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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like the character of Hieronymus Bonaventure very much. I like the feeling of “This is only the beginning”. He seems to be at the beginning of a heroic journey. The Author’s Notes at the end, which Roberson included because he likes to provide just a little more, bear that out. He writes a lot of alternate history fiction at this point. The basic underlying history and flavor in the story seemed very real to me. I enjoyed that very much, as I waited to see exactly where that history and ordered universe was going to take a very sharp turn. Roberson definitely seems to not be so obsessed with writing a story of a ship’s crew encountering unimaginable horror that he glosses over the historical flavor part of it to get there.

That brought a lot of tension and intrigue to the story for me since, if there were horrors awaiting The Fortitude, they would appear all the more horrible in contrast to the very real world that had already been fleshed out.

Set the Seas on Fire also seemed to flow very well. It did not bog down in long chapters that ran off into tangents. It moved along in very short and focused chapters that made for a pleasant read that did not bog down at any point.

The after notes indicate that Set the Seas on Fire is a prequel to Paragaea: A Planetary Romance. I can only presume that the adventures become more exotic and, pardon the pun, “out of this world”. While Set the Seas on Fire saves the exotic of Lovecraftian elements for the end of the book, it was a very solid prequel and I personally am very interested to read both the book that this is a prequel to as well as any other direct sequels that it is (hopefully) spawning. There are enough loose ends remaining from this book that it apparent that the adventure is not intended to be confined within this 372 pages.

I give Set the Seas on Fire a 7.5. I think it sets up for some very interesting follow-up material, which should stretch my imagination further. Roberson handles his characters very gracefully and I look forward to reading additional offerings.

Gavril faces his deepest fear-that he cannot exist without his Drakhoul. His comfortable life was turned upside down in the first book of this trilogy with the appearance of a smoky presence that wrapped around him and invaded his being. The Drakhoul, a dark and demanding creature, promised strength beyond reckoning and breathed sulfur into Gavril’s soul. This power came with a heavy price, however. Gavril sustained physical changes without and within, his body changing into a dragon with the appetite of a vampire. Unable to face living as a monster, Gavril throws off his familiar with the help of Kiukiu and looks forward to living as a human again. Unfortunately, without the power of the Drakhoul to protect his people, Gavril is taken prisoner and Eugene proclaims himself Emperor of all he surveys.

Ms. Ash blazes through her descriptions of people. As the second book in the series entitled The Tears of Artamon, Prisoner of the Iron Tower is Act II of a three act play. There are many characters and most seem to be playing more than one role. Attempting to identify the alliances made and betrayed can leave one breathless. Like a typical second act, life seems dark for our hero Gavril and the countries fighting for independence.

I enjoyed this one more than the first, which is a bit unusual. The author seems to delve deeper into the primary characters, making them real. Readers see into the mind of Eugene, the self-proclaimed Emperor of New Rossiyan. He is not a flat, all-out bad guy but is very human, a contradiction. The loving father, afraid to emotionally embrace his new wife because the loss of the first was so painful. This alongside of the imperious ruler who demands instant groveling, paranoid about all around him and whose dreams consist of all he sees bowing to him. Readers sense that if Astasia and Eugene could just communicate better, a love could blossom that could heal the agony in his heart.

However, the character development of Eugene is balanced by a frenetic bouncing between other characters, shifting the focus so much I became a bit frustrated. I wanted the story to land in one place and develop more. I think she attempted to do too much here, trying to balance the story of Eugene as a budding emperor with the rebellion in the south and the destruction of Gavril’s country in the north. On top of all this is the search to understand the Drakhoul and his kind, to control or banish him forever. The story dashes one way and then swerves the other, like the daemon-dragon of the tale. Reader, beware! Ms. Ash invests effort in creating her characters only to pitch them off a cliff for the sake of the story. My hope is Sarah Ash will resolve this story effectively in book three of The Tears of Artamon, The Children of the Serpent Gate.

The vision of a bridge probably invokes the feeling of simplicity, a means to go from A to B or vice versa, at time ornate, but more likely, sensible, serviceable, and functional, but bridges in fiction have led us to many memorable moments. Whether the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, Goats Gruff, Jon Orr, or perhaps most memorable to me, a standoff between brothers, Benedict and Brand, fans of speculative fiction have tread many bridges and with Shadow Bridge, Gregory Frost brings to us a world made of bridges, bringing a literal walkways to the figurative that exists all around us.

Our travels take us to different spans, an apt description considering our protagonist‘s ‘magic’ is in her hands - a master shadow puppeteer - as she looks back on her travels, collecting and sharing stories, and performing in a manner that had not been witnessed since a generation before. Leodora, whose stage name, Jax, relays not only the stories of the myth, but draws audiences from members of the pantheon who inhabit such stories. Relegated to a caste that views a potential marriage to the dimwit son of a lackluster family in the hinterlands as an optimal destiny, Leodora, the local pariah, who knows very little but lies and gossip regarding her eclectic parentage runs off to pursue her father’s trade. Bardsham the last master shadow puppeteer - and the greatest.

The town drunkard was the first to bring Leodora to Tenikemac as a baby and he would accompany her as she fled. Soter, the man who preserved the legacy of Bardsham, the puppets of the former master of shadow play, and passed them to his heir. Soter is the bridge to the past, prone to converse with the dead, and while his intent seems true, you get the distinct impressions he does his best to lay low, perpetually on the run but nor trying to look like it and his new, or perhaps life-long charge has raised the stakes. Is his habit due to reflecting on past digressions or the future he was waiting for? Or perhaps - he just enjoys his drink. There is guilt, there is pride, and a sense of duty.

In between the travels, two deviations highlight the novel. One to tell the story of the company’s third member picked up along the way . It’s a the story of a boy left abandoned with an abandoned home who is used as bait for a divine lottery and then sold to service to a Harem with a twist -drinks and spirits included. A musical savant/avatar, you lose yourself in his song, as although brief telling you get completely immersed and you don’t realize you left one story for another - it was always about Diverus wasn’t it? - until a member of the audience reveals a familiar face. We also get a recurring story, of creation and death, a tale of a fisherman - the original dreamer - and his wife, that adds to the immediacy of the story as they recount the mythology and origin of Shadow Bridge itself.

There is a fourth member, the secret companion, an enigma that will remain as such…

The most amazing aspect of the novel may be its constraint. There is a real story. Frost can go anywhere, along the bridges of a multiverse, and he seemingly does, but it all spirals back, every step is relevant, even if we don’t know it as a fact when we whimsically take it, at once Florentine and Shinto. But it never just dissolves into a fever dream - the characters and their problems are substantial, if it is an experiment, they are the control. What made something like Amber such a terrific read was that you while one can clearly witness the endless possibilities of walking through Shadow, Zelazny never forgot his story; and while Frost’s weave and use of point-of-view is a bit more ambitious, you only ever lose the story long enough for it to find you around the next corner. The segues from one environment to another, from one span to another is smooth. It doesn’t come off as abrupt absurdism, it’s not a book that demands constant leaps of faith even when we find ourselves in mid-jump, and it is able to maintain an authentic feeling of travelers on the road. For this reason, Frost’s makes us feel we are not seeing his finished products being deconstructed recorded on paper , we feel like we are there as he constructs it. The telling is as refined as the product thus far.

Often times when following a troupe’s travels in our reading, the journey feels as if it’s what occurs between the author’s real passion or the exact opposite, destinations are end point, rest areas in between the actions create bonds between characters in the process of running away from troubles or chasing after themselves - and in the aptly titled Shadow Bridge we have both. Nothing feels like an extensions of the other, everything is unique, everything is fantastic, we touch the mythic, we share stories with gods, then we go to find our next job, drink our next beer, catch our next fish, stare at and converse with our monuments, we play board games…with Kitsune.

A planned duology, what we also see is the development of a concept - a universe - for even more stories whether future novels or short fiction to inhabit. From parades to ‘the end’, more stories of the dragon bowl, there is fertile ground for revisiting all manners of stories in a Willinghamish way. There are preexisting cases such as a call back to call back to Frost’s fine collection Attack of the Jazz Giants and other stories, where one story - a Sturgeon finalist - entitled How Meersh the Bedeviler Lost his Toes was referenced, as Leodora viewed her puppets:

And later, the master story teller tells him - the Trickster - to go back to his own story.

It’s a beautiful story but not in the same vein I have described in more recent reviews, it’s not Valente who both whispers and screams at us with the voice that makes us anticipate each equally; Frost charms us in manner like Park did last year, and there is a feint lyric in the background , a harpist in the wind, that is beautiful but has a grace that goes beyond skin deep that brings to mind the strengths of several of my most beloved reads, but only in flashes, before forming its own vision. When confronted with just having the first book in a story, upon reaching its conclusion there are many possible reactions. Disappointment, anticipation, satisfaction, disconcertion and Frost leaves us looking back believing the phrase, "we build too many walls and not enough bridges". As we look forward, the idea that we may be a part of something special is more than a mere passing thought. We aren’t just looking forward to a worthwhile journey, we just stepped out of one., and yet we feel like we are continually chasing it and are never left feeling lethargic as at the same time we sense it stalking us. The novel physically weighs in at well below 300 pages, but you come out of it with more in the experience than you do multiple installment tomes promising swords and truths, blood and stone - you can trip on its shadow.

I’m hooked, the serenity of a fisherman’s dreams and the chaos of the beings who inhabit it offers a middle ground we can all find our place in, in this case one of the best reads of the year and this is just the beginning. I'm a traveling man this year this year; the best books of this year I encountered when walking the road and crossing a bridge.

Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

A little boy with a gift for leadership and a desire for the good of his people runs afoul of those with a hunger for power. His skills in strategy and inspiration unwittingly threaten the position of the crown prince, who is himself incapable of the type of loyal following that Inda inspires. Inda’s downfall from grace marks a turning point in the story, and he must leave the life he knows and create a new existence at sea. Here the story widens its scope and readers begin to see that the fate of this one boy has affected his country on every level.

This is fantasy written in both broad sweeps of the pen and behind-the-scene details, bringing this world into three dimensional relief. Full of swashbuckling flourishes, mysterious spies, political machinations, and believable characters, this is a well-told story that has adroitly worked its way into my list of favorites. Although the main character is Indevan, the boy of the title, the book is truly about politics and powersharing among cultures sustained by war and trade.

Sherwood Smith has excelled at her craft, creating a society where men have granted women power within limits and women have quietly worked behind the scenes to control and ameliorate what men might do. The complex social structure, the assumption that small magics are a part of life, the slang of the characters all combine to convince the reader that the lives defined by this book are reality. What captivates me the most are the hints that Inda’s people may have come from some other world, dropped comments here and there that imply a larger scope to the story than just the pages in this book.

I truly enjoyed reading this book. I like books that look at the bigger picture and authors who take the time to create the small details and flesh out their stories. Sherwood Smith has accomplished this with flair. She includes a short list of definitions in the back of the book to help with terms, but I could also have used a list of characters or a family tree.* I found myself backtracking a bit to remind myself who was who. She also ended the book with a whopping cliffhanger (blast her hide)! This means I need to run out and find The Fox, the next book in the series.

*Readers who would like more information about the Inda universe should check out Sherwood Smith’s website at www.sherwoodsmith.net

Fiction’s new favorite purloiners return, the scene of their last crime – an act of lurid but no less true justice - drifting behind them. Their introductions behind them, the characters cast off and stripped of nearly all possessions but their lives, one could conclude an author would be primed to hit the shores running with his second offering, diving headlong into another fresh and elaborate juke devised to follow 2006’s most recommendable debut.

To our initial disappointment Lynch delivers.

We find the remnants of our band stalking the pits of the Sinspire, patiently and calculatingly ascending lady luck’s ladder in Lynch’s Monte Carlo, the city-state Tal Verrar, marked on any map as the destination for the apex of high society and high stakes. The absurdity of the back in-saddle starting point exhibits the author’s greatest strength, his decisions on how to pace a novel. The cuts to the recent past, giving us the anatomy of the scheme and farther back to moments transpiring in the direct aftermath of The Lies of Locke Lamora are perfectly placed, once again functioning as a new door to open just before the occupied space stagnates. You seem to never be anywhere but where you want to be, Lynch just doesn’t let you in on the fact until a chapter later, and the reader isn’t sprinting or running a marathon as much as they are in a literary shuttle run. The initial perceived thoughtlessness is rectified as our ‘hero’ is doing the only thing any reader should expect as an aftermath to the first book…

The Thorn of Camorr is grieving. Reduced to a melancholic lush, burdened with the weight of an adynamic soul. The Gentleman Bastards have been reduced to a duo and it is Jean who takes on a gamgee role to make sure that number isn’t cut in half again. The bastard’s lifestyles are inherently risky, but Locke is used to winning his gambits and the effect of the loss of members of his troupe is not skirted over by Lynch. While Locke chooses to rot we witness Jean exploring other avenues other friendships, and destiny - paths that make him at time vague, unreadable even to Locke. For Locke it was the dead end, for Jean it was a bit of crossroad, they always knew the stakes better than anyone but never had to pay-up, and the events in Camorr were shakedowns of the soul. When we finally see the charisma and vigor return to Locke – he is not unchanged – he has doubt, not in himself or Jean, but in Jean’s faith in him. There is an Ocean’s Eleven vibe but what drives the duo most is neither a faire sauter la banque goal nor vengeance, but it is passion for the art of the trade as Lynch cuts back to unveil steps to the heist at intervals even as they are being cast in multiple plots against other factions – simultaneously.

When I reviewed The Lies of Locke Lamora the single stumbling point for me were the Bondsmagi. Their presence as a nation of essentially unstoppable ace-in-the-hole-ass hole-boogiemen seemed more convenient plot device to me than a welcome in reading even though Lynch memorably made sure to exhibit they could indeed be touched – and with extreme prejudice – it remains an element still that I wish we could be rid of. It does give that constant threat of reprisal in Locke’s and Jean’s lives and one they are fully aware that they are almost powerless to stop if the Bondsmagi want to collect, but otherwise seems like a burden we now have to deal with just to make the Grey King’s ploy in the first book plausible. That aside, Red Seas Under Red Skies is not only a worthy sophomore effort, it is with little doubt the superior book. Too infrequent is our chance to read great pirate stories, such that we all have that similar shortlist in our head when asked to reference them: The Scar, On Stranger Tides, The Princess Bride (okay I’m stretching but you its one of those inclusions you simply can’t be mad about), Pyrates, Captain Blood; some more dedicated readers may include recent stories by Wells Tower or Rhys Hughes and Lynch supplies an addition to that list. It is so because in a book that features our protagonists being used as puppets by both sides in a feud over control of Tal Verrar between a well informed War Lord and the master of the Sinspire, Requin and his majordomo, learning the art of pirating and with one eye always looking over their shoulders for Bondmagi, all while still keeping to and amending their own scheme in play, Lynch is able to still make a brief excursion to Salon Corbeau the highlight and most decisive and gratifying chapter in the novel.

The glamorization of thieves and their exploits are hardly an untested formula in all mediums of fiction (and non-fiction) from – and Lynch’s books have a manner about them that make them feel cool but not trendy – the difference is achieving a state when it is not your goal. In this manner it’s more pool hall junkies than smokin’ aces and Locke’s healthy hatred for the wealthy and is so blatant that it creates this aura of honesty about the character that creates a natural common ground with more than ninety-ninety percent of the people who could potentially pick up the book. Chain’s words rattle in the back of his mind, and brands Locke to be an instrument, not as a social equalizer, but to act as a living memory and in a case that a past humbling instance doesn’t apply, to be the tool with arms long enough to hit the elite in the mouth – not so much for the joy of the literal punch, but to personify the figurative, permanent black eye. While Lynch keeps his promise of offering the reader a complete, self-contained story in each book of the sequence, it is the chapters such as this sprinkled in both books that expose the roots of the Thorn, the foundation and origin of the persona and we are a witness to it as much in the displays of his commitment to his craft as we are when he later insures a family of master artisans be spared a settlement’s judgment. It is really these chapters that supply that secondary, post-read pondering content and allows us to discuss Locke himself: peerlessly confident, a traveling - even if for one person audience - show, adrift, and guided by nothing but perhaps his own unique brand of avarice and the camaraderie of his partner, or is he that and still a child – looking to be guided by a higher authority, be it a father figure or deity. Is he driven by purpose or constantly searching for it? I’m unsure if it was the author’s intent – perhaps it was my own projection – but Locke seemed to go into a darth-mode for a moment, as he was a spectator of game played in Salon Corbeau called The Amusement War. He showed what was more than mere disgust, it was pure, unbridled, hatred. We know Locke is certainly capable of mischief from grand theft to killing, but the presence of this hate was almost disconcerting, and in the most positive of ways. This is not a balanced individual and while capable of extreme concentration and control when necessary, as much as Locke is able to manipulate his surroundings – the world moves him, not the other way around, and thus a feeling of contrivance is avoided in a manner that sometimes is not true of larger than life characters where often too often the world revolves around them.

This is as much a Jean novel as it a Locke novel, and it Jean’s story that in some ways saves the novel as the secondary characters tend to be a bit uneventful and seem perhaps too bit of a clean fit. There was no Chains, or characters of the like that were only limited by pages they were on, not what they brought to them. When we left Camorr we did so feeling we left some future stories whether they included the bastards or not, told or left untold where Red Seas Under Red Skies feels much more like just simply leaving a chapter behind us. Lynch has a talent for what amounts to multiple epilogues, and while actual roles may seem a bit less thoughtful or standout, the conclusions to various plot lines never do. It's probably true that Red Seas Under Red Skies ends up feeling more harmless than it's predecessor and in end we are left much the same as we were in the beginning except the condition of the spirit and body change places, yet from the tone you feel there is a weary but playful composure - a game face – has returned to Locke and we wonder if these red seas will ever lead him to a home.

For even the most novice of fantasy enthusiast it is hard not to notice the Mieville similarity, not in the sense of adding to the tired modernization of the fantastic spiel, or at in any way implying a creative riff in regards to content, but in terms of general symmetry. Like China, Lynch abandons the confines of his urban center that not only served as the backbone of the introduction, but also breathes as if alive - a constant presence without dialogue, and chooses to launch to the high seas, a decision that makes us as much reader and mystery tourist. It also creates a odd sensation that rather mimics and reinforced the point-of-view and continuity cuts from past to present – as readers we were not so much unlike Bellis in search of future opportunity but ran off from our immediate past enough to look back before ever step forward and the subsequent trips were what made the story. We still have that Camorr musk on us as readers and it takes awhile for us to appreciate the fresh sea air. In Red Seas Under Red Skies, no matter the location of the masquerade at hand, Camorr still plays an off-stage roll and we perhaps learn more of the city – and the mentality of her vagabond sons while being elsewhere. There is also an excursion in The Scar to a land of blood sucking horror mosquito people, and Lynch has his version of such a stopover and monsters only they are represented by man. Admittedly it’s all rather superficial - as were many of the overstated comparison involving with the first novel - (the comparisons) but something that was definitely in my mind.

In the more the merrier era of ensembles and complexity weighed by cast numbers Lynch chooses what is still not the path less taken, but is one that is polluted with innumerable unmarked graves, not blank due to a lack of information, but to signify that is no more relevant than the other, of stories buried that don’t require a revisit, failed adventurers blurred together that fail to spark reasonable recognition and whose names die even if they themselves do not, where the Tristan of Eutracia’s will come to rest or be buried alive. It is the path that has successfully been undertaken by a few, these are characters that threaten to become part of the very fabric of fantasy’s conscious – they are not necessarily characters that claim new territories and spill first blood on new ground but all are those that come to define. I like Neverwhere more than the next guy – but who was the protagonist again? Inevitably some replies will be "the guy who Vandermer and Croup were chasing". With Lynch, through just two books you feel as if the author perhaps has stumbled upon that multiverse-spanning, vellum-crossing, shadow walking, dream trail that ran through the Underdark that once revealed a lavender glint reflecting off dual scimitars, or was once trodden by a storm-bearing Albino, or where a blind prince of Amber sulked, or where stalked a ring-totting leopard, and even once bore a fool wizard and his luggage, among others. It is that connection with a single character that was once vogue that seems to a point admonished now for that very fact, and thus the numbers of personalities and seem that is still able to drive a series by their presence alone in a manner that perhaps is only mirrored in its first steps currently by Stover’s Cain or Morgan’s Tovac. The accomplishment includes and goes beyond being the topic of self-important small circles; it extends into daring to be large, indeed embracing it, but not at the same time fearing to achieve that state by accepting built in limitations more often simply the vices of minority aloofness. These are characters that create absolute statements – to actually come to not like Locke Lamora seems near implausible, a sad, dark place, an opinion hell with baffling inhabitants and even stranger horizons who sadly run away from large crowds just to be noticed and seemingly always scratch their when they miss the party wondering why. These are the characters that transcend book and series titles: they are the Elric, the Cain, Conan, Covenant and Drizzt books. The vast majority of the time I would say the human element – I think – remains the most important facet of any piece of fiction but I think we often limit what we perceive as grand accomplishment to examinations of that state and tend to view simply the enjoyment of as something lesser. There are simply very few reads that just have that kick back and relax ambience, that timeless fresh and jazzy ‘Summertime’ experience, "Here it is the groove slightly transformed just a bit of a break from the norm just a little somethin' to break the monotony of all that hardcore dance that has gotten to be a little bit out of control it's cool to dance but what about the groove that soothes that moves romance give me a soft subtle mix and if ain't broke then don't try to fix it" – ahhh...good times! That’s what Lynch brings to the shelf. When will Locke find what he searches for? Is it something even the greatest thief can steal? Does Locke Lamora fascinate me? Not in specific ways that some characters do. But the idea of more of his as of yet untold adventures do – and that’s an accomplishment.

The headstones don’t lie.

Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

For twenty-one generations an unbroken Akaran line has ruled the Known World; the staple in the pages of the gloss of stability and prosperity, the latest chapter given to King Leodan, not to write, but to keep on the shelf. A widower-monarch, he lived his life in the shadows of his ancestors, bound by their actions, as he knew his children would be. Leodan finds solace in sharing the fate of his people, drawing from the same tainted air and sharing in their vice. Unlike his people, he chooses to wear his chains, in either some piteous, twisted-gallant attempt to share the lie turned hash reality of his people - feeling it the least and most he could do - or to forget the very truth his kingdom was built upon or both. While in his own clouded mind it is still clear he knew he would not sustain either his life or own reign, his line would survive him. For better or worse, it would fall on his children to find their own story and bring to light the question of whether or not if stories do change or are merely reenacted by those who follow us in the quest not to.


In the distant frozen reaches of the empire, the Mein, a hardened race, and allies in establishing and expanding Akaran dynastic power nurse a 21-generation marinated hate. Driven by and burdened by his restless ancestors, Hanish Mein will lead his people out of exile with the best of intentions and with allies not of the known world. The Akaran children will be separated and clandestinely dispersed to differing corners of the Empire until history find them.

What’s right is clearly evident. It’s immensely readable, as Durham gives you multiple journeys to follow and does so without spending a substantial amount of time dragging explanatory back-story in an artificial and ponderous manner. We literally begin our stay into Durham’s world heading out the gate, on a singular, single-minded mission that would change the future history of the world that will unfold with us. We don’t so much have to wallow in the past history as much as we are thrust into the making of history itself. For myself, with few exceptions, large and lengthy action scenes in novels have become akin to chase scenes in films, which is to say altogether boorish and prime skim worthy non-content. The list of authors that are able elevate an already existing aura of passion with sensible brutality effectively into such scenes doesn’t go much beyond the likes of Stover, Erikson, Bakker, and few others, so what Durham chooses to do is a rather welcome occurrence for me and while it could be viewed as anticlimactic manner of writing I found it rather apt. Durham tends to have the crux of large-scale campaigns occur off-page and directs the reader right to the outcome that instills an effect that war changes abruptly and absolutely – the world turns. The plight of the Akaran children offers diverse enough avenues that one will be hard pressed not to find something that peaks interest – the pirate, godly figurehead, sansa-lite, the transition from boy to man. From the fringes of the empire that bears their name they are educated beyond the scope that the opulence of the Imperial center could hide from them. It presents both the potential fulfillment-dream and worst nightmares of a father who desired social and political change but was caught in-between with the dilemma of his responsibilities to his kingdom and to that of the harmony of his children’s lives in his remaining years. In the end he sends his children into hiding – much as he hid himself - but in doing so they find an understanding of the world they live in and with that, themselves.


The subtitle of this book is The War with the Mein and Durham does an admirable job in creating (with the Akarans) conflicting factions that merit more than lazy and haphazard tags regarding their motivations and races. The Mein have legitimate and even reasonable motivations. The three brothers of the ruling family are a motley brood, but each uniquely come to define some form of the word efficacious. In it’s simplest form, the brothers come to display three different models of reaction of the disenfranchised who are sick of the man pushing in their neighborhood, a practice that literally cursed generations of their people – and the Mein are playing dirty but no more so than the Acacians. Neither can much stomach The League, who hold a monopoly on commerce, are uncontested at sea and are the keepers and benefactors of the Acacian pact with those not of known world that both cripples and permits the Empire to exist. They (the league) play the role of the capitalist mercs in the setting and are the target of universal scorn and jealousy that comes with it.


As noted, Durham’s trade has been in historical fiction and Acacia has this unmistakable feel of a tale relayed by a historian with no present stakes tied to the conflict of the time. This gives the characters, factions and thus the book itself a style of presentation that allows the reader opportunities to feel conflicted in offering their allegiance to opposing sides of conflict and differing characters across those lines. Such a quality is generally - and aptly - attributed to a work as a desired element, indeed a success in a reading, yet at time I felt tied to the fence. We get characters who completely turn full circle, and then half again, but don’t feel as if they step out and it dangerously walks the line of being so preoccupied or perhaps so efficient in displaying how well rounded it is that everyone takes on the aura of uniformity, showing us all there is to offer, and while at times stimulating, one finds it hard not to notice the lack of emotional highs and lows in the flow of the read. Make no mistake, I do not require or even at all desire characters to sympathize with, much less personally admire, however, I felt I lacked any considerable reaction to occurrences in these character’s lives that I felt should have moved me or my opinion of them and this never occurred. One Thadeous Clegg, the Akaran chancellor – the second most powerful man in the Empire and confidant of Leodan – is a perfect example and his is a tale of betrayal, duty, vengeance, loyalty, lost love, family, and redemption yet we seem to go through these sometimes overlapping cycles unscathed and unaffected. Very early in the book and in the very section we are introduced to Clegg we read this of him:

But it is.


We stroll through a war and do so untouched. There is an immediacy that never reveals itself, an intimacy that always seems a page away. This isn’t to say that Durham isn’t confronting us with relevant questions in his examination of the role and eventual motivation of leadership, nationalism, slavery, and cultural outlook – both introspective and otherwise – but it is just so leveled in presentation through the characters that what ends up emanating is this withdrawn quality. Characters tend to go through the motions and in the end it’s the local lap dance that doesn’t come home with you – a comprehensive and vivid look but not truly an experience. It lacks in choice moments of personal extremity – not in terms to appease the gratuitous, but to truly endear. It is not that such moments don’t try to occur, but like kicking someone to death with a foot fallen asleep the satisfaction seems incomplete. There is a speculative-mystery content – those nebulous truths left to ponder between episodes in multi-book sequences that are stories within the stories that are make the time between installments events themselves – that seem absent to me at this point excluding only the true nature of sorcery or magic system Durham is going to employ. The mythological backdrop of Durham’s world, although allowing for slight local variances deals with a common enough application of magic that is rooted in the application of the language of the creator. What we do know of magic is gifted to us by those banished for knowledge of the practice during the formative years of the Akaran dynasty and by self-admittance their own application is an incomplete, tainted form of the true word. Couple that with the fact that the veracity of their input is dubious at best and we get a minor dose of legitimate ambiguity that I think, not coincidentally, connects with the most engaging character in the book, that of the Akaran General, Leeka Alain. Just about every other character we read about is of the royal family, has aims of supplanting and being such, or otherwise sycophants. Leeka, even with carrying a rank of some prestige takes on the role of the everyman and gives us the story of a veteran, both in the military and in life who so often serves as the spearhead with the virgin eyes through which we are introduced to the supernatural or foreign horrors and wonders of Durham’s world. It is with him we truly breathe the Acacian air, and where Durham seems to let loose outside of the confines of the structure that the principals of the first book are confined to move the plot. Now, by default does that imply a quality of contrivance present in the meat of the novel? Faintly. It does feel scripted and lacks that organic progression at times, but contrivance is the four-letter word of SF/F reviewing and if it apt it is only so because Acacia and Durham are impressive enough to gauge against – though not equal – the very best currently in the epic landscape. We are not speaking in terms of Newcombelike proportions or anything resembling such, but at times it felt like the world was revolving around the convenience of propelling the few. Quality authors hide what’s beyond the corner – the masters jump you on the straightaway and dare you to get up and even look at, much less limp around the corner.


Acacia is already a certainly much more than competent beginning of an epic fantasy story – it might even be a great one - and is a thoughtful platform for Durham’s aforementioned themes but exists as almost two separate entities making Acacia have the feel of being a product of two worthwhile exclusive quantities that don’t quite seamlessly combine into a product that is greater than its parts. While reading, pages will flip with no lack of anticipation, the story moves, but after the last page while certainly still ready and willing to move on, I will do so unchanged; the same person who embarked almost 600 pages ago which is a rather remarkable happenstance considering the themes Durham is engaging. I admire and laud what Durham wants to pull off the shelf and bring to the fantasy round table, but the true stature of a story for me is measured by the level of manipulation that resides in the seat around the table not what’s brought to it. I look forward to Durham’s next installment that promises to take us to the unknown, to the Lothan Aklum and beyond, the follow-up to a debut that strokes my epic sensibilities and has and kept my interest, but not one that can yet demand it.


Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

The initial appearance of the pulp hero in the newspapers, radio shows and cinema of 1920s America was a reassuring affirmation of rugged American individualism in a world that, in the wake of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, seemed suddenly large and uncertain. America's gradual acceptance of an increasingly multicultural world can be seen in the pulp revivals that followed. The campy, tongue-in-cheek revivals of pulp characters such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the 1970s had become by the 1980s and 90s outright humor, as the Indiana Jones series and later Evil Dead films let audiences know that it was okay not to take their pulp heroes' antics too seriously. Indeed, the self-awareness brought on by globalization made it impossible to do so.

Which speaks to the principal problem with Napoleon's Pyramids, William Dietrich's pulpy new historical thriller. Set during Napoleon's 1798 invasion of Egypt, pyramids are present but this book is best understood as a four-sided construction of a different sort, a dialogue between those original pulp hero adventures of the 1920s, the late 18th-century era of the tale's setting, and both the fact and fiction of the present day. While not without some pleasures, Napoleon's Pyramids is never quite successful at erecting a stable edifice from these different sides. The unrelenting sincerity of its dated pulp sensibility is not only painful to read in itself, but actively works against the other, more thoughtful elements of the novel.

I'm the expert on women. You hold the rifle.
(p. 273)

Poster boy for this is Ethan Gage, the first-person protagonist of the book. Gage, a wholly fictional character amidst many historical figures, is a prototype of the gentleman adventurer pulp hero: he comes from a well-to-do family; studied two years at Harvard before leaving due to impatience with "debates over questions for which there is no answer;" and spent the balance of his 33 years traveling, gambling, learning to shoot, and building an import/export business. He is the period archetype of the ruggedly individualistic, self-made American man.

Now an American in Paris in the years following the French Revolution, Gage wins an ancient Egyptian medallion in a card game. When he refuses to relinquish the medallion to an oily former aristocrat tied to a fringe Masonic sect, he is quickly framed for the murder of a prostitute and finds himself on the run. To escape the authorities, Gage uses his own Masonic connections and his familiarity with the new science of electricity to insert himself into the group of scholarly savants accompanying Napoleon Bonaparte in France's invasion of Egypt. As Gage travels through France to reach Napoleon's fleet, and then journeys in Egypt with the savants as part of the invasion, it becomes clear that the medallion he carries is desired by many, including Napoleon himself, as the key needed to unlock the mysteries of ancient Egyptian knowledge and conquering power.

This clarity arrives slowly: as a first-person narrator, Gage has the fatal flaw of being self-absorbed but not self-aware. We can almost feel his mind overheating in a crisis of identity as on one page he wonders what he's doing in the company of all these French savants, and on another ponders that "because I was a savant, I would have expected my mind would remain occupied with loftier things [than the opposite sex], but it didn't seem to work that way." Indeed, throughout Napoleon's Pyramids Gage's chief source of identity is his American long-rifle, with (it is repeatedly mentioned) its longer barrel than the French equivalents. Devoid of any sense of humor or irony, and with the story lacking the genre deconstruction that could have made his role interesting, Gage is left dreadfully earnest uttering such lines as those quoted above, and worse.

 

Gage is joined in his journey by the standard accoutrements of the pulp hero: the less physically-fit, more cerebral sidekick/mentor figure; an honorable native warrior-guide; and the beguilingly mysterious native woman, powerless in the world of men but for her sex appeal. Together they strive to uncover the secrets of the medallion before those secrets fall into the wrong hands -- those wrong hands embodied on one hand by the aforementioned oily aristocrat and his Arab henchman (who carries a snake-headed staff, so you know he's evil), and on the other by the cold, mechanical ambition of Napoleon. Although Gage, it must be said, spends more time mulling how he'll benefit from the whole affair, and trying to make his female companion like him.

The ruling caste simply could not believe that technology was bringing its reign to an end.
(p.142)

This is a shame because Gage's juvenile self-absorption masks what could have been a fascinating historical travelogue. Napoleon's Pyramids positions Gage as likely the first American to visit Egypt, yet his comments show none of the sense of age and history that one familiar with only the cities of America (at best scores of years old in 1798) and France (at best hundreds) might be expected to feel when encountering locations such as Cairo; show none of the alien otherness of a first experience with a non-Christian, non-European culture; show none of the vastness and wonder of the desert setting. "Sand hissed over the top of sculpted dunes like an undulating sheet," Gage reports of the journey between Alexandria and Cairo, and says no more about dunes or sand. There is also a sameness to many descriptions: several cities are "dirty" and "disappointing." Considering the quantity of words that Dietrich spends on these exotic locales, it is the overall level of description that is disappointing.

What Gage (and Dietrich) do describe well are large-scale military battles, three of which figure prominently in the book. There is a mix here of historical moment -- Napoleon's campaign was the beginning of the end for the Ottoman Empire -- strategy and tactics, technological and cultural clash, and pure visual spectacle. In these moments, if nowhere else in the book, the pulp sensibilities of Gage-the-narrator and the historical appreciation of Dietrich-the-author can work together.

 

Students of history will realize that there is also an unsaid element of irony to be found here. Less than a century later, in the Franco-Prussian War, it would famously be the French with their beautifully colored uniforms, and antiquated weaponry and tactics, who would fall quickly before an opponent's onslaught.

Victory is sometimes more untidy than battle. An assault can be simplicity itself; administration an entangling nightmare.
(p. 101)

To his credit, Dietrich does take up the matter of current parallels in world affairs, as history repeats itself anew. Again a Western nation has achieved a quick military victory via superior technology over a Middle Eastern country in an ostensible effort to liberate it from an oppressive minority rule; again that Western nation has found it more difficult than anticipated to consolidate its victory and to rally native support. That it is now America who owns the military victory and France who is a conspicuous outside observer merely completes the irony.

However, once again Gage as a pulp character is his author's enemy in articulating this forward-looking perspective. Gage's self-absorption is such that to convey such thinking, Dietrich must resort to breaking point-of-view in passages that feel like an author too-cutely pointing out his own cleverness. Ruminates Gage after a river battle between boats decided by cannonball:

 

In other pages of Napoleon's Pyramids, various secondary characters explain to Gage how he can't expect the Egyptian natives to thankfully modernize and adopt the Western advances of their invaders, even if it means "liberation" from their Ottoman rulers. The difficulty is that these explaining characters are Mamelukes and Greeks, two of Egypt's historical oppressors. There is thus again the sense that it is Dietrich rather than his characters speaking to us, and it is again caused by the fact that Gage himself is not a thoughtful enough protagonist to engage with these ideas -- even when his own nation was so recently formed based on the principle of self-governance.

[Masonry] plays with ancient mysticism and arcane mathematical precepts.
(p. 22)

Masonic rites, Knights Templar, the Ark of the Covenant, the idea that the Holy Grail might not be a cup, the Golden Ratio, the Fibonacci sequence...Napoleon's Pyramids at times feels like a who's who of recent archaeological thrillers (there are several brief, wholly extraneous references to ideas from The Da Vinci Code that could have easily been trimmed). Strip away all the name-dropping, though, and the actual plot of the book just isn't strong enough, isn't thrilling enough, to hang the other elements of the story on. The first-person narration removes any degree of tension; we know that Gage will survive. As for the mystery, what exactly the medallion is and why people want it are uncomfortably vague for the first half of the book; what it unlocks is uncomfortably vague for the second half. Does it represent power, immortality, a cure for ED?

Indeed, there is a pervasive quality of cobbled-together vagueness in the mystery that drives the book's plot. It is as if Dietrich himself can't quite visualize what's going on once the tale abandons its historical grounding. As a result, blatant research and logistical issues crop up here, in the thriller portion of the book, that were not present in the historical aspects. An explanation of the Fibonacci sequence takes up several pages of the book; unfortunately, an explanation of the connection between the Fibonacci sequence and the eventual solution to the mystery (for there is one) is bizarrely absent. The constellation Draco, which had wings until 600BC, is depicted in its modern snaky form on Gage's medallion, created c. 2500BC. And in one crucial sequence, Gage counts up the rows of the pyramid's stones from the base when logically he would have needed to count down from the top. In other thrillers, vagueness of plot and small inconsistencies in execution are quickly swept into the background by pacing. Here, the combination of historical detail and Gage's pulpish need to have everything explained to him by various savants results in a slower pace than thriller fans will be happy with. Again, the story elements are working against each other.

This trend continues through the book's unsatisfying, inconclusive ending. While Gage is entreated constantly by those around him to grow, to become more aware, in the end -- in true pulp fashion -- it is his dogged American persistence that outsmarts the intellectuals, defeats the warriors, charms the woman. But always, the conservatism of the pulp hero works against the wider historical perspective that the novel tries to evoke, just as the ponderous self-absorption of the protagonist slows the pace needed to maintain a thriller. How can this conflict in story types be resolved? It can't, and thus Dietrich offers up only a placeholder with that ultimate invention of 1920s pulp: to be continued.

Given pulp's origins in national uncertainty, it should be no surprise to see elements of it making a comeback now. But while history may seem to repeat, America is not the same nation it was in the 1920s -- we've gained an element of global awareness that will not quickly be erased. Napoleon's Pyramids illustrates the incompatibility of the original pulp sensibility with that new worldliness. Hopefully in his sequels, Dietrich will take a larger step towards learning from pulp's past, rather than being content to repeat it.

-- Matt Denault

In the first installment of Catherynne M Vaente’s In the Night Garden, the first part in duology entitled The Orphan’s Tales, the ingredients are all present and the conditions are met. Clichés abound at every corner, every three steps a risk at tripping on tropes, another orphan’s story, meandering prince in tow and a quest for each cast member, a jaunt into fantastic fiction that is epic in the truest sense of the word. On the surface, a description of another forget-me-soon, brand-expectation feeding, disappointment. - the next and last in the seemingly sempiternal line our hobby has to offer. Something happens, however, our memory fails us, the expected horizon blurs, while at times grimmly familiar, our once assured stride turns into adventures stumbles and off the paved path we still encounter homages, but homages turned vintage, as we encounter cynocephali, rapacious wizards, witches, shape shifters, assassins, mother goose, griffins, flame birds, we are like the prince aware of and living his intended story but in welcome need of the immediate contradictory and continuous afterword. It is a story of beasts and adventures on the high seas, in cities of dream, and where barkeeps wait for a divine promise kept, all residing below a star-studded pantheon. But it is always the garden we go back forward to.

Surrounding the palace of a Sultan, a garden serves as the dwelling place of an outcast child shunned for her ornate gaze, her eyes magically tattooed with stories carrying the weight of 1001 nights. Ostracized for the birthmark, she was only even allowed to wander the garden – relegated as a tolerated local gapeseed - out of fear of retribution from her kind – she must be a demon child right? A living taboo, it is only natural it would be the curiosity of a child of the royal house who would come looking for her, as even the greatest story ever told requires someone to listen. A pact is made between the two, the girl - the literary bastard child of Scheherazade and Ishmael – our narrator and the young lordling drawn into her tales like a strung out Bastian Balthazar Bux. We see a pact turn into symbiotic bond, a relationship growing with the story and it is through their exchange that the reader will experience a series of interlocking tales, myths in a myth, folktales told within a folktale, in a clever fashion never but never too clever, sidestepping contrivance. Valente’s ball of yarn seems infinite, as stories keep mounting, pieces fitting before, after, on top of, and under previous chapters and at times might induce some reader weariness, but the patient reader will start to see their breadcrumbs intersect. These are stories set to no particular or uniform emotional tone – in Valente’s world treachery, vengeance, camaraderie, love, independence, faith, tradition, shame, sacrifice and family – exist concurrently with each other, which is why one moment can be dementedly violent while the next may offer a worthy laugh or indeed both.

When critique is offered of a formidable stylist like Valente, noted strengths delegated are usually more aesthetic in nature, and while there is no depreciation in this regard from her previous work, perhaps the most significant achievement of In the Night Garden is the world she creates (or Harrison’s bane if you will). We will not be given the product of Valente’s world building, we will travel with her as she builds, she gives us no map, it’s drawn as you flip the pages. The perspective of the world around her characters allows the world to organically grow and shift even when standing in place – you do not buy into the background, you buy into the inherent belief system of individual character’s who inhabit backdrop – whether human, beast or divine in inspiration – revealing the secret life of the world around them, and that’s a mean trick. Readers will bask in the Arabian atmosphere and recognize Canterbury’s twisted roads but shouldn’t discount the bloody chamber or Heian myth – all harnessed by one of the most distinctive writers to come along in fiction in the last few years.

In short, In the Night Garden is downright folk-funky, with DJ Cat V scratching and mixing myth and lore with an original blend given previously untold life by a writer who ultimately made me ponder the question of what happens when a neverending story ends, while almost making me forget to ask about the power in the name of the teller. The Orphan’s Tales is the poet, short fiction writer, and novelist maximizing her entire skill set in an offering that caters to the sensibilities of the fan of all forms.

Not in the too distant past one of my favorite - now flawed - methods to describe my tastes in the fantastic or preferred reading in general was to make the distinction between those who had a story to tell and were simply given a venue to tell it – a capacity that I couldn’t help but view as seemingly having as much to with hat-drawn luck as much as existing as a true barometer of actual proficiency of craft - and to those who had the actual gift of conveying the story. It was well intended, putting more credence to the deft of stroke rather than the common root of vision – the for some reason at times abstruse distinction beyond base synop between a Celidon and Landover, a Severian and Rahl, a Conrad Metcalf and Harry Dresden, that separates fantastic fiction from simple fanciful fluff - but when making that refined and defining cut, judging works as either stroke or stencil, I think in less drastic comparisons it became all to easy to ignore the true end game, a combination of the intent of both circumstances. The Story and the Teller. We read In the Night Garden, but in the girl’s hands we experience, we feel, we live the stories as if we accompany the character’s journeys with blood soiled club in hand and yet simultaneously watch them from afar armed with S’mores on a stick. Like the young prince, we run off in the night, we steal time, lie to our obligations, indeed we may find ourselves in a dungeon and better for it with proper company, as we shut the world out for the privilege to have it told to us seeking our forbidden fruit - but mostly we listen for a glimpse of the miraculously cursed girl with the deep, beautifully-burdened eyes with the greatest gift of all…

Catherynne M. Valente is a storyteller.

Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

After a protracted wait, despite the release of The Virtu in the summer of last year (alas, the benighted library system in this poor reviewer's neck of the woods runs like molasses when it comes to new releases), I finally had a chance to read the followup to Sarah Monette's excellent debut novel Melusine.

Among the Gardens of Nephele, Felix Harrowgate has regained sanity and magical ability, yet his half-brother Mildmay the Fox is all but crippled by the effects of the curse that nearly claimed him. Felix embarks on a quest to return to Melusine and restore the Virtu, a journey that will draw Mildmay after him and lead them on a path across the sea and the realm of Kekropia once more.

As with Melusine before it, The Virtu rises above the tried-and-true (albeit given a new life here) fantasy models to be a complex yet at times touching depiction of relationships. Felix and Mildmay once again are depicted in alternating first-person chapters as they struggle with their feelings about each other, the people around them, memories of the past and the forces arrayed against them. The multi-faceted personalities of Felix and Mildmay are on full display here, bringing a great depth to the storylines that twist and turn like the literal and symbolic labyrinths encountered throughout The Virtu.

The more fantastical side of the story is no less intriguing, as Felix and (reluctantly) Mildmay delve ever deeper into the thaumaturgical arts that will enable a mending of the Virtu. The various schools of wizardry are described in more detail, and the numerous mysteries touched upon in Melusine are given answers throughout the book. In particular, having just read Melusine to refresh my memory before starting The Virtu, I was impressed by the neat setup for events much later.

The Virtu could easily be an excellent conclusion to the stories of Felix and Mildmay, but Sarah Monette has indicated that two more books will follow: The Mirador and Summerdown, both of which I'm eagerly anticipating.

Melusine was an outstanding debut novel on a number of levels, but The Virtu surpasses it easily.

It is the age of Napoleon, and France is at war with England on the high seas. Meanwhile, Captain Havelock of the Whirlwind receives orders from the British Admiralty to proceed to the west coast of Africa and hunt down the French frigate Elita, which has been hounding British merchant ships.

After engaging the Elita in an indecisive combat which leaves both ships in dire need of repair, Havelock discovers that they are not alone in the vast ocean. A dread ship manned by rotting zombies stalks him, eager to exact revenge for his ancestor's crimes...

Death Hulk doesn't have much in the way of surprises. The plot is more or less predictable to the end. It excels as a page turner, but not much else. It might have been nice to see more character development as well, but it wasn't absolutely necessary to the book, admittedly. However, Sprange has evidently done some research into naval combat of the era and has a good eye for action scenes, lending some verisimilitude to the sea battles and hand-to-hand fights.

All in all, I'd have to say this is a decent read with plenty of action to keep you going, but don't expect anything incredibly thought-provoking.

The Thrall’s Tale is Judith Lindbergh’s debut novel of historical fiction set in the times of Viking exploration in the late 10th century. Eirik Raude and his sons including Leif Eiriksson lead several small ships packed full of people and animals from bleak Iceland to a place “all flush and green”. But this is not another story of marauding Norse men out to pillage and plunder. On this journey and the subsequent settlement of Greenland, we follow three women: a young female slave, an old seeress, and the daughter of the slave who becomes the apprentice of the old seeress.


Lindbergh gives her characters an amazing depth and provides exceptional insight to their motivations and emotions even as they perform the most mundane chores and eke out an existence from such harsh conditions.


Still, every dawn I awake to sounds of the scraping out of stones, to the slicing of sod and the lashing of driftwood. Every day, Thorbjorg’s men mount the casing stones into sturdy walls, then stuff them with sod, thick and wide for warmth, then make a roof of grassy turf laid over driftwood beaming. Once full enclosed, the house is dank, with a meager hearth for warmth set upon the inner row. On either side, dirt-built benches tuck beneath the roof’s low eaves. On these we will sit, eat, sew, and sleep-and, fair, most likely die.


As these people struggle to settle this land and build lives for themselves, the old prophetess Thorbjorg foresees a coming of great change even as she feels the weakening of her master Odin.


Thorbjorg reflects on her ominous feelings:


What is to come. What lingers close. What these others all about me still cannot fathom. Yet ever it will come-as they to me, begging for some lean, uncertain tidings. I tell them what I may-what little well I can. But the murk is thick. My master’s voice has grown quite still.
…
And a scent-such a scent-strange and thick with the sweetness of a rotting. Such as I knew it once-upon a distant market-where? Well now I remember; and somewhat how that scent was termed-by foreign names, fitting crudely on the tongue. One was frankincense…another myrrh.


Christianity reaches out even to Greenland and as some are quick to embrace it, others deny it and stand fast to the old gods. Lindbergh presents a balanced and compassionate view of the Christian conversion and the dying of old myths.


The formal prose creates a sense of detachment that contributes to the feeling that Greenland and the Vikings are truly of another time and place. The ancient magic that pervades their world is palpable as Lindbergh skillfully includes the myths and gods of Old Norse. The novel’s language and its structure read like an epic poem of yore. It’s melodic and flowing with its own distinctive meter.


The author’s years of research is evident in the detail provided, the dialog and mannerisms of everyone from the lowliest thrall to the most arrogant son of a chieftain. The Thrall’s Tale is a compelling interpretation of the lives of three very different women whose fears and struggles and passions cross the boundaries of time and place.

There's nothing like reading a big, fat thriller novel every now and then. It's a specialised genre, with its own rules, and for me the pleasure comes not so much from any literary quality, but from the fast-paced action and laughable plot. Sometimes, over the top can be just right.

Frank Schatzing has followed the rules: he's taken some stock science fiction concepts unknown to the broader community, a large dose of science from magazine articles, thrown in some action, novel threats and a ticking clock. The Swarm has apparently been a successful seller in its original German and in translation.

I can't see why. Perhaps it captured some of the zeitgeist at the right time. But for me the intriguing story promised in the book's blurb was smothered by layer upon layer of bloat. The book would have been so much more enjoyable if it was half the size. Perhaps Schatzing was being paid by the word? Or the pound.

Schatzing can write some decent action scenes, and has some fun ideas, but the book is weighed down
by screeds of exposition, half-baked theorising, debates with straw men and authorial eco-haranging. I don't have a problem with any of these in moderation. And I certainly don't care about dodgy science or plot holes when I'm reading a pulp thriller. These books aren't supposed to make sense.

Normally if you're slumming in the thriller genre you look for a fat book, but if the thrill/page ratio drops, you just want to start skipping pages. Length isn't the problem, so much as the pace. The book needed some serious editin