JD's Take: Misspent Youth (Peter F. Hamilton)

I love Peter F. Hamilton so it was without thought or hesitation that I picked up Misspent Youth. I barely even complained that it seemed to come out between The Dreaming Void and The Temporal Void, figuring that maybe he wrote it before those. I don't know. Publishing is a weird game. Besides, I correctly assumed, I'll probably still end up reading the Temporal Void first, my stack being what it is and my priorities being what they are.

So, I finally got around to pulling this off the shelf last week, and discovered that Hamilton had put aside Space Opera to take a stab at Near Futurism. This, I thought, ought to be good. Hamilton is an absolute master of extrapolating technology in interesting ways! However, my excitement slowly faded into... not disgust but at least apathy. By halfway through the book, I had no desire to open it again and placed it, sadly, on the shelf.

So what went wrong? The story follows a well-off family in 2038-ish England. The father is missing, gone to get the world's first Rejuvination treatment. This rare honor was given because of his massive popularity and fame, having invented a crystal memory lattice that could be grown cheaply and provided unlimited storage space... and then giving it away for freesies. His beloved son and trophy wife are waiting for him to return from the 8 months in isolation, and the security teams from the EU are setting up shop to protect against terrorist assasination attempts. So far so awesome, yeah? The problem is that when Hamilton turned in Space Opera, he traded it out for Soap Opera. The first part of the book was spent following the son and his friends in their drama-tastic sexual exchanges. Then the dad comes back and we get more of the same with the father. And the Wife. And the neighbors, the old friends, and probably the postman.

The technological and societal extrapolation was interesting, but very much in the background. Normally I'd consider that a good point, but in this case the foreground was filled with vapid, unlikable characters. The greater sin, however, was that like all Soap Operas, this novel lacked any kind of real plot. There was no conflict, no villian, no political intrigue. There was nothing to keep me reading unless I actually cared if the Father and the Son's Girlfriend would hook up (really. That was the big suspense when I set it down).

So give this one a miss, and busy yourself reading everything else this man ever wrote.

[Mini Review] JD's Take: The Forever War (Joe Haldeman)

Honestly I'm not even going to bother to really review this book. Every nice thing about it that can be said has, at some point in the last 35 years, been said. If you happen to see a copy, you will be assaulted by quotes from authors you respect singing it's praises on every visible surface. I think it had a blurb on the spine. You will wade through 8 or so pages of review blurbs they couldn't fit on the cover, carefully chosen to represent only the creme de la creme of the sci-fi world.

They are all basically right: Haldeman took his experiences with war in Vietnam and crafted an amazing story about humanity and war and relativity. There is only one real character in it, and the ending is little trite, but those are extremely minor quibbles. The technology is very "future viewed from the 70s", but that's not a complaint at all... it's just an interesting perspective.

So yeah, I'm not going to spend any more time with this one: it's a solid, thoughtful, quick-reading exploration of war and human psychology set in a sci-fi warzone. Good times.

JD's Take: Personal Effects: Dark Art (Hutchins, Weisman)

This was a book with a gimmick. It's a supernatural detective novel that comes with a stack of papers, invitations, business cards, drivers licenses, maps, and artwork. The idea is that the added content will make the mystery more engrossing, drawing you in by letting you see the evidence, piece together the clues, call cellphones and check voicemail, investigate online information and so on. I picked it thinking "well gosh, Alternate Reality has really caught on and here's a book version. Clever!"

Predictably, the gimmick fell far short of the premise. The book itself was passable... a pretty bland little mystery filled with some supernatural stuff that failed to tingle the spine sufficiently. The characters themselves were... almost painfully "in-touch"? You have the main character: an Art Psychologist who is dedicated to making the world a little brighter by having viscious killers that society has locked away in a stereotype of an insane asylum (they built it DOWN instead of up! Spooky!) by making them do finger paintings, through which they tell him all about their insecurities and whatnot. He has a younger brother who is a genius NYU film student who is heavily into parkour, and a girlfriend who is smoking hot and tattooed and a huge nerd who eats potato chips and plays videogames all day for her blog and never needs to work out. Oh, and she's also a fact-checker for a newspaper, giving her great connections for researching stuff. Oh, and his father is the Assistant DA trying the case he is assigned to. How convenient that we will use all of these disparate skills and connections in the solving of this mystery!

Anyway, one of the things the book does well is to impart a sense of peril about the characters who surround the protagonist. Throughout the book you feel like you are one panicked moment away from utter devastation. In part this is because he loves them all so hard and appreciates them and needs them and you just KNOW that's the Kiss of Death. Partly it is because their deaths are fortold like 10 pages in, and that is also a Kiss of Death. But here's the thing: nothing bad happens to anyone. Even the *very* secondary character who is marked for death early in the book (and whose death would have made the whole plot more convincing and impactful) comes out unscathed. By the end, I felt kinda... ripped off that all of the foreshadowing and dread and suspense ended with smiling rainbows and chocolate.

If you've noticed that I haven't mentioned all of the non-book content so far, you've made a very good observation! On the plus side, the quality of the inserts was quite good. The drivers license was laminated plastic, the certificates were on crappy government paper while the CIA memos were on nice stationary. Nice production value! The problem with the Book Tied Into Clues concept is that it totally falls apart if you neglect to make any of the non-book content meaningful. Let me itemize:

• Most of the stuff ends up being very tangentally connected (birth and death certificates for a couple of minor, off-screen support characters, for instance, which have no bearing on the mystery).
• When there are phone numbers you can call (to, say, check voicemails) the messages aren't reprinted in the book (good! Make me do it in real life!) but they are also WORTHLESS. Every single syllable of the messages can be easily extracted from the in-book context and they are totally mundane anyway ("Son. I'll be late to the funeral. Love, Dad.").
  
• On top of the above, the outgoing messages on the voicemails are totally out of synch with the book. At a point in the book where the main character has only barely heard of the case, the outgoing message you get is "Sorry I can't come to the phone. This case has taken hold on me in unexpected ways. I love you all" or something. It totally destroys the sense of immediacy that the whole concept is doing its best to impart.
• Some of the clues have puzzles in them. Neat! I spent 15 minutes deciphering a card that was totally blank except for some brail writing. This was a fucking waste of time and opportunity, since it was never mentioned in the book, added absolutely nothing, and provided no clues or insight. Gah!
• Websites! There are several! One of them was missing, one of the them provided a clue to the characters in the book but NOT TO THE VISITOR, and one of them was actually kinda cool (a blog run by the protagonists girlfriend that actually developed her character a bit and lent authenticity... though had no relevance to the story).
• There was some artwork included. There was artwork in the book, the clever manipulation of which led to important clues. There were not connected. The included artwork had no relevance to the book at all.

Basically, in order for this to have been a compelling gimmick, the toys had to have relevance to the story. I needed to be able to solve puzzles and work out connections that weren't given to me in the book. Honestly, the book shouldn't even have *had* an ending until I solved things my damn self. The narrative should have cut off suddenly at the end and begun with a "Previous researcher missing: see what you can do" introduction. As is, they could have dropped all of the props... I'd still be left with a mediocre mystery novel but at least I wouldn't be angry about it.

[Lisa’s Take] Act of Will – A. J. Hartley

[Editors note: This review sat for a few days before I was able to post it, and when I got back around to re-reading it I think I may have been a bit harsh, especially due to some of my biases from related books. I'd be happy for someone to contradict me on this review and give me a reason to try the second book]

I really, really, really hate to pan this book, because it’s soooo close to being everything I love in character-fantasy: snarky first person narrator, main character with dubious morals, betrayals, plot twists, magic, &c, &c. Unfortunately, either due to my own personal bias or perhaps due to the lack of polish that sometimes comes with first books, these ideal elements didn’t quite coalesce into a good book. A passable book, perhaps, but not the excellent, rollicking, laughter-inducing tale that I hoped for.

The setting: Will Hawthorne is a young actor (think Elizabethan era) who writes some stories, but more often than not gets stuck playing female characters - dress and all. On the day that he’s set to graduate from his role as an apprentice and become one of the big players, a decree is sent out to close all theaters and arrest all writers of note (repressive government and all that jazz). Will makes a run for it and is sheltered by a mysterious collection of men and women. They turn out to have things like Morals and Scruples (unlike our Will) as well as a firm belief in Doing The Right Thing. Will is forced to tag along with them in order to stay out of the government’s clutches, and ends up being sucked into an investigation of strange attacks and magical happenings in a nearby province.

Will as a character is a lot of fun – just the sort of narrator that I love to read: witty, scrupulous, tactless, and a big self-serving coward. Unfortunately, a couple of problems kept him from being ideal. First, as the book goes on Will “develops” and “changes” but it seems forced. His shenanigans and reactions also get a bit predictable, so he’s less and less fun to read as the story progresses. The second problem is more a personal problem: Will is basically a clone of the main character from Sir Apropos of Nothing. If you hadn’t read the aforementioned excellent little novel by Peter David, it probably wouldn’t present an issue for you. But since I read it last year, Apropos was fresh enough on my mind that Will seemed like an imitation – and a pale one at that. Very Sad.

Still, that’s getting pretty picky. Overall I liked the narrator and the themes in the book; a strong story or supporting cast would have done a lot to remedy my gripe. Sadly, the supporting cast were mostly one-dimensional and predictable (though I did have a soft spot for Orgos), and at their worst moments annoying. The story tried for political intrigue, but mostly ended up with a plot line of “then they went there and discovered ‘this.’ Then they went somewhere else and discovered ‘that.’ Gasp! A revelation!” The “big reveal” at the end wasn’t much of a surprise, and honestly the tedium of the storyline by 250 pages in had me close to giving up.

So – it is with much disappointment that I can’t really recommend Act of Will. I wanted so much for it to be great, and given so many promising elements it’s a travesty that it didn’t come together as excellently as promised. That said, I think there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll give book two a try – the story’s (fictitious) translator promises it will be out in a year… I guess we’ll see. I want very much for Hartley to live up to the promise he shows. Perhaps it will just take him a couple of novels to hit his stride.

[Mini Review] Lisa’s Take: (Temeraire Book 5) A Victory of Eagles – Naomi Novik

I’ll keep this review short and sweet: I think I’m done with this series. The first book was a very novel idea and quite interesting and engaging... and then the books steadily went downhill. A Victory of Eagles was more of the same: Laurence is exiled and bummed about it, Temeraire is obstinate and disliking of the state of affairs, Iskiera is annoying, and there’s a war. Same old, same old. The characters don’t change or develop (in fact I’d go so far as to say that Laurence regresses and becomes more boring and flat as a character) and while the story does move along at a brisk pace, it’s not new and exciting anymore.

I don’t want to disparage the series as a whole, because the first book really was excellent, and the second book was enjoyable. I just wish that Ms. Novik had kept an end in sight for the story as a whole, and maybe limited the whole ordeal to 3ish books. Damn shame. Someone do tell me if the 6th book suddenly turns around and redeems the series, ok?

JD's Take: Manual of Detection (Jedediah Berry)

I actually picked this book up in the mystery section of all places, though it could comfortably hang out in the seedy hive of the fantasy section as well. Actually, it could probably dress up nice and at least stroll through the "Fiction" section, as it certainly has a literary* character to it. It is Berry's first novel, though he has published short stories before and he is an editor at Small Beer Press (making me want to read the stack of $1 books I ordered from them rather more than I did).

So. Let me set the scene. The story is set in the city, an unnamed noir style metropolis dominated by a monolithic building housing the Agency. The city is dark, and rainy, dirty and dismal, and structured. The city honestly feels more like Bas Lag than Metropolis. There is nothing openly fantastic about it, but the people are too structured, too neurotic, too obviously and subtly broken to be entirely mundane.

Charles Unwin is a orderly man, a clerk by trade, and the best in the business. His job is to chronicle the cases of Detective Sivart, a legendary figure who is a cross between Holmes (in stature) and Sam Spade (in attitude). Our story starts as Unwin is suddenly promoted to the rank of detective and his life spirals rapidly outside of his ability to cope. He meets a cast of characters feel like they are in color against the black and white of their world. They are broken, strange, intriguing. Many would not be out of place in a Dick Tracy story, and others feel lifted straight out of Chinatown. Unwin is forced to stretch outside his comfort zone (a zone that is 7 blocks long and 14 stories high), his only strong motivation to make sense of his life and go back to the way things were.

As details emerge about cases past and present, they are filled with fantastic elements. I'm not talking dragons and high magic though... one of the cases that is often referenced in the story quite literally focuses on the theft of November 11th, a Tuesday. Certainly the book is imaginative, along with being well written, well plotted, and engrossing. There are weak points, perhaps, in the resolution though that is largely a matter of taste I think. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys noir, urban and weird fantasy, and/or great writing in general. Honestly, it's a shame that the book is in the mystery section, because it doesn't read or play out like a mystery, and true fans of the genre will probably be disapointed. There are no clever clues for you to work out while you pretend to work, and the butler most certainly did not do it. The biggest mystery is figuring out what exactly "it" is that was done.


* Used in the sense that it plays with language, and at time flirts with poetry. There were paragraphs I stopped and read aloud, just for the pleasure of doing so.

[Lisa's Take] Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)

There are some books that every book geek should have read, and I have an embarrassing number of them that have been sitting in my stack for many, many years. Cache 22 has been in there since 2001, along with Fahrenheit 451. Catcher in the Rye, Dorian Grey, something by Ayn Rand, not to mention all of the strictly-fantasy books that people tell me I have to read.

Stranger in a Strange Land has been in my stack for a very, very long time. I remember in early high school my mother said "you really need to read this" then quickly changed her mind after re-reading it herself and deciding I didn't need that much candid sex as a 13-year-old. The novel unofficially joined my stack around that time, and then officially a few years later when I received a copy as a gift.

Honestly, now that I've finished SiaSL, I'm unsure about how best to review it. Much like when I read 100 Years of Solitude I find myself struggling with evaluating the elements of "real literature" versus "fantasy candy." I didn't find the story of SiaSL particularly compelling, and it dragged painfully through the second half. I was counting down the pages to the end, so very ready to get it over with. I didn't like or care about any of the characters with the exception of Jubal Harshaw, who reminded me far too much of an old friend to dislike.

I did, however, appreciate some of the very progressive ideas that Heinlein touched upon, especially considering the book was written over 40 years ago. His diatribes on love, lust, sex, relationships, and polyamory were impressive and well considered. Early in the book I enjoyed Jubal's dissertations on religion, media, and lifestyle, though Heinlein's portrayal of religion shifted so heavily towards the end of the book that I was left with a sour taste in my mouth.

What I didn't appreciate about the book were the rampant undertones of sexism and the blatant gay-bashing. Generally my rule is that it's ok for an author to have opinions opposite of mine (Orson Scott Card comes to mind) so long as those viewpoints don't creep into his literature. Heinlein did not manage to maintain this separation, and his diatribes on the matters left me quite grumpy. Saying things like "9 out of 10 women who get raped probably were asking for it" and generic gay bashing is more than I can deal with. I especially have a hard time reconciling all of the "free love, open relationships, orgies!" talk in-story with the blatant statement that "being gay is wrong and immoral."

I don't really have a bottom line for this review. As with many books that are "more serious" rather than strictly fantasy, I don't know whether to recommend it or not. It's a lot like Wicked in some ways - not a very pretty story, but one that has some really interesting themes. Take from that what you will.

JD's Take: The Mistborn Trilogy (Brandon Sanderson)

The really, really short version:

2,272 pages of extremely high quality fantasy.

The slightly longer version:

Lisabit already covered this series, and we feel about the same about it, so I'll let her review stand. This series features an intricate and fascinating world/magic system, an ensemble cast of compelling and interesting and flawed characters, an evolving storyline that works quite well at escalating the threat while not seeming tacked-on, a witty and entertaining writing style, and several fantastic and unexpected twists on fantasy tropes. I'm not too proud to say that the ending had me tearing up pretty bad, and the final resolution was simultaneously satisfying without being over-done, brief without feeling truncated, touching without being sappy, and open for more books without feeling like an obvious set up. I'd rate the ending as one of my favorites in any series.

There were times when the work dragged a little bit. I agree with Lisabit that the angst in the second book could have been cut in half and that would have been fine with me. The first half of the third book dragged pretty bad for me as it ventured too close to Epic Fantasy Purgatory for comfort (that being: endless marches. Everyone just moving around the board in excruciating detail, but not actually *doing* anything). One of my favorite characters (TenSoon) got the shaft, story-wise, in the third book too, which was a shame to me. I think his character's resolution could have been more meaningful if his narrative had gone another direction (West, actually).

There are also times when you'll be screaming at the characters to pay attention to some small detail, that they are making life far more difficult and it's Just So Obvious. Of course, the first time I did that I was totally wrong about it... so you might want to keep those yells bottled up lest you be embarrassed when you're wrong...

That said, I highly recommend this series to any reader of fantasy. If you are the type of person who happens to get a little *too* excited by well-executed and fiddly magic systems (in other words: if you are a tabletop roleplayer) then all the more reason why these books should immediately go onto your must-read stack. At the top.

Oh: and Lisabit is totally wrong about the "glaring plot hole" she claims to have found. Nyah. :)

[Sean's Summation] Saturn's Children (Charles Stross)

If Mr. Stross has been on this blog a bit much of late, you can blame me. I've been an unabashed fan of his after reading Accelerando, and though JD beat me to Halting State, I agree with his solid recommendation to read it. Thus, when I saw the wonderfully...ahem...provocative cover of Saturn's Children, I was genuinely excited -- would this be a Heinlein-eqse, risqué sexbot on a mission romp? The answer, it turns out, is equal parts "yes" and "well, kinda."

Quick setting summary: Saturn's Children is set some several hundred years into our future. Humans have built robots with relatively powerful AI to do all manner of jobs -- from asteroid mining to entertainers to spaceships to whatever else that humans, being squishy or easily bored, couldn't do. Stross gets around our current problems with AI by hand-waving that these robots are based on human intelligence patterns (essentially, computer-based copies of our brain's structure). Robots have a "soul chip" that stores their consciousness, which can be slotted into another copy of the same model, carrying over its experiences and personality. Copies of the same model form lineages that typically stick together, pooling the soul chips of their dead brethren/sisters so that the deceased's memories live on. In addition to their soul chip, robots can have slave chips installed (usually unwillingly), which allow near total control of the robot in question.

By the way, "robot" is a slur equivalent to some of our more pernicious racial slurs. So, apologies to any persons that happen to be non-pink goo reading this. Though, I really should apologize for much more, because, you see, there are no more humans (or any biological life) in Saturn's Children. Somewhere in the next couple of centuries, humans disappear (Stross isn't particularly clear on the how or why, but it's not really necessary to the story), leaving behind our robot slaves and a destroyed Terran ecosystem. Problematically, since robots were generally property rather than people, this left most in a peculiar legal state. Some enterprising robots that happened to have legal powers of attorney used their now defunct masters' funds to buy up around 90% of the robot population. This created a solar system of a incredibly small, cruel and insane aristocracy and enormous slave population. The few remaining "free" robots were essentially self-owned LLC's barely scraping by, attempting to avoid falling into debt and becoming indentured servants themselves.

Enter into this world our protagonist, Freya, a free robot of modest means. Unfortunately for her, her lineage's purpose died out with humanity: she was to be a hyper-advanced sex toy for the few remaining humans. (Is it any wonder we died out?) Thus, she starts the story down on her luck somewhere in the high atmosphere of Venus.

Looking back over those last couple of paragraphs, I can conclude that I'll never be a jacket-cover writer. Moving on.

In continuing theme with his previous fiction, Stross depicts space-travel as realistically as possible. Thus, it is very Hobbesian: solitary, nasty, and brutish, but not so much with the short. Travel to Jupiter from Mars on even some of the fastest ships takes over a year and that journey comes with a hefty dosage of ionizing radiation from the ship's nuclear engines. Colonization efforts are also depicted in realistic, but nonetheless fantastic, detail: a city moves on rails around Mercury to keep its temperature optimal, while Mars gives birth to a massive space elevator. While settlement would have been impossible for squishy humans, robots manage to proliferate, colonizing the solar system in our stead. While this is terribly disappointing to those of us raised on Star Trek, it sadly has the support of quite a bit of scientific evidence behind it.

Stross cheats a bit with his characters and makes them mostly clones of each other, but this sort of fits in a world dominated by many clones of a few basic models. There is a background cast of various more fantastic non-anthropromophic bots, but their details are usually shallow. There are a few colorful exceptions to this, of course: Dechs seems to fill the role of the plucky dog sidekick, but reveals to be much more. The hobo bots on Mars are also wonderful bit of the familiar yet absurd.

Perhaps one of my favorite theme in the story were the debates concerning creation myths from a robotic perspective. As creatures created rather than evolved, the majority of robots had trouble believing that their creators came to be in such a messy manner. This leads to the comedic reversal of evolutionists being treated as the intellectual parriahs that today's creationists fill, complete with cultists, "skeptics" and the like.

Though I am admittedly a Strossian fan-boy, we now come to the part of the essay where I must lambaste him for failing: Mr. Stross needs an editor with a chainsaw and plenty of duct tape. As was the case with Accelerando, Saturn's Children is occasionally non-linear. Unlike previous works, however, these transitions are unexpected and confusing. At several points in the book the transitions were so jarring, I found myself checking page numbers to make sure my copy wasn't missing pages. A zealous editor should notice these sorts of things and berate Mr. Stross until they're fixed.

(As a note, from reading his blog, it appears he's been releasing and editing quite a number of books of late. While I'm all for output, I really would prefer a more paced release schedule. Quality, not quantity!)

Further, his characters motivations and personalities fall flat, especially towards the novel's climax. I was left wondering, "So, that's why so-and-so did that? Ho-hum." It just really didn't feel believable or interesting. The overall plot, too, felt a bit weak. It was very Mission: Impossible (the Tom Cruise movies, not the TV show): needlessly complicated, with too many, "Oh no, X was really Y all along!" moments.

Despite these complaints, I had a good time with the novel, and would definitely recommend it to fellow SF readers for their enjoyment.

[Lisa’s Take] Conqueror’s Moon (Julian May)

It seems like I see Julian May’s name a lot on the book shelves, so when I saw a used copy of the Conqueror’s Moon hardback a few months ago, I snagged it for $4. I’m nothing if not willing to try out new authors, and a $4 hardback is usually a steal. Sadly, I was very disappointed in this particular bargain. As always, I gave the book 100 pages to impress me (a generous 102 in this case) and I was beyond relieved when I could finally call it quits.

I’m not really up to trying to put together a plot summary, so instead I’ll just bitch (because who doesn’t like to listen to me rant about bad fantasy?).

The story started with a very promising prologue – first person with a touch of wit and a very human tone… but after this brief introduction there was a subsequent switch to 3rd person omniscient and the author started waxing poetic about the world and the characters. Is there nothing less enticing in a book than extended droning about the history of a nation? Especially when said history is neither particularly original, nor particularly interesting? The author went on at length and started to lose me right away. Once characters started showing up on screen (on page?) I though the book might turn itself around and hook me… but I found quickly that the characters were much like the history – dull and over-described. I want to be shown what my characters are like, not told “he was loyal, oh so loyal.” And heaven forbid that more than a sentence or two should be spent describing totally mundane clothing – please spare me. I especially enjoyed (didn’t enjoy) the few pages that introduced 16 characters and spent a paragraph describing each one. Let me tell you how exciting that was – I do so love incorporating memorization exercises into my reading experience!

Oh dear, I seem to be waxing sarcastic and not a little bit caustic. I’ll just stop before I get really carried away, shall I?

I do see that Ms. May has written quite a lot of scifi – can anyone out there tell me whether it is more worth reading that her disappointing fantasy foray?

[Lisa’s Take] Labyrinths of Echo Book 1: The Stranger (Max Frei)

Max is your typical loser – 30 something, down on his luck more often than not, and a chronic night-owl to the point that he can’t keep a regular day job. The only thing remarkable about Max is that he has very vivid dreams. Then one day a man in Max’s dreams offers him a job… and seeing nothing better about his life Max accepts and is transported to another world – vibrant and exciting where magic is commonplace, but highly regulated. A little bit of acclamation and training and he is officially instated as the Night Time Representative of the Secret Investigative Force (think the CIA, but with magic).

Do you remember when you first read Harry Potter? Even if you weren’t completely blown away, you have to admit that the world that Rowling painted was gorgeous, colorful, and enthralling. My experience reading The Stranger was a lot like that – the world was just so very engaging and convincing. I really felt like I had been plucked out of Boring Old Real World and dropped into the fantasy city painted by the author.

There are some quirks to the storytelling in The Stranger. The first is that it’s a translation from Russian, and while it is very well done, there are references or jokes made from time to time that don’t quite make sense. Very minor things that don’t at all take away from the major themes or humor in the book as a whole. After finishing all 4 Night Watch books and now this new piece of Russian Fantasy, I’m gaining a serious affinity for the genre – both in the originality of the stories and worlds, as well as the variety of wry, askance humor that seems to pervade.

The second quirk to the book is that rather than one large arc (The hardcover weighs in at a middlingly-dense 544 pages), the book is broken up in to 5 large “chapters,” where each chapter is its own story, largely self-contained. Each of these chapters has its own hook, plot, crescendo, climax and resolution, which is nice, but it made the book feel a bit choppy, rather than being a smooth continuous narrative.

What else is there to say about this book? The characters are vibrant and exciting, the wit is beyond measure, and each chapter is nearly impossible to put down. I absolutely loved it, and I’m desperately hoping that the rest of the books in the series will be translated soon and published in the US.

[Lisa’s Take] Wizard of Pigeons (Megan Lindholm)

Robin Hobb is one of my favorite authors – I’ve read her Farseer trilogy several times now, and it was one of the fantasy series that really solidified my love of the genre back in high school. As such, I’m always watching out for books written under her old pseudonym of Megan Lindholm; whenever I hit a used book store I go straight to the L section to see what I can dig up. I usually strike out, often finding “book two” in her old trilogies, but never book one or standalone books. You can imagine my excitement when I happened across Wizard of Pigeons, a short stand-alone novel.

Wizard of Pigeons is urban fantasy set in modern(ish) Seattle. It revolves around a homeless man who goes simply by Wizard, and who is granted certain powers of urban survival so long as he does not break a few rules. The magic system is fairly interesting a has a level of subtlety that is rarely seen – in some ways the powers of the characters in the book reminded me of aspects of the magic in the Nightwatch series. However, where this book really shines is in its description of downtown Seattle – the images and geography are spot on. Maybe it’s just my great love of the Emerald City, but I found the city descriptions to be incredibly evocative, so much that I could smell the air, feel the misty rain on my face, and taste the rich coffee.

After such a rousing endorsement of the setting I almost hate to type this next line, but alas… I’d be lying if I said I thought Wizard of Pigeons was worth the read. Where the environment and magic system where intriguing, the characters were less so. Wizard was kind of well developed, but the major secondary character drove me absolutely insane. I hated her so much that she actually managed to ruin a lot of the book for me. I wanted about 90% less screen time for her and 300% more screen time for the other wizards in the story, who were all interesting but didn’t get to be featured very heavily.

By the last quarter of the book I was literally only reading because it seemed like I didn’t have many pages left and it would be a shame to quit so close to the end. I wanted the final chapters to redeem the middle section that made me so angry, but I don’t think I was in much of a mindset to let it. I ended the book grumpy and disappointed, and though I recognized that the author made a bid at including her signature bittersweet finale, I couldn’t appreciate it.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone unless you are a particularly die-hard Robin Hobb fan, and also only if you have a strong stomach for extremely obnoxious female characters (ex: if Malta pissed you off during the Liveship Traders, don’t touch this book with a 10 foot pole). It may also be worth reading for lovers of Seattle, if only to see a beloved city in text form, and to have a little magic lent to the Market.

JD's Take: Halting State (Charles Stross)

Halting State is a near future science fiction novel that uses a mysterious digital theft in Scotland as a backdrop to both explore the Stross's projections of technology (and the world political stage) for the next 20 years and to posit some of the possible dangers of that technology's advance. While doing so, Stross adeptly writes a compelling story with reasonably good twists, likable characters, and enough action and suspense to keep you turning the pages long after you should have packed up and gone back to work.

The basic technological premise of the novel is that human interaction with technology continues to become more and more pervasive. Most everybody wears digital eyeglasses that give them an internet-enabled overlay (or several overlays) on the real world in order to augment it with additional information. For instance, the police use an overlay called CopSpace which recognizes people in their field of view and gives instant information about them (arrest record, personal information, etc). People can overlay maps onto their field of view to navigate, gamespaces into their view to seamlessly immerse them in a fantasy world while they navigate the real one, and endless other applications are hinted at or explored. All of this is powered by distributing the processing across everybody's (extremely) smart phones. Basically? The future is sweet. And really, there's nothing here that's particularly farfetched for the future of technology. I won't say that I believe the predictions, but it is certainly a compelling argument for the way that tech might progress.

We join our heroes as they are gathered together to investigate the theft of Sweet Gear from a bank in an MMO. The implications of this theft are that *someone* has broken the cryptography on the networks, and that is Bad. It quickly becomes clear that this is Very Bad Indeed, and has implications for national security and worldwide politics and economics.

The story is told entirely in the second person, and switches characters each chapter between one of 3 POV characters. This sounds awkward, and it could have been, but Stross handles it masterfully. Instead of being jarring, it feels like a DM narrating a scene to the character as you read. This, in turn, helps to subtly draw you into the very gaming-centric story in a very effective way. The other thing it does is to reinforce the importance of perceived reality to the story. In a world where you can augment your reality however you want, the second person perspective really drives home that "you see a man" is a much better construction than "there is a man". Frankly, this was a subtle and wonderful and clever decision and I loved it.

The story wasn't without flaws... there were weak characterizations in the supporting cast and some unconvincing technological guesswork, but that's all nitpicking. This was a great book and I highly recommend it. Just read it now, while it still sounds like compelling futurism and not one of the other two options (reality and "flying cars" futurism).

[Lisa’s Take] Peter and the Starcatchers (Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson)

After reading Peter David’s most excellent novella Tigerheart, I was feeling a soft spot towards Peter Pan stories. So the reason I picked up Peter and the Starcatchers was threefold: it was sitting on a “staff recommended” shelf at the book store, I was feeling fond of Neverland, and Dave Barry writes such a great news paper column that I figured his fantasy would have to be great.

Peter and the Starcatchers is kind of a Peter Pan Prequel (mmm, alliteration), the first in an ongoing series. It follows the story of a group of young orphans who get sent off on a ship that will take them to live in the employ of an evil prince. Their voyage does not go as planned, however, and through the course of the story we find out just how the ordinary boy Peter becomes the legend that can fly and defy pirates. We also meet Captain Hook’s precursor and discover the events through which he came to be plagued by a crocodile.

This book is definitely a kids book; I think a child between 8 and 12 would really love it. Sadly, it doesn’t live up to the “timeless tale” measure, like Tigerheart did. I chomped the book down on a flight home from Memphis, all in one sitting, but I really only kept reading it because I had nothing better to do. The story was fun and it was a creative and interesting take on Peter Pan, but there was no real substance to it. At times the narrative aaaaalmost took on a self-aware tone and injected a bit of humor… but in the end it fell short and missed the mark.

Peter and the Starcatchers is a good book for youths and young adults, but lacks the punch or depth to make it appeal to all audiences. If you pick it up looking for Dave Barry’s usual wit and humor, I fear you will be disappointed.

[Lisa’s Take] Mistborn Book 3: Hero of Ages (Brandon Sanderson)

I kind of thought I’d have a lot to put into my review of the final book in this trilogy, but now that the time has come I don’t have all that much to say. I can’t do a plot summary without spoilers, and there just isn’t much that I feel like waxing poetic about. If you’ve read my reviews of books 1 and 2 you know that I adore the story, and book 3 continues to deliver on that promise. I didn’t enjoy it as much as book 1 (like book 2, book 3 is Good but not Great), but it was an entertaining tale. I’m pleased that the ending brought such great closure, and I was very surprised by the bold strokes that the author took in wrapping up the story.

Oh, I did have one little gripe: did anyone else feel that there was a pretty serious screw up (retcon?) in the capabilities of allomancy during one of the big final battles? Trying to remain unspoilery: the one involving a lot of Inquisitors? Maybe I was racing through the book’s climax so quickly that I missed the explanation of why this particular thing worked in that battle, but didn’t work in a number of other battles – I’d like to think that surely the author and the editor couldn’t both have miss it. Regardless, the fact that I got fixated on it in a “that’s not supposed to be possible” sense really broke up the book’s climax for me.

Anyway, at this point I’m really just rambling because I don’t have the juice to do a full review of Hero of Ages. I’ll wrap this up by reiterating that in spite of its (very few) faults, the Mistborn trilogy is truly excellent. It’s definitely the best fantasy trilogy I’ve read in a couple of years, sporting a compelling plot line, an amazingly awesome magic system, epic scope, and very well developed characters. I look forward to reading more of Bradon Sanderson’s work in the future.

[Mini Review] Lisa’s Take: Mistborn Book 2 - The Well of Ascension (Brandon Sanderson)

I suppose I should post just a brief note on the second book of the Mistborn trilogy, as I’m already ¾ of the way through the final book. I’ll keep it short, and forgo the potentially spoilerfull plot summary.

The Well of Ascension was a Good Book, though perhaps not a Great Book. I felt it wasn’t as impressive as the first book for a couple of reasons, the biggest one being that it’s hard to rival the slow reveal of a world and magical system that took place in book one. There were still some cool new concepts in book two, but you didn’t spend 200 pages learning about Allomancy and going “Oh, awesome!!” so the overall novelty was lower.

I was also kind of annoyed by how Sanderson handled the relationship aspects of book 2 – a lot of the back and forth just annoyed the hell out of me, regardless of how much you could argue that it was in character. For about two thirds of the book I ground my teeth whenever the Elend/Vin dynamic came up, and the weird conservative overtones that snuck into the narrative rubbed me the wrong way.

Luckily the end of the book did a lot to rectify my gripes; when I finished The Well of Ascension I had a very “Empire Strikes Back” feeling in my chest. I wasted no time getting my hands on book 3, which I have been summarily tearing through. I also feel it worth mentioning that Zane might be winning the “Lisa’s favorite character of the year” award – some of the aspects of his characterization were really great.

Right, that’s it. Keeping this short, with the expectation of a longer ramble when I wrap up The Hero of Ages in a day or two.

[Lisa’s Take] Mistborn Trilogy Book 1 (Brandon Sanderson)

Praise be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster: the fantasy genre is still good! I have to admit that I was having doubts this year – since Tigana, which I finished in January, I haven’t read a single fantasy (or extended/related genre) novel that really blew my socks off. There have been a few good things, but nothing that really drew me in, made me believe, and felt obligated to deliver the occasional sucker-punch to the gut.

Before I get too far into this review, let me issue a preemptive apology for the number of times that I compare the book to Lies of Locke Lamora – I’ll try to keep the number less than 5, but no hard promises here. Sorry.

So, the world of Misborn. If you’re feeling a little sci-fi, you could call the world post-apocalyptic: some event in the past caused huge volcanic eruptions that turned the sky permanently grey and ensured that ash falls like snow when the wind is blowing right. If you’re leaning in a steam-punk direction, you’ll note that the men and women nobles in the book wear complicated dresses and vests and carry pocket watches. If you’re feeling straight up fantasy, no ifs-ands-or-buts… you won’t be disappointed, either. The world is filled with magic, monsters, and evil overlords. The fantasy-tropes are definitely the strongest, but there are some cool genre-crossover points that spice the world up from the standard fantasy setting.

Next, politics and magic! The political system in Mistborn is pretty standard fantasy-fare: Immortal, God-Like Overlord reigns with an Iron Fist ™. Nobles live a life of luxury, filled with balls and riches and intrigue. The poor folks (called skaa, in this particular case) work as the slaves of the nobles, constantly beaten down and subjugated. As for the magic – Mistborn might have the most interesting magical system I’ve ever read about. I’d love to play a video game based upon this magic system: it’s just that awesome. I’m not going to go into it in this review, as finding out about it in the story is part of the fun, but I will say that it’s awesome, intriguing, and thought provoking.

Right – we have this awesome world and magic system, so what’s the plot? Remember how Lies of Locke Lamora was kind of a fantasy-heist? And how there weren’t really many other books that fell into the same genre? Mistborn definitely qualifies as another fantasy-heist, which is the most wonderful news I’ve ever heard. I could read fantasy-heist novels all day and never get bored, I think. The plot of the story follows a group of thieves and con-men as they plan to… well, I could tell you, but like the magic system I think I’ll let you read for yourself. Suffice to say that much like Lies, the plot doesn’t fall out quite how you expect it to, and there are plenty of twists and roadblocks along the way.

This review is getting long already, but I feel the need to put a word out there about Sanderson’s characterizations. They’re good – kind of standard, but with some of the generic archetypes shaken up a bit to keep them interesting. What Sanderson really excels at are the conversations and interactions between the full crew of characters (think the scene in Lies where they discuss why they steal). The interplay is spot-on, and the camaraderie is genuine and compelling.

The one negative I’ll dish about is that I didn’t always like how the action scenes read. Especially when you got two magical badasses fighting each other, Sanderson would often wax poetic about the fight scene – which is cool, because the magic system allows for that in a big way – but in a lot of cases I felt like he had a really clear picture of every movement and action that was supposed to occur in the scene, but when he described it I was missing something, or all the pieces didn’t fit together. It was a small thing, but I figured I have to mention something critical in this praise-fest if I’m to maintain any credibility.

One final note on the plot: Sanderson managed to put a couple of big old twists into the story that I didn’t see coming, which is always impressive. There was perhaps one item that I think might be a little plot hole, but I’m reading the book annotations now (which he has on his website, along with deleted/revised chapters – so cool!) and I’ll see if they clear up the problem. I do appreciate a story that manages to pull the wool over my eyes. Also, I managed to keep to my promise of mentioning Lies of Locke Lamora fewer than 5 times in this review, but let me be clear on one thing: while the genre and level of awesomeness in Mistborn are similar to Lies, they are very different books, especially in the scope of implications and world. Don’t let my comparisons make you think that they are in any way clones.

I finished Mistborn around 2:00 on Sunday afternoon. By 4:00 I had gone to the bookstore and bought the sequel, and I chewed out 100 pages of it amid my other Sunday evening festivities. This is the first time in a while that I immediately picked up Book 2 in a trilogy without needing a breather – I very much hope that the rest of the trilogy delivers.

The bottom line: get this book. Read it now. I was late to the party on this one, but it’s definitely a staple of new fantasy releases that you need to read. Is my recommendation resounding enough?

[Lisa’s Take] Hand of Isis (Jo Graham)

Last year two brand new authors each released their first book. Jo Graham’s Black Ships and Jonathan Barnes’ The Somnambulist both blew me away and made it solidly onto my “top 5 books of 2008” list, along with two other first time authors (Galen M. Beckett and J. M. McDermott, if you’re curious). Within the last couple of months, Graham and Barnes each released a second novel – you can imagine my surprise and delight, both at the quick turnaround and that so many great new authors were succeeding.

I tore through Barnes’ new book in a day. I was a little disappointed – it was ok, but not great. I’m no good at delayed gratification, so I turned immediately to Graham’s new release, Hand of Isis, hoping author #2 could fix me up. Sadly I ended up being doubly disappointed: I’m now 0-2 on second books by promising new authors this year.

Hand of Isis is a re-telling of Cleopatra’s life story from the perspective of one of her handmaidens (though handmaiden is a bit misleading, given the strength and power that said sidekick wields). While it has some vague ties back to Graham’s first book (implications of characters reborn, old souls, and repeated destinies) it stands on its own as a story. There is a lot of good to be said about the book – the descriptions and portrayal of the world are absolutely lush, and the amount of research Graham put into this book might be even more impressive than the research she did for Black Ships. The character relationships were strong and poignant, and her interweaving of magic and gods with the established belief system of the time was very impressive.

Now for the less good bits. The most compelling part of Black Ships was Graham’s strong characterizations. You really got to know all of her main characters at a very deep and emotional level – thus why I ended up sobbing over the last chapter at lunch time. However, in Hand of Isis the characters weren’t as solid – I’m not positive what caused this problem, but I think in part it had to do with the idea that the main characters were reborn versions of the main players in Black Ships. I didn’t remember their quirks and defining features well enough to project them onto their reborn counterparts, and Graham didn’t spend time re-developing them. As a result – no big emotional connection.

The second problem I encountered was in the book’s pacing. The first third of the book was excellent and moved along very swiftly. The last third also was filled with action and major plot points that kept me reading. The middle third, however, dragged horribly. While Graham excels at relationships and world building, she really fell down on the political aspects, and the middle of the book read like a litany of politically-based, distant actions. It made for a very underwhelming middle of the book, and did a lot to lessen my overall opinion of the story. If I’d gone into the final section less grumpy, I imagine my review for Hand of Isis would be much more glowing.

This third item might be me feeling touchy, but I feel like Hand of Isis seemed a little “romance novel” in sections. I’ve seen at least one other author go from “promising new fantasy author” to “relegated to the romance section” and I’d hate for Graham to head that direction. That said, I did very much approve of her portrayal of sexuality and love, in all of it’s not-quite-standard forms. I know it sounds like a weird dichotomy to say that I liked her approach to sexuality but that some of the relationships seemed like a romance novel… but there it is. I honestly can’t think of a good way to clarify.

Finally, I touched upon a similar idea in my review of The Domino Men, but I think the world in Cleopatra was a little too “real” for me. In Black Ships I wasn’t at all familiar with the historical period Graham based her story in, so it felt to me like straight up fantasy. It’s pretty much impossible not to know a bit about ancient Egypt and the world of Cleopatra, though, so Hand of Isis really felt like historical fantasy, rather than “fantasy” fantasy… which always decreases my enjoyment a bit. Entirely a personal bias, and not at all the author’s fault.

So all in all Hand of Isis was fairly balanced between things I liked and things that were gripes, but my high expectations meant that I had further to fall from the disappointments. Unless you’re particularly a fan of Jo Graham, I’d say skip Hand of Isis and just read Black Ships – the latter of which I do highly recommend. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on Jo Graham’s work and I’ll no doubt be excited when she releases her next book, in hopes that it will make it up to the level of her first release.

[Lisa's Take] The Domino Men - Jonathan Barnes

The Somnambulist was one of the top 5 books I read last year, so you can imagine my excitement when JD came home with a copy of Barnes' new book, The Domino Men. He sent me a picture of it when he found it in the book store - as I hadn't even known Barnes was working on a new book, you can imagine the sort of thrilled noise I made.

Anyway, I think JD did a fine job describing the gist of The Domino Men in his review, so I'll cut straight to the chase.

Domino Men was good, but not great - not even in the same league as The Somnambulist, though to say so is definitely rooted in my own bias against "real world" settings. Unlike the Victorian and slightly Steam Punk setting of The Somnambulist, Barnes' latest endeavor is set in the same world, but modern day. Maybe it's just not "fantasy" enough for me, but whenever too much realism sneaks into my books my opinion immediately turns south.

The book also didn't seem as nuanced as I would have hoped - as JD mentioned, there was much less an air of mystery. Most of the plot was predictable and I called nearly all the major twists. I wasn't a huge fan of most of the characters, and though they were constantly suggested to be great schemers and mad geniuses, these aspirations were only thinly realized in the plot. I will admit that I made a decided sound of glee when The Domino Men came on screen (on page?) but few of the other players elicited such a response.

That said, I finished The Domino Men in one day (admittedly a day where I wasn't feeling great, so I did nothing but sit about and read all evening). Barnes' best feature as an author is his ability to write a damn good narrator - much like in The Somnambulist, my favorite character was the snarky, acidic narrative voice that starts breaking into the main character's accounting a few chapters into the book.

This powerful and entertaining voice coupled with Barnes' ability to keep a plot racing meant that while The Domino Men wasn't as good as its predecessor and wasn't quite my cup of tea... I very much enjoyed it. I'm thrilled that Barnes' fist novel was successful enough to merit a second, and I look forward to his future work (and hopefully work with a less futuristic setting).

[Lisa’s Take] (Song of Isaak Book 1) Lamentation – Ken Scholes

I’ve felt a little “meh” about the last few books I read, so I was looking for something really stellar to get me out of my funk. Based solely on the recommendation of Jeff over at Fantasy Book Reviews I decided to pick up Lamentation. No questions, no research – I didn’t even read the jacket flap, just picked it up and added it to the stack.

Granted that didn’t stop JD from reading the jacket flap, and then he almost talked me out of buying the book. I know better than to put any stock in jacket-flap descriptions, but with text like the following I was almost scared off by the level of triteness packed into a few sentences:

An ancient weapon has completely destroyed the city of Windwir. From many miles away, Rudolfo, Lord of the Nine Forest Houses, sees the horrifying column of smoke rising. He knows that war is coming to the Named Lands. Nearer to the Devastation, a young apprentice is the only survivor of the city – he sat waiting for his father outside the walls, and was transformed as he watched everyone he knew die in an instant. Soon all the Kingdoms of the Named Lands will be at each others' throats, as alliances are challenged and hidden plots are uncovered.

I mean… wow. Do you get more hackneyed than that? Named Lands. Kingdoms at war. Ancient weapon. Orphaned Apprentice. Hidden plots. Check! We’ve hit all of the standard fantasy tropes with nothing that sounds even slightly original. It didn’t help that when I took the dust-cover off the book was kind of a mauve-ish-pink color, so coupled with the title it kind of looked like I was reading a romance novel. Still, in spite of JD’s skepticism I held my ground and started Lamentation as soon as I got home.

I’m very pleased that I did. I won’t say that Lamentation blew my socks off – it didn’t bowl me over like Last Dragon or delightfully surprise me like The Magicians and Mrs. Quent – but it did prove to be far less trite than the description suggested, and definitely worth the read. The world is an original combination of fantasy mishmashed with sci-fi and a touch of steampunk, and the characters a fantastic balance of vibrant and subtle. I found myself instantly attached to all of the major POV characters, though I’ll admit that Scholes did touch on my pet peeve of establishing X-number of POVs then throwing in a random +1 from time to time. I certainly don’t mind prologues or epilogues that diverge from POVs, but random chapters thrown in irk me, as it really breaks off the close relationship and flow that sucks you into the main POVs. Very minor gripe, and I can see why he felt the need to switch it up to cover all the major action.

In addition to the great characterization, I loved how evocative Scholes’ prose was. While he didn't use any particularly exciting words or flowing sentence structure that characterizes some of my favorite books, he still managed to draw me in with his descriptions. Scholes created a very rich world of sights and smells and tastes - so rich that I’ve been on a stint of drinking sweet chilled white wines (both while reading Lamentation and well afterwards) because of his meal descriptions. Oh, and did you know that girls’ breath always smells like apples? Sorry – random silly thing that caught my attention and I latched onto it. Twice in the book Scholes described women’s breath as apple-scented, and it struck me as chuckle-worthy.

Perhaps the thing I appreciated most about Lamentation was the fact that Scholes didn’t insult his readers’ intelligence. When it said “Hidden Plots” it really meant it, and Scholes doesn’t feel the need to over-explain or treat you like a 4-year-old. He tells the story with all its intricacies, and you’d damn well better be paying attention if you want to put it all together. I appreciated the chance to engage my brain.

I ended lamentation with a renewed purpose when it comes to completely disregarding jacket descriptions, and a new appreciation for blindly following the recommendations of other geeky fantasy bloggers. Though there were a few first-time-author hiccoughs, Lamentation was still more evocative and intriguing than most of the other fantasy novels I’ve read this year. I’m definitely looking forward to finishing the rest of the series.