Rob J. Hayes's Blog, page 14

Review Blog – We Ride the Storm by Devin Madson

First off a little disclaimer. This book is entered into this year’s SPFBO (Self Published Fantasy Blog Off) and is in BookNest’s group. While I am a judge for BookNest this year, this book was not in my list to judge. This is my own personal review.

 

I’m gonna start off by saying I loved this book! A lot. It’s a low fantasy setting with only hints at magic, possibly some gods and some necromancy and that’s about all we know of so far. It’s also a non-traditional setting in that it’s clearly Asian-inspired. It also does things a bit differently by giving us 3 points of view, but each one is written in first person. I’m not going to lie, this was a little confusing at first, but by about a quarter of the way through the book, each character’s own distinctive style was apparent enough that the voices no longer bled into one another. Honestly, to have 3 different character point of views in the same book, all written in first person, all have their own distinctive voices is an achievement that the author deserves no end of praise for!

This book has more severed heads than a GRRM novel!

I’ve not read any of Devin Madson’s earlier works (which are apparently set in the same world), but I’m sure as hell going to after reading this one. I have it on good knowledge they help flesh out the world even more. And the world definitely seems a complex one. There are multiple different empires, each with their own cultures and religions and customs, and many of them collide in this book… often with violence. There’s quite a bit of violence. The Kisians hold a lot in common with ancient Japan, the Chiltaens feel a lot like Christianity led Rome, and the Levanti are nomadic horse lords. It’s fair to say there’s some tension when they interact, and the clash of customs is handled well.

Character wise we get Rah e’Torin, Levanti warrior and leader of his own little warband. Rah is in exile from his homeland and searching for a way to keep his people alive in a part of the world that is entirely new to him. Cassandra Marius is a Chiltaen whore/assassin… who can sense the dead and has a ghost(?) riding along as an internal passenger. Miko T’sai is a Kisian princess and caught up in a game much larger than she ever realised, but is determined to stamp her own legacy upon the world. Cassandra and Miko were what drove the story for me. Cassandra is foul mouthed, violent, impulsive, and mysterious. I was eager to learn more about her internal passenger, and her odd power. It’s hard to say what I liked about Miko so much without spoilers, but she is a strong character unwilling to give in to the whims of fate, or the machinations of others.

And there’s also a straight up holy prophet character who may or may not be on a mission from god…

With war on the horizon, all 3 of our main characters will play a part in the conflict, and though they never interact with each other, they each feel the effects of each other’s actions. And when the war does come… it hits the fan!

So here’s the hard part. I really wanted to give this book 5 stars because I honestly loved it. But there’s was always something that just didn’t work for me… and it was Rah. From the get go I struggled with his character, never really feeling him. He’s an exile, determined to keep to his old traditions even in a land that doesn’t recognise them, even when all others around him are moving on progressively. There’s no bend to him, only angst that puts him at odds with everyone he encounters. To top it off, he has no real agency. The story just picks him up and carries him around, and he moans about it, but never fights it. Cassandra, on the other hand, fights the current at every possible point, regardless of success. And Miko… well the story doesn’t happen to Miko. She damn well happens to the story! But the book starts with Rah and it ends with Rah, so for me, it both started and ended on a flat note. But pretty much everything in between was !!!!!!

I give We Ride the Storm 4 stars. But I really wish it had been 5. Buy this book. Read this book. Love this book!

Review Blog – Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

A book about manly men being angry at things!

Oh, alright I’ll do a proper review.

Promise of Blood starts with a bang and I must admit I really enjoyed it at the start. We join the story amid a revolution; ageing general (and very angry man) Tamas overthrows the monarchy and the aristocracy, and plants himself at the head of the country.

‘The Age of Kings is dead. And I have killed it.’

Yeah that’s a cool line.

We’re also quickly introduced to the magic system. There are Privileged, who are all round sorcerers. Knacked are those with special abilities such as never needing to sleep, or having an eidetic memory, or being able to tell when someone is lying. And there are Powder Mages who have the ability to consume black powder to make themselves superhuman, and also burn black powder to influence bullets after they have been fired, and also just explode black powder at will.

Look, here’s the thing about the magic system. It sounds cool as shit on the surface, but the deeper the book dug into it, and the more it tried to explain the rules of the various schools of magic, the more it all just fell apart. Privileged are special magic users who can do all sorts of things… but they need special gloves to do it or they’re harmless? So is it the people or the gloves that are magical? Black powder isn’t naturally occurring, it’s made by mixing substances together so what is it that is actually fueling the Powder Mages abilities? And why can they only manipulate bullets? And sometimes Privileged could swat entire armies with a click of their fingers, and other times they couldn’t do a damned thing about a guy with a bayonet. There seemed very little consistency throughout the whole thing and the deeper the book dug into the magic system the less sense it made and the more frustrating it got.

We follow 3… no wait, 4 characters. There’s Tamas, the spearhead of the revolution and the most powerful powder mage alive. He’s pretty cool character with some depth to him, and an iron will. It’s nice to have a story that focuses on an older character. We also ride along with Taniel, Tamas’ son and the best marksman in the world. And we have Adamat, a retired police inspector who has a knack for remembering things.

I think the first thing to note about the 3 characters is that they are very angry a lot of the time. Tamas is definitely the angriest, but the others are pretty angry all the time too. Even Adamat, who is supposed to be level headed apparently, has bouts of rage. It’s not just them either. Everyone in the book seems to be angry almost all the time… apart from the chef. He’s pretty chill.

Did I mention 4 characters? Oh yes, there’s a lass as well called Nila. She’s kinda there and bumbles about a bit. Honestly, I’ve never read a book where one of the major players feels so tacked on. It would not surprise me if she didn’t exist in an earlier edit, but somewhere along the line someone suggested having a female character involved maybe.

This review sounds like I hated the book, and that’s not entirely accurate. I really enjoyed the first half of the book. I thought it was great. But the more I got through the more frustrated I became at it. By the finale, I was actually rolling my eyes at bits.

So I’m giving Promise of Blood a 2.5 and doing my usual round up to 3. It’s alright, I guess. I don’t know if I’ll be moving on with the series.

Review Blog – Superhero City: Ghoul by Eddie Skelson

X-Men meets The Running Man. (If you don’t know what The Running Man is, you should quickly go and familiarise yourself with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s back catalogue. Do it. Do it now!)

 

Superhero City: Ghoul is a fascinating look at superheroes in a corporate, capitalist America gone mad. It’s a world that’s all about the ratings and the merchandise. Heroes are picked for super teams, not by any skills or powers they might have, but on their bankability. At no point is this more clear than the fact that the prime super time, The Wild 5, needs a new member and instead of picking a black, homosexual Flash, they pick a hot latino teenager who can set her hands on fire. It’s all about the money. Kinda like what would probably happen if Michael Bay became the next president… which now I think about it is a terrifying prospect that could probably come true.

Hero teams are accompanied by drones, conflicts are televised, and it’s all about getting people to subscribe to the next version of the platinum plus viewing package. If you haven’t guessed it yet, this is a super cynical look at what could happen if mutants (they’re called enhanced in the story) start popping up everywhere. It’s cynical, but not all together unrealistic. The author uses the medium of the Superhero genre to shed a damning light on the way the real world is moving. This is where The Running Man reference comes in. You should probably all read this book and also watch that film right now.

We get a good range of PoV characters, including some heroes, some villains, and a scientist with an agenda that sits apart from the other characters. The characters are all a bit tropey at times, but that’s actually part of the point. This is a look at a world where people ARE boiled down to their tropes. My only real criticism with this is… they’re all so angry all the time. Every character is angry. All the time. It fits within the setting, but it’s a little bit tiring.

The prose is good, with a slight over-reliance on infodumps to exposit about characters back stories, but the dumps are dropped in such a way that usually flows smoothly within the story. The book is short, a little slow paced at the start, but it picks up about half way through and from then on it’s relentless.

So I’m giving Superhero City: Ghoul a well earned 4 stars. It’s a terrifying and damning look at where our world is headed, told through the lenses of a X-Men style superhero story.

Review Blog – Horus Rising by Dan Abnett

So after checking out the first Fabius Bile book in the 40k catalogue, I decided I wanted to try some others, and the Horus Heresy saga has always been interesting to me. So I asked a few friends and they came up with a reading list, somewhat predictably starting with book 1.

This is the story of the Space Marines and the rise of Chaos. More specifically it’s about the rise and fall of Horus, the Emperor of Mankind’s favourite son.

It’s a fairly tough book to review in many ways as it’s obviously part of a much larger franchise with books firing out all over the place, but I’ll certainly give it a damned good go.

It’s fantastically written for a start. Dan Abnett definitely knows his stuff and part of that is how to spin a good yarn. Extremely engaging and you get a real feel for the universe and technology. There’s a fair amount of 40k porn, which is to say lavish descriptions of weapons/armour and what not, but it never really stands out as obtrusive, and it’s quite cool to learn more about how some of the weapons work (not to mention the Space Marine physiology… they’re kinda like humans+).

The pace varies pretty wildly. It’s starts off blistering, slows to a crawl, then picks up, only to slow back to a crawl for the finale. And there isn’t really a finale. Things just kind of happen, and then we get a few hints about how they’re going to develop… in later books.

So what I’m saying is this. I really enjoyed Horus Rising. It kept me thoroughly entertained for all 12 hours of listening, but it’s definitely a book that’s setting up future volumes. So I guess I’ll be getting book 2 next.

A quick note on the narration. Toby Longworth knocks it out of the park. His performance was brilliant and really fit with what little I know of the Space Marines.

Review Blog – The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley

This is one of those books where the standard 5 star scale doesn’t really work. It sits firmly between 3 and 4 stars for me.

It’s taken me a long time to get back to finishing this book, not because it’s bad, but because I had a falling out with audiobooks last year, and have only recently really discovered the joy of them. It turns out exercise is hard work, but made better by good words. And this book (and series) have many good words.

So I want to start this review by saying that Brian Staveley is a masterful writer. His ability to tell a story and philosophise at the same time is right up there with Mark Lawrence. It’s actually for this very reason that his stand alone, Skullsworn, was one of my favourite books of last year. This series, however, was not quite as good as that stand alone, and mainly for the fact that each book is so much longer. I love a bit of philosophising in my fiction, but there were times in this series where I wished the author would stop and get on with the story. It was never a big deal though, because honestly the prose is gorgeous!

This is the third and final installment in the Unhewn Throne trilogy, and the conflict is ramped up throughout the book, with stakes becoming ever higher, and the odds ever shittier. Despite this, it reaches a satisfying, and not entirely predictable, outcome. Sometimes you see a thing coming, and that’s OK because the beauty is not in the surprise of it, but in the emotion of the delivery.

Reviewing the third book in a trilogy is always a little tough. Especially when it doesn’t dip in quality, but just continues to be excellent epic fantasy, that makes you think. So I will it with this:

Adare is still one of the most frustrating protagonists in the history of fantasy. Kaden is still a potato. All hail Gwenna as the rightful queen.

In reality I’d give this one a 7 or a 3.5, but I always round up so 4 stars it is.

And 1 more thing. I listened to this as an audiobook and Simon Vance is one of the best narrators out there. A real master who helped bring the characters, world, and story to life.

Review Blog – Pilgrimage to Skara by Jonathan Pembroke

I’ve let this one sit for a bit, partly to decide on my rating and partly because I’m a terrible procrastinator.

Skara (as I shall be calling it) is about Pell Wendt, a retired pathfinder. This basically means he leads people with magical potential into the outlands beyond the realm of civilisation’s protection. There are shrines out in the badlands which gift potentials with magical abilities. The story picks up when Wendt is approached by his ex, asking him to take her daughter to one of these shrines. But not just any shrine, the most infamous of them all… Skara.

Honestly this book is a bit of a weird one. For the first half I thought it was a decent, if a little predictable, fantasy story. It happily adopts the trope of young boy/girl on a quest with an old (wise) mentor type. Except that it flips it slightly by being from the old mentor’s perspective. He’s a bit of a legend around his parts and is rather curmudgeonly in his old age. Not that he’s really that old, but he keeps pointing out that he thinks he’s old.

Wendt is an interesting enough character, if a little tropey, with a backstory miles long. Unfortunately, much of that back story is delivered by dry reminiscing on his part. One particularly long section like this almost felt like character notes had somehow made it into the story. It was just delivered so inorganically that it stood out like a sore thumb. Although the story is delivered entirely from the perspective of Wendt, we have a second main character who is along for almost all the ride.

Our 2nd main character is Keilie. She’s a pawn in a greater game and doesn’t really want magical powers at all. And she’s just so inconsistent that I found it tough to root for her. Her character evolution just kind of happens with no real catalyst.

And then about half way through the story, the relationship between the two characters starts to change… and it becomes awkward. It’s not easy to explain why without spoilers, but the only thing I can think of is that Keilie starts suffering from a fairly extreme sort of stockholm syndrome. Something about it just feels off the entire time and it’s never really addressed.

The world seems an interesting one, if a little small. There the civilisation, and a wall, and beyond that the outlands full of monsters and savages, and magic giving shrines. There is some hint of a larger world and purpose behind these shrines. That it could be technology rather than magic… but again it’s something which is just there and then forgotten.

The finale is blistering (perhaps a little too so), and when everything is wrapped up it feels like it was rushed a little.

I struggled with the score because I honestly wanted to give Skara 3 stars. I enjoyed it for the most part. But I feel there was just too much left unexplored. So 2 stars. Skara is a decent fantasy romp, with a nice twist on the old mentor trope.

Review Blog – Ravencry by Ed McDonald

Well, I absolutely loved Blackwing. So much so I actually cheated my own rating system to give it the 5 stars it deserved. It still remains the only book I have done that for. So when Ravencry released I jumped straight on it, expecting another wild and wonderful ride full of despair, misery, nihilism, and hope.

I was not disappointed.

Ravencry picks up a few years after the events of Blackwing and the world has moved on a bit. Ryhalt has, if anything, become more of a belligerent arsehole determined to falsely prove to everyone that he doesn’t care. The nameless and the deep kings are still locked in their eternal battle, but there is a new threat rising, seditious and nebulous… religion.

The book is quite different to the first one. Gone is the mystery, that wonder at what the Misery is and the things it contains. The oppressive power of the deep kings and the nameless are vague concepts rather than at the forefront of the tale. Instead we have Ryhalt trying to uncover a new plot against his city and his people, one that in many ways feels a little disconnected from the larger narrative. Honestly, after finishing the book and letting it sit, it feels like a 2nd book in a trilogy. The plot happened and some changes were felt across the world, but it does feel more like the major changes are all character based. The world at large stays the same, but by the gods does Ryhalt go through some changes.

It deals with some interesting issues, including the march toward fatherhood, and the rise of religious power within a military state. It does them both incredibly well and hangs such emotional weight on each and every one of Ryhalt’s choices and actions, that we truly feel the weight of the world dragging his shoulders down every step of the way.

As with Blackwing, the narration was excellent. Colin Mace does an amazing job and really brings Ryhalt to life. Rarely has it felt to me that a narrator has such a hang of the character.

I have little else to say. I loved this one almost as much as book 1, but not quite. The Misery felt less mysterious and a touch less dangerous. And even though I think there is a good reason for that, the world lost something because of it.

Overall, 4 stars. I loved Ravencry and I am eagerly chomping at the bit for book 3!

SPFBO 4 – The Judgening!

As some of you may know, my pirates won SPFBO 3. Where Loyalties Lie scored an impressive 8.1 overall and just barely poked its scurvacious nose over the finish line first. This bares no real relation to the rest of the post, I just wanted to remind myself that I won… and use the word scurvacious.

SPFBO (that’s the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off) is back on for a fourth year and another 300 books have signed up to take a healthy dose of judging to the face. But I won’t be participating this year as I unfortunately don’t have any eligible books. It’s been a year of sequels and sci fi for me. But I still wanted to shove my support behind the blog off and take part in some way. Luckily, Petros of the family BookNest has invited me over to be a slush pile judge. So from contestant to winner (had to get it in at least once more) to judge/reviewer.

What this means is that I will be reading 5 of BookNest’s initial 30, and then choosing one of those 5 to put forward as a semi-finalist. At that point, Petros will read all 5 semi-finalists and choose BookNest’s ultimate finalist. It’s quite exciting, and far less nerve-wracking, being on this side of the contest.

I’ll be getting started on my 5 reads soon, but no reviews will be posted until August when the blog off officially kicks off. I have been asked to read and review, but not rate… which contestants will probably be quite pleased about because I’m fairly brutal with my 5 star rating system.

SPFBO 4 – The Judging!

As some of you may know, my pirates won SPFBO 3. Where Loyalties Lie scored an impressive 8.1 overall and just barely poked its scurvacious nose over the finish line first. This bares no real relation to the rest of the post, I just wanted to remind myself that I won… and use the word scurvacious.

SPFBO (that’s the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off) is back on for a fourth year and another 300 books have signed up to take a healthy dose of judging to the face. But I won’t be participating this year as I unfortunately don’t have any eligible books. It’s been a year of sequels and sci fi for me. But I still wanted to shove my support behind the blog off and take part in some way. Luckily, Petros of the family BookNest has invited me over to be a slush pile judge. So from contestant to winner (had to get it in at least once more) to judge/reviewer.

What this means is that I will be reading 5 of BookNest’s initial 30, and then choosing one of those 5 to put forward as a semi-finalist. At that point, Petros will read all 5 semi-finalists and choose BookNest’s ultimate finalist. It’s quite exciting, and far less nerve-wracking, being on this side of the contest.

I’ll be getting started on my 5 reads soon, but no reviews will be posted until August when the blog off officially kicks off. I have been asked to read and review, but not rate… which contestants will probably be quite pleased about because I’m fairly brutal with my 5 star rating system.

Review Blog – Fabius Bile: Primogenitor by Joshua Reynolds

This book is my very first foray into the literary world of the 40k universe. I’ve played a bit of tabletop in my youth, and enjoyed both the Spacehulk, and Dawn of War video games, but I’ve never stepped into the literature because… well, I expected it to be trash. Part of this is baseless assumption, and part of it is I’ve been burned before (the Resident Evil tie in novels were not good… at all). But a friend recommended this book to me so I thought why not. And I’m glad I gave it a try.

It’s worth pointing out that this book is told from the perspective of the ‘bad guys’. They worship the chaos gods, the enjoy pain and suffering (both given and received), and the plot revolves around them attacking a space city because… well let’s just say the reasons aren’t particularly wholesome. But the other thing that needs pointing out is that there are no ‘good guys’, in fact part of the thing about the 40k universe is that it’s full of bad. I don’t know a lot about the lore, but the ‘good guys’ are often thought of as the Space Marines… who worship an immortal emperor who is kept alive by consuming a million souls a day (or something along those lines). When the ‘good guys’ worship an intergalactic space vampire overlord, you can be pretty sure the lines of morality will be fluid.

But onto the book. It’s twisted, convoluted, brutal, fast paced, nihilistic, and ultimately futile. Which fits the 40k universe pretty well from what I know of it. But damn, it’s also a lot of fun. The main cast of characters are constantly sniping at each other, which strangely made them quite endearing, and you get a good feeling that they are nigh on indestructible… but also quite destructible. There’s a lot of tension as they jet set their way around the galaxy, and venture into the void space where demons and worse things reside.

There’s a lot of lore, and it is occasionally delivered a little dryly, but mostly it fits well into the narrative of the story, and provides tantaslising insight into the complexities of the universe. One thing this book really made me want to do, is learn more about the deeper lore behind the scenes… and also play 40k again. I’ve actually reinstalled Dawn of War for just that reason.

The narrator does an excellent job for the most part, delivering with a practiced nuance, and bringing the characters and their world to life. My only criticism of him is that he used very similar voices for some of the characters, and because of this occasionally lost track of voices when they were all conversing.

Story wise, I have just one criticism, and it’s that the book occasionally devolved into what I can only call 40k porn. This does not mean there was nakedness, but that the author occasionally started talking about weapons and armour and bits of lore that had no relevance to the story, but were blatantly there to satisfy the hardcore fans.

So I’m giving it a 4 out of 5. A very enjoyable, fast paced read. I’ll probably check out some more 40k novels in the future.