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

I will freely admit I only picked up Sanderson's works to see who was the man that would finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I had noticed his books before but they didn't appeal to me enough to buy one. When I did read his first novel Elantris a while ago I found I don't quite agree with Justin's opinion of the novel. Elantris was entertaining but certainly didn't break any new ground. The writing showed some flaws as well. After reading it I though Sanderson would have to raise the level to please Jordan's readers. I must admit that Sanderson had made some progress since Elantris. Mistborn does not, as Tor, claims turn the genre upside down, but it is a good read none the less. I promise to shut up about Jordan from this point on. It would not be fair to Sanderson to look at this book only in the light of how good a job he will do finishing A Memory of Light. Even if that is what made me pick Mistborn: The Final Empire up in the first place.

Mistborn is set in a world that has been ruled for the last thousand years by a despotic god-like creature known as the Lord Ruler. He has gained power and founded the Final Empire in an event known as the Ascension, a final confrontation between good and evil with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. This event has since faded to legend but it is quite clear the good guys didn't win. The world is a dark place, the ash veiled sun barely gives enough light to sustain a the perpetually brown-leafed vegetation. At night a mist envelopes the world and the creatures that roam through it are said to be ruthless killers. Most of the population is enslaved and works at the edge of starvation to sustain a small group of nobles, who in turn are suffered by the Lord Rules as long as they provide him with enough taxes and services. This small elite keeps in power mostly though the use of allomancy, the magic of the Mistborns. By burning certain metals they enhance certain physical attributes, making them more dangerous and more powerful than ordinary people. Not that displays of power have been necessary lately. Dissidents and rebels have long since been slaughtered, there is but one religion left, the worship of the Lord Ruler. Life is cheap under the Lord Ruler's tyranny. The world is not a nice place to live in.

Not quite everybody is willing to accept the way of the world though. Kelsier is a man with a dark past, a man who has lost at the hands of the Lord Ruler. His wife, his freedom and almost his life. Yet an act of love and self-sacrifice has changed his outlook on life. He has done the impossible and escaped from the pit he was supposed to die in. Kelsier refused to let hope die. Several years on he is using his considerable allomantic powers to help a fledgling rebellion achieve a position from which they can strike at the Lord Ruler. The task is complicated, the risk enormous but Kelsier beliefs it can be done. A belief strengthened by him finding Vin. A young girl destined for a life of poverty among the capital's thieves and beggars. Without knowing what she is doing she has discovered her allomantic powers and uses them to help her gang or thieves be more successful. Unfortunately that talent draws unwanted attention. Before the authorities can get their hands on Vin though Kelsier snatches her away from her miserable life and trains her. Without realizing it, Vin turns into an essential part of their operation, the element that may be decisive in their attempt to overthrow the Lord Ruler's Regime.

Like in Elantris Sanderson introduces a fairly rigid system of magic. It has clear rules but parts of it seem to be missing. I enjoyed this aspect of the novel quite a lot but you do have to remember to forget your chemistry lessons as soon as you open the book. If not you'll probably end up in the following train of thought. The power of an allomancer depends on "burning" small bits of various metals they have ingested. Some of the metals they ingest are toxic, certainly in large quantities over longer periods of time. Allomancers don't suffer ill effect though, if they burn off the excess metal in their stomach. This seems like a violation of the law of conversation of mass to me, unless you apply special relativity. Maybe they have invented cold fission ;) He also doesn't explain why allomancers are not chronically anaemic. And, since I have put suspension of disbelieve overboard altogether in this paragraph, why use a non existing metal? The periodic table is full of them, it doesn't seem necessary. I have been reading too much hard SF lately I guess but as you can see there is something to be said for keeping your magical systems deliberately vague. Much easier to suspend disbelief that way. Without getting any further into the mechanics of this magic, the rules he sets up are clear and consistently used throughout the book. Magic does not provide a deus ex machina ending in this book.

I thought Sanderson's characterization has improved a bit too compared to Elantris. Vin in particular is a well rounded character. She is obviously talented, but also inexperienced and naive at the right moment. Sanderson walks a fine line with her but he manages to keep her from appearing to be superhuman. Her childhood was far from pleasant and she shows scars that only slowly fade. Certainly a fitting heroine for this story. What the book misses is a point of view of one of the villains though. We get to see the entire story from the point of view of those who try to overthrow the empire, the motivation of the bad guys themselves remains unclear. Although at the end it becomes obvious that this is something Sanderson will deal with in the remaining two books in this trilogy. In a way it is a shame he didn't incorporate some of it in this book, it is what keeps Mistborn: The Final Empire from being a good stand alone fantasy. Then again, that was not what Sanderson was aiming for.

As I mentioned before Tor presents this as a fantasy novel that turns the genre upside down. That's nonsense. Evil empires fall left and right in modern fantasy so presumably they must rise at some point as well. This first Mistborn novel is not a ground breaking fantasy, it will not change the genre or draw in lots of new readers. For those comfortably with the genre and looking for a good fantasy novel this book would not be a bad choice though. It is not particularly challenging but certainly well written and Sanderson leaves a number of interesting questions unanswered for the next book in the series. This, combined with the fact that Sanderson delivers a better book than his début novel made me decide to read the next one as well. Mistborn: the Final Empire is a good start to what promises to be a solid fantasy trilogy. I will be reviewing Mistborn: the Well of Ascension next month.

P.S.

Sanderson is one of the authors who have fully embraced the internet. For those who are interested in more background material on this novel he provides chapter by chapter annotations on his website. Personally I wouldn't recommend getting into those before reading the novel but the author does very carefully avoid spoilers to future chapters.

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:

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:




And as when Jim gives Mary some Halloween advice:




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.

This is not a children’s story. Marketed as a companion piece to HDM, this short piece is rife with sophisticated themes and adult language, along with an elegant sarcasm that operates well from an adult perspective. No prior experience with the author’s famed series is necessary to enjoy this stand-alone tale of an accidental aeronaut and an outlaw talking bear. Readers familiar with the relationship between Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison will be engaged by this explanation of their first adventure together, and those without such a background will be intrigued enough to read future developments surrounding the pair.
When Scoresby finds himself a stranger in a city on the verge of a hostile political and business takeover, he stumbles headfirst into conflict, with the armored bear at his side. Scoresby has a habit of chasing trouble, if one considers the snappy remarks of his rabbit daemon, Hester, who consistently harasses him in good humor. His concern with honor, which he denies – “I don’t think too much about honor” – seems the primary motivation for these conflicts. He finds himself drawn to others with this interest, including Miss Victoria Lund, a librarian and fellow boarder. When Lund surprises him by asking his advice about a difficult personal situation, he quickly deduces the heart of the matter.
“This is about honor, ain’t it.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Hard thing to get right.”
His consideration of the upset young lady is unexpectedly rewarded at the end of the story, as is his commitment to leave the townsfolk in a better position than he found them. He expects no return on this investment, but the appreciation of certain citizens leads to assistance in his safe escape.
The author clearly holds a distaste for big business and uses the story to promote this message, but his platform does not take center stage from the fast paced adventure and valuable friendship born within these pages. Neither do the charming engravings by John Lawrence, which echo his work in Lyra’s Oxford. What does detract is the unfortunate miscellanea from Scoresby’s volume on aerial navigation; a bill of lading as described in the story; instructions to ‘Peril of the Pole,’ a board game included in a pocket inside the back cover that is “too exciting for children under 5 years of age;" a leaf from a shipping world yearbook with a description of the town, Novy Odense; a newspaper article regarding the final events in the story; two letters from Lyra regarding her dissertation; and the certificate for her dissertation, which is a study of trade pattern development with an emphasis on independent cargo balloon carriage. These, like the intrusive materials in Lyra’s Oxford, are annoying. Readers of HDM will make the obvious connection between Lyra’s work and Scoresby’s activities, but like Lyra and the Birds, the story stands better on its own.
The audio adaptation proves a two hour and 17 minute mess of the author’s narration, which is often too fast, and various actors who unintentionally make a mockery of this sharp story. “Overdramatic” does not quite cover the lengths to which the accents and emotions are carried. Unlike Lyra’s Oxford, which employs several actors but remains primarily in the talented hands of Jo Wyatt, this version falls short of the written word.

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.

I was a Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi "virgin", as I had never read any of their books before.  I was going into THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES  Blu Ray movie tabula rasa.  This can be a good thing, as there are no expectations, and a bad thing as I have no real background as the viewer.

All the actors did a good job with all the blue screen work they had to do, while interacting with the fantasy creatures created by powerful computers.  They also portrayed a regular family with brothers/sister interaction very well.  I particularly liked Sarah Bolger playing the character of Mallory Grace and how she deals with her younger brothers.  Everyone that has an older sister can relate here.

From the voice acting standpoint, the CGI characters came to life.  Hogsqueal, who at first I thought was too simple for the story, came around a bit in the end.  The humor of the character does lend itself to some entertaining moments throughout the film.  Mulgarath , the ogre, was the main villain in the story, but at the end of the day while he seemed so very evil, it did not feel like the character had been built up enough that I felt he had the chance to take over the world. 

This is really where the issues come into play.  The movie felt very rushed, and I am sure it had to be due to the fact it was covering 5 books in the span of a single movie even if the books were not huge volumes.  We are rushed in without too much background and this causes our investment in the characters to be rather small, leading to a low level of concerns for their fate.  The story should have been paced over two movies to give the character time to develop on the screen, which I can only assume they did in the book, or there should have been a warning that reads, “read books first for true background before watching”. 

The strongest part of the movie stems from the special effects, which are pretty darn special.  Mulgarath, the Troll in the tunnels and the goblins themselves are extremely well done and mesh with the environment seamlessly.  The battle scenes draw you in and bring what you only thought you could render in your imagination on the screen.  These are the scenes that up the excitement factor for the movie and make us sit up and take notice.  Mulgarath, with his morphing from one character to the next is truly a marvel of special effects.

The two things from the Blu Ray Extras that stood out (don’t know if they are also on the DVD) were the making of the fantastical creatures in the ILM computer labs as well as the interviews with Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi.  There are other interviews with the rest of the actors and then some deleted scenes as well, what one has come to expect from the extras section.

Overall, a rather rushed effort that is really too scary to lend itself to a young child’s viewing.  Maybe being a well versed fantasy reader had an effect on my review, or maybe reading the books may be necessary to fully enjoy it.  The special effects save this movie for a lower score from this reviewer, and everyone should see them in glorious High Definition at some point.

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs         

Here I go again on my own…(Whitesnake 1987).  Just seems an appropriate way to start out our review of the new Futurama episodes packed into a DVD for a movie length feature.  This will eventually air on Comedy Central Network as a bunch of 30 minute episodes, and we can only hope that it will get picked up for some direct to TV shows as well.  If you are unfamiliar with Futurama, it is a Matt Groening creation of a man (Fry) who is frozen in 1999 and thawed out in the 31st century.  Futurama gives all the people that lived through the 1980s nice Easter Eggs of funny things to watch for when Fry deals with the many situations at hand.

Review of the movie storylines

I am going to pick up some of the story lines and sub story lines and comment on them without hopefully spoiling anything for the viewers.  We start a bit after the last movie (see the continuity) and there is a big ‘ole tear in the universe.

One of the first storylines we get is of Colleen and Fry, who are dating (we can see a whole dating theme throughout the movie).  Unbeknownst to Fry though, the future must look upon polygamy in a different light as Colleen has boyfriends from all corners of the world as well as walks of life.  Fry is really digging her (what happened to him and Leela) and tries to make it work, but Fry cannot take the sharing of his girlfriend for that long.  This lends itself to some humorous moments but it is really only a setup for the central plot of the movie with the big ball of tentacle loving that Yivo puts on the planet.

Sprinkled in the storylines we have a neat little one about Bender and his fascination of what he originally believes to be an imaginary League of Robots from his robot youth.  Nice spoof concept here as well as being a necessity for Bender’s climactic act at the end of the movie.  It is a great setup, even if it is originally a solid storyline from the get go. Hang on ‘cause it makes the movie in my opinion.

Professor Farnsworth and Doctor Wernstrom, as always, get to competing with each other on who gets to  encase the world in their version of some clear crystalline structure.  Having a nemesis is awesome, and the back and forth between both of the characters works as usual.  A nice cameo voice from Stephen Hawking flesh this part of the movie out as well.

Ok, so back onto the central concept of the movie, which can be summed up as “dating”.  The previously mentioned big ball (think planet or so sized) of tentacles comes to earth and wants to spread his love to the people of Earth by sticking his tentacles into their necks.  Fry, who was the first to meet Yivo, soon becomes Pope of the tentacle shenanigans with most everyone on Earth being ass-imilated (intended).   But as Leela escapes she comes to find out the tentacles are genitals or genticles and everyone now feels disgusted.  So is that it?  No, Yivo feels bad that he/she pretty much raped the inhabitants of Earth and now wants to go on a date with the people of Earth.  Some funny dialogue ensues with some answering machine messages and the Head of President Nixon pulling out some quips from behind his ear.

The inhabitants of Earth figure they will go back to Yivo’s Universe and what they come to find out is that it is a pretty good approximation of Heaven and everything is pretty satisfied. 

This is Futurama though and here comes Bender being Bender.  While everyone is loving the Yivo life, Bender brings his robot army he got from the robot devil which he used to take over the League of Robots and “rescues” all the humans from Yivo.  Bender is a friend to a fault and I love that about the character.  His trying to save them actually ends up taking them away from the perfect life, and to Bender it is all in a days work.  This is by far the climax of the movie and stays true to character.

There is one storyline in the movie that really for me was the reason I knocked it down a few notches,  and that is that Kif Kroker asks Amy to be his Fon-Fon Rue and have the ceremony on his home planet to make the union.  I never really like the Kif character and his role to begin with, but this just seemed forced and out of place.  Then to top it all off *spoiler* we have the Kif resurrection at the hands of Yivo. Come on, I for one would have been pleased to see him go.  The Amy and Zapp sex may have some future implications going forward and that I do enjoy.  Switch out this story line and come up with something else and this is then in the top notch halls of Futurama.

 

Extras

Let us not forget the extras of this DVD because they are pretty solid.  I am not a huge fan of extras, and had this not been for a review I probably would have skipped them.  I would have been a darn fool to do so though.  We have the norm, with some commentary by Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West, John DiMaggio, Maurice LaMarche, Michael Rowe, Claudia Katz, Peter Avanzino and Lee Supercinski.

Futurama The Lost Adventure, which are the cut scenes from a long lost video game.  The commentary on the top of the computer scenes are really funny as well. There are two audio tracks, one with the creative people commenting and then the actually audio for the cut scene episodes. It is almost worth watching twice, one for each audio track.  The characters are cell shaded 3-d models and it looks pretty good actually, the robots may even look up to par with the cartoon.  The scenes all together add up to an extra long episode of Futurama.  The Professor’s project the Re-animator is pretty funny, and seeing Devastator in his cameo (hey as well as Zoidberg) was also nice.  So this extra is actually more than an extra but really like a second episode.

Also in the bonus features is a story board of the movie, which is neat to see how things are laid out and pitched.  There is also a section that has some bloopers while the actors are doing their audio voiceovers.  Meet Yivo allows us some insight into the voice actor (David Cross) who does Yivo.  It is always really cool to see the real actors doing the voices of cartoon characters, even though it can be weird at the same time.  The Deleted Scenes are always a nice touch, even if some of them never made it past the story board phase.  Geek feature where the 3d animators show us how their job works worked for me as well, it always interesting to see how these things are done.  The Deathball background was one of the weaker parts of the extras as I really was not fond of that portion of the movie anyway.  And now on to the second best extra.  A preview of the next movie, which is a Dungeon and Dragons spoof called Benders Holiday, which we should be able to check out Holiday 2008 (Christian and Jewish Holiday I would assume if anyone is keeping track).   Obviously with our fantasy reading background this is on the super hype meter for me.

 

Summary and waiting for next one

The thing I enjoy most about the Futurama characters is the consistency of their actions as well as the overall tidbits that get carried over from one episode to the next;  why hasn’t any company made a Slurm drink yet?  TBWABB seems like it might have had too much closure on the story, which at this point we cannot tell if it is a good thing or not.  A Beast with a Billion Backs may not be the best episode(s) of Futurama that has ever been produced by Matt Groening, but being very cliché here, a good episode of Futurama is still better then a great episode of most other comedy television.  We had one storyline bomb in the Amy/Kif one, and we had a little bit of a lull in the latter parts of the DVD, but Bender saving them all really upped the ante.  Even though the scene was at the end and didn’t seem like a huge thing, from the Futurama standpoint and the character of Bender it was just brilliant.

Futurama is my favorite cartoon sitcom, passing the Simpsons, King of the Hill, American Dad, and Family Guy (which I feel has gone too far in some of its humor).  Bring this show back into the regular rotation with a regular season Fox, it is missed.  I haven’t watched the Simpsons in ages, but I have re-watched every Futurama at least 10 times and it still is on my DVRs schedule.

Since I got to watch this one early it means an even longer time before I get to watch the third part, as Bender would say “Well I’m boned”.

 

Coming from a different direction, Peter David explores the Peter Pan legend through the eyes of Paul, a young man whose family has experienced a terrible loss. Paul's baby sister dies in her crib one night. His family deals with this tragedy in different ways. Paul's mother retreats into reality, declaring that only the recognition of the pain of life will make one strong enough to survive. Paul's father simply retreats, leaving his family and the woman who used to be his wife but is now a stranger. Paul relies on what he believes - that his friend, the Boy of Legend, and the magic that surrounds the Boy can somehow replace his sister with another baby. After rescuing a pixie, Paul finds himself led into Anyplace and embroiled in a power struggle between the pirates and the Boy. Thus begins an adventure for Paul that will cause him to question his beliefs and face the most difficult pain of all - saying goodbye.

His quest is not all rainbows and roses. Peter David, the author, weaves the thread of loss and loneliness heavily throughout the story. While some might believe the subject matter of sadness and rejection are too much for younger readers, I disagree. What child has never experienced some type of loss? This is an excellent example of how one little boy deals with the pain he is feeling.

Mr. David writes in a lyrical prose that is a work of art. Unfortunately, the structure and cadence of the writing serves to separate the reader from the story, keeping the reader from participating in the fantasy, experiencing the wonder alongside Paul. Instead, a gulf has been formed, maintaining a strict formality of here is the story and over there stands the reader. For readers who enjoy submerging themselves into a book's reality, this will be a disappointment.

In spite of this, or maybe because of it, I enjoyed this story. The formality and separation served to give the book an old-fashioned feel, as if this was a dusty favorite resurrected from the nursery. The style of the book gives it a sense of being made to read out loud. The cadence lends itself to auditory emphasis and perhaps would be more entertaining to children to listen to the story rather than read it themselves. Peter David goes behind the scenes of NeverNever Land, giving bones and structure to a legend that has spanned generations. He brings in many well-known characters from Peter Pan, giving them fresh faces and different reasons for existing. The new characters are blended seamlessly in with the previous legends, causing Tigerheart to be able to stand on its own.

This is a deep story that would bear well under the scrutiny of a literature class. The nuances of the storyline, though delicate, are clear. Here is a young man struggling to understand the abandonment by his mother, the painful escape of his father, and the harshness reality can bring to life. Mr. David ties up all his loose ends in the end, delivering a whimsical tale that harkens back to the elegance of turn-of-the- century literature.

Deepsix is the second novel in Jack McDevitt’s “Academy” series, which can be described as mostly-hard science fiction with a few exceptions like faster-than-light travel included out of narrative necessity. However, while it has the same main character as the first Academy book, The Engines of God, it is a fully self-contained story and can easily be read by someone who has not read its predecessor.

In the 23rd century, the Academy of Science and Technology and its fleet of superluminal ships is tasked with exploring the reaches of space and pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge. When a rogue gas giant adrift in deep space for half a billion years enters the Maleiva system, a scientific team is sent to watch. The rogue giant is on a near-collision course with the third planet of the Maleiva system, dubbed Deepsix, providing a rare opportunity- the chance to observe as a planet is ripped apart by gravity. Teams of scientists and an interstellar liner full of tourists gather in the Maleiva system to observe.

Deepsix is a rare life-bearing world, but has seen little exploration of its surface since the first human expedition to the planet ended with most of the survey team dying at the hands of local wildlife. But when the orbiting scientific team studying the planet in preparation for its destruction spots something that appears to be an artificial structure, rendered almost invisible beneath the ice and snow of an ice age that has frozen most of the planet for thousands of years. In desperation, Academy pilot Priscilla Hutchins is sent to the surface with a scientific team, including the leader of the ill-fated first expedition, Randall Nightingale, with the hope of learning as much as possible before Deepsix is destroyed. They are joined by a second shuttle bringing renowned journalist, essayist, and curmudgeon Gregory McAllister, who managed to talk the captain of the tourist liner into letting him go down.

The exploration of the ruins on the planet has barely begun when disaster strikes. As Deepsix strains under the growing stress of the rogue gas giant’s gravity, a violent earthquake shakes the area and wrecks both shuttles, leaving everyone stranded on the surface. Now, trapped among the ruins of a dead civilization, they must struggle to survive on a hostile, dying world while the Academy personnel in orbit desperately try to figure out a way to evacuate them before the planet is ripped apart.

Deepsix is a great combination of survival thriller, tale of discovery, and traditional hard science fiction problem-solving story. The two narrative threads- Hutchinson and company trying to survive on Deepsix, learning about the fate of its civilization as they do so, while their allies in orbit struggle with the engineering problem of a rescue- provide a great combination of both intellectual stimulation and adventure.

As is often the case in his work, McDevitt does not reveal all of Deepsix’s secrets to either the characters or the reader, with new questions arising as old ones are answered, and by the end the reader is left with as many mysteries as at the beginning. However, this didn’t leave me feeling frustrated; rather, instead McDevitt is very skilled at both satisfying and tantalizing the reader at the same time. Perhaps somewhat ironically for a story that simultaneously incorporates a lost alien civilization, bizarre and deadly wildlife, a struggle to survive in the wilderness, scientists in a race against time to mount a last-minute rescue mission, and the violent annihilation of an entire planet, McDevitt takes a “less is more” approach to the central question of Deepsix’s lost civilization. He is very effective at creating a fascinating picture by giving a bit of information here and a bit there, never filling in all the details but giving enough to stimulate the imagination and create a feeling of wonder and mystery.

The characters are not examined in extreme depth, but McDevitt is good at slipping in just the right amount of detail to make them interesting individuals. I especially liked the figure of writer Gregory McAllister, who is a type of character I’d like to see more of in fiction- a believably unpleasant person who is not a villain.

McAllister is bitter, unkind, and misogynistic. He’s doesn’t have a secret heart of gold beneath his harsh exterior and he doesn’t learn some dramatic lesson about the value of niceness. At the same time, he’s not amoral or relentlessly nasty or mean for the sake of being mean. He’s a jerk, but he’s not a caricature of a jerk.

McDevitt grounds his events in a background that also shows his skillful use of small details. In addition to references to human technology and the state of affairs back on Earth in the early 23rd century, McDevitt effectively creates a setting that is both full of wonders and yet believably mundane. Rather than any mythological or historical name, the Maleiva solar system is named after the daughter of a Senator who voted to approve Academy funding. In the midst of a desperate do-or-die effort to get the survivors off the doomed planet before it is ripped apart, characters worry about things like lawsuits over the people who have died or the public uproar that will result if Earth’s premiere man of letters is killed- mundane but all-too-believable details. McDevitt carefully mixes these down-to-Earth elements in with more exciting ones, giving a sense of a world that is full of exciting events and yet still a place where everyday people live and go about their lives.

The more cataclysmic aspects of the premise are well-exploited too, with a growing sense of apocalyptic dread as Deepsix’s crust bucks and heaves under the growing tectonic stress, the weather is driven into chaos, and the approaching gas giant looms ever-larger larger in the sky. McDevitt does a great job of conveying the doom of an entire planet.

I would strongly recommend Jack McDevitt’s Deepsix to any fan of science fiction. If you want a book that successfully brings together adventure, discovery, hard science, and interesting characters, Deepsix is definitely a winner.

"Darkling" is the third book in the Otherworld Series by Yasmine Galenorn. While this book is in the middle of the series, it's possible to pick up this volume and start reading without feeling too lost. The recaps are brief but relevant and they're incorported into the story well so it doesn't interrupt the flow of the plot at all.

Readers are immediately introdcued to Menolly D'Artigo, a no-nonsence tough bar-owning member of the former Otherworld Intelligence Agency, otherwise known as the OIA. The OIA is defunct, since the administration collapsed, but some of its members remain active in order to keep humans safe from nasty supernatural creatures taht would try to kill them. Menolly is also a vampire. She has two sisters, one who's a shapeshifter and one who's a witch, who not only live with her but also act as OIA agents. When a renegade vampire starts making more of its kind, the D'Artigo sisters are called in to put an end to the nest and its sire. They recieve help from sources that are trusted and others that are dubious at best.

The book is a hodgepodge of mystery, urban fantasy, thriller, and romance with a cast that's highly attractive and a style that is fast-paced and entertaining. The strong female characters are nice to have in the book, though they're balanced out with plenty of men to help them. This book feels a little like it wants to be paranormal chick lit but can't quite bring itself to go there.

It isn't entirely light and frothy, there are some fairly graphic scenes of torture as well as some explicit gore. The D'Artigo sisters are hardly perfect though sometimes the exibition of those flaws seems like it really ought to have gotten them killed at least twice in this book alone.
It was a fun book to read. I certainly found myself looking forward to reading it and will probably seek out the previous two volumes as well as the subsequent ones in the series. There are friends that I would certainly recommend it to, especially those that like vampires and angst, though I would want to be sure I considered the age-appropriateness for some of them.

The Galactic Star Force Battle Fleet is a cobbled together remnant of human society that is trapped in a system filled with hostile aliens. Some of the humans are kept as a foodstuff by one alien race, while the group that managed to escape and desperately wanted to free them is being maniacally attacked by another alien race that simply wants to see humans completely oblitereated.

The author obviously knows a great deal about fighting techniques and strategy. It's obvious in each battle scene that this is a guy who knows exactly what he's plotting. Most of the time, it's easy for the reader to get a very clear idea of exactly what is happening with both the enemy and the heroes. The battle scenes did flat-out work in terms of consistency and strategy. There were nearly transparent rules that were followed strictly for tactical abilities with both groups as well as equipment performance. The physics in this book neither get ignored nor do they disappear conveniently.
There are also some very helpful definitions and specifications at the front of the book, especially if the reader is starting the series with the second volume.

However, this book suffered greatly from an overabundance of repitition. Everything that happens is explained at least twice and it's usually from the same perspective. If the reader missed something important in the plot the first time, they have no need to fear, they'll get a chance for a recap in the not-too distant future.

The author's martial arts discipline also left a stamp all over this book. That isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but in this one, the stamp was at least page-sized and the letters were bright red. His heroes were very strictly honor and duty-bound to the point that there isn't even the flicker of doubt that they will always do the right thing and they will always do their absolute best to save their fallen comrades. The solidarity and hope that the humans show in this book is a beautiful dream, but the problem is that humans tend to get more complex than that. People have doubts, lose their convictions, or get scared on a regular basis and those things often get in the way of the principals that just about everyone wishes they could live by.

As for the aliens, well, both races are terrible, evil creatures. The aliens are impulsive and ruled by their greed and pride, which is what tends to get them into trouble when battles against humans are concerned. Sometimes, the aliens are so completely stupid that it's laughable. Certainly, everyone makes dumb mistakes now and then, but it's hard to believe that an alien race with such a glaringly obvious species-wide character flaw would become a conquering force of any sort of threat level.

The world of this book is very sharply delineated. Those who live by honor and adhere to duty, common sense, and careful plans of action are bound to succeed, whereas those who heed their impulses and their individual pride are doomed to fail. The bad guys are very, very bad and the good guys are very, very good.

So where does that leave this book? On a pure science fiction level, it tends to dissolve into specifications, statistics, and jargon and the story is set up and knocked down so succinctly that there's nothing to get really excited about. However, if applied as a sort of philisophical allegory, it might work as a very nice thought experiment for a class. The book holds little margin for error or misinterpretation within its pages and so could be used to help illustrate differences in Eastern and Western thought as well as helping to get people thinking about what it would actually take to get people to stop fighting amongst each other for silly, petty reasons. The book is certainly a call for peace and for that, it's very difficult to fault the author. He's just trying to show a better humanity striving its way towards a utopian existence.

Some mention should be made for the diagrams and illustrations in the book. They're very well-done pencil sketches by artist Dion Hammil and while it might have been nice to see them as full pages in the book the fact that they were included was a very nice bonus.

This book is one that I would recommend to a middle-school or junior high-school aged boy, especially one who hasn't got a great deal of time for reading. The repetitiveness of the book would serve him well if he has to put the book down for a length of time before he gets a chance to read it again. It could be the kind of book that would get boys to read more, especially if they prefer to have far more action sequences in their entertainment and it offers enough in the way of ethical and moral questions that it could probably get him thinking beyond the confines of this fictional world.

This novel is part of the larger Battletech series, though it's not necessary to have played the game to appreciate the book. In fact, this book worked quite well as a stand-alone novel. There was just enough background information mixed in with the text to be helpful without bringing the story to a screeching halt.

A federation of planets known as the Free Worlds League has collapsed under the internal squabbling of its ruling family, the Meriks. Each branch of the family, often denoted by a hyphenated surname, controls a loose alliance of planets. Their fighting escalates to intergalactic scales through the use of the armies of their commonwealths. All of which sounds fairly standard for the average military science fiction novel. Fortunately, this novel does see its way into some more exciting and interesting territory.

Firstly, there aren't any aliens causing problems in this story and there hasn't been a large scale unification of the human race in an attempt to combat a hostile enemy. This is human nature as currently viewed on Earth taken onto an intergalactic scale. In this book, people are people and some fundamental truths about them simply do not change. The people in power are both rich and priviliged. In some cases, those ruling a particular alliance haven't got the slightest clue about what the average citizen in their charge goes through. There are also differing schools of religious thought as well as a death cult involved.

Secondly, this book is just as much a political science fiction novel as it is a military one. There are strategic placements of Merik family members within various factions in order to gain information and power. Some of these mechinations involve covert operations, while others involve overt schemes. There is certainly some very well thought out groundwork involved in this plot and while some of the later developments are hardly a surprise it's still very satisfying to see how the story fits together as the book winds to a close.

One thing that I found very enjoyable was that this book contained very strong female characters. The women are powerful and intelligent and even, in some cases, a little bit threatening but they're still well-constructed believable characters. They're women that chew the scenery rather than create or become part of it. There is a good balance with the male characters. There is no expense of characterization to accomodate either sex.

The novel is fast-paced and is rather like watching a good action movie. If there are parts that don't quite make perfect sense it won't disrupt or derail the rest of the book. In most cases, things are clarified later on. In a very few isolated cases, things were at least resolved even if they weren't really explained. However, pacing is also where the novel does get tripped-up a lot. Towards the end, there are some fairly large, important chunks of information that just simply get glossed over. As a reader, I felt dissatisfied because, while I may not know much about setting up a government, I know enough to know that what I got there at the end was a completely sweetened condensed version of "well, that's kind of boring and I'm ready to write this part now." To be honest, by that point, I'd really started to care about how the actual politics were going to play out and I couldn't help feeling that skipping over them that way, with only a few relevant teaspoonfuls of information, completely robbed me of the statisfying conclusion I really wanted. I wanted to know how the triumph of this colossal undertaking actually happened instead of getting a tidy little epilogue at the end. It almost seemed like the book had been edited for time which, of course, completely defeats the purpose of taking the time to read the book.

Aside from that hop, skip, and jump to the end, it was a good book. The interjections of battle scenes amidst the political maneuvers kept interest up by making sure that the book didn't get too monotonous at any juncture. The characters were interesting, the dialog was nicely written, and overall, it was a book that I was happy to read.

I'd recommend this book to people who aren't sure if they'd really like a military science fiction book. There are enough other things going on that it doesn't get bogged down in incomprehensible jargon or graphic violence and there is a complexity to it that ought to keep most readers happily stimulated.

“Set the Seas on Fire” by Chris Roberson is a naval adventure set aboard the HMS Fortitude in 1808, with The Napoleanic Wars as a backdrop. Right on the front cover though, almost as if to assure that this is not another “Master & Commander”, Revolution SF states “Horatio Hornblower meets H.P. Lovecraft”.

That statement kind of threw down the gauntlet for me. It said, “No matter what you read along the way, how the story progresses, or how you think you’re going to categorize the story along the way, just wait.”

So I read. And waited. The story followed through the trials and tribulations of the HMS Fortitude in a vivid, well-written way. I felt like I was immersed in the history of that era. It didn’t feel like the story was just trying to be historical in a way to serve as a flimsy backdrop to “get to the real point of the story”. Roberson seems to have done his research and could bring that era to life. But still there was that statement. “Horatio Hornblower meets H.P. Lovecraft”. Somewhere in there, there would be a twist. The reader was warned, so don’t think you’re reading a sailing adventure and then say “What the hell?” when…whatever…happens. It may not make sense, it may shake things up, but it’s coming, be warned, because the disclaimer is right there.

Hieronymus Bonaventure, the first lieutenant and first officer, is the main character of the story. We learn more about him from chapters from his childhood where he learns swordfighting from his mysterious mentor, Giles Dulac. The book starts in flashback, as Bonaventure seems to be destined for greatness. Now as an adult as the first officer of a British Navel vessel he seems to have not underachieved to date. We learn that not only does he have an adventurer’s heart but he also seems to have gained wisdom along the way, so he doesn’t plow ahead with reckless abandon.

I really thought Bonaventure was depicted well. I enjoyed the character very much and I thought that character information was doled out in just the right fashion.

In the midst of a navel engagement that is possibly ill advised, the Fortitude is pushed by a strong storm out into the unexplored South Pacific. It becomes apparent that the captain of the vessel allows personal glory or perhaps greed to color his decision making in ways that are not in the best interests of his ship. The captain has the final decision making power but it is Lieutenant Bonaventure who has the respect and personal admiration of the crew. I was expecting mutiny, and Bonaventure to single handedly save the ship in a larger than life fashion befitting the greatness that the character seems to be destined for.

I was very pleased to see this not happen. Bonaventure had his adventure, but he nobly stuck to his duty as a British Officer, followed his orders, and supported his captain, presumably until such a time when the best interests of the ship and crew no longer warrant such support. There was no rush in the story to turn Hieronymus into a super-character all in one book. Thus Roberson takes a likeable and interesting character and leaves him plenty of room to grow, presumably in more books. In my opinion, the fast way to make an interesting character uninteresting is to make him too interesting. Having a lifetime’s worth of epic adventure within one book, as if the main character is an adventure magnet, and everybody else is just there to watch it happen, becomes over the top. For me to really enjoy a book I have to be able to suspend my disbelief to an extent.

The beauty here is that while Hieronymus is obviously the central character, he’s also a member of a ship’s crew. He fits into that crew and is not bigger than that role. He will become bigger it seems, but that comes through promotion within the ranks, additional ocean adventures, and additional travels. Just like in real life, all that happens in time.

Within the historical elements of the story this one had all the elements of a seaborne adventure. All of these elements seem to flow naturally though. Ocean sailing was dangerous in this era, and the events that befell The Fortitude were certainly not outside the realm of actual historical occurrences - being lost in unexplored sea, the discovery of a ship’s crew that had come upon mysterious misfortune enough to set the nerves of a typical superstitious seaman of the era on edge, the discovery of an uncharted island, first contact with its locals, and the work to repair their damaged vessel so that they may be able to return home.

Along the way, Hieronymus observes a ceremony of a local shaman, which seems to defy the laws of the orderly scientific universe that he holds to. He falls in love and becomes torn between his heart and his duty but we learn that Hieronymus’s future has already been seen. He will travel on to the mysterious nearby island where a Spanish vessel met misfortune, which in the native’s lore is home to their demon figures. Only heroes travel there, and our first officer is one such here. Hieronymus will not die either there or on this island. He will die many years and miles from here and not on the sea. So now Lieutenant Bonaventure, who shares his family name with many great adventurers, now seems to be prophesied to have many more of his own. No dull life of a British Navel vessel’s first officer. I for one like the teasing and I hope not.

The tone of the book throughout would make one think that once The Fortitude makes landfall on this mysterious island, home to the demons of the native’s mythology that what they will find is nothing but superstition. But remember that proclamation from the front cover. They find something that they never could have imagined. The crew doesn’t get anything in the way of explanation, nor do we. But for those who were there to bear witness, including Hieronymus Bonaventure, nothing will ever been the same again. One final very nice touch was that the crew did not include the true events that they witnessed within their logs. They saw it, they believed it happened, but it was just too unbelievable to put in any sort of public record to be subjected to scrutiny.

But while they may not discuss it with others they know that they experienced something that does not fit into the natural world. It feels like a doorway was opened here, which cannot be closed again. As the Chinese say “May you be cursed to live in interesting times.” That seems to be the case for Bonaventure and maybe the re