Girl Genius, Mike Shevdon, and the Company of the Dead

A new batch of reviews posted to SFFWorld over the past week, two from Mark and one from Nila...

Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius comics have been the darling of the Internet for quite a few years. Tor recently bound up the first three issues into book form and Mark had a look Girl Genius Omnibus, Volume One: Agatha Awakens:

There are three issues in this omnibus edition. Issue One introduces us to the main characters and shows us the world Agatha lives in. When Agatha is mugged and has a brooch (that she must not lose) stolen, she comes to the attention of Baron Wulfenbach, and also gains the attentions of the Baron’s son, Gilgamesh (Gil). When banned from the University, Agatha ends up at the Airship City in Issue Two. Issue Three is where Agatha discovers her secret past and true identity.

The story here is great fun, and clearly plays on the traditional steampunk tropes with a great deal of humour and panache. There’s lots of big machines and strange laboratories, with masses of arcane power at work. The characters are imaginative and memorable, from the evil villain to the many mad scientists to Krosp, the bio-constructed talking cat. The drawing is fluid and detailed, and adeptly combines black and white drawings and shades of copper in its initial pages with vivid, vibrant colour, when Agatha is in the Airship City (in Issues Two and Three.)

The charm of Mike Shevdon’s The Courts of the Feyre is still high for Nila, she reviewed the third novel in the series, Strangeness and Charm:

… Niall Petersen … finds himself and his family tearing at each other throats. There are also all the other inmates of the special hospital that held the half-fey mongrels set loose on the world and Garvin, the head of the Court’s Warders, has given Niall the responsibility of bringing them all in before they upset the Human-Feyre treaty. If Niall doesn’t or can't do it, Garvin will send the other Warders and they won’t be as nice. As a matter of fact, they’ll probably kill the mongrels rather than deal with bringing them in. But all Niall wants to do is help them. …

This installment of the Courts of the Feyre series is a fine continuation of Niall Petersen’s story. Again, not as fast paced as the first in the series, and not as spectacular as the second (in my opinion), but I very much enjoyed Strangeness and Charm. Mr. Shevdon continues to show his readers fresh insights about his characters and his wonderful imagination manifests in the fey magic mixes with human blood to create interesting fey-mongrels.

Just in time for the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, Mark posted his review of The Company of the Dead by David Kowalski:

Like the Titanic itself, in terms of size this novel is a monster: 800+ pages of fairly small print and not for the faint-hearted.

Pleasingly though, it is a satisfyingly complex tale, one involving alternate history and time travel, with a touch of conspiracy theory and even romance. Considering this is a debut novel, it is quite daunting to see an author cover such a wide range of ideas. And yet, impressively, David manages to juggle these disparate elements into a book that entertains without lecturing.
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Our tale here begins with events upon the original Titanic being changed, yet the ship still sinking. Flash forward to 2012 and the descendant of one of the original ship’s officers, John Jacob Lightholler is now the Captain of a new version of the Titanic, sailing across the Atlantic for a commemorative centennial service of the original journey. On Lightholler’s arrival to New York, we find him contacted by Joseph Kennedy, one of the descendants of the Kennedy family, who tells him that he has been honourably discharged from the Titanic, put back into British Naval service by King Edward IX of Britain and is being made to work with the Confederate Bureau of Investigation (CBI). At a time of emerging nuclear weapons Japan seems to be declaring war on Germany and the US. To avert global disaster Kennedy and his team must put the world on the time-track it should be. Lightholler finds himself part of that group that are to travel back in time and correct the minor changes to the past that have diverted history from its predetermined route.

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..…

Sixty One Nails, Interview, and After the Golden Age

We’ve got some more reviews up at SFFWorld, this time from some of the irregulars.

Nila White is one of the new contributor/moderators at SFFWorld, but she’s been doing a bang up job of everything. This time ‘round she did double duty with Mike Shevdon (also a member of the SFFWorld forums) reviewing his first novel, Sixty One Nails from Angry Robot books and conducting an e-mail interview with him.

Sixty-One Nails is Mike Shevdon’s first book. But it doesn’t feel like it. The characters are well defined, the plot engaging, and the story arc brings a satisfactory conclusion to the first book in a series that I predict will become one of my favorites.
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This is a fast paced book that, if it grabs you, will leave you sleepless till you finish. It is hard to put the book down when so much is happening to the character. Because Niall is being chased for pretty much the entire book, the reader is imbued with that same sense and is impelled to finish the story. Another aspect of the book I enjoyed was the descriptions of the use of magic and the magical beings. Though these creatures are familiar to many who know English folk-lore, i.e. wraiths, fairies, leprechauns, etc, they are painted in darker hues and given a history and problems just as real as our own. This made their story just as interesting to read about as the main character’s. I was also impressed with the descriptions of Niall’s power over the ‘void’, the spaces between things, and how, when the character draws upon that power, it changes his physical appearance. Don’t ask me why, but I was reminded of Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen.…

Again, here’s that interview with Mike, go have a look, won’t you?

Dan has written a handful of reviews for SFFWorld in the past, his latest review is of Carrie Vaughn’s After the Golden Age:

Celia West is the daughter of the leaders of a superhero crime fighting team, a fact that did not bring her much pleasure growing up. She loves her parents but can't stand being around them for great lengths of time.
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This is a comic book without pictures – that is basic to the encounter - and it works very well. Knowing too much about the heroes and villains will detract from the enjoyment of the tale but know that the interrelationship between the characters is played flawlessly. Celia's character makes sense; her love life makes sense, and the progress toward conclusion makes sense.