The Viper of Portello is my first encounter with the work of James C. Glass. He's published a number of novels and short stories of which I know absolutely nothing. In this novel Glass provides us with an SF-tale set on a loose federation of four planets originally settled by south-Americans (where have I seen that before? Right, here). It's a tale of drug wars, revolutions and corruption, but also one of hope of a better future. While Glass definitely has a story, the execution is flawed. Despite it's potential I am not impressed with this novel at all.

The main character in The Viper of Portello is Eduardo Cabral. A young man raised in the family of one of the planet's most wealthy families. Eduardo wants to pursue a career in the arts but to please his father he joins the army instead. After several years of fighting in a drug war on another planet the unit Eduardo commands becomes the victim of a deal between his commander and the drug lords. None of the soldiers of his squad are meant to survive. The operation is poorly executed though and Eduardo and one of his soldiers survives. While recovering from his injuries Eduardo learns more about the conspiracy to destroy his unit. Unwillingly Eduardo is recruited to unravel a network of drug-related criminal activity that reaches to the highest levels of government.

During his campaign to take revenge on those who wiped out his unit he finds the work as a military assassin suits him. In a way that totally contradicts his artistic aspirations the killings satisfy his need for revenge. He discovers the side of his personality that will become known as Culebra, the Viper, in some circles. His fame attracts the attention of several parties in the simmering conflict on his home planet. Revolutionaries, drug lords and members of government both fear him and require his services. Culebra takes precedence over the artist. How long before Eduardo will be left along to work on his art?

While the story could definitely work this novel has too many problems to be really enjoyable. In the beginning of the book in particular, Glass has the annoying habit to spoil the rest of his story by giving less than subtle clues, making the book quite predictable. His world building is also far from spotless. Most of the story is set on a planet that has only been colonized for a few generation. The place is absolutely settled but certainly not overcrowded, yet for some unknown reason humanity finds it necessary to build four, impossibly high towers to house most of the population, the expense of which probably could have housed them all in villas. The technology of this world remains a bit of a mystery as well. Apparently it is possible to make a phone call to another planet with a delay that is only several minutes? Einstein would love to know how that is managed. The lack of attention to details such as communication and travel between the stars bothered me. Especially after I read the biography at the back of the book, which states Mr. Glass taught physics for a living.

The lack of attention for detail doesn't stop there though. Details on how this federation works remain sketchy too. Apparently (some of) the planets are governed by a hereditary governor but lead by an elected president. A situation that causes some political tension and eventually lead to a revolutionary movement that springs up among the planet's poor and unemployed. The origins of this conflict, quite essential to the overall story, are not revealed at all. The revolution is a vehicle for one of the characters personal ambitions and absolutely nothing more.

I'm not quite satisfied with Eduardo either. His personality could have been very interesting. The transition from Eduardo the soldier-against-his-will to Culebra the military assassin is very sudden. After two partially successful mission Eduardo decides he likes his new job to the point where he develops a second personality to be able to deal with these radically different character traits. A moment of insight and a thirst for revenge is all it takes to wake the viper. His psychology could be very interesting indeed but it is too sudden. The only thing that he seems to do when confronted with his father's betrayal is hide inside the armour of his cold Culebra personality. He goes through some pretty intense experiences in the book but it doesn't seem to touch him all that much. Almost like a chore he needs to do so he can get on with his life and art.

So much potential in this novel and so little of it is realized. It is a shame. This could be a good story but in order to become that the novel pretty much needs a full rewrite. As it is, I wouldn't recommend The Viper of Portello. The lack of detail, poor world-building and character development and the predictability of large parts of the book prevent it from being more than mediocre.

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.

Viewpoints Critical is a collection of short stories by L.E. Modesitt Jr., prolific author of both fantasy and science fiction. He's written about fifty novels but relatively few stories. This is the first time they have been collected. The collection spans his entire career as a writer starting in the early 1970s right unto story first published in this anthology. Oddly enough the story the collection is named after, Viewpoint Critical (no s), is not included in the collection. It is one of the few short stories he wrote that are missing.

In the introduction to the collection Modesitt mentions he once got the advice of Ben Bova to start writing novels. In hindsight Modesitt agrees with him and so do I. This collection contains few interesting stories. I recently read a number of collections and anthologies and compared to those Modesitt falls short. His stories do not pack a punch like Bacigalupi's short fiction in Pump Six or display Martin's excellent characterisation as displayed in his collection Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective. In his novels Modesitt's writing is driven by motivation. Why do people act the way they do, how do certain events and developments fin into the larger picture. The main characters is usually in a position where he or she has to figure out the answers to these questions in order to survive. He uses complex interlocking themes and ideas to build a word and uncover a story. Modesitt carefully distributes clues and has his main characters gradually forming theories. While this can result in an interesting novel, the use of the same themes in short stories doesn't seem to work for him.

So, generally speaking, I didn't enjoy this collection a whole lot. There are a couple of stories that did work for me however. The first one is The Rule of Law. A 1981 story about a lawyer who is handed an impossible case by his superiors. To win, he developers a use of computer modelling that will change the way court cases are handled forever. Whether that is a good or a bad thing remains to be seen at the end of the story. The main character isn't blind to the drawbacks of his method. Although the case itself is based on US regulations regarding oil imports and they scarcity of oil in the future the story is set in, Modesitt successfully manages to keep focused on the legal aspects of his story. Perhaps that is why this story works better than some of the others. I found the approach intriguing.Probably the best story in the collection.

The second story that worked for me was Beyond the Obvious Wind. A story set in an alternative Corean Chronicles world. These could have been the opening of the first Corean Chronicles novel but eventually Modesitt chose another approach. This story contains elements of both the Corean trilogies published so far. The main character of Beyond the Obvious Wind could be a proto-Mykel, one of the two main character in the second trilogy. The setting is that of Iron Stem, the home of Alucius, the main character in the first trilogy. Modesitt takes a few more pages for this story than for most in the collection and presents us with an interesting puzzle. A good story in it's own right but also an interesting look into the creation of the Corean Chronicles. For the fans of this series a 7th Corean Chronicles book, The Lord-Protector's Daughter, is scheduled for release in November.

For fans of his best known work, the Recluce saga, this collection contains two stories set in that universe. The first answers the question of how Cassius, the only black man we've encountered in the Recluce series ended up on that island. The second follows one of the Westwind guards who joins Creslin on Recluce just prior to the fall of Westwind. I don't feel either add much to the overall series but the real fans will probably want to read them.

A couple of enjoyable stories are not enough to make this collection interesting. Reading it was something of a disappointing experience to me. Unless you are a hardcore Modesitt fan I would advice you to pick up one of his many novels instead. Any of them will offer a much more satisfying read.

The Court of the Air is the debut novel of English writer Stephen Hunt, and it falls within the category of steampunk, although the novel constitutes a rather eclectic mix of disparate elements that only occasionally come together in a meaningful whole.

The story of The Court of the Air primarily takes place in the kingdom of Jackals, a country that simultaneously is and is not very alike to late 19th century England, if you can imagine an England where Cromwell’s Commonwealth never fell, and where political symbolism is taken quite literally. Thus the Jackals king only has one function, as a symbol of a monarchy shackled by parliamentary democracy. Hence, the king has his arms surgically removed and is paraded around with a metal gag. While the primary reference is Victorian England and steam-driven technology, Hunt also builds his world from an eclectic mix of sentient robots, faerie magic, communist-like revolutionaries, the underground remains of a lost civilization, a Buddhist inspired religion as well as forgotten insect gods worshipped in bloody rites of human sacrifice reminiscent of the Aztecs.

Hunt’s novel is a story about a world poised on the brink of an apocalypse and of two orphans, each with an inborn power to avert the oncoming catastrophe. Molly Templar has grown up in a city orphanage like so many other unwanted children, but when she escapes a brutal murderer in the brothel she has recently been apprenticed to, only to find all her fellow orphans slaughtered, she begins to suspect that someone is committing considerable resources to have her killed. She teams up with a journalist, a retired naval commander and a couple of steammen, sentient robots, in order to escape her pursuers and find out why they want her dead.

Oliver Brooks lost both his parents in a flying accident as a young child. Touched by the inhuman powers of the feymist curtain, he has led a severely circumscribed existence with his uncle in a provincial backwater. His world is suddenly turned upside-down when he finds his uncle and his entire household murdered and himself framed for their deaths. He consequently finds himself on the run from the law together with Harry Stave, a shady friend of his uncle and an agent of the Court of the Air, the mysterious hidden power behind the Jackelian state.

I found The Court of the Air a somewhat frustrating reading experience, mainly because it starts out quite interesting and proceeds to build suspense very well throughout the first 2/3s of the novel. But when we get to point where Molly and Oliver find the answers to why they are hunted, the narrative careens out of control. Molly and Oliver learn that they have inborn abilities that can stop the re-emergence of an ancient evil, but Hunt seems to have had trouble with coming up with a plausible and organic solution to his narrative. Instead he relies heavily on the device of deus ex machina, endowing his hero and heroine with superhuman magical powers that they learn to wield quite suddenly and effortlessly to the detriment of characterization. They simply become less interesting as characters because it is very difficult for the reader to identify with them. Furthermore, it becomes increasingly difficult to uphold the suspension of disbelief that fantasy depends on when the main characters without any significant explanation drastically change from frightened children to competent wielders of superhuman powers. Another of the novels weak points is the way that the narrative derails the plotline about the Court of the Air, the secret police that resides in an airborne fortress of dirigibles. For the better part of the novel, it appears that it is the Court of the Air that seeks the lives of Molly and Oliver, but this plotline is shunted aside about the same time as the children begin to use their suddenly endowed powers, a development that certainly made me wonder why the novel was titled The Court of the Air in the first place.

Though Hunt’s debut has some very serious weaknesses, it also has some strong points. The best part is without doubt his descriptions of the steam-driven technology, which reaches a pinnacle in his invention of the steammen as a sentient race of robots with their own state, culture and religion. This is perhaps the single most original aspect of the novel, and it is worth a read. I also quite liked the Victorian atmosphere of Jackals and Hunt’s use of period slang adds flavour and reality to his creation. These strengths do not, however, balance out the weak points, which is why I have such mixed feelings about this novel.

With The Court of the Air Stephen Hunt demonstrates an abundantly fertile imagination. It is, however, in need of a little pruning in order to make for a more satisfying fantasy novel. It will be interesting to see how he fares with his next offering, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, also set in the world of Jackals.

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.

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 initially realized. His master isn’t satisfied with ruling the city, or an empire. The Cardinal wishes to be God, and Capac is tangled in the plot to bring this mad dream to fruition. Capac Raimi finds himself last on a list of names marking the Ayuamarcans, those vital to The Cardinal’s plans. Most have been crossed off, but not Capac, and Capac Raimi is Incan for December. He is the last Ayuamarcan, if only he knew what it meant.

This story could have made a great crime novel with supernatural overtones, rather than a mediocre fantasy with horror and crime elements. While I am all for having the reader experience the magic as the protagonist does, it just takes too long for Procession of the Dead to feel like a fantasy novel. Having not read the original printing, I cannot speak to the “thorough revision” Procession has undergone at the author’s hands since its first publication. It also feels like a novel strangely out of time. Capac Raimi makes cultural references to Trading Places, Dallas, Bjorn Borg, The Graduate, all of which seem a bit dated for a character of Capac’s twenty seven or “thereabouts” years.

It is hard to say if the fault lies with the author here, or with how his publishers chose to market the book. Shan certainly has talent. That fact is undeniable. He has a real gift for turning a phrase, such as with the book’s opening: “If The Cardinal pinched the cheeks of his arse, the walls of the city bruised. They were that close, Siamese twins, joined by a wretched, twisted soul.” Procession of the Dead is proclaimed as a gritty urban fantasy, Shan is even likened to Neil Gaiman. Gritty it certainly is, but this is no Neverwhere. While Shan and Procession of the Dead held my interest well enough to see me to the novel’s end, I was left with little desire to read the next books in The City Trilogy.

Sandworms of Dune is the second part of a project by Herbert and Anderson to write the unfinished finale of Frank Herbert's classic Dune series. I gave quite a lot of thought about how I was going to write this review without spoilers to the final Dune books or Hunters of Dune and I decided I can't do it. So I am going to throw my usual spoiler free review model out the window and just say it. This review contains spoilers for Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse Dune and Hunters of Dune as well as Sandworms. There is no point in reading either Hunters or Sandworms until you have competed the original series anyway. If you are not familiar with the Dune universe I suggest you check out this review by Lawrence of the original Dune novel by Frank Herbert.

Spoilers ahead, you have been warned.

Herbert and Anderson have been producing a book a year in the Dune universe since 1999. Their efforts are met with mixed reviews. Personally I thought that the Prelude to Dune trilogy was entertaining and the Butlerian Jihad books are mediocre at best. In general all of them fall well short of Frank Herbert's level. I had my reservations when the announcement was made that Herbert and Anderson would be writing Dune 7 based on notes found in Frank's archives. Their previous attempt all included periods not covered in the original series, with a host of new characters. They were going to try a direct sequel now. Given their track record it was bound to be a disappointment to the fans of the original series. And it is, even if I have to admit Sandworms of Dune is the best Herbert and Anderson have delivered so far. It is also a major disappointment.

Dune is a charred ruin of a planet after the Honoured Matres obliterate it at the end of Heretics of Dune. The flow of spice is once again threatened. Various factions struggle to create substitutes or find new sources. The Bene Gesserit even go so far as to convert an entire planet to suit the needs of the sandworms. In the mean time the Honoured Matres take more an more planets until at the end of Chapterhouse Dune, Murbella, a woman with both Honoured Matre and Bene Gesserit training, manages to unify the two factions. During the course of Chapterhouse it becomes clear that the Honoured Matres, as powerful as they seem, are actually running for an even more dangerous foe.

Breaking away from Bene Gesserit control, the Duncan Idaho ghola, has made a run for it at the end of Chapterhouse. In a gigantic no-ship Idaho flees from the old empire as well as their unknown enemy. On board with him are a number of sisters not wanting to merge with the Honour Matres, a captured Tleilaxu master and a number of young sandworms. This ship may well be the only hope for humanity to survive the oncoming crisis. Their enemy is desperately trying to find them. Meanwhile the new sisterhood is preparing for an invasion. At the end of Hunters the true nature of the enemy is revealed to the sisters, the thinking machines have not been as thoroughly exterminated as once humanity assumed. As the old empire braces itself for the oncoming storm, Idaho and his company try to stay out of their enemy's reach. Running will only work for so long, a final confrontation with the Evermind Omnius is inevitable.

As I mentioned before I had my doubts about this project. The Dune novels Herbert and Anderson wrote before didn't require the reader to have read the original series. This book will only make sense if you have read all of Frank Herbert's Dune books. These book get progressively less accessible and by the third book a lot of readers will have given up. In short, they are writing Dune 7 for the die-hard Dune fans. A very hard crowd to please. They really had to raise the level in order to succeed. And they did in a way. Which leaves me to believe Frank did indeed leave a substantial portion of the outline behind.

Still, Herbert and Anderson have a style of their own and their books don't read like Frank Herbert's writing. Frank intended this to be one book. It turned out to be two 600 page paperbacks. As far as I can tell there are two reasons for it. Firstly, their style is a lot more descriptive. Frank makes the reader think and guess about the details of his books. He is intentionally vague on certain subjects. Herbert and Anderson spell it out. The best example of that is probably the difference in how they treat the horrendous phenomenon of axlotl tanks. Herbert and Anderson also explain in detail what is going on in the various factions and how these occurrences relate to events earlier in the series. In fact they are completely misjudging their audience here. Frank's later Dune books are brilliant not only for what he writes but also for what he doesn't tell you. Reading Herbert and Anderson becomes annoying if you are used to that. They are wasting entirely too much time on spelling things out for their readers.

The second reason is that they have added to the original outline. Mostly in order the keep the story consistent with their earlier addition to the Dune universe. And there we hit another fatal flaw in this book. They are forced to let their worst creations, the Evermind Omnius and the ridiculous independent robot Erasmus (and his insane quest for humanity, the historical Erasmus will be turning in his grave), make another appearance. That Frank intended for the thinking machines to be the enemy the Honoured Matres were fleeing from is something that makes sense given the original series. Unfortunately there is no recovering from the mess they made of the Butlerian Jihad books. The revelation that the enemy was indeed Omnius pretty much ruined Hunters for me.

The climax of Sandworms was also rather disappointing. It relies heavily on a deus ex machina occurrence to get rid of Omnius. It renders a whole lot of story lines completely irrelevant (suggesting that it could indeed have been done in one book). So while the writing is good, the story fits in the overall time line and Herbert and Anderson include a number of good action scenes the finale is so poor that the book falls flat on it's face. They had a real opportunity here to do the work of Frank Herbert justice, I could even have forgiven them for the thinking machines, but after having read the final chapter it is still disappointing. Brian Herbert thought this story had to be told, and from his position I can understand that. I think he would be wise to concentrate on his own creations from now on though. After having read 8 of the Herbert and Anderson Dune novels I am quite convinced they are not going to write anything that holds up to Frank's standards. Which in itself is not a bad thing. There is only one Frank Herbert after all. Keeping the Dune series alive after his will only invite more criticism. Herbert and Anderson appear not to have reached that conclusion yet, there is another Dune novel scheduled for later this year, Paul of Dune, set before the original Dune novel. It is to be followed by at least two other books.

The real fans of Frank Herbert's Dune will probably want to read this anyway if only to find out what gems of Frank's are buried beneath the story crafted by Herbert and Anderson. That's the main reason I read it anyway, and the only reason I picked up Sandworms after being disappointed by Hunters. I can very well understand people who will settle for the limited sense of closure Chapterhouse offers though. If you can't contain your curiosity Hunters and Sandworms are not that bad a read but there are far better science fiction novels out there. Think carefully before you pick this up.

Brethren is the debut novel of Robyn Young and the first of a historical trilogy set during the final decades of the crusades. Brethren covers the years 1260 - 1272 and was published in 2006. The second volume, Crusade, was released last year and the final part of the trilogy, Requiem, is expected later this year. Brethren focusses on the workings of the Knights Templar, an order that received quite a bit of attention lately. The author obviously studied the period well but ultimately the book fails to really capture the spirit of life in the high middle ages. I thought it a slightly entertaining but otherwise disappointing read.

The novel opens in 1260 AD, when we are introduced to the boy Wiliam Campbell, sergeant in the order of the Knights Templar and training to become a knight at the preceptory in London. The crusades have entered their last phase at this time. The infighting between the orders and nobles in the Holy Land have weakened the crusader states. They are under constant pressure from the Mongol empire as well as the rising might of the Mamluk sultans. Will doesn't know it yet but in the next three decades the crusaders will be slowly driven into the sea until in 1291 their last foothold in the Holy Land, the principality of Acre, falls to the Mamluks.

The man largely responsible for the conquest of the crusader states is our second main character. We witness the rise to power of the Mamluk general Baybars, his triumph over the Mongols at the battle of Ain Jalut and the way in which he disposed of sultan Kutuz. After firmly establishing himself as sultan, Baybars begins his campaigns to drive the Christian invaders into the sea.

In the mean time the event that will link these two characters takes place Paris. A highly secret book is stolen from the library of the Temple and although the thief is caught, and killed in the process, the book remains missing. The theft threatens to expose the Brethren, a secret society within the Temple who's ideas and goals radical, heretical to some. Against his will William is drafted by the ill-tempered priest Everard to retrieve the book. A task that is complicated by the fact that both the crown prince of England (later King Edward I Longshanks) and the Knights Hospital take an interest in finding the book.

The book mentions Young tried to stay as close to history as the story would permit. While the Brethren are obviously fictional she does stay close to history in terms of the events taking place in the book. My main problem is the characters. They sound awfully modern, in fact the Dominican priest that shows up around halfway through the book sounds like he could have walked straight out of the White House. They are also too aware of their history and that of other nations. Studying such matters was a luxury few could afford. Then there is of course the inescapable women who won't settle for marriage and a bunch of children. At least she doesn't wear breaches. But what feels most unlikely are the ideals of the Brethren. I can't really go into it without spoiling the story but let's just say the likelihood of those ideals being found among the Knights Templar is approaching zero. Pragmatism yes of course but Everard is very unconvincing as a medieval character. On top of all that quite a few of the characters can only be described as drama queens.

Despite Young adding a Muslim point of view the novel is still very much the western view of the crusades. Young throws the whole history of the crusades at us at various points in the book from Richard the Lionhart and Saladin to Pope Urban II deus vult preach. The historical Baybars was probably not a very nice man, to put it mildly, but do we really need to be reminded how much more noble Saladin was in the eyes of the Crusaders? Personally I found the history lessons superfluous, out of character and quite annoying interruptions in the story. If you want to include that information, write an introduction or historical note.

I have not said a whole lot positive about this book other than that is is well researched, have I? Maybe I should mention I really like the cover art? Young has written an engaging story at one level or I wouldn't have suffered through 600 pages of it. Still, as a historical novel I don't think much of it and I didn't care much for her characterization. I am not ready to give up on this trilogy just yet but I have read far better debuts.

“Battle Dragon” by Edo van Belkom is not a deep book, but it does pose an interesting question. If a firebreathing dragon was sent forward in time to the age of airplanes, how would it fare in those battles?

Tibalt is a fire-breathing dragon with revenge in his heart as he terrorizes the English village of Dervon 1000 years ago. Even after vengeance is satisfied the arrogant Tibalt vows to continue attacking humans as they are not worthy to share the world with dragons. Despite being warned that mankind would become more advanced and in the future would be able to be more than a match for dragons in the sky, Tibalt still considers humans worth nothing more than being wiped out. Left with no other choice, the wizard Asvald sends the dragon forward in time, to an era when humans will be more of a match for dragons, and he will learn the foolishness of his beliefs, or so that is the hope. I thought that sending a dragon forward in time to be someone else’s problem in order to solve yours was not very noble and heroic. But anyway…

That time is 1940 Britain, in the midst of World War II’s Battle of Britain. Would Tibalt win in aerial battles against the “steel dragons” of the British Royal Air Force and the German Air Forces? Would World War II air power rule the skies against a dragon?

After a dragon appears in the middle of the war, the Royal Air Force believes that they are witnessing a new German weapon. The Germans believe they are seeing a new British weapon. The dragon may want to destroy every plane it can find, but with both sides looking for him he may get a lot more than he bargained for.

It was a curious “What If?” to keep the pages turning. The storyline was pretty straight forward, with only enough character development to tell the reader exactly what they need to know in the present of the story. I’d put the target audience as Young Adults. “Battle Dragon” read almost like a fable, with a bit of World War II history about the Battle of Britain added in.

The Battle of Britain portion of the story was done in fine detail. I personally enjoyed that aspect of the story more than the dragon aspect. For a younger though who may be getting his or her first exposure to either dragons or history this could very well make for a very nice appetite whetting for both subject matters. Edo van Belkom ends the book with a nice acknowledgement and a bibliography of books and a video about the Battle of Britain to learn more about the real battle. It is obvious that he was very passionate about that part of the story, and he did justice to that piece of historical fiction within the story.

That said, the story is short. It comes in at 270 pages. Even for a young adult book I thought that it could be a little longer. Even 20 pages or so could have fleshed out some of the characters better. The story featured a wizard from 1000 years ago who was still alive in 1940 and proved to be pivotal to the plot. It would have been nice to know just a bit more about him. Other than the fact that he served in World War I and worked in a non-combat support role, that’s about all the information we get about a man who was at least a thousand years old.

In 1940 dragons were the stuff of legend. They existed a thousand years ago, but where did they go? Are they still in existence but hiding? Did man and their technology hunt them to extinction in the past? We never find out, even though we have a millenium old wizard who would likely know the answer. We could have learned more about the wizard and about the decline of the dragons in one fell swoop.

Also, after the drama of both sides in a race to find the dragon and add it to their arsenals, that storyline was ended in very quick and anti-climactic fashion. I realize you probably want to keep a YA book short, but another 20 pages with a little more depth would have added a good bit, and would have still been a quick read.

That’s why I liken the story to a fable. You don’t get much deep information out of the story, or anything unexpected out of the plot. But you learn a little bit about history, and everyone learns a valuable lesson in the end.

It’s definitely one for the youngsters but there’s not enough meat on the bones or in the plot to make this an exceptional read. It is an interesting read in a straightforward fashion and it is a quick read, although not one that I personally would buy new off the shelf. The plot on the back cover pretty much sums it up, so it’s a simple “what you see is what you get”. If I were trying to expose a young teenager to fantasy though I’d give this one a shot. I’m all for any books that get kids reading.

Sons of the Oak is the fifth novel in the Runelords series. It is set in a world where attributes such as brawn, wit, stamina or metabolism can be transferred from one person to another using the ancient runelore and forcibles of rare blood metal. The person who gives such an endowment, a dedicate, loses the attribute when the receiver, known as Runelords, exhibit superhuman strength, speed, stamina etc. A warrior with a dozen endowments to his credit thus becomes practically invincible to a common man. Not until his dedicates die will a Runelord become a normal person again, making them valuable to their lord and interesting targets for assassins. The consequences of this concept are disturbing, the economics quite impossible, but this is fantasy, I thought the idea interesting at least. It strikes me as a medieval arms race.

This book is something of a new beginning, though I would not recommend starting here. In the first four books we are told about the struggles of Gaborn Val Orden, the fist Earthking in two thousand years, and his struggles against the Reavers and the powers that control them. Now, nine years on, his many endowments of metabolism have aged him and his wife Iome prematurely. They know they will not live to see their sons Falion and Jaz grow up. Before he dies Gaborn charges Sir Boreson and his wife Myrrima with the care of his two boys. Knowing them in terrible danger, Gaborn manages to send them one last warning before he dies. Run, beyond the ends of the earth is not far enough. And surely enough, as soon as the Earthking dies his enemies try to control or get rid on his nine year old heir. So begins a desperate flight to safety for Falion, Jaz and Boreson's family.

Falion, the main character of this novel is not your typical nine year old. He is a Son of the Oak, born in a time of plenty under the Earthking's rule, to a generation that is somehow brighter and more talented than their ancesters, Falion is wise beyond his years. He is very quick to understand the way of the world. His father sensed this in him and realized Falion had greater potential than even he had, both to do evil or good. Throughout the book Falion struggles with good and evil in the world and especially in himself. The book is more or less centred around Falion's exploration of these themes, we learn very little of the evil that threatens him or it's motives.

The constant stream of insights into the nature of good and evil make Falion a very unlikely nine year old. I know it fits in the story but Farland overdoes it. There is very little boyish about him. I once wrote on the first Runelords novel The Sum of All Men that the book read like it had had an endowment of metabolism as well. Farland rushed that story on at great speed. I think he rushes here again, but in another way. The world has barely had time to catch it's breath when the next (too young) hero of the realm stands ready to battle evil. A hero that ought to be severely traumatized by what he's seen. I was not impressed with the way Farland handled the coming of age of Falion and since there is very little else about this novel, except a rather abrupt break with most of the remaining characters from the previous four books, I am not impressed with this novel as a whole.

Farland uses this book to introduce a new hero and set the stage for an new epic struggle between good and evil. Perhaps that is to be expected in a first book of a new sequence. Unfortunately he does so with an unlikely main character, fighting an unknown evil whose motives remain unclear until the last revelation in the book. A revelation that is almost added as an afterthought. I never considered Farland's Runelords series five star material but I enjoyed the previous four a lot more. I certainly hope the sixth volume Worldbinder, recently published in hardcover, will be more convincing.

Of late I have kind of been, or more properly stated, returned to a mystery kick and recent excursions into my unread book piles have taken particular notice to book that claim to be hybrid mystery or sleuth novels. From superb novels like The Spiral Labyrinth by Mathews Hughes to exploring the world of Chen and Liz Williams, and too countless debuts of late in what seems on the surface to be a new fad as two pools of writers see crossover opportunities in each other’s depths or something no doubt much more innocent in simply being a combination of a writer’s love for both mediums, consciously or not.

Among the more recent of these books is a one Nathalie Mallet entitled The Princes of the Golden Cage. It’s a pseudo-Ottoman backdrop taking place entirely in the city, the seat of power of Telfar Empire ruled by the Ban dynasty. The central element and the novel’s most interesting facet is the implementation of the Kafes system (unfortunately spelled out on the first page for the reader), a system that places and confines all sons of the reigning Sultan into one portion of the palace until one of them ascends to the throne. The choice of the next ruler is not at all reliant on order of birth, or necessarily the station of one’s mother, but is tabulation based on a formula overseen by the Vizier of the “cage” and the Sultan himself that make up an updated registry that the Prince’s can follow their current rank. Aside from whatever personal or politically motivated preferences of the Vizier and Sultan, these ranks fluctuates on the action of the Princes themselves. The Cage is a Darwin daycare where fratricide is the norm as princes vie to improve their standing even if it’s just to position themselves in the esteem of brothers who are the favorites. It’s like a horse race but the horses are betting and are the bookies Others, like Mallet’s protagonist, Amir, chooses a different route. One of the more studios of his sibling (so he thinks), he strives to achieve a state of that of the undistinguished. He walks the line of exuding the presence of a threat yet not being so weak to be viewed as easy prey. He does this so much - and until the occurrences of this novel - so well, it actually assimilates into his worldview of himself which proves most dangerous in his environment. The crux of the story is that he is a woken up one night and asked to help investigate particularly peculiar death that turns into a series of such that seem supernatural in nature. This sets him on a path that will take him off of his average path of safety and in a certain sense makes him start living a life. It is more than interesting that he essentially has the same day-to-day life style of his two immediate neighbors, brothers that are more or less hermits and are both - to some degree - mildly delusional.

Amir’s journey to freedom is at time interesting as the evolution occurs sentence by sentence. In the beginning all the 117 inhabitants of the cage are his brothers but as the novel progresses he clearly starts separating them, and thus himself in his mind. The entourage of the Sultan’s current favorite to ascend, Ibrahim, no longer are his (Amir’s) brothers, they are Ibrahim’s. I think the reoccurring tendency to think the Amir is an idiot isn’t as much a product of questionable writing but is probably and hopefully and intentional effect to keep the reader mumbling to the pages as we would chastise our dumb young kid cousin or brother. We are supposed to envision ourselves as another brother, Darius, a more typical fantasy protagonist (and thus thankfully not so in this book) and while I think perhaps our attachment to Amir is a bit too overtly intended and threatens to be more than an annoyance but I think for the most part it remains bearable.

I find that in most whodunits authors can’t help but to smile at us at some point nearly in the novel and The princes of The Princes Golden Cage is no different in this work. There is a single line in this book that should allow you figure out who or what the antagonist is. I certainly didn’t know the details or motivations exactly but I knew where the path would lead eventually and admittedly perhaps the fun is to be proven right as much as it is to be surprised.

I fear when a book in this type of backdrop is written and is described it is inevitable that it will be tagged with The Arabian Nights wrap which is a bit like saying Open Water II reminds you of Moby Dick because there is like water…and boats and stuff. For the same reason every bloke or shelia who writes a street level story is Dickensian and god forbid you have Hell in your story because you’re obviously channeling Dante. At not time in my reading did The Princes of the Golden Cage invoke the Arabian Nights, though it may spur thoughts of what some think - IE haven’t read - the Arabian Nights represents. What Mallet does have on her hands is what I’d call a quick, in-and out read. As I said prior, the story doesn’t leave the city and follows essentially one character performing a single task and along the way we are introduced to what may be an underdeveloped cast, but is naturally and correctly limited due to the POV choice which I think is reasonably kept to. At times it is hard to convince the reader that Amir can be so petulant at times as we are no really immersed into the world as much as we are just along for the ride as it occurs. We are indeed told the why, but I’m not sure if the reader feel the stakes as much as we are simply told what the stakes are. - I’m not walking in his shoes, I‘m told what brand he wears and where Amir is walking. It’s a brisk enough read that I kept on reading partly due to interest, and partly due to the economy of the experience. It’s a read that you become aware of early on that won’t astound you upon conclusion but neither did I feel inclined to give up on it either. In some sense it’s much like Amir - good enough to not get tossed after every chapter, but not at all threatening the upper-hierarchy of my bookshelf either.

There are some rather annoying elements in the novel and to some could represent deathblows to the reading experience. First, just about everybody we are introduced to via Amir is somebody else, or the long lost relative of, so much so I wanted to ask all of them if any of them knew Ratchett was indeed Cassetti! The problem is that it somehow occurs without the characters ever achieving a state of being multifaceted. Secondly, the ending is so telegraphed and the invitation of it by the antagonist seemed so stressed and bolded in my mind that it invites you to think if the read suddenly shifted to a YA novel. I’d be remiss to say it isn’t an absolutely cringe worthy sequence of events and due to being the climax of the novels ends up perhaps unfortunately marring the work as a whole. All in all The Princes of The Golden Cage was a solid one night read and at times has a charming, mischievous quality, and possibly even hits its mark, I just don’t think I’m that target.

In a slight confession, what prompted me to take a look at the book is that I found that I had multiple copies that were sporting different covers The book I received first was the galley and pimped a cover marked for solicitation purposes only and I remember that it caught my eye the day I received it. In the past I have stated that I’d never buy a book because of the cover but I would also not even give a second look to a book because of a cover. The finished version of the book sports a real stock 70’s and 80’s Deryniesque look that would be a strong model representative of what I wouldn’t buy. The first cover is vivid, atmospheric, inviting adventure in a city of opulence, and an intoxicating, basking in forbidden romance representing freedom. I preferred the latter but perhaps the one ultimately used is more honest.

Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

My Immortal by Erin McCarthy is a romantic fantasy tale that leans more toward romance than fantasy. The lead character, Marley Turner is a shy, timid, self-conscious and self deprecating woman who’s concern for and jealousy of her wild sister leads her to the steamy wilds of New Orleans.

Marley, fresh from a solitude retreat at a monastery, has traveled to New Orleans to discover whether her sister is truly missing or just out of touch with her family and young son. Lizzie’s last communication with Marley indicated that she was in love. This clue leads her to Damien du Bourg who, unbeknownst to her, is an immortal in service to a demon. With Damien’s help, Marley attempts to locate her sister and during the search finds herself becoming more and more interested in Damien.

While this story was an attempt to mix the fascination of the fantasy genre with the intoxication of the romance genre, I felt that it did justice to neither. The purpose of the demon and his immortal daughters were not adequately explained and the bargain struck by Damien du Bourg seemed to be convenient device. Perhaps because I could not relate to either of the main characters, I did not enjoy this book as much as I should have. Generally a mix of fantasy and romance will send me running to the couch to open the book and begin.

I did like McCarthy’s use of the old letters to tie in the past and give the reader an insight into the current characters. However, these letters did not read as real letters would have done, and they didn’t have the feel of a diary or journal. Because they included entire conversations and other descriptions that would not have been included in these types of writings, these letters felt like an obvious information dump. A device to give the reader what was needed without the entire necessary story to go with it. This fractured the story and made it feel false, like a deliberate tall tale.

Other parts of the story may be especially appealing or not depending upon what you are looking for. There is a great deal of gratuitous sex included in the story, including Damian’s debauched background and his sex parties designed to inflame the lusts of mortals. The actual romantic scenes between Damian and Marley are less gratuitous but they display the characteristics of long time lovers, not of lovers who have just met. Granted, Damien’s specialty is charm and sexuality but that wouldn’t change the nature of Marley’s thoughts and reactions.

So while this was not a bad book, I was a bit disappointed that the author took so many shortcuts with a good idea and turned it into something that was only marginally interesting. I felt that she could have explored a great deal more of the demon aspect. That she could have given us a few glimpses of Damien’s two hundred years as a broker of lust, and more background on the two sisters and why they are the way they are. I think it could be a fine book if it were to be expanded, the plot holes filled and some of the character’s lives filled out.

“Sniper Elite: Spear of Destiny” by Jaspre Bark is based on the videogame “Sniper Elite” by Rebellion Games. It is the first in a projected series from Abaddon Books.

The story centers on Karl Fairburne, an elite American sniper fighting in the last days of World War II’s European theater. Germany has all but fallen when Fairburne’s superiors give him dire news: Germany has built a working nuclear weapon, and a rogue SS general plans to defect to the Soviet Union and take the secret of the atomic bomb with him. With the United States and Soviet Union still officially allied, Fairburne must go deep undercover and battle Germans and Russians alike to keep this terrible new weapon out of Stalin’s hands.

I liked the central idea for this story, but the execution of the initial premise was disappointing. The plot is competent but not particularly gripping, consisting in large part of the protagonist going on a series of sniping missions assigned by his commander, with battles and complications arising on each mission. Unfortunately, the main character and overall story arc isn’t interesting enough to keep the individual episodes from getting repetitive after a while. There are some interesting developments near the end, but my lack of investment in the events and characters weakened their effect.

The book is badly weakened by the lack of interesting major characters. The hero and viewpoint character, Karl Fairburne, is not very compelling- he has little personality, and the back story he is given did little to provoke my interest. Fairburne’s lack of personality could have been effective if used to further a characterization of a man with his emotions dulled by the horror of war (as is skillfully done in some of David Drake’s work, for instance) but I didn’t get a sense of that from Fairburne; he didn’t come across as damaged, just uninteresting. This is especially unfortunate because there are some plot twists towards the end that would have been far more effective if I had been more interested in the main character.

On the plus side, the book’s atmosphere is strong. Bark paints an evocative picture of war-ravaged Berlin. He does a good job of creating a sense of despair and decay in his descriptions of the ruined city. The book’s action sequences are fast-paced and exciting, and Bark is good at creating a sense of tension during the sniping sequences. The violence is fairly graphic, and Bark uses that to good effect- the frequent descriptions of bloody injury and death, which could have been repetitive if handled poorly, did a good job of creating an atmosphere of horror.

All in all, I see “Spear of Destiny” as something of a missed opportunity, with an interesting premise, effective atmosphere, and a few potentially strong plot moments weighed down by a repetitive, mostly middling narrative and flat characters. To be fair to Bark, some of this may be due to the limitations of the source material, since he was presumably expected to follow the plot and characterizations of the video game. Unfortunately, despite some elements that make me suspect that Bark is a better writer than this book suggests, I can’t recommend “Spear of Destiny.”

“Demands of Honor” is book two of the Errands of Fury Star Trek series. This book is set in the Classic Star Trek era. In an interesting twist though, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and company were secondary characters in this story. The focus of this story was Michael Fuller and his Starfleet Security team. Typically the role of the redshirt in the original series has become stereotypical that it is now a running pop culture joke. This book puts them in a role other than cannon fodder.

Also in the forefront was political drama as the Federation and Klingon Empire teetered on the bring of war. Council Member Duras showed that his family’s penchant for sneakiness and treachery stretched farther back in time from the Next Generation Era. The crew of the I.K.S. D’k Tahg had no doubt that he was up to something. The question was what, and would they be able to find out before it was too late to do anything about it?

Errand of Fury was an appropriate title for this novel. Several characters confronted the demons of their past. First Officer Karel on the D’k Tahg sought to avenge the death of his brother. Michael Fuller was still haunted by the death of his son in battle against the Klingons.

As the Federation and Klingon Empires stared each other down, the primitive race of Klingon inhabiting a dilithium rich planet in System 7348 were caught in the middle. The younger Adon and his clan sought to save their race from an act of treachery. He too had a personal score to settle.

The focus on different characters in the Star Trek universe was a two-headed monster. It was a breath of fresh air. The Enterprise has a crew of several hundred. Presumably all these Star Fleet personnel are highly trained and competent at their jobs. Yet it seemed to be Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, and Uhura getting all the action, leading all the missions, etc. The security personal? They go on an away mission and they die. “They’re dead Jim!”

On the other hand, when you read a Star Trek book you’re expecting to see certain characters. It was strange to see the senior officers confining themselves to the bridge of the Enterprise while there was a lot of action going on in an away mission. The storyline justification for that seemed odd, when circumstances in the show didn’t often keep Kirk confined to his ship. So I found myself mainly wondering when the Security personnel would meet their seemingly inevitable demise. Would they be the sacrificial lambs to add gravity to the plot as things teetered on the edge of war and the plot switched back to the main characters? Since these are “temporary” characters, it was hard to really care about the characters. Whether these characters would die, heroically or tragically or whether their demons would get the best of them and add fuel to the plot fire did make the story “interesting” but not a classic. It wasn’t a bad book, but it was short and pretty predictable. But if you’re a fan of Redshirts and yearn to see them have a life expectancy of longer than about 5 minutes you'd definitely enjoy this book.

The story follows the character Johnny Greco, an old has-been reporter who now works for a tabloid news site on the internet, having little more respect than paparazzi. The world is similar to our own, but it's a bit more into the future, where the “right-wing white Christians”(as Hendra refers to them) have taken over. Executions are performed on criminals (now called “sinners”) who have the chance to repent before death, all the Christians drive giant SUVs, and the President himself has a religious advisor in his cabinet who has a heavy amount of power and influence. The Messiah, who Johnny Greco gets caught up with trying to do a story on, is an early-twenties Hispanic named Jay, who performs miracles all throughout the ghettos, but never on camera.

It sounds like a pretty decent set-up for a humorous yet eye-opening story at this point, until the actual writing is factored in.

Johnny Greco is the only character who feels a little known to the reader. He's an apathetic, down-to-earth sort of guy, with a hint of desperation, and a void in his life that only Jay and his story can seemingly fill. He's not hard to relate to if you've felt apathetic before in your own life, but he's just a bit too exaggerated. At times he almost seems to mope through scenes, with little to no input or emotion about anything – and, since he's the voice of narration, this can put the reader to sleep. Jay, on the other hand, is almost like a ghost character. What little background you do get of him is nothing you wouldn't expect (he liked being at church when he was little, he's always been soft-spoken and friendly, etc.). The only other interpretation we get about him throughout the story is that he makes Johnny feel serene when Johnny talks to him, which is not really that often, because he's very frequently absent from the book, with Johnny only hearing about his stories, but usually never being there. None of the other characters(Jay's apostles and the President's religious advisor are the only ones attempted) are ever given enough page space to have them thoroughly fleshed out, so the story really only feels like it has Johnny as a character, which is completely uninteresting most of the time.

The story lacks any sort of creativity on Hendra's part. The events unfold as if Hendra himself had just finished reading the story of Jesus's death and rebirth, and was regurgitating it onto paper, replacing “Jesus” with “Jay” where necessary. Do you know what happens in the story of Jesus's death and rebirth? Then you know what happens in The Messiah Of Morris Avenue. Aside from the fact that Jay actually claims he is Jesus returned, at one point a character says, “I am Jay's Judas.” The are certainly no surprises or twists.

The style of writing in the book is one of straightforwardness and some bad sarcasm that altogether lacks subtlety. Again, with Johnny as the voice of narration, the reader would expect a down-to-earth straight tone with possible dry humor, but the sarcasm and humor that's supposed to keep the reader's interest is completely lacking. I may have laughed once throughout the book, but for the most part Hendra seems to have a different idea of humor than I do. For instance, he frequently repeats sayings such as “far-right Christians” or “right wing evangelists” almost to the point of where he must think he's placing a little golden nugget of comedy for the reader to find every few pages. The same could be said about always needing to state that Christian characters drive “SSUVs”, the extra S in front being for “Super”. Way to go Tony, that had my sides splitting all 300 times I read it. Naming the site that Johnny works for The Inquiring Mind (definitely not referring to our own online tabloid site The Inquirer) was clever as well. Oh, and after potentially symbolic events happen, saying “Symbolism? Sure.” is not the way to keep the reader guessing and reflecting after they're done. The serious writing and descriptions in the story are always of the “meh” style, that is, where nothing that happens feels important, and the narrator seems to reinforce that they're not important. Not a good combination to keep a reader interested.

Hendra's complete lack of subtlety and creativity diminishes what otherwise could have been a great story with a powerful message. I'd recommend avoiding The Messiah Of Morris Avenue.

-Kevin Main