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The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:44:11 -0400

I don’t know what the phrase “extreme fantasy” means. To me the word “extreme” was best defined in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle : white water rafting in a convenience store, hang gliding off a cliff, drinking Mountain Dew and lastly listening to Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler. The editor of The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy defines extreme as “stories that took a basic idea, whether simple or complicated, and developed it to some extreme, beyond what the reader might normally expect.” That doesn’t sound too bad, but I like Harold and Kumar’s definition of extreme better.

For this review, I will give a brief synopsis of each story, followed by what I thought about the story and then finally the rating I give it out of 5. There are 24 stories in total making this one meaty, or mammoth if you will collection. Onto the first story:

1) Senator Bilbo by Andy Duncan. First published in 2001.
Story : A descendent of Bilbo Baggins fights for political power and immigration control in the fantasy land of the Shire.
Thoughts : Boring and overlong. Duncan is usually a good writer, but the characters in this are simply unsympathetic caricatures of Tolkien’s. I mean Gandolf-like magicians interacting with turn-of-the-century senators? Come on! Not a great way to start of a short fiction anthology.
Rating : 1/5

2) Sandmagic by Orson Scott Card. First published in 1979.
Story : A young boy watches his parents die of murder and disease and vows to seek vengeance upon the ones that caused his pain.
Thoughts : I liked the way Card expresses the concept of magic and the consequences caused by using something far greater than any one being. This story is very nicely done— heartbreaking and dark all at the same time. Now if only Card could keep his mouth shut and stop spouting his religious views on the evils of American Democracy and the Satanic undercurrents of homo-sexual marriages.
Rating : 3.5/5

3) Dream A Little Dream For Me… by Peter Crowther. First Published in 2000.
Story : A young man dealing with writers block travels to Germany to unwind and finds out he may be the key to saving God’s one true dream.
Thoughts : Crowther may be better known as the publisher of the great small press publishing house, PS Publishing. However, it also turns out that he is one heck of a good short story writer. This is a tale of how dreams can tempt us, rule us, and ultimately destroy us; how hope can turn to sorrow and regret in an instance. This one has a dreamlike melancholy feel to it— like dreaming of bunnies frolicking while your girlfriend breaks up with you.
Rating : 3/5

4) Lost Wax by Leah Bobet. First published in 2006.
Story : A young boy dreams of magic forbidden and learns that not all things wished for are beneficent and wanted.
Thoughts : A simple story with an abrupt ending. This one could’ve been more descriptive and a tad longer, but still was fun. Nothing much more to really say here, although I could never imagine myself collecting discarded wax shavings.
Rating : 2.5/5

5) Save A Place In The Lifeboat For Me by Howard Waldrop. First published in 1976.
Story : A bunch of old-time film comedians search for their destinies/purpose?
Thoughts : This is absurdist to the extreme. I don’t mind absurdist when it’s done well, like with Beckett, but this was not done well at all. Can comedy really save the world? I don’t know, but if it can, this ain’t it. If anything, this type of comedy will set things back by centuries.
Rating : 1.5/5

6) I Am Bonaro by John Niendorff. First published in 1964.
Story : A man who can turn into anything he wishes loses his mind in more ways than one.
Thoughts : An odd and short little story. This one is quite striking and will stay with you for days— or maybe like Bonaro, you’ll forget it. What wonder!
Rating : 2.5/5

7) The Old House Under The Snow by Rhys Hughes. First published in 2004.
Story : Two friends become trapped in a mansion surrounded by ice which slowly sinks, sending them deeper and deeper into a bottomless world.
Thoughts : The editor of this book, Mike Ashley, promotes this story as a nightmarish version of Alice in Wonderland, and I couldn’t agree more. This was quite the surreal one. Rhys has a definite way with words that will leave readers itching for more. I am officially a fan of his.
Rating : 3.5/5

8) Banquet of the Lords of Night by Liz Williams. First published in 2002.
Story : In a world of darkness where any concept of light means death, one man struggles to bring light to his life and save the world.
Thoughts : This is a short yet suspenseful story. Each word read is filled with more and more dread, reaching a crescendo that explodes of the page. Liz Williams always creates interesting worlds and this is no exception. Reminded me a lot of the tall creepy things from Dark Crystal and Mirrormask .
Rating : 3/5

9) Charlie the Purple Giraffe was Acting Strangely by David D. Levine. First published in 2004.
Story : A purple giraffe becomes aware that he is in a comic book and wonders if there is existence if there are no readers.
Thoughts : A story that can be read many ways: of our cultures obsessions with being famous, of peoples need to feel, well, needed— or perhaps it really is just about a purple giraffe. I’d like to live in a world where comic characters have found out the truth and Batman’s pretty pissed off at us. We can all dream.
Rating : 2.5/5

10) Master Lao and the Flying Horror by Lawrence Person. First published in 2005.
Story : In fantastic ancient China, a demonic evil starts taking the heads of villagers to build its floating head army, and it’s up to a lustful temple acolyte and his aging mentor to save the day.
Thoughts : Clearly Mr. Person has seen many Chinese horror/comedy movies, because this story is like reading the movies I grew up watching in the 80’s. He is rather funny with his turn of phrases and uses them for many laughs. It also seems like there’s more stories set in this world— gives me something to look for. This one is very reminiscent of The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart, which I entirely love.
Rating : 3/5

11) Using It and Losing It by Jonathan Lethem. First published in 1990.
Story : A man who wishes to be apart from society makes himself forget the language of words, but soon finds out that like all animals, words aren’t the only ways to express.
Thoughts : Admittedly, I am not the biggest Lethem fan, but this was quite interesting. The concept of repetition to forget actually blows my mind and makes me wonder if it can work— another odd-ball tall from Lethem. Maybe I’ll have to re-read Glass Soup . Wait, that’s a different Jonathan. Hmm. Still, both Jonathan’s were enormously boring on NPR the other day, so I stand by not liking either Jonathan.
Rating : 2.5/5

12) The All-At-Once-Man by R. A. Lafferty. First published in 1970.
Story : A man seeks immortality by living all ages at once.
Thoughts : This one reminded me of the Great Gatsby . I can’t really pin-point the why but the main character of this story had a “Gatsby-ness” to him, and that’s brilliant. What bogs the story down is that it try’s to explain the “how” of immortality but doesn’t do it well. I wish the author just left it ambiguous. Still, a nicely thought out and quirky piece— the ability to live all ages at once is an remarkable concept.
Rating : 2.5/5

13) Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani by William Hope Hodgson. First published in 1919.
Story : Translated to mean, “my god, my god, why have you forsaken me.” This is the story of a scientist who while trying to initiate an experiment attempting to recreate the biblical Crucifixion finds more than he bargains for, with Lovecraftian results.
Thoughts : This is by far the oldest of the stories, and it really shows— the dialogue is painfully prolonged, while the explanations are devastatingly lengthy and esoteric. Another problem I had with the story is the many shifting narrative view points. This can get a bit confusing at times and every time one of the characters reads “I said”, I was left wondering who in fact was talking. This is not old-time good like Lovecraft, but rather old-time bad like Edward E. Smith.
Rating : 1.5/5

14) Boatman’s Holiday by Jeffrey Ford. First published in 2005.
Story : Everyone knows that when you die, you put a coin under your tongue to pay the ferryman to take you across the river Styx. But what do we know about the ferryman? Tired of ferrying people across for centuries on end, the ferryman decides to use the holiday granted him once a century to escape hell, if only for a week. But can there truly be escape when hell is just a concept?
Thoughts : I liked this one a lot. It’s like Dante’s Inferno mixed with the “cosmic.” The question has always raged: did man create hell or did it always exist? This story tries to answer that question through one man’s journey into himself. This one reminded me of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as well.
Rating : 3.5/5

15) The Detweiler Boy by Tom Reamy. First published in 1977.
Story : A detective searches for the murderer of an old friend but instead finds a string of murders leading back to something disturbingly cruel.
Thoughts : This one genuinely hit the spot. I question if this belongs in a collection of “fantasy” stories, but I really don’t care. It was a nice break and a damn fine story. More crime-horror than fantasy, but not totally without since all horror contains some sort of fantastical events. Like a side-show coming to town, this one’s a can’t miss. Total Recall anyone?
Rating : 3.5/5

16) The Fence at the End of the World by Melissa Mia Hill. First published in 2002.
Story : Two young girls are told never to leave their yard for fear of falling off the edge of the world.
Thoughts : This is the shortest story in the collection and being so short tells more of a tale than a story. This is about the children we forget that are locked up from the world by parents who are more dictators than family. I feel that there could be more to this tale, but it was in the middle of blossoming before it was cut off.
Rating : 2/5

17) Elric at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock. First published in 1981.
Story : Elric finds himself stranded at the End of the World with his soul sucking sword out of energy and trapped at the mercy of bored immortals.
Thoughts : Besides the previous story by Howard Waldrop, this is the probably the most controversial choice for this collection. Elric has always been a polarizing figure in the fantasy community, and as I get older I tend to come across more people that hate him rather than love him—I for one am a huge fan. The Elric series were the reason I started reading fantasy back when I was 13. Of course I was far too young to understand the underlying themes at play in each Elric tale, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. So the Elric stories always hold a special place in my heart. Kafka may have gotten me to start taking literature seriously, but it was Elric that made reading “fun”— so much so that I own this story in probably a dozen different collections. This is one of Elric’s later, more playful tales, and is in its own way probably the most assessable of his stories— perhaps that’s reason enough to include it. As the editor of this collection, Mike Ashley states, “it was impossible to compile this anthology without something by Michael Moorcock.” I couldn’t agree more.
Rating : 4/5

18) Cup and Table by Tim Pratt. First published in 2006.
Story : A secret society searches for a holy cup that, predating man, will allow them to talk to God and ask him any question, any plea. And only a junkie who can see through time knows the true plea that all of mankind truthfully desires.
Thoughts : I’ve been a fan of Pratt’s since his short story masterpiece, Impossible Dreams — it’s the nearest any story has gotten to a dream after my own heart. This one is another home run. I love the way Pratt shifts through time, layering more and more questions with more and more answers. He does in 18 pages what lesser writers take whole books to do. Love this guy and love his work. Buy everything he does people!!
Rating : 4/5

19) I, Haruspex by Christopher Priest. First published in 1998.
Story : In the early days of the 20th C. a man consumes the flesh and maladies of the dead in order to maintain a balance, keeping demons from overrunning the world.
Thoughts : Most people know Christopher Priest for his novel The Prestige , but he has had a prolific short story career for over 30 years now. This story starts off really slow and builds to a slow finish. Maybe it’s just me, but I felt that this story really slowed the flow of reading the overall collection— like the editor was reloading for something exciting to come so he needed a lull to fill the space. Not one of Priest’s better stories, but it had an interesting, if at times confusing and entirely disturbing, premise.
Rating : 2.5/5

20) Radio Waves by Michael Swanwick. First published in 1995.
Story : The ghost of a man seeking understanding and remembrance is chased by an “entity” in a dead world surrounded by radio waves.
Thoughts : This is an existentialistic story about choices. How even after death, the pain we caused and choices made still ripple against the tide. Can we forgive ourselves even long after the ones we hurt no longer care? This one is a nice, albeit surreal, look at death that reminded me a bit of the Japanese movie After Life .
Rating : 3/5

21) Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang. First published in 1990.
Story : After centuries of building, The Tower of Babylon is finally finished, and a group of miners makes the 4-month trek to the top, attempting to dig upwards into the vault of heaven. But what they find isn’t exactly what they were expecting.
Thoughts : Besides the Elric story, this was the only other story I had read previously. This is the story of the nature of faith— the accepting of truth when there has never been any proof. Much praise has been heaped on Chiang and this story and deservedly so. What’s even more astounding is that this is Chiang’s first published story? What?!! It’s like finally making the majors and your first career at bat is pinch hitting in the bottom of the ninth in a game seven of the World Series and hitting a grand slam. Again, what?!! This has been discussed and dissected for years in the literary circle and I’m always amazed that by each re-reading of it I find out something new— some new layer previously undiscovered. It’s that good!! What I like most about this story is the way Chiang describes the agriculture surrounding the tower as one goes higher. Since whole communities live along the tower, mini-towns have sprout up and the need for food is ever prevalent. The mid-parts of the tower where water is scarce can only grow onions, while higher up where there is rain, they grow beans and fruits. It’s the little details that show how much care Chiang took into creating this world. Utterly brilliant.
Rating : 5/5

22) Jack Neck and the Worry Bird by Paul Di Filippo. First published in 1998.
Story : A day in the life of Jack Neck (at least I think that’s what it’s about).
Thoughts : This story is just odd. The reader is constantly getting smacked around by words and phrases that are made up and make no sense. I’m sure to Di Filippo, the words made sense in his mind, but since I don’t have the fortune to rent real estate there I didn’t get what’s going on. It’s truly like reading a story in a foreign language. You can maybe pick out every 100th word. Di Filippo is usually such a strong and defined writer. I think for this story he was given too much free reign and probably created a story he has been carrying around since childhood. It’s like reading a Dr. Seuss story if Dr. Seuss didn’t rhyme and made less sense. I have to give it to the magazine that first bought and published this story. That took a lot of guts, and good or bad, the future of short stories needs more of that.
Rating :1/5

23) The Dark One by A A Attanasio. First published in 1994.
Story : A young barbarian is gifted with power and immortality from an ancient sorcerer. Through centuries the barbarian walks, searching for his peace known as darkness, which eventually he hopes will lead him to destroying the world.
Thoughts : The one thing that stands out about this story is that it tries way too hard. Its message of spiritual bliss is laid on pretty thick, like syrup on a stack of pancakes or lotion on a fat guy’s belly. The message of this story is that no matter how much time changes, all things remain the same: empires will always rise and fall, man will always be greedy and selfish— and only darkness is the salvation. This story is all about how religion is faith and that is good, while science is truth and truth is death— how the worst invention ever founded by man is science. I was waiting for Keyser Soze to suddenly appear and say, “and another thing: the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he didn’t exist.” I mean it’s like reading some “emo” kids poetry. However, what really bothered me about this piece is that towards the end there’s a huge shift in POV which is extremely jarring, I thought I suddenly was reading another story— like I had skipped the ending or something. This is sadly not the worst story in this collection, but it’s brutal to get through nonetheless.
Rating : 1.5/5

24) A Ring of Green Fire by Sean McMullen. First published in 1994.
Story : A peasant with a penchant for the ladies is cursed with his “member” being surrounded by a green ring of fire. After spreading his wanton onto hundreds of unsuspecting women, a group of men newly infected hunt him down to make him pay.
Thoughts : This one is quite interesting. One of the notable aspects of this story is how beautifully it progressed: from the inanely comedic to the tragically possible— like a message surrounded by a lollipop. I’ve always been a fan of stories that say something profound while still being entertaining. This story is about how even to a healer, some wounds can never be healed; how only through pain can many of us find compassion and hope. This is a fantastic way to end a short-story collection. Heartbreaking and completely spot on.
Rating : 3.5/5

So that’s the end of the collection. I hope that at least someone was interested with what I had to say and will pick up this one up. While this was not by any means the best collection I have ever read (that honor goes to Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman ), it was still quite good. There were more interesting and excellent stories than there were of dreadful ones. Generally what I find from collections that contain numerous authors is that the overall quality dips pretty low—since every reader has different tastes, some editors try to meet all expectations within a single book, which is frankly impossible. Still, surprisingly enough, this collection worked. There were around 6 stories that I found were poor, 10 that were average to good, and 8 that ranged from great to incredible. Those might not seem to be great odds, but generally in short story collections, the poor stories far outweigh the good ones and the average stories in this were still better than most. The one complaint I had with this book is the “extreme” tag the editor chose. I know I have a different definition of extreme, but none of these stories felt particularly excessive. What would have been better would have been to call this collection, The Mammoth Book of Fantastic Stories to Read While Cliff-Diving or Parasailing — or maybe not.

Heart of the Mirage

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:25:12 -0400

Mirages are images without substance – sometimes sensory illusions, but they can also be hopes and illusions that never can be realized. Heart of the Mirage is the first instalment in Glenda Larke’s trilogy The Mirage Makers, and it offers a narrative that explores the nature of the illusions and delusions that can make and unmake a person. It is a story about the sometimes illusory nature of identity, of loss and betrayal and of the possibility of redemption.

Heart of the Mirage is first and foremost the story of one woman’s journey towards self-discovery and of the recovery of her heritage, hidden beneath layers of callous deceptions. As a young child Ligea Gayed was stolen from her people by its conquering enemies. Adopted by a high-ranking general, she is raised as a citizen of the Tyranian Empire and employed in its service as a member of its fearsome secret police The Brotherhood. When rebellion breaks out in Kardiastan, the land of her birth, Ligea seems the obvious choice to hunt down and eliminate the Mirager, the mysterious and elusive leader of the rebel insurgency.

Upon her arrival in Kardiastan, Ligea devotes herself to her mission with patriotic zeal and ruthless cunning, but the deeper she infiltrates the leadership of the rebellion, the harder it becomes for her to maintain her disciplined self-image as a loyal Tyrianian citizen. There are deep secrets in Kardiastand, secrets that intimately defines the land and its once ruling elite, the Magor. These secrets are also the key to Ligea’s forgotten heritage. As she learns more about her people and her unique heritage, Ligea begins to question the values of her upbringing and her very identity in an ever increasing degree. Ultimately, she is faced with a difficult choice between the values of her upbringing and the nature of her birthright. It is a choice that not only will affect her sense of self, her loyalties but also the future of two nations.

Glenda Larke creates a vivid and exotic world that departs from the more conventional pseudo-medieval settings of fantasy fiction. Thus the Tyrian Empire displays many similarities with the Roman and Byzantine Empires of the Mediterranean world. It is a civilization with a highly sophisticated culture, but it is also an aggressively militant culture, built upon conquest and slavery, a culture where racism and casual cruelty is the norm and where ruthlessness and corruption is rewarded above decency and compassion. Kardiastan is in many ways the direct opposite to Tyrans. Where Tyrans has a Roman or Byzantine “feel”, Kardistan is more reminiscent of Arabian or North African culture. The Kardis are a desert people, hardy and fierce but also very generous and trusting when it comes to people other than their Tyranian oppressors. In the entire Empire, the Kardis are unique in their refusal to bend their neck to their oppressors and assimilate their culture and values. They cling to their own culture and mores with a fierce desperation that quietly disrupts the administration of the Tyrian occupiers. The Magor, the Kardi aristocracy, exists as a unique culture within the larger Kardi society. Set apart by their magical abilities and closely connected to the land, they live by rules and values that are significantly different from those of the ordinary Kardi people. After the invasion, the Magor has retreated to the Mirage, a mysterious and inaccessible piece of land in the heart of Kardiastan. The Mirage is a strange place, where the landscape constantly changes and it leaves a lasting imprint upon Ligea’s soul.

The Mirage is the heart of the Kardi insurgency and the source of the Magor’s powers, but it is not the only mirage in this story. Narrated in the first person, Heart of the Mirage is essentially the story about the illusions and deceptions that has shaped Ligea’s life and person. Structured in four parts, each section titled after the various names that Ligea is given or assumes throughout the story, Heart of the Mirage is ultimately a novel about the illusory nature of identity itself.

With Heart of the Mirage Glenda Larke has written a very enjoyable and utterly compelling story that unflinchingly probes into the psychology of a person who has been robbed of her family, her people and her culture. Ligea’s origins have been stolen from her; her heritage has been denied her - a crime that is compounded by the fact that she has been raised by the very person who has killed her family. Larke has obviously been inspired by real events, mainly the Disappeared Ones of Argentina and the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Australia, a fact that imbues Ligea’s story with a deep-felt resonance.

Characterization constitutes the novel’s greatest strength. It is Ligea’s character that drives the plot and Larke takes the time necessary to build up Ligea’s personality as well as the events and experiences that prompt her to question herself and her values, thus making the manner in which her character evolves plausible. When it comes to characterization, Larke’s work reminds me very much of Robin Hobb. Like Hobb, Larke uses a first-person narrative and she takes the time necessary to build a quite complex character. And like Hobb, Larke is never shies away from revealing bare the less savoury aspects of the protagonist’s personality. Ligea is in many ways not very likeable. Throughout a large part of the story, she comes across as arrogant, self-centered and cruel, but as Larke slowly reveals the forces that have shaped her one can’t help to feel for her. Likewise, the experiences that cause her to change and mature as a person ring absolutely true.

Heart of the Mirage is a very strong novel that offers a multi-facetted and deeply flawed protagonist as well as a well-paced and deeply compelling story about betrayal and identity. Larke has a fluid prose that often emphasizes sensuous detail and if she sometimes veers towards the overly descriptive then this is a very minor complaint. Likewise, the rather ridiculous names – gorclacks and shleths - are but a minor quibble. The only thing that detracted a bit from an otherwise wonderful reading experience was that the novel failed to elicit that “tingling” sense of wonder and enchantment that I associate with truly great fantasy. This is, however, simply a matter of personal taste and it certainly won’t prevent me from recommending it highly.

Trine D. Paulsen

The Immortal Prince

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:55:58 -0400

Australia is referred to as a ‘New World' country with respect to its wine production. This distinction is made with the traditional European nations being referred to as ‘Old World'. Jacobs Creek, one of Australia’s leading wineries, defines ‘New World’ wines as “innovative, easy to understand, accessible and generous in flavor”. There is far less pretention to be found in New World wines than the traditional versions, and as such, Australian wines have gained a world-wide reputation for originality and value for money. In many ways, a strong parallel can be drawn to the large number of Australian fantasy authors currently producing high quality and innovative works. Many of these writers are not well known outside of their home country, but they are gradually gaining exposure in the mainstream marketplaces of the USA and England. One of the most talented of these Australian authors is Jennifer Fallon.

Fallon is an interesting character in her own right, being the ninth child in a family of 13 girls. She lives in the Northern Territory, which contains some of the most isolated and remote places in the world. Fallon has three children of her own, but has also fostered over 50 other youngsters in need. Her writing commenced, as with all good authors, through submitting a Mills and Boon manuscript. Thankfully for the world of literature, this book was rejected and Fallon has gone onto a successful career in fantasy. Fallon’s first novel was 'Medalon', the opening novel in the six piece “Hythrun Chronicles”. She then wrote the “Wolfblade Trilogy”, with both series being very well received in Australia and overseas. Fallon’s latest work is “The Tide Lords”, which commences with 'The Immortal Prince'.

Fallon introduces the reader to a new world in 'The Immortal Prince', with the story commencing in the duchy of Glaebe. The main character of the book, Arkady Desean, is in a position of security being married to Stellan, the Duke of Glaeba. She has, however, a life and experiences prior to her marriage that are not traditionally expected of someone marrying into high society. Her childhood originated in near poverty, and then progressed to history studies at a doctoral level. And it is as an academic that Arkady is brought in to interview a convicted criminal called Cayal who, mysteriously, failed to die whilst being hanged. From this point, the story unfolds.

The author manages to successfully sketch out the background and history of this new country, but at the same time, does so without falling into the trap of inundating the reader with massive passages of descriptive text. Fallon uses the interviews between Arkady and Cayal as a mechanism for revealing the details of the world. As a literary device, it works very well. New characters such as the Royal Spymaster Declan Hawkes, and the Crasii, a mix of half-human half animal slaves, are also introduced and add significantly to the flow of the story.

The underlying magical premise is quite innovative, being based around the concept of a group of Immortals who possess near god-like powers. This magical skill is contingent upon ‘the Tide’, a force that ebbs and flows over thousands of years. When the Tide is out, the Immortals are largely powerless. However, when the Tide returns, the Immortals have the ability to literally destroy or re-make the world. At the start of the book the Tide is out, however, it soon becomes clear that change is underway.

One of the strengths of 'The Immortal Prince', and yet also its weakness, is the prose. Fallon demonstrates her great skill in writing interesting and well developed characters, however, at times the story almost got lost in overly decorative language. Some readers will delight in this aspect of the book, but I must admit that at times I found it a little grating. It is only a minor criticism, but I almost felt that the plot took second place to the prose in certain sections of the book. It is not a significant fault in any way, and some readers will particularly enjoy her style. It must also be said that Arkady is occasionally quite irritating as the main personality, but Cayal and the rest of the cast are consistently well portrayed. As a means of comparison, Fallon's writing is far closer to that of a Robin Hobb or perhaps Greg Keyes than someone like Steven Erikson.

Whilst much of the story is reasonably predictable, Fallon does manage to maintain the intrigue right to the end of the book. There are a number of twists in the plot that are unexpected, and underline her skill as a storyteller of the highest quality. These surprises are logical and consistent within the larger plot, but were still not easily foreseen. Fallon also manages to finish the book off at a suitable point. Whilst it is clearly set up for the remainder of the series, it still ends without leaving the reader completely up in the air. I intensely dislike books that are not complete in their own right, and Fallon has successfully managed to avoid this error.

There are few authors that I automatically buy their latest offerings without even perusing the back cover. Fallon has become one of this group. Her books are consistently well written, with great plots and exceptionally well developed characters. Fallon is not just a very good Australian fantasy writer, she is simply a very good fantasy writer. 'The Immortal Prince' is highly recommended to all fans of the genre. Book Two of the Tide Lords, 'Gods of Amyrantha', and Book Three, 'The Palace of Impossible Dreams', are also now available.

The First Mother's Fire

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:08:23 -0400

In First Mother’s Fire, the first book of the series titled The Soulstealer War; W. L. Hoffman has created an engaging quest/save the world/good vs. evil fantasy epic. There are, however, several flaws with the text as it is and I will go into those a bit later. Ken McNary is a law student that has just graduated and has yet to decide where to move on to from there. To aid in his decision making, Ken goes on an extended hiking tour along the Appalachian Trail. Along the way he is confronted by a being who offers him the choice of staying where he is or going to another world and helping to save it. Ken of course decides to take the challenge on and the being confers a sort of ‘blessing’ on him before he leaves. As Ken moves around this new world, wondering what is truly expected of him he discovers two things, first, humans are slaves and considered to be unclean and inferior and second, the ‘blessing’ bestowed upon him by the being allows him to not only communicate with the environment around him but confers upon him additional strength and other powers. Ken's goal is to stop the corruption of this new land, restore it’s magic and while he is there, to cease the enslavement of humans. Easy right? How he is supposed to do that with the little bit of knowledge he is given is what the reader is determined to find out.

While the story itself is very good, as well as the writing, there are several minor improvements that should have been made before publication. The first is to have had an editor read through the manuscript for spelling, grammar and word use issues. There are several places where there are clear spell check errors like the sentence where ‘succulence’ is used instead of ‘succor’. Additionally, there are some odd turns of phrase as when the weather is described as ‘ice cube-sized snow’. Now, I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but I know of many differing types and sizes of ice cubes from tiny and round to large and square which makes this phrase mostly useless. The reader gets the idea that the snowflakes are probably large but perhaps a better analogy should have been used to avoid the flow destroying eye-roll from the reader. Additionally, there were some strange things that just did not ring true within the story. The main character, an experienced hiker, was hiking in his jeans. For anyone who knows anything about backpacking, hiking or camping and being in the outdoors in general, that is rather odd, especially since the author took care to note the importance of weight and proper packing and care when hiking. Jeans are heavy, hot and take a long time to dry and they are not at all conducive to backpacking or hiking. Most hikers, depending upon where they are going, wear lighter weight cotton or canvas (or these days, some man-made high performance fabric).

Those are all minor issues that would not in themselves denigrate a good story. The two issues that I found to be more destructive in terms of pushing the reader out of the story and losing those who might have otherwise gone on to read the later volumes are these: first, the main character spends so much time debating scientific theories with himself in an internal dialogue that often spans pages of text that the reader loses the flow of the story, and second, the story seems to move too quickly for realistic believability. The main character spends little over a week in this strange new world and has won over nearly everyone he meets – tackling cultural issues like slavery with a speed that seems too easy. I would have liked to have seen this develop more over time, with Ken learning to utilize his newfound abilities and working to combat the enslavement of humans.

All in all, it was a good story that just needed some issues hammered out before publication. I will most likely try and get my hands on the second in the series for two reasons – to find out what happens to Ken and to see if the second book gets a much more thorough editing before being published. For good ideas that were relatively well executed and for endorsing the cause of environmentalism I give this one a 7.

Midnight Never Come

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:18:42 -0400

Midnight Never Come is a historical fantasy, set in Elizabethan England and seasoned with a goodly portion of faerie lore. It is the third fantasy novel from the hand of Marie Brennan (pen name of Bryn Neuenschwander) and her first foray into this particular subgenre of fantasy and historical fiction.

England 1590. Queen Elizabeth is at the height of her power – she reigns supreme as the Virgin Queen, the threat of the Spanish armada has been averted, and the literary and dramatic arts are flourishing. Like so many other Renaissance courts, Elizabeth’s court is not only place of ostentatious display but also a tangled web of political intrigue and aristocratic patronage. Into these dangerous waters enters Michael Deven, a young gentleman of no fortune, as he is enrolled in the Queen’s elite bodyguard, The Gentlemen Pensioners. With ambitions of advancement Michael seeks an aristocratic patron and thus becomes embroiled in the covert operations of Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s Spymaster. Walsingham has long suspected the presence of a “hidden” player in English politics and he chooses Michael to flush him or her out in the open. This assignment takes him into dangerous waters and radically revaluates his perception of the world. For Elizabeth is not the only queen in England, she has a dark double – Invidiana, the Queen of Faerie and the ruler of the Onyx Court, the shadow court that exists beneath the streets of London as a dark mirror of Elizabeth’s royal court.

Invidiana established her sovereignty of Faerie at the same time as Elizabeth ascended to the throne of England, and since then fae and mortal politics have become dangerously and deeply intertwined, often through the faerie queen’s manipulations of both fae and mortal agents. One of these is the faerie Lady Lune, who is sent to monitor Sir Francis Walsingham. Out of favour with the mistress of the Onyx Court, Lune crosses the path of Michael Deven, and together they start unravelling the secrets of two sovereigns in the hope of finding the source of Invidana’s power and break it.

With Midnight Never Come Marie Brennan has composed a very well-structured and tightly plotted novel. The story is intriguing and I found its twists hard to predict thus increasing the suspense factor. Brennan also experiments a bit with the novel’s structure: The main narrative, which takes place in 1590 alternates between Lune’s and Michael Deven’s POV. However, the chronology is broken up as Brennan intersperses flashbacks that illuminate the extent of Invidiana’s interferences in mortal politics. Brennan has furthermore structured the narrative like a play; five acts with prologue and epilogue. Each act is introduced with a short chapter and these are perhaps the most experimental aspects of the novel. Written like as stream of consciousness of indeterminate POV, these sections contains important clues to main narrative. In effect, the novel as a whole creates a rather pleasing reading experience, puzzling out the different fragments of the plot.

The structure is one of the novels strong points. Another is the basic premise of the plot: the idea of Elizabeth and Invidiana as mirrors of each other. This idea of mirroring or doubling was actually quite prominent in Tudor thinking – a fact that Brennan, who holds a degree in anthropology from Harvard, must have come across during the large amount of research, which is necessary for a piece of historical fiction. The Tudor conception of kingship was in several instances, fx legal practice, formulated in terms of doubling, i.e. what the historian Ernst Kantorowicz dubbed “The King’s Two Bodies”, which crudely put, is the distinction between the office and person of the king or queen. The metaphor of the double was especially widespread during Elizabeth’s reign, seeping into the arts where the Virgin Queen was praised through thinly veiled alter egos in poems and plays. Edmund Spenser’s famous epic poem The Faerie Queen (1590-96) was in fact written as an allegory of praise for Elizabeth. In this poem, Gloriana, the Queen of Faerie, serves as on of several alter egos for the Virgin Queen.

As this very short historical overview suggests, Midnight Never Come rests on a very solid foundation of historical sensibility. Brennan has obviously done a lot of research (her research bibliography can be found at her website, www.swantower.com/marie) and for the most part he use of historical detail is for the most part impeccable. She gets her facts right, and besides a few heavy-handed instances (fx Walsingham engaging Deven in a Socratic dialogue about the intrigues surrounding Mary Queen of Scots by means of a chess analogy) manages to seamlessly work the historical exposition into the narrative. But what I find most impressive is the fact that Brennan has delved into the Elizabethan mindset itself for the basic premise of her story. She utilises ideas and element that were prominent in the historical period she portrays as supporting structure of the narrative. Throughout the novel, Invidiana functions as Elizabeth’s dark mirror on several different levels. As Elizabeth ages, Invidiana stays eternally young; mirroring the fact that throughout her long life Elizabeth was never portrayed as an ageing woman, in her portraits she was ever young. Invidiana is also Elizabeth dark double as regards politics and psychology as Brennan ascribes the crueler, capricious and ruthless aspects of Elizabethan politics to the shadow queen of the Onyx Court. Using Elizabeth and Invidiana as mirror images is, as mentioned earlier, one of my favourite aspects of the novel, but I can’t help to feel that Brennan didn’t exploit this facet enough. While the faerie queen has a palpable presence in the story, Queen Elizabeth is far more elusive. Though part of the story unfolds in a place that revolves around her person, Elizabeth is for the most part curiously absent from the tale. She skirts the periphery of the narrative, and I feel that Brennan would have been able to delve deeper into the aspect of doubling and mirroring if she had given Elizabeth herself more space in the story. As it is, Brennan's novel constructs an intriguing and complex set-up that sadly is never really filled out.

In many respects, Midnight Never Come can be likened to a teenage supermodel. Great bone structure, but no curves! Marie Brennan has laid a solid foundation of historical detail and built a great structure rooted in Elizabethan imagery, but she never really manages to fill her ornate edifice with life. Her prose is pedestrian at best and rather awkward when she attempts to work in period expression in the dialogue. The characters are mainly functional; shallow constructions that serves the plot but never really comes to life. As in the case of the characters, Brennan never really manages to infuse a semblance of life into her world, both Elizabethan and Faerie. The novel is rather low on description, which is too bad because Brennan has constructed a complex plot on the basis of a rather intriguing premise. A more thorough attention to detail (sensuous, psychological, etc.) would have added an extra layer of mimesis and characterization which could have given this narrative more depth, adding to its appeal. Midnight Never Come is an enjoyable experience, well-structured, suspenseful and with a slightly eerie feel. I was, however, slightly frustrated with the flaws since the premise has so much more potential than the finished product.

Lyra's Oxford

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:55:13 -0400

As a short story companion to the author’s His Dark Materials trilogy, this attractive volume offers a diverting look at Lyra two years after the events in The Amber Spyglass. The majority of the book is devoted to the telling of Lyra and the Birds, which outlines a dangerous situation in which Lyra must decide who she can trust. Her decisions are always vital, not only to her own safety but to that of others. Readers of the trilogy will recognize the responsibility Lyra carries on her adolescent shoulders as a standard of her young life, forced upon her and held with good intent but not always with the best judgment, as one might expect from a teenager. When a witch threatens a scholar in whom Lyra has developed an interest, she rushes to help, but her impetuousness blinds her to alternative possibilities and consequences.

This red cloth bound package is graced with detailed engravings by John Lawrence but marred by extraneous material that is annoying rather than enhancing. A preface with instruction on connections between these materials falls into this category as well. The “things” to which it refers, including a map of Oxford, glued to a page about a third of the way through the story; a picture postcard from Oxford, with a note written by Mary (presumably Dr. Malone of HDM) to a former companion at the convent; a page on the history of Oxford; and a brochure for a cruise on the Imperial Orient Shipping Line in London, with the arrival in Smyrna on Monday, May 11 circled and marked “Café Antalya, Suleiman Square, 11 a.m.” clutter and interrupt the story.

This is one for HDM readers of all ages, but would not appeal to those unfamiliar with the preceding titles. Lyra’s past plays a critical role in her choices and reactions in Lyra and the Birds. There are many references made to incidents, characters, and relationships necessary to Lyra’s experience in this short story that would alienate readers who do not have this frame of reference.

The audio book, which runs short and sweet at 45 minutes, is primarily narrated by Jo Wyatt. Wyatt, who plays the excited teenage girl very convincingly in adaptations of Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty and Meg Cabot’s Avalon High, follows her portrayal of Lyra in HDM with an appropriate range of expression, from eagerness to self-doubt, for the spontaneous and open girl readers have followed since 1995. The CD comes with a slightly smaller copy of the map that is included with the book, but it is tucked neatly out of the way and as such, not an issue.

The Sellsword

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:06:05 -0400

Tracy Hickman Presents: The Anvil of Time is a new DragonLance trilogy. Book one is The Sellsword, by Cam Banks.

The prologue of the story introduces us to the mysterious Journeyman. He is tasked with using the Anvil of Time to watch history but not to interfere. Our tale then begins 71 years earlier. The War of the Lance has ended but all is not roses in the land of Nordmaar. Highmaster Rivven Cairn, disciple of Emperor Ariakas himself, and her Red Wing of the dragonarmies still rule these lands.

Our central character is Vanderjack. We know he’s the central character because he is mentioned in the first sentence of every chapter of the novel except two. I don’t say that as a criticism. It was obviously done intentionally. Vanderjack is a sellsword. He’s The Sellsword. At the beginning of the story he’s low on coin and seemingly cursed with a haunted sword, the magical Lifecleaver given to him by his mother.

But circumstances find Vanderjack. He’s a man of action and he’s always in the middle of things. Thus, it became something of a matter of intrigue to see what he was going to be in the middle of at the start of a chapter. It wasn’t uncommon for Vanderjack to be surrounded. When he DIDN’T lead off the chapter, that break in the pattern was significant as well.

The Sellsword finds himself in the employ of a noble who wants him to recover something of great value to him. Vanderjack’s plans begin to go awry when he has to take the Baron’s assistant with him. Things become more complicated when they are joined by the gnome warrior and inventor (like all gnomes are) Theodenes, a former adventuring companion of Vanderjack’s. Things went sour the last time they saw each other though, and Theodenes had a score to settle.

After Vanderjack, Gredchen the Baron’s assistant, and Theodenes set off, things got more and more complicated as the group came under attack in their travels, and made enemies. When one makes an enemy of a dragon Highlord, things become more complicated indeed. Vanderjack also learned that the job he was doing wasn’t exactly what he’d thought. However, the need to settle some scores, some old and some new, continued to drive The Sellsword, as his assignment become more than just doing the work and collecting the money.

Through it all, Vanderjack was a sarcastic, trash talking “action hero”, who had a one-liner for every occasion. The dialogue was not classic fantasy. It featured back and forth banter between adventuring companions, between heroes and villains, and between villains. That term is rapid-fire dialogue and I enjoyed it here. Personally it reminded me of the way our characters interacted in my years of playing D&D, rather than the more formal and stylish manner of speaking from The Lord of the Rings.

I could easily imagine Vanderjack saying “Yipee-Ki-Ay Mu…” ahem…you know the rest, Bruce Willis style as he cleaves into a draconian with Lifecleaver. I ate it up, I admit. I loved Vanderjack. He is a very different type character than what I’m used to reading in DragonLance. He’s a man of questionable morality, as much interested in profit as anything else. However, in the spirit of DragonLance, some people are destined for greater things. Sometimes they just need a nudge in the right direction. While this was a bit of a grittier DragonLance, it didn’t turn the principles of the franchise on their ear.

At first I wondered how interesting a gnome character could be. But I liked Theo. His character worked very well with Vanderjack. I did wonder at times exactly why the gnome would travel with his old sellsword companion given how badly their last encounter ended. Don’t think Cam Banks left a plot hole in there. He left some mystery and intrigue in the story, and held some cards up his sleeve until the very end.

Our interesting heroes also had interesting villains to play off of, the determined Highlord and the devious Dark Robed Mage. No, not THAT Dark Robed Mage, but another one.

It appears that book two of the series is not going to focus on Vanderjack. That’s unfortunate, but never say never I suppose. There is a thread that links the books though. That would be the Journeyman. We got a little bit of a flavor of him in book one. Enough to be intriguing. I expect that we’ll learn even more as other authors pick up the series

I will admit that I had some doubts coming into this book. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman ARE DragonLance. Every one of their books that I’ve read have been gold. Once other authors began writing books in the series, they definitely became hit or miss.

Cam Banks definitely hit with The Sellsword however. I learned that Banks has been a managing editor with Margaret Weis Productions. So in a manner of speaking The Sellsword was kept “in the family”. That’s a good thing.

The plot was fast paced and action packed. However it wasn’t a one-dimensional creampuff either. Maybe not as deep and layered (yet?) as the original DragonLance Chronicles, but it was no slouch. I enjoyed how every chapter began with a “Vanderjack moment”. That made me laugh. I got a good chuckle out of the fact that one of the major cities is named “Wulfgar”. I appreciate a good tip of the cap to R.A. Salvatore, being a fan of his work as well.

If I have a complaint it’s that the book was too short. It came in at 307 pages. Give us a bit more of Vanderjack cracking jokes and putting on a cocky façade in the face of danger. We got sword battles, aerial battles, gladiatorial arenas, magic and more, all packed into 307 pages of an “action movie story” Give us 400 pages, and give us even more I say.. Or maybe the plan was to leave them wanting more.

I’m going to give The Sellsword by Cam Banks a very solid 7.5 stars. I hope we haven’t seen the last of The Sellsword. I also want to see how these events play into the events in the other two books. I certainly hope the other two books are published, given the state of affairs, or lack thereof, with the DragonLance license and Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

The Book of Lost Things

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:17:50 -0400

Irish author John Connolly is perhaps best known for his crime stories that hover on the edges between traditional detective stories and supernatural horror, but with The Book of Lost Things, Connolly travels deeper into fantasy-land, reinventing age-old fairy tales in a beautiful and poignant story of childhood and loss.

Set in England during the beginning of World War II, The Book of Lost Things is the story of the 12 year-old David and his struggle to come to terms with the death of his mother, his father’s quick re-marriage and the birth of a baby sister. David is especially close to his mother, sharing her love of literature. Her illness and death is an earth-shattering experience for him, and it is this loss that the whole narrative revolves around, which is already hinted at in the very beautiful opening paragraph:

Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.

He had, in truth, been losing her for a very long time. The disease that was killing her was a creeping, cowardly thing, a sickness that ate away at her from the inside, slowly consuming the light within so that her eyes grew a little less bright with each passing day, and her skin a little more pale.

And as she was stolen away from him, piece by piece, the boy became more and more afraid of finally losing her entirely. He wanted her to stay. He had no brothers and no sisters, and while he loved his father it would be true to say that he loved his mother more. He could not bear to think of a life without her.

David’s mother has shared her love of fairy tales with him, and she has taught him that these old stories are important. The fairy tales have a special power. They are stories that come “alive” in the telling and they have the power to take root in and transform the reader, and the power to create their own reality. After his mother’s death, these ancient stories begin to intrude upon David’s reality. Books start to whisper to him and he receives episodic visitations from the Crooked Man, a strange and frightening figure.

About six months after his mother’s death, David’s father introduces him to Rose. She works at the hospice where David’s mother ended her life, and it quickly becomes apparent that she is in a relationship with his father, a relationship that most likely began while his mother still lived. David’s father and Rose marry not long after this introduction, she gives birth to a son, Georgie, and the new family moves into an old country house that belongs to Rose’s family. This house contains its own tragic story, a story that becomes intertwined with David’s. In his new room, David finds a book with dark and horrifying fairy tales, a book that once belonged to Rose’s uncle Jonathan, who, as a child, disappeared with his foster-sister Anna many years ago, never to be found again.

David is both attracted and repulsed by the tales in Jonathan’s book, and the narrative subtly builds an atmosphere of quite menace as David continues to hear the books and see the Crooked Man while he at the same time clashed repeatedly with his step-mother. He hates his new life; he hates his step-mother, his half-brother. He misses his mother, and his father who is emotionally absent. And the reality of war is ever present as the backdrop of this more intimate battleground of familial conflict. This atmosphere of conflict and menace comes to a head when the war in the family and the war in the world briefly collide. David’s resentment of Rose’s intrusion into his family finally explodes in a heated argument, and the very same night, a bomber airplane crashed in the garden. At precisely this point, the membranes of David’s reality violently ruptures, tearing him away from his known world and catapulting him into a strange and frightening place, where he hears his mothers voice, calling for him to save her, to bring her back.

David finds himself in a strange forest where the trees bleed and the flowers have the faces of dead children, and where blood-thirsty wolves walk and speak like men. Aided by a woodsman, David sets out to find the king of the land, who owns The Book of Lost Things, which might help him find his way home again. David has to negotiate many horrifying dangers during his quest, sometimes aided by different helpers, sometimes alone – all the time haunted by his mother’s voice, and shadowed by the mysterious Crooked Man, who wants something from him. When he finally reaches the king’s castle and finds the Book of Lost Things, David learns that things are not what they seem, and that he has to make a choice that might have severe consequences for himself and his family.

In The Book of Lost Things John Connolly engages with several different, yet interrelated literary traditions. His novel is structured as a portal-quest fantasy in the tradition of C.S. Lewis, where the protagonist enters parallel world, but the world David enter into draws extensively upon the tradition of fairy tales with an emphasis on their darker aspects, which touches upon the horror genre. Connolly handles these different aspects extremely well, weaving them into a coherent whole with an emotional underpinning that is both poignant and psychologically truthful.

The main part of the narrative takes place in the parallel world that David enters, but Connolly manages to keep up a continuous doubt about its reality. It is a world that is both real and tangible, in the sense that David interacts with it, yet also dream-like and hallucinatory, its elements made up well-known fairy tales re-told and re-invented, mixed up with elements from other books that David has been in contact with. Thus David’s encounter with a group of dwarves living with a petty house-tyrant in a dysfunctional domestic situation offers a rather funny and whimsical interpretation of the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves filtered through a text book on Communism! Thus, the kingdom that David journeys through is in many ways his own creation, it is the amalgam of all the stories he knows, mixed and reordered into a new configuration.

In a sense, John Connolly highlights the workings of the traditional quest fantasy by making explicit the fact that the external quest often stands as a metaphor for the internal journey of the protagonist. David’s quest through his dark and twisted fantasy-land is driven by his need to work through his grief, to accept the loss of his mother and the presence of his new brother – a need that is not met in his own reality due to the emotional absence of his father. But at the same time, Connolly leaves the reader in doubt about the actual presence of this fairy tale parallel world. It both is and is not real, for The Book of Lost Things is also a story about the power of stories.

The Book of Lost Things is brilliant take on a modern fairy tale – dark and scary but also beautiful and moving in its depiction of a child’s loss, grief and ambivalent jealousy as is it filtered through the fantastic. The emotional underpinning of Connolly’s story is its most powerful element, but his re-workings of popular fairy tales also work very well. Their emphasis on the horrific touches upon all that is scary, while at the same time addressing the fact that most of the fairy tales we know today were heavily edited in the 19th century. The paperback edition of Connolly’s novel comes with an appendix, where the author explains the origins of each of the tales he re-invents in the novel, accompanied by a reprint of the “original” tales (from textual sources such as the Brothers Grimm). The appendix is also the only gripe I have with this otherwise wonderful novel as Connolly unfortunately not only explains the origins of each tale but also proceeds to explain their use in his narrative, thus essentially interpreting his own work for the reader. This is a rather heavy-handed move, but since it is located in an appendix, it can be skipped.

Girl Genius Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 with Agatha Heterodyne

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:32:07 -0400

Authors Phil & Kaja Foglio

Pencils Phil Foglio

Colors by Mark McNabb and/or Laurie E. Smith or Cheyenne Wright for Books 2 to 6

Inks by Brian Snoody on Book 1

Not being all that familiar with Steampunk, I jumped in tabula rasa to this sort of world, but what I have heard is that “Steampunk” means different things for different people. Be that as it may, this is not a review on how well Girl Genius falls into that category, rather what a delightful romp Girl Genius books one, two, three, four, five and six are. We have a Victorian setting industrial age, mad scientists and the “spark”, which allows certain individuals to be set above the rest in their ability to create these mechanical creations, as the author describes it, the capability for true Mad Science. Being a spark leads to all sorts of complications, though…

I am going to give my thoughts on the storyline and characters of each of the books and then bring it all together with a review of the series up to this point as a whole.

Book 1 – Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank - The detail in the background causes a bit of a jolt for the reader as it feels like too much is going on in this book. This is where we are introduced to Agatha Clay, a student at Transylvania Polygnostic University, where she can not build anything that seems to work. The reader can feel a little overwhelmed as we start this book with the host of characters and giving the reader the background of those characters and the world. By the end of Book 1 though is where you can really start to enjoy it as you feel like the story falls into place and we start to get a feel for each of the characters introduced. We also have our main villain Baron Wulfenbachand and his elite soldiers the Jagermonsters. We have an extra color story at the end that solves many of the details of the background issues.

Book 2- Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City - Uh-Uh-Um it is in f’ing color, awesome. This is the volume that starts to excite the reader. Gone are the issues with only black and white and the backgrounds. In this volume we start to appreciate the backgrounds and all the subtle details that they hold for us. We are introduced to Baron’s Airships which are a city in the sky, and all the inhabitants, both good and evil. We have a “Heterodyne Boys” episode in the middle of the book, these little interludes are set perfect as a middle book break and give us information to fill in our background knowledge of the story before book 1 and the Hetertodynes. This issue is also where we start to really see Agatha in the personality sense as well as the skin sense, as the pajama scene with Agatha…well lets just say it was well worth it being in color! The story is really starting to take shape and I do not feel as lost as I did in book one. The relationship of Agatha and the Baron’s son Gil is also a nice plotline. The Jagermonsters also fit very well now within the storyline and their speech works for them, where I originally thought it would annoy me.

Book 3- Agatha Heterodyne and the Monster Engine - We are really into the meat of the story. Did I really just start to realize how fun the story and the artwork are? Shame on me. We also have a talking cat, The King of Cats. I have to say I really like it even though one would think this wouldn’t work. This cat is no Garfield, wait maybe he kinda is. There is also a two page spread of Agatha dreaming which is gorgeous, where is the full sized poster version of this. We also start to get a taste of some of the secrets of Agatha and who she really is and what the Baron is really up to. Whenever there is either a full page panel or even a two page panel it really is a sight to behold.

Book 4 – Agatha Heterodyne and the Circus of Dreams - The Traveling circus was just awesome, all the characters were fleshed out perfectly. I loved the caravan and the secret that these traveling actors were hiding. The spider riders about halfway through the book though seemed a tad out of place, even though they play a more prominent role in the next book. The interaction of Agatha with the characters is so well done, and how she fits in like a cog (!) with the circus works well. We even get some good scenes with The King of Cats. This book features Master Payne’s Circus of Adventure and I loved it, could be my favorite book of the series so far.

Book 5 – Agatha Heterodyne and the Clockwork Princess – This is where the series turns a bit weird. Not weird in a bad way, but weird like you really have to pay attention to what is going on in the second half of the book because so much of the larger back-story is thrust upon you and it can be a bit disconcerting. Once you get into the story though you realize that Agatha Heterodyne's story is not what you once thought. We get introduced to some real cool steampunk muses, who are the clockwork pieces, alive or not alive is the debate. Think Clockwork Smurf if you are from the 80s. If you thought the Baron was the only villain, hang on for the ride.

Book 6 – Agatha Heterodyne and the Golden Trilobite - In the beginning of this book the confusion starts to come to a close and I am really in vibe with the story again. Maybe I am just stupid though and it is not confusing at all, take that for what it is worth, even though my college degree says otherwise. Coming in at 155 pages this book is also a chubby one. The artwork again is superb. This is a tough one to really review without giving anything away, so take these tidbits: there is a huge battle at the end and some people do not survive. Again the story really picks up again from book 5 (my least favorite book) and makes me go Girl Genius crazy again. Where is book 7!!

I do not want to give too much away of the story so they are more a commentary on each book rather than a full blown summary where I may ruin something for you the reader. That would be a shame as it is such a wonderful story.

Team Foglio gives us Heterodyne extra credit stories buried in the middle of volumes (or end) that work out well for breaking up the story and giving you a lot of background to the story. It is like a Super Bowl commercial where you actually want to watch it in our Tivo age.

The backgrounds are filled to the brim with all sorts of fun things going on, it seemed to be distracting in the first book in black and white, but once the story moves to color it does not seem as distracting and works real nice. For the reader it is fun to re-read and notice something real funny going on in the background. Whoever made the decision to go from black and white to color really vaulted this graphic novel into the must read status.

The writing/story and the artwork are interwoven like a complex blanket that not only keeps you warm but also looks good on the back of the couch. Okay, that was a bit cheesy, but it does sum up how I feel about the story and artwork together. The story is funny and silly, but in a way that makes it enjoyable rather than stupid.

The characters are very well developed and go from Agatha Clay, The Baron and his son Gilgamesh, a traveling circus, the King of Cats, Jagermonsters, various monsters (mechanical and otherwise), pirates, a nanny with an attitude, ancient relics turned alive…phew, it has it all. There is not a lack of new and exciting characters, and they all seem fleshed out to the level appropriate to their involvement in the story.

Angela Clay is sexy, smart, and funny. So what if she is a mad scientist, that just makes her an even better catch.

I like to read the works in the collection in tactile paper, but for all the people that cannot wait you can check out the new stories at the website. While you are there, check out all the other neat things on the site.

Check out more Girl Genius at http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

I heard there is a 7^th volume, hopefully Airship Entertainment will forgive me for being so long with the review and grace me with a copy because I am sure looking forward to the further adventures.

A Magic of Twilight

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:39:08 -0400

Take the political intrigue of various factions of church, state, subjugated peoples of an empire, and religious heretics in a Renaissance setting and combine with magic and a well-realized fantasy setting and the result is A Magic of Twilight by S.L. Farrell, the first, yet stand-alone, volume of the Nessantico Cycle.

Nessantico, the city and empire has endured a period of relative peace under the leadership of its long-time ruler – Kraljica Marguerite ca’Ludovici. This period of peace has allowed for elements within the ruling nobility, the lands of The Holdings, and factions of the religious order known as the Concènzia Faith to separately plot their own ambitions. The Kraljica and Archigos Dhosti ca’Millac of the Concènzia face a rough road as they are awakened to the growing dangers encircling them.

The main narrative follows the path of a of a minor noble, Ana cu’Seranta as she gains the favor of the Archigos Dhosti within the Concènzia. Ana is gifted in the magical force at the heart of the faith and is soon overwhelmed by the ambitions of the higher nobility, the demands of the faith, and a personal brush with a heretical sect at odds with all she’s ever believed in as she is taken into the Archigos’ council. In these struggles lie the future of The Holdings and Nessantico.

A Magic of Twilight represents another example of a fairly standard epic fantasy framework – an adolescent rises above her roots to attain power and save the day with inborn magical skill. A couple of the variances to the common clichés are the Renaissance setting and use of a female lead character, though the tropes of epic fantasy are embraced rather than subverted. The key is that A Magic of Twilight is skillfully realized and balances well the needs of world-building, characterization and plot. Trope and cliché have their roots in universal truths of the human condition and in competent hands can both entertain and enlighten. While A Magic of Twilight may not rise to a level of enlightenment, it does provide an entertaining and addictive read.

The strength of A Magic of Twilight resides in politics. There are no less than six factions of competing interests at play – complete with assassination, massive armies, and powerful magic. The interplay of these factions and their shifting alliances keeps the reader alert and interested while providing just enough surprises along the way. The portrayal of these Machiavellian politics rivals writers like Robert Jordan at their best, even approaching the skill of George R.R. Martin, if not actually attaining it.

The characterization generally holds up well across the spectrum of point of view and supporting characters. While all the common roles are present, Farrell manages to go beyond caricature characterization to provide an interesting depth. My only real complaint with the characterization is with some of his choices surrounding the main character, Ana. To round her out with a depth of hurt and despair, Farrell chooses to follow the well trodden path of sexual abuse. This approach both benefits and detracts from the character that Ana could be and would drive any follower of feminist theory into a fury.

The primary aspect of A Magic of Twilight detracting form its readability is the choice of naming and the hierarchical titles. The liberal use of apostrophes and made up titles brings the pace to a crawl – especially in the beginning. While this is somewhat effective at creating an otherworld sense of atmosphere, it often proves to be a confusing stumbling block that will likely sour many a reader. The inclusion of an informative Appendix may help and please some, but does little to improve the pace of the narrative.

A Magic of Twilight presents a familiar fantasy epic in a new wrapping that should appeal to fans of the genre while providing an entertaining and addicting read. The story is complete and stands well on its own, though this is the first volume of the larger story of the Nessantico Cycle.

Bitterwood

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:47:03 -0400

Bitterwood by James Maxey is on its surface a fantasy tale of dragons versus humans. Our titular character is Bitterwood. Notice his name is not Mellowwood. He is not a laid back easygoing man. Dragons have ruined his like and he’s….bitter. Bitterwood has vowed not to rest until he has hunted and killed every dragon in the world. Despite their power and their position of rulership over humans in the world, the name Bitterwood still inspires fear, as he is a man with nothing to lose with the expertise and will to kill dragons. That is his only ambition in life, and his motivation is born from personal vengeance not the cause of humanity as a whole.

Humans being oppressed by dragons, and an anti-hero obsessed with delivering vengeance despite overwhelming odds are pretty standard s for a fantasy story. The biggest question would be whether Bitterwood could bring a twist to the story to rise above the average

Bitterwood did not take long to toss out the first morsel when a Southern Style fire and brimstone preacher comes to a village preaching the salvation of God. Blessed with inhuman strength and endurance he seems to be the very messenger of God. That’s certainly unexpected in a dragon ruled world of fantasy, and it’s a spark that kickstarts the story from the get-go.

As we progress through the story, in the presence and in flashback, I feared for awhile that the story would turn into a complicated story of political intrigue and powerplay within the court of the dragon king Albekizan. Instead individual characters moved back to the forefront to give me someone to latch onto as I read the story. Personally if I’m going to read a story high on the political intrigue, it had better be written by Robert Jordan or George R.R. Martin. Even Jordan’s plots became so complex and intertwined that I began to get lost in the intricacies as The Wheel of Time got deep into the series. So I was beginning to get nervous as we saw the interplay between the King’s sons, his royal mage, his royal biologens, and his insane, murderous brother.

King Albekizan was determined to exterminate the human race in revenge for the death of his favorite son. Many in his inner circle disagreed with this plan, and even desired to overthrow him and bring forth a new age for the race of dragons. Most of the motivations here had nothing to do with altruism, but rather personal agendas.

The book then moved some characters to the forefront and provided some sympathetic characters through which to tell the story. That allayed any concerns that I had and got the story flowing again after it had been in danger of stagnating a bit.

We learn that there is much more to this world and to the story than what had previously been apparent. As more twists are parceled out, Bitterwood becomes more of a fantasy/science fiction story.

I liked that part of the story evolution a lot, and became more and more engrossed in the story as it went along. While these more science fiction elements were intriguing to me and added to the story in the way that they were incorporated they didn’t affect the overall world, nor have any bearing on the war that was brewing between dragons and humans. If those elements are to be used to their full potential we would need to see them expanded in the additional books of the Dragon Age series.

It was these elements that added the unpredictable into a story that was predicable on the larger scale. The story gave us unexpected alliances, secret plans, betrayal, daring escapes, and heroic victory against overwhelming odds. There’s our basic scoop of chocolate ice cream. It’s good. The science fiction that James Maxey sprinkles into his recipe are the fudge chunks. They make it better.

When I say science fiction don’t expect spaceships streaking through the sky unloading arsenals of laser weapons. Things are handled more subtly and expertly than that, and I thought that it provided the gem of the story. The backstory of Bitterwood, and his character development that was intertwined into the story was more interesting than the character in the present day portions of the story. He’s definitely a flawed hero, if he can even be called a hero. Perhaps he will blossom in future books but he wasn’t the most interesting character in the story, or even the second most interesting. Bitterwood is not a hero. He’s just a man with a grudge, a lot of arrows, and a knack for using them to kill dragons. Many of our science fiction pieces swirl around Bitterwood though, so his story is still of interest within the novel. He does also begin to show signs of wanting some purpose in his life other than to kill dragons. I suppose that’s a classic portion of the journey of a hero, so I don’t believe that Bitterwood will end up taking a backseat in the novel or series named after him, even if that happened to an extent in this book.

I’ll be interested to see who the central character ends up being. Jandra, the 16 year old human apprentice to a dragon mage would be my candidate and was my favorite character in the story.

I give Bitterwood a 7.5. The fantasy portion of the story, taken alone, was above average, on the strength of the elaborate focus on dragon society and culture. It was the other twists that made this an even more interesting tale and raised my rating a bit. For this series, if in fact this is the beginning of one, to truly remain above average the pieces of the larger world as a whole and some of its history and truths needs to play a larger role in the story. Hopefully they will be more than just interesting addendum to the story. Bitterwood promises much. We’ll have to see if it delivers in its sequels.