Fantasybookspot - Moderate

Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:24:59 -0400

In Zoë’s Tale John Scalzi changes stride – this stand-alone novel set in the Old Man’s War universe is told entirely from the perspective of a 17-year old girl, intentionally being accessible to both adults and a young-adult audience.

Zoë’s Tale presents a different view of the events covered in Scalzi’s previous novel, The Last Colony, with the point of view from Zoë, the adopted daughter of John Perry and Jane Sagan, the main stars of The Last Colony. Simply stated, the plot involves Zoë’s adoptive parents being chosen to lead a new colony of humans within a universe where habitable planets are coveted. Politics greatly complicate the situation, and things become ever more dangerous – and through it all, Zoë deals with the same teenage trials common to the more privileged of the human race. Oh, and Zoë is also a virtual demigod worshiped by an entire race of aliens that provide her with two body guards who continually record their experiences to share with the rest of their species. Navigating the tricky ground of writing a story that many readers will already know, Scalzi gets to show us another side to those events, addressing the wants and issues his fans had with The Last Colony and potentially attracting an entirely new audience to his world.

One thing that I love about John Scalzi’s books is that they are simply fun to read. His choice of words makes for fast, easy, and enthralling reading. His humor and wit entertain and even though this might not be the most innovative or mind-blowing science fiction out there, it’s certainly among the most fun to read. Equally impressive is that this book crosses that magical (and often forbidden) line between adult and young adult fiction – I can say it worked well for me, and I imagine it will work equally well for the young adult audience.

Zoë’s Tale is far and away Scalzi’s best book yet. The voice of a teenage girl is always tricky, yet Scalzi, a male in his upper-30s, manages to get it rather right. Zoë is just as snarky, inconsistent, short on judgment, emotional, and remarkable as any teenager can be. She really comes alive through Scalzi’s witty dialogue and uncertain internal discourse – it’s very easy to imagine Scalzi channeling his pride of his own young daughter into Zoë, and I get the feeling that his daughter is his number one audience.

One of the aspects of Zoë’s Tale that I enjoyed most is Scalzi’s treatment of the colonists’ PDAs – think something like the most techno-jacked-up blackberry of today, except that it is much more powerful and important to the every-minute life of people. Due to a need for a complete radio blackout, all of these devices must be confiscated and the colonists must rely on non-wireless technology and their own brains. I recall not thinking too much about this when reading The Last Colony, but seeing this event from the perspective of a teenager lends an entirely greater weight to things. The parallel to the youth of today cannot be missed.

The success or failure of Zoë’s Tale resides entirely with its namesake: Zoë. As I’ve indicated above, Scalzi scores a winner with Zoë in this book (in spit of my finding her a bit flat and unconvincing in The Last Colony). She is the every-teenager with all the usual trouble of personal interaction, young love, adolescent angst, with an added danger and the fact that she is literally worshiped by an entire alien species. All this forces Zoë to discover who she is and who she will be – the identity struggle that all teens deal with – and the realization that while she is literally the center of a whole species’ universe, her actions have consequences, and the view outward is of great importance. While Zoë is a remarkable person (perhaps even too remarkable), it works and it’s this success that raises Zoë’s Tale above Scalzi’s other books.

Natural Ordermage

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:08:30 -0400

Natural Ordermage is the 14th novel in Modesitt's best know series, the Recluce Saga. The Recluce Saga is somewhat unusual because it published well out of chronological order, with the first novel The Magic of Recluce being the second to last chronologically. The author insists they are to be read in order of publication and I agree with him. At least until you have read the series once. Another unusual aspect of this series is that is shows both sides of the conflict. Modesitt write from the point of view of both order and chaos wielders, elevating the series above the standard good versus evil story. Natural Ordermage and the immediate sequel Mage-Guard of Hamor are chronologically between Colors of Chaos and The Order War. Even if you do not wish to follow the publication order when reading this series Natural Ordermage is not a good point to enter. You'll quickly get confused in the history of the world and the conflict between order and chaos.

This conflict is the basic theme for all the Recluce novels. Although the origins of the conflict are shrouded in mystery the story seems to start about a century and a half before the events in Magi'i of Cyador, to date the first book chronologically with the founding of the chaos driven empire of Cyador, later to be balanced/oposed by order based nations such as Westwind and Recluse. Order and chaos are carefully balanced and cancel each other out when the free chaos and free order collide. The magic of Recluce seems to be inspired by a number of physical phenomena, one of the more obvious ones being the duality of light, but don't quite follow the rules of physics as we know them. Any use, or overuse in order results in more free chaos being available for those who are attuned to that kind of magic and vice versa. The balance ensures that the use of order or chaos must be carefully weighed against the consequences of upsetting the balance. Spectacular uses of either power usually results in an equally spectacular backlash.

Some six centuries have passed since the founding of the state of Recluce, a haven for those who follow order. It has become something of a power in the word, especially after the founding of Nylan as related in The Magical Engineer. A council mages carefully sees to it that those who show chaotic tendencies or who misuse order as exiled. Rahl is a young scrivener's apprentice who is very aware of the fact he has certain order talents. He is very careful to hide them so as not to attract the attention of the council wizards though. Still, he finds his talents useful in being more successful with the local girls and that is what gets him in trouble. He gets one of the young women he has his eyes on pregnant and her family demands they marry. Events soon start to turn heated and after a fight in which Rahl uses his order abilities to defend himself he finds himself facing the council. The verdict is exile to Nylan. In the port city of Recluce's engineers they handle order differently. Maybe he'll fit in there.

Rahl soon finds out that he cannot be taught to master his order abilities satisfactory at Nylan either. He is what the mages call a Natural Ordermage. His talents are intuitive, he can do things that takes other mages years of study to accomplish without really understanding what he is doing. This lack of understanding makes him unpredictable. The mages even consider him a danger to his surroundings. All efforts to teach him seem to be futile and after an incident involving a rather big explosion the rules of Nylan order his exile form the port city. He will be sent to Hamor.The powerful, continent spanning Hamorian empire has quite a different view on order and chaos. But again Rahl manages to get into serious trouble. This time it may cost him his life.

The Recluce series has had it's ups and downs, there's a couple of good books in this series and a few I didn't enjoy so much. After the 12th and 13th book in the series, Ordermaster and Wellspring of Chaos, both dealing with the Ordermage Karl, I thought Modesitt didn't have much more to add to his overall history of Recluce. He explored some continents we hadn't visited yet but Karl doesn't seem to have been involved in one of the defining moments in the history of Recluce. In this book we get a few interesting hints though.The story of Rahl seems to be connected to a comment made by the Ordermage Cassius in The Magic of Recluce (the same Cassius as in the story included in Viewpoints Critical). I'll have to read the next book to be sure but he appears to be referring to the same rebellion mentioned in Natural Ordermage. There are also some hint of a connection between Hamor and the ancient Cydoran empire toppled by Nylan in The Chaos Balance. Hamor is proving to be much more interesting than Nordla and Austra.

The main character of this book and the next, Modesitt has written a lot of the Recluce books in pairs, is somewhat unusual choice for Modesitt. Most of them are somewhat likeable. Not Rahl though, at the opening of the book he is the type that is too clever to lie but cannot to be trusted anyway. If your teenage daughter brought him home you'd try the cleaning-your-shotgun-while-having-a-nice-chat routine on him. If you let him in at all. Rahl grows throughout the novel though. As I mentioned above Rahl is very difficult to teach. He has to find things out for himself, usually the hard way. It shapes his character. I'm not sure if I like him at the end of Natural Ordermage but he certainly did grow up.

When I read the synopsis of Natural Ordermage a while ago I was a bit disappointed that Modesitt chose to write another Recluse book from the point of view of an Ordermage. Only four of the 15 books in the series are written from the chaos point of view. Which leaves a lot of the history of that side of magic unexplored. Both the founding of the White Order and that of Cyador remain a mystery for instance. I enjoyed the chaos books quite a lot so I had hoped Modesitt would add a chapter to those. That being said Natural Ordermage didn't disappoint me in the least. Unlike the previous two books, which gave me the impression Modesitt was done with the Recluce books, this book is a solid entry into the series. I can think of a number of Recluce novels I enjoyed more and it certainly doesn't contain any surprises in style, choice of subject or main character, it does add some interesting things to the overall story and sets us up for what could be a very interesting continuation of Rahl's story. Mage-Guard of Hamor has been released last month in hardcover. I will try to get it reviewed as soon as I get my hands on it.

The Inferior

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:33:38 -0400

Peadar O Guilin takes the reader out of their comfort zone with The Inferior. This is the story of a young man who learns the hard way that things are not always what they seem, and you should be careful what you ask for because you might just get it. Stopmouth, so called because of his stutter, is a strong young hunter whose only ambitions are to make his family proud, find him a wife and start a family of his own. Holding him back are several things, his stutter is always a stumbling block, making others not take him seriously and making him less interested in social interaction. Stopmouth also has more attraction to his brother’s new wife than is seemly. Additionally, his brother’s latest reckless scheme has created a rift between them that may never be mended. But, O Guilin obviously feels that there isn’t enough stress in Stopmouth’s life because there is tossed in the arrival of beautiful stranger and some radical changes in the world around them.

O Guilin is exploring many things in this story. To begin with the title, The Inferior, this could be a comment on the fact that the characters do not agree on who is inferior to the other. This occurs with the two main characters, Stopmouth and Idriana who each believe that the other is their inferior. This could also be a comment on the idea of inferiority itself – depending upon the definition you put on the word, you could consider the Diggers (which would be the overwhelming evil of the story) to be superior to all the characters because eventually they will be all that remains, thus making all of the ‘human’ characters their inferior. Additionally, playing with the word inferior, the author could be saying that those observing from outside should not presume to judge that because they are not the observed, that they are superior. This could also apply to the reader – we are duly cautioned to not judge others unless we could take a walk in their shoes.

What else could the author be exploring? The nature of relationships across cultures is one theme. The strength and capriciousness of familial bonds is another. The author takes a simple coming of age story and gives it so many obstacles that poor Stopmouth is quite lucky that he comes of age at all. And this he certainly does. He puts his life on the line for others who not only consider him to be inferior, but to be repulsive. Since they need his knowledge and experience, they cannot refuse his offer of help. With simple honor, respect and integrity, Stopmouth shows them that inferiority is in the eye of the beholder.

Did I truly enjoy the story? Certainly I was rooting for Stopmouth and wanted him to prevail, but at the same time I both pitied him and was revolted by his actions. This is where the problem arises when you take the reader outside of their comfort zone. They are no longer comfortable. They are forced to think, take sides, and make personal choices from poor options. Once we are there, we are more focused on how we react to the story than how the story is played out. The story was well written, and considering the secret the author was keeping that was probably a much more difficult task than it would be for a straightforward story. I only found one point I would have quibbled with the author over and it was not a major one. Other minor issues were just with background and scenery and truly did not affect my connection with this novel. I can think of two major influences that could have inspired this novel and while they were both well done, I feel that Peadar O Guilan took it a step further and made the reader both uncomfortable and thoughtful at the same time. This book is designed for a younger audience and while there are some instances of violence and some rather gruesome imagery, I find that it still fits for both a younger and older audience. For a good story and a more extreme take on an older idea, I give this one an 8, though I doubt that I will be rereading this one any time soon.

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 Devil You Know

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:08:50 -0400

Many book authors make their way over to comics. It may seem like a sensible idea since it's just another medium and another way to tell a story. However, with comics you generally only have 22 pages to tell a story, while in a book you can have as many as you want. Authors such as Tad Williams, Jodi Picoult, Brad Meltzer, and Charlie Huston try to bring along the wonderful charm they have as book authors to the comic book medium. Many fail miserably, producing such terrible and tripe fluff that catastrophically nearly kill entire character story arcs. Ultimately things become so bad that fans just want to forget these authors ever wrote comics in the first place (Picoult's Wonder Woman run is the stuff of legends it’s so bad and Tad Williams Aquaman has prompted the published to stop publishing the comic, and for better or worse, I don’t even want to get into what the DC universe looks like post Meltzer).

However, comic authors rarely make the jump to book authors. It's a totally different beast and what works for the X-Men may not work for a whole new world with dwindling readers in altogether competitive book market. Some succeed (such as Warren Ellis, Mike Mignolia, and Greg Rucka), while others tragically fail or churn out the lowest of mediocre fare. Mike Carey falls in the group that shouldn’t quit their day job. His comics have always been heavily dialogue driven (his Lucifer comics have Lucifer running a Night Club and talking about feelings most of the time. Doesn't sound exciting? Well somehow, it truly is). However, what has charm in the comic form may also seem derivative and drawn out in the book form. What usually took Carey a page in comics and roughly 1-minute to read, now takes dozens to hundreds of pages and hours to read. Since books don't contain paneled art, the author must use his words to describe the setting. This is where Mike Carey really shows his weakness. While his world in The Devil You Know is enjoyable, he tends to explain things slowly and only partly presenting a fractured world view that at times doesn't seem all that interesting. This is a 500+ page book that could have really been 300 pages.

Here's the line: Carey's Felix Castor is an Exorcist living in a world where ghosts can be seen by most people and are generally non-plused about things. However there are times when they get out of hand and people like Felix are called in. For reasons all his own, Felix has got out of the Exorcist game and is trying to lead a normal life. But in the immortal words of Pacino in Godfather 2, "everytime I try to get out, they pull me back in." Succubi, haunted ghosts, strip joints, zombie's who are tech savy, and demons who just don't like music run abound. What's a regular shlub who's broke and making ends meat supposed to do? Have sex with a succubus? That's right!

Mike Carey is quite the eponymous writer. Mainstream wise he is best known for his work on the X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four published by Marvel. However, comic fans know him best for his Eisner nominated Lucifer, Hellblazer and Crossing Midnight, all published by DC. Lucifer is also important because it proved that DC’s Vertigo imprint still had life post Sandman. I chance to go as far as to say that without Lucifer and Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets, Vertigo comics may not even exist anymore. What does this all mean? I just wanted to put his work into context since The Devil You Know may turn you off of following any of his other work. His novel work = poor. His comic work = timeless. An overstatement? Perhaps. But true? Oh yeah.

I should state that I have an unabashed love for Carey's comic work. He is also a charming and gracious person who took the time to have a smoke with me as we talked books one rainy day in NY. With that said, The Devil You Know is only a decent book at best and a poor book by Mike Carey standards. So I can only recommend this with heavy reservations. The reservations being that if you aren't a Mike Carey fan, you may enjoy this a lot more than I did. But as for me, I really didn't care much for this overlong work and am hesitant to enter Felix Castor’s world again with Carey's upcoming releases. Hmm, but the ending does have me somewhat enticed.

Vampyres of Hollywood

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:35:20 -0400

The actress Adrienne Barbeau, probably best known for the ‘70s tv series Maude and more recently the HBO series Carnivale, teams up with prolific author Michael Scott (his YA novel The Alchemyst is being made into a movie) to write her second novel, Vampyres of Hollywood: a modern tale of vampires, murder, and the movie-making business.

This novel differs from other tales of that bloodsucking creature of the night in that it claims that Hollywood was essentially created by vampires. After all, it provides the perfect environment for them. It allows them to satisfy their narcissism and it gives them a means to perpetuate all of those fallacies and even create some new ones, like having no reflections, in order to keep the true nature of their existence from being discovered.

It took an X-ray and an autopsy to confirm that Jason Eddings had been killed with the Oscar he’d won for Best Actor just six hours earlier.

He deserved it.

The Oscar, that is.

As for being murdered, well, he probably deserved that, too.

Vampyres of Hollywood opens with a murder, and the subsequent chapters alternate between the first person point of views of Osvanna Moore, legendary horror film actress and studio head, and Peter King, the detective with movie-star good looks and a penchant for nice clothes (he is, after all, working the Beverly Hills beat.) But one murder quickly becomes several murders, and all of the victims are somehow linked to Osvanna.

From Osvanna’s point of view, we are given glimpses into her long and rich past from her relationship as body guard, friend and occasional lover to Catherine the Great to that of muse to Van Gogh. We learn that many great historical events and persons were somehow related to vampirism like Jack the Ripper and the fall of Pompeii. Barbeau and Scott manage to make it all seem plausible, and it works mostly because the novel doesn’t strive to take itself too seriously.

Through Detective King’s investigations, we are introduced to more than a few interesting characters. His tenant, SuzieQ (that’s her real name, it says so on her driver’s license) is an exotic dancer, snake wrangler, and sounding board for the detective, often offering insightful comments and useful insider information (Hollywood is a small town, you know.) Since the suspect in this case has been dubbed The Cinema Slayer, we are introduced to his mom, who knows the movie industry inside and out. She once had aspirations of being an A-List actress, but was always relegated to roles such as “girl in the bar”, “woman in the bar, and “woman behind bars.” Eventually, her penchant for saving movie set mementos and collecting signed film scripts paid off when eBay provided the perfect venue for selling those mementos. Then there’s John Trueblood who stands at 6’8” and goes by the nickname Little John. He’s an ex-convict and ex-professional wrestler, tattoo artist and parlor owner, and avid collector of movie memorabilia (he‘s one of Mrs. King’s best customers.) These folks may be secondary characters, but they add interest and color to the story in addition to helping move King’s case forward.

Minor inconsistencies (vampires don’t feel the cold, but in one scene Osvanna feels “Brittle cold but no pain.”; it’s pointed out that vampires can be seen in mirrors because of the laws of physics yet no mention is made of those same laws when they change into animal forms) and a tendency to state the obvious do little to detract from the fact that this is a briskly paced and entertaining story that doesn’t pause long enough to give the reader time to worry too much about these minor criticisms. There are plenty of references to the Hollywood of yesteryear as well as currently running shows to appease most movie and television buffs. There are scenes of gore and a grand finale of flesh-eating to give horror fans something to wince about. In the end, Vampyres of Hollywood provides a fitting metaphor for Hollywood’s movie industry as well as a vampy, campy fun read.

Since I don't have the option of rating this book something between a 6 and 7, I gave it a 7.

(This review refers to the Advance Uncorrected Proof.)

ASH

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:22:16 -0400

ASH - A Secret History can in many respects be regarded as Mary Gentle’s magnum opus, both in terms of volume (a whopping 1100 pages) and in terms of its ambition and scope. It is also a work of literature that is very difficult, if not impossible, to categorize. It is simultaneously historical fiction, alternate history, fantasy and science fiction. The novel was awarded the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 2000. It should also be noted that while ASH is published in one volume by Gollancz in the UK, it is published in four volumes (A Secret History, Carthage Ascendant, The Wild Machines, Lost Burgundy) by Avon Eos in the US.

The novel contains two parallel narratives. The primary narrative is the story of Ash, a young woman, who is the captain of a company of mercenaries in the late 15th century. When we meet her, she and her company are employed by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III in a conflict with Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy – both great powers in late medieval Europe. Ash has ambitions for herself and her company. Life as a mercenary is both dangerous and unpredictable, and it is difficult to provide for the hundreds of people that make up a mercenary company in lean times, so she fights in the hope of being rewarded with land, which would provide the company with a secure base. Ash’s own position as soldier who is also a woman is also rather precarious, which she learns the hard way when Frederick to her dismay rewards her with a noble husband instead of land and title. Bound by marriage and her husband’s feudal ties, Ash finds that she has lost control over her company of mercenaries. This, however, turns out to be the least of her problems. At this point Gentle twists her narrative into alternate history as she introduces Visigoth Carthage as powerful and fearsome enemy. In this alternate history, Carthage is a stronghold of Arian Christianity and a place of stark brutality and strange technology – golems, tactical computers and non-human intelligences. Shortly after Ash’s marriage, Carthage launches a crusade of massive proportions against Europe, and Ash learns that the voice she hears in her head is not a saint but something else entirely. Soon it becomes apparent that the fate of Europe rests on the slender and armoured shoulders of Ash; on her origins and, indeed, her very nature – as well as on the continued existence of Burgundy (The Duchy of Burgundy dissolved as an independent nation upon the death of Duke Charles the Bold in at the Battle of Nancy on January 5th 1477, which became a pivotal moment in European history).

Framing the story of Ash is a narrative which plays out through a fictitious email correspondence between a historian working on a biography of Ash and his editor. This part of the narrative is set around the turn of the millennium and focuses on Dr. Pierce Ratcliff, who is translating a collection of late medieval manuscripts that tells the story of Ash, i.e. the main narrative of the novel. As his work progresses he discovers that the history of late medieval Europe that the Ash documents narrative diverges significantly from known history. That is, in Pierce’s time-frame, Carthage did not exist in the late 15th century. As he puzzles about this, trying to construct a theory to fit what the documents narrate, strange things begin to happen. Suddenly most of his source material has either disappear or has been re-classified as myth and literature, while at the same time material evidence of a Visigoth Carthage begin to appear in North Africa. As the novel progresses, it becomes apparent that the story of Ash and the history Pierce is working on is deeply intertwined.

ASH is a very complex novel, which includes some very sophisticated perspectives on the workings of history, myth and scholarship, founded on a thorough knowledge of late medieval Europe and the warfare of the period. In fact, Gentle completed a MA in War Studies as part of the research for this novel. As a piece of alternate historical fiction, ASH demands quite a lot from the reader, more specifically a certain amount of historical knowledge in order for the reader to discern exactly when the fictional narrative deviate from known history. However, Gentle doesn’t just throw in random element to create an alternate history but rather creative extrapolate an alternate history from a certain point of known history. Case in point: Visigoth Carthage! In the 5th century, the site of Carthage was conquered by the Vandals (an East Germanic tribe like the Visigoths), who were in fact followers of Arianism (refers to the teachings of the 4th century theologian Arius, who held that Jesus Christ was almost, but not fully divine). Carthage existed as a Vandal city in a short period before it was annexed by the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century.

In order to facilitate this kind of knowledge, Gentle has provided her narrative with numerous footnotes, a feature that simultaneously support the framing narrative wherein Pierce Ratcliff explores Ash’s life in order to write a historical biography. As the two parallel stories progress, it becomes apparent, that the framing narrative serves other purposes than presenting historical exposition too cumbersome for the main narrative. At first, the footnotes as well as Pierce’s correspondence with his editor serves to mark the moment of departure – what is fact and what is fiction? But as his evidence appears and disappears, the framing narrative develops into a more philosophical exploration of the very nature of alternate histories (couched in scientific terms):

I’ll be honest. Anna, I know the ‘Ash’ documents were authentic history when I first studied them. Whatever I may have said about errors of re-classifications, you will remember that I found myself completely unable to explain it in any satisfactory way. I think that I _had_ almost come to believe in Vaughan Davis’s theory out of sheer desperation – that there actually had been a ‘first history’ of the world, which was wiped out in some fashion, and that we now inhabit a ‘second history’, into which bits of the first have somehow survived. That Ash’s history first was genuine, and has now been – fading, if you like – to Romance, to a cycle of legends.
[…]
I had begun to think that perhaps they *were* from a previous version of our past, growing less real by the decade. A previous past history in which the text’s ‘miracle’ *did* take place. In which the Faris and the ‘Wild Machines’ (or whatever it is that those literary metaphors represent) triggered some kind of alteration in history. Or, to put it in scientific terms, a previous past history in which the possible subatomic states of the universe were (deliberately and consciously) collapsed into a different reality – the one we now inhabit.
[…]
Plainly, we have to face the possibility now that reality did fracture in or about the beginning of the year 1477. Equally plainly, it is possible that fragments of that prior history have existed in ours, becoming gradually less and less ‘real’ as the universe moves on from the moment of fracture.

Gentle uses this notion of a ‘first’ and a ‘second’ history to explore the workings of history and the fluidity of historical “truth”. She has elsewhere stated that she views “history” as a construct, that is, that there historical writing always contains a certain level of fictionality. Furthermore, historical sources and documents are continually re-examined and re-evaluated, and the farther they are from the present, the harder it becomes to separate fact from fiction and myth. Considerations such as these are partly made explicit in the contemporary sections of the narrative, but Gentle also lets history and myth blend almost seamlessly together in the story of Ash herself. Thus the astute reader might pick apart Gentle’s often subtle play with myth and history. A good example of this particular aspect of the novel can be found in a rather discreet detail: the many references to the Green Christ (Christus Viridianus), a detail that isn’t really explained until the latter part of the novel when Ash and the company surgeon Floria(n) del Guiz inspect a series of religious mosaics:

Ash leaned in close, peering at a mosaic of the birth of the Green Christ – his Imperial Jewish mother sprawled under the oak, half-dead from bringing forth her son; the Baby suckling the Sow; the Eagle, in the oak’s branches, lifting up his head, depicted about to take wing on the flight that will – in three days – bring Augustus and his legions to the right spot in the wild German forest. And in the next panel, Christus Viridianus heals his mother, with the leaves of the oak.
[…]
Florian walked the circuit of the walls, glancing at each panel briefly – Viridianus and his legion in Judea, gone native after the Persian wars; Viridianus speaking with the Jewish elders; Viridianus and his officers worshipping Mithras. Then Augustus’s funeral, the coronation of his true son, and, in the background, the adopted son Tiberius and the conspirators, the desire for the oak tree upon which they will hang Viridianus – bones broken, no blood shed – already plain on their faces.
One circuit of the room, back to where Ash stands by the birth; and the last panel is Constantine, three centuries later, converting the empire to the religion of Viridianus, whom the Jews still consider nothing more than a Jewish prophet, but whom the followers of Mithras have long and faithfully known as the Son of the Unconquered Sun.

In the space of a few paragraphs, Gentle constructs an alternate history of Christ, a history that highlights the specific mythic elements from the ancient world that have since been incorporated into Christianity. The epithet “Viridianus” is not a Christian one; rather it (the colour green), together with the jealous brother and the death on the tree, is specifically associated with the Egyptian god Osiris. The references to Mithras (a sun god of Persian origin, worshipped by Roman soldiers) and Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun, a late Roman state cult of solar deities) are, like Osiris, all examples of an ancient mythic archetype – the resurrected deity (a life-death-rebirth deity). The story Jesus Christ display key structural elements with these deities, and it has been argued that this mythic archetype has been absorbed into Christian theology and symbolism through the religious syncretism of the late Roman Empire.

The above-mentioned elements are deeply buried in Gentle’s narrative and require a rather knowledgeable reader to puzzle out. However, other examples of her play with history, myth and fiction are made manifest on the surface of the story. One such is the ways in which Ash continually is compared and contrasted to the legend of Joan of Arc. Like Joan, Ash is female soldier; like Joan, Ash receives aid from a disembodied voice; and, like Joan, Ash finds herself in the role as the defender of a nation – she is the Maid of Burgundy to Joan’s Maid of Orleans (a bit ironic since Burgundy play a part in the capture of Joan of Arc!). Mary Gentle not only invokes the legend of the Maid of Orleans, she also turns it inside-out thus highlighting the hidden issues of gender and sexuality. Where Joan of Arc was a holy virgin, a peasant girl made into soldier through divine intervention, Ash is a professional soldier who happens to be a woman. Ash’s military competence has been earned by hard work and an iron will. She is single-minded in her dedication to the business of war, which partly is a product of circumstance – she has lived almost her entire life in a mercenary company. War is, in fact, the only thing she knows. As a female soldier, Ash is an anomaly. Her gender presents an obstacle in the context of her chosen profession, but at the same time she uses her femininity, youth and beauty strategically in the dealings with the men of her profession. She knows that her status as a female war leader evokes the legend of Joan of Arc and she’s not averse to exploit it.

Ash might be a brilliant and cold-blooded soldier, but she is also an incredibly damaged young woman with what at best can be described as a dysfunctional childhood. She’s raped at the tender age of 8 and survives childhood as a camp whore – it is certainly no coincidence that Gentle lets Ash’s rapists cut up the girls face. She is scarred, both literally and psychologically, and those traumas are integral elements of her personality. It is, as it is stated in the opening sentence of the prologue: It was her scars that made her beautiful. The rape/scarring also constitutes another form of marking – Ash is not a virgin in armour like the archetype to which she is compared. The fact that she is a sexually active female soldier makes her a potentially subversive and therefore dangerous figure according to the late medieval mind, something that her young husband finds very troubling. He finds her threatening and repulsive, whereas Ash is very strongly attracted to him on a pure physical level but has trouble seeing him as other than weak-willed and cowardly. In many respects, Ash’s marriage seems to be a pivotal moment in her character-development. It is established early on that she isn’t an introspective personality – Ash is all action, and her military competence often make her appear older than her 19 years. Emotionally, she is, however, very young and she has no clue how to deal with the confliction emotions that her reluctant husband elicit in her. It is, however, not this rather ill-luck marriage that forms the most significant relationship in this novel. Rather, the main focus is firmly locked on the interactions between Ash and her company, especially her officers. Here she finds a real sense of belonging, of comradeship. It is an emotional attachment that is never spoken (unless couched in an irreverent banter) but always present in an easy (and often bawdy) camaraderie. Ash and her company are loyal to each other unto death and beyond – and it is Gentle’s skilful and often subtle representation of this heartfelt bond between Ash and her company that constitutes this novel’s heart and soul.

Another wonderful aspect is the level of mimesis that Gentle brings to her story. She delves unflinchingly into the minutiae of the daily life of these 15th century mercenaries, and she never shies away from depicting the less salubrious aspects of late medieval life and war. Ash and her soldiers are, more often than not, both dirty and battered, their armour rusting, their clothes fouled by gore and human waste, their appearance ravaged by the dangers of war and the harshness of the elements. All of this gives the reader heightened experience of the world the protagonists inhabit, all the details makes Ash’s world present in one’s mind. Stylistically, this aspect is reinforced by the way in which the narrative alternates between the past and the present tense. Gentle primarily employs the present tense in action- and battle scenes since it effectively conveys a sense of immediacy – and it works! I have yet to encounter a writer who can imbue a fight scene with such an overpowering sense of immediate experience as Gentle does.

This kind of attention to detail – often anchored in sensory impressions – heightens the realism of the text, and Gentle is most certainly part of the recent trend for the dark and gritty in fantasy fiction. Gentle makes her alternate 15th century Europe real and tangible to such a degree that ASH is a very intense and somewhat exhausting reading experience. I sometimes felt as tired and battered as the protagonists and thus welcomed the sections of the present-day narrative as much needed and well-timed breathing spaces. Yet no matter how demanding and exhausting it can be ASH ultimately offers a deeply rewarding reading experience. It is, in fact, hard to find anything to criticize. It offers a gripping action adventure, a historical puzzle and a slightly foreign world. It has a well-structured and well-paced narrative, built on a solid and extremely impressive foundation of historical research. The main character is complex and compelling, strong yet vulnerable and utterly likeable. The text itself is multi-layered and has a depth beyond the ordinary when it comes to fantasy fiction. The only thing that annoyed me was an odd tendency to arbitrarily vacillate between a third person and a first person narrative in the sections of Ash’s story – this is, however, a very minor complaint in regard to a novel that is very nearly perfect.

I will not hesitate to label ASH a modern masterpiece of speculative fiction. It is a work of literature that transcends genre and offers up an intriguing and highly entertaining exploration of history as a state of potentialities. As a secret or alternate history ASH is not only closely related to the genres of both fantasy and science fiction, but also to the practice of counter-factual history (also called “virtual history”) in academic circles. Mary Gentle’s novel is a highly intelligent and extremely accomplished work of literature that will appeal to fans of historical and speculative fiction alike.

Trine D. Paulsen

Harbinger: The Beginning

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:55:45 -0400

While all opinions of value on a singular subject reflect personal observation - either shared or so penetrating or whimsical to claim true originality - it is something that is thought that needs to be controlled, reigned in for the purposes of achieving a balance of that and a degree of the impossibility of objectivity I believe in those words but choose to and admit that they will not apply here. This will not be a search of highs and lows, the critical eye here is misty in rare satisfaction witnessing a moment of medium-perfection, where sensibly and creativity combine to create modern classics. I and many speak highly of contemporary super hero-based books like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Miracleman, Planetary, Miracleman, Robinson‘s Starman, and what we find are reactions - indeed reactions as quick and sharp that cause the counters to look as if they occurred - should have occurred - before the first blow, but still reactions. Even something like DC’s Identity Crisis or Morrison’s run on X-Men were/are new platforms by any definition, are built on the brick of retort. This is not a review, nor a retort. This is a letter…

The modern blueprint for team books - with respects to the Challengers of the Unknown - is Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four. Why is this? The introduction of storylines that were as much about family as it was fighting crime, and at the beginning we were given explorers, more than just scientist exposed to powers, but explorers of the world we all traverse. Later, after a couple of tries, the X-Men would successfully add the angst of fitting in and prejudice from multiple sides. The creative teams of both of these books would influence the generation afterwards (indeed Byrne was influenced by the Fantastic Four only to extend the same shadow after he helmed the title himself) again in response, and that generation though armed with guns larger than torsos that carried easily the burden of seemingly thousands of pockets in which a multitude of ammunition could be stored for use - many were misses.

The first page of Harbinger #1 is a splash page, the backdrop is mundane: a traffic jam, trees, a helicopter hovering above, this is the real world, the world that you and I live in, a chaotic world but to a degree we have been able to account for with some sense of false order in our minds - in our world oddities occur, even atrocities and comics in this era would attempt to remind us of these grim elements to attempt to parallel our experiences, but on the first page Harbinger goes a different route, it attempts to instill something so fundamental the word alone was a title of a comic in out industry’s Golden Age, we have multiple characters: boys, girls, canines, even animated twins, that carried the name, and if anything it is what drew us to famous lines like, "look up in the sky, it’s…". Harbinger, in a time when pubescent and fanciful definitions of grit being passed off as realism were prevalent, appealed to our lost sense, the one that is unique to us - our wonder. From the first page we are thrown into a already fluid story, we are both going somewhere and know that something has already occurred, a bit of a microcosm of the VALIANT Universe that plays all across its own time-line while being linear and occurring in real time, our wonder is not isolated in the now or the future but is in concert with the what has been the initial mystery in just meeting someone who naturally has a past, life does not begin in these initial pages. Above that aforementioned prosaic backdrop and in the direction of the unseen fingers pointing from the ground, a car is flying - and we know immediately we are a part of a story that will touch on places with roads we know and stories that have no use for them.

The title ‘Harbinger’ relates to a couple of aspects, one is the simple decision and two is that those called Harbingers that embody the former. Essentially, Harbingers were the next turn for humanity, beings of some diverse powers, though for the most part the abilities were dormant. It is also the name of the foundation that will serve as the adversary in the title and the VALIANT universe as a whole - thus it is rather unique in that is a comic that could be construed as being named after the antagonists and the fact illustrates the duality of the story if one ever wishes to go beyond the adventures of super-powered teenagers trying to do right while being pursued by a corporation of similar beings who are chasing them. In many ways, the second generation of VALIANT’s line was Peter Stanchek’s story (though there is something to be said about the meta-frame that was Solar) and that of his family. His first family are the group we follow within Harbinger: The Beginning a hardcover released in 2007 by VALIANT Entertainment that reprints issue 0-7 that featured the creative team of Jim Shooter and Dave Lapham. In these pages you will be introduced to family, you will experience the growth of that family, and you will suffer from a loss in that family as we meet a group of kids who had enough troubles finding themselves to begin with. The Harbinger part of VALIANT universe is rather simple in that corporation that recognizes people of ability searches them and collect them to train them in their ability in order to pave the way to a better world that humanity has or will squander. The Harbinger Corporation was founded and is led by one Toyo Harada who in several ways is one the most powerful people on the planet - a statement he makes around the ‘other two’ and none seem inclined to correct him - as his foundation is an economic power and more importantly that he is an Omega Harbinger. Harbingers to this point have come into their power only by their potential being unlocked or activated by an Omega Harbingers. Omega Harbingers are those able to use their abilities by their own will without need of an ‘activation’ and upon finding another like him - Peter Stanchek - it becomes his mission to bring him into the fold. Going back to the duality of the title and how it can be applied, Harada himself is at times a character one can empathize with and in the issues Shooter goes out of his way to illustrate that he and his followers nor only believe they are doing the right thing - but also compares them to the actions of Peter and his friends in a manner that makes the readers view the Harbinger kids as ‘kids’ involved in a rather petty rebellion and not seeing the big picture and on several occasions they arrive to further their ‘goals’ at inopportune times when Harada is indeed trying to handle important matters (like saving the life of a member of his organization). You see the distinction brought into full effect when the character Solar arrives - a real Superhero - and indeed points it out to Peter and the reader. The reason why Harada wants Peter dead is not out of jealousy but he deems him to uncontrolled and a danger and what you get in this title are two powerful individuals who think they are the correct answer but on different level, it’s just that one knows, or rather thinks he knows what the answer implies beyond the question. Harada is affective because in truth he’s consistory the most reasonable, lucid and rational figure in the title.

The Harbinger kids themselves are a motley band even if familiar archetypes. Pete - aka Sting - the de facto leader, like Harada is one of the most potent individuals on the plant - an Omega Harbinger he has at his disposal psionic abilities that are only rivaled by Harada and his abilities are vast and growing. Faith - aka Zephyr - is one of those quirk that gives the title a unique element. It’s not that her ability is to fly - it’s that she is a tubby kid, a bit of an oddity in an era where all female superheroes had a likely fallback as models. body builders, or porn stars. Charlene - aka Flamingo - is basically the human Torch and the aforementioned likely future adult star. Kris, who is not a harbinger, but play the role of non-powered foil and also becomes the catalyst of VALIANT legacy characters and John Torkelson - aka Torque - who is the strong guy of the group whose rendering (by Lapham) really brings us back to faith and all the characters. Lapham drew these characters and made them look like kids, like people which played into the bigger desire for VALIANT to be and look like the world that is or could be outside of your window. You get a bit of a Claremont-type feel where you just sense multiple plot lines being developed for later fruition - or not - and half the fun is the knowledge of exploring those further but yet you never are taken away from what is a story about teenagers with powers - the plot moves, things, happen and like all VALIANT titles they ripple into other books.

If there is an issue for today’s reader concerning Harbinger: The Beginning it is that the dialogue dates itself and not just with particular references to things like Nintendo, but in that it at times doesn’t just forward the story but attempt to aid the art to describe what is occurring as a narrative which seems odd not only due to current readers just don’t need or prefer that anymore as the age - and hopefully comprehension - increases but also because even at this point in his career Lapham is able to tell sequential storytelling without the crutch but you feel what seems to be a Shooter mandate of being very easy assimilation of what is occurring. One would hope and suspect in the event of future incarnation that this will be eliminated but at least for myself it served as what may be the last top shelf example of the way superhero stories used to be told - a reflection of the ‘80s MARVEL sensibility brought over by Shooter when he was their Editor-in-Chief for a number of years, but I don’t back-away from the idea that nostalgia plays a role in that, one that isn’t particularly relevant. I do want to point to point out what seems to be an often repeated saying: “there were Image kids and VALIANT kids, you go to Image for the art and if you want well written you go to VALIANT“. Not even to point some quality titles that had and would come out of IMAGE - this is a statement that I find to be fundamentally incredulous. Who were some people that contributed art to VALIANT? Barry Windsor Smith, Dave Lapham, Frank Miller, Steve Ditko, Bob Layton, Walter Simonson, Joe Quesada, and Tom Mandrake - just to name a few. To continue my previous thought however, it does strike a rather unique balance of having layered storylines both within single titles and as a line and it creates a story complexity and dram without being neither avant-garde or my least favorite adjective to describe fiction - ‘gritty’. It recognizes ideals exist but certainly does not use that as mold and while there is redemption, there are also permanent prices to pay. This is where the zero issues come to play and while I fully understand the choice of leading off these hardcovers with them, I think they lose a certain nuance - albeit only if you are familiar with the original reading experience - of their power. I think in many ways this order tends to take away from the message the first page of Harbinger#1 offers and I think this applies for any VALIANT title and their zero issue. To be able to go back and see where Pete came from - to see a darkness to him that is not at all abnormal, but is deviant - acting on hormones and issues of control someone his age would have causes one to be able to cast the story they just read in another light. And in my mind simply adds to the story in a manner that it doesn’t when they lead-off the hardcovers. In an interview we see Shooter thought much the same (at least at that time)

"Too many times, especially in comic books, you get the feeling the characters
are just hanging around waiting for the story to start. Like they were
doing absolutely nothing before this story started and they have no
other reason for being than being bitten by the radioactive water
buffalo so they can go charging around butting into trucks. So I tried
to give the sense that stuff had gone on before. I wanted to try to
get people interested in the characters, and also to take through the
building of the team. So maybe I didn't do it very well...my motives
were good.

And people have asked "well why didn't you do issue #0 as issue #1?"
Because issue #0 is really intensive to one character, to Sting. And
I felt that if that were the first issue, it wouldn't be until the
third issue or so that they'd really be a team. No, let me start
further down the pike, and come back and fill that in. I mean, isn't
that how people really are? If you meet someone, you know what's going
on NOW, and sometime later, in a bar or something you're sitting there
talking and you find out how they got that way. I mean I've done it
both ways. I've started with the origin and moved on, and I've started
in the middle. The goal is to make these characters come alive and be
as real to everyone as they are to us. There's probably a lot of ways
to get there."

Given that, for myself these early Harbinger issues represent a point where the last time a throw-back superhero team book was arguably the best (superhero) book on the market and it dwells in and may be the sole representative of the transition from 1980’s MARVEL storytelling and what would we would now call modern storytelling employed by people like Johns and Bendis in books pointed at the mainstream comic reader and in some ways represent the best of both world while carrying some baggage from the former and less refinement of the latter that may actually (as noted above) a refinement of the reader and for this achieves a charming quality but not to the depths where it has to become a guilty pleasure.

The new material in the collection is The Origin of Harada and is new material written by Shooter and penciled by Bob Hall. It is a rather effective ending to a collection in some way speaks to the zero issue being used first as using the two Omega’s as bookends to a presentation. This is essentially the first new real VALAINT material in over a decade and by real VALIANT, this reviewer means VALIANT through Unity and perhaps a year beyond with some titles - as one simply can’t deny Barry Windsor Smith’s Archer and Armstrong which was post Unity - and was simply a striking 8 page story that is a no frills yet haunting eight pager that has relevance to readers old and new. and like the first page of the first issue, Shooter again gets it - stories are based on questions and what’s revealed contradicts information in this very review and also reinforces what is probably Shooter’s original vision of Harada that may have been deviated from when he was ousted from the company.

Harbinger: The Beginning is a story of life evolved, not of the day after, two days - these are the children of the eight day, of this world as sure as those of the sixth day but like those they would have to succeed and suffer through a world that’s evolution not only was represented by them, but hinged on them. To call Harbinger the X-Men of VALIANT has some accuracy to it on the surface even to the point that their arch-nemesis , Magneto, is also an antagonist that has the quality of being reasonable and both deal with a group who may represent the next step in evolution but they are also much like the VALIANT’s Fantastic Four, in that they are our first family and where titles like Solar, Magnus and Rai set the stage and were top shelf stories in their own right and served as our introduction to a new line and world to explore, it was Harbinger that turned visitors and tourist into inhabitants - it was the ground we needed to settle on while we watched stories of far future invasions and when spectators became participants. To this day VALIANT fans may at times visit Gotham or look up at New York City skylines and catch a glimpse of a webslinger, but we do so reading from the comfort of our home, where wonder still stirs - where faith can fly.

Dear me,

This was a love letter.

Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

Deep Inside

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:35:26 -0400

When I received a copy of Polly Frost’s book, Deep Inside, in the mail, there was no note attached. The name and address on the package were unfamiliar to me. So I assumed that I had been randomly sent a book for review by the author or publisher to get the word out, so I was about to place it on the ‘perhaps when I get time’ pile. However, when I saw that the book was a collection of erotic short stories, I then thought ‘Hmm, this might be fun! I’ll take a look-see later this evening.’ By this you might gather that I was intrigued by the idea of a collection of erotic stories. I’ve read many of them online, some are good, some are ok, some are bad but quite a few are really good and I’ve since become a fan of Violet Blue who is now a regular at the San Francisco Chronicle. So I was intrigued enough to place it next in the rotation and open it up that very evening.

The first story was ok. It was a little hokey, a little judgmental, and a little silly – but basically not too bad. It didn’t rock my world but it didn’t bore me either.

The second story was a complete let down. I was so annoyed by the poor wording, vulgarity and bad grammar that I didn’t get past the first several paragraphs.

I then moved on to story number three, hoping that the last one was an anomaly. Nope. Story number three was just as annoying as the second. I thus moved my way through the book, trying to get past the first few paragraphs of each consecutive story. I never succeeded; I reached the end of the book without finishing another story. As I put the book down, I was trying to decide if finding these stories to be vulgar rather than erotic was a failing in me. Was I a prude? I had never thought so. But I thought about it some more, just to be sure – nobody wants to be considered a prude. What was it that was making these stories about as erotic as stepping in dog doo first thing in the morning? After glancing again at some of the tales, I realized that there were several common factors in each (at least in the first few paragraphs in each), and that they reminded me of the glut of reality shows on TV, which made them just tasteless and uninteresting.

What they had in common was this; they were poorly written, with grammar errors and clumsy wording that did not flow as it should, they too quickly attempted to shock the reader with overdone situations, and they used too many words in places the author should have been sparking the reader’s imagination, not leading them by the nose. In this last characteristic, it is quite possible that my opinion differs from that of mainstream eroticism readers. Perhaps with the proliferation of pornography on TV and the internet, the bulk of the audience for a book such as this have become inured to subtlety and need a push start rather than just a turn of a key to bring their imagination engines to life. Even if that is the case, I would still have to say that the stories that make up this collection need to be passed under the eye of at least one editor who isn’t afraid to rework a manuscript until it resembles something that they are proud of. I was terribly disappointed in this book and it actively annoyed me because it looked good on the outside and made me feel as if it had promise. Thus being deceived, I give it a 0 rating.

Veil of Gold

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:12:39 -0400

An old Russian storyteller presents stories that revolve around a magical golden bear in this slow and stilted foray into Russian folklore and history. The premise holds promise, but unbelievable characters and a disjointed narrative suck the life from it from the beginning.
Papa Grigory, who alternately tells the story of a romance between Rosa, a young woman blessed (or cursed) with magical gifts, and Daniel, a writer who is often fearful and lacks direction, and the history of the enchanted golden bear, which brings the unlikely couple back together after an affair carried on before the book opens. Rosa, who lives in St. Petersburg with her uncle, calls upon Daniel when contractors find the bear hidden within the walls of a building her uncle has purchased. It is in a bathhouse, where, it is explained, sorcerers practice magic. Now, I don’t know a great deal about Russian folklore, but this seems a bit strange to me. The bear is dirty but might be valuable, so Daniel, who is educated in Russian history, is pleased when Rosa asks for his help, not only because he is interested in the bear, but because he is still quite interested in her. Apparently their affair ended badly without sufficient explanation from Rosa, who seems to prefer very short and physically motivated relationships for a reason she finally reveals to him at the end of the book.
When Daniel and his work colleague, Em, take the bear out of town for closer inspection by someone more qualified than Daniel, the bear takes them on a journey to Skazki, an alternate world. They both seem to accept this without too much disbelief, which is, well, pretty unbelievable, especially considering that Em is extremely practical and rather fearless. She has a child from a failed marriage who she doesn’t see and in whom she only has a cursory interest, and is referred to by her co-workers as “frozen solid.” The story starts to feel very much like The Wizard of Oz, and eventually Daniel mentions this to Em: “We’re like two rejects from Oz, Em. You don’t have a heart, and I have no courage.”
While Daniel and Em are trapped in this dangerous world, attempting to take the bear to the Snow Witch, who, they are told, will help them back to Mir, their own world, Rosa is frantically trying to learn the magic she needs to enter this other world and save them. In a house in the country where she poses as a tutor for a young boy, the boy’s father trains her, slowly, in the spells she needs to safely cross the veil that separates the worlds and keep herself from danger once she is there. His wife is jealous, his daughter is possessed by love for her dead husband, and his new son in law is lost in the midst of his love for the possessed girl and his physical desire for Rosa.
The only respite from this complicated drama is the interludes regarding the history of the bear and its creation and importance in the maintenance of balance between the two worlds, along with Papa Grigory’s involvement with the whole business. He admits he is not always known by this name, as some call him Koschey the Deathless, others, the mad monk, and yet others, Chyort, or the devil. His emotional investment in the bear and the consequences of its use or misuse (which of course is all a matter of perspective) is very human for a supernatural creature, and the most believable of the feelings described in the book. The other characters are inconsistent in their behavior and speech, and the relationships between them are not well developed. Em, for example, is very focused on her career and clearly used to the finer things in life, but under pressure in Skazki she can bake bread from memory, sew, and fashion shoes from bark and fur. Daniel is mysteriously fearful and fussy about everything and often annoyingly close to tears. Rosa loves Daniel and is prepared to risk her life to save him, but in the meantime, she is attracted to various men and fantasizes about having sex with them. While studying with the wizard-magician on his farm, she rolls around with the son in law in the barn, Daniel quickly forgotten as she initiates sex with this poor young man, who has been deprived of his husbandly rights with his wife because she is possessed by her love for her dead husband. After a playful and explicit romp in the hay, the pair go into the farmhouse and Rosa explains that a spell has been cast to make him impotent in his wife’s bed, and once that is lifted, she asks if he would like to check to make sure it is gone. It is very hard to believe that Rosa adores Daniel as she claims, when it is so easy for her to be intimate with other men.
This was a hard book to finish. Why is Rosa afraid of a serious relationship? What will happen to Papa Grigory and his adopted daughter if the bear is not used as he wills it? Will Em and Daniel make it out of Skazki alive? Will Rosa sleep with every man she meets, and if so, how will she have the time to learn magic spells? Who cares? With lines like this: “She dropped his hand, and sucked the blood off her fingers. It fizzed like sherbet on her tongue,” and characters as flat as Russia’s tax rate, the ending does not come soon enough.

The Shadow Pavilion

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:06:57 -0400

The Shadow Pavilion, the fourth in the Detective Inspector Chan adventures certainly carries through with the promise of an entertaining read. DI Chen, Shanghai Three’s Police Liaison with Heaven and Hell, is after whatever group is illegally bringing in residents of Hell as cheap labor. He has two of the best working on it when they disappear. Seneschal Zhu Irzh is not only a demon but a terrific operative in his own right and was sent in with Badger, who can take care of himself. Now Chen has to find out where they’ve gone and still get to the bottom of the issue. It doesn’t help when he finds out that the newly crowned Celestial Emperor is under an attempted assassination and that a shortcutting scriptwriter has imported a Tiger demon to impersonate a movie star and that she is now on the loose and in a starlet-sized snit.

Liz Williams has created an interestingly enjoyable fantasy/scifi/adventure. This one sort of defies classification as Singapore Three is futuresque but with her addition of the realms of Hell and Heaven and all their dream- and nightmarescape denizens, the tale takes on a mythological bent that makes for fascinating reading. She has begun to flesh out some of the secondary characters more – we get to see from the perspective of Badger, a Hellish family familiar with fierce loyalties to Chen and his wife; we also get a little more perspective from the Celestial Emperor; as well as Chen’s wife Inari. As usual we have some new secondary characters, new demons, foolish humans, and the most successful assassin of all time to keep us amused.

With all due speed Williams draws us into the intrigue, imbuing our imaginations with vivid images full of color and scent that make her stories come alive. With this descriptive skill she lures us in. Then, like the sticky strands of a spider’s web, we get trapped and held by a story that is so full of life we cannot even decide what to call it. Is it futuristic police procedural? Is it an allegorical fairy tale? Near future occult? Perhaps an alternative historical fantasy? Whatever you would like to call it, I’ll just call it something I want more of. Fans of the previous three will not be disappointed.

The Shadow Year

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:31:09 -0400

Almost two years ago when I reviewed Ford’s collection The Empire of Ice Cream for FantasyBookSpot, I noted that Botch Town was my favorite of the bunch. It was something of a mystery story meshed with a coming of age story that had a feel of the “fantastic” about it.

So when I began reading The Shadow Year which is based on that novella, it was evident I was reading a very familiar story, but I didn’t mind because I had enjoyed the original so much. But The Shadow Year isn’t just a re-telling of Botch Town. Ford expands on his original story, makes some major changes to it, adds a significant character, and then continues on to a much more resolute ending.

At the same time that little Charlie has disappeared, a Peeping Tom has been making the rounds in this neighborhood and a stranger trawls the streets in an old white car. All of these occurrences seem likely to be related, and Jim recruits his brother and sister as well as George, the family dog, to gather clues and investigate.

The focus of The Shadow Year is as much on these mysteries as it is on family, and that is where Ford expands on the original story the most. Dad works three jobs and is seldom seen by the kids, Mom is an artist and an alcoholic, Nan and Pop are the grandparents who live in the converted garage, and George, the aforementioned family dog, is protector and scent marker. The youngest child, Mary, is either “really smart or really simple”, Jim is the oldest and in the seventh grade and does a good job of bossing and generally harassing the other kids. The book’s narrator is the middle child, a self-described weakling, but who is never actually named in the entire book (or the original story.)

Ford’s portrayal of this family and its dynamics evokes feelings of compassion and even understanding as he describes here a scene in which you get the feeling this has happened all too often before and will be repeated all too soon:

When George and I got home, the wine bottle sat on the kitchen counter, empty, and my mother was passed out on the couch. There was a cigarette between her fingers with an ash almost as long as the cigarette. Jim went over and got an ashtray that was half a giant clamshell we had found on the beach the previous summer, and Mary and I watched as he positioned it under the ash. He gave my mother’s wrist the slightest tap, and the gray tube dropped perfectly whole in the shell.

I wedged a pillow under her head as Jim took her by the shoulders and settled her more comfortably on the couch. Mary fetched the Sherlock Holmes. Jim opened it to The Hound of the Baskervilles, the story that obsessed her, and gently placed the volume binding up, its wings open like those of a giant moth, on her chest.

There is a lot going on in The Shadow Year, and Ford moves the story effortlessly through such accounts of family life to the disquieting effects of the prowler’s appearances in folks’ backyards and a stranger in a white car (also the prowler?) whose presence is somehow sinister and alarming.

But things are kept in balance with humor as we see the grandmother through the eyes of the young unnamed narrator:

Nan had gray wire-hair like George’s, big bifocals, and a brown mole on her temple that looked like a squashed raisin. Her small stature, dark and wrinkled complexion, and the silken black strands at the corners of her upper lip made her seem to me at times like some ancient monkey king. When she’d fart while standing, she’d kick her left leg up in the back and say “Shoot him in the pants. The coat and vest are mine.”

And as when Jim gives Mary some Halloween advice:

“You don’t eat anything that’s not wrapped, except for Mr. Barzita’s figs. Some people drop an apple in your bag. You can’t eat it, but you can throw it at someone, so that’s okay. Once in a while, someone will bake stuff to give out. Don’t eat it--you don’t know what they put in it. It could be the best-looking cupcake you ever saw, with chocolate icing and a candy corn on top, but who knows, they might have crapped in the batter. I’ve seen where people will throw a penny in your sack. Hey, a penny’s a penny.”

By the end of The Shadow Year, the mysteries are solved, and if there is any flaw to be found in this book, that may be the one: the neatness of its conclusion. Nonetheless, Jeffrey Ford has written a captivating novel of a year in the life of a young boy. The characters have that feeling of authenticity that makes them instantly recognizable, and the story has that feeling of nostalgia without any of the sugary sentimentality.

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.

Wicked Game

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:22:01 -0400

Jeri Smith-Ready’s Wicked Game is a fun little vampire yarn with some interesting new twists. While some of those new twists bring on new thoughts that I might prefer never to have come up, others may enjoy them for what they are. Wicked Game tells the story of a small town radio station manned by vampires stuck in their respective ‘birth years’ and thus the experts on each era’s music. While they have a cozy gig at the station with an understanding boss and onsite apartments designed to protect them, their future with the station is on shaky ground with they find out it could be sold to a huge radio conglomerate famous for homogenizing their stations.

Ciara Griffin is a small time con artist looking to go legitimate with a regular job. When she hears about an internship at the local radio station, she’s all for it. But she isn’t yet aware that the famous DJs are actually vampires and that her internship might be a little more exciting than she expected. Getting through the interview, while horribly dreaded and sweated through, winds up being the easiest part of the job. Ciara soon learns that WMMP’s revenues must go up by a large percent in a short period of time in order to keep the radio station going as it is. Her resulting mad dash to increase revenues creates some wonderful publicity, a load of new listeners and a media storm that causes more problems than it solves.

This book is definitely a fun and interesting twist on the urban vampire tale that has become so popular these days. Expect adult situations, blood, death and a healthy seasoning of cheesy puns for a light stew fit for an enjoyable evening spent on the couch at leisure.

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.