Joel Adamson
Full of fun stories and some useful data, but the writing is amateurish and full of cliches.
People spend a lot of time saying Stephen King isn't just a horror writer. This book is pure horror. Scary, gory, creepy, altogether a work of terror. It might give you nightmares. Pretty plot-heavy for King, but still his kind of story.
Psychological fantasy
This is the kind of fantasy writing that mature fans of the genre (i.e. myself) are always searching for. I don't know what it is that makes World Fantasy Convention and major publishers shy away from stories about people with swords going on quests. Tim Akers' new novella is both a heroic tale of a man on a mission and of a man with a deep spiritual and psychological need. It's gripping and hard to put down, just like Servant of a Pale Sword, but goes deeper into mystical territory than its predecessor.
I've been trying to find the first book of this series for more than a decade. After seeing Modesitt's books in libraries, used bookstores, featured at B&N, and in the bargain bin at Staples (true story). He's written a ton, but seems absent from Booktube or any other discussion of the history of fantasy. People mention Terry Brooks, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, but not L.E. Modesitt. Weird. Especially because he's still alive and still producing work regularly. There must be something wrong with his books...
Of course not. This book is great. It follows a young man with burgeoning power, prone to boredom, who's being shifted around by the authority figures in his life. Given his last choice, he ends up in a magic school with similar youth. There's some making out, and then he and the rest are exiled from their home island. Fantasy hijinx ensue.
This is a medium-length story, spanning a few years, in which our main character grows up and faces some serious challenges. The narrator is humorous, self-deprecating, and intelligent. And it's a good old fantasy coming of age tale. Nothing wrong with it unless you're in the “I hate farmboys” camp. But if you are, why not give it a chance?
An elegant, suspenseful book. I loved it and recommend it. Just don't expect to know what's really going on at any stage of the story.
Argh. I hate it when this happens. This book has a really cool concept, a war between neighboring empires with weapons at the cusp of modernity. And sentence-by-sentence the writing is excellent. It's smooth, easy to read, hard to put down. I was really into it.
Until about halfway through when the author made some very questionable choices that make the characters look like stupid assholes. I just couldn't buy in at that point. I'm all in favor of the “stupid teenager” plot (as in The Eye of the World), but these characters aren't teenagers and they're not stupid or naive until they start acting stupid and naive. I was kind of interested in what was going to happen, but not when considering that I only wanted to see how the characters were going to deal with the implications of their completely stupid decisions. I just couldn't read another 350 pages of that.
People of the Wolf is a masterpiece; People of the Sea is great: People of the Moon still haunts me. The Gears are great writers and this disappointing book won't change that.
People of the Fire follows the carrier of the Wolf bundle, the remains of Wolf Dreamer's companion from the old world. The inhabitants of the new world are facing a drought and the extinction of their large prey. A rivalry develops between two dreamers over the Wolf bundle, the efforts of Wolf Dreamer and the bundle itself.
Although this book has a heart-rending sequence that had me saying “no no no!” it rapidly devolved and dragged on to the point where I just wanted to finish it but didn't really want to pick it up. The writing is not up to the standard of the Gears' other work: the characters are shallow, events are poorly set up, and the point of view is all mixed up. The POV keeps coming in to characters who are mere observers. In the last third of the book, a character takes a major role that is never fully justified. Although they were clearly trying to do something related to gender, it feels like they were just being trendy here (for the early nineties). There are a couple characters who are gender-atypical, but they don't really show it, they just talk about it. I won't be keeping this one.
An interesting relic of the “men ruin everything” mentality that have us The Mists of Avalon, Goddesses in Every Woman, Dances with Wolves, and The Wheel of Time, this dystopian novel has an interesting main character in an interesting situation. It kind of drags in places, and most of the other characters aren't particularly deep although they try to be.
A much better written and overall more interesting and less predictable exponent of this kind of dystopian fiction is The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri Tepper. That will always be my favorite dystopian novel if not my favorite novel of all time.
This book, although fine to read, serves even better to document the hysteria that left wing authors propagated in the eighties. I hate to put it that way, because (a) I generally don't care about author politics UNLESS it's totally transparent in the work and (b) it's clear that David Brin is a fine writer and deserves his place in the pantheon of 80s-90s futurists. But the bad guys in this book are “survivalists.” It's just funny to see how seriously some people took things.
So all in all, pretty good but not great.
An excellent book on a historically interesting time period. Way better than Clan of the Cave Bear.
I'd been waiting to read this since I was a kid of about 11, and now I'm 38 and I've finally read it. Isn't that funny?
This book shows Stephen King to be more than the “master of horror,” as this book goes way beyond a simple monster tale, but a rich fantasy in a complex, familiar and yet puzzling world. It is a tale of the power of children, their beliefs, their bravery and so much more, as the cast of characters get to the root of the evil below their town in Maine. This book is told in an omniscient voice that has a classic monster story sound, but goes deep into the characters' lives. As this book can be enjoyed on so many levels, I can't not recommend it. Yes, it's long, but every page is filled with anticipation.
Very hard to put down; read in less than a day. It's nice to read something that is both entirely historically plausible and a good coming-of-age story. Even better when it's not just a chance for the author to show off her historical knowledge and point out all the nifty things she learned in her research. Instead this is an authoritative author who uses her knowledge of the time period to craft a good plot and turn historical footnotes into charming, living characters.
Let me be a little more clear about that: this is one of the best, if not the best, pieces of Anglo-Saxon historical fiction out there. I like it way better than The Last Kingdom.
I swear, every time I think I'm not going to give a DG book a high rating, he pulls out an ending that just floors me. This is one of those Gemmell books that is uneven, containing some of his flattest, first-draft-like writing, but also some of his best. Works like White Wolf, Morningstar, and the Troy series are far more good all-around, but this is still a David Gemmell book. The characters have feelings, damn it. An even 3 stars, even if it's a bit far-fetched at times.
Wow. Just wow. It's going to take me a few days to come up with what to say about this series. It's totally brilliant.
Perhaps it's schadenfreude, or simple voyeurism, but only Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood can make unlikeable characters so engaging. McEwan is also a master at believable immersion in the technical aspects of the characters' world, in a way that myself, a former scientist, is totally engrossed. McEwan nails how scientists think, interact, and the hypocrisies and benefits, habits and mannerisms, as well as the unique demands on the mind and “real lives” of scientists. Reading this book was like being back as a professional scientists. The conversations were realistic, the thoughts and judgments of the characters were completely like the people I've worked with.Back to McEwan's unique skills as a writer: Solar features an overweight Nobel Prize winner who spends his time labeled as a scientist, lending the weight of his laureate-hood to “important” projects, the most keen being climate change. Told in three phases, the story revolves around the dissolution of Michael Beard's fifth and final marriage, then around his attempts to build on the tragedy that ended it, and finally how he comes very close to realizing the dreams laid out in the first section. Beard is not a good person. He has apparently won a prize not just for physics, but for denial, all the way to the end of the book. It snuck up on me as a reader, but whereas in the beginning Beard seems like kind of an endearing but hypocritical character, by the end his denial is so clear I expected him to react the way he did. And all of it is told in a perfectly sarcastic, almost slapstick voice. This isn't [b:Atonement 6867 Atonement Ian McEwan https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320449708s/6867.jpg 2307233] at all, and the voice fits the story. This book is a good rebuttal to anyone who thinks that characters have to be likeable. They don't, and plenty of authors prove otherwise.Note to [a:Douglas Adams 4 Douglas Adams https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1189120061p2/4.jpg] fans: there is a scene in this book that looks entirely like a rip-off of [b:So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish 6091075 So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4) Douglas Adams https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327873354s/6091075.jpg 3078120], and I kinda freaked out when I read it. I was about ready to lose faith in McEwan, and strike him from my list of favorite authors, but keep reading! It plays into the story well, and even changed my opinion of Adams himself.
This is a nice book, and well-written in a paragraph-by-paragraph sense. It is sort of a pseudo-historical fiction, connecting the legend of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok with the rise of Alfred the Great. The authors do so by introducing an ingenious character who gets into an arms race with the Ragnarssons.
It's a neat idea, but the story doesn't really “pop,” and it is somewhat old-fashioned. It came out in 1990 (as far as I could tell), but the way the authors handle point of view and story progression makes it feel like it could have come out in 1960. No disrespect to 1960, but the way point of view was handled was often confusing, even irritating. This is a story that could have really been made more interesting by female perspectives, instead of the men just grunting and grumbling and wondering what was going on with the women who were pivotal to the plot. Ultimately, though, the plot is somewhat unclear, particularly because the book just goes on too long. I found it quite hard to finish.
An excellent book for any level of British history buff. The classic stories of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland are recounted for neophytes, and done well to please the aficionados. The motivation for the book is explained in the early chapters in terms of Victorian popularity of Saxon racial identity in England's ruling classes. Also woven throughout is the story of how Sykes and his team collected their data and excellent explanations of what the DNA data means. I'm not just a British history guy, I used to be a biologist, so I can attest that from both angles, this is a great book.
I normally wouldn't review a book I didn't finish, but I am so disappointed with this one I thought it worth commenting. This second book in The Demon Cycle has a confusing structure, accentuates the crass culture of the first book, and does not confront the storytelling problems inherent in the series. I am interested to see what [a:Peter V. Brett 1405152 Peter V. Brett https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1469679887p2/1405152.jpg] does next. He's clearly a good writer, and I think now that he's done with The Demon Cycle he can do something much better.[b:The Warded Man 3428935 The Warded Man (Demon Cycle, #1) Peter V. Brett https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1354571949s/3428935.jpg 6589794] was a fun book to read: I really couldn't put it down, despite some basic storytelling problems it was still a fun adventure and I recommend it. Book 1 of The Demon Cycle tells the maturation story of three young people who have important skills in humanity's fight against hideous demons that stalk the night and threaten to end the world. They come together at the end for a series of climactic battles that change how they live their lives and their place in the world. The Desert Spear, strangely, begins another coming-of-age story in a completely different culture only peripherally experienced in The Warded Man. The first third of this book is really a different story with its own characters and own moral problems (more on that later) that barely touches the material in the first book. I found this really confusing: I wanted to know what was going on with Leesha, Arlen, and Rojer Halfgrip and I had to get through two hundred pages of story about repugnant people I wasn't really interested in. This section also jumps back and forth in time, and I couldn't tell what I was reading about half the time. Then after we catch up with the timeline we jump right back in and pick up where we left off at the end of The Warded Man. I was shaking my head wondering why we just didn't start there.I couldn't keep reading about these completely crass people and their crass dialogue. It was hard. The characters in both cultures are constantly talking about peoples' bodily functions, especially menstruation, and other private stuff like no one I've ever heard in real life. It was understandable in the first book, but in this one it gets way out of hand. I realized at some point that if people actually talked like this they would be smacking each other for getting into everybody's private business: oh wait, they do, but people keep doing it anyway. I don't know if the author was going for something like Game of Thrones, but it was not just unbelievable. It was unreadable. It was gross. As I said, I want to see what Mr. Brett does next, because I think he's a much better writer than this book (which was written ten years ago).The final problem I have, which doesn't even hint at getting solved is that no one is on the side of the demons. We know nothing about the demons, they have no personality (except the rock demon One Arm), no objective, no organization. There is a “demon prince” but I don't see this as a solution to the larger problem that it's just people fighting demons. Think of every great epic and there's always internal strife to the point that someone is actively helping the other side (e.g. Darkfriends in The Wheel of Time). No one's helping the demons. No one wants the demons to succeed (the tenders say the demons are a plague, but that doesn't mean they want the demons to win). There's internal strife, but it has nothing to do with the demons. As I said about The Warded Man, this means that there's no end point. There's just demons and demons and demons. If I kept reading, perhaps this problem would get resolved, but in my current critical book, it should be stated at the beginning how the characters could solve the general problem. The demons are, as of my reading, just a force of nature and only a war of attrition could get rid of them. I would keep reading if the other problems weren't so glaring: I don't want to wade through hundreds of pages of crass language and people having sex like striking a match just for the hint that the problem might be solvable. It should be there on page 1.
If you've sampled some of Rand's other fiction, or maybe have heard of this book, but don't know much about it, this is a short story, more of a novelette than a novel. Written in an intentionally surrealistic style, this is a portrait of a dystopia, a reductio ad absurdum of collectivism.
And it's great. I don't think you need me to tell you that. This book ought to be talked about along with Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, but for some reason it isn't. It's a classic. Read it. But read it for what it is. Don't expect a novel. It's short.
This novel covers the origins of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, with a central role played by Marian. That being said, the unconventional way the author handles point of view ensures we get inside the heads of all the usual RH characters. Everyone is here (the Sheriff of Nottingham, Sir Guy, Will Scarlet, Little John, Friar Tuck, and so on) plus a few characters of Roberson's creation. Each POV gets at most a page and a half before switching. The other thing that's a bit unconventional is that there are no gaps in time. It's a straight shot from the feast welcoming Robin home to the end.
3.5 stars. This is an interesting setting, especially from a social and gender perspective, as well as being set in the far future, but it's essentially an Ottoman/medieval desert setting. Thirty million years in the future, descendants of Slavic refugees from Earth live in a city called Basilica on the planet Harmony. Women run the place, at least from a spiritual perspective, and have control of marriages and the raising of children. There's an interesting set of rituals around sex and marriage. The main character Nafai spends an awful lot of time thinking about getting a girlfriend, in a typical example of Card's excellent characterization. The planet is watched over by a computer mind called The Oversoul, which the main character and his brother discover is responsible for keeping Harmony's citizens from developing weapons of war (i.e. they have weapons for personal defense). The Oversoul is breaking down, however, losing its ability to prevent war.
So it's a cool setup, and it's as well written as any other OSC book. The reason it's not 4 stars is that as interesting as the setting is, it's not quite interesting enough or distinctive enough to get me to read the next book (there are 5). Despite the hugeness of the story idea, it just doesn't feel like a big deal the way Hyperion or other books from this era do. Not bad, just not that compelling.
Short version: richly-imagined world, historically important in modern fantasy, and mostly skilled prose, though mixed and sometimes hard to follow.
Black Sun Rising is a book I have looked forward to reading for years, as it's often found on library shelves and lists of influential or favorite books. The tipping point came when I found the third book of a different trilogy at a local thrift store. C.S. Friedman's skill was evident from the first word and I found myself stuck, ignoring my kids. Black Sun Rising, likewise, is engaging and drew me in with its inventive and original world. The author is not tentative about revealing the nature of the world: this is a future world colonized by spacefaring humans, and the relationship to earth is clear from the very beginning, in the prologue. You're clearly dealing with earth cultures and remnants from Earth on a world that works differently, right on page 1.
The world of Erna was the last ditch point for the colonists and despite extensive testing, they had to settle the habitable, but quite un-earthlike planet. An unseen elemental force called fae alters the laws of physics and feeds off human psychic energy (careful there: this is not faerie, fairy, faery, fair-folk, etc; it's a completely different sort of thing). Dealing with the fae has led to not just difficulty settling, but a host of magical beings: demons, adepts, and sorcerors. It has also kicked the evolution of the rakh, the planetary natives into high gear, since invasion of humans seeded their evolution into an intelligent life form.
Our hero is warrior-sorceror-priest Damien Vryce, who comes to town to crack down on unorthodoxy in his church, and befriends Ciani, an adept and loremaster. Damien gets to know the local situation well, especially the lore of The Hunter, a rogue adept who tortures women, chasing them through a local forest. Everything goes haywire when Ciani is attacked and loses her adept powers and much of her memory. Damien, Ciani's friend Senzei, and Ciani herself set off after her attacker, in the hope that killing the assailant will restore Ciani's identity. They meet Gerald Tarrant, a cold-skinned adept with extraordinary powers, and there is rivalry between Damien and Tarrant for the rest of the book.
That's the setup, in about 120 pages, and it was almost inadequate to maintain reading this nearly 600 page book. I read the whole thing, and I enjoyed it, but it was hard to get to sometimes.
The motivation seemed poor and I was often puzzled by the intensity the author told me the characters had. I was often thinking “They're bleeding and starving and killing all these people for revenge? To do something that might not work? Or is it something else?” The prose was mostly good, but was vague in some parts, to the point where I sometimes just couldn't tell what was happening. The inventiveness of the world outweighs this, but makes it harder to keep momentum than with Melanie Rawn or Robert Jordan. Behind it all, Friedman is a sincere, honest author who doesn't resort to cheesiness, take shortcuts, or lapse into sentimentality. There are genuine well-built feelings here with genuine, believable adult characters, even if they are not clearly motivated.
Overall, this is an inventive and interesting book, even if the writing is not entirely consistent. I really look forward to reading the Magister Trilogy.