Corey, Fowler & Christopher Reviews at SFFWorld

I catch up with a book Mark read earlier in the year while Mark continues on with a newly found series he’s quite enjoying and Nila takes a look at a Superhero novel.


James S. A. Corey’s Expanse sequence has received deserved award nominations with the first volume and the second volume has already received a fair amount off praise. Here, I give my thoughts on Caliban’s War:

The plot itself is fairly familiar, ship on the run trying to find a missing girl, same macguffin from previous novel, interplanetary politics. But so what, the novel is a lot of fun and perhaps more fun than it’s predecessor because we can see more of the characters both new and old. With familiar situations established, Corey can delve further into the interpersonal relationships of the crew of the Rocinate, and more importantly, give us new strong characters to follow. While Prax is an interesting character, the ladies really shine in Caliban’s War. Bobbi is a complex character - a large, imposing woman whose thoughts and actions come across very naturally and realistic. Conversely, the ascerbic Avasarala provides some snarky humor throughout. Her uncompromising attitude is balanced by her interactions with her family. There’s also a good deal of political weaving especially through her character as she interacts with people very high up in the solar system’s hierarchy including a particularly grin-inducing scene with one individual at the novel’s conclusion. I hope to see much more of her in this series as it progresses..

Mark catches up with the second installment of Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May Mystery, and the book is The Water Room:

With the events of Full Dark House (reviewed here) I found the series a very pleasant surprise. The Water Room develops them further. Whereas the first book introduced them in their most recent reincarnation (they did appear in some of Christopher’s other writing previously) and Full Dark House was mainly about their first case back in 1940’s London, this one is resolutely ‘now’, with the book’s beginning at the time of the reopening of the redecorated Peculiar Crimes Unit’s base after the explosion in Full Dark House.

It’s not long before we’re into ‘the weird stuff’. Bryant is contacted by an old colleague whose elderly sister has been found dead in her house and in possibly mysterious circumstances. The body was in the cellar, sitting, as if at rest, but with water around her feet and Thames river water in her mouth. The house is nowhere near the river. Bryant is intrigued and involves the PCU. However, when her various and varied neighbours are interviewed, it seems initially innocuous, a case of relatively simple sudden-death.

Last, and most certainly not least, Nila jumps aboard the growing trend of Superhero Fiction in her review of Adam Christopher’s Seven Wonders:

Set in a fictitious town in southern California, Seven Wonders introduces us to Tony Prosdocimi; a regular guy, nothing special. Except for the fact that at the ripe age of 23, he has suddenly developed superhuman powers. Powers just like the Seven Wonders, a team of superheroes that supposedly protect the City of San Ventura from the last supervillain on earth, The Cowl.
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After this, the story then follows a myriad of protagonists and antagonists vying to either save the city, save their own skin, or hold the city hostage for some unsaid reason. In the midst of it all, a regular guys ends up being the last thing he thought he’d be, a cop’s dead body get’s hijacked by an alien, and the world is indeed saved - but not safe.

Lovegrove's Aztecs and Smith's Vampires

Mark and I have a review each this week, which as all my millions and millions of readers know by now, is the norm here at the o’ Stuff. Mark takes a look at a novel that’s a bit of a turn for the writer whilst my review concerns itself with the (at the time of this blog post) latest in a popular mythologically-infused Military Science Fiction series.



James Lovegrove’s Pantheon sequence is growing in popularity and the latest in the series (book four) drops the “The” from the title and simply goes with Age of Aztec:

Two characters form the center of the novel, Stuart Reston – a rich, powerful man whose wife and child gave themselves over as sacrifices to the Great Speaker, the leader of the world. The other protagonist is Chief Inspector Mal Vaughn, who due to her superiors’ ritualistic deaths because of the inability to capture the Conquistador, becomes head of the investigation to learn the identity of the Conquistador and capture him. She suspects Stuart is her man and after a drug induced spirit-dream confirms his identity.

The first half of the novel, then, is much of a cat and mouse game between Stuart and Mal and all the while, Lovegrove does a good job of providing a believable background for the characters and the world in which they inhabit. The Aztec presence is everywhere, subverting what was once the culture’s societal norms and mores, as well as art and technology. Religion and science have become one under the Aztechnology banner as the gods (Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, etc) granted the Aztec people much of the technology (flying discs, their weapons) that power their empire.

Mark takes a look at a vampire/mystery novella from L. Neil Smith and the book is Sweeter Than Wine:

The story set up’s pretty straightforward. J Clifford is the sort of guy you wouldn’t notice much about if you bumped into him in the street. No major debts, (in fact, all bills paid), nice to children and his small-town neighbours.

In reality, he’s a ninety-year old who was turned into a vampire in World War Two after a sexual liaison with a fantastic looking young girl. Now, in the twenty-first century, he’s a twenty-something-looking guy living a seemingly-respectable life as an unlicensed private investigator in New Prospect, Colorado, with a cat named Fiddlestring.
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Neil’s vampire keeps some of the traditional vampire tropes and ignores the rest. J prefers to use a syringe, rather than a bite. In the manner of Matheson’s I Am Legend, vampirism is a symbiotic virus. Here it protects the vampire from disease, aging and injury, makes them strong and allows them to grow parts of the body back. In Smith’s version of vampirism, being bitten can actually improve the victim’s life: they become healthier and less prone to disease, and usually remember nothing about being the vampire’s meal.

The Price of Spring & Hobbit's Herbert Horror

Back to Tuesday this week despite the (US) Labor Day holiday. Mark’s got a horror novel while I finish off Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price Quartet,

I reached the end of Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price Quartet a little over a week ago, but the novel still sits with me, as does the whole series. In short I loved the experience of reading these books so let me share my thoughts about The Price of Spring:

 

In many ways The Price of Spring is an elegiac novel; there’s a great melancholic weight to the novel and the feelings espoused by the characters. As I indicated, Maati is a tragic figure and the regret he oozes is, at times, a painfully uncomfortable thing. Perhaps because the feeling hit home a bit with me in terms of recent life events, but this also returns to the main theme as I’ve seen it in these four books – consequences. Every action from the opening of the first book to the conclusion of The Long Price either pays forward to the consequences of the character’s actions or is a consequence of earlier actions. …
With any concluding volume, the quality of the series rests on the execution of the finale. The Long Price Quartet is an ambitious saga, one that shows a young writer willing to take smart, calculated risks in telling a story he wanted to tell. I indicated in my review of A Shadow in Summer these four books didn’t get the widespread recognition they deserved (this final volume never received a mass-market publication, for example). As time has helped these novels grow in the modern genre canon, it turns out the story Daniel Abraham wanted to tell in The Long Price Quartet is something readers are wanting to read. Though firmly entrenched in the fantasy genre, Abraham’s story didn’t quite take the ball and run with expectations. Rather, he shunned expectations told a rich and rewarding story despite that.

Mark takes another step into the recent past (a 2006 release) with a horror novel from James Herbert, one of the more ‘luminary’ horror writers of the UK. Here's The Secret of Crickley Hall:

The Secret of Crickley Hall is basically a haunted house story, in the same manner as, say, Shirley Jackson’s The Legend of Hill House or Richard Matheson’s Hell House.
The Caleigh family decide to move away from London for a while, following the disappearance of Gabriel and Eve’s five-year-old son Cam, a year ago. American husband Gabe thinks that Eve could do with a rest after her near-breakdown and the two remaining children, Loren and Cally, agree.
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This déjà-vu was re-emphasised when we have the arrival of Lili Peel, a local psychic, who, when brought in by Eve, definitely feels presences. Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s Eleanor Vance, Lili picks up on the presence of children and a darker, more malignant adult who seems to be stopping them from moving on. There’s a lot of filling in of back history as we read: the children were war orphans, kept in the hall when evacuated there in 1943. They were kept under the harsh regime by a brother-and-sister pairing of Augustus and Magda Cribben, whose punishments usually involved liberal use of the cane. A flood from the underground river there seems to have drowned Augustus and the children, but as the story continues, we find out other reasons.

Double A Reviews - Aaron and Arnott at SFFWorld

Mark and I check with two reviews this week...

Rachel Aaron’s Eli Monpress series was softly re-launched earlier in the year with a nice, big, fat omnibus with great new cover art.  The Spirit War, is the fourth book and another solid entry in an entertaining series

Having established her characters to great length in the first three novels, Aaron expands the scope of the story into one with a more global focus. With the characters established in previous novels, this also allows Aaron to open the novel with a flashback to one of the characters, in this case Josef, to days where we can piece together very quickly just who the character is and how Josef acquired the Heart of War – the greatest magical sword in the world.

She introduces, as the title might imply, a couple of warring factions into the mix; nations which were more or less on the periphery in previous novels. In addition to the two powers (The Nation of Osera and the reawakened Immortal Empress) on the brink of war, other powers who govern the world (The Spirit Council and The Council of Thrones) are embroiled in a philosophical conflict about how to handle the reawakened Immortal Empress. Wars about wars, one could say.

Perhaps the most enjoyable elements of the novel were the backstories of Josef and Eli that came more into the forefront of the novel. One lays the groundwork for much of the plot of The Spirit War while the other sets up Spirit’s End which is likely the conclusion of the saga. Though it becomes abundantly clear whose backstory fuels The Spirit War very early on in the novel, I’ll still leave that to the reader to discover.

Mark’s was pleased with Jake Arnott, The House of Rumour:

As the story progresses we get a variety of different characters and we are told of events shown from different viewpoints. In the present, Zagorsky is given details of a mysterious file that suggests that Hess’s defection to Scotland in the Second World War was possibly connected to the consequences of an occult temple service in the US in 1941. The story then goes back to the 1940’s and 50’s and tells of members of that meeting, which includes many SF filmmakers and writers whom Zagorsky knows. Jack Parsons, one of the founders of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was not only a scientist and avid SF reader, with many connections in the genre, but also an active member of a Satanist cult who, in this story, is encouraged to perform strange deviant acts in order to encourage the world’s race into space. As flying saucers are first reported and Sputnik launches into space, UFO cults and space-based religions occur in the late 1940’s and 50’s as part of this global hysteria. Many of these people known by Zagorsky become involved in the move to the SF genre being more mainstream and B-movie film making.

Favorite SFF Books First Half 2012

I did this last year so I might as well keep the tradition alive. We’ve just passed the halfway point of 2012 and thus far, I’ve read 35 novels (some of those were part of an omnibus so the technical book count is 30).  19 of those books hold a 2012 copyright . Since it isn’t always easy to place one novel above another when the writers are creating different stories, I’ll do this top 6 alphabetically (6 months, 6 books). Right, I know that’s a cop-out but I make the rules here:

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

With Doctor Adoulla Makhslood is that overweight, aged (60+) protagonist. He loves the city in which he lives, Dhamsawaat; and is the foremost ghul-hunter in the city, in fact he’s the last. His young assistant is the holy/monk swordsman Raseed bas Raseed who takes out monsters with his dual-tipped sword. When the two are tasked with investigating a string of ghul appearances, the cross paths with the were-lion Zamia, or as her powers are considered in Ahmed’s world – angel-touched. Zamia is the Protector of the Band, a desert wasteland tribe that, as Adoulla and Raseed meet Zamia, has been decimated. As the appointed protector, Zamia blames herself, but soon joins Adoulla and Raseed since they have a mutual goal of finding and eradicating the man responsible for creating these powerful ghuls. Complicating matters is the roguish Pharaad Az Hammaz AKA The Falcon Prince, a master thief/rebel who is seeking to bring down the strong, controlling grip of Khalif who sits upon the titular Throne. In addition to these characters, Ahmed surrounds Makshlood with a strong-knit group of associates who are much of a surrogate family for the good Doctor who would rather relax with a cup of tea alongside Miri, “the one that got away” than battle demons
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Where Ahmed excels is with his protagonist, Doctor Adoulla Makhslood. He’s the type of guy you want to have as the ‘crotchety but cool uncle’ at the bar with you to share a drink or at your side should that bar-room brawl occur. We get in the head of Makhslood as he re-examines the decisions he’s made in the immediate past and ponders of how he should best proceed particularly with the Falcon Prince. Where Adoulla shows the most emotion is in his regret of the lost love of Miri, who he set aside – for lack of a better term – to give into his calling as protector of Dhamsawaat, his city which he does truly love.

I hadn’t read any novel-length fiction from Elizabeth Bear before this year, though I did read various short stories in a few anthologies. Considering those stories often stood out, I wasn’t surprised I enjoyed Range of Ghosts, but I didn’t expect to be as entranced as I was:

Did I mention the gods are alive and real and each ‘nation’ has a different sky which contains different moons and stars? Yeah, there’s that too. One of the things that make this novel so amazing is Bear’s ability to weave these elements into a wholly cohesive narrative. Woven along with these elements is an incredibly lush and powerful resonant element of mythology. The vital connection between the creation myth one character recounts has great bearing on the world itself. In many other fantasies the gods may be part of the world, but more so in Bear’s richly developed world the gods, or beings thought of as gods, actions have logical connections to how the characters react, in terms of consequences of the gods actions and how the characters internalize those elements into their own actions.


I mentioned the resonance in this novel that Bear has constructed so wonderfully, I felt the same power reading Range of Ghosts I did reading and enjoying archetypal myths and folktales that have been around for thousands of years such. While I enjoyed reading the novel in the moment, the sense of gravitas in the story settled in with my imagination after I’d set the novel aside for the day’s reading or even when I completed the novel. In a sense, Range of Ghosts, from my reading experience, can be seen as a successful experiment in modern mythmaking. What is even more promising is that this is just the beginning and Bear has more to tell in this resonant story.

The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett was a stunning novel and like most of the other novels in this post, it was my first exposure to the writer’s novel (or in this case, any) writing

The small things are important, too, Bennett’s The Troupe reminds us. Sure there may be an apocalyptic, near biblical conflict that serves as the engine, or rather, the sheet music of the events, but engine parts and players are what put these elements into motion. In the case of The Troupe, George Carole is of course this major part although to call him the driving character may not be completely accurate. Sure his initial query about his father brought him to Silenus’s Troupe, but once there, he’s more of a front-seat passenger than the actual driver. He’s a young man searching for his family – an orphan if you will – and for a sense of purpose in life. Initially, he’s headstrong and unwilling to hear that he’s young and perhaps not ready to take the stage in Silenus’s Troupe. After all, as George likes to inflate himself by saying, he could headline and make an appreciable sum for his performances. What truly makes George stand out to Harry is that George is the only audience member who has ever been able to remember the Troupe’s final act.
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Harry, comes across just as headstrong, but as the mentor who seemingly holds back necessary information from the young hero of the tale. Harry’s obsession – something he’s initially unwilling to share with anybody other than the silent Stanley – is what drives the story and the Troupe across the country in search of something supernatural and away from something equally supernatural, though much darker. There’s a great aura of confliction surround Harry, he’s got very honorable intentions and goals but he often comes across as a callous and harsh individual. I felt some resonance in the Harry/George relationship to the relationship portrayed in Gangs of New York between Daniel Day Lewis’s Bill the Butcher (who might make a terrific Harry if The Troupe ever made it to film) and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Amsterdam or even to Roland the Gunslinger and the boy Jake Chambers in King’s The Dark Tower, and there was something about Harry that reminded me of Jessie Custer, the title character from Garth Ennis & Steve Dillion’s landmark Preacher comic book series. Bennett’s deft depiction of Harry as a conflicted character is evident down to his speech pattern, Harry’s dialogue often includes allusions to wondrous things which are soon punctuated with a contrarian “fucking…this” or “that fucking bastard.” In short, Harry is a gem of a character

In perhaps the most assured debut since Peter V. Brett’s The Warded Man (no coincidence since the two writers are long time friends and share an agent). Shadow OPS: Control Point by Myke Cole really hit all the right cylinders for me:

Oscar Britton is part of a military unit responsible for rounding up ‘Selfers,’ those people who suddenly manifest magical abilities and run amok. In, Shadow OPS: Control Point, Myke Cole’s near future saga blends Urban Fantasy and Military Science Fiction, two branches of Speculative Fiction that don’t come together often. The Great Reawakening has taken place, magic is real as are the creatures out of fantasy and myth like goblins and Rocs. The military has permitted (and controls) schools of Elemental magic dealing with wind, fire, water, and earth control. Other ‘schools’ such as reanimating the dead and opening up portals for quick travel, are forbidden. Oscar manifests sorcerous powers in the forbidden school of magic – Portomancy, the ability to open portals allowing for instant transportation to any location. Due to the laws in place, he must immediately turn himself into the authorities. As an officer in the military responsible for bringing in those who manifest out of the public, Oscar has seen what happens to Latents, people such as himself, so he flees and becomes a fugitive. What drives home the fact that Latents such as himself are treated like dangerous criminals is the opening scene of the novel – Oscar and his military team, step into a dangerous scene where two young people have manifested and are causing havoc at a school, killing people, and harming the officers tasked with quelling the situation. Oscar must decide if it is better to turn himself in and eventually cooperate or if he should buck the system and forge his own path.
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Told in a third person perspective, Cole still conveys the stress and conflict Britton experiences both physically and mentally in a supremely believable fashion. At times I found myself sympathizing with Oscar’s plight, other times, I wanted to whack him upside the head and shout “Just go with it!” It proved frustrating at times, but I’d almost say in a car-wreck kind of way because I wanted to see if Oscar would actually do what he’s told or continue to rebel. I don’t know if this is what Cole intended, but also found myself siding with characters that were likely set out as antagonists – specifically legally empowered magic practitioner Harlequin who was once part of Oscar’s team and then attempted to secure Oscar once he manifested.

Paul S. Kemp has been carving out a nice swath in the sword and sorcery genre with his popular Erevis Cale novels set in The Forgotten Realms. It can both be risky and rewarding for an author to jump from shared worlds to their own worlds, but it paid off VERY well for Kemp’s first non-shared world/tie-in novel: The Hammer and the Blade:

Sword and Sorcery is making something of a renaissance in genre fiction, thanks in no small part very recently to writers like Scott Lynch, James Barclay, and James Enge. Part of the reason for such a flourishing of these personal tales of fantasy featuring blue collar heroes getting in over their head is the popularity of role playing games over the past couple of decades allowing players to participate in what amounted to collaborative sword and sorcery storytelling. One of the most popular and widely played games during that time (and now) is The Forgotten Realms and one of the more popular authors of novels tied into that franchise is Paul S. Kemp. That’s the long way of saying how Kemp’s pedigree, for lack of a better term, provides him with a strong foundation to pen his first novel set outside any previous shared worlds to which he contributed. Thus, we have The Hammer and The Blade A Tale of Egil and Nix. I’m very pleased to say this sword and sorcery novel was a blast.
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To say these characters and this story is a love letter to Fritz Leiber would be selling Kemp short of what he’s done. In Egil and Nix, he’s given readers possible long-distant cousins to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser in that he’s got the large bruiser and short thief duo, as well as the banter between the two. Furthermore, one of the main areas in this world is known as the Low Bazaar, an obvious homage the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story Bazaar of the Bizarre. Kemp also throws out shout-outs to Green Lantern mythos along the way.

Regular readers of my blog and members of the SFFWorld forums are aware of how highly I rank Matthew Stover in my pantheon of favorite writers so it should come as no surprise that a novel by him makes this cut. In this case, the “last” Caine novel: Caine’s Law

Matthew Stover has carved out a solid niche for himself at the intersection of Fantasy and Science Fiction genres with hisActs of Caine sequence. The first book, Heroes Die was published in 1997 and introduced readers to Hari Michaelson the actor who portrays Caine, the most popular adventurer in Overworld, a fantasyland Earth discovered and exploits as the ultimate reality television experience. In Heroes Die, Caine is on what is thought to be his last adventure to save his girlfriend from a sorcerer (Ma’elKoth, probably my favorite hero antagonist) who has ascended to godhood. Heroes Die easily stands on its own, although thankfully, for readers like myself, Caine’s voice kept haranguing Stover to continue telling stories about him. The sequel novel, Blade of Tyshalle was at least as good as Heroes Die (some would say better, I might even say that sometimes) and is the story of both the fallout of Heroes Die and Earth’s continued exploitive efforts on Overworld. A few Star Wars novels later, Stover again picked up the story of Caine in Caine Black Knife (billed with the sub-title Act of Atonement, Book I) which was a dual narrative with one thread having followed the ‘modern’ day Caine while the other followed Caine on the adventure that made him a star, “Retreat from the Boedecken.”
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The not-so-straightforward narrative not only changes POV character and voice, but time / history as we see a young Duncan Michaelson before he’s married and a father, a young Hari Michaelson while he’s a boy in the hospital where his mother dies, and an older grizzled Caine, among other character time-points. One of, if not the central question, of the narrative is whether or not one would change a past event filled with regret, given the opportunity. A simple question, on the surface, but of course the implications of such a question are more interesting than the question itself. To summarize the plot any more would be an injustice to the multiple branches of the narrative Stover leads the reader, but suffice it to say Caine’s Law is a novel about heroes and gods, past and present, power and manipulation. It’s about saying fuck you to the people trying to hold you down, control you and mess with your family; it’s about love and honor; and sometimes about being the right guy even if that means not being the good guy all the time. Simple enough, right? Didn’t think so.

Elizabeth Bear, Anne Lyle & J.A. Pitts Reviewed at SFFWorld

Another slew of reviews have been posted over the past week including reviews by Kathryn (Loewryn), Mark Hobbit, and myself..


Over the years that I’ve been writing these reviews, I’ve received a handful of novels written by Elizabeth Bear. Much to my chagrin, I hadn’t read any of them though I’ve read nothing but good things about her writing. Well, that has changed with Range of Ghosts the first world in a series she’s calling The Eternal Sky:

The basic thrust of the story finds Temur coming out of the aforementioned battle along the Celadon Highway and taken in by Edene’s people. A devotion and attraction grows between Eden and Temur, as they travel across the titular Range of Ghosts, Edene is taken away by the ghosts who haunt the trail. He is devastated and soon crosses paths with Samarkar and they attempt to find Edene. Meanwhile, a cult tries to take over the world through subterfuge and behind-the-scenes devilry.
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I mentioned the resonance in this novel that Bear has constructed so wonderfully, I felt the same power reading Range of Ghosts I did reading and enjoying archetypal myths and folktales that have been around for thousands of years such. While I enjoyed reading the novel in the moment, the sense of gravitas in the story settled in with my imagination after I’d set the novel aside for the day’s reading or even when I completed the novel. In a sense, Range of Ghosts, from my reading experience, can be seen as a successful experiment in modern mythmaking. What is even more promising is that this is just the beginning and Bear has more to tell in this resonant story.

The novel is just over 300 pages, which judged against many other novels considered Epic Fantasy, may be considered a bit slight. It’s possibly a worn-out phrase, but not one word, punctuation mark, or letter is wasted in the telling of Range of Ghosts. It is precise, engaging and powerful.

Mark takes a look at a historical/alternate fantasy debut, Anne Lyle’s Alchemist of Souls:

From the start this story feels great and has a tone and presence that feels both natural and of its time, Tudor England. It reminded me very much of Mark Chadbourn’s Will Swyfte novels, which I‘ve read and reviewed before (and perhaps partly explains why Mark has a glowing comment on the front of this book.) Like Mark’s books, the dialogue is appropriately nuanced, the places reeking with the grubby effluvium and gorgeous splendour of Elizabethan life as you would expect.
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The book is also slyly about gender and sexuality. Much is about hidden identities. In a subplot, Coby is a girl masquerading as a boy named Hendricks in a troupe preparing for the presentation of a major play held in a competition in honour of the ambassador’s visit. Coby has to not only keep her identity a secret, for to be discovered invites death. She meets Mal in order to train in fighting so that she can fend off the attentions of other males and females in the company, though she harbours a secret love for him. Mal himself has secrets: he once was a member of the Hunters, a secret clan who kill skraylings as part of an initiation ceremony. He has relationships with women but more secretly with his best friend, Ned. Ned himself is forced to betray Mal to people looking for him, which leads to others knowing about Mal’s twin brother, who is insane and secretly kept locked away in a hospital.

Kathryn/Loewryn has been professing her enjoyment of J.A. Pitts’s Norse urban fantasy series Sara Beauhall so she was able to get an early copy of the fourth installment Forged in Fire:

Set immediately after Honeyed Words, Forged in Fire sits in a perfect place to tie up Sarah Beauhall's hectic year. Despite facing and defeating the same dragon twice, becoming a champion of Odin and having her whole world view changed, she remains resolute. Her friends are still nursing the wounds of their initial fight with the dragon Jean-Paul, whilst also working to maintain vigil over the local area, but the stress and fear multiply the tension. To make matters worse, Sarah's life becomes even more chaotic. The core Black Briar group gain new family members, her relationship with Katie hits a slightly rough patch and she has one of the most powerful and influential dragons breathing down her neck. She must work with her friends, and those whom she does not trust, in order to defeat the next wave of terror that swoops down upon them.
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However, I found the main strength of the book to be within the more personal moments. For example, I particularly enjoyed the exploration of Sarah's feelings and thoughts, her relationship with Katie and their friends, the addition of some potentially interesting characters (whom I don't wish to spoil), and even just the detailing of the lives of Sarah's friends. We're shown a group of people who are still nursing their wounds, physical or otherwise, and who are getting to grips with a world that's been turned upside down, but who still have their own lives to lead. With this novel, Pitts once again shows that he has a flair for blending both personal and global stories, each complimenting the other yet one thread never becomes dominating.

Aaron's Eli Monpress and Shevdon's Bedlam at SFFWorld

This week’s reviews are brought to you by Nila and myself.

I took a headfirst dive into Rachel Aaron’s The Legend of Eli Monpress, which is an omnibus of the first three novels in the series The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion, and The Spirit Eater

Set in what seems to be a vaguely fantasized France and Italy, Rachel Aaron’s Eli Monpress novels, the first three of which (The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion, and The Spirit Eater) appear in The Legend of Eli Monpress could be characterized as many things within the fantasy genre. High Fantasy, Swords and Sorcery, Adventure Fantasy, Light Fantasy – all are apt, but mostly, they are just fun, entertaining reads. In Aaron’s world, every object has a spirit (rocks, doors, dogs) and magic is employed by a wizard’s cooperation and employment of these spirits. When Spirits are enslaved or made to act against their will, the body of magicians known as the Spirit Council steps into the situation.
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Let’s look at the characters: Eli Monpress would be the first person to tell you he’s the greatest thief in the world, he’d also tell you that he’s charming, smart, and a lot of fun. Sometimes characters and people who boast about themselves are full of hot air and quite the opposite of what their words say. In the case of Eli, he’s pretty much telling the truth. I don’t think I can get out of this review without drawing a comparison to Scott Lynch’s Locke Lamora because the similarities are there – both characters are confident, snarky, and head strong thieves. Though Aaron and Lynch may be drawing from the same source material and the sense of fun is present in both author’s works, that’s where the strong similarities end.

Nila is continuing with Mike Shevdon’s The Courts of the Feyre with the second novel, The Road to Bedlam:

The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon is the second book in the Courts of the Feyre series. The story begins nine months after the concluding events in Sixty-One Nails, the first book in this series. Niall Petersen, our hero, is training hard to be a Warder of the Seven Courts and Blackbird, his half-feyre partner, is well on her way to being a mom for the first time in her 800 year-or-so existence.
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Though not as fast paced as the first in this series, Mr. Shevdon does not disappoint his fans with The Road to Bedlam. The magical fabric of Mr. Shevdon’s world is expanded in this book. We learn more of how humans have lived alongside the feyre, and how that relationship has grown and changed with the rapid changes modern technology has brought. Niall gets to use some of his newly learned skills against humans and fey. The fight scenes are real and gritty, intense enough to shock, and entirely believable..…

The Recollection and Zombie Compendium Reviewed at SFFWorld

Just because it is a new year doesn’t mean we’ll be changing the order of business here. In other words, a couple of new reviews at SFFWorld from Mark and me. Since it is only the third day of 2012, neither of us have a 2012 book reviewed…yet. Though the book I finished yesterday, the highly charged and entertaining Shadow OPS: Control Point by Myke Cole, is the first 2012 book I’ve read. That review will come in a couple of weeks closer to the book’s publication date.

Right, on to the reviews posted in the last week…

Although technically not a debut, Gareth L. Powell’s The Recollection, is his first release through a major publisher, Solaris Books, which I enjoyed:

Gareth L. Powell takes a golden age SF idea, one might even say a Clarke-ian idea, and places it squarely in the 21st (and 25th) Century – strange archways appear at random places and random times throughout the world, causing confusion and more than a bit of a scare. This is the premise of his major imprint debut, The Recollection. Though this idea is rather grand, he starts the novel very grounded, as Eddie Rico is being roughed up by some gangsters after losing a night of card games. His brother Verne bails him out of the trouble, but Verne is soon after sucked into one of the aforementioned arches. Not; however, before Ed can tell Verne that he and Verne’s wife Alice have been having an affair. Ed wants to find his brother, but Alice is hesitant until an arch appears in a remote field near her. So, the two put aside their tense past and embark on a journey to find and hopefully save Verne.
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Powell’s greatest strength in the novel is his ability to give the four main characters (Ed, Alice, Kat, and Victor) a real sense of humanity. In doing so, I found his contrast of this humanity against galactic pressures and forces to be mostly successful. Where he was less successful, was in some of the important plot points that draw events together towards the end. Though I wouldn’t say one element in particular was completely out of left field, it did seem a bit forced and somewhat out of place in a Space Opera/Science Fiction novel. Whether Powell had this specific plot element in mind or it was an outgrowth of how his story was progressing, I can’t be sure but for me, it felt too much of an obvious insertion to solve an issue. It’s one of those points in a story that I don’t know how he could have handled this big element differently, but I don’t know if the way it was handled was the best option available.

Corvus Books's offerings continue to impress Mark, the latest of which is: Zombies: A Compendium of the Living Dead edited by Otto Penzler:

Compared with ghosts, vampires, werewolves and, frankly, most horror icons, I’ve always thought of them as one of the weaker family members of the horror genre. They’re dead, but they’re living.... they move! ....they look at you! And that’s about it. They’re also slow and dumb and pretty limited in what they do….

So, it’s going to take a lot to impress me, though I’m willing to give it a try.

The good news is that I think this book is about as good as I’m going to get. There are 46 (!) tales of dead people walking here, with some very well known authors (Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Bloch....) as well as a lot of less known or unknown authors (to me, anyway) such as Jack D’Arcy, Thorp McClusky, and Henry S. Whitehead.

As you might expect with over forty stories, the range is also impressive. There are tales in unexplored lands, creepy houses, mouldy mansions, quaint cottages, the past and the present. Otto does point out that although there are some gory tales herein, he has tried to maintain a balance and so there are not that many of the stories with the ‘almost pornographic sensibility of the need to drench every page with buckets of blood and descriptions of mindless cruelty, torture and violence.’ (Introduction, page xii)