Reiffen’s Choice

Been quiet on the creative front, but I am working on the cover image for the catgirl calendar, and November is starting in a few days.  I will be writing the sequel to Aurius for NaNoWriMo.  I had never planned for there to be a sequel to it, but Jake’s story simply wasn’t over.

For now, the latest book I read:

Reiffen’s Choice, S. C. Butler – Three children live a peaceful life in a quiet mountaintop manor when two of them, a displaced heir to the thrones of two kingdoms and his friend, are kidnapped and the former whisked off to the stronghold of three great, evil mages.  Paired up with a dwarf and a shape-shifting bear, the other two travel a difficult journey underground to rescue him.

This was a really enjoyable read.  Right from the beginning, the story drew me in, the opening introduction to the world setting an easy pace before the conflict begins.  There was something distinctly classic about the author’s voice, yet he set up a very rich, unique world in this novel.  The whole story is fairly slow-paced, but the tension is ever-present and left me wondering what was going to happen next.  It’s pure escapism and was really a delight to read.  I’m looking forward to reading the second in this trilogy.

 

October book reviews

One of these days, I will start reviewing books as I read them, rather than several weeks later.  In the meantime…

The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson – The third installment in the Mistborn trilogy, this concludes the story of Vin the Mistborn and company in her struggles against an increasingly hostile atmosphere, the fracturing political stability in her new empire, and herself, culminating in an epic struggle between gods.

After the first two Mistborn books, I had high expectations for this conclusion.  Although I had grown to know the author’s style through the previous two books and, as a result, some aspects became a little more predictable, the surprises and tension were kept, and I was very pleased with the result.  As with the previous books, I could honestly go on for pages about everything Sanderson did right with this book.  Everything came together fantastically, tying together every aspect of the world and the previous books seamlessly.  As I had hoped, the ending was climactic and epic, the whole book was extremely difficult to put down, it was overall incredibly well written, and simply an absolute delight to read.  It was deep, it was exciting, it was emotional, and I absolutely must commend Sanderson’s ability to leave one final, amazing surprise at the very end – as indeed he did with the previous books.  And above all, it was a wonderful ending.

I’m not like a lot of people in that I love a good ending.  Series are great and all, but what really sticks with me is a strong ending.  The Hero of Ages was an incredible ending to an amazing trilogy.  It was happy and sad, concluding everything while looking forward to the future, and simply left me feeling very satisfied.  These books have immediately become some of my favourite books of all time and I cannot recommend them enough.  Read Mistborn, and then read The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages.  That’s all I can say.

Little Brother, Cory Doctorow – A modern-day 1984 – as described by someone who has not actually read 1984 – this tells the story of Marcus Yallow, a tech geek high school student in San Francisco who subverts the attempts at surveillance by his school until a terrorist attack puts him in the wrong place at the wrong time and the Department of Homeland Security irrationally brands him a terrorist.  As basic Constitutional freedoms are suspended and invasive surveillance on ordinary citizens increases, Marcus becomes an underground freedom fighter, using his connections and his resources to bring like-minded people together and thwart Homeland Security’s illegal surveillance measures.

I had seen a number of ads for Little Brother on e-mails from Tor.com and had been intrigued for a while, so I was looking forward to reading this one by the time I got down my list of ebooks to read to it.  I can certainly say I wasn’t disappointed, as I ended up being hooked on this book and started and finished it within one day.  The way the plot developed, coupled with character interactions and a refreshingly natural narration and dialogue simply made it hard to put down.  It was edgy, it was exciting, it was fun, and of course, it was poignant.  What I hope to be outrageous fictional situations were portrayed with disturbing believability, and reminded me why politics really make me uncomfortable sometimes.

In all, I really enjoyed this book and definitely recommend it.  You can download the book for free from Mr. Doctorow’s website.  While you’re at it, I also recommend reading all the prefaces regarding copyright and freedom of speech.  They’re good reads.

Through Wolf’s Eyes, Jane Lindskold – An expedition to discover the fate of the entourage of a wayward prince finds a sole survivor, a young woman who has been living with wolves for most of her life, and who is believed to be the heir to the kingdom.  As she’s brought back and slowly taught to integrate into civilized society, the battle for ascension between her and other contenders heightens, and becomes even more complex as the neighbouring kingdom, a longstanding rival, stakes its claim for the throne, resulting in war.

I must say that I admire the depth of the political balance in this book – not just that I can, but that I do – but I found the writing itself a bit lacking.  It took a couple chapters to get into it at all, which nearly lost me right at the beginning, and the rest of it I found rather simplistic.  Character thoughts, reactions, and particularly interactions felt more like a young adult novel than one as complex as it was trying to be.  Further, the characters had the feel of being dictated, rather than developed.  It was smooth enough so that none of the characters did things that seemed out of character, but they just felt more like actors, like they were filling necessary roles, than that they were real people.  In all, it wasn’t bad, and I don’t regret reading it like other books I’ve read, but it’s not at the top of my list.

The Disunited States of America, Harry Turtledove – In a future in which travel between alternate realities is possible – in which changes in historical events make a very different present – two travelers become stranded in an America where the Constitution was never ratified, resulting in fractured city-states and a Georgia where politically mandated racism is alive and well.

I thought this was an interesting idea, though again, the writing failed to impress.  It tried a little too hard at times to be clever and tongue-in-cheek, and some character reactions seemed awkward or understated.  In the case of the latter, when war breaks out between Georgia and neighbouring Ohio and the lead character ends up marching on the front lines, I thought his reactions to a confrontation which he doesn’t agree with and the things he sees and does as a result to be quite glossed over, as though he was a common rookie soldier, rather than a pacifist civilian dragged into the atrocities of war.  In the case of the former, the same character’s disdainful reference to “grown-ups” irked me.  Teenagers don’t call people “grown-ups;” teenagers want to be or believe they are adults.  Ignoring that showed a clear disconnect between the author and the type of characters he was writing.

Again, this wasn’t a bad book, but it was really nothing special, and nothing I would particularly recommend.

Casino Royale, Ian Fleming – The first James Bond novel, this tells of the secret agent’s baccarat game against a Soviet spy desperate to turn around his failing fortunes.

There’s not much more to this novel, and there certainly wasn’t as much action as most Bond movies would have you believe.  The writing I found a little awkward at times – places described in second person before switching abruptly back into Bond’s POV – though it was good enough to keep my interest.  The story was really quite slow and not much happened, though I was surprised at how sexist it was.  Not just Bond’s attitude towards women – that of course could be accepted as a character flaw – but the way the lead female was portrayed enforced the stereotype.  While I found some enjoyable tension in the baccarat game itself, the climax of the story came early, and the “surprise” ending was predictable and trite.  Perhaps Fleming’s writing improved in subsequent novels; I probably wouldn’t have been interested in a movie adaptation if I’d read this before seeing any Bond movies.

 

September book reviews

And by “September,” I mean the last three months… again.

The High King’s Tomb, Kristen Britain – I was given the first book in this series, Green Rider, as a gift some years ago and enjoyed it enough to follow the series since. Continuing the story begun in the first book and second, First Rider’s Call, The High King’s Tomb tells of Karigan G’ladheon, first reluctant, now eager Green Rider messenger in service to the King of Sacoridia, a young woman who turns out to be far more than she realized, and the growing threat from beyond the D’Yer wall that keeps an ancient evil sealed inside a ruined forest. To say much more than that would be a spoiler for previous books, but suffice to say, at 670 large-format pages of text, there is a bit more to the story than just that much.

This book, as with the first two in the series, is something of a guilty pleasure read. The attention Karigan receives and the attention other characters give to her give it a bit of a romance novel feel, and I can almost understand the appeal of the genre. Karigan is fleshed out enough that she avoids being Mary Sue and I’ll admit I take a perverse pleasure in the things that happen to her, and in particular with the way villains and others toy with her. At the same time, in this book in particular, I found the writing at times a bit childish; not immature, but naive, and it seems almost like a young adult book.

As to the story in this one, it wasn’t bad. It was interesting, though it didn’t have the gripping appeal that I found so captivating in the first book, and some of the antagonists I found somewhat one-dimensionally evil, and chapters from their point of view were a bit annoying to read. In all, like the previous books, it wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever read, but it’s fun. It’s kind of like a shoot-’em-up action movie or chick flick – whichever’s your taste – a lazy, easy read to simply get lost in.

Summer Knight, Jim Butcher – Another fantasy series that hooked me from the first book, this continues the saga of Harry Dresden, practicing wizard in modern-day downtown Chicago, in a story of epic battle between factions of the Sidhe, or faerie.

As with the other books in the Dresden Files, the fantasy is mixed in with murder mystery and comedy, and in that regard sticks to formula, though the comedy doesn’t shine quite as well as in books 1 and 3 of the series. Some startling developments to Harry seemed a little glossed over, and his decision to team up with the Alphas – a gang of werewolves introduced in the second book, Fool Moon – seemed somewhat out of character for him, but aside from that, I didn’t have any real complaints. It wasn’t my favourite book in the series, but it was a good one to continue it.

A Brief History of Life in the Middle Ages, Martyn Whittock – I don’t normally read nonfiction, but upon seeing this in the clearance section at my local bookstore, regarding a period of time of which I’m particularly fond, I decided to pick it up.

Before one looks into this book, I must stress that the book is not so much about the main title, but its subheading: “Scenes from the Towns and Countryside of Medieval England,” with focus on the last word. There is no information whatsoever as to the facets of life on mainland Europe, nor even really for Scotland or Ireland. Even so, I found the coverage of this book not as in depth as I would have liked, with the aspects of Medieval life that were covered feeling a little too separate from each other, without giving a good all-around view of how all these facets worked together. Also, I found this a difficult read as the writing was very dry, especially in the first few chapters.

It’s a decent introduction to the topic for those who already know a little about it, at least in absence of a better book, for which I’m open to suggestions. I wouldn’t really recommend this as a good starting place, though, and it’s certainly not expansive enough to extend the knowledge of someone already somewhat familiar with that era of history. More or less, if you can get past the dry writing, it can make a decent casual read for those interested in the subject, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it for much else.

Crystal Rain, Tobias Buckell – Returning at last to the free ebooks offered in the promotion leading up to the opening of Tor.com, this steampunk-genre book with a basis in hard science fiction tells the story of an army of fanatical warriors and their alien “gods” invading a small jungle civilization, the only settlements on a distant planet cut off from Earth. At the center of it all is a clearly extraordinary man whom everyone is searching, but who has no idea who he really is.

When I started reading this book, it was like a breath of fresh air. It’s exactly the type of book I’ve been looking for – something distinctly speculative fiction, but so refreshingly different from all the typical off-the-shelf fantasy. It takes place in a setting vastly underexplored in the genre, with a very atmospheric portrayal, the characters have different mannerisms and, particularly, accents, the genre blending was very natural, and the fact that most of the characters, indeed, most of the people in the story, were dark-skinned was simply a refreshing change. Coupled with a well-woven plot, carefully laid out secrets, and real tension, this was a really engaging and fascinating read, and it comes with my recommendations.

A Brief History of Medieval Warfare, Peter Reid – Another clearance rack find, and again mostly for writing reference, I would again direct your attention more carefully to the subheading of this book: “The Rise and Fall of English Supremacy at Arms, 1314-1485.” The focus is strictly on England, with information only on France as it applies to England’s role in the Hundred Years War, and even then, I found the range of information too narrow to be of any general use. As also with the book above which shares only series title, the writing was very dry – even more so, as I started reading this one before all these others and was only able to finish it after I got through Life in the Middle Ages – and the information provided really didn’t seem to provide a good overall view of what the book was supposed to be about. It read quite more like an English history lecture than a treatise on Medieval warfare, and even seemed so strict in its coverage that I could find no overlap between the information provided in this book and that in Life in the Middle Ages.

Again, the book did provide some good information; the detailed descriptions of how battlefields were prepared and men arrayed and the tactics used give a good idea of how battles were set up, and won, in that time period. However, it just seemed to be too narrow in range to really give me what I was looking for, and what I expected from the book’s main title. And again, it’s certainly not one I would pick as a starting point for the topic.

 

Three months’ reading

… has not equated to much, in my case.

Farthing, Jo Walton – Now over halfway through the ebooks offered in Tor.com’s pre-launch promotion last year, I reached this alternate history novel taking place in a mid-20th century in which the second World War resolves in a truce with Germany, not victory for the Allies.  The story is a murder mystery surrounding a group of British politicians instrumental to the peace terms with the the Third Reich, along with the London detective who investigates the case.

This book very nearly lost me right after the first chapter, as it set up the main character and narrator for half the novel, an obnoxiously vain and self-centered upperclasswoman, despite her claims and – admittedly – desires not to be.  There was enough of interest to keep me reading, and the first chapter was the worst of it, but I didn’t really enjoy reading most of the novel.  I can appreciate the thought that went into the setting and such, but the story and particularly the characters failed to captivate.  Also, though I hesitate to fault the author this, the writing was almost painfully British, really shoving it down my throat in what seemed to me an equivalent to a flag-waving, gun-toting American saying “y’all” all the time.

It wasn’t a badly written novel, per se, but it certainly wasn’t to my taste and wasn’t what I was looking for in a story, and I wouldn’t recommend it as such.

The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson – Earlier this year, I read Mistborn by this same author, the free ebook of which I also received in the above-mentioned promotion from Tor.com, and I loved it so much that I had to pick up this sequel, and second in the Mistborn trilogy.  Continuing where the first book left off, this book concerns Vin and company’s struggles to continue in the aftermath of the Final Empire, something that is made particularly difficult in the face of the nightly mists turning deadly and multiple besieging armies coming down upon them.

I had high expectations for this book after reading Mistborn, and it did not disappoint.  The story was woven remarkably, the tension and action were amazing, I got to see new sides of characters I had already grown to know and love through the first book, and it was so exciting and unpredictable that at times, I really had a hard time putting it down.  As a writer myself, I can only imagine the amount of preparation it must have taken to weave together every aspect of this novel to make it what it is, and I could go on for pages about everything Sanderson did right here.  I honestly cannot praise this book enough and there is nothing about it that I think could be improved upon.  Like Mistborn, this book is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read, and I recommend it first and foremost to anyone who enjoys reading fiction.

That said, if you plan to read The Well of Ascension, read Mistborn first.  In fact, if you have any intention of reading Mistborn, don’t even read the blurb on the back of The Well of Ascension, as it gives away the entire ending to the first book.  Sanderson did an effective job of making this novel self-contained, as was his intention in an interview I read with him, but of course, all the surprises of Mistborn are given away in short order in the second book, and Mistborn was every bit as amazing as this one, perhaps more so when you have both books leading up to a singular conclusion.  Find an ebook, check the library, borrow from a friend, but seriously, read these books.

Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan, William E. Deal – I don’t normally read nonfiction, but I came across this title when I was trying to find a good resource on the topic some few weeks ago and ordered it in to my local library.  As the title suggests, it’s a general guide to the various aspects of life in Japan from 1185-1868, commonly known as the Medieval and early modern periods.

I found this to be a very useful resource with great information on the subject.  It’s more or less an introduction to the topic, without going overly into detail regarding any particular matter, but it provides an excellent basic view of life in Japan and covers every aspect of life that I can think of, including history, warrior culture, demographics, religion, daily life, art and architecture, and more.  The information provided was easily palatable without being dumbed down and each topic was covered pretty evenly.  In addition to the information the book itself provided, each chapter ended with a list of recommended reading for more information on the subject, though some listings I found confusing – occasionally there would be nothing but a date – and along with a bibliography at the end of the book, there was a list of museums outside Japan with notable Japanese collections.

I found this book both very helpful for my own research and a very interesting read on its own merit, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the subject or even those with a casual interest in it.  In fact, reading it has me interested in some other books listed on the back cover in the Handbook to Life series, such as those on ancient Rome, Aztec, and Renaissance.

 

More books

Once again, I’ve fallen behind with my book reviews, as they were.  Let’s hope I can remember the ones I’ve read recently with a modicum of accuracy.

Spin, Robert Charles Wilson – Still going through the ebooks I received through Tor.com’s promotion before the website opened, this is a story of the stars disappearing as the Earth is encased in a shell that significantly slows down time within, so much so that in one generation on Earth, the sun will expand to the point of absorbing the inner planets of the solar system.

The story, of course, is about the main characters, the narrator and his two closest friends, very intelligent but very different fraternal twins.  And the book excels at their interactions with each other and with other people in their lives, their relationships delightfully complex without being frustrating or annoying.  The plot was captivating and original, and the extents to which it was explored were very satisfying.  In all, I’d say this one is a keeper, and worth reading if you get the chance.

Grave Peril, Jim Butcher – Harry Dresden is back in the third book of his namesake series, this time up against rampaging ghosts, vampires, and a faerie godmother that doesn’t know when to quit.

This book hearkened back to the things I loved about the first Dresden Files book, most notably the humour that was disappointingly uncommon in the second book.  Peril also introduces Michael, the Fist of God, a new major character who plays Harry’s partner throughout much of the story.  His presence adds a nice element to the story – Michael contrasts and yet complements Harry well, and the animosity Michael’s wife displays towards Harry makes for some interesting drama as well.  All the mystery, suspense, and danger that kept me reading the first book raptly is present in this one, and it was just as thoroughly enjoyable throughout.

After having read three of the Dresden Files books, however, I am starting to notice a bit of a pattern in the storytelling.  Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing – it’s a winning formula and it’s not followed strictly enough to become predictable – but in general, the story progresses much in the same way as it has in the previous books.  It could be a problem in later books, if it continues, but for now, it’s just a casual observation.

Twilight, Stephenie Meyer – Yes, I read it.  It had been recommended to me by a couple different people before the movie came out last year, and I’m trying to be more open-minded about hyped-up things, so when one of such offered it to me, I decided to oblige.  This is, of course, the story of a high school girl who moves from Phoenix to rural Washington, only to discover vampires inhabit her new home, and more so, she finds she falls for one of them.

The short story is, it’s not bad, but it’s hardly a winner.  Honestly, I had to chuckle while I was reading this, because it read so much like so many stories I’ve read on Fictionpress – not badly written, but teetering on the brink of Mary Sue and trying very hard not to be.  The narration style – which was a little simplistic for my tastes – read just like countless stories of “fictional” high school girls that I’ve read on Fictionpress.  It’s 999,999 in a million, and the characters don’t exactly make up for it.  While not exactly one-dimensional, they’re just not all that interesting, and – much as I like my godly elves and such – the vampires were just a little too AWSUM!!!11 to care about.  And the plot, well, the ultimate conflict has little to do with much of the story and isn’t even hinted at until very late in the book.

I’ve certainly read worse, lots worse.  Twilight was not painful to read, nor was it really boring, but it isn’t something I would recommend unless you’re interested in the series.

Fathom, Cherie Priest – I picked up this hardcover – at list price, which is highly unusual for me – because I loved Priest’s first book, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, which I read last year, and I read her blog enough to know that much of her career rested on the success of this, her first hardcover.  Hoping someday to be published myself, I was happy to contribute to a still budding author whose work I had already enjoyed.

Fathom is a story set in mid-20th-century Florida about ancient gods fighting to resurrect the Leviathan – or prevent doing so – which would destroy this world and create a new one in its place, using two young women as avatars to carry out their instructions.  The reviews I read on Priest’s journal and the dust jacket blurb painted it as a bizarre, epic tale, and I was interested to read it, but it fell short.  The epic nature of it actually hurts it a little, as it’s difficult to connect with the characters the way the story is written.  It also suffered what 4&20bb carefully avoided, a wandering plot.  I really had no idea what was going to happen next, which made things seem to happen for no reason and lessened the importance of the events that occurred.

It certainly wasn’t a bad read, but especially after 4&20bb, it just fell short of expectations.  Still, I don’t regret supporting the author, and I wish her continued success.

Child of a Dead God, Barb & J. C. Hendee – The last book in the first series of this duo’s Noble Dead saga, this story culminates the story of the last five books into Magiere the dhampir’s quest for a mysterious orb sought after by her vampiric half-brother Welstiel.

I picked up Thief of Lives, the second book in the Noble Dead saga, several years ago, and soon acquired the first book and have been following the series since.  Thief of Lives was a fun, fast-paced, action-oriented story of a reluctant vampire hunter called upon to save a bustling city from a gang of ravening undead, with one of the longest, most developed climaxes I’ve ever read.

Child strayed a bit from those roots.  It is a classic fantasy, rife with very traditional elves, magic, fay, and mystical artifacts, with less action and far less humour, very different from what drew me to the series in the first place.  And that’s not really something that can be ignored, either; Child references each of the previous five books and I doubt much of the book would make sense to one who has not read the rest of the series.

And, as the conclusion of that series, it didn’t really satisfy.  Many questions were left unanswered at the end and, without already knowing that it was meant to be the end of a series, I would not have suspected it was.  It is meant as part of a greater saga of books, but there’s only a couple of things at the end of the book that provide any sort of closure, and that mostly has to do with character relationships than with anything story-related.  I was also a little disappointed – though not surprised, based on the lead-up – that one of my favourite characters at least from earlier in the series died somewhat unceremoniously in this book.

Make no mistake; Child was not a bad book.  If the previous books had been different, I probably would have enjoyed it more, and I did still enjoy it.  But it was very different from the last books, and in such a serial story as this, that really affects reception.  With the way this book concluded, and knowing what I do about the next book in the saga, I’m not certain I’m interested in starting the next series.

 

Book review backlog

I’ve been putting off my latest book reviews because I’m afraid they won’t sound very professional.  But, this is my blog and I never made any claims that my reviews are professional or enlightened, it’s just my opinions of the books I read.  Hopefully, further book reviews will be more positive than they have been, because as of this year, I’m not going to continue reading books that utterly fail to captivate me when I have so many more to read as it is.

That said, I’ve read a few since I last shared any.

Soul, Tobsha Learner – Still working my way through the backlog of free ebooks from Tor.com before the website opened.  This is a dual story about a geneticist struggling through a new study and coming to grips with her husband suddenly leaving her, and her great-grandmother’s rise in Victorian England from rural Ireland to fashionable London as she catches the fancy of an ex-soldier turned scientist.

To start with, for anyone who might be tempted to pick up this book, I would like to point out that this was published by the wrong company.  There is nothing fantasy about this book.  It is a modern-day and historical fiction, and further, it reads more like literary fiction than nearly all of the genre books I’ve read – never mind the reading guide at the end.

Aside from that, the story/stories in this novel are interesting.  The characters are well portrayed, and I did find myself wondering what was going to happen next.  However, the recurring theme of loneliness was something of a detriment to the book’s enjoyment.  Every major character went through some period of loneliness through the book, in a way that was well written, but depressing to the point of annoying, and it honestly put me in a bad mood at times while I was reading it.  Kudos to the author for making me feel along with the characters, for really making me appreciate the injustice of it all as I got each character’s different perspective, but it was frustrating to read.  It wasn’t a bad book, but it’s not one I would recommend.

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens – I’d never read this classic before and decided the season was right a little over a month ago.  This is the story of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge on the night before Christmas, when he’s visited by the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come and is convinced to change his ways.

It’s a classic story, of course, and it reads like classic British literature, and not necessarily in a good way.  The writing is very dry – there was an obnoxious passage on the first page about the author’s opinion of the phrase “dead as a doornail” – and I found Scrooge’s change a little too willing for the way he was set up in the beginning.  As a classic, of course, I can appreciate it, but that’s about all I can say for it.

Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson – Another one from the Tor.com library, this was the first book I picked up when I got tired of the book I had been reading.  It’s a little difficult to summarize, as it’s a complex story and even more detailed world, and it’s hard to know what to say without giving away too much from the book.  This is the story of a group of Allomancers, mages who use the power of various metals to give them enhanced abilities, in their attempts to overthrow the unbeatable Final Empire and take down its immortal Lord Ruler.

For the incredibly rich setting the author has portrayed, the world is overly exaggerated to a point that would be childish if it had not been handled so delicately.  The Final Empire consists of two kinds of people, the lower-class skaa that have no more privileges than slaves – perhaps fewer, for how poorly they are treated – and that infinitesimal fraction of the population that is lucky enough to be nobles, who treat the skaa badly even as property.  The skaa have been so downtrodden for so long that for 90% of them, escape or rebellion isn’t even a possibility.  The author treads a thin line in a world consisting only of the utterly hopeless and the utterly complacent, but he does so as expertly as a tightrope walker by focusing on the only characters who are truly likable in this world.

They are the driving force of the story, the force that really sweeps the reader into this rich, yet bleak world.  The dialogue is excellent, the characters are delightfully engaging, and some very troubled characters are portrayed very believably.  The plot to overthrow the Final Empire is complex and well thought out and, without giving anything away, the author shapes events and brings things together in the only possible way the climax of the story could have worked.  Mysteries are presented and solved clear through to the end of the story, the action is engaging, surprises and twists constantly kept me on my toes, and the way everything came together was nothing short of brilliant.

In a word, this book is phenomenal.  Even this early in, I can say with confidence that this book will undoubtedly make my top five books I read this year – unless, of course, it’s surpassed by the next two books in the trilogy.  I am really looking forward to reading the second book in the trilogy, and this first book is one of my highest recommended reads of all time.  Read this book.  I’m serious.

Fool Moon, Jim Butcher – In this second book in the Dresden Files, Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional practicing wizard – and one of few others, if any, in the entire U.S. – is called upon by the Chicago police department to investigate a grisly series of murders with a lupine connection, and the twists unfold as the mystery deepens.

This book is written much the same way as Storm Front, the first book of the Dresden Files, a book I thoroughly enjoyed – with one difference.  The beginning of Fool Moon, at least, is a lot more serious than Storm Front.  The drama and darkness of the story was always there, but what made Storm Front so endearing and so entertaining was the humor woven throughout.  That humor is a little more absent in Fool Moon, and it makes the book tip a little too far into angst territory, and makes it a little more standard fantasy, an affliction Storm Front successfully avoided.  There was also a lot more death in this book, which kind of desensitized me to it, something I didn’t think was necessary or helpful to the story.

That said, it was still an entertaining read, and there were still the lines that made me crack up to read, and the danger and action and story were, for the most part, well portrayed.  It wasn’t as good as the first book, but it was a satisfactory continuation to the series, and I’m looking forward to reading more.  As the book I’m currently reading is the third in the Dresden Files, that review could come soon.

Old Man’s War, John Scalzi – The latest of my free ebooks from Tor – but an early one in the promotion, if memory serves me right – the title of this story is more literal than one would think, as it follows the journey of a seventy-five-year-old man as he signs up for the interstellar military, one that recruits exclusively from his age group to protect a cut off planet Earth from hostile alien races it has not yet seen.

It’s a bizarre tale and more than a little unpleasant at times, but it drew me in immediately.  The banter between characters is easily the prime highlight of this novel, clever, amusing – sometimes downright hilarious – and simply a delight to read.  The pacing of the story fits with the action very well, too; in the first part of the novel, the writing/narration really gives a sense that the narrator, and other characters, are elderly people, making the book a nice, easy read to start.  In the second part of the novel, when they are made fit for combat again, the pacing picks up with it, in a very natural way, and the depiction of characters who had lived long, full lives in which they had little else to expect but death suddenly given a chance to be at their prime again was, although graphic at times, believable and very well handled.

At just about 300 pages, it’s a short and fast-paced read all told, something that, after the hefty 650 pages of Mistborn, was a refreshing escape.  It was certainly an enjoyable read and comes with my recommendation.

 

Three recent books…

The second item that I have fallen behind in this log is reviews of the books I have read of late.  Not many, but there have been a few.

Writers of the Future Volume XIX – I picked up this past compilation of winners of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest for unpublished authors at a used book sale a few months ago, since I was just sending in an entry for that contest myself and it was on my mind.  It is a collection of longer scifi/fantasy short stories – the shortest I figure is a little under 4,000 words, the rest are around 20 pages or more.

It’s a difficult book to review quickly, in that regard, but certainly I can say that I enjoyed this.  I have always been a fan of amateur fiction and few of these stories disappoint.  There’s very little swords-and-sorcery fantasy, most of the stories leaning towards a modern fantasy or scifi bent, but they were all compelling and unique and I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Battlestar Galactica, Jeffrey A. Carver – Yet another in the list of ebooks that I received from Tor.com before said website opened.  This is a novelization of the beginning of the new Battlestar Galactica TV series, based on the old 70s series.  It is the story of the namesake warship, about to be retired and turned into a museum after years of peace, only to be thrust into combat again from the sudden attack of the deadly Cylons, the robots turned war machines that rebelled against humanity decades earlier.  The attack devastates the twelve colonies of humans and the survivors’ only chance is to flee as far as they can go.  Fans of the original Battlestar Galactica show recognize the story, but notable differences include the gender switch for main characters Starbuck and Boomer and the Cylon models that look exactly like humans.

It’s an interesting story, starting off the series with an enemy so overwhelming that mankind’s only choice is to run.  As far as this novel goes, it’s not bad.  The action is interesting, as is the character interaction, and while neither particularly shines, it’s certainly entertaining.  Of course, none of that can really be attributed to the author, who, honestly, does not impress me.  This is the second book I’ve read by Carver and I find his writing style simplistic and almost a little amateurish, and his tendency to write spoken character thoughts in the wrong tense irks me.

I haven’t yet seen the new Battlestar Galactica series – though it’s been on my list for about a year now – so I don’t know how this novelization compares to the show it’s based off.  It was an entertaining read, I’ll give it that, but it’s not something I would have actively sought out, and I don’t think I’d recommend it as such, either.

Flash, L. E. Modesitt, Jr. – The next book from the Tor mailing list to follow after Battlestar Galactica, this followed the story of an independent business consultant in an advanced future as he receives a string of jobs that lead him to mystery and danger, and pull him into a conspiracy he would sooner have no part of.

This was a heavy read.  Right from the beginning, original scifi concepts, company/organization/person names, and detailed politics of this futuristic world are thrown at the reader a mile a minute and it’s a struggle to keep up.  Most of the original concepts can be understood in context, but none of them are really explained, so even at the end of the book, one has an idea of what those things do, but defining them is challenging, and some of them, such as the ever-present “rez” and the book’s namesake “flash,” I never did quite follow.  There are a lot of acronyms for company/organization names and there’s a lot of the lead character’s work described through the book which is not really relevant to the actual story, serving only to bog down the reader further.  It provides some believable depth to the lead character’s work and world, but it does make for some heavy reading.

Add to this the nature of the lead character’s work, independent consulting on the effectiveness of product placement as an advertising tool, which involves more than a few complicated economics lectures, and you have a book which is not something I would recommend to a casual reader.  I ended up reading this probably a little quicker than I would have liked, simply because I was afraid that if I let it sit too much, I would have forgotten a lot of the foreign concepts described and been completely lost when I resumed later.

As for the story, it’s alright.  I had a hard time getting any sense of urgency about it early in, as the first indication of conspiracy occurred so far down the corporate ladder that it hardly seemed of any importance.  It got somewhat more interesting later on in the book, but it didn’t exactly become enthralling.

In the first half of the book, the characters are of little interest, and it takes a long time for even the narrator to develop any sort of personality.  When he does, it doesn’t become one I particularly like.  I didn’t dislike the character, but I found his stated beliefs clashed quite a bit with his actions – in essence, what the author showed and what he told didn’t really match up, and I really didn’t agree with the character’s actions.

I can respect all the work that went into the story to develop the future world with its intrigues, politics, and advanced technology, and those readers who appreciate that more may enjoy this book more than I did.  Personally, though, when I read a book, I’m looking for a good story first and foremost, and the story in this novel was a little dry, and the characters didn’t add a lot to it.  In short, I don’t think I’d put this novel in the recommended list, but again, for those who are more captivated by a detailed world than I am, it might be right up your alley.

 

In the Midnight Hour

It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally gotten through another book.

In the Midnight Hour, Patti O’Shea – This was another of the ebooks I received for signing up for the mailing list for Tor’s new website.  It’s the story of a young magic user in a secret society called the Gineal as she frees a man from being imprisoned in a cartoon and struggles to defeat her old mentor, who had turned evil while she was still the woman’s apprentice.

Books like this are the reason I wish I wasn’t so stubborn about finishing what I started.  Given that this title was published by Tor, one of the largest English language scifi/fantasy publishers, I would never have expected that this book was in fact a romance novel.  I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of the genre, but I had no personal experience to say for certain.  Having read this, however, I can say beyond doubt that this is not a genre I am interested in.  It was trite, it was predictable, and there was an excess of graphic sex scenes thrown in solely for the purpose of arousal.

That, however, isn’t the main problem I had with this book.  Fine, I didn’t pick it, it’s the genre, I don’t care for it but I’ll slog through it.  What really ate at me was how utterly amateur the writing was.  Between the constant swearing, downright obsession with sex, poorly defined world less believable than Harry Potter, and narration that sounded like something you might hear in a high school cafeteria, this book seriously read like it was written by a fourteen-year-old.  There were some aspects of the plot that were interesting and the characters for the most part are consistent.  But I’ve read teenagers’ LiveJournals that sounded more mature.  Unless Tor has a romance novel division that I was previously unaware of, I honestly cannot imagine how this book was published – and even if it was, I’ve read a lot of stories that focus on a relationship between two characters that were better.

Where the complimentary quote that provides the only accent to the book’s cover came from, I don’t know, but the long and short of it is, if you see this book in a store, avoid it like the plague.

 

Boundless love

Finally finished some new art:

Done for a friend, who designed the dress.  You can commission her for a copy of it or see more of her clothing on her website.

And, since I was using this as a way of keeping track of the books I’ve been reading, I figure I should review the latest one.

Storm Front, Jim Butcher – Harry Dresden is a wizard offering his services for hire in downtown Chicago.  Business is slow, but things start getting crazy when he investigates a grisly double murder for the police department and gets hired to find a missing husband, and both cases open up a whole new world of trouble for him.

I remember seeing this book on Roc books’s website and being interested, so when an uncle offered to let us borrow it, I was happy to oblige, and was more than pleased with it.  It’s clever, witty, tense, exciting, and dramatic.  Harry is both believable and likable as a narrator, I loved the detail the author gave the world, and I laughed out loud more than a few times while reading this.  Some outlandish situations came about, as crazy as any sitcom, but far better written as it didn’t cross the line into absurd.  The danger coming in from all sides kept me wondering how Harry was going to get out of things and the pacing drew me along and made it very difficult to put the book down.  The narration was simply a pleasure to read and the story was engaging.

I wasn’t quite as impressed with the ending.  Right from the beginning, it’s set up that Harry is a pretty powerful wizard, but throughout the book, he doesn’t actually do a whole lot of magic, and this is especially true during the climax of the story.  The denouement was a little short and abrupt, as well, but neither of those really detracted from the book, it would simply have been that much stronger if Harry had done more during the climax and there was a little more detail of the resolution at the end.

Despite that, this was an excellent read and comes highly recommended.  I’m eager to read more of the Harry Dresden files.  I haven’t read a book that enjoyable in a while, and in my opinion, this is what books should be like.  Not as in genre or style, but it seems rare that a book really captivates me, when one would think that there should be more really good fiction.

 

Experiencing technical distractions

Last weekend, we bought a Wii. This is a terrible, terrible thing for all my other hobbies. Needless to say, I am not close to finishing any new art this week. My biggest accomplishment is starting to get the hang of powersliding in Mario Kart. Curses, but that game is fun.

Unfortunately, I haven’t done a lot of writing this week, either. After having the 2007 Writer’s Market sitting on my desk for two weeks, I finally took down information on publishers and writing contests before having to return it to the library today. As such, I’ve spent a lot of time at work this week, my last as a receptionist without much to do most of the time, researching and compiling information on writing contests. It has consumed my life a bit too much at the moment, though I think my list is pretty stable now. I did write a new short story this week, one I’m sorry to say I’m not going to share online yet simply because I want it to remain unpublished for contest purposes, and I’m going to be entering some contests in the near future. Wish me luck.

I also finally read a steampunk novel.

The Difference Engine, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling – I found numerous references to this novel as a quintessential steampunk story online, so I put it on the reading list and checked it out of the library recently. It’s difficult to summarize this book, as even after having finished it, I still don’t really know what the point of the story was. In a world where the computer is invented more than a century ahead of its time, three people come into contact with an extremely powerful and mysterious program, and the story chronicles their struggles as they deal with the ramifications the program presents.

This book was a bit difficult to get into. There were a lot of period terms and the authors’ own invented devices thrown in right off the bat, most – but not all – of which I could pick up in context, but rarely on the first instance. I’ll credit the authors for effectively blurring the line between actual period technology and the devices unique to their world, but it was all a little difficult to follow at least at first. In addition to this, passages would abruptly switch tense and purpose entirely out of context to the rest of the story, and the whole last part of the story, at least fifty pages or so, was written completely different to the rest of it and seemed jarring and out of place, little say extraordinarily difficult to understand.

I enjoyed the second part of the story. Some questions, some of them very essential ones, were still left unanswered at the end of it, but the events of that part of the story were interesting enough, the narrative itself taking me into the story enough for it not to matter much. It had an effective beginning, exposition, and ending, and even though I didn’t like all of it, it did keep my interest well throughout. That a good hundred or so pages followed it didn’t really detract from the enjoyment of that segment, but I simply didn’t feel as compelled to keep reading as I did before. The conclusion of the second part of the story made me feel like the rest of it should have been denouement, when it was meant as a complete story of its own, one which never really took off the ground the way the second, and to a lesser extent the first, parts of the story did.

It was different, and I’m sure it’s more to some people’s taste than others. I found it a bit jarring, and honestly, even setting those flaws aside, I’ve read better books. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either.