Elitist Book Reviews

Sometimes it's way too easy to make a call on a book. There are some indicators that, when they come up, scream, “Run away!” One of the classics is when you get to the end of the first chapter and the last sentence is something with a flavor similar to:

It all started less than 24 hours ago...

Oh, yeah. Those? They're doooozies.

SLOW APOCALYPSE was my introduction to John Varley's work. I was looking forward to a good read going in, what with the cover quote from Tom Clancy, even if the title promised something significantly less than exciting. I mean, who puts “Slow” in the title of any kind of book they want to sell? I don't know.

The premise is that there's a scientist who loses his girlfriend in the United States World Trade Center attack, and then decides to serve up a dish of revenge to those responsible. His method of attack: create a strain of bacteria that will cause subterranean stores of oil to turn solid. Unfortunately for everyone (literally), the bacteria finds a way to go airborne and takes out every oil store in the entire world. The side effect of this solidification process is an excess of hydrogen gas that wreaks havoc with the earth, causing quakes and eruptions and giant jets of flame bursting from the ground.

Where does the story start? Dave Marshall, a sitcom writer living in Los Angeles and the inimitable hero of our story, finds out about the impending oil disaster from a military contact of his in the first chapter...and then the whole story proceeds to fall apart. Yeah, I know. Chapter 1? I thought the same thing. The whole rest of the story (nay, the entire book) is one big, long series of observations and so little of anything else. Oh, let me count the ways.

1.) After stocking up on foodstuffs Dave turns on the TV and watches...and watches...and watches all of the mess that begins to happen in...THE SLOW APOCALYPSE. Dun, dun dun!

2.) Craziness starts to happen in LA (earthquakes, explosions, rioting, etc). Dave roams around the neighborhood, sets up for the long-haul at home, and views some of the destruction in person. Copious amounts of street names, building names, valley names, hills, and corners abound.

3.) The craziness ramps up as violence escalates. Dave decides to find a way out of LA by driving around the city. Enough map references here to drive my Aunt Margie back into the mental asylum.

Now, yes, there's more that happens. There's some turmoil in Dave's family (estranged wife and teenage daughter). Some of Dave's friends are in danger. There's some nasty biker gangs that make a few appearances. There's plenty of social commentary about how we're too fat as a people, don't care enough about things that really matter, and get tied up in those things that don't. There's all the stuff that you'd probably expect to make a showing in an actual situation like this.

But the problem is that it's all so BORING with a capital B (repetition included on purpose). Yes, it's a story. Yes, it's realistic. Yes, it's even probable. But is it anything I'd want to read? No. Uh, double no actually. And yet I did, as we always do. Oh, the torture the EBR reviewers endure so that you loyal readers can know to avoid these books like the warm, half-full jugs of way-past-expired milk that they are.

>>shiver<<

Now, Mr. Varley has been around for quite some time. Obviously, he didn't get that cover quote from Tom Clancy by writing books like this. I've seen a lot of places where people said they seriously love this guy's books. Maybe this one was just a stinker. Granted, it was a pretty bad stinker. So, I say go find a book of his that has some decent reviews and give it a try.

Just stay away from this one.

Recommended Age: 16+
Profanity: Very little, but there's some of just about everything in small doses
Violence: Again, very little, but when the gore comes in it comes in small bubbles and spurts (heh, heh--get it?)
Sex: Two scenes that are over fairly quickly, but get somewhat detailed

Your link:

SLOW APOCALYPSE

So two award-winning journalists decide to try their hand at the current craze of YA dystopian/post-apocalypse novels. But WASTELAND is what happens when non-fiction writers think that writing a coherent, engaging, and imaginative YA novel is not so hard. Throw in a controversial situation, maybe some race-themed antagonism, a couple of clever adjectives for spice, and voila. Easy peasy, right?

They should keep their day jobs.

Esther is our main protagonist. She's fifteen, the prime age for partnering and having a child of her own. But she avoids it, instead ignoring the boys' attentions and skipping out on the mandatory work assignments so she can run off and play with her mutant friend, Skar. In the meantime, the other kids of the town of Prin are barely surviving on the water and meager supplies provided by Levi in trade for their work.

Then one day Caleb arrives in town and everything changes.

Told in an awkward omniscient PoV narrative, our main character Esther must find a way to live in a world that doesn't seem to fit her sensibilities. She easily befriends the outcasts, but runs the risk of becoming outcast herself. Caleb's motivations are more straightforward. Levi, as the villain, is a more complicated creature and it takes time to understand him. Then there's Esther's sister Sarah, her variant friend Skar, her autistic friend Joseph. None of them felt like very deep characters, that the authors were going through the motions of characterization and it felt awkward and forced. Even the romance between the main characters was clumsily written (there's more to say but it would mean spoilers).

We never learn what happened and why everything is all post-apocalyptical--they hint at global warming, but that doesn't explain the mass devastation, since they still search through abandoned areas for supplies, so it must have been recent. Their foraging lifestyle does not make for long-term survival. Also, why does everyone die by the time they're nineteen? Seems like a pretty specific age, but we never learn why. The most important thing we never learn is where the Variants (mutants) come from--they aren't human, so why are they there other than a contrived plot device?

Despite the prose being easy on the eyes, the pace was slow and dull, mostly as a result of a distant omniscient narrative that makes it impossible to really get into the characters' heads. And if you've read enough dystopian YA novels then this book's plot feels predictable, clear to the end.

I have so many questions and no answers. There just wasn't enough meat to this story for me, but then again I'm not the target audience. Nevertheless I'm not going to be passing this book along to my fifteen-year-old daughter. Instead, she'll be reading the PARTIALS series by Dan Wells (EBR review).

Recommended Age: The publicity says 14+ but I would say 17+ because of the sex scene and themes
Language: Nothing
Violence: Torture, teens fighting, some blood, death by fighting and disease
Sex: One brief graphic scene; teenagers must "partner" in order to perpetuate the human race

Find this book here:

WASTELAND

Do you hate movie trailers that essentially tell the whole story of the movie? You get three minutes of whiz-bang cool that makes you want to shell out the cash to go watch it, only to end up finding out that what you saw in the trailer was, in fact, the entire movie condensed down to three minutes? Grumble. This book was exactly like that. Read the back cover of this one, read the book, and then tell me I'm wrong. No wait, I've already done all that. Check it out.

TUNNEL OUT OF DEATH is a standalone book written by Jamil Nasir, an author who is probably more well-known for his short fiction than his novels. This is, however, his fifth novel, and at this point I'm going to assume that most of what he's written is science fiction. The covers of his previous books and his work in this one tend to make me believe that. The setup I got for the novel, provided for by the blurb on the back of the book, sounded fairly decent. It's something along the lines of:

Heath Ransom is a former police-psychic turned machine-enhanced “endovoyant” private investigator that is asked to find the soul of a woman, Beverly, that has been cut loose from reality. As he's searching he comes across what appears to be a rip in reality, a black hole of sorts, that leads him to find the woman, but drops him into the middle of a war between secret, ruthless, government agencies and a non-human entitiy known as “Amphibian”. Their battlefield is a multi-level reality that Heath learns to navigate, finding along the way that everyone around him may not be humans at all but instead super-realistic androids. The result threatens not only Heath's sense of reality, but his sanity as well.

Conspiracies, multi-level reality, playing with the line of one's sanity. Not bad. It was enough to at least get me interested. I didn't get very far though before I had some serious issues with the way things were going.

The first was a serious lack of understanding or introduction. Strike one. The first chapter of TUNNEL is a conversation between Ransom and a doctor who is trying to tell Ransom something, but Ransom isn't interested and leaves the meeting prematurely. The second chapter is the conversation between Ransom and a married couple, relatives of the woman whose soul has gone missing, in which they bribe him to do the job (despite the fact that he has no experience in searching for people's souls) with loads of cash. Why?  Because, the story has to start somewhere for crying out loud. Then, in chapter 3, we're immediately thrust into the alternate reality, ethereal universe that Ransom can access via some funky Fringe-like setup: wires, sensory deprivation, drugs. No rules are ever established, so we don't know what to expect, and have to just take it on faith that the author is leading us somewhere that we want to go. Tripping through the author's disjointed imagination.

It quickly became apparent that there would be little to no characterization. Strike number two. We get a couple paragraphs, maybe, about the main character. Nothing of substance though. Thus, Ransom becomes this cardboard character with no obvious motivations, other than finding this lost woman's soul, as he wanders through scene after scene of what is described as the woman's “boundary dream,” which from what I understood was kind of like a conglomeration of the stuff that flashes before your eyes just before you die. The secondary characters are much the same. Movement and decision with no justification or even clear reasoning as to why they're doing what they're doing.

And then we get a Noah's ark event (aka: complete wipe of the story). After finding Beverly, the Ransom story line skips several years in which Ransom is living the life of another person: a pool boy, actually. This was the first time I really realized that the author had no idea what he was doing in relation to the story, and my expectations of the book took a serious slide. Fast-forward a bit more, Ransom has learned to navigate himself between his real life and this alternate pool-boy life, and we see Noah wave to us again as he floats by a second time. Another bundle of years pass and by manipulating the future, Ransom becomes filthy rich. It happens about as quickly as I've just explained it there, too. Ohmigosh. Strike three. It is at this point though that Ransom starts to see that perhaps the reality he's living isn't the one he thinks it is.

Ah ha! Now can we find out what's going on?  Is the government manipulating him? Is this non-human Amphibian (whom only really makes an appearance once, despite sending his goons in to mess things up a couple times) in charge? Who cares, says the author. Instead, the story is forgotten and what we get some dubious pontification on the reality and transition of death, random references to God and/or eternity, and we're done.

But he's finally figuring out that reality isn't what he thinks, I say. I finally got to the end of what was in the book teaser.  Now what? What about the conspiracy? What about the mutant goons of Amphibian? What about Beverly being connected to it all? Eh. Peanuts. Why worry about all that boring story stuff when you can instead take an about face and listen to the author blather on about what death might be like? That's so much more important! Strike...err. Is that four or five? I've lost count.  Anyhow.

It stands to reason that there IS a reason why this book was published. I can't for the life of me figure out what that was though. It seems to me that anything that drops its whole premise this blatantly should be sent back to the drawing board. So much wasted time. Even if you love any and all science fiction, I highly doubt you'd even want to give this one the light of day.

Recommended Age: 16+
Language: Infrequent but spans the range of possibility
Violence: Some of the violence is fairly graphic, but most of it involves androids/machines
Sex: Several scenes with low to moderate detail

If you're looking to get rid of some cash...

TUNNEL OUT OF DEATH

Jake Lawton is a bouncer at a London club's goth night where nearly thirty people die of a drug overdose--one of them his ex-girlfriend. Not long later they all rise from the dead and begin a killing rampage, draining the blood from everyone they come in contact with. People refuse to believe it, but many call them vampires.

The drug Skarlet is the culprit and Jake is being framed for selling it to the clubbers. He's on a mission to clear his name, but as people rise from the dead and chaos ensues, Jake works to unravel the mystery of the cause and stop the evildoers from realizing their grand plan.

I'm gonna be real here: I did not like SKARLET. At all. This is not the kind of book I would buy, and if Steve sends me the sequel I'm going to send it right back. Why? It's the genre: horror-vampire-thriller mash-up with gore, blood, and various brutality. But, hey, maybe you like that kind of stuff so this is the kind of book for you.

That being said, the author is an experienced writer, and it's not a poorly written novel. The evil people are pure evil. There's a mythology associated with the vampires. The present-day London setting was clear and yet didn't clutter the narrative. The main characters are complex people. And the plot moves along with enough interesting twists and turns to keep readers engaged.

However, SKARLET has its share of issues, the most notable being the flow. Have you read Dan Brown? Did you notice that his chapters are really short? The chapters in this are like that. The scenes are short enough that there are constant cliffhangers--which is exhausting for me to read--and there are even some action sequences with scenes as short as one page. Plot events were circular, there was a lot of character movement, and with such a large cast it was difficult to follow the whys and wheres of everyone's comings and goings.

Couple short scenes with a multitude of PoVs and it's difficult to understand the characters with any real depth because you hardly have time to get into their heads before you're whisked along to the next character. This made it hard for me to really like any of the main characters or believe the motivations of the antagonists. Jake was fine enough as the protagonist, but the secondary characters, especially the women, are awkwardly and inconsistently drawn. For example, the gutsy reporter Christine starts out well enough, but I would have liked to see the qualities that made her such a hard-nosed reporter translate more consistently to the matter at hand.

Emson also liked adding scenes from the PoV of random people who die--I guess if you like the horror flavor of the concept you might enjoy this part of the book, but I had a hard time seeing the point. I would rather follow Jake as he attempts to discover the mystery behind the outbreak, but that part of the story drags out for the sake of sensationalizing the bloody violence of the vampires. Ultimately I saw that it did have a purpose to the plot, but not clear until the end when my frustration had nearly boiled over.

The mythology was...interesting, but the jury's still out on that one for me. Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar. Alexander the Great. Vampire demon trinities. Using mythology and science to bring about a new plague of vampires. I just don't know. I guess I could have believed it more if I had liked the characters, but it all seemed so shallow to me. And the vampires themselves were meh.

I may be lacking a fundamental understanding of the horror-vampire-thriller storytelling style, which may be the result of my dislike for this kind of book and therefore my dislike for SKARLET itself. But I'm not so sure.

Recommended Age: I recommend adults only
Language: Lots and lots
Violence: Blood is everywhere
Sex: Lots of references (including rape, prostitution, and incest) and a few scenes

Find this book here:

SKARLET

It's always an interesting experience to sit down and try to write a review on a debut novel. There are numerous questions that always raise their heads, not the least of which pertain to the standards that I hold debuts to in relation to other books. Was the debut good as compared to other novels? Or, perhaps, was it just good for a debut novel? Or was it good at all, for that matter? At times I think I'm coming to a point of convergence on the issue, but at others I still wonder.

THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON is the first long-form work of author Saladin Ahmed, and one that I was fairly interested in reading. After sampling some of his short stories (finding quite a few that I liked) and noting the large number of positive reviews that seemed to be floating around the web about THRONE, I finally found a slot and wedged the book solidly into my schedule.

My first impression of the book: Holy freaking cow, this thing is short! The hardcover weighs in at a whopping 288 pages. Not exactly what I've come to expect from fantasy fare, but THRONE had mostly been touted as a Sword & Sorcery novel (and those are usually shorter). So I wasn't too worried about the length, but it definitely wasn't a plus.

The story itself revolves around two main characters, but has about six that get page time. The first character of import is Doctor Adoulla Makhslood. He's a tired, old guy that has been claimed to be the the last real ghul hunter (ghuls being corpses reanimated by a powerful sorcerer) in his city. He complains a lot, and has a lot of history riding under the wide circumference of his belt, but knows how to get the job done and does it when it needs doing. His compatriot, Raseed bas Raseed, is a young whirling dervish type that praises God and dispenses His holy justice where necessary. They both live in the city of Dhamsawaat. Over them, rules the tyrannical Khalif. And because he's so tyrannical, there's a guy that's opposing him: the Falcon Prince. Age versus youth factors frequently into a story that plays outside the normal “Fantasy Sandbox” in more ways than just length.

The setting was one of the aspects of the story that I enjoyed. It is one of a more Middle-Eastern flare, instead of the much-seen medieval setting. So we get new cities, and new foods; new terms and new customs; they're all peppered throughout the story. Although, the size of the book didn't allow for much of the setting to be overly developed, Ahmed did a good job of portraying those pieces that were necessary, and I never really felt tripped up because of a lack of understanding. Thus, props to him for being able to give readers this new setting and keeping clarity.

The main story itself though had some pretty serious issues, from my perspective. There's the spread of the characters to begin. Having six POV characters in a book that has fewer than three hundred pages is just asking for trouble. There just isn't enough time to develop each of their stories. Even giving it the benefit of the doubt, the main story never really took off. It stayed very small and localized. In fact, the book felt more like a watered-down but bloated short story by the time I got to the end.

Story was another big problem: it was way too simple. Linear, straight-forward, and walk-through almost: like a D&D campaign. The plot moved from one set to the next with very little difficulty, and the usual way of things was for one character or another to say something along the lines of, “Oh. Problem? No worries. I have a guy that can help us with that.” In fact, this book could easily be a poster-child for the concept of “Conflict Resolution By Associate”.

Continuing in this vein, I haven't seen a more overwhelming example of Deus Ex Machina since PERDIDO STREET STATION. (If any of you haven't read that one, you should. It's a great book, despite the annoying ending.) Even given that comparison, the ending in THRONE takes the veritable cake for being even a larger travesty of this type. I just sat there, literally dumbfounded, throughout the entire conclusion. And then, to top it all off, the main character passes out, and we actually miss everything that happens during the peak of the climax.

I mean, egad. That's just wrong.

In the end, this one feels too much like a bad cake. Quality ingredients and great intentions, yes. But ultimately poor execution. So the result is more of a dense, lumpy mess of carbs that won't really taste good no matter how much frosting you ladle onto it.

But still, the guy's a newbie. Would I like to see him try again? Yup. I love to see the boundaries of a genre stretched. Diversity in storytelling I love. Give it to me. If the story isn't any good though, then diversity doesn't matter a lick.

Age Recommendation: 14+
Language: Pretty mild. These are a God-fearing lot, for the most part
Violence: Gets fairly gory in parts, but mostly it's violence against the dead, and I mentioned the whole passing-out for the climax thing already, yes?
Sex: Mild, but chaste attraction between two characters

Here's a link for the book, if you're still interested:

THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON

Many years ago monstrous sun flares changed everything, and humanity was thrust back into the Dark Ages. For the natives of an island in the South Pacific and passengers on a beached cruise ship, they are the last known survivors of the subsequent apocalypse.
THE CROSSING starts out on the idyllic island of Onewere, where the teenage Maryam has been living with other girls who were Chosen from among the native population to live with the Apostles when they reach womanhood. Her whole life she's been taught the Rules, religious teachings that are supposed to protect the people of Onewere from suffering the same fate that destroyed the rest of the world.

Maryam goes to the Holy City anticipating a Blessed life with the Apostles. Instead she finds her older 'sisters' from the island pregnant and unmarried working as servants for the Apostles; most of the natives subdued with a mind-numbing drink called toddy; and the main Apsotle's son using the girls for his own pleasure--willing or not. The horrors don't end there and Maryam begins to fear for her life.

I can tell you with certainty that I'm not the target audience for this series. For the entirety of the book I was disturbed (this coming from a woman who immensely enjoyed I DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU) and almost didn't finish it. THE CROSSING is dark and deals with unpleasant themes--in fact I had a hard time seeing it as the YA book it's billed as.

In a strange coincidence, during the week I was reading this book I met a witnesses for one of the Warren Jeffs trials. It was a fascinating conversation. She was open to discussing what it was like to live in a cult-like sect, where men use religion to control women for their own self-gratification. It's disturbing stuff. Certainly being disturbing doesn't mean it's a topic that shouldn't be addressed. From jail Jeffs still directs his minions to perpetuate his teachings, and women and girls continue to stuffer today--this makes the topic absolutely pertinent. So I get what Hager is trying to do and I can imagine that THE CROSSING must have been a hard story to write because of its themes. I just wish Hager could have presented the story with the finesse it deserves, instead of a contrived and clunky mess.

For starters Hager only vaguely explains how the whole thing started. I was able to suspend belief of the situation, but only until it was explained: the white people on the cruise ship set themselves up to the Onewere natives as teachers sent from God to bring the remainder of humanity back from the brink. Then I spent the rest of the book stewing on that, which pretty much ruined the story for me. I don't understand how it could have happened. The natives have their own religion, why would they listen to foreigners on a stranded boat with no way to contact the outside world and prove their situation? Brainwashing doesn't happen overnight.

There are other problems with the writing, in particular the prose itself, which is awkward and stiffly formal, which doesn't make sense considering how it's from the PoV of a sixteen-year-old girl.  The prose is slowed down by heavy-handed metaphors and adjectives--cleaning up those alone would have helped the flow considerably. While the imagery was nice, it went overboard and draws too much attention to the flowery prose and takes away from the story itself.

The plot moves forward well enough (despite some stumbles and circular events) through Maryam's eyes as she witnesses first-hand the hypocrisy of the Apostles and the other whites on the ship. The reality of her situation unfolds and we can feel her horror: how can Apostles who teach from the bible of the Lamb's love and goodness condone such wicked behavior?

Via Maryam we become attached to other characters, such as the Apostle's sick yet good-hearted nephew Joseph, the blind but wise Hushai, the faithful Mother Elizabeth. They are all familiar characters, archetypes really, and shallow in comparison to Maryam. But I admit, I was so stuck on the darkness of the story and the contrivances (i.e., Maryam feels her life is in danger but we never see a guard until the end of the book?) that it was impossible for me to become attached to the characters and the obvious horror of their plight.

THE CROSSING was first published in New Zealand in 2010 and even won awards and accolades. While it's a relevant topic, for me Hager's execution makes it hard to recommend.

Recommended Age: 16+ for themes and drug use
Language: None
Violence: Not much, mostly just a sense of peril
Sex: Teenage pregnancy; on-screen attempted rapes; details of nudity

If you can't get enough of the recent influx of dystopian YA novels, this is for you (I'm not sure I'd recommend it for your kids, though):

THE CROSSING

Romance? I know. I can hear the tumult of the masses lurching in defiance from here.  Since when does EBR review romance novels?  Answer:  since King started writing them while his publisher was marketing them as otherwise.  There was nothing even remotely romance-related to this book that I came across prior to getting into its pages.  Not on the outer cover, not inside the cover, not in any official summary of the book.  Not anywhere.  In fact, despite everything that made my deductive reasoning lean toward the contrary, I didn't even fully accept that the book was a romance until the very end.  Not until the last sentence of the book.

And did that bother me?  Immensely so.

11/22/63 is another recent offering in Stephen King's literal plethora of novels.  I've been a fan of his for a couple decades now, and in that time I've been a constant reader through the highs and the lows, the weirds and the whats, and the absolute genius that is Mr. King.  My excitement for this novel was no less, and perhaps even a bit more (outside of the Dark Tower novels) than it had been for any other of his books.  In this book, our main character, Jake Epping, a divorced high-school teacher and frequent facilitator of adult GEDs, becomes privy to the existence of a hole in time that connects his "when" in 2011 to a "then" in 1958.  This allows for an eventual connection between Mr. Epping and one of the largest, most impactful events to hit the giant that is America, and even the chance to make a difference by keeping that single event--the assassination of John F. Kennedy on 11/22/63--from ever occurring.

If the premise alone wasn't enough to lock me in, the first few chapters made it a literal improbability that I might not love this story.  The amount of character development threaded through the introduction of Jake Epping and his friend, the severely handicapped janitor, Harry Dunning, was incredible.  From this launching point, Jake takes a test trip to see if changes he makes when going through this time hole will translate to changes in the present day, and then back into the hole again to head for the date most pivotal to the crux of the novel.

The first portion of the novel was nearly perfect, in my estimation, and encompasses the story of the test trip through time and Jake's subsequent return.  It hits you hard early on, moves fast toward the point of conflict, and pays off in a big way.  This section of the book could probably have been retained by itself, marketed as a true-to-form thriller, and it would have done just fine.  Simply amazing.  But all of this was just the ramp-up for the real thrust of the novel:  the drive toward 11/22/63 and saving JFK.  I couldn't wait.

But this was where the novel began to get...difficult.  The inception of the idea that became this novel came to King decades ago, but he ultimately dropped it because of the amount of historical research that he felt he'd need to do in order to do the novel right, and the amount of research that he finally did accomplish is very apparent here.  For so many potential readers, the late 50's and early 60's America portrayed in the novel will be a world as foreign as that of Middle Earth, and King does a very good job of relaying that world to us.  It was here that Jake's drive toward the "end goal" started to get fuzzy. It was a very gradual change, and moved the plot from being focused on Lee Harvey Oswald, the supposed perpetrator in the assassination, to being focused upon the world in which Jake was living.  The research, as they often say, took over the story.  After a good spell of this, the plot moved yet another step away from where it started through the introduction of a love interest, Sadie Dunhill, and Mr. Oswald gradually receded from view until he became something akin to a minor side plot.

Until, of course, the end rolled around, where the main characters are all running their hearts out to make it to the assassination on time, and there's a whirlwind "climax", an explanation of how everything works (including a horrifically blatant plot hole that nearly killed me), and...

Ta da!  I'm a romance novel!

At which point in time, I wanted to throw the book to the dogs, but I had already finished the dang thing and even the thought of doing such was supremely unsatisfying.  I'd been tricked!  Duped!  I thought I'd gotten myself into a great novel.  I thought I'd found a winner.  But instead, the novel ended up being nothing like what it had purported itself to be at the beginning.  The really irksome part of all this is that even books that are horribly written with crappy characters and wandering, pointless plots will end up being the same book that they started out being.  So why not this one?

If this book had ended the story that it started, it probably would have been amazing.  Of this I have little doubt.  If the book had begun the way that it ended, I would have never picked it up.  Again, of this I have little doubt.  Instead of either of these, what I got was a horrible mish-mash of awesome sauce and an are-you-kidding-me switch-a-roo that left me more frustrated than a single father chasing his black-marker-weilding three-year-old sextuplets through the Church of the White Nun.

One of my least favorite reads of the year.  By far.

Recommended Age: 16+
Sex: Frequent references, most quite mild for King, does detail the early moments of one scene
Violence: Very violent and gory in parts
Profanity: Infrequent, but consistent. Pretty low-key for a King novel, but it IS a King novel in this regard.

Garet James is the last in a line of women "watchtowers" who protect humanity from evil--particularly the magic kind. In BLACK SWAN RISING she had to learn about her unknown powers and save New York City from destruction. She had the help of fairies, goblins, as well as that of the rich and handsome vampire Will Hughes. But he has disappeared, leaving clues for Garet to follow.

If you remember my review for BLACK SWAN RISING, I had a hard time with the love story between Garet and Will. It was sudden and inexplicable and emotionless--it's hard for a romance to be believable when you don't understand why two characters love each other. So when the second book, THE WATCHTOWER so depended on their love in order to explain Garet's motivation to follow Will...it didn't bode well.

Garet must travel to Paris and find the path to the Summer Country to find Will on his quest to cure himself of his vampirism. Those details are interesting and creative as Carroll draws out the history and lore surrounding the magic of the Fae and their lives in Paris. Carroll also does well painting a picture of Paris itself and its view from an up-close street level--much like was done successfully with New York City in SWAN.

Unfortunately, that's the best part of the book, and it's not enough to keep the reader interested. Instead, we get the love story of Will and Marguerite (Garet's grandmother+great I don't know how many times, it wasn't clear) of 400 years ago mixed in with Garet's present-day search. What's wrong with that, you ask? Carroll already told us how that particular story ends in SWAN. So I'm reading a story of a spoiled and emo 19-year-old Will falling in swooning love at first sight, and I already know what's going to happen...and, yeah. Had a hard time enjoying that. Add on the fact that Garet and Will spend the majority of the book apart, and when they're together I'm still not sure why they love each other.

If I had liked Will more, I might have been more interested in his origins, but he behaved so erratically and took Garet's stuff only to leave her behind in SWAN, so going into THE WATCHTOWER I would have been fine if she'd washed her hands of him. My other question is: Why name the book THE WATCHTOWER if Garet doesn't do watchtower-ish things? Sure she is clever and able to follow the clues, but she leaves the hard stuff for others in the end. Again. Maybe the book is about Marguerite the original watchtower? But we don't see Marguerite protect the world from evil, she just moons over Will. Now I understand where Garet gets it from. But I still don't understand why.

And then the Summer Country and time travel and magic watches and...I just got confused at where the story was taking me. Why the characters did the things they did. Why magic worked the way it did. By the end I just wanted it to be over. There will be a sequel. I don't plan on reading it.

Recommended Age: 16+
Language: Very little
Violence: Some, although without detail
Sex: One brief scene

This book is the second in a series:
BLACK SWAN RISING
THE WATCHTOWER

I've been meaning to try out James Enge's work for some time now. I've seen some high praise (there is a blurb by Lev 'effin Grossman on the cover for instance) and so my expectations were high when I cracked open A GUILE OF DRAGONS. This novel is a prequel to Enge's Ambrose series and I saw that as a perfect opportunity for a beginner to jump in. As a book filling in some background detail for a beloved series fans may be satisfied. For those yet to be initiated this may not be the best entry point.

Here is the book description courtesy of Amazon...

"Before history began, the dwarves of Thrymhaiam fought against the dragons as the Longest War raged in the deep roads beneath the Northhold. Now the dragons have returned, allied with the dead kings of Cor and backed by the masked gods of Fate and Chaos. The dwarves are cut off from the Graith of Guardians in the south. Their defenders are taken prisoner or corrupted by dragonspells. The weight of guarding the Northhold now rests on the crooked shoulders of a traitor's son, Morlock syr Theorn (also called Ambrosius). But his wounded mind has learned a dark secret in the hidden ways under the mountains. Regin and Fafnir were brothers, and the Longest War can never be over."

Sounds pretty epic right? Right? Yeah, I thought so too at first. A GUILE OF DRAGONS starts out pretty well. The birth of Morlock is a cheerless one. The baby Amrbose is left to his own when the parents, both traitors of a sort, are exiled from the realm. The baby soon comes into the care of Tyr, lord of the dwarves and friend of Morlock's father. Morlock grows up under the mountains amongst the dwarves, eventually leaving to become a Guardian. This is where the main story picks up.

The intro is good. I like the way Enge binds our world to his fictional setting with the Sea of Worlds. And the fictional setting of the Wardlands appears very cool at first. The idea of a fantasy land without a monarchy of sorts is refreshing. The Graith of Guardians is an interesting concept, policing the realm and enforcing the law in a mostly benevolent manner. I liked the culture and lore of Enge's dwarves, as he gives reasonable explanation to a lot of genre tropes. I even liked Morlock at first. Orphaned by traitors and raised by dwarves I grew an intimate connection to Morlock.

But all of this cool stuff fizzles out after the opening chapters. The interesting and unique setting becomes a drab and dull affair. World building details are sparse and the majority of the plot takes place in and around the mountain city of the dwarves. The characters become just as bland as the setting. As fascinating as Morlock starts off he completely fails to develop. I was surprised at just how little attention was given to building this beloved character.

I was also under the impression that Morlock is a maker of sorts, a skill learned under the tutelage of the dwarves. As I understand it, this is a major aspect of the series. Morlock does not make anything over the course of A GUILE OF DRAGONS. This doesn't matter to me so much but it may disappoint fans. The action is also minimal and lackluster. Again, I don't know if this is a deal killer for fans but it could be.

Overall this book was pretty blah. I just wasn't feeling it and I struggled to finish. It could be that my high expectations set the bar unfairly high. I don't feel like that is the case but it is something to consider. Fans of the series may know better what to expect. It could be that I'm not the proper audience and all of these things are strengths of Enge's writing. The thing is that there are good ideas here, great ideas really. And there is some solid writing. It's just that the whole thing felt half baked. If you are a fan then you are probably going to buy this to complete the collection. Otherwise I recommend giving this a pass--or at least see if the sequel resolves these problems.

It may be best to just start with BLOOD OF AMBROSE after all.

Recommended Age: 14+
Language: I didn't notice any foul language, if there is some it must be minimal.
Violence: Don't let the cover fool you, the violence is also minimal.
Sex: Nope!

Still want it? Get it here.

I think I've mentioned before how I like to see authorial “progress” from one book to the next. Seeing them get better in at least one aspect of their craft with each progressive offering to the reading masses gives me hope that there will, someday, be more authors that I love to read. In general, I think that most authors fall into this category. It's hardly ever that I find one that seems to have regressed further from the goal that I think each of them should strive for: greatness in storytelling. As I'm sure you can guess by now, this book is one of those.

LANCE OF EARTH AND SKY is the second in the planned Chaos Knight trilogy and continues the story of Vidarian Rulorat and the empire of Alorea. Mostly, however, this is a story about the empire, as Vidarian factors so little in what actually happens.

After the end of SWORD OF FIRE AND SEA (spoiler for the first book!), a dimensional portal of sorts has been opened and all sorts of chaos has been spread across the land. The natural magic present in the world has quickly faded away and been replaced by an elementally-based magic system that feels very much like Wheel of Time run through the rule-based powers of Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) from the Incredibles. Use the element—water, air, fire, earth—that is available and channel it into streams that you can ultimately weave together and blast people with.

The replacement of this magic has upended the entire world, killing off a large number of leaders that have been magically lengthening their lives. In the wake of this chaos, the trading company that has been dictating what the government of Alorea was doing, begins to take a decidedly more direct route to governing. Additionally, the opening of the gate has brought in magical items and constructs that have been absent for centuries. The changes that have come in the wake of the open portal are constantly reiterated throughout the book. Almost like a mantra.

Ohmmmm...

Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes. Regression.

The crux of the problem with the book was that where SWORD was very linear but adventurous, LANCE is very linear and pointless. The main character, instead of doing anything of import, spends nearly every waking moment meeting someone new, introducing himself to them, drinking another cup of kava, or listening to other people talk. It was uber-frustrating. When he finally does do something vaguely interesting, the outcome feels more like he did it so that the author could showcase another part of the world-building.

If anything, further world-building seemed to be at the heart of the book, and yet none of it really did anything to develop the world. Thus, instead of the presentation of the world feeling like an oil slick riding across the surface of an abyss-deep ocean (good), it comes across more like a puddle of water spread across the concrete (severely lacking).

There were a couple aspects of the story that stayed consistent between the two books: there are still a ton of characters surrounding Vidarian, nearly every one of them able to communicate telepathically. About half of them this time can shape-change as well though. The ending was also incredibly lacking in impact again. Incredibly, the largest-seeming event in the entire book is given away on the back cover. There was very little in the book that held what I like to see, and that's a solid reason in my mind to stay away from the rest of this series.

On the up-tick, if you're looking for a book to just stroll through, with no real thinking necessary, and give you a great way to suck up a few hours, grab this one. It'll definitely be good for that.

Recommended Age: 15+
Sex: None
Violence: Very low key, no gore
Profanity: Very mild and infrequent

Want it? Get it here.

Talyn the Dark, one of the immortal Vaerli (aka Breaker of Oaths), hunts the enemies of Caisah of Conhaero, Master of Chaos. As his Hunter, she rides her nykur on the Road or the Void itself to fulfill the bounty on Manesto, Ahouri, and Portree alike, to return them dead or alive to the city of Vnae Rae (aka Perlious and Fair). At the same time Talyn works to undo the Harrowing (aka the Great Conflagration) and fulfill her people's oaths with the Kindred.

Oy vey.

When I joined my first writing group many moons ago one of the first things I was called out on is what Vonda McIntyre calls the Nouns of Doom. So when a novel's first chapter had such a freshman issue, it made me wary of the rest of the book. My worry was later confirmed.

HUNTER AND FOX is not Philippa Ballantine's first novel, surprisingly enough. I haven't read her others, and the cover even has a blurb from Felicia Day, which is why I initially picked it up so eagerly, since I follow her on Goodreads.

There are several PoV characters, but the main four are Talyn, her brother Byre, the talespinner Finn, and the mysterious Equo. They each have a unique viewpoint of the narrative. Talyn is one of a diminishing race, the Vaerli, whose magics were taken away by the Caisah--another immortal with mysterious origins and motives. She made a pact with the Caisah that forces her to do his bidding, but with the promise that he will help to redeem her people. The pact has left her guilt-ridden and scorned, but she is determined to see it through. Byre is the youngest of the existing Vaerli and discovers that perhaps Talyn's road isn't the only way to save his people. Finn loves Talyn, but must keep his distance, and it's because of his love that he risks the Caisah's wrath by spreading the truth about the Vaerli. Equo and his brother Si and Varlesh at first seem a superfluous trio, but become an interesting part of the story.

HUNTER AND FOX has quite the large cast, with several races, different magics, and various plot lines...all in an itty-bitty book of less than 300 pages. Clearly Ballantine plans on a sequel. But in the meantime every Capital Noun, magical tidbit, and terrain we can possibly journey across is thrown at us. Too ambitious for so short a book, HUNTER AND FOX comes across as rushed and feels contrived as a result of the lack of adequate foreshadowing. We're whisked from event to event, and even the transitional movements within a scene are abbreviated and had to be re-read. The plot itself is predictable, and the climax felt like Ballantine just wanted to finish the book so she could move on to the sequel.

Another problem is the semi-formal prose that is mixed with English colloquialisms and cliches, which makes for an awkward cadence that draws attention to itself. She's also fond of adjectives, her particular favorite being "wonderful," as in wonderful food, a wonderful night...you get the idea. There's the cliche fantasy events such as a torture scene, a masque, the tomboy being made-up and found beautiful--all stuff we've seen before. This is an author trying too hard to create high fantasy and falling flat. It isn't something an editor can fix, it's a skill an author will either learn on her own, or else switch to a different genre.

In its favor, the characters are an interesting bunch--what we could see of them through all the short scenes and quick transitions. The setting and magic, while both with some new concepts on old ideas, lacked any real depth because Ballantine tried to cram so much information into the story, there was no time to flesh out her ideas. Unfortunately, most readers won't be patient enough to pick up a second book if the first is too frustrating to read. If she's lucky, her characters will help her to pull off a sequel.

Recommended Age: 14+
Language: None
Violence: Yes, including a vague torture scene, but not gory or overly bloody
Sex: Referenced without detail on several occasions

Here's your link should you want to give it a try:
HUNTER AND FOX

NOCTURNAL by Scott Sigler is a most curious creature. In all my years of reading I can't remember coming across a book quite like it. This isn't because NOCTURNAL features some brand new theme or idea, but because it is a book that showcases Sigler's evolution as an author and still manages to be an inferior novel than its predecessors. Considered to be Sigler's most ambitious novel to date, NOCTURNAL is a supernatural police procedural with a score of highs and lows.

Monsters lurk in the ruins of San Francisco's past, striking out at night to hunt for those who won't be missed in order to sake their blood thirst. Homicide detective Bryan Clauser is drawn to this dark secret by a crop of serial murders that bear chilling resemblance to his own twisted dreams. With his partner, Pookie Chang by his side, Bryan must uncover the mystery of Marie's Children and the shadowy vigilante known as Savior who kills the killers with supernatural strength.

I was pumped to read NOCTURNAL, a whopping 500+ page urban fantasy police procedural from the notably twisted mind of Scott Sigler. Having recently read Sigler's INFECTED, I expected no small amount of depravity and gore. INFECTED was a rough novel in many regards but it showed a certain potential that I was keen to see develop. NOCTURNAL being Sigler's latest piece of fiction, displays many of the ways his writing has improved over the ensuing years. The pacing is much more steady and deliberate this time around. I wouldn't jump to call this book a slow burner but much more time is spent getting the ducks in a row. The characters, by and large, are infinitely more likable and believable as well. And yet despite this progression NOCTURNAL still seems to be the lesser novel.

The characters may be more likable but they are still flat. Bryan (aka the Terminator) is dull during the first half of the book, exhibiting all the emotion of the killer robot he got his nickname from. During the second half of the book he compensates for his lack of depth by becoming extremely expressive and a bit hormonal. Robin the obligatory love interest is no better. She is an intelligent medical examiner for the police department but her whole existence seems to revolve around Bryan for no discernible reason. Ironically, though Bryan is the intended protagonist his partner Pookie is the one who comes off as the main character. Pookie is a decent individual, showing the most depth of any member of the cast even if his jokes are hit-or-miss.

The rest of the cast is passable for the most part. John Smith (aka Black Mr Burns) turned out to be my favorite character of all and I couldn't help but feel sympathy for Rex, at least at first. Then comes a character like Mr Biz-Nass the vocally challenged fortune-teller with Tourette's. Yeah, if that seems to be reaching a bit for comedy that's because it is. I get that with these dark and serious novels a little humor is necessary to break up the morbidity but there is a line between funny and ridiculous.

I will commend Sigler for not falling back on the typical urban fantasy monsters. Marie's Children are definitely a unique creation, one that had promise. Unfortunately the gamble didn't entirely pay off as the monsters range from genuinely creepy to outright silly. That's really the largest problem NOCTURNAL faces, the constant tonal shift between horrifying and ludicrous. Early parts of the book, those that focus on the investigation, are dark and ominous but when the monsters finally reveal themselves they lose most of their potency. It's like those old horror movies when people are dying for unknown reasons and then eventually the killer turns out to be this dude sweating profusely in a really cheaply made monster costume. The two tones just don't reconcile.

NOCTURNAL isn't entirely a bad novel, the police procedural and forensics portions work much better than the supernatural parts. The nature of the monsters was even scientifically plausible (for an urban fantasy novel anyway) until the halfway mark when Sigler decided to give up trying to explain these mutant creatures. Fans of Sigler's work are bound to love this book as all the reviews until this point have been rave. I will go so far as to say that Sigler has come a long was as an author since INFECTED and I will continue to keep an eye out for his work.

Recommended Age: 18+
Language: No shortage here.
Violence: Plenty of blood and guts and carnage for all.
Sex: One very disturbing scene and lots of other disturbing mentions.

Going to risk reading this at hardback price? Get it here.

I have Plants vs Zombies on my iPhone. As I read THE FIRST DAYS: AS THE WORLD DIES, I'd occasionally switch to my smaller version of the zombie apocalypse. Why? I guess because the story is better.

In a desire for full disclosure you should know this is my first zombie book, even though I've watched my share of zombie movies. So I may not be the best judge of this sub-genre. But I do know what makes a book good.

A good book will have characters that interest you. The first pages introduce us to Jenni and Katie as they experience the beginning horror of the zombie apocalypse. Jenni is a young mother in an abusive relationship. Katie is a high-powered attorney in a happy same-sex marriage. When the world begins to fall apart around them, they find each other and somehow survive. We follow them as they save Jenni's step-son and try to find safety. They start out interesting enough as strong, female characters--which is great in this kind of story. But the strange thing about these characters? They're hyper aware of their own motivations and behaviors. We get a clunky laundry list of what makes up these women's personalities, and it was often inconsistent with their actions.

I admit that I love me some romance, but I grew frustrated by THE FIRST DAYS. As soon as the male characters entered the stage, more than fifty percent of the story became about who's going to get it on with whom (a mere 2 days after the deaths of their loved ones!). The love triangles were forced, the progression of their romantic relationships didn't feel realistic and brought out inconsistencies in Jenni's and Katie's personalities in order to fit the relationship better. We do some have PoV scenes from the romantic interests, Travis and Juan, but their characters lack any real depth, and mostly serve as eye candy. The redeeming thing despite all this is that the women do maintain the strength that helped them survive in the first place--as well as a goofy sense of humor. But in the end it wasn't enough to make me like them.

A good book will also have good writing. I know that sounds obvious, but I'm referring to the stuff other than the characterization and plot. In other words, a good book won't have cliche prose, it will have smooth transitions between scenes, the pacing will be steady, there will be a firm sense of the setting, the author won't have to bludgeon a reader over the head with heavy-handed descriptions of character emotions... THE FIRST DAYS did have some of these good things, but not with any consistency.

To me, the most important thing that makes a book good is the story itself. Frater structures THE FIRST DAYS fine enough, considering all the running around and fighting. However, it was still loosely enough plotted that I had to force myself to keep reading--the story just didn't grab me. Frater tries for a climax near the end of the book, but after a series of battles against the zombies it's hard to give the last battle any special significance. Then the resolution that follows meanders with awkward story line tie-offs and ends with an odd epilogue and possible new tensions for book two (/yawn).

If other zombie books out there are like this, I'm glad I haven't wasted any time on them. However, if enough of you suggest a particular book, I might be persuaded otherwise.

Recommended Age: 17+
Language: Tons
Violence: Gore, blood, body parts flying every which way
Sex: Mostly referenced; a couple of brief scenes with moderate detail

I suppose if you really must read it anyway, you can find it here:
THE FIRST DAYS: AS THE WORLD DIES

How to start this one. [[sigh]] Seriously, I have no idea. This book was just such a massive disappointment. Well. That was actually easier than I thought it would be. Just say it, I guess. Now I can go have a breakdown.

THE WHITE LUCK WARRIOR is the second novel of Bakker’s second trilogy set in the world of Earwa the Three Seas. The Prince of Nothing Trilogy is one of my favorite fantasy series. Both Steve and Nick are of the same opinion. After reading those first three books, I was really excited to hear that we’d be getting more of this story. Two more entire trilogies, in fact. I have to say, though, that after making my way through THE JUDGING EYE, my compatriots and I were less than enthusiastic about things. Regardless, I decided to reserve my own judging eye (eh? eh?) until a later date and continue with the series. Right now I’m regretting that decision quite a bit.

THE WHITE LUCK WARRIOR follows three main story-lines, much like its predecessor. We have the progression of The Great Ordeal, a massive, multi-national army pressing into the northern country, to where the evil of the Consult waits to be destroyed; the progression of Achamian and the Skin Eaters, as they drive toward Sauglish and what Achamian hopes will be the undoing of Anasurimbor Khellus; and finally we have Khellus’s wife, Esmenet, who has been left behind to try and keep the empire together.

Bakker’s prose is, of course, really well done—that’s nothing new—so even the really dense chapters that have little to no dialogue in them, race past your eyes with ease. His use of italics and ellipses though…atrocious. Horrific. Ludicrous. It’s like he was trying to make the book mysterious and somehow life-altering by using those two methods alone. Forget about the story, isn’t this mysterious? Isn’t this life-altering? Seriously over the top and destroyed my ability to enjoy what plot there was in the book. They got in the way BIG TIME!!!!!! and were COMPLETELY ANNOYING!!!!!! (Kind of like TextInAllCaps and LotsaExclamationPoints...)

The first half to two-thirds of the book is almost completely given over to travel across the wilderness, be it from Achamian’s group or The Great Ordeal. In the case of The Great Ordeal, we learn the names of seemingly every captain and general and head honcho in the bunch. Names and titles and countries and over and over and over. And flags and standards and armor and UGH. Enough already. Give us some story! From Achamian and Mimara we get navel-gazing after navel-gazing thought as they plod on and on and... Granted, what else are they supposed to think about while traveling through the wilderness or the jungle or the mountains or wherever else they may be? Between these two story-lines, readers are getting The Slog of Slogs, indeed (a reference from the journey these two separate groups are taking). Sound interesting? Wait, there's more.

Thankfully, the entire book wasn’t consumed by the Slog of Slogs. Outside of it, though, plot development felt very minimal. In the last 150-200 pages or so, things finally get moving. There's development of Esmenet's situation, which I enjoyed once things started happening, though the time spent on Kelmomas's storyline after everything goes down was disappointing in particular. After the slow plodding and detailed renditions of everything else in the book, the development of his character during this part of the story felt very rushed and like it had been given very little attention. In fact, he mostly just tells us what happens to the kid. That's a pity too, as after finishing everything it seems to me that Kelmomas is going to play a very important role in things, indeed. Perhaps the most disappointing was the extremely minimal role that the White Luck Warrior played in the book. After his introduction in THE JUDGING EYE, I had some high hopes, but the way he ended up being handled reminded me of how frustrated I was after finishing THE BRIAR KING and finding out the minimal role the title character played in that book. Of course, every book in that series was disappointing, but that's beside the point.

Then, surprise of all surprises, the climax of Achamian's story arc AGAIN revolves around another "tribute to Tolkien"? Are you freaking kidding me? After the end of The Judging Eye, I would have thought Bakker would go somewhere else for some source material, but no. Stick with the classics, I guess. Oh well.

I remember watching two separate interviews with Bakker. The first one was completed sometime during his process of writing the Prince of Nothing trilogy. He talked about how he’d write and rewrite the scenes with Khellus, agonizing over whether or not he was getting the character right, as Khellus was supposed to be so much more intelligent than anyone else. So much smarter than even the author that was writing him. Effort. Strain. Work. And I loved every bit of it. The second interview was taken just after The Judging Eye was released, I believe. I don’t remember much about that one except for a single comment Bakker made, describing his writing process as "throwing a lot of sh*t on the walls and seeing what stuck". (That's a quote!) For me, that says it all. I’m done with Bakker. For those readers that can handle all the Slog for such little progression, interesting and good or not, I wish you the best. As for the rest of you? Stick with his Prince of Nothing Trilogy and then look somewhere else. This round just ain't worth the price of the ticket.

Recommended age: 18+, as before with his stuff, though there's significantly less adult content this time around
Language: Regular and strong
Violence: Lotsa, lotsa
Sex: A couple scenes, fairly strong

And, dependent upon how your tastes roam, links to the Forum for Bakker's books and Bakker's blog

I, like any decent purveyor of story critiques, am an author-hopeful. Once, about ten years ago and near the beginning of my writing “career”, I came up with the idea of evil monsters that could travel through shadows to get where they wanted. I thought at the time how creepy and cool something like that could be, and that I might actually use these shadow beasts in a story someday. That is, until a good friend of mine suggested that doing so might not be such a great idea because the bad guys could just wait until night time (or ANY time/place that it got dark) pop in on our heroes, slaughter the lot of them, and then take over the world. End of story. I’ve moved on since then. This novel felt like it hadn’t.

SWORD OF FIRE AND SEA is the first book in a trilogy named The Chaos Knight and is Erin Hoffman's debut novel. It is a story told from the perspective of a ship’s captain, Vidarian Rulorat, who has been called upon to fulfill a generations-old family promise to the fire priestesses of Kara’Zul. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to accompany Ariadel, a special fire priestess, from the temple of the fire priestesses in the north to a friendly temple of water priestesses in the far south. Along the way, he encounters rogue telepaths called the Vkortha, mighty gryphons, love, betrayal, and a prophecy or two, as well.

This one fell within my 10% rule pretty quickly, and if I hadn’t been asked to review it, I would have bailed really early. It wasn’t that it was particularly bad, there just wasn’t anything that really grabbed me. The prose is decent, though quite explanatory, and stays pretty high-level. Characterization, unfortunately, sums to essentially null. As the story progresses, and the main party amasses more people and more sentient gryphons, the names and references all got jumbled and difficult to tell from one page to the next who we were talking about now or really what was going on at all.

At times the story tried to get bigger, bringing in a trading company that dictates what the central government does. Then we're introduced to the prophecy of the one that is supposed to come and seal away the chaos magic forever behind an already closed gate. These scenes though were counter-balanced by others that just cripple the story—-the most memorable being the entire chapter devoted to the massage house, with its masseuses and their lotion. And there was a cat. I’m sorry, but I just hate finding cats in fantasy novels. I should probably write a fantasy story about a cat sometime so that I’ll hate them less.

On second thought, no, I shouldn’t.

The plot of SWORD is very linear and progressional, with one event/task leading the main party of characters to the next. In so doing, they travel quite extensively and visit many places that are quite difficult to discern from one another. Each trip is completed by gryphon, and so these legs of the journey happen on a very short time scale. This leads to a really vague sense of just how big the imagined world of the story is and how each of the individual pieces of the world-building fit together. I’ve heard complaints before about the horse being the “fantasy equivalent of a motorcycle”, and in this one the gryphons act as almost a perfect substitute for the "fantasy helicopter". They move the characters from one location to the next, flying through the air at fast speeds, and never seem to get any attention. At times they impart information. In others, they fight a bit, though those scenes are few and far between.

The two largest difficulties I had were the nebulous magic system and the lack of an impactful ending. The main character acquires the ability from a goddess to access the magical power of the world, and then starts using it with little to no training or effort as if he were a prodigy. At each of these times, he uses the magic "without thinking" or he just knows how to do what he wants, as the power is somehow tied to his will. At one point, the Vkortha use a wind-storm to swoop down on the main characters, steal Ariadel—the special fire priestess, in case you’ve forgotten—and then disappear. (Shadow monsters, anyone?) Later, the main character is given a magical power equivalent to that needed to move planets within the universe. (Sunshine…heroes maybe?) Every time the magical ability came up, the results seemed to get more and more preposterous. And then the big bang ending, which kept getting referred to throughout the book, passed like a puff of air and seemed to be forgotten entirely. At first, I totally thought that I had missed it, but no. The impact just wasn't there.

Looking back at this review, I’m seeing a whole lot of complaint and I apologize for that. Really, there’s nothing that was absolutely unforgivable about this story, it’s just that there was a whole lot of mediocrity and it was handled in a fairly poor way. If I could take back the time I spent on this one, I definitely would. And if you get the chance to read this one, and you think anywhere near like we do here at EBR, then I’d probably suggest that you pass on it as well.

Recommended age: 14 plus
Language: One reference to a swear word as being a "bedroom" word
Violence: Some fighting, but not really
Sex: A single reference to someone being naked

She's a "shoot first and ask questions later" half-vampire with assassin skills, trust issues, and who must learn the magic inherited from her mage father in order to unite the dark races.

/yawn

If you've read your share of chick urban fantasy, THE MAGE IN BLACK is more of the same. Unfortunately, it's not even average more of the same. Perhaps I should start with what it has going for it: straightforward storytelling and fast-paced action. What it doesn't have going for it? Everything else.

It starts off with Sabina, our kick-butt heroine, arriving in New York after leaving the good graces of her vampire queen grandmother in RED-HEADED STEPCHILD. She's on her way to meet her long-lost twin sister, she's unsure what's going to happen, how she's going to make a living, whether she should kiss Adam the mage again—and of course they're attacked en route. Gotta shake things up early! Cuz, you know, otherwise people might get bored with the predictable story. Also, make sure to keep it snappy and distracting enough so that readers won't catch on that there's little point to the opening violence to the plot as a whole.

For Sabina, once she arrives in New York, things don't seem to get any better. The mage council doesn't trust or approve of her. Maisie, her bubbly twin sister is too busy being the mage council figurehead and resident prophetess to bother getting to know her own sister. Adam the potential love interest spends most of the book MIA, absent on an important mission to the Fairy Queen—because the mage council has convened to decide whether they should go to war with the vampires and the mages are going to need all the help they can get.

Often a reader will be forgiving to predicable plots, mediocre prose, and simplistic world-building if the characters are worth caring about. Unfortunately, not even the main character escaped secondary-character syndrome: shallow stereotypes, without even much detail to add depth. Sabina's first-person PoV emotional baggage was clunky and hard to sympathize with, especially since her decisions were inconsistent. She's supposed to be a well-trained assassin, right? Yet she's always caught off-guard by attackers, will find herself without a weapon during a fight, and goes broke when her funds are frozen by her grandmother's organization...even though she had plenty of time to withdraw emergency cash. The secondary characters are, for the most part, flat and uninteresting. What are these peoples' motives? Where do they come from? Why are they here? What do they like to eat/drink/wear/drive? Anything beyond the existing sparse details would have helped.

Something that could have boosted character personality? Dialogue. However, there was nothing to differentiate one set of quotes from another, including the main character's. Even then, the dialogue had no personality, was cliche, and did little other than awkwardly propel the plot forward.

One thing that could have really been cool was Sabina's demon familiar Giguhl, but the demon wasn't anything more than a sidekick for comic relief, whose origins, magic, and abilities aren't given more than basic information. In fact, I had a hard time seeing him as anything other than a strange-looking, sex-obsessed guy who happened to be able to shapeshift into a cat, and who's got some nasty street-fighting skills (how convenient).

The mage magic was traditional and dull—can't they do more than "throw" a magic force to attack with? Anything? It wasn't much different than Giguhl's magic, now that I think of it... A more imaginative effort might have really added some punch. And speaking of fight scenes, they left me uninspired. Well, the opening sequence was pretty good, I'll grant that, but it appears that the author's imagination was used up for that scene, because the climax lacked a real sense of peril, purpose, and anything interesting. Then, we get stuck with no resolution and a cliffhanger. Yippee.

Recommended Age: 17+
Language: Scattered profanity, but not lots
Violence: Yes, there are vampires and werewolves and demons, so there's blood and pain
Sex: Lots and lots of innuendo, references, and one graphic scene

You ever had a bad Snickers bar? I’m not talking about one that's obviously bad--with flaky, grey chocolate crumbling from the edges because of how old it is. I’m talking about a Snickers bar that looks just like every other one, but when you bite into it you nearly get sick right there because of how bad the peanuts are. Bitter, and pasty, and just...yeah. Those peanuts not only ruin the rest of the sugary goodness of the bar, but they stick in your craw and affect everything you eat for a long time afterward. This book was kinda like one of those.

In THE HOUNDS OF AVALON, our heroes from the previous two books in the trilogy (my reviews: DEVIL IN GREEN and QUEEN OF SINISTER) are finally joined amidst the chaos and the overpowering evil that’s threatening to drown the entire world. Mallory and Sophie from DEVIL IN GREEN, get together with Caitlin and Thackeray from QUEEN OF SINISTER, and then run into Hal and Samantha. There are a few others to help mix up pot: a government type or two, a soldier named Hunter, Thackeray’s tag-along Harvey (wait...Hal, Hunter, Harvey...that makes three main character H-names. Nuts. How am I going to keep track of them all? He-he. Nuts.), and don’t forget the leftover guys from the first trilogy in this sequence. They're around somewhere too.

The Lament Brood are still combing across the country and gaining strength all the time. Everyone they kill comes immediately back to life, glowing purple, and adding to their mob-strength. So our “heroes” decide band together and...retreat and retreat and retreat, until they can’t go any farther. And then figure they can safely lie down and die. Meanwhile, the Golden Gods that have continually swept in and saved the day in previous books continue to do so, but face dire peril themselves when a civil war breaks out. Half of them start to wage war against the half, those championing humanity and those who think humanity sucks. The the Void is still coming.

The characters feel like cardboard cut-outs all; no depth, no development. They wander from one disaster to the next. Every other page or so, I had to remind myself who this character was and what part they’d played in previous books. When a new character came on, they usually got a one- or two-paragraph description, and then everything would continue. Situation normal. The only reason the characters seemed to be there was as vehicles for getting across what’s happening to the world. They're three year-olds with all those burning questions on their lips. They're Watsons, with every secondary character the most recent incarnation of Sherlock Holmes ready to pontificate and enlighten.

The story’s still the same one from the beginning of things. The gods of legend have come into the world, and we have to protect ourselves from them. Five heroes arise from the ashes to save what is left. Yeah. Six books into this series and nothing much has changed about the plot line.

Things go downhill fast as the book progresses. In general, there's a complete lack of consequence that runs rampant throughout. This plot device rears its head repeatedly, and I quickly lost any sense of peril or tension because I knew that nothing bad was going to happen to the good guys. In the end, it lacks just about everything a good book doesn’t: engaging characters, twisted plot-lines, and a satisfying ending (surprising, especially for this being the third book in a trilogy). There was just too much/little in this book/trilogy for me to set aside my critical eye and simply enjoy it.

Sorry, peoples. But this one is just more of the same. Move along. Stick with Chadbourn's excellent Swords of Albion series.

Recommended age: 18+, for a smattering of everything
Language: Some, fairly strong in places
Violence: Yeah. It’s an apocalypse, so it pretty much has to be there, and it is
Sex: Several scenes, glorified and graphic but quick


Mark Chadbourn’s Website
http://www.markchadbourn.net/

Sarah Beuhall is pretty sure she needs therapy. Her personal demons of doubt and self-identity keep her from being happy with her life, even though at first it appears to be going well. She's got a job she loves (blacksmithing; props for a local B movie director), beautiful girlfriend who loves her (Katie), and a chosen family in her Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) reenactor friends--so why does everything still seem to go wrong?

But none of those problems are nearly as bad as the ones that revolve around her ownership of a black-bladed sword: these more immediate problems involve dwarves, Old Norse gods, and dragons. BLACK BLADE BLUES (no, I can't believe he named it that, either) by J.A. Pitts is your typical urban fantasy novel with some gettin-together by the main characters, the heroine learning that magic really exists, and swords--don't forget the swords.

The story takes places in modern-day Seattle, and even though Sarah likes fighting in skirmishes at the occasional Ren Fair, she's never believed that magic really exists. That is, until a movie extra claims he's a dwarf and that the black-bladed sword Sarah bought at an auction is magic. Then everything changes.

BLACK BLADE BLUES starts off slow. This is an urban fantasy novel, and UF is generally shorter, so a writer can't dilly dally with set-up and has got to start out at a dead run. He doesn't. Pitts probably thinks that the short chapters would solve the pace problems and choppy flow. They don't. Neither can they successfully hide awkward progression. You don't even really know what the "story" is until well past page 100.

Sarah is the first-person PoV, but we occasionally see third-person via Katie, or a dragon (in human form) and a witch who consider the Northwest their territory, the people in it as chattel. Sometimes these switches help to advance plot and they're often more interesting than Sarah's part of the story; Katie's PoV scenes are used to advance the romance. However, it's Sarah's voice that will hook readers long before the plot, or before even liking her as a protagonist: it's full of attitude, sarcasm, and opinions. But readers will have a hard time liking Sarah since she spends so much time questioning Katie's attraction to her, she's got a dismal self body image, and she ruminates on an unpleasant childhood with a religious nut father--all of this was ham-handed and gloomy. On the plus side, while the F/F protagonist's relationship is an important part of the story, it doesn't feel like it's there for diversity's sake, and was for the most part believable.

Pitts' prose does get cliché. The conversations are vapid. The storytelling style is engaging and easy enough to read, but the action scenes nothing to get too excited about. The climax is a SCAdian dream come true, and becomes over-the-top with trolls, dragons, and witches fighting reenactors on their horses and using homemade swords and mail. If you're looking for nerdy fun, then great, this is for you. Personally I thought it was a little silly.

What we end up with is a mixed bag, and a result I'm not really certain who the target audience is. Lesbian blacksmith protagonist who's uncomfortable with her sexual orientation, and becomes an important player in the fight against evil. Dragons and witches vying for control over humans, but we don't really understand why or how. SCAdian reenactors who on the outside seem really cool, but not much time is spent in that world other than the convenience of Sarah having friends who can call up an army to fight trolls. So, yeah, I'm going to have to say skip this one.

Recommended Age: 16+
Language: An infrequent smattering of various profanity and crude slang
Violence: Yes, the climax chapters get brutal, but the action could have been better done
Sex: Lots of innuendo, references same-sex encounters with some detail; however, there are no graphic 'on screen' scenes

The hardest part of being a book reviewer is putting together a negative review of a book when you don't want to. This happens for a variety of reasons, but mainly has to do with the author himself (or herself as the case may be). If we hate the author, or absolutely hate a novel, writing a scathing review is simple and enjoyable--therapeutic even. But with a novel like THE UNREMEMBERED, well, we almost didn't even write this up. But then we realized the potential disservice we would be doing you, the readers, and the author, Peter Orullian, by leaving this unreviewed.

We are going to tackle this review a little differently from the other negative reviews we have written. Hopefully it comes across as constructive rather than destructive. Peter is generally regarded as a good guy by people we know. As you readers may be aware, we are alpha readers for several big-name authors. They send us an early draft of the completed novel, and we read it over and give detailed feedback on what we liked and/or had problems with. We are going to do the same sort of thing here for Peter Orullian--albeit in a spoiler-free way so you readers can still make your own decision at the end. That's right folks, we are going to be the "nice guys" today. Don't get used it.

Let's start off with the good from Peter's debut novel. The cover art is absolutely beautiful. It in itself will sell the novel to a good number of people. The map inside is perhaps the single best map we have ever seen in a fantasy novel--and we've seen some great ones. Our good buddy Isaac Stewart--you know him as the artist from the maps in the MISTBORN series and THE WAY OF KINGS--told us once that the person who did this map deserves a Hugo. We agree.

We aren't going to lie to you, that was about it for us. This book was a huge disappointment. Where does this disappointment originate? Well, from the beginning. From the story itself.

THE UNREMEMBERED starts off with a boy from a small town. He is fantastic with a bow. He has stars in his eyes about life outside the town. When out hunting one day, a mysterious and evil creature chases him, threatening his life. Upon returning to his village, he finds that two foreign strangers have come. They soon tell our main character and one of his friends that they need to leave their village because the evil bad guys are coming for them. Have you heard this before? We have. We've seen this story from Terry Brooks, and more specifically from Robert Jordan. At first we thought it just a coincidence arising from the "coming of age" type story we were reading. But as the novel progressed, we soon were predicting each plot point specifically as it came...based on the plot and progression of THE EYE OF THE WORLD.

THE UNREMEMBERED isn't just loosely similar to THE EYE OF THE WORLD. It follows it near exact. Think of every major plot point from the first Wheel of Time novel, from beginning to end, and you can find a parallel in Orullian's novel. Suppose we were in a writing group with Peter. The first thing we would have pointed out is this blatant similarity. Perhaps it is the industry's desire to have another Wheel of Time, but isn't this taking it a bit too far?

The characters follow the same template that Jordan's do. We could point at character and say, "Oh, this is Mat. That is Rand." One of the characters is Moiraine, only as a dude. The other is Lan, but a chick. Simply reversing the gender of roles is not enough to make it new. Now there are fans of this novel out there who are starting to foam at the mouth a bit. Doubtless they will want to point out that not every character has a WoT counterpart. True enough. But over half do, and most of the main players.

One of the mistakes it seems all first-time fantasy authors make is the whole "invented word syndrome." We've been trying our hand at writing, and we've each been guilty of this. Too many made-up terms for normal words doesn't add any freshness. They don't add uniqueness. All they do is pull a reader out of the moment as they spend a few moments trying to figure out what the word actually means. Words and names littered with apostrophes used to be super vogue. No so much anymore. Even the authors out there with the highest learning curves are careful about what they make up. Don't make it harder for the reader than it needs to be.

One of the storytelling techniques that bothers us the most is when information is completely withheld. "I'll tell you when you're ready." "This is not the time to discuss that." "I'm a mysterious bastard, and will berate you for not knowing what I refuse to tell you." These types of responses happen every single chapter. We could only shake out heads in dismay as the Moiraine/Allanon hybrid character would tell the other characters that there wasn't time to explain anything...as they rode slowly for days at a time...or as they sit around a campfire talking about history for hours at a time. To us, this isn't fair to the readers, nor is it good storytelling.

Like most first-time authors, transitions are extremely rough. There is a side story being told, for example, that when introduced has no time-anchor on it. It comes at a confusing time that immediately cripples the momentum of the scene it interrupts (can't get more specific than that due to heavy spoilers--it's pretty early on). We literally read that section a half-dozen times trying to figure out just what the heck was going on, and when it was happening. Part of this has to do with Orullian describing things that don't need it, while ignoring what needs clarification. These are the types of things that, as alpha readers, we point out. Even the most derivative story can be enjoyable if it is smooth and accessible.

We are ultimately left feeling the Orullian played it incredibly safe with THE UNREMEMBERED. Though it has some interesting theology mixed in, it still feels like EYE OF THE WORLD rewritten. The characters act in unbelievable, yet utterly predictable ways. This novel needed a few more heavy drafts in our opinion.

We've said a lot of negative stuff here. We just didn't like it at all. Hate? No. We didn't hate it. THE UNREMEMBERED feels half-done. It feels like a novel still in its draft form. It feels like a copy. The good news is that Orullian still has time to make it right. It's our opinion that you can't play it safe as a writer anymore. Writers have to take risks. Orullian isn't a bad writer, he's an inexperienced one. A lot of these issues can get worked out through simple experience. But the story? Sorry man, this needs a radical shift. There are readers out there that will like this novel due to its absolute similarity to that Jordan/Tolkien/Brooks story we've all read dozens of times from dozens of authors. But that isn't good enough for us. It isn't good enough for the thousands upon thousands of discerning readers out there.

We doubt Peter Orullian will read this review. That's fine. Regardless, we want him to know that we really WANT him to get better. Twist the crap out of this clichéd story with its clichéd characters. Stop playing so safe and predictable.

Again, writing a negative review like this is never easy. We could have sugar-coated it, or completely swept our opinions of this under the rug. No insults here, just our honest thoughts. You decide if you want to read this novel or not.

Recommended Age: 16 and up.
Language: Nope.
Violence: Mixed bag here. Sometimes it's well done, other times it is completely terrible--transitions and clarity are important in action scenes.
Sex: Rape is talked about pretty frankly.