untrue to me.

There. It’s out of my system. On to the more important point:

Tigana is a masterpiece.

Really. I don’t think I’ll be able to put together effusive enough text to describe how much I enjoyed this book, nor portray just how astoundingly impressive it was. I’d be starting this review off with text along the lines of “this may be the best book I’ve read this year,” except that since Tigana is the first book I finished in 2009, it just wouldn’t sound quite as impressive. Regardless, it has certainly set a high bar to reach for the other 59 books I’d like to finish this year.

The book’s prologue opens with a man sitting on the bank of a river on the eve of a battle. He’s reflecting on the fight to come and the sure defeat that he and his comrades face. In a few short pages, a mellow, soft, sweet mood is set, overlaid with both sadness and pride. It’s an impressively subtle setup, and was certainly a portent of the mastery with which the rest of the book would be presented. Fast forward some unspecified amount of time, and we start getting into the meat of the book – which is to say meeting all of the excellent characters. As these many and varied individuals are introduced, the underlying current of the story begins to be revealed: one of the provinces of The Palm, where the story takes place, has been magically erased from history due to the vindictive actions of a dictator. The story follows the cast as they work to free The Palm from the two wizards who hold it in thrall, and restore the name of their beautiful homeland.

I know, the wizard thing sounds a little hokey, but I assure you it’s presented with enough subtlety so as not to become clichéd. Magic as a whole in Tigana is a very understated thing – it simply exists as a part of society without the author (or the characters) needing to fixate on it and expound at length. Which leads me nicely to my next point. The word “subtle” keeps coming up in this review. The reason is that everything about Tigana is subtle. The ways the author introduces the characters. The definitions of good versus evil versus gray. The conflict and pain and plans and resolutions: Kay does a magnificent job subtly showing, painting, demonstrating all of these things without having to explicitly tell you so. It makes for a gorgeous and seamless depiction of his characters, story, and world.

Ok, ok, I’m kind of starting to wax philosophical, so I’ll try to bring things back on track here. The story was magnificent – it was personal but still had an epic feel to it, and it covered a reasonable passage of time. I absolutely loved getting a fully flushed out fantasy story that was in a single volume, rather than being broken up into a “trilogy” (air-quotes included due to the fact that so few fantasy trilogies these days are actually trilogies, but rather most a single volume broken into three chunks). The characters were gorgeously developed and easy to relate to, and so very real that the choices they faced left me feeling torn up inside. The book’s pacing was superb and it never lagged or stretched on too long, nor did it rush at any point. Finally, taking this review a little further than I usually do – the themes that Kay addressed in the book were much deeper and more profound than most fantasy novels dare take on. This exploration might have raised my bar for meaningfulness in fantasy.

The ending of the book left me aching and teary, but still bittersweetly happy and very satisfied. I don’t know what I expected from the end of this book when I started it, but Kay managed to both surprise and fulfill me in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. So, if you couldn’t tell – a couple of very minor knit-picks aside, I absolutely adored Tigana. I’m glad that I continued to read Kay’s work; I enjoyed Ysabel well enough, but it was nothing compared with the subtlety and mastery he exhibited in Tigana. I’ll definitely be picking up some more works by him soon.

Lisa’s Take: The King Raven Trilogy Book 2 – Scarlet (Stephen Lawhead)

I’m posting this review close on the heels of my review for Hood because I don’t want anyone to get away with reading my Hood review and thinking that King Raven isn’t a trilogy worth reading. I’ll admit that after Hood I was a little ambivalent – the story dragged in places and my own preconceptions about the characters muddied the waters of the characterizations that Lawhead was trying to establish. Still, something about the book sparked a craving for more in me, so I picked up Scarlet a week or two later.

If I hadn’t read so many other Damn Good Books last year, Scarlet would probably make my top 5 list. I really, really enjoyed reading it, and I was quite grumpy when I finished it since book 3 (Tuck) isn’t out yet. Talk about a serious turnabout from book 1!

Scarlet takes a significantly different tack from Hood. Rather than being third-person-omniscient with a penchant for POV character profiles, Scarlet begins as a story told in the first person. Our narrator finds himself imprisoned, being forced to tell his jailor anything and everything about the current terror to king and crown – our very one Hood, who else? Will Scarlet is an immediately likable character for his wit – his manner of speaking and personal touches had me drawn in within a few pages. As the story progresses we find out how Will came to join Hood’s band, and the events that lead up to his capture and imprisonment.

Like the first book, the main flow of the story sometimes jumps over to another 3rd person POV character – it was a little more jarring in Scarlet than in Hood, since it broke up the smoothly flowing narrative, but overall I think it was a necessary decision to introduce conflict and suspense into the story. By the second half of the book the disjointed views synchronize, and the change was done very smoothly.

The second best thing about Scarlet was that it introduced several new characters – and knocked off a few that I never liked in the first book, anyway. It also started to get much more into the shenanigans and plots that you expect out of a good Robin Hood story. So much more happens in the second book than the first, it’s hard to believe that they’re really related.

Anyway, if it isn’t obvious by now, I truly enjoyed Scarlet and I’ll definitely be buying Tuck as soon as its out. I hope that book 3 can continue to live up to the high standard set!

Lisa’s Take: The King Raven Trilogy Book 1 – Hood (Stephen Lawhead)

What I’m about to say may make you think that Stephen Lawhead’s Hood isn’t the best book – but take it with a grain of salt, I’ll clarify in a moment.

The most interesting part of Hood was the author’s note at the end. I’ve been fairly fascinated with the Robin Hood mythology since watching the BBC series last year – until then I had no idea that there wasn’t really a specific Robin Hood “canon,” I had just assumed that there was one great master work out there that Disney, the BBC, and everyone and their uncle was playing on. After watching the show on BBC I started to poke Wikipedia to learn more about the Robin Hood history and discovered that rather than a specific canon, there was really just a collection of tales and folklore that had grown and been elaborated upon over the years.

With that in mind, Lawhead’s discussion of the mythology and his decision to take Hood out of the usual established setting (Nottingham, Sherwood forest, &c, &c) and move it to Wales in the late 1000s was fascinating. The move was artfully done and pulled upon many of the well known mythical elements while still being very true to (historical) form. The sheer amount of research that must have gone into completing this novel is astounding, and left me with a new appreciation for the historical fantasy genre.

Right – less waxing poetic about the afterword and more elaborating on the book itself. I’ll be frank: when I finished Hood I was only middling impressed. If I were a good little reviewer I would have written this review as soon as I finished, but as it was I procrastinated and read book 2 (Scarlet) in between and my opinion of the series jumped up about 34 notches. Still, I’ll restrain myself from gushing about Scarlet and try to stick to my impressions of Hood for now.

There were two major problems with Hood: one problem belonged to the book, and one problem was mine. The book’s problem was that it just… didn’t really go anywhere. Young, irresponsible prince loses his family, land and people. It’s very unfair. He tries to get them back and is laughed at by The Man. He tries to give up but is nearly killed and then embarks on a personal journey of self-discovery to gain confidence and purpose. By itself this is a thin premise – luckily when wrapped in the trappings of Robin Hood and presented with Lawhead’s pleasant writing style and touch of wit, the story takes on enough life to keep things interesting. Still, I couldn’t help feel like most of the story could have been accomplished in half the time, letting us move on to the more rollicking parts of the adventure.

My personal problem that I projected onto the book was that I have so many preconceptions about the characters in the Robin Hood mythology that sometimes the characters in Hood felt muddy – I was mixing up my idea for who they should be with the picture that Lawhead was trying to paint of them. This wasn’t so much a problem for the main crew, but Merian was a particular sticking point for me, as she diverged the furthest from my charachterly conceptions. Regardless, this frustration was entirely self-imposed, and not something I can stick to the author.

I know that most of the text above is tepid at best, but do bear in mind that that Hood was compelling enough to make me continue the series, which is certainly saying something. Though the pacing could have used some work, the sheer scale of research and historical accuracy with which the story was laid forth was very impressive, and I loved how thoroughly Lawhead took the existing stories of Robin Hood and made them his own.

Lisa's Take - Backup (Jim Butcher)

Let it never be said that I'm not a huge sucker. Fangirl of the worst kind. When I saw a new book in the Jim Butcher section I snatched it up with glee - a little slim hardback called Backup. I glanced at the premise long enough to see that it was a novella set in Harry Dreseden's world, following a secondary character (I'll refrain from saying which, as I spoilerized JD a bit without thinking).

I hate to say that I was disappointed... but I was disappointed. First off, it was a pretty big punch in the face when I realized I was shelling out $20 for a teensy little book - some nonsense about it qualifying as a special edition. Apparently there's a leather-bound, signed limited run out there for $60; I would have happily shelled out for that! $20 for a plain old undersized hardback rubbed me a bit wrong. Then, of course, was the niggling problem that Backup is short, clocking in at 70 pages. I finished it in just over half an hour. $20 for half an hour of entertainment. That's an even worse rate of return than a trip to the movies, which I'm notoriously grumpy about. Piffle.

That said, the story was fun and I always like to read more about Harry Dresden. Mr. Butcher adeptly showed that he could write from a different character's perspective - he captured the mood and feel of the Dresden setting while making the new POV distinct and interesting. He got some solid laughs out of me, as always, and it was fascinating to learn a little more about the character whose head we occupied.

Bottom line - save yourself the cash and come borrow this book from me instead. I'll make us some coffee while you read through it, and then we can do a little Dreseden-related squeeing.

2008 Review

Inspired by Geoff, I decided to keep a list of the books that I read this year. Below is the complete list, in (more or less) order of book completion. I didn't really have a goal in mind when I started, but I made it to 51 books, which seems a good number for a year. Maybe next year I can make it 60!

1. The Phoenix Guards (re-read) by Steven Brust
   
2. Fire in the Sun by George Alec Effinger
   
3. Black Powder War by Naomi Novik
   
4. Privilege of the Sword (re-read) by Ellen Kushner
   
5. Dead Beat by Jim Butcher
   
6. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
   
7. Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher
   
8. The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
   
9. Lord Foul's Bane (didn't finish) by Stephen R. Donaldson
   
10. Territory by Emma Bull
    
11. The Gunslinger by Stephen King
    
12. Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb
    
13. Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
    
14. My Own Kind of Freedom (not published) by Steven Brust
    
15. Fire Study by Maria Snyder
    
16. Otherland - River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams
    
17. Sabriel by Garth Nix
    
18. Black Ships by Jo Graham
    
19. Sir Apropos of Nothing
20. Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
    
21. Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik
    
22. Before They Are Hanged by Jow Abercrombie
    
23. Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
    
24. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
    
25. Dies the Fire by George Alec Effinger
    
26. The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez
    
27. Kushiel's Mercy by Jacqueline Carey
    
28. The Dark Volume by Gordon Dahlquist
    
29. Blood Noir by Laurel K. Hamilton
    
30. Jhegaala by Steve Brust
    
31. The Immortal Prince by Jennifer Fallon
    
32. The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
    
33. Dragon Champion by E. E. Knight
    
34. Tigerheart by Peter David
    
35. White Night by Jim Butcher
    
36. Holder of Lightning by S. L. Farrell
    
37. The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen M. Beckett
    
38. Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin
    
39. The Sordid Tale of Jackie D (not yet published) by C. L. Witten
    
40. Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie
    
41. The Good Fairies of New York (didn't finish) Martin Millar
    
42. Last Dragon by J. M. McDermott
    
43. The Stand by Stephen King
    
44. Little Brother by Corey Doctorow
    
45. Man with the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green
    
46. Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
    
47. Hood by Stephen Lawhead
    
48. Too Many Curses by A. Lee Martinez
    
49. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
    
50. Scarlet by Stephen Lawhead
    
51. Halting State by Charles Stross
    

Lisa’s Take: Too Many Curses (A. Lee. Martinez)

It’s pretty much impossible for me to say anything bad about Martinez’ work – I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every shred of story I’ve read by him. I can’t even put into words how thrilled I am that he’s so prolific and so filled with delicious ideas. Too Many Curses is no exception to the precedent that Martinez has set – it’s a very fun read, it has interesting characters, it’s full of witty dialog and creative silliness, but it also still has a nice emotional balance.

The premise of Too Many Curses is that Nessy, a Kobold, is the house keeper of a castle for an evil wizard with a penchant for cursing his enemies in creative ways, then trapping them within his evil abode. You get people turned into owls who can only alliterate, ghosts trapped in mirrors, vampires that jingle, disembodied voices, and heroes trapped in bat form. When Nessy’s evil master suffers an untimely death, it’s up to Nessy to figure out how to reverse all the curses of her charges – as well as deal with the sudden turmoil that the castle is thrown into.

The story is fun and really give’s Martinez a chance to show off his creative side – he fires off one amusing curse after another, creating a colorful, endearing, and entertaining cast of characters. Sadly, loathe though I am to say it, it felt like his extensive cast was developed at the cost of two things: further character development after their initial conception, and a compelling plot.

The former of the two criticisms is the easiest to pin down – it’s as though Martinez had these awesome character concepts, but didn’t bother to develop them past their base idea. Yes – we understand that Nessy is staid, solid, and organized, while simultaneously being clever, good hearted, and possessing impressive intuition. I can assure you that we don’t need to be explicitly told this over and over and over. It felt like for all of the events happening around her, Nessy never changed – which could be a point unto itself, I suppose, but in the end it made me feel less like I was taking a journey with her, and more like I was watching an entertaining but un-dynamic movie.

My second complaint ties in with the first to some extent, though it’s also stands alone. As with the characters, I didn’t feel like the story had much of a sense of movement or pacing. The first two thirds of the book fell victim to the “and then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened” syndrome. Granted, all the things that were happening were clever and entertaining, so it wasn’t too bad, but it was disappointing to see Martinez take a step back in his story telling technique from the excellence he had achieved in The Automatic Detective. That said, the story did culminate into a big, action-packed ending, which somewhat mitigated my complaints.

Well – I started off saying that it was impossible for me to speak ill of anything written by A. Lee Martinez, but I apparently had quite a few gripes about this one. All of that said, Too Many Curses was still an extremely fun read; it just broke the constant upward improvement momentum I had come to expect from his other books (which I have always read in order of release). I suppose it’s to be expected that it would be hard to surpass the absolute excellence of The Automatic Detective… he shouldn’t have set my standards so high! Regardless, don’t give this book a skip just because I had a few bad things to say – it’s still a really fun read! Just maybe read it before, say, Gil’s and The Automatic Detective.

Spreading the Love

In an effort to help Grasping for the Wind get a well-fleshed-out list of fantasy review blogs compiled and exposed, I'm re-sharing the list below. Yay bloggery!

7 Foot Shelves
The Accidental Bard
A Dribble Of Ink
Adventures in Reading
The Agony Column
The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.
Barbara Martin
Bibliophile Stalker
Bibliosnark
BillWardWriter.com
Bitten by Books
Blog, Jvstin Style
Blood of the Muse
Bookgeeks
Bookslut
The Book Smugglers
Bookspotcentral
The Book Swede
Bookrastination
Breeni Books
Cheaper Ironies [pro columnist]
Cheryl's Musings
Critical Mass
Dark Wolf Fantasy Reviews
Darque Reviews
Dave Brendon's Fantasy and Sci-Fi Weblog
The Deckled Edge
Dragons, Heroes and Wizards
The Discriminating Fangirl
Dusk Before the Dawn
Enter the Octopus
Eve's Alexandria
Fantastic Reviews
Fantastic Reviews Blog
Fantasy Book Critic
Fantasy Cafe
Fantasy Debut
Fantasy Book Reviews and News
Fantasy and Sci-fi Lovin' Blog
Feminist SF - The Blog!
The Fix
The Foghorn Review
Frances Writes
From a Sci-Fi Standpoint
Fruitless Recursion
The Galaxy Express
Galleycat
The Gamer Rat
Genre Reviews
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Grasping for the Wind
The Green Man Review
Hasenpfeffer
Highlander's Book Reviews
io9
Jumpdrives and Cantrips
Lair of the Undead Rat
Literary Escapism
Michele Lee's Book Love
The Mistress of Ancient Revelry
Monster Librarian
Mostly Harmless Books
My Favourite Books
Neth Space
NextRead
OF Blog of the Fallen
The Old Bat's Belfry
Outside of a Dog
Pat's Fantasy Hotlist
Piaw's Blog
Post-Weird Thoughts
Publisher's Weekly
Reading the Leaves
Realms of Speculative Fiction
Rob's Blog o' Stuff
Robots and Vamps
Sandstorm Reviews
ScifiChick
SF Diplomat
SciFiGuy
Sci-Fi Fan Letter
Sci-Fi Songs [Musical Reviews]
The Sequential Rat
Severian's Fantastic Worlds
SF Gospel
SF Reviews.net
SF Revu
SF Signal
SF Site
SFF World's Book Reviews
Silver Reviews
Speculative Fiction
Speculative Fiction Junkie
Speculative Horizons
Spiral Galaxy Reviews
Spontaneous Derivation
Sporadic Book Reviews
Stella Matutina
The Sword Review
Tangent Online
Temple Library Reviews
Tor.com [also a publisher]
The Road Not Taken
Un:Bound
Urban Fantasy Land
Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic
Variety SF
Walker of Worlds
Wands and Worlds
The Wertzone
With Intent to Commit Horror
WJ Fantasy Reviews
The World in a Satin Bag
WriteBlack
Young Adult Science Fiction

Foreign Language (other than English)

Cititor SF [Romanian, but with English Translation]

Elbakin.net [French]

Foundation of Krantas [Chinese (traditional)]

The SF Commonwealth Office in Taiwan [Chinese (traditional) with some English essays]

Yenchin's Lair [Chinese (traditional)]

Fernando Trevisan [Brazilian, Portuguese]

Human 2.0 [Brazilian, Portuguese]

Life and Times of a Talkative Bookworm [Brazilian, Porteguese]

pós-estranho [Brazilian, Portuguese]

Fantasy Seiten [German, Deustche]

Fantasy Buch [German, Deustche]

Literaturschock [German, Deustche]

Welt der fantasy [German, Deustche]

Bibliotheka Phantastika [German, Deustche]

SF Basar [German, Deustche]

Phantastick News [German, Deustche]

X-zine [German, Deustche]

Buchwum [German, Deustche]

Phantastick Couch [German, Deustche]

Wetterspitze [German, Deustche]

Fantasy News [German, Deustche]

Fantasy Faszination [German, Deustche]

Fantasy Guide [German, Deustche]

Zwergen Reich [German, Deustche]

Fiction Fantasy [German, Deustche]

Lisa’s Take – Last Argument of Kings: First Law Book 3 (Joe Abercrombie)

This is a really hard review to write. When I reviewed book one I was delightedly picking it apart, finding all sorts of things to harp on – justified or not. After the second book I had a solid basis for comparison… I could revisit each of the knit-picks and talk about how they had been taken care of or improved in the second book. But now that a review for Last Argument of Kings has come around, I find myself lacking a good starting point. I can’t put together a plot summary, as that would be far to spoilery this late in the trilogy, and I don’t have any convenient lists to base things on. Hell, I don’t even have a good anecdote to start off with.

I suppose I’ll just keep it simple. I really enjoyed Last Argument of Kings a lot, and I’ll definitely be buying Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie’s next book. Big reversal from The Blade Itself, I know, so let it never be said that I won’t revise my opinions with good reason. That said, I didn’t like it quite as much as Before They Are Hanged. I wanted the improvement from book 2 to book 3 to be as great as the improvement from book 1 to book 2, and that just didn’t quite happen. My biggest gripe was the character POVs, yet again, as there were a couple of times where the POV would jump mid-chapter and leave me baffled. Sometimes these jumps in perspective were totally unnecessary and didn’t add anything to the story, which just frustrated me more.

Ack, let me stop before I rant, because that was really the one and only problem I had with the book. Other than that it was great – the plot was gray and gritty and had a whole lot going on. A lot of loose ends were tied up, and there were events from the first book that got tied back into the overall plot quite nicely. I called a few plot points, but didn’t call just as many. A couple of the “gotcha!”s were a little thin, but mostly they had solid foundation and made me go “No WAY!” Always a good sign. There were also some big plot points that didn’t get totally resolved – which felt right… in the end there was all this Crazy Stuff that happened, but the world didn’t really change. Cool in a real-world kind of way.

I was pretty attached to the characters by the end – not so much as in the second book, but still quite a bit. I catch myself using one of Logen’s catch-phrases sometimes, which says a lot for the writing style. There was one character that I struggled a lot with… once I thought about it I remembered that he had been mentioned briefly in book 2, but he really could have used a more solid foundation. Again, though, small gripe. I got a little teary when my favorite sub-character was killed off, and the author made me keenly aware of just how much people had changed, as well as just how much they’d stayed the same. I’d almost call it deep.

Well, I guess I did have a decent amount to say once I got going. I wish I’d written this review right after JD and I talked it over when he finished the book, because we really got going with a lot of food-for-thought. Maybe he’ll grace me with a complementary review and catch anything I missed.

Lisa’s Take – The Good Fairies of New York (Martin Millar)

I picked up this book pretty much entirely because it had a quote on the front and an introduction by Neil Gaiman. After all, if one of my favorite authors likes it, it can’t be bad, right? ...Right?

Funny, that’s what I thought when I saw Scott Lynch’s quote on the front of The Blade Itself, which turned out to inspire one of the nastiest reviews I’ve ever written. Granted, the later books in the trilogy turned my opinion around, but the fact remains that I shouldn’t trust author quotes, as it seems to always go badly. I didn’t even give this book the chance that I gave to TBI (which I slogged through to the end, gleefully finding things to pick on). I put down The Good Fairies after about a third of the book, and have had nary a regret. I didn’t really even mean to stop reading it – I had been forcing it down in spite of my lack of enthusiasm – but I left it on a table in the library and just sort of forgot it for a few weeks. When I found it again, I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm, so I gave up. I think it may still be laying open on the table.

The premise is that a group of fairies from Scotland accidentally end up in Manhattan due to political intrigue. Angry kings hunting them and the suchlike. They like whiskey, they aren’t world wise, and only some people can see them. They attach themselves to several different main characters, including a pretty artsy girl with a wasting disease and a fat, dickish, dead-beat violinist who can’t make his rent. Hijinks ensue. I suspect I gave up right around the time it would have gotten more interesting, but frankly it shouldn’t have taken so long to get to the point.

Aside from the book not really going anywhere for the first 110 pages… I really have nothing to say. The premise wasn’t all that original, and I hated most of the characters. The fairies were all obnoxious, and the main human characters were hollow. It’s like the author just piled more and more quirks (oh, she’s ill! Oh, she’s an artist! Oh, she’s collecting flowers, how interesting!) in an attempt to make them deep enough to give a damn about. It didn’t work. Part of the problem was probably the completely flat prose – there was nothing engaging or compelling about the words the author picked. Each sentence was just flat and bare… perhaps it was a stylistic choice, but it didn’t do anything for me.

Obviously, I’d say skip The Good Fairies of New York. I can’t make a definitive call, since I only read part of the book, but the first third was uninspired and lacked any sort of hook. If you want urban fantasy, read War for the Oaks. If you want fantastical beings out of their element, read American Gods. Or, if you want an opportunity to prove to me that I made a terrible mistake in not finishing, read The Good Fairies and then write a counter-review.

Lisa’s Take – Little Brother (Corey Doctorow)

Marcus is a high school senior in San Francisco and an expert in all things technology and security related – he can fry RFIDs, fool his school’s gait recognition software, and don’t even get him started on encryption algorithms. Then one day there’s a terrorist attack on the city and Marcus and his friends are picked up by the department of homeland security, imprisoned, tortured, and thrown back into the world with dire warnings about being on good behavior. San Francisco turns into a police state, and Marcus takes it upon himself to fight back against the tyranny.

Doctorow’s work is usually full of nifty (sometimes silly) ideas and far-fetched scenarios, so Little Brother was a very different experience from the other books of his that I’ve read. It was flat-out believable, realistic, and bleak look at a near-future scenario in which government-run security gets out of hand. The book itself is very absorbing, but when you take a step back and really consider the plausibility, the effect is pretty chilling

As always, Corey nails his characterizations head on. I’m not sure anyone has ever written a more believable 17-year-old boy – a good mix of hormones, smarts, and real emotion make it exceedingly easy to get attached to Marcus. The supporting characters are also strong, the technology is fun, and the story really moves along never getting bogged down (though he does sometimes wank poetic about tech for a little longer than a non-geek might appreciate).

Touching on what is becoming a bit of a theme in this blog - Little Brother is billed as a YA book, but will definitely be readable both by teens and growed-up-types. Corey doesn't pull any punches, and takes a really frank look at teenage life. I appreciate him not talking down in a book that was directed at teens, and the end result is that adults will not feel like they're reading something trite or below their level.

My biggest worry about the book is that the many, many, many pop culture references will be stale in 2 years. For now they make the book hip, up-to-date and very real… but soon a lot of those buzz words are going to fade to obscurity and might make the text seem dated.

Anyway, this review is coming off as stilted (what is it with me lately?) but the bottom line is that this is a great little read. It’s easy to plow through in a few hours, has some cool ideas, and will leave you with a pleasant afterglow as well as some food-for-thought. Hoorah.

JD's Take: Last Dragon (J.M. McDermott)

Framed as letters written by an old woman days away from death, her mind fragmented and jagged and brittle, her lungs full of blood, her hands palsied and pale, Last Dragon tells a story that will leave you cold inside, and sad... and somehow better.

There are two stories being told in these letters. The first is the obvious one. It's an adventure tale, with journeys and battles and fabulous sights and death. It's a tale of friendship and betrayal and all of the things that make up a fantasy novel. It's also none of those things. Our narrator feels to us as real and as fragile as any person I have known. She tells of her youthful adventure looking back, and the things that matter to her now as she lies dying are not what authors, even ones striving for realism, feel the need to tell us. Her story is told in circles, in fits and starts. She circles around the most crucial moments probing them gently, like a healing wound, before finally summoning the courage to recall, as best she can, the moments that defined her life. Moments of pain, or shame, or crippling doubt. While she does so, she tells of the trivial moments that caught, as she says, in the web of her memory. Emotional impressions, glances, words between friends before sleep. She jumps around in time as she tells the tale, and her memories are not always consistent or clear. She tells us of things that she didn't see as if she did, tells them as she imagines or as she was told or how she dreamt them to be.

She doesn't tell us the story start to end because that is not the story she's trying to tell. The second story is the story of her life after the events in letters she is writing, a story of pain that lasts a lifetime, of love and betrayals and journeys and marriages and empires and children and all the things that make up fantasy novels. This story isn't told, it's alluded to. It forms itself in our minds as we read her letters, the tragedy of her life, the pain of her decisions. It's a story that features very few of the people she knew in the first story. Its major players never get screen time and its passions go unresolved, but its poignancy is what we will remember, long after the details of her first story fade into the web of our memories.

Oh, and there's a third story in there as well. A brief and beautiful and sad exchange towards the end of the book that, uniquely, takes place in the writer's present. I'm not sure why, but it might have been my favorite part of the book.

This isn't a tale of adventure. It isn't a tragedy in the Shakespearean sense... you'll get no catharsis as you turn the last page. It won't inspire you, your pulse won't race, your mind will not turn contemplating the subtleties of the schemes. The end won't surprise you, the action won't thrill you, the sex won't titillate you.

This is the best book I've read in years. It isn't my favorite, but it is the best.

Lisa’s Take: The Man with the Golden Torc (Simon R. Green)

If you took Harry Dresden and mashed him up with James Bond, you’d get Eddie Drood, the main character in this… er… fun little book. I hesitate because yeah, it was a fairly fun read, but I’m not sure I’m up for giving it a rousing endorsement. Hmm, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and take it from the top.

Meet Eddie Drood, the black sheep nephew of the Drood Family – enforcers of the supernatural world. With their secret estate filled with agents and laboratories, they’re the biggest force to be reckoned with if you’re a Bad Guy. Take every spy gadget you’ve ever heard of, mix it up with every magical spell or contrivance you’ve ever heard of, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of how the Drood Family operates.

Anywho, some Bad Shit goes down behind the scenes, and Eddie – formerly a (somewhat) respected field agent – gets declared rogue. All the baddies of the supernatural world come after him, along with a healthy dose of his own family and friends. Hijinks ensue, plots are uncovered, days are saved, romance blooms, &c, &c.

Man with the Golden Torc is a hella fast read – it’s unabashed candy, and goes down in a sitting or so with no problem. That said… I really didn’t like it that much. There are a lot of cool things and ideas in the books, but there’s not a shred of eloquence in their presentation. It’s just one long string of “and then this and then this and then this and then….” The plot had no flow at all, it was just like a dam broke and cool ideas came pouring out. There wasn’t really any interesting conflict other than the major plot point, and the story had no ebb and flow – just a constant fire-hydrant-like stream.

I also didn’t give a damn about any of the characters… Eddie Drood was kind of slippery to peg down as far as what kind of person he actually was. I suspect part of the problem is that I kept transposing Harry Dresden on top of him, which gave me a mental conception of a Moral Set that Eddie lacked – he kept trying to come off as bad ass, but then I’d pretend he was actually a good guy at heart. Who knows. The secondary characters will bland and forgettable (I can’t even remember their names now, and it’s only been a week).

So… what’s the bottom line here… other reader reviews on BN & Amazon suggest that maybe I’m being too hard on this one. It’s fully possible that when I read it I just wasn’t in the mood for candy, or maybe my expectation for the genre has been set too high by other similar series. Regardless, it’s fairly likely that I’ll skip the rest of the books in the series – I’m just not getting anything out of them. Of course, I say that now when I still have a few Dreseden File books in reserve… once I’m out of those, all bets may be off.

Lisa’s Take - The Stand (Stephen King)

Much like my baseless aversion to Westerns, I tend to avoid mainstream, prolific authors. However, so many people have told me “you HAVE to read The Stand” that I figured I better go through with it. I needed something non-fantasy to reset my expectations after the last book I read (Last Dragon, which was amazing, and will have a review forthcoming), so I figured I’d finally go through with reading The Stand.

Now – I think I griped about this when I reviewed The Gunslinger… but is it really fair to keep letting Mr. King go back and re-write his books? At least this time he didn’t get to change things around, but he did get to re-include 300-odd pages that were cut from the original edition. I’m just saying (yet again) that it seems like cheating. Also, can I bitch just a little about editing? It’s all well and good to let your pet author go back and add old text back, but when you update it don’t introduce anachronisms and inconsistencies, please.

Anyway, on to the book! The basic idea here is a post apocalypse story: the military has a security breach and an extremely virulent flu makes it out of the lab and into the wild, killing 90% of the population. The first quarter or so of the book deals solely with how the flu spreads, the reaction of the people, the military trying to keep things hush hush, major characters being introduced, etc. The second book chunk follows the main characters introduced at the start of the book as they make their way across the country, adapting to the change and dealing with the new world. They’re following mysterious dreams that seem to be leading them west. Quarter 3 is all about the new civilization that springs up around Boulder and begins to explore some of the strange, dark themes that everyone has been dreaming about, and the last fourth of the book is the war against that darkness. Vague, I know, but I don’t want to be too spoilerific. Suffice to say that the story starts as standard post-apoc, then takes a pretty significantly different tack from the norm, and gets pretty fantasy-themed and deep.

When it all boils down, the book was pretty damn good. I can definitely see why it was shortened in the first place – especially in the first half things drag pretty frequently. Still, by the end everything moves along very quickly and engagingly – I’m actually still having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that the book is over. I keep expecting to have more to read… which all in all is usually a good sign in a book. It left me fulfilled but wanting more.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the plot of the book is how much it got me thinking about the other post-apoc book I read recently, Dies The Fire, by S. M. Stirling. I was only middling impressed with Dies The Fire the first time I read it, but while reading The Stand I found myself thinking more and more about Stirling’s work, and really analyzing it: comparing it to King’s, debating what was worked and what didn’t, thinking about the places they followed a similar path, and the places where they diverged completely. Honestly it makes me want to revise my review of Dies The Fire from “skip it” to “read it.” Intriguing.

Plot aside, one of the biggest strengths in The Stand is the characters. They’re all just so real and believable – it’s impressive to see such human creations in a work of fantasy. When my favorite character was killed off (on my lunch hour no less) I had to try hard not to get tears in my chili. Even characters that I wasn’t as attached to had me pretty upset – I was choked up through most of the last 150 pages. Also, kudos to King for sprinkling his literature with some false portents – it’s refreshing to think “oh, I know exactly where THIS is going” and then to be proven completely wrong. My one character gripe is that it seems like a few of the “core” characters could actually have used more development… it was weird to have two “main” characters next to each other, where one had chapters and chapters behind them, but the other had only a few paragraphs. It’s a knit pick, but it made me feel a bit unbalanced.

Finally, I have one last negative thing to say: I feel like the author ruined the ending of the book. The final chapter ends with a very Real conversation, appropriately tinged with melancholy and doubt – it was a perfect ending. But then you turn the page and there’s one last little caveat… and to me it felt insulting in its explicitness. The author didn’t -need- to say what he said; he had already implied it. It really left a bad taste in my mouth.

Anyway, I think I might just pull those two pages out of the book, and then return it to my shelf. Overall it was a very complete, fulfilling, and satisfying read, and I can understand why people have bugged me for so long to read it. I’m glad I finally did.

Lisa’s Take: Tigerheart (Peter David)

So you know how whenever you hear words “a touching story for all ages” you expect to get a cavity from the saccharine nature of whatever was being described? Disney movies, kids books, cartoons – you know what I’m talking about.

Ok, now take that association and set it aside – get rid of all those sugary connotations and just take my words at their most literal value: Tigerheart is a story for all ages. I mean it. If I ever (heaven help me) spawn kids of my own, I’ll read this book to them when they’re 5. I’ll have them read it themselves when they’re 10. I’ll sneak it into their Stack when they’re teenagers and hope they’ll appreciate it enough to seek it out on their own when they’re 20 and 40 and 80. I absolutely think Tigerheart has something to offer a person of any age or gender – and it’s the first book I’ve read in ages that I’d be happy to curl up with and read through again and again.

Tigerheart is a variation on a Peter Pan story – it follows the adventures of Paul Dear, who undertakes a quest that leads him to the magical world of “Anyplace.” There he meets The Boy (who everyone says Paul might resemble just a bit) and becomes embroiled in a struggle involving Pirates, Indians, wild animals, and even witches. There’s bravery and cowardice, ingenuity and pride, the best of people and the worst of people. The story is fast paced and entertaining, and really covers the whole gamut of emotions.

The thing that shines the most about Tigerheart, however, is the narrative tone. If you’ve read any other Peter David (Sir Apropos of Nothing, or one of his many many comic book issues) you’ll know that he has an excellent, side-ways wit – sly, wry, and very self-aware. He brings this tone to bear throughout the telling of the Tigerheart story, which really puts the “all ages” shine on what might otherwise just be a really rollicking children’s tale. Add a bit of Victorian flare to the sentence structures, and you’ve got text that’s a hell of a lot of fun to read.

I started this review with every intention of launching into a rant about YA fantasy and how books like Togerheart make the term obsolete – but I find myself in such a good mood after reliving the book itself that I think I’ll refrain from said negativity. Go get this book and consume it – reading it won’t take but an afternoon. Tigerheart absolutely makes my “Top 5” list of this year.

[Mini-Review] Lisa's take - Fevre Dream (George R. R. Martin)

Vampires on Steamboats during the heyday of the Steamboat Era! Hoorah!

That preeeetty much sums up Martin's Fevre Dream. The one notable exception to that theme is that the Vampires in this story aren't of the typical variety - they've a bit of a similar feel to Brust's Agyar. Alternative and interesting, though still with some ties to canon.

Anyway, the story is so-so, the characters are... pretty good, and the narrative style is nice enough. I think if you wanted to write an english paper, you could fabricate some metaphors or deeper meanings to the story. Sadly, all of the mediocrity means that the book was a bit of a chore to finish. I wouldn't really recommend it, even to hardcore fans of Martin's work. Stick to the Fire and Ice stuff.

[Mini-review] The Cloudmages Book 1: Holder of Lightning (S. L. Ferrell)

Erm. What to say about this book. I had kind of forgotten all about it until I saw it in the list of books I wanted to do a mini-review for. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad or anything… it was good, solid, welsh-influenced fantasy. It was at least marginally emotionally engaging, and in spite of being pretty thick it read quickly.

It just… wasn’t really anything new. Girl finds stone. Stone’s made of magic. There are lots of funny fantasy names. Girl faces adversity and meets up with a cast of supporting characters. Some of them are with her, some of them are against her, and there are (easy to call) inevitable betrayals. The whole thing was entertaining enough, it just also felt very “done.” I’ll admit that the ending surprised me a little in some aspects… but… yeah.

That said, I might go ahead and pick up the second book in the series if I’m bored. I’ve heard vague ruminations that the mediocre first book is a huge setup for some really stellar later work, so maybe we’ll see.

[Mini-review]Lisa's Take - The Raw Shark Texts (Steven Hall)

It's rare that I read outside the fantasy or sci-fi genre, but this particular work of fiction was recommended by a new acquaintance, and after drunkenly debating with him about it I decided to give it a read through. The tale is rather Jaws-esque, but with conceptual sharks, rather than actual sharks. Conceptual sharks? Why, conceptual sharks are just one of the many organisms that have evolved in the invisible spaces between theories and ideas.

It sounds pretty weird, but honestly this was a great book. Fun, deep, believable characterizations, a solid story, and nice pacing all combined with the crazy, original ideas to make a really entertaining read. Pick it up if you'd like a break from the standard fantasy fare that I usually foist on you via my reviews.

[Mini Review] JD's Take: Too Many Curses (A. Lee Martinez)

This book is by A. Lee Martinez.

Do I really need to say more? It's his fifth book and third foray into the fantasy realm (realm being relative, the whole book takes place in one building), it does a lot of interesting things while being readable (I know! I read it!), humorous (though his continuing trend of replacing humorous with entertaining continues, and is awesome), and human (despite not having any humans in it beyond the first chapter or so).

So I'm not going to say any more, if you need to know more about Martinez go read the other four reviews. I will say this though: his blog looks interesting and he ranted about how other authors look down on him because he's not writing a series. I hope he never starts, he's far too good at creating fascinating one-shot worlds.

Also, it sounds like 3 of his books have been optioned, one attached to David Fincher, which is pretty awesome :)

[Mini-Review] JD’s Take - The Innocent Mage (Karen Miller)

Innocent Mage  is a story about a fisherman's son who rises to political and social prominence in the Big City by staying True to His Roots. I should note that while he does *appear* to be the eponymous character, he is in no way a mage. Credit where credit is due, he is pretty innocent about most things... though he certainly isn't naive or air-headed which is typically how authors choose to let us know that someone is innocent. Anyway, while he's getting more and more respect (and similar amounts of bad blood from the people who don't like him because he's a filthy peasant, naturally) the magical world that he lives in is building up to what looks like a spectacular and fundamental Reality Failure, which ought to be fun but I'll have to wait for the next book to see if it happens. 

The writing is smooth, if unmemorable, and the characters are surprisingly nuanced. The plot moves along without belaboring anything, which is a relief because there are plenty of places where your jaded fantasy-reading brain will be like "oh shit, now I've gotta hear about how sad he is for 50 pages". 

Overall, I'd recommend this one if you're looking for an interesting fantasty read that isn't so in love with its world that is neglects the story, and isn't so in love with its characters that it neglects the reader. You might as well buy the second book too though, since it most certainly is not a complete narrative and ends on a cliffhanger.

[Mini-Review] Lisas’s Take - Age of Fire Book 1: Dragon Champion (E. E. Knight)

I’ve been struggling with this review for a while – I keep trying to be nice about Dragon Champion (“Oh, maybe it would be good if it were supposed to be YA…”) but I’m giving up. A quick summary: Dragon Champion is about a dragon named Auron, and we follow him from hatching through early adulthood. There are some wolves, some hunters, some elves, some dwarves, magicians, and a big doomy war.

This book was mediocre at best, dragging at worst (which says a lot, seeing as how it was maybe 300 pages long). There were a couple of engaging characters and ideas, especially near the start of the book, but through the middle and end it was hackneyed and unoriginal. I didn’t really care about the plot or the characters by the end (mostly because the only two interesting characters had gone their separate ways). I just wanted to finish the damn thing, because there was no excuse not to when it was so short.

The bottom line: I won’t be buying the sequels, and I suggest you don’t waste your time with this one unless you’re between the ages of 10 and 14.

Week of Mini-Reviews

It’s that time again! Time for another week of mini-reviews! If you’re like me and have just a few words to say about a big backlog of books, this is your chance. Go crazy up until Friday.

Lisa’s Take: Jhegaala (Steve Brust)

The last few Vlad books have been fairly chronological, so it was interesting and refreshing to read Jhegaala, which jumps back in Vlad’s timeline quite a bit. Jhegaala falls in between Phoenix and Athyra, following Vlad’s escapades immediately after leaving Adrilankha in his flight from the Jhereg. He gets it in his head to track down his mother’s family, and sets out through the East to do so. When he reaches his destination there’s all sorts of fun intrigue, warring factions, misunderstandings, and general angst. As usually, Vlad ends up in a stick situation and has to extricate himself.

What’s not to like about this book? It’s another good installment in one of my favorite stories. As usual, it goes down like candy but still has enough of a kick and emotional impact to be compelling. It got loud chuckles from me on more than one occasion, and had me squirming uncomfortably at others. If I wanted to knit pick, I’d say that the whole “Vlad knows what’s going on and isn’t going to tell us” bit got dragged out longer than necessary, but that’s a pretty small gripe. I especially loved the chapter intros in this one – I want to go back and read them all together. Exceptionally amusing.

This is a short book, so I’ll keep the review short as well. Go read the latest Brust! If you haven’t ever read any of the Vlad books at all, then you’re severely deprived and should start consuming them from the beginning!

JD's Take: The Dreaming Void (Peter F. Hamilton)

The Dreaming Void takes place 1500 years after the events chronicled in Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained and begins a new trilogy set in the same world. Which, of course, means that I really should have written reviews for those books as well... but I didn't. Ah well. *looks* Actually, I did write a review of Pandora's Star! Haha! Victory for me!

Mr. Hamilton is very good and making deep, interesting, characters set in wildly fantastic science fiction settings, which makes me very, very happy. In this novel we see him extrapolate the technology advances (and corresponding technology shifts) from the first series by 15 centuries, which is an interesting intellectual exercise that he handles with a deft hand and a keen sense that the story and the characters are far more important than the exercise. The new characters introduced are fascinating and really drew me into the story. Ironically, the older characters that I already knew from the previous books seemed... awkward. It's very possible that this was intentional... their reasons for remaining in the corporeal world are varied, but they are by far the exception and so they stand apart from the society they've watched grow and change. I won't give away which characters return, but there are a couple of old favorites and a couple of surprises still kicking around the galaxy.

I didn't really get drawn into the story until about halfway through the book but, at the same time, I was never bored in the least. It just... took him a while to reach the narrative "tipping point", where the story and the characters that have the weight to roll along on their own inertia... each interaction giving more energy to the force of the narrative flow. Those who like their books to each stand alone will be disappointed... as the first book in a Hamiltonian trilogy there are so many loose ends at the conclusion of the book that it hardly even has a climax. There is plenty of cool shit going on, but no thread of the story reached an end. This is no surprise to anyone who has read any of Hamilton's other work... he writes epic scale sci fi and he does it beautifully. For me, I wasn't disapointed by the end... only eager for the next tome.

Overall, I'd call this a promising introduction to the new trilogy, and an exciting expansion of the wonderful world he created in the previous books. I'm inordinately pleased to be looking forward again to another Hamilton novel to appear on the shelves... I was pretty bummed when I finished Judas and realized that it might be a while before I saw more from my favorite comtemporary SciFi writer.

Sean's Take: Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge

Hai. I'm Sean. I'm normally really lazy and slack about posting reviews of what I read. I'll try to be better about it in the future (ha).

I originally introduced myself to Vernor Vinge [0] reading his space opera-tastic A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire On the Deep [1]. I found them enjoyable, mainly because his portrayal of computing technology in the far future was slightly better than "punch a few keys and photon torpedoes come out."

Fast forward a few years and I happen upon Rainbow's End, a short(ish) novel based on the universe Vinge started on in "Fast Times at Fairmont High" [2]. Grabbed a hardback from Amazon and got crackin'.

Vinge's characters haven't gotten much better over the years. They're certainly believable given the settings they live in. However, he really does like his asshole antihero protagonists who find themselves in anachronistic situations.

What's so awesome about Rainbow's End, however, is the shear idea density of this volume [3]. Each chapter has Stross-levels of current time-frame extrapolations, but they're significantly better thought out. Each piece seems logically fitted to the frame of the narrative rather than thrown-in.

This is not a book of jet-packs and FTL, however. And it's definitely not XKCD levels of "the future's pretty cool," either. The surveillance state is in full effect -- but, appropriately enough, most people rarely seem to mind [4]. More interestingly, it portrays the online world, not as a separate cyberspace a la Gibson or Stephenson, but multifaceted overlays on the real world. Characters going "off the grid" feel the same dissonance we would get in a location without, say, running water and electricity.

The palpable feel of "being left behind" by the current pace of technology is a consistent theme of the novel. Even those who would be on the forefront of technology today wind up being behind the cutting edge (see the middle-aged hacker who's still using a quaint laptop while everyone else has "smart clothing").

Bottom line: If you enjoy speculation about the near future, this is a must read.

[0] Vernor Vinge
[1] I have a serious soft spot for space opera, anyway. Blame Lucas, Roddenberry & company.
[2] Recommended if you want a quick intro to this work.
[3] *cough*
[4] This gives it an aura of legitimacy/believability to me, sad as that is.

JD's Take: Battle Royale (Koushun Takami)

Odds are pretty good that if you are one of the (2) people reading this, you already know what this book is about, but I'll give you the back-of-the-book summary regardless. In an alternate world much like our own (but worse!), Japan has decided that one way of reinforcing the power of the dictator is by randomly selecting a middle school class from each prefecture and making them fight to death each year. We open as a class of forty 15 year-old kids is taken to a remote island and set loose with a backpack each of supplies and told to kill each other off.

Good times.

What follows is a gripping story filled with twists and gut-wrenching moments. I found myself eager to read more, to find out who lived and who died. I was constantly surprised by the brutality of the author and the humanity of the characters. That isn't to say that the book is without flaws, far from it. I'm not sure whether it is a facet of the original text or the translation, but the writing is often stilted, repetitive, and immature. The characters repeat themselves endlessly, reusing the same phrases repeatedly, and often dwelling on the obvious far past the limit of my patience. Some of the characters are extremely unrealistic. The antagonists (whether they be the government, the guy running the show, or the classmates with a villainous streak) are usually flat and generically sinister (though there is a notable exception to this in the form of the Bad Girl character).

Overall, I found the whole work oddly compelling, and pushed past my annoyances with the writing style with minimal effort to see what happened next. The best part about the book is that it explores the themes of evil, violence, authoritarian government, betrayal, loyalty and human nature without dwelling overmuch on it, and makes a nice pulpy read out of it in the process. Now I just need to pick up the movie!

[Mini Review] Lisa’s Take – The Tide Lords Book 1: The Immortal Prince (Jennifer Fallon)

I’m sticking to a mini-review on this book, because I’ve been putting off reviewing it for lack of verbose content. I don’t feel like writing a plot description – every time I try the summary falls flat and just doesn’t do the book justice. So, a mini-review!

Jennifer Fallon is rapidly rising on my list of authors I like – I have a feeling that by the end of this quartet she’ll break through from “good authors” to “favorite authors” on my mental tally. She just does characters and intrigue so damn well – what other author can claim that they have given me an aversion to a particular beverage based solely upon one of their characters’ use of it?

Woo, tangent! Stick to the mini-review. At first I was afraid that The Immortal Prince would be too predictable (I called one of her “big reveals” quite early) but she got me pretty good with another one of her reveals – any time an author causes me to emit an utterance loud enough to attract JD from two rooms over, it’s pretty impressive. The characters were excellent and well developed (as always) and I can sense the potential for angst building towards a head later in the quartet. Did I mention that Jennifer Fallon is starting to rival Robin Hobb for angst levels? Impressive, I know.

Right. Thumbs up. Read this book, it is tasty goodness.

[Lisa's Take] The Dark Volume - Gordon Dahlquist

The Dark Volume is the most disappointing book I’ve read in the last year. Maybe even the most disappointing book I’ve ever read, period. It’s certainly the biggest disappointment I’ve experienced since starting this blog.

The aforementioned offending book is the sequel to The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters – a book that would almost certainly make it onto my “book top 10 list” were I to compile one. Glass Books is kind of a victorian-steampunk-fantasy-intrigue-mystery hybrid, a genre niche that I don’t think I’ve ever encountered elsewhere. When I first started Glass Books, I nearly put it down after 30 pages – it was rather thick and slow and didn’t seem to be going anywhere. But I decided to give it my customary 100 page attempt, especially given how entertaining the prose was, and by the time I’d made it through one of each of the character perspective chapters, I was totally hooked. The story unfolded with tantalizing slowness and was totally unpredictable – because the genre is so different, I had absolutely no idea where things were going. The characters also developed with the same delicious unveiling – building upon them bit by bit, never revealing too much all in one go. Glass Books was a novel to savor, something to really immerse yourself in and get swept along. It accelerated to the grand finale, then finished with an incredibly Victorian ending... think The Awakening. It was brilliant.

And then The Dark Volume went and ruined it.

The book started out on the wrong foot by demolishing the open, dream-like ending that Glass Books established. It took away any sense of ambiguity, or any interpretive open-ness that the first book established by diving straight back into the plot where the first one left off. This immediately put me on guard, as the ending of Glass Books was one of the best (and most gutsy) parts. I suppose you could argue that this was unavoidable with a direct sequel, but it could have been approached less jarringly.

Unfortunately, it didn’t get much better from there. Where Glass Books took its time and ramped up slowly and steadily, introducing layer after layer of plot and intrigue, Dark Volume just sort of throws it all at you , one thing after another. And then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. The “and then this” storytelling technique seems to be a more and more common theme in books I read lately – how about some pacing, people?

I also had some pretty serious gripes around prose and character development. Whereas in the first book the characters were revealed and grew slowly but surely, the sequel did nothing to further develop or deepen the 3 main characters. The new characters that were introduced were largely forgettable. Secondary characters from the first book did improve a bit, but only from increased exposure to the reader, I think. Also, where the first book had very entertaining (self-consciously overblown) prose, the second book was just verbose, without the tint of self-deprecation (appreciation?) that made the prose of the first book tongue-in-cheek, rather than arduous.

As if all that isn’t enough, then we get to the book’s ending, where it committed two more grave crimes. The first was trying to redeem itself at the last minute by jerking emotional strings. Gods how I get sick of books that reach the ending and go “hmm, I’ve managed to only tell a mediocre, lackluster story. Let’s try to make up for it by senselessly killing characters off, in hopes that the emotional impact will make there reader think the whole story was actually emotionally engaging!” Yeah. Oh, and then there was one other little niggling problem with the end of the book... in that it didn’t actually end! That’s right! The Dark Volume (much like The Great Book of Amber) isn’t actually a book! Haha, fooled you – get to the end of that last page and just SEE if there’s any wrap up or resolution. I can’t even begin to explain how disgusted I am.

Is there anything else I missed? The lack of viciously double-entendre’d conversations? The non-existent opportunities for Svenson to be awesome, rather than a useless puppy-dog? Chang only really getting to be badass maaaybe once? Even Miss Temple’s characterization was hollow at best.

Anyway, I should stop ripping before I get even grumpier. There is only one good thing to say for this book: the ending makes it clear that a 3^rd novel will be forthcoming, and I can do nothing but cross my fingers and fervently hope book 3 will right the many, many wrongs of the book 2.