History is usually written by the victors, which often means that certain facts are left out or certain figures are deliberately misrepresented. Richard III, who has the dubious reputation as one of the most reviled kings in English history, is perhaps the paradigmatic example of a history written by the winning side. He was reviled by the Tudor apologist Thomas More and immortalized as an evil and crippled hunchback in the play of William Shakespeare. It is, ironically enough, his notoriety that has attracted his most ardent apologists, most notably the Richard III Society - formed in 1924 by a group of amateur who believed that Richard III had been unjustly vilified throughout history and thus took upon them the task of defending his reputation (read more at www.richardiii.net). The revisionist attempts of Richard III’s supporters generally fail to elicit academic approval, yet this type of historical revisionism has been extremely successful within the genre of historical fiction where novels such as Sharon K. Penman’s meticulously researched Sunne in Splendour offers a portrait of Richard that is vastly different from Shakespeare’s infamous villain.

Freda Warrington’s novel The Court of the Midnight King is part of this particular tradition of Ricardian historical fiction, but she takes the revisionism a step further by intertwining the story of Richard with another secret history. Warrington’s representation of 15th century England differs from the conventional historical knowledge on several points. She paints a world where paganism hasn’t been entirely suppressed by Christianity. Alongside the world of men and priests thus exists a hidden world of goddess worship, here represented as a uniquely female brand of spirituality. Warrington’s novel thus also draws upon the “feminist” tradition of historical fantasy in the vein of Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The basic plot of The Court of the Midnight King spans the period of civil war in England, known as the Wars of the Roses, experienced through the eyes of Katherine Lytton and Raphael Hart. They are both children of Yorkist sympathizers and their families suffer because of the allegiance of their fathers. More importantly, both Kate and Raphael are children of women who travel the hidden path of the Earth Goddess, the Serpent Mother Auset – and both of them cross paths with Richard III. Raphael is orphaned by Lancastrian forces at a very young age, a trauma that leaves his without memory and open to visions when he is found by the victorious Yorkists. He forms an immediate connection to Richard, the young Duke of Gloucester and brother of Edward IV. He later enters the household of Richard of Gloucester as one of his most loyal and trusted knights.

Whereas Raphael is an orphan who makes Richard his family, Kate grows up in a household shaped by an ailing father and a strong mother. Like her mother, Kate is inducted into the mysteries of the Sisterhood of Auset and must therefore straddle two very different worlds, something she finds extremely hard to do. In order to avoid a distasteful marriage, Kate leaves her family home and enters into the service of the Neville family, one of the great powers behind the Yorkist regime. First as a lady-in-waiting to Isabelle Neville who is wed to George, the Duke of Clarence and brother of Edward. After Isabelle’s death in childbirth, Kate enters the service of Anne Neville who is married to Richard of Gloucester with whom Kate has an ambivalent and tension-ridden relationship.

It is through the eyes of Kate and Raphael that Warrington tells Richard’s story – a story that the astute reader will find significantly different from the “official” one yet still based on a thorough knowledge of the period and events in question. When it comes to the figure of Richard and the Wars of the Roses, Warrington’s narrative doesn’t deviate very much from historical fact – one event is decisively altered but she has otherwise simply presented her interpretations of some the unsolved riddles of Richard’s reign, fx the fate of the Edward IV’s two sons.

Warrington’s novel offers an alternate history in the sense that she creates a world suffused where women’s spirituality has not altogether been assimilated by the Christian Church and where women can wield spiritual and magical power, albeit in a hidden way, across the otherwise dividing lines of social class and political faction. Warrington presents the reader with a world animated by spirit, a world where nature is quite literally alive in the form of elemental spirits as well as the hidden world of Faerie. Warrington intensely descriptive prose borders on the “flowery” or “purple”, but it is quite suited to the strange and enchanted world that she has created – and it is precisely this atmosphere of “enchantment” that is one of the novel’s strongest points.

When it comes to character, Warrington’s work is somewhat uneven. Kate is by far the novel’s strongest and most engaging character. She is feisty, head-strong and passionate, which I found very appealing and if she sometimes sounded too much like a modern woman, then her status as a priestess of Auset makes her opinions and attitudes quite plausible in relation to the narrative’s inner logic. Richard remains a ubiquitous yet elusive character as the reader only experience him through the eyes of others. To Raphael, Richard is the embodiment of knightly virtue and the epitome of royal authority. Kate, however, has changing opinions of Richard, which helps the reader to discern the nuances and flaws the Raphael’s shining idolism cannot detect. Kate is at once attracted and repulsed by Richard, attracted by his obvious charisma yet repulsed by his fearful, priggish and judgemental attitude towards the Sisterhood of Auset and the hidden world.

Raphael is by far the weakest among Warrington’s characters. He doesn’t really seem to be distinguished by anything else than his honourable behaviour and devout loyalty. He is a rather bland and uninteresting character, which lead me to question his function in the story. As it turns out, Raphael and his visions has quite an important function in The Court of the Midnight King because Warrington does not only wish to write an alternate history about Richard III, she also wants to interrogate his infamous reputation. In order to do so, Warrington resorts to two different strategies. Firstly, she introduces a separate narrative, set in a contemporary college environment where a young female student becomes fascinated with the enigma of Richard III and quietly attempts to unravel fact from fiction when it comes to his reputation. Secondly, Warrington lets Raphael be haunted with a series of sinister and prophetic visions about Richard that essentially corresponds to some of the most infamous aspects of his posthumous reputation. The problem is just that Warrington handles these aspects of the narrative very clumsily. The sinister nature of Raphael’s visions are not really consonant with the story’s internal logic and they appear jarring, and in one instance, downright ridiculous. The contemporary narrative doesn’t work any better. For the most part it appears utterly unconnected to the central story and when the two narratives begins to intersect, Warrington’s writing disintegrates into a heavy purple prose and a florid and romantic form of mysticism that doesn’t suit the novel at all. She would have done better to stick to the central narrative of an alternate 15th century England and leave the interrogation of Richard III’s reputation well alone. As it is, her clumsy handling of Richard’s historical infamy remains the novel’s deepest flaw as it mars an otherwise fascinating narrative. Fortunately, the reader has the option of simply bypassing the contemporary narrative as it is largely unconnected to central storyline and enjoy the rest of the story.

Trine D. Paulsen

Susan Michael has gone from mainstream news reporter to a sleaze magazine that prints outlandish pictures and even weirder stories. Her life is simple and bit a lonely. Her best friends, Angie and Jimmy, bring her to the local animal shelter to share a deep dark secret. Susan is able to speak to Jimmy for a few moments and then she ends up leaving the shelter with a cat. Of all the animals she could have brought home- she's allergic to cats. Events occur in the next few hours that Susan never thought possible. Her stray cat is really a adonis with six-pack abs and a devilish grin. Things that go bump in the night really do exist. And her life will never be the same. She's left with no friends, family, or hope for the future. The future where she thought she was headed. Now she must live with Ravyn and his world as a squire.

Ravyn Kontis is a Were-hunter who becomes attached to no one. The fact that a mere human saves him from death is both ironic and a lifesaver. He soon finds out that this human is different than most. She brings up feelings he thought were long dead and gone. Because of her he must face many things he thought were over and done with. Because of her he will regain the power to live.

Sherrilyn Kenyon knows how to create other worlds and her character development is amazing. Readers will want to travel through destinations unknown with Susan and Ravyn. They will want a happy ending and they won't be disappointed. How they get there is quite the adventure and it is highly recommended that you stay along for the ride. Readers will find themselves searching eagerly for the other titles in this series. The latest in the series has just been released.

This isn't usually my genre of books but I was totally enthralled with this book. I've already researched and found that this should not have been the first book read but I wouldn't change a thing. I was lucky enough to win an autographed copy at a recent GRWA meeting and now I'm hooked. Kudos to you Ms. Kenyon for showing me the way...to the dark hunter series.

Storms of Vengeance is the debut novel of John Beachem. It is the first book in his fantasy series, “The Lorradda Stone.”

The story is set in the Kingdom of Faranin, a state comprising many formerly independent nations brought together by centuries of war, now enjoying an uneasy peace for the first time in generations. Magic is forbidden, and those tainted with magical power, the Marked, are hunted and destroyed without mercy.

Faranin’s short-lived tranquility is shattered by a daring late-night raid on the capital city. A band of mysterious attackers, aided by magic, penetrate the vast complex of the royal palace and manage to get out alive. In the aftermath, a prominent legislator is found murdered in his chambers. He had many enemies who would have liked to see him out of the way, but what seems at first like a political killing is soon realized to be more. Witnesses reveal that while the assassination was taking place, some of the raiders were busy searching a completely different part of the palace. The speed and efficiency with which the mysterious raiders struck makes it clear that they knew exactly where to find their victim. So what else were they up to?

Into this mystery are thrust two young palace guards. Calton Relanas is a young man of peasant origins, eager to prove himself. His friend, Ratel Eresgot, is the scion of a wealthy aristocratic family who desperately wants to show that he can succeed without his powerful father. Assigned to assist with the investigation, they find themselves faced with a deadly conspiracy with tendrils reaching into the palace itself, and an evil with designs on far more than the life of a single politician.

I found Storms of Vengeance to be a frustrating book, because it keeps showing flashes of potential to be better than it was. After a successful attention-grabbing opening, things slow down badly, meandering dully for a number of chapters, punctuated by attempts at greater excitement that came across as forced. Then, about a third of the way through, things start to pick up, and I was fairly interested by the end. There’s some good stuff here, but it’s a bit of a slog to get to.

The characters are a mixed bag. The main protagonists, Calton and Ratel, were not effective for me, and seemed neither emotionally engaging nor otherwise interesting. Unfortunately, the reader spends a great deal of time with them. On the other hand, some of the antagonists are a good deal more interesting, though again there is a pacing problem: the reader must wade through some rather unsatisfying parts before these characters start to become more intriguing. I also liked the character of Faren, the commander of the palace guard who leads the investigation of the attack. Beachem does a nice job of taking a very boring, stick-in-the-mud sort of person and making him an interesting and sympathetic character. The brief appearances by the King of Faranin were also effective, defying the common clichés for fictional monarchs- heroic guardian of the people, ruthless tyrant and oppressor, or ineffectual buffoon. Instead, he comes across as a well-intentioned man who is just unbearably tired, ground down by a lifetime of crushing responsibility.

The setting is more or less a typical medieval fantasy kingdom; for the most part it is serviceable but not remarkable. It does have one prominent virtue, however. I greatly enjoyed the book’s portrayal of elves- or “forest demons,” as most people in Faranin call them. In an enjoyable break with the common fantasy clichés that have turned elves into little more than pretty long-lived humans with a fondness for trees and shrubbery, Beachem’s elves truly seem uncanny and inhuman, frightening and inscrutable creatures of folklore.

Overall, I would describe Storms of Vengeance as a disappointment. Beachem shows a number of flashes of potential, but the reader must put up with a good deal of much less interesting material to get to them. I think his work shows future promise, and I’m curious to see how Beachem develops, but overall I can’t recommend Storms of Vengeance.

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.

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.

“A Druid Born” is an uplifting tale of adventure and self-discovery, told from the point of view of a young chieftan’s daughter, Regan. Narrated from a first-person perspective, we follow Regan as she faces personal challenges and learns about herself and her blossoming abilities. Magic is present mildly throughout the story, in the form of shamanistic rites, visions, or herbal remedies.

For its target audience, this novel will be quite a treat. The writing is competent and solid, and the pages fly by. Unlike many books for younger readers, it does not come off as juvenile, but maintains a dignified maturity that is refreshing. The subject matter and events are mostly personal in nature, and include the kinds of things that young readers might themselves be facing: conflict with the wishes of parents, and changes brought about by approaching adulthood. In contrast to the book’s title, there is very little that is dark, and nothing I’d call disturbing. The drama is dealt with gently, with a responsible eye toward impressionable readers.

Druidic culture is lightly showcased, and there is a flavor of Celtic life throughout. At times I wanted to see more of this, however, as it felt like the author was only scratching the surface of a deeper ability she has in this regard.

The bond between mother and daughter is central, and is presented in a way that may be particularly appealing to young female readers. Regan’s family situation in the story is a little unusual, and her desire to be close to the spirit of her mother becomes an important part of her quest.

There are a few drawbacks worth mentioning. Foremost is the shortness of the book. The text comprises what would only be two or three chapters in similar novels. A dedicated reader would require only a couple of afternoons to finish the short novel. Though meant for less experienced readers, it seemed that more could have been written. The language, as well, seemed a touch too simple. Perhaps this is simply due to my bias as an adult reader.

Also, I found the characters to be slightly shallow and underdeveloped. Given the few pages to work with, it’s to be expected, perhaps. Additionally, there are some minor anachronisms which pop out here and there – unlikely references to real-world places and history that pulled me out of the story as I read. These were only slight distractions, however.

Additionally, the first-person perspective has a way of narrowing the story. It decreases the potential for characters other than Regan to be interesting, and detracts a little bit from tension that might exist otherwise – we know nothing bad will happen to Regan, because she’s retelling the story for us.

The book finishes on an optimistic note, as Regan completes her journey ready to take on the world and her approaching womanhood. “A Druid Born” very much has the feel of a motivational work. It was a pleasant, if brief, read, and one which I would not hesitate to recommend to readers aged 10-16.

So recounts Steve, one of the characters in Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem's fantastical memoir The Man on the Ceiling, about his wife Melanie. And Melanie's character, in one of her narrative turns, tells us how a strange and lost man did one night climb through her bedroom window, only to flee when she awoke. The Tems describe their book as "loosely autobiographical" (the book's jacket adds a parenthetical "maybe" to the common descriptor "A Novel") and we can guess that this episode may be one of those that are, as the word is typically understood, true. Given this starting point, a more creatively blinkered author or pair of authors might have left the "man on the ceiling" as a minor aside, a passing nightmare to be commented on and then dismissed. We would instead be holding a straightforwardly autobiographical account of the Tems, of the love and anxieties they have for each other and their family, likely titled "The Man in the Window." And everything in that account would be true. But such a mechanically truthful account wouldn't be the whole story, or the whole truth.

There are of course limits to the written word: we can seldom know, much less share, the whole truth. But we can approach it, and it is in approaching the truth that the man on the ceiling (and The Man on the Ceiling) become our guide. The man on the ceiling is the sort of quintessentially fantastic creation that, in Ursula Le Guin's impossible phrase, puts into words what cannot be put into words. But to attempt an approach: throughout the Tems' accounts of domestic joys and tragedies, the man on the ceiling serves as a representation of the imagination's need to represent what we imagine as meaningful units of Story.

In a book that includes a section on the importance of names, it is telling that the book's name is the naming of the imagination. Melanie's man in the window is a creature of "simple physics," a collection of biochemical processes bound by gravity. In those terms, his mutters are only "nonsense," his actions "not meaning me anything." It is the man on the ceiling who represents how "we make things mean." The gravity-defying man on the ceiling is impossible, obviously so: a creation of imagination. And it is our imagination that encodes positive possibilities for the future into stories we call hopes; our imagination that coalesces negative possibilities for the future (of which death is but the most obvious) into discrete units of story called fears. Our imagination stories the past as individual memories. It stories a house into a home; a stranger into a spouse; legal and biological relationships into a family. The man on the ceiling may be an angel or a demon, as the Tems variously suggest in their narrative, but in the end both identities amount to the same truth: both are "masks of God" (echoing Joseph Campbell), representations of the transcendent. The man on the ceiling is a "necessary angel," of meaning, of sense-making.

As the man on the ceiling represents the drive towards many types of story, so The Man on the Ceiling incorporates many types of storytelling. The book is divided into eleven thematic sections with titles that include "Naming Names," "Telling Tales," "Down the Dark Stairs," and a phrase repeated often throughout the book: "Everything We're Telling You Here is True." The third section, "The Man on the Ceiling," is closely based on the Tem's year 2000 novella of the same name that won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the World Fantasy Award. The other sections, and thus the majority of the book, are new. At different points these sections incorporate both fiction and non-fiction; The Man on the Ceiling is a mixture of fantasy and horror, an essay on where fantasy and horror come from, a family memoir, a how-to book for aspiring writers, and perhaps most abidingly, a snapshot of family life in contemporary America.

It is this last that marks the primary change between the original novella and the new book. The original "Man on the Ceiling" (now most readily found in Datlow and Windling's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection) was an obsidian knife of a story, knapped down to a raw and beautiful universality. In contrast, the new sections situate and ground the book firmly in early 21st century America. Many sections take familiar scenes of Americana as their starting point: sitting down to a family dinner; a visit back to the old neighborhood; a family road trip; the death of a pet; telling stories to grandchildren; a restless night in the large family house. The authors then riff on these scenes, giving their imaginations rein to make connections, add meanings. The road trip -- where "the route coincides with the map only occasionally and, even then, deceptively" -- becomes a metaphor for the imaginative journey of creating a family (the Tems' children are all adopted, but we come to realize that Melanie and Steve have conceived them all the same), and then a metaphor for creating a story. The death of a pet becomes a ghost story, and an essay on why we tell ghost stories. A collision between two small planes near the Tems' Colorado home becomes the man on the ceiling's defiance of gravity (he is "out there, on the ceiling of the world, masquerading as ... the wingtip lights of a doomed plane"), becomes, for post 9/11 America along with much of the rest of the world, a symbol of the looming uncertainty and fear of raising a child at a time when planes do fall out of the sky.

The impact of the additional sections on the original novella is nothing less than a fundamental transformation. "The most disturbing thing about the figures of horror fiction for me," writes Steve, "is a particular vagueness in their form." Yet the additions to the novella sufficiently name, shape, and ground the man on the ceiling so as to dispel a large measure of his vagueness. If the original novella was based in the affective language of horror fiction, the new book in both form and content captures -- indeed literalizes -- the more ambivalent theme of "making a home in the weird" that I noted in the Interfictions anthology of recent interstitial fiction. The Tems certainly realize the magnitude of the transformation, from the questioning of "A Novel" to their word of choice to describe their account, a "testament." Their story has become a self-conscious work of contemporary social observation. It is something we could imagine as the product of a more humanistic Milan Kundera (who shares a similar obsession with gravity), except that the Tem's novel has the layered redundancy of a distinctly collaborative construction. The change from the universality of the novella to the novel's grounding in the zeitgeist acts to highlight the Tems' understanding of the present: how difficult and scary, how impossible and necessary, it is to love in the 21st century; and the kinds of stories we require to do so.

All this largely works because the Tems have crafted a believably honest book. The expanded, sectional nature of the new edition does lead to passages not so much irrelevant as extraneous, artifacts of the Tem's need to fill spaces with tellings and explanations, with connections and meaning. But as this is precisely what the book is about, we are inclined to forgive them. As careful readers, we suspect that the characters of Steve and Melanie are to some unknowable degree both more and less than the authors themselves. (Given the subject matter, it would be surprising if the Tems did not ever engage in the storying of each other, as well as themselves.) Yet the book's frequent refrain that "everything we're telling you here is true" adds an implicit assurance: the we. The we asserts that everything here has been seen and verified not just by the characters of Steve and Melanie, but by the thing called "the Tems" that exists behind the characters, between the real people. What the Tems write may not be the whole truth, but the believable manner and form of its construction let us suspect that it approaches the truth.

The most truly horrific segment within The Man on the Ceiling occurs as we approach the end of the book. The maybe-novel has so far been narrated by Melanie and Steve. Then, a sudden shift of perspective: we're in the head of one of their children. The immediate sensation is one of profound invasion, a breach of trust that a parent would use a child so to tell a story. But then we pull back and realize that of course people imagine stories about those they love, that such imagining in the face of never knowing the whole truth, of never having full control, is one of the necessary attributes that make a good parent, or spouse, or storyteller. The fantastic imagination has ever provided a chronicle of all that humanity cannot know or control. With The Man on the Ceiling, the Tems have created an entry for our time in that chronicle.

-- Matt Denault

Maledicte marks Lane Robins’ first effort as a novelist, and a glance at the cover - which depicts and androgynous face in profile, eyes covered with an ornate Venetian-style domino, the title written with gothic type and the tagline: “A novel of love, betrayal, and vengeance” – it quickly becomes clear that Robins is aiming at a brand of dark fantasy of manners and courtly intrigue that have been very successful in the hands of writers like Jacqueline Carey and Ellen Kushner.

The story starts with a short prologue, where the reader is introduced to two teenagers, Miranda and Janus, who eke out a precarious existence in the Relicts, the slum of Murne, capital of the kingdom of Antyre. Here, Janus is kidnapped by a nobleman acting on the behalf of the Earl of Last. Janus is, in fact, the illegitimate son of the earl, who is in desperate need of an heir. The children know none of this, and the kidnapping thus takes a violent turn. In her desperation, Miranda takes an oath of vengeance and gives her soul into the keeping of Black-Winged Ani, the merciless and bloodthirsty goddess of love and revenge. She intends to reclaim Janus, her first love, and kill his father, the earl of Last.

Disguised as a young man, Miranda enters the household of the baron Vornatti where she creates the persona of Maledicte. Three years later, Maledicte is introduced at the court of King Aris under the patronage of Vornatti. Here s/he cuts an enigmatic and elegant figure, wielding an equally sharp-edge wit and sword among a dissolute nobility. Maledicte attracts the attention of the king with his androgynous beauty, but s/he also creates scandal and makes enemies.

It is at court that Maledicte meets Janus again. They enter into a scandalous love affair that quickly becomes tainted by the ambitions of Janus. As the son of an earl and the nephew of the king, Janus is highly placed at court. He is, however, not content and thus schemes ruthlessly in order to crawl closer to the throne of Antyre. He doesn’t hesitate to use Maledicte, whose god-ridden bloodlust steadily increases, to eliminate whoever stands in his way. However, events spin out of control as Maledicte, goaded by Ani’s lust for blood, edges ever closer to madness. Maledicte is torn between several different identities and the question is whether s/he can recover herself in order to prevent destroying all s/he holds dear.

Lane Robins is very deft in the pacing of the plot, doling out information sparingly in order to create suspense. This makes for at somewhat slow start, but the reader’s patience is rewarded when the story increases in intensity after the first hundred or so pages. The story is focused on courtly intrigues and is full of twists and turns, some fairly unexpected and surprising. The prose is fluid, yet unobtrusive with some shining moments in the descriptions of the opulence of the aristocratic environment and the deadly, sharp-witted banter of the jaded courtiers.

The world-building is sketchy, to say the least. Details about the world the characters inhabit are used very sparingly and only when it suits the plot. The result is a rather hazy impression of a Regency-style world of high society balancing on the cusp of a “modern” era (with oblique references to colonial expansion and industrial innovation). The city Murne, where most of the story takes place, is a little better fleshed out, and Robins makes a few attempts at providing her world with some back-story. However, details about Antyre’s history, its relations with the neighbouring Itarus, its religion and the exile of the gods is scattered about the text in an haphazard and inconsistent manner, which in the end imparts no more than a fuzzy outline of the fantastical world Maledicte inhabits. Actually, it is Maledicte himself, who, unwittingly voices the reader’s experience of the world the story is set in:

Quote:
"Maledicte thought of maps and distance, but his knowledge was sketchy. Vornatti had taught him about the city and its fashionable retreats. Janus had told him about Itarus, and Gilly had sweetened his dreams with descriptions of the Explorations. Ennisere meant nothing, a foggy blur on an unfinished map of the world."

The world of Robins’ novel can in fact best be described as an unfinished map, its fuzzy and blank spots enticing and intriguing, its inconsistencies unexplained. Why, for example, are the god-ridden traditionally persecuted as witches despite their roles as vessels of the divine? How were the exiled gods worshipped? How much did they interfere in the lives of mortals and was their interference always detrimental to humans? One of the themes in Maledicte is the question of superstition since most people, except Vornatti’s man-servant Gilly, believe that the old gods are simply a fabrication, which is why very few are able to recognize that Maledicte functions a vessel for Ani’s bloodlust. But this theme is ultimately undermined by the lack of information. The reader is simply told that the gods disappeared after a battle a few decades back and that people happily abandoned religion altogether – a rather implausible explanation in my opinion. All in all, Lane Robins’ gives the reader a tantalising glimpse of a rather fascinating world and one can only hope that she will develop it further in subsequent books.

Apart from the world-building, my main criticism of the novel concerns the characterization. The story is told via a third person narrative with shifting POV, which can be slightly confusing at times. The main POV is, however, not that of Miranda/Maledicte but instead of the servant Gilly, who plays the role of Maledicte’s friend and confidant as well as the primary witness to the events of the story. He therefore comes across as not only the most sympathetic of the characters but also as the main character of the story. Maledicte is as much Gilly’s story as it is Mirande/Maledicte’s. The reader is only rarely given an insight into the workings of Maledicte’s mind, a fact that lessens the emotional impact of his/her role as the supposed main character. Maledicte mostly comes across as sinister and childishly sullen rather than charismatic and intriguing. In the end, this rather distanced perspective makes it somewhat difficult for the reader to engage herself in the eventual fate of Maledicte and Janus. I, at least, found that I cared more about what happened to Gilly than to the other characters.

I found the question of Maledicte’s multiple identities one of the most interesting aspects of the novel, and was therefore quite frustrated with the author’s inability to explore, in a satisfying manner, the demands and expectations between the overlapping and conflicting identities of Miranda, Maledicte and Ani. Part of the problem is connected to the use of POV, while another relates to the lack of back-story. Miranda and her relationship with Janus are simply not developed enough, prior to the creation of the Maledicte persona, to be convincing and make her yearning for revenge understandable. Their all-encompassing love remains a postulate that is stated by the characters but never proven by the narrative itself. Maledicte’s complete devotion to Janus is fundamentally incomprehensible to the reader (especially as regards the manner in which Janus later makes use of his lover) because one is never really made to understand exactly what these two young people meant to each before the main plot is set into motion. Since the whole story revolves around a love thwarted and betrayed, the lack of back-story for Miranda and Janus is a rather serious failing on the author’s part. Another poorly developed aspect is the process in which the poor street-rat Miranda transforms herself into the elegant, sharp-witted courtier and swordsman Maledicte, something which could have helped to explain how the young woman comes to identify so completely with an identity gendered in the masculine.

Ani’s divine possession of Miranda/Maledicte is perhaps the single-most fascinating aspect of the story, but it suffers from a somewhat uneven handling that oscillates between psychological exploration and external action. Robins gives the reader a few tantalizing hints of the inner conflict between the vengeful goddess and her human vessel, since Maledicte at times attempts to withstand Ani’s seductive whisperings of blood and death. Robins strives to maintain this delicate balance between Maledicte and Ani through most of the novel, but since the POV mostly belong to Gilly and rarely to Maledicte, this aspect often comes across as a pretext for escalating the violence to a level that sometimes approaches the farcical. I must admit that I was continually amazed at the licence Maledicte was given by the king despite his very suspect actions.

Maledicte by Lane Robins can perhaps best be described as a high-strung melodrama of manners, set in a dark and glittering world of courtly intrigue where love and betrayal walks hand in hand. It is an entertaining and suspenseful read, which might appeal to fans of Jacqueline Carey and Ellen Kushner, though it doesn’t reach the high standards of their work. Despite my reservations, I still consider Maledicte a solid first effort from a promising author. Lane Robins is certainly an author worth watching.

We awaken with Tynan Llywelyn from a hundred year's Sleep. Tynan is no Rip Van Winkle, however, but a powerful vampire who is not eager to return to the vampire community who shunned him. The world that greets him is vastly different than what he left behind. Society has crumbled and humanity is being controlled by a domineering techno-government called the Tyst. A small group of rebels, the Phuree, are fighting back as best they can. The Phuree have taken a radical step in allying themselves with the Predators who feed off them - the vampires. Tynan finds himself embroiled in a power struggle between vampire and human players alike.

I knew I was in for an incredible read when I became captivated by the Acknowledgments page. Ms. Faust's talents as a wordsmith far surpass anything I have read in some time. Her depiction of vampires is a delicious exquisiteness that at times had me running my tongue over my teeth to insure fangs had not appeared! She creates these beings with a deft hand, stitching common myths together with her singularly modern twist, providing a seamless and completely believable existence.

Next to such thoroughly real characters, the Tyst and Phuree pale by comparison. The Tyst are nameless and faceless; although characters are mentioned we never really get to know them. These are the Big Bad Guys, yet they seem completely untouchable and almost nonexistent. The Phuree are also a bit out of reach. Teirnan, their leader, and his sister Khanna are stereotypical and rather predictable. They appear small and ineffective somehow. This book is the first in a series, however, so perhaps the next installment will focus more on the other characters. If Faust can bring them to reality as she has her vampires, this will be a knockdown-dragout favorite!

The overall sensation of the story is very focused on Tynan, his tough and (unusual for the Living Dead) his emotions. In fact, Tynan's emotions are a pivotal point of the entire storyline. Faust captured his moral writhing quite well. He is struggling with a moral crisis, one that led him to abandon his Dark Brethren and sink into Eternal Sleep. But his despair only kept him for one hundred years, not forever. With prose the texture of deep velvet, Faust draws us down to the depths of a story as old as fear, as dark as sin, and as deep as Satan's heart. The lines between friend and foe are re-drawn. She captures desperate obsession and hunger, outlining each with the passion for existence that burns in all beings.

In spite of a lack of character development in some areas, I was very impressed with Gabrielle Faust and Eternal Vigilance. I eagerly devoured the book from cover to cover in one sitting and felt bereft when I was finished. This is not an airy-fairy, "rescue the damsel"-type of story. Gritty and dark, readers will begin to understand the "un"life of a vampire.

Misty Massey’s first novel, Mad Kestrel is a story of a young lady who has made her way in life to her satisfaction, while avoiding some common pitfalls of unfortunate youths and also evading capture by the Danisoban – the cadre of mages who control the use of magic and it’s wielders, capturing and either brainwashing or enslaving them all. She evades them because she is a Promise, a person born with the potential to use magic. She has the ability to control the wind though she rarely uses it and only when she cannot be observed. She’s made her way onto a pirate ship, the sea can neutralize the Danisoban magic and thus she is safe from capture. She is not safe, however, from treachery, trickery and betrayal. Her life and her companions are no longer what they appeared to be and danger follows her around every corner.

When her captain is captured and arrested for piracy, Kestrel, barely escaping the same fate, in turn gets captured by a Danisoban agent. Her subsequent adventures are engaging and fun to follow along with. While there is a substantial lack of background given for both the lead character and the world she lives it – this can be easily corrected in future stories – her character and basic plot are interesting enough to pull readers into those yet to be written stories. I would have preferred to have a few more buckles swashed, and for sure more on the magic concept, as well as more world building background to move the geography from an isolated spot surrounded by void into a place on a map you can spatially understand. She also inconsistently changed pace – at first we are immediately thrown into action, then we get slowness…andbacktoaction…and then s l o w n e s s again. It may not have been as jarring had I not just finished a novel that was action from cover to cover; so take that with a grain of salt. I truly enjoyed some of the surprises that were sprung on the reader, and though one or two were things I might have imagined as natural evolutions of the story, some definitely took me by pleasant surprise.

Mad Kestrel is what I call a debut of interest. While I would not consider Mad Kestrel to be bestseller quality, the author definitely shows potential to give us some wonderful stories and possibly a blockbuster or two. I found her ideas and plot machinations to be very interesting and enjoyable. The main issues I had with the book were the inconsistent pacing and the lack of background and as explained above, these are fixable issues and only highlight her newness to the publishing scene. I also wanted to mention that I found the cover to be one of the more interesting and aesthetically pleasing covers I have seen in a while. I have found that lately, covers seem to be almost afterthoughts; not given the importance and stature they deserve. Clever images and photos are nice, but a painter’s interpretation seems much more often to find the mark of the personality of the book itself.

Procession of the Dead comes from the Incan word Ayuamarca, which literally translated gives the book its title. It is also the Incan name for the month of November, and the title of the novel’s 11th chapter. In fact all of the chapter titles are taken from the Incan names for the months. It is a clever hook that Shan bases his narrative on, were the reader so inclined; they could research and dissect the minutia that Shan has layered into what was in 1999 his first novel. Sadly, I was not so inclined.

Capac Raimi arrives in the city (it is always just referred to as “the city”) to be a gangster with his Uncle Theo. Uncle Theo was a big deal in his youth, when he ran with “The Pacinos”, but has since faded to doing smalltime protection rackets. Capac’s arrival quickly changes things. Before long, they have attracted the attention of The Cardinal. The Cardinal is the near mythic crime lord who rules the city, and his attention is not rarely a good thing. Those who displease him disappear so thoroughly that their own families never remember they existed.

As Capac works his way up into the good graces of The Cardinal’s family, he comes to understand how little he knows of himself. But it quickly becomes apparent that there is more to The Cardinal and his city than Capac initiall