Elitist Book Reviews

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/

THE QUEEN OF SINISTER is the second book in the Dark Age Trilogy by fantasy author Mark Chadbourn. This trilogy is the second of three that tells of the time when the boundaries between our world and next have run thin and allowed Celtic gods and nightmares of legend to cross over. If you caught my review of THE DEVIL IN GREEN (the first of this trilogy) you’ll probably understand that I was a bit hesitant going into this book. Like a good reviewer though, I dove into it with my eyes and arms open, hoping for some goodness, because I just love you that much. Ah, the things we do for you...

THE QUEEN OF SINISTER starts off completely different than its predecessor. Where Devin in Green had a car chase, a galloping horse, and a host of nasty bad guys, Queen starts off with a whole host of people dead, a plague ripping across the countryside, and the poor doctor that is torn up that she just can’t do more. I loved the fact that it looked like we were going to get into character in this one. Everything swirled around our doctor-friend, Caitlin Shepherd, and how she was dealing with the mess of a newly mangled world. Then Frank Crowther shows up and says that Caitlin has to come with him, to cross to the other side and help him find a cure for the plague. A quest! To say I was interested would be putting it mildly. Movement! Purpose! Exactly the things that were missing from the last book.

Despite the fact that I liked the opening sequence, I was quickly disappointed by what followed. The cast got pretty large, rather quickly, and I soon found myself wondering why all these people were acting the way they were. In what I read, there was little consistency of character to be found, unless it was the fact that they would all stop and stare agog at the psychedelic colors of some vista or other. I still wanted to see what the end held though, so I did something that I’ve never done before: I gave up on the characters and read the book just for the scope; go in for the ideas and the imagination, for the wonder of the thing. In stepping back, I found that I began to like the book a bit more. It became more of an adventure book, with unknown perils and creepy spies. I just had to remove myself from caring about what the characters were doing. Or in understanding their logic. Or in seeing how one event naturally led them to the next conclusion. Okay. I guess I can do that. Do any of you like books this way though? I don't. Even though there was purpose, the whole thing felt wide open. It seem like a lot of bad stuff happened because that’s the way the world is. But I was okay with it. I may have even been able to finish it all with this somewhat positive outlook, but the end flipped back around and gave me a character/emotional ending.

And I didn’t care in the slightest. Augh!

In the end, this book seems to have given its readers three things:

1) A wider view of the world as it “really is”, including some crazy stuff from the other side—in other words, a whole lotta world-building;

2) A setup for Ms. Caitlin to become a Daughter of Dragons (though by the end I still don’t know if this was even accomplished or not);

3) Solid proof/evidence that mankind is lazy/selfish/crappy, and without helping/goading/forcing from the gods of the Celts, we’d simply never make it. Positively sucks to be us.

On this end of things, I can see that a lot of these three things were in THE DEVIL IN GREEN as well, and I’m not so sure that I’m liking the trend here. Maybe though, it's because I'm not the one doing the manipulating. I certainly have no qualms against pointing any of you in the right direction when necessary... ((Evil chuckle, dry-washing of hands))

Chadbourn’s prose is still good here; world-building, something to be noticed; characters, not much to root for; over-arching story, fairly lackluster. If you’re into books that you can skim through without much involvement, are into it for the author’s imagination, and are looking for a quick read, this book will probably fit right into Slot C (for cool) with you. For me, it was more like Slot I (interested) to A (annoyed) to R (removed) to H (humbug!). I liked some of it. The rest just made me mad. Loads better than its predecessor, but not by enough to matter.

BookInTenWords: Overly flawed heroes find the gods know better than they.

Recommended age: 18+, for a little bit of everything
Language: Not a whole lot, but a bit of every type
Violence: Some, though more should probably be said about the gore of diseased/decaying bodies
Sex: A couple people mentioned as being together under the covers, and one fairly graphic "spiritual ritual" by a female character.

Mark Chadbourn’s Website

I like avocados. A good one will leave you longing for more without much effort. Soft, green flesh, that great nutty flavor, and all it needs is a bit of salt to provide, quite possibly, one of the finest snacks on the planet. Yum. I’m always on the lookout for some good Green.

So I’d heard all sorts of coolness associated with Mark Chadbourn before finally getting to read any of his books, and as it ended up, this one was my first. Chadbourn’s a novelist living in the UK that got picked up by Pyr recently, and if you’ve been anywhere near their booklist in the last year, you would have had a hard time missing his name. Seven books of his have come through the Pyr imprint in the last fifteen months and all of the covers have been absolutely full of win (Imitation being the best form of flattery, I thought I’d throw a bone in the direction of the overlords here). Thus, I gathered my salivating palette and dove into the book with great amounts of gusto.

The Devil in Green starts out with a bang and flash. Mallory, the existential hero of the story, is ripping down an old road in a Porsche with the hopes of finding someone alive in the next town, when he catches up to a man galloping down the road on a horse. The man’s being pursued by a pack of man-sized orangutan-looking beasts, with the faces of children and wicked sharp teeth, that speak lies to depress and demoralize you before ripping your head off for lunch. The man on the horse is Miller, and the two fight through these nasty freaks-of-nature, ending their flight within the ruins of a castle/church, high on a lone hilltop, where they are safe for some reason unbeknownst to them. The next day, they travel to a town Miller suggests, where a branch of the Catholic Church has supposedly taken over a cathedral and is recruiting people to become a modern set of Knights Templar. Or possibly just giving people free lunches.

As I mentioned above, I haven’t read Chadbourn’s previous trilogy, The Age of Misrule, but what I gleaned from the net was that it included beasts and mythology from Celtic legend that have come into the world we know and left chaos and destruction in their wake. With this kind of setup and the opening chapters of Devil in Green, I was ready for a seriously good ride. Like say, something akin to The Matterhorn or even Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, I didn’t get anything near either of them.

Chadbourn actually writes quite well. His prose pulled me in and had me swallowing things very easily. He has some relatively interesting side characters, a realistic feel to the setting, and enough sarcasm to outstrip Simon Cowell on a bad hair day. I love sarcasm, don’t get me wrong, but if there’s no other reason for me to like a character they get old really fast. Also, Chadbourn writes the mundane stuff very well. I never got tripped up by anything when the story was plodding along from one excitement to the next; it was only when things got a little crazy that I had questions. Like, for instance, throughout most of the climax.

In the end, my difficulties with the story boiled down to two big issues. The first was the fact that it felt like nothing happened for the entire book. Nothing. This was because the main characters didn’t do anything significant of their own volition. They were forced out on a few forays by their religious superiors, and some people got killed in messy ways, but it never felt like there was a real plot or point to the book--no forward progression that I could see. The fairy people get introduced, though they’d supposedly already come into play in the first trilogy so this was nothing new. There’s a dragon that attacks the cathedral a few times (Though it’s only ever referred to as a “fabulous beast”. Why? No idea. Call an elf an elf, I say), but the thing makes minimal impact to the structure before [***Censored***] (Seriously, guys? Oh yeah. No spoilers. Umm...) There’s some kind of love interest for Mallory, a girl from outside the complex that communicates somewhat with the fairy people, but there’s no real progression there either--just some sort of vague sense of romantically jumping from one step to the next until [***Censored***] (Aww, come on. That wasn’t such a big one to give away...). About 250 pages in, Miller asks the main character, “What’s your motivation, Mallory?” I thought this a very appropriate question, and one I would have liked an answer to. Unfortunately, there was no answer to be had.

The second issue I took with the story is the excessive harping on the stupidity of those that ascribe to any particular religion. I could understand if there had been some bashing. I could even have put up with lots of it if said bashing would have been specific, or added something of value to the story or the characters. That’s not what this was though. This was simply a blatant generalization of all religions as being bad and those involved with them as being incompetent morons for believing. So, I did a little research, and it looks like something on the order of 85% of people in the world believe in giving worship to some kind of greater being through the religion of their choice. That's an awfully large majority to be preaching against, and that's exactly what it comes over as. There did seem to be some small part of the story that tried to show how following church leaders (or anyone for that matter) without thinking for yourself, would lead to destruction, chaos, and death. This I can see. This I could have sympathized with. But I couldn’t swallow everything I got fed here. Not by a long shot.

In the end, I can’t say that I liked the book very much. It was empty; Green, yes, but empty. I waffled over my thoughts about it for a long time because there was so much potential to be had. There’s still potential for the next two books, I think, based on the material he has, if he'll just use it. If there's another book like this though, I might just have to bail on the series altogether. So for you, instead of reading this one, I’d suggest trying a different book of his (A reliable source has suggested that some of his other books are much better), or that you buy an avocado. Nice, dark skin; gives slightly when pressed upon; not too soft; lots of nutty goodness. Plenty of Green to satisfy your craving there, I’d say.

So let it be written.

So let it be done.

Recommended age: 16 and up
Language: Some, across the range, scattered.
Violence: A little. People fighting with swords. Someone loses a hand. A few brief descriptions of two people that die messily.
Sex: One scene, fairly quick. Not much else.

http://www.markchadbourn.net/

The following review, once you know that it is a Pyr book, will not come as a shock. We have to exercise the utmost of restraint in order to avoid reading through and reviewing all the Pyr books we can, as soon as we can.

THE SILVER SKULL, by Mark Chadbourn, is one of the funnest books we have read. Period. Imagine a James Bond story, but way more awesome, set in an alternate Elizabethan England. This is what you get in this book.