Michael Cummings
A bit quicker paced than the first book (I thought), it was a solid read. Not from King's fright night side, more of a thriller with a few foreshadows for the next book. Fun but quick read.
It pains me to give a Stephen King book only three stars. Bear with me.
Billed as a sequel to The Shining, I felt this book fell short. I've read the Shining more than once (yes, despite it's awkward at times prose and POV mishaps, it is worth it). Even having read it multiple times and now being in my ahem rather late thirties, when I read the Shining last fall in anticipation of this book, I still had times where I got goosebumps and jumped at random noises and shadows in the house. Despite the fact that it's starting to get long in the tooth (HAH, DS readers will chuckle), the Shining still serves as a great book for getting a bit of creepy fright.
Doctor Sleep, a continuation of that story, held no fright. There was suspense, and even action, but no spine tingling, bone chilling, jump at the shadows because two keys on the piano just started playing and no one's there scare. While a lot of that is due to who King has become as a writer in the last few decades, focussing more on the weaving of a good story over giving his readers the heebie jeebies, in a book that is supposed to be a successor, its absence was noteable. There was a type of urban science fiction (for lack of a better term) that was really popular in the late seventies and early eighties dealing with psychics and ESP. A fine enough topic, and this was a great book in that sub-genre, but without anything to counter balance it I was left wanting. This was a psychic hero explores his life and powers book, not a REDRUM thriller.
As a sequel, then, I give this three stars. It did not stand up to the bar that was set by its predecessor. The book would have been better suited if the lead character had not been named Danny Torrence - then it would have been just another King affectation of setting one novel in the world of another (Sidewinder). Then the fact that we have a book that obsesses over steam, a purported sequel to a book that obsessed over a steam boiler, but that only once almost made a cross reference wouldn't bother me so much.
Fabulous!
Oh, it's just Babar in space, scoffs the reader looking at the description.
Oh, its just how I lost all of my free time in a black hole, admits the reader.
I'd give it that extra half star if I could, but it's not up to 4 star material. We know why we come to King's books, and he delivers. Like many of King's works that were adapted for the screen, don't watch the show and expect to find that story here. In that regards, stick with the book, it makes more sense while still having definable beginning, middle, and end.
“The Demon King” is a novel from two disparate perspectives that eventually begin to weave together. We have Han Alister, who at sixteen years old is already a former thief and gang leader, trying to live his life honestly. But even when staying out of town, trouble still finds him, and before long he is tangling with wizards and getting into worse trouble than he ever did as a gang leader.
The flip side of the novel follows Raisa, princess and soon to be heir to the Queendom of the Fells. Life isn't as sweet and simple as it should be for a princess as Raisa becomes more and more aware and involved in politics that are as old as the Queendom. The closer Raisa gets to her 16th birthday and “Name Day,” the more convinced she becomes of something running afoul in the Queendom. And somehow, her mother the Queen seems to be at the heart of it.
First, the con. The novel makes so many allusions to past events and history in this first novels that I spent the first third of the book convinced that I had missed a preceding volume or even series. No such book existed, sadly, which makes it even more baffling. I understand the desire to start a story already in motion, so that the reader can discover the world of the characters. Sometimes, that works. Sometimes, it doesn't. In this case, it almost didn't work.
However, if you can plow forward in the book, things will snap together and start to make sense. As soon as they do, the book is a rush of action and revelation even when it quickly becomes evident that there is going to be little conclusion in this volume. The stories of Han and Raisa loosely weave together and apart in a way that will leave the reader eagerly anticipating the next page. And for every revelation we receive, there is a hint that we are only hearing a part of the story.
This first volume of the Seven Realms offers a lot of promise, and I'm looking forward to reading the next volume to see if Chima pays off. If you're looking for a story with conflicting love interests, magic, and the threat of a kingdom spiraling into war, the first act of the Seven Realms series is a good place to start. Enjoy!
The second volume of Chima's Seven Realms series begins right on the tail of volume one. Haunted by the loss of his mother and sister, Han heads south to study in Oden's Ford at Mystwerk House. But leaving the Fells doesn't mean leaving the danger behind, as Han quickly discovers when he learns that his fellow students include the Bayar twins, scions of the High Wizard.
Meanwhile, Princess Raisa has escaped to Oden's Ford, looking to hide from those that would try and force her on a path that is not in her best interests. In Oden's Ford she lives an assumed identity, hiding from those that would force her into a marriage that would break the thousand year old laws that bind the Fells.
The Exiled Queen is a story of false pretenses and politics, framed within the lives of Han (17) and Raisa (16). This second volume of the series starts off much more strongly than the first, and could easily be broached by readers new to the series. Chima does a great job of refreshing our memory of the plot points without too much backtracking, letting the story carry us forward on its own merits.
The Exiled Queen is a solid volume in terms of story. The first book of the Seven Realms introduced us to these two characters, making it clear that they were going to be interlinked some day, but focussed largely on world building. This second volume explores their development as individuals, giving us more depth and intertwining their stories as individuals, focussing on character over scenery. Most of the time in Oden's Ford is glossed over with a few brush strokes, focussing instead on the characters thoughts and emotions. In each character we see the shade of the adults they will become developing, at the expense of the story at large moving along.
For that, this book earns some criticisms. Where the first volume focussed on the world around the characters more than it did on the individuals within it, this second volume takes the exact opposite approach. As a consequence, the action is fairly predictable to anyone that's ever read a fantasy hero/heroine novel before. The state of affairs in the Seven Realms at the start of the book is the same as it is at the end of the book, with only a few pawns moving around on the outskirts of the story. The real story is about us watching Han and Raisa make the decisions that will affect the rest of their lives.
Having watched the Sissy Spacek movie all my life, I thought I knew this story. Sure, I knew the highlights, but the book was so much better.
It is no small feat that this is a novel narrated by a selfless AI who is also the most poignant personality. For me, books have flavors, superficial resonances that can usually be expressed verbally as “this books reminds me of FOO, but with BAR.”
What Ann Leckie has accomplished in her debut novel is to give us a story that has all of the flavor markers and hallmarks of a classic C. J. Cherryh novel from the 1980's, with the poignancy of a contemporary story. The novel is first and foremost a top notched space opera. But what has been fascinating for readers is that the language Leckie has chosen to use bring up questions of gender. This is certainly not the first book to talk to gender - even LeGuinn's Left Hand of Darkness wasn't the first genre book to go there. Leckie's fresh approach, though, is in giving us a future society where gender is rendered equal not by neutering it, but by neutralizing it. By removing the bisect of male and female and using only the female gender to reference everything, the society of the Radch blurs the line. By submerging Breq, our AI product of Radch society, into other cultures, we begin to see the how arbitrary some attributes of gender are, and how much they can complicate what should otherwise be a simple worldview.
One of the oldest tales is the tale of vengeance. What is justice, then, but vengeance wrought legal? But what if the system, the ruling mind that defines what is right and legal, is itself what has gone awry? Is the vengeance of ancillary component still justice? I am probably reading too much into this play of words between the title and the straightforward goal of Breq, but these are the kinds of thoughts you have when reading Ancillary Justice. Its really refreshing to find a book that satisfies both my simple interests (Space Opera with boom!) while still being thought provoking.
And there was plenty of explosions and gun play. Just in case you were worried.
Ancillary Justice was a wonderful read, and I look forward to more in this series.
I should start this review by saying that all in all, I am not a big reader of dystopian novels (future or otherwise). Sure, I love a good Sci-Fi epic like any other bred and raised on Star Wars geek, but all in all I'm not usually interested in near future sci-fi, calamitous or not.
Which made it all the more fascinating to me that Marie Lu's debut novel and first volume in her Legend series, “Legend,” was so mesmerizing. “Legend” is a near future story set in a future Los Angeles following the collapse of the United States. Told from the first person perspective of Day, a wanted criminal, and June, a rising law enforcement officer, the novel flips back and forth each chapter as we see the world through their eyes, waiting for the two world views to mesh together. June and Day have no reason to interact with each other until the day June's brother is murdered and Day is fingered as the prime suspect. As the facts are shed to reveal the truth beneath, we learn that there is more to this story than we realized, and interesting tidbits that seemed spurious take on new meaning and context.
The novel wasn't perfect, though. It was never clear to me how Day, a rebellious street punk with a definite antiestablishment agenda, became the most wanted criminal in the Republic. Before being accused of murder, none of the crimes we are told about involved anything more than vandalism and disrespect for authority. Yet even before we see the paths of these two characters cross, it is plainly telegraphed that Day is the Republic's most wanted. I understand that in a tyranny, anyone that speaks out against the establishment must be silenced, but Day, who is only his late teens, seems to have earned a disproportionate amount of attention.
Lu gets away with this, though, by giving us an engaging story that deftly intertwines two disparate views into a single, cohesive story that has us both rooting for resolution and disappointed when it all comes to a conclusion. I look forward to seeing where Lu takes this series in her next novel, and would recommend it as a good read to YA and up looking for a quick escape to a darker future.
I could not do this to myself. When halfway through the book I still felt no interest in any of the characters or even the scenario as it was being portrayed, I decided to walk away. Based on the other reviews of this book, it looks like you, fellow reader, will fall into one of two camps (and only TWO!) - you will either enjoy this book, or you will question the Bram Stoker award, the publishing industry, and what passes for well-written horror these days.
For myself, I'm in the latter camp.
I admit: I thought I was spoiled when I started reading. After watching almost ten seasons of the TV show in a month, I thought it was time to read the books that inspired it.
From the start, I recognized the episode that was inspired by this novel. And yet despite that, I quickly learned that screen and page aren't a mirror. The source material was just as robust and full bodied as I had hoped. What did surprise me was that Vera doesn't make a full appearance until half way through the book, and even then is not the dominant character.
Fans of the show should be aware the book loosely picks out details from the book, enough that you will remember the salient points. And yet it was still a great read with far more depth than the show could give it.
The book had a lot of great tips on why you should be outlining, but in the end I found the practical side of it lacking. Don't get me wrong, its an entertaining read, and Weiland makes a compelling case on why you want to outline, what the benefits are, and what all of the factors of a well rounded outline include (not just the scene list). I had hoped for something a little more in depth about the different toolsets you can use (not just “this is a mind mapping,” but “this is mindmapping - here's how to do it and make it useful for your outline if that strikes you”).
Folks that get here by way of the TV show Haven will be sorely disappointed - like many of King's work turned into film, the names are the same, the places are the same, but little else runs the way you expect it to. This book is a mystery - if the imprint didn't give that away - but it's less about solving the mystery than learning what makes it so mysterious. A fun quick read, told mostly like a ghost story (third person narration).
Meh.
If you look at the reviews for this book, you will see that folks either fall into the love it or hate it crowd. I didn't hate it, but I really, really didn't love it. While I agree there are same languid points in the book, my biggest problems were that I felt nothing for the main character, and was frankly a little disturbed that every woman he met was either sexy or a shrew. I realize the main character is in his late teens, presumably his world view being skewed by hormones - but we have no real feel for the other characters outside the cardboard shadows they cast.
I might give another book in the series a shot - I liked the magic system, thought the world had some potential - but it's not on my TBR list any time soon.
Not my favorite. While it attempted to maintain a cohesive story, the original material's episodic nature made for a read through that felt stilted at times. Much of that was due to slight rehashing (for new readers when it was on Tor.com no doubt) and the need to reintroduce key bits repeatedly. Understandable in the original format, but in a collected “novel” I don't think it worked as well.
This book began with a great hook - an office bet on who can find the most interesting and unique ways to kill media darling, showman, and all around jerk to be around, Henri Kerlerec. Nobody foresaw the agency of his death (less than a dozen pages into the book) at the claws of the native Ilmatar, who naively dissect him thinking him an unintelligent animal.
And then the book trips over itself for a while. Cambias becomes lost in setting the stage, something he could have forgone without any loss to the story. Not helping the story is that our other space faring species, the Sholan, read more like a foreign culture than a foreign species. While there are some physiological differences noted, they feel like TV aliens with pointed ears and green blood - different, but only in culture. Otherwise they are just humans with rubber suits, bent on protecting us from repeating their own mistakes.
What really saves this book - from the portraying an alien species perspective - are the natives of the ocean depths themselves, the Ilmataran. It's not a fair analogy, but reading their POV is like being in the head of a sonar wielding lobster. I was reminded of Vinge's Spiders from A Deepness in the Sky, especially with the ease with which Cambias relates the world of a blind, ocean vent dwelling creature. Cambias really shines when dealing with the Ilmataran, and you get a sense of the potential here. As a first novel, it was good, and I look forward to seeing what else Cambias writes in the future.
The ARC of this novel was provided for review by Tor.
There must be a magic to California that draws books of this genre. When I first read James Blaylock and then Tim Pratt all those decades ago, their stories tended to take place somewhere in the golden state, a place where a certain kind of magic still reigned. Sitting somewhere in the borderland between magic realism and urban fantasy, their books blended the ordinary with the extraordinary, hidden magic.
Greg Van Eekhout's “California Bones” takes a rightful place in this pantheon. Set in a not so alternate world where magic is real and California has seceded from the United States, this is largely the story of Daniel Blackland, son of a powerful magician and orphaned at the age of 12. Fast forward to an alternate LA - one where the streets are watery canals and the movie wizard DIsney and the water wizard Mulholland are among the powerful - we find Daniel all grown up, a thief with special talents.
One of Van Eekhout's smartest moves in this book was in not trying to tell us too much. This is a heist story, a crew of thieves sent out to lift some merchandise and a magic sword, and for the most part it stays within the confines of that story. Van Eekhout presents a concise story, one that rarely strays from the heist and the after effects of that heist. What little backstory we get is only in supporting our understanding of our focal character, Daniel. Even when we switch POV characters to Gabriel, grandson of the Heirarch of Southern California, we're still moving towards bringing to conclusion the main story.
Even if you don't care for heist stories (I'm not the biggest fan), you'll still find yourself drawn into this well written story. Although the central story arc is around the heist, this story is really about power, both taken and earned. From the first moments when we see just how osteomancy works and how the Heirarch acquires his power, to the climatic end, we recognize the heist itself as just a means to an end.
Many thanks to Tor-Forge for sending me a copy for review - I devoured the book in five days, bones and all.
John Scalzi books are always fun because they're not intended to be deep tomes of introspective reflection on the future of humanity and our interaction with the Universe at large. Scalzi writes fun, quick to read science fiction that you enjoy because they aren't huge investments of your life. In fact, they tend to be self contained volumes, so you also don't have to buy into an expanse of books just to keep up with them.
In “Fuzzy Nation,” Scalzi revisits the world of H. Beam Piper's Fuzzies, with a bit of a modern update. I have to confess, I haven't read the original, so I can't compare this effort, but for my money it was a fun read. The novel follows one Halloway, disbarred lawyer turned prospector and dog owner as he deals with making two huge finds - one that can make him rich, and the other that can take it all away from him. Halloway is the type of incorrigible rogue that will be familiar to readers - a smart mouth, quick decisions that you know have an agenda even if it isn't obvious, and he's entertaining.
I don't usually gush, but this was a great read. The story was written with all of the flavor and fervor of the character centric storytelling of a classic Niven or Heinlein. The pace is fast, the characters engaging. A thoroughly fun read!
Lamentation, in my opinion, was a little rough to start off, but by the end you knew you had a decent tale you were dealing with. Certainly a good show for a debut. Canticle takes that precipice that Lamentation left off on and just hurls you into the stratosphere. It feels like you are constantly pumped up on scout magicks as the novel races across the landscape of the Nine Lands (and a glimpse beyond). Book two of the arc is largely a book of reveals, where our perception of the characters doesn't change much (much), but what we know of the world around them grows a lot. While its hard to say whether its critical to have read this book yet for its reveals versus the scope of the series, if you enjoyed Lamentation, really, how could you not read it? (plus, I gave it 4 stars. Surely that counts for something!)
** DON'T READ THE GOODREADS SYNOPSIS OF THIS BOOK. IT IS A SPOILER AND GIVES MOST OF THE BOOK AWAY. **
Tobias Buckell, known for his Caribbean influenced science fiction Xenowealth series and additions to the Halo universe, brings us his first new novel in four years with “Arctic Rising”. In the very near future, the Arctic ice cap has all but melted as rising global temperatures change the dynamics and balance of power in the world. Tundras are now prairies, and the once ice locked islands of the Arctic circle are now the coveted centers of commercial and shipping success.
Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the U.N. Polar Guard, patrolling these northern shipping lanes by air when events kick off in the novel. Readers are propelled through this eco-thriller as the stakes are raised and the balance of power is at risk.
Buckell's book seems somewhat apropos this year, when in the dead of winter we are looking at 70 degree days during a time of year when we usually measure the day by how deep the snow is. At its heart, “Arctic Rising” is a thriller set in the backdrop of a world where global warming has already started to wreak severe havoc, destroying tropical islands in floods while at the same time opening the northern reaches of Canada and Russia to more temperate activity.
When the book excels as a thriller, it really excels. Buckell has a gift for writing down the play by play action of a fight scene, whether that fight is in the scrub of Greenland, or between armed groups in a disintegrating floating city. Sadly, its not without its flaws - the info dumps, when they happen, are a force to be reckoned with, and occasionally someone takes a sip of the monologue draught.
Buckell always does a great job of breaking us out of the northern European descent perspective of the world, giving us a better rounded view of the world. His characters aren't just white Americans - they're Nigerian, Caribbean, and Canadian, and they come from a culture and history that you can almost feel.
I would love to learn a little bit more about the world Anika and friends live in, though. If the Arctic is melting, what about the Antarctic? What's going on south of the equator? Maybe a future book will give us that glimpse. For now, I'd recommend this near future thriller for the fast paced zeppelin ride that it is.
Spellwright is the introductory novel of Nicodemus, a young aspiring wizard who has been branded a cacographer because of his disability. Simply put, he has magical dyslexia - in a world where spells are visible as strings of floating, physical text, a mere touch by Nicodemus can cause a spell to be misspelled, gaining new meaning and often as not warping it from simple to potentially dangerous.
As with many fantasy novels, there is a prophesy, and depending on interpretation Nicodemus could be a savior - or the equivalent of the antichrist.
I have to confess, I've wanted to read this book since it came out a few years ago, and anticipation breeds its own expectations that reality can rarely match. As is oft said, I wish Goodreads would let us use 1/2 stars. Charlton's book is right on the cusp between 3 and 4 stars, but ultimately I couldn't round up.
The cons, for me, were twofold. First, mechanically, I found the text to be agonizing to follow in some places. It is almost worst that this is an inconsistant problem, because the rest of the time you can get a sense of Charlton's emerging voice. Future books will not suffer this problem, and you can tell. Charlton can tell a story, but that fact is buried in this first novel, and only shining on occasion.
Secondly, and perhaps this is another writing advancement that will come in the future, there are far too many info dumps. In fact, this book is an amazing example of show, don't tell. There are so many cases where if Blake had stepped back and given pause, he could have demonstrated his point, leaving the reader to “discover” the truth on their own (and therefore feel both a minor sense of accomplishment, as well as feel more involved in the story).
I read the book in five days, with a real life interrupting. In my world, that means the book was a quick read, so caveat lector.
Sadly, I found the third book a little disappointing. The first half of the book spent far more time than it should have trying to bring everyone up to speed, leaving the last half feeling a bit rushed. There were reveals, and things you wondered about this world were finally explained, but the good moments were evenly balanced out by the droll, leaving me with a 3 star review where I expected to give better.
I've tried to read a few Sanderson books, but this is the first I've actually followed through all the way. While slow to start (beginnings, although not exposition full, are a little awkward/slow to build), Sanderson provides a stunningly well thought out magic system (something he's known for and for good reason), as well as high paced, well written fantasy action. If the beginning of the book had captivated me a little quicker I would have given it all five stars, but as it is I was still more than happy with the book.
David Brin is an icon in science fiction, and for good reasons. Brin's imagination gave us works like the Kiln People, the Postman, and of course, the seminal Uplift War saga in all of its glory. In his latest novel, Existence, Brin takes us to the near future, a world where mankind has continued to make mistakes, but has also made attempts at progress. We start by meeting Gerald Livingston, an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have abandoned things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there's something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn't on the decades' old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth's infomesh about an “alien artifact.”
Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity. (end blurb)
The difficulty I have with describing or even assessing this book is that it felt to me like it was written in three different mindsets. The first 25% of the book falls into that class of science fiction that deals with world crisis - you may recognize the formula. The setting - near future. The cast - someone in power, someone outside of the corridors of power, and a reporter of some kind. Additional cast optional. The crisis - something outside of our control threatens the way of life globally - flood, solar flares, alien incursion, etc.. The artifact is uncovered, ripples reach out, and we see how these dozen or so lives of our cast are affected, in some ways interacting.
Then the book takes a shift.
I'm glossing over, because I'm trying to avoid any spoilers, but the next chunk of the book (@50%) left me growing impatient for something to actually happen. That isn't to say that there isn't action or progress, but the middle seemed to stretch on and on without any satisfaction of resolution. Towards the end of this chunck we get a lot of tantalyzing clues and suggestions about our place in the universe, answers to the Fermi paradox, etc.. I would classify this portion of the book as less sci-fi disaster novel and back down into the near future thriller genre.
Then came the last 25%. Neither crisis novel nor thriller, this part of the book was pure speculative space opera, which if we're talking science fiction, is known to be my preference. It'll be no suprise that I wish the writing in the last 25% of the book had actually been more like 75%.
Brin is very much in touch with modern technology, and it shows in this book. Our near future citizens aren't that displaced from today. The gadgets are shinier and smaller, but the concepts are the same, or at least taken to their next few logical steps. Its only after reading the Afterword, where Brin explains himself and the novel a little more, that we learn that a lof of that first 25% of the book was previously written material that was worked in. Although I enjoyed those bits - especially the homage to uplift - I didn't feel like they were satisfactorily given a conclusion. The same happened later in the book, where we were led along certain paths and then never saw the characters involved again, leaving those subplots just dangling.
Don't be discouraged. Existence was still a good read by a great author, just be prepared to do a little work to get there.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tor/Forge for an advance copy of the novel.