Michael Cummings
I've been on a King run of late, I admit, but this was the one I appreciated the most. A spiritual successor to books like Firestarter, and a reminder that sometimes King really knocks it out of the park and past the parking lot.
Imagine everyone woke up one day to discover that magic was very much real again. As with so much in our modern life, the first reaction of the government would be to regulate it, to determine what the best uses of that magic was for the welfare of the nation - and what magics would be considered safe, and what magics would be prohibited.
Welcome to the world of Shadow Ops: Control Point. Oscar Britton is your average enlisted grunt, bagging and tagging people that have manifested prohibited, or “Probe” talents, keeping America safe from one latent to probe at a time. What happens when this good guy suddenly finds himself marked a probe as his latent magic power manifests itself unexpectedly in a discipline that is forbidden (though outside his control)?
He runs.
As a concept, I think Cole has a good formula here. Magic meets military fantasy in a contemporary landscape? What's not to love in this comic book like milieu that is so reminiscent of Marvel and DC copyrights?
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and its in the execution that we find the lumps. The world building is as solid as needed - why magic suddenly exists is as much of a mystery to the characters as to us, and that's fine. The fact that Cole chose to set this in our modern world relieves the burden of painting an extremely rich picture to convince us with. We already know the setting, which leaves us with only the unknowns to deal with - the characters and the magic. With the world so easily established, its really in the strength of the characters and the magic they wield that we rely on to entertain us.
For the magic, its rather simple and easy to grasp. You either come up with magic at some point in your life, or you don't. If you do, its in one of a few defined talents, most of which seem to be centered around control of the Greek elementals - water, fire, air, earth, and spirit (life, death, etc.). The prohibited magics are a little less well defined, but at least we don't have mixed talents (that we know of?). There doesn't seem to be any penalty to using the magic (weakness, inflammation, etc.), but it also isn't easily or quickly mastered. Simple and sweet and easy to follow once you understand the terminology that Cole bandies around.
But the characters, like with any summer eye candy, is where I got hung up with in this novel. Even in the context of the story, Oscar's waffling at whether he's a team player or being beaten down was annoyingly inconsistent. Either track would have been fine, but I needed something to rally behind, and I didn't get that from Oscar. I found many of the other characters in the book equally baffling, leaving me wanting. This is probably just hindsight, but it seemed that there were chapters during the span of which Oscar would change his mind on whether he was committed to the cause, to and fro, multiple times.
So, great concept, and perfect if you have an afternoon or two to kill and want a little magic versus assault chopper action. Myke's a really nice guy, so I have high hopes that the sequel will cast off the training wheels that were so evident in this first novel.
Repeats a lot of advice others give (only sub to pro markets, keep on subbing, etc.), but with a mix of some fresh perspective and a real kick in the pants attitude, a solid motivational book for short story writers, especially in SF/F/H genres (Smith doesn't exclude others, but he has an obvious preference/history). Five stars for the kick, I needed that.
Really 3.5 stars, but I chose to round down. My biggest issue with this freshman novel by Brooks is that he hadn't learned to show instead of telling yet. I admit, I wasn't surprised by the heavy borrows from Tolkien, but (and this is why I marked it spoilerly) I can't help but wonder if Goodkind didn't in turn borrow heavily from Brooks with his Sword of Truth. Either that or the Sword of Shannara gets around.
As with the previous three volumes, I feel like Brooks spends too much time in the first half of the book just telling us things. It's not until the midpoint that he begins to show and use dialog more effectively.
Abaddon's Gate welcomes back James Holden and his motley crew in the third volume of the Expanse. At the end of Caliban's War the alien artifact that wreaked havoc emerged from the cloud cover of Venus, it's construction work complete. A giant ring is ejected into the outer solar system, where came to a rest, waiting.
The ring is a gateway, a portal to someplace else. Little is known about the other side, but our friend Miller is back from the dead again to urge Holden to take action. Readers familiar with the Expanse know that wherever Holden is, there is usually conflict. Earth, Mars, and the PTO are all racing to the ring, as much to make sure no one else can stake a claim as to find out what's on the other side of the ring.
And so our story begins.
The first two books reminded us that space opera didn't have to span a galaxy, that the story could be just as epic confined to our own heliosphere. Abaddon's Gate takes us back to the realm of the classic space opera, replete with the Big Dumb Object, bizarre changes in the laws of physics, and a glimpse at an ancient, cosmos spanning civilization.
In other words, pure awesome fun.
Working with both a few regulars and a new fresh cast of character perspectives, Abaddon's Gate is as much about what we find on the other side of the ring as what we bring through with us. Sometimes the greatest threat to humanity is humanity itself.
My copy of ‘Leviathan Wakes' came as a free addendum to Abraham's ‘The Dragon Path.' When I finished Path, I needed a break from the story building technique's of Abraham's brain, so I set it aside.
What a mistake.
It took me a few tries to get past the initial chapters of the book, which cost it a star. The book starts with a great, tone setting hook, then switches POV immediately to a beat cop on an asteroid. Mwah? Alas, if I had just pushed past this POV switcheroo and moved ahead on my first try, I would have recovered. Miller's story took me a little while to become invested in (Holden's, on the other hand, I was taken with immediately), but I did come around. The book is laid out as an alternating POV (and worldview) between Miller, a beat cop in the Belt, and Holden, captain of a crew from a water hauler. Set in mid future - not tomorrow, but also not at a point where we're roaming free among the stars - ‘Leviathan Wakes' is modern space opera, pure and simple.
Should you read it? Maybe. But only if you are the kind of space opera reader that likes alien phages, cloaked ships, asteroid hurtling, fate of the human race in the balance kind of stories. Otherwise, nah, leave it for the folks that do.
When I reviewed Leviathan Wakes, I mentioned that I sat on that book for too long and was kicking myself for it. This time, I didn't make that mistake, and now I have to live with the repercussions - waiting another year for the third volume.
Readers of Leviathan Wakes will be able to step into the pages of this book without pause. The writing duo that makes up James S.A. Corey took an approach I have to respect - there's no backstory, no summation of the previous novel, not even an awkward chapter of “well, you remember when we did this thing just happened a day ago for us but was up to a year ago for the reader?” It also means that the 600+ pages of this book are written with the intent of making this story move forward.
Book two begins with the tensions between Mars and Earth still high. On the breadbasket and nursery of the outer Solar System, Ganymede, the tensions is broken with an attack by a creature that is very reminiscent of Eros. Is this a sign that the protovirus has spread out from Venus, or is this another example of greed gone wrong?
While Leviathan Wakes was well balanced between Holden and Miller, this second book is more wholly Holden's story. There are four other characters with POV time, but Holden is a solid 30% of the book, and like before, he doesn't always know when to keep his mouth shut - which is probably why we like him. He's the cocky know it all who's too busy trying to do the right thing to notice when he's totally messing it all up. Our new cast members, besides the always lovable band of rogues that is the crew of the Rocinante, include a Martian gunnery sergeant, an Earther politician, and a botanist from Ganymede, Pax.
Which, sadly, is why I reluctantly did not give this a full five stars. The story of Caliban's War begins and centers around the disappearance of Pax's daughter, Mei, which as far as plot devices go is a great one. I know as a father I wouldn't let a little thing like interplanetary hostilities or marauding alien viruses get in my way if one of my girl's was kidnapped. What bothered me, as readers of Leviathan Wakes will understand, is that this is the second time in a row we've used the missing daughter gambit to justify our adventure. I have nothing but respect for the collective brains that made this book, I just wish that they had done something a little different this time. Yes, without getting spoilerly, the plot device works, probably even better than it did it in the first book. It makes sense of what we learn and it fits - its just too bad we've done this before.
Is there fighting? Of course!
Are there starships on fire off the shoulders of Orion? Sort of, if by Orion you mean Jupiter.
Is it space opera? You bet. Spaceships whiz and the fate of worlds - and humanity - can be seen in the balance. If that's your thing, then there's no good excuse for why you aren't reading the Expanse series with me.
Its no small talent to find yourself sympathizing with a character that, when you take a step back, you know is a horrible example of humanity. The Dragon's Path delivered as an introduction to a new epic, though the entire 500+ page book felt more like the prelude to the story rather than the first chapter. If Abraham delivers with book two, that won't be a problem, but if not, well - that's why I gave it three stars. It was a fun read, but except for one plot line I spent most of the book wondering when it would pick up.
Where to begin with the second volume of the Dagger and the Coin? This is still the story of a brazen girl turned banker and a bookworm too afraid to know when to stop. It's still the story of a mercenary and an old defunct priest as they head out to deal with a goddess whose priests have spiders for blood.
But it's also so much more.
The second volume is no place to start the series, but it is definitely a good place to continue it. Some of the elements are almost reminiscent of Martin's Ice and Fire series - empire in turmoil, dragons, and (SPOILER - can't tell you that bit). The execution, though, is completely different, and where Martin draws a long, deep story out, Abraham punches you in the stomach runs away laughing maniacally.
It's books like this that make Daniel Abraham such a force to be reckoned with in the fantasy genre. I read this book on an e-reader, and more than once I found myself flailing with my free hand to find a bookmark before I remembered it would do me no good. The King's Blood is an engrossing novel that seems slow to suck you in at first, then races all the way to the finish line.
A bold, galaxy sweeping story where you're even willing to overlook how central humanity can be to Solving Everything(tm) - if only it wasn't underwhelmed by poor writing and execution. To be fair, I have the same opinion of other popular space operatic series, bringing to question my tastes and opinions, but between the constant info dump and poor writing technique, I was left bored and unintrigued for most of the book.
For all the fantasy and short fiction I read, I rarely read fantasy short fiction. The Shattered Shields anthology aptly filled this void in my reading, bringing together both familiar and unfamiliar authors. Like any collection of short fiction, not all of the story worked for me. The ones that did resonate, though, were especially astounding. Even considering myself well read, I was surprised at how many of the authors and worlds on display were new to me.
I can't give a rundown of every story in the collection, but here are some of my favorites.
Starlight and Ash - David Farland. I've heard much about Farland over the years, but this was actually my first Farland story. While new to the world, I had no trouble diving in and immersing myself in his world.
The Fixed Stars - Seanan McGuire. There's something about the Celtic pantheon that has always seemed both exotic and familiar, and this story was no different.
Keeper of Names - Larry Correia. I've read some of Correia's Monster Hunter books, but this was the first time I've seen him write fantasy. The story was a little predictable, but still a fun read.
Words of Power - Wendy Wagner. This story could have led the collection in my opinion. I'd certainly read a full length novelization by Ms. Wagner. A mashup World War 1 and golems set in an alternate history, this was a really great story.
Hoofsore and Weary - Cat Rambo. Come on, Cat Rambo says it all. This story of centaurs on the march was a great story and star in this collection.
Vengeance - Robin Wayne Bailey. Woof - magic and death gods tickle a spot in this story. For a short story, it packs an amazing punch in a short amount of space.
There are of course more stories than these, including a Glen Cook Black Company story (Bone Candy). On average, the successes in this anthology were in the majority, making this a worthy read. The stories were consistently on theme, something you don't always see these days, while interpretations of that theme were varied enough to keep the stories fresh most of the time.
Special thanks to NetGalley and Baen books for the opportunity to read this book.
Tough call with this one - I actually wavered between 3 and 4 stars. It's good, not always great, but good. I think it would be more fair to say it was inspired by Wells' Time Machine than as a direct reboot, but with honest focus that was more on the character and his place in a far future society than on the technology that got him there (a mistake too often made). There is rarely room to doubt in this novel as to which direction the lead character is going to jump, a fact that makes the story comfortable and familiar and occasionally predictable. Having read through most of the Riyria books, I know from experience the author takes some time to ramp to full throttle, which is I think the what left this book a bit lacking. Without the breadth of pages to gain full speed, the book fell a little short for me.
I'd still be happy to recommend the book, especially if you were looking for a fun quick read with a faintly science fiction bend.
Readers of Ovid looking for something with a little more sex and magic would do well to dwell in these pages. Like A Guile of Dragons, Wrath-Bearing Tree is a book whose mood implies it is best savored on a stormy summer afternoon, or from the comfort of a stuffed chair on a cold and bleak autumn night.
Continuing the early adventures of Morlock Ambrosius, Wrath-Bearing Tree begins by giving us a taste of life in the kingdom of Kaen and how easy it is for one of the many city gods of this continent to be replaced by an usurper. It stands to reason, then, that when Morlock is thrust into the middle of this, his only way out is to kill a god and return home to the Graith.
But no sooner is he home than he is sent back to Kaen. Something more is going on on that scary continent, and more information is needed about the Two Powers, believed to be behind the fall of many of the city gods of Kaen recently. While readers of A Guile of Dragons will remember the role of the Two Powers in the return of the dragons, this second volume was still approachable as a stand alone novel. Before the novel ends, Morlock and his companion will face warring gods, living machines that grant apotheosis, and a wintry father figure named Merlin driving a sleigh led by eight tiny demons.
Morlock and his companion's journey reads like a medieval travelogue, cataloging the strange customs and unusual creatures and beliefs found along the way. I enjoyed the book, though it was a bit more graphic (NSFW) than expected. Enge again delivers a well written story set in a mythos that is so familiar to us, painted with the elements that have defined the landscape of fantastical stories for centuries, and yet delivered in a fresh and entertaining story.
I won't hold back - this is a train wreck of a book. At first pass, these are the stock characters every GM has dealt into an ongoing campaign, the initial quest as straight forward as they come: rob the ancient tomb, plunder some gold, get the magic sword.
Why read it, then? There's an argument there. You could say its because it's a Michael Bay train wreck, a Wachowski style production. Larger than life explosions, Brandon Frazier as one of the male leads, over the top dungeon crawler.
And then chapter one starts.
The Barrow is a well written tale of gritty fantasy. The biggest problem this book faces, I think, is that if you haven't read the comic it's a prequel to, then there's no way to filter the volume of information being dumped on you. What's important? What's filler? I couldn't tell, and that's a problem. In a sea of gritty fantasy epics, this is certainly dark, more adult than most of its competition. Sadly, it didn't work for me, but it wasn't from a lack of style or ability, so your mileage may vary.
The ARC for this novel was kindly provided to me by Pyr for review.
High Fantasy often faces the criticism that it is a poor reflection of the works that have gone before it, most notably Tolkien. By employing the same basic mythos with a highly Western European (and generally, British) composition, many chide that too much of fantasy falls into this trap and needs to be refreshed with something edgier, or something more original. The end result is generally a poor facsimile that inevitably fails to shine in comparison.
“A Guile of Dragons” is not some mere copy.
Yes, it employs many of the elements that we might quickly label a High Fantasy trope - dwarves, dragons, ancient terrors, and the name Merlin (or at least his son, Morlock). Its important to remember that it is not what elements a writer uses, but how they use them, that brings distinction. Enge does not treat these elements lightly - the history and culture of the dwarves alone are an integral part of this story, hinting at a depth we never see a bottom to. The shortness of the work (@300 pages) is belied by the depth and fullness of the characters that populate it. These are thick characters, populating the pages not because they fill a need but because it is their story to tell.
Set as a prequel for Enge's character, Ambrosius, aka Morlock syr Theorn, “A Guile of Dragons” introduces us to a small cast of recurring characters, each of whom demonstrates a depth and fullness usually reserved for the titular character. Not having read the other books in this milieu proved to not be a problem - as a prequel, it is a well contained volume, beginning with the birth of Morlock, son of Merlin, and the circumstances that place young Morlock in the care of the dwarves of Thrymhaiam to the north. This is also the story of Morlock's first real adventure (other feats are alluded to, but nothing so grand), following a metre and pace that is reminiscent of a classic saga even when the story telling is modern.
For in the Northold, the dwarves find themselves cut off from the Graith of Guardians as a guile of dragons invades, reigniting the Longest War from before the dawn of history. Morlock, a thaen of the Graith, adopted son of the dwarves, trapped between both worlds, faces the failings of each as he is thrust into battling the dragons themselves.
Enge, who's unsecret real world identity is a classics professor, demonstrates that a writer is influenced by the books and life you lead. “A Guile of Dragons” is a worthy epic for any fantasy reader, containing a surprising depth and fullness that is rarely found in so short a book. I cannot say more about this book without spoiling it, so I will just say that I wholly and heartily recommend that it be read.
As readers of epic fantasy, we are spoiled. We've come to expect that anything labeled epic must be epic in all regards. It must require epic feats of strength to carry it; it must be epic in length and effort to read it; it must have an epic length cast. Reading Erin Hoffman's debut novel, “Sword of Fire and Sea,” will be a shock to the system for most epic fantasy readers who haven't experienced fantasy from the recent batch of new to the scene fantasy authors. Hoffman employs an economy of words that is near terse - there are no wasted descriptions, no wasted scenes.
As the blurb from Pyr goes, three generations ago Captain Vidarian Rulorat's great-grandfather gave up an imperial commission to marry a
fire priestess. For love, he unwittingly obligated his descendants to an allegiance with the High Temple of Kara'zul, domain of the fire priestesses. Now Vidarian, the last surviving member of the Rulorat family, struggles to uphold his family's legacy. All of this, of course, is background, and this is about as much as is revealed in the novel itself. You can easily disregard the rest of the back flap's description of the book, because the book quickly changes course more than once as you weave through the story. Hoffman does a great job of keeping you turning those pages, though, so that it isn't until the novel is done and you glance at the back of the cover that you remember to ask yourself, whatever happened with that plot point?
For a time of the year when the northern hemisphere fantasy readers are looking for “beach books,” preferably something shorter than the tomes the likes of Rothfuss and Sanderson are putting out (which are great, but ruin your tan by blocking out the sun as you struggle to hold a thousand page monstrosity up and turn the page), Hoffman's debut will be a fun delight.
My only complaint about the novel, and I'm phrasing this so it isn't a spoiler, is - really? “Correctamundo?” “See you later, alligator?” You've got a lot of explaining to do, Ms. Hoffman :)
Book two of the Aeon's Gate trilogy picks up mere moments after the end of Tome of the Undergates with the intrepid Lenk recording recent events in his journal. The Tome of the Undergates has been recovered, and yet the gates of hell remain closed. Lenk and his five companions set sail to bring the accursed relic away from the demonic reach of Ulbecetonth, the Kraken Queen. But after weeks at sea, tensions amidst the adventurers are rising. Their troubles are only beginning when their ship crashes upon an island made of the bones left behind from a war long dead.
And it appears that bloodthirsty alien warrior women, fanatical beasts from the deep, and heretic-hunting wizards are the least of their concerns. Haunted by their pasts, plagued by their gods, tormented by their own people, and gripped by madness personal and peculiar, their greatest foes may yet be themselves.
Critics of the first book lamented that the characters were too thinly sketched, the bulk of the book being taken up by some longer than usual action scenes. In this second volume, Sykes flips that expectation on us. We delve deeper into each of the characters, getting more tantalizing glints of their depth and background as they recover on the island of the dead. To be sure, while the first book was a book of struggling, this second volume gives us a better understanding on why each of our characters - and I don't just mean our protagonists - are struggling and what it is they are trying to achieve. Which in the case of our (un)lucky band of adventurers is largely what they are struggling to run away from.
The problem, of course, is that we spend most of the book introspecting the characters, their flaws, backgrounds, motives, and favorite past times that we never quite make any headway in the story. In fact, the only real progress in the books is delivered by two new characters that are external to the adventurer party, one a librarian (don't snicker, librarians can kick your butt) on a mission to step any who use magic without paying the price (Oh Netherlings...), and the other who is commonly known as the Moth, a vassal of the Deep Shriek sent out to release the Father. The story advances under the stewardship of these two characters, but they have scenes too far and few between to give the rest of the novel momentum.
And this is why the second volume of a series usually drags. The first volume hit us with such force and speed, the second volume had a bar set higher than it could reasonably achieve.
And yet I will still recommend this book to you. It was a well written and fine addition to the series, with all the Shict loving you can handle. Hopefully in volume three, now that we understand what compels most of the POV characters in such detail already, we will return to the tour de force that was book one, but with a better understanding and appreciation of what is driving Lenk and his merry band.
Barnes presents in The Garden of Stones a well developed, fully laid out world. The reader is catapulted into the conflict head first, and although those first few chapters are confusing, chaotic scenes of fighting between factions in a war we don't understand, it all makes sense soon enough.
At first, the cast of characters seems daunting. Names, species, factions, how will you keep it all straight? While Barnes' world is fully realized, it is a departure from the familiar. New nomenclatures are nothing new to fantasy readers, which is fortunate. But beneath the strange and new, the book really only focuses on three characters and those that orbit them. Indris, the warrior scholar and principal character. Corajidin, his rival in this book and all around mostly bad guy. Mari, daughter of Corajidin, torn between loyalty to her father and burgeoning feelings for Indris and the honor of her career.
All the while, Barnes paints a promise. There will be action, there will be intrigue, there will be cliff hangers that compel us to read further. I believe Barnes delivers on that promise in this book - the Garden of Stones was well worth the read.
Thanks to Amazon and Netgalley for the review copy of this book. It was provided in exchange for an honest review.
The first half of this book resonated with me deeply. The further Sax strayed for the personal level of analog overtaking digital, the less interesting I found the book. Still, a solid 3.5
I was so wowed by Williams with the Dread Empire series that Implied Spaces was a real let down. Solid writing, but with the stakes so low - there is no real death, and new universes can be crafted from the quantum foam directly - I had a real hard time investing interest in this novel. Another reviewer likened this book to a late Heinlein novel (we all know what that means), and I have to agree. Not bad, but not great, with a sort of boyish save the multiverse mentality.
A little dated in parts, this was my first foray into a Jacques Cousteau book. For me, Cousteau shined best in this book when recounting his own past. If I can find an autobiography by the man I'd love to read it - his life anecdotes read like a modern day Verne character. Active in WW2, then an explorer of the deeps and all the wonders therein.
A curious entry in the autobiographical material of Asimov's life. If you have no other resources, or your only other resource is the slim “I, Asimov”, then you may find more enjoyment in this book. Personally, I found it to be a somewhat disjointed collection of excerpts from the longer autobiography that he wrote (I've read “In Memory Yet Green” and “In Joy Still Felt”, which covered 1920-1978). Unfortunately, this is about the best you're going to find these days, especially if you're looking for a digital book. Ye olde paper books are rare and out of print as near as I can tell, so this is the best of what you can find, but don't think you've found the best.