Elitist Book Reviews

When endeavoring to attract a new lover, one cannot begin to understate the dignified merits of beauty, grace, and poise; and yet nothing else, I have found, will draw undivided attention to your person more quickly than a good, swift punch to the face. Repetition encouraged.

Sam Sykes's debut novel, TOME OF THE UNDERGATES, was nothing, if not exactly just such an attention-clenching assault on my psyche (read the review here). Through that book, I was ripped from the funk of my heretofore meager existence, dragged wholesale through the thrilling chaos of true adventure, and then left to wallow in the self-pity and dripping mucus of what detritus remained to me. It was an experience that I did not think that I would soon forget. And I didn't, until I read this novel and was hit so hard by it that I lost the ability to retain such fond memories of any other such impactful novel.

THE SKYBOUND SEA was easily one of my most anticipated sequels to read. Even after the relatively underwhelming BLACK HALO, I could see nothing but rampant chaos and giddy carnage for Lenk and his dear friends (read the review of that novel here). The last novel left part of them floundering in the sea in search of an invisible island, and the others wandering around the bone-covered and netherling-infested island they'd found at the end of TOME, and all of them having a date with the devil during an apocalyptic world-ending visit to the island of the Shen. Ohmigosh, this book was fun.

The opening chapter nearly sent me into fits. Super mega action, caged behemoth-god rising from the depths of the ocean, seagull-Omens chanting salvation, hoardes of frogmen streaming through the streets, and one lone ex-priest wandering in search of a young girl. Just whoa. If there was ever a way to start a book this book, or any book for that matter, this was it. But was SEA going to be another action-fest, or would it drop off and get too detailed on me?  Thankfully, the thing that was most impressive about SEA was how Sykes took what he'd learned from the first two books of the series and combined them to make this one. Where TOME was “action, mockery, action”, and HALO was “breathe, explore, breathe”, SEA was something on the order of “action, explore, learn”. The balance between action and story development and character planning sessions and introspection, all which seemed very skewed and bunched up until this point, was very well done.

All of the character development that Sykes has done up until now played major roles in this book as well, and made this journey all the better. We learn more about Denaos's background, and oh is it ouchy. Kataria's inner turmoil concerning her people and her relationship with Lenk (a filthy, disease-tastic human of all things) made for some serious good reading. The scene where Gariath meets the Green Shict (Shict on steroids) was awesome-tastic. I laughed for days after reading it. I still laugh about it.  Gariath has some killer fight scenes in this one. Oh, man. That massive sea serpent? Woo-hoo! His time for contemplation is over, and he just starts wailing on stuff. Lenk finally finds the voices in his head. Really great ideas all, and well worth the investment.

There were so many cool parts of this book that I can't begin to start enumerating them, and Sykes does such a good job of writing that clarity was never an issue. The balance between action and breathing/exploring made for great pacing. It never seemed to lag to me, and things kept moving toward a climax that was obvious (Kraken Queen wrastlin', anyone?) but by no stretch of the imagination conventional. Sykes just kept pulling out punch after punch too. Forget the fact that this is supposed to be a trilogy. Last book?Nah. Bah.  Take this.  POW! And here's another. WHACK! And now a left hook. BANG! Guy just doesn't stop.

On the whole, I think this series could be seriously helped by reading it all together. I know that's probably a big commitment for some--it's gotta be like 1500 pages or something--but I really think the story would benefit from doing so. Because, whereas your typical literary offering will end before the climax of the story ever happens, this series is nothing but climax. Everything leading up to the events that happen in these three books has already occurred, and this is the massive clash of chaos that ensues as a result.

Kind of makes the series as a whole a kind-of “post-literary” story, in a way.  Humph.  I like that. In fact, I might just use that somewhere else.

I honestly can't say enough good about Sam Sykes. He is one of the elite few that I consider to be a favorite author of mine. He can write. He can spin a tale. He can nail a character to the wall with impunity. I can't wait to see what this guy comes up with next. Will it be more story of Lenk and his “trusty” companions? Given the ending of THE SKYBOUND SEA, that'd be entirely possible. Or perhaps it'll be something new? Honestly, it mattereth not. Sign me up, kimosabe. Cause I'm sold.


Recommended Age:18+
Sex: One scene that includes detail on every body part but the necessary few
Violence: Ridiculously violent and gory but none of it gets distracting
Profanity:  Significantly more than in either of the previous books, but still quite tame and infrequent.

Here are your link to buy the novels in this series:

TOME OF THE UNDERGATES
BLACK HALO
THE SKYBOUND SEA

Sophomore novel. You know the term. And if you don't, then here. Hmm. That didn't work very well. Did anyone else know there wasn't a wiki for the term "Sophomore Novel"? Who'd have thought? Now I have the urge to go write one. Perhaps I will. Oh look. There's a wiki for haiku. How about a haiku on sophomore novels:

Great debut, I say,
but then this lackluster. Why?
It is the way. [[sigh]]

If any of you missed Sam Sykes's spectacular debut, TOME OF THE UNDERGATES, you should really go read it. Loads of fun. I loved it. BLACK HALO is the second novel of the Aeon's Gate, and after that first one I was seriously interested in seeing what Sykes was going to do next. TOME OF THE UNDERGATES could have been the climax to an entire series and readers probably would have been good with it. Action. Packed. But there was this pretty large issue that the whole thing happened on a boat. Thus, when BLACK HALO didn't start on a boat, I was ready to go.

Lenk and his five followers, after stealing the illustrious Tome of the Undergates, have crash landed on an island. Well, a massive sea serpent might have had something to do with it. But they're there. On the island, that is. And apparently it's deserted. They're all pretty sick of each other though, and after that last book who can blame them? They weren't exactly the most happy-go-lucky bunch of folk to begin with. Lenk's having some problems with these voices in his head. They just won't shut up. They've been bothering him for a while now, telling him to kill everyone or to bail on them because they're all going to betray him eventually anyway, and they've gotten considerably worse since he took a looksie at the pages in the Tome. Kataria is struggling more with the whole lifestyle choice she's made. She's supposed to kill all humans, and Lenk is, after all, a human. Soon she starts to hear the voice of another Shict though, and is fighting against all her thoughts and emotions. Gariath has kind of gone off the deep end. Wandering away from everyone else, he starts to talk to another dragonman that apparently died a long time ago, but for some reason is still on this island and has shown up to fill him in on a few choice details about the place.

And honestly, it wasn't long before I had to ask the question: Does anyone else feel like they're on the island from Lost? I kind of threw my hands up though when Lenk follows the stream to the cave where bad things happened a long time ago, and then he goes inside it. So much for subtlety in imitation...

Syke's writing in this book is every bit as good as in the previous one. He has this way of writing that makes it easy to read lots of pages. His characters are, at once, interesting and nuanced and complicated. There were two new point-of-view characters in BLACK HALO that were really quite good. The first is a wizard that's been charged with tracking down those that use magic "illegally" and without cost, that has difficulty ignoring the abuse of women. This is the character that starts the book off. The one that got me excited about everything because I was going to see more of the world. The second new character is The Mouth, the human through which the sea-goddess Mother Ulbecetonth speaks, that is sent to release The Father from his captivity. Unfortunately for Ulbecetonth, the Mouth's faith is wavering because of a daughter that he lost to sickness a long time ago. Both of these characters are immediately engaging. This is absolutely one thing that Sykes has brought to the table in both of his offerings to us: great characters.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot that really happens in this novel. There's a whole lot of navel-gazing. A whole lot of lying on the beach. A whole lot of hanging out with the lizard men. A whole lot more hanging out on the beach. We get a bunch of back-story and history, both of the characters and the island. Interesting, but progressive to the plot? Honestly, it's not clear yet. There's not a whole lot that happens to the plot, other than, perhaps, it gets fleshed-out a little.

The detailed, blow-by-blow, thought-by-thought writing of TOME OF THE UNDERGATES worked great for one reason: there was so much action going on that the reader just got swallowed up and dragged along with the current. This made the pacing of the novel fast, furious, and absopositutely more fun than the proverbial barrel of ninja-monkeys. Sykes's writing here is much the same, but the book lacks all of the action from the first novel. So the pacing is incredibly slow. Painstakingly such. There are a few exciting spots, some fun fight scenes, some tense creature moments, but what's really missing is a significant amount of progressive action. Most of what is there just feels random or pointless. I did like the climax...well, the end of the book (I don't know if I'd really call it a climax--there wasn't a whole lot of actual build-up), as there was a big fight with lots of monsters and magic and dragonman-mayhem. Still, fun as it was, it didn't feel like it progressed the plot at all. Except to set up the third book. Which it did perfectly. But sill, this is a perfect example of the whole "Middle Book Syndrome" you read about a lot on this blog. If there's anything that's obvious by the end of BLACK HALO, it is that the third book of the Aeon's Gate will be just a chock-full of violence and carnage as TOME OF THE UNDERGATES was, if not massively more so. Which is good, as long as it ends with something other than Lenk getting his hands on the Tome. Again.

Some day I think that Sam Sykes is going to be a really good author. He has "the way" with words. He knows how to write not just characters, but character. And he has a wildly imaginative mind to boot. His books are fun. I admit it, though, I expected a lot out of this one while feeling like I got very little. Too much character, not enough plot. Not enough progressive story. Lots to like, but this one would need so much more, and so much less, to be something really great. Here's to hoping that the next one is a step up, and that it's considerably more than just action.

Recommended age: 18 plus
Language: Mild swearing, not frequent.
Violence: When the action comes, there's a whole bundle, and it gets messy.
Sex: Some more kissing, some humorous references, and a fairly disturbing scene of violation that is, thankfully, interrupted.

Sam Sykes Official Website

Holy freaking bottle rockets, people! This book ROCKS!

So let’s get this out of the way. Sam Sykes is awesome. He’s young, he’s hip, he’s soon to be part of the growing Overlord's Elitist Movement. Let’s forget for just a moment though that he lives in one of the hottest places on earth (Phoenix, AZ), and the fact that he’s obviously named one of his big baddies after Yours Truly (more on that later), and instead do our best to just focus on the book he’s written. Whadd’ya say? You game?

TOME OF THE UNDERGATES is by far one of the fastest, funnest books I’ve read this year. Mr. Sykes debut novel is a knock-your-socks-off, hit-em-hard, what-in-the-name-of-all-that’s-good-and-holy blast of a great read. He’s got a varied cast of interesting characters, a megalithic backdrop, and a veritable maelstrom of chaos that erupts within its pages, all leading to the outcome that I never for a single moment wanted to put this book down after opening the first page. Man, was it fun.

Lenk, a young human and quintessential leader of a band of Adventurers, are on a large boat to... somewhere (honestly, it doesn't even factor into the story), being paid to play the part of faithful mercenary guards (cough...hack...sputter...) by the captain of said ship. His companions are many and varied: Kataria, the sarcastic Shict (elf on steroids) and archer extraordinaire with a driving passion to kill all humans; Denaos, a cowardly cockroach of a rogue with not a drop of moral fiber or backbone to be found within him; Gariath, a massive dragonman looking for any and all opportunities to kill and/or be killed (if you think Abercrombie’s Logan Ninefingers with dark red skin, massive bullhorns, and always in a rage, you won’t be far off); Asper, a priestess and healer who wants to pick up a sword and help in the fighting, but absolutely sucks at it and has been cursed by her God anyhow; and Dreadaeleon, a young magic user with the annoying penchant for accidentally setting both friend and foe on fire.

POW! KA-CHAA! ZING!

The fight is off and running on page one and already the ship has been boarded by pirates of the loquacious and muscle-bound kind. The battle has ensued! While Lenk crosses swords with one of the swarthy attackers, his boss/captain is screeching at him to: kill, kill, kill! Kataria is gathering back a number of red-streaked arrows from various corpses, and (of course) Denaos is nowhere to be seen (although he soon arrives and quickly suggests that they bail). Gariath makes an appearance, ripping pirates into several gruesome pieces, leaving heaps of blood and carnage in his wake. Even Dredaeleon comes up for a bit to torch a person or two. Ooh! But the massive pirate ship has fallen back after having dropped off the first raiding party and now seems to only be tailing them. Things don’t stay like this for long though. Oh my goodness no, because the pirate ship comes back and this time it’s filled with frogmen and even more cranky pirates, and pretty soon there’s a fifteen-foot beast of a bad fish-man, an Abysmyth, crawling up onto the ship and tossing Gariath around like he’s last week’s newspaper. Then when the thing starts talking though and the zombie-seagull chorus chirps in... What’s that you say? What about the Tome? Am I going to mention it? Certainly not. If I did, I could very well carry you through two-thirds of the book, and I wouldn’t want to go that far. Sheesh. I didn’t even get to the psycho purple warrior maidens...

So seriously, I had a really good time with this book. Sykes does an amazingly good job at description, and character interaction, and dialogue, and...yeah. The way he’s written this book makes it easy to burn through pages faster than a greased pig down a waterslide. There are a few things that readers might have a difficult time with, there were definitely a few for me, though I only ended up coming to these conclusions after all was said and done.

Part the first: Timeline. Three days. (Well, the last 30 pages or so could be construed as an additional three days, so...) Yeah, okay, this one totally threw me. The whole book, all 480-odd pages, describes essentially three days of said Adventure with Lenk and his "friends". As such there’s not a whole lot of time for Sykes to delve into politics and social structures and economics and...are you getting the picture here? Very little world-building. Does that bother me? With the way it’s been written, absolutely not. If Sykes is anything like other fantasy authors this’ll be a trilogy (though personally I'm hoping that will end up being one of the very few ways in which he satisfies the definition of such a person). For me, he’s done a great job of setting the hook (Fish? Frog? Ocean voyage? Hehehe. They’re rolling in the aisles...) but in order to keep my attention I’m going to need to see a lot more of this world of his before the end.

Part the second: Character development. I loved his characters. I think he did a great job of showing just what each one was about, who they were, what they wanted; but their overall development felt a bit disjointed. I admit that most of this feeling comes from the fact that there was so little downtime in which he could do it. There is a bunch of navel-gazing that happens during Day Two, and a bit more immediately following Day Three (which I really enjoyed, as an aside, especially Gariath’s fairly emotional scene). Maybe there wasn't another way to do it. Given the amount of stuff that these characters went through in such a short period of time, I’m almost temped to say that Sykes did the best job he could. Regardless, I loved the interaction between them--the banter, the threats, the sarcasm. Give me more! I want more!

Part the third: Unanswered questions. In a way, this ties its fingers intimately into the first two. There were just so many that came up that are never really approached. Why doesn’t Lenk worry more about the voices in his head and that they occasionally take over his mind/body? And, seriously, how much punishment can one guy take before just being done? What keeps Kataria from putting one of her long shafts right through the head of our illustrious leader? How come the cowardly Denaos sticks with this batch of Adventurers when there’s so much direct violence that seems to follow them around? Why does Gariath only punch and kick his compatriots, instead of tearing them into three pieces when he gets mad? We get some explanation to these, but seriously what’s the real reason that all these people stick together? Forget the beef, where’s the glue?

This is absolutely one author that I think fantasy readers should check out. Was the book perfect? No. Regardless, this is one awesome debut novel and I can't wait for the next one to hit my currently-twitching fingers. Huzzah to Pyr for finding him and publishing his stuff. They deserve every laud in the book.

Recommended age: 18+, due to violence but so little else.
Language: Incredibly absent. Yeah, I know.
Violence: If you didn’t read the part about Gariath in my review, then you don’t deserve anything from me at this point.
Sex: An attempted seduction cut short, though detailed enough to warrant mention.

Sam Sykes Official Website

P.S. -- Just wanted to make sure you caught the homage Sykes made to me. (AbySMYTH? Get it?) I can’t help but love this fact. You should view this as concrete proof as to his level of awesomeness. Now go read his book.