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15
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| 2265090433
| 9782265090439
| 2265090433
| 3.47
| 30
| Jun 14, 2012
| Jun 14, 2012
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it was amazing
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La Fille de L'Archer (the daughter of the bowman) is a historical fiction with some fantasy elements that takes place in France (so far as this is vol
La Fille de L'Archer (the daughter of the bowman) is a historical fiction with some fantasy elements that takes place in France (so far as this is volume 1 of a series) during the dark years of Charles VI (the mad king, when France was split between the English and 2 faction of nobility) some years after Agincourt, so ~1420 - there are a few anachronisms and the history is a bit iffy in parts (as Charles VI died in 1422, 7 years after Azincourt and the book seems both to take place still during his reign as well as at least a decade after the battle, then there are the Crusades and Orient remembrances which have ended some 150 years before, though on occasion they seem to refer to the Spanish Reconquista still ongoing true, not to speak of a character using "scientific") but the atmosphere is there, the characters slowly evolve to the Brussolo-standard and the action and imagination is top notch Anyway this is a novel to be read like sff not like historical fiction as its thematic is not about the 100 years war, kings and the like but about mysterious people, refugees from the North who have some strange powers. Namely we have viking-like Gunnar, former mercenary bowman whose bow fingers were cut during captivity so now he acts as bodyguard to a show-traveling troupe led by sleazy Bezelios who is not beyond a trick or two to part the peasants fro their money and entertain the lordlings on his way Gunnar is failing though and the main heroine of the book (series), Wallah, his 15 year old daughter - raised as a boy and taught archery by her father - is dreading her future as she is not particularly good at showmanship and only Gunnar's physical power preventing Bezelios from taking advantage and then using her as prostitute to earn her living; however Gunnar mentions than on his death, what he refers to as a mysterious talent will "pass" to her and indeed she is approached by a sorceress and offered the deal - she can shoot to kill anyone from anywhere (more or less) as long as she knows that person's face and can image it in her mind's eye, the price being a year from her life per kill; somewhat incredulous Gunnar tests that (and presumably loses a year) on a bird - for animals the power works but the face requirement is looser - and then she must use one more year to feed the troupe who fell on hard time when local strongman, cruel Baron Ponsarrat was not amused by Bezelios tired tricks and killed his "moon boy" - an orangutang - and chased them away from his lands without food or money However despite his hardness Ponsarrat is not the worst of the lot - life is hard, short, brutish etc comes utterly clear as this is Brussolo and so no mercy, no get out of jail cards, sentimentality etc - and the Baron offers Wallah a bargain, one kill now and possibly more later, lots of money and no more persecution of the troupe - Later Wallah and Bezelios (now with the bow, the money and the food, Wallah becomes at least feared by the showman) try and go into the beast hunting business when they hear of strange doings in a nearby mountain area on the Spanish border; and there it is where the real adventure with all the Brussolian touches (horror, shock, seeming supernatural beasts, murders, orgies, mysteries as something is wrong but we do not really know what until close to the end etc) starts and the book concludes it well with of course the to be continued ending (as expected the novel ends with Ponsarrat calling on Wallah again as he needs another kill...) After the somewhat disjointed beginning until we learn what is what - and there are more mysteries than mentioned above btw - where the atmosphere carries the book, the novel just becomes impossible to put down and it shows that even today after 100 books more or less (this is 2012 published!) Brussolo has not lost his touch and keeps one at the edge of the seat with a great story, dark, no mercy, all the mud and blood (and later ice) included but a great gripping read nonetheless Nobody is "good" - the oppressing and murderous nobles and the brutish peasants make slimy Bezelios look quite good after a while, the myths of heroic war and/or deeds are brutally dispelled and even our heroine who becomes very engaging after a while, just tries to survive at any cost; there are some similarities in style and thematic with the Pilgrims of the Dark and Wallah resembles Marion in courage and inventiveness to some extent, while the next installment here is definitely an asap ...more |
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Dec 28, 2012
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Jan 02, 2013
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Dec 28, 2012
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26
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| 6068113787
| 9786068113784
| 4.07
| 15
| Nov 20, 2012
| Nov 20, 2012
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it was amazing
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this is the one Romanian sff novel I really wanted to read since I heard about (as usually I find Romanian sff very derivative and limited, so I tend
this is the one Romanian sff novel I really wanted to read since I heard about (as usually I find Romanian sff very derivative and limited, so I tend to avoid it) but i could not get until today when the ebook was finally released to purchase; it starts great and I expect to read it soon - read some 1/3 of it and the novel started bogging down in wordiness but I plan to continue going soon -read now about 2/3 - passed the very slow part at the Cathedral and into the considerably more interesting parts in the next 2 satrapies; more and more Vancian stuff and i quite like it Finished the novel and it was great fun and among the best fantasies I've read recently; the one flaw is that Taxidermie should have been a sf novel set in a decadent star empire/advanced planet as pretty much all the cultures and happenings could be translated easily; that way it would have been a masterpiece; as fantasy you really have to work hard at suspending disbelief as the mindset of the characters is very modern, while the world building is pre-technological and the two do not really meet As mentioned, if you love Jack vance's sf especially the Gaean universe with its strange worlds and customs you will love this ...more |
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1
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Jan 14, 2014
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Feb 02, 2014
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Nov 13, 2012
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Paperback
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10
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| 9789734632121
| 4.03
| 518
| 2010
| Nov 02, 2012
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it was amazing
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Reading this novel I could see why it got the top Swiss fiction prize last year as the first 2/3 or so are just unbelievable good; whether it is the O
Reading this novel I could see why it got the top Swiss fiction prize last year as the first 2/3 or so are just unbelievable good; whether it is the Obertin family of the 20's and 30's, young Jacob, Katica and the war or the 30 years War flashbacks about Caspar, the book is just awesome; the same narrative pull and the right mix of emotion and matter of fact as in Zaira and a compelling book that was just blowing me away However the last 3rd becomes a bit too fragmentary and while the dark times, the deportation, the communist takeover etc are reflected well there, the book somehow loses a little of its magic and becomes a sort of Hertha Muller like book, dry and maybe not boring, but say lacking empathy, rather than the great prose of the author - and yes I know that Hertha Muller got a Nobel but that;s political rather than literary Overall an excellent novel, but one I fell could have been even better with a more emphatic last third ...more |
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1
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Nov 09, 2012
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Nov 10, 2012
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Nov 09, 2012
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ebook
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25
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| 0316214442
| 9780316214445
| 4.31
| 45,950
| Oct 18, 2012
| Oct 23, 2012
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it was amazing
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"Severed heads,’ Cosca was explaining, ‘never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic sensibility, they can make a point a great deal more
"Severed heads,’ Cosca was explaining, ‘never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic sensibility, they can make a point a great deal more eloquently than those still attached. Make a note of that. Why aren’t you writing?" Joe A. at his best so far in Red Country which i have been greatly enjoying; while grim on occasion the book is really darkly funny and better than the limited Heroes in so many ways; still only about 100 pages in but tonight should read more and hopefully finish it tomorrow with a full review Tuesday Finished Red Country and I found it very good; I still think that Before They Are Hanged and Best Served Cold are Joe A's best but this one is definitely more interesting than the Heroes and it is the most "personal" one, as the stakes are not the world as in the First law, or various counties as in the two standalones, but the fates of various characters in a gold-rush, wild west kind of setting. The book sparkles in the first half, then loses a little momentum for a while but it comes back with a very strong ending. A full review soon, but a must for any Joe Abercrombie fan for sure Here is my part of the FBC rv (Mihir wrote more about the book per se so i just added impressions without going into detail about who's who)- link is http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com... "Severed heads,’ Cosca was explaining, ‘never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic sensibility, they can make a point a great deal more eloquently than those still attached. Make a note of that. Why aren’t you writing?" The quote above shows Joe Abercrombie at his best and encapsulates why the first half of Red Country was awesome. After that, the insistence of the author to limit himself at least temporarily to the convention of the western leads to a considerable slowing down of the action, as we are treated with cliche after cliche in the frontier town of Crease. Luckily, either that was a feint to prepare for what comes next, or the author realized that mimicking the "new western" is maybe not such a great idea and the book comes back to roaring life with a great last third of all out action, twists, turns, comedy and tragedy. Shy and Temple as main leads and with a great role change from the usual stereotype, so she is the "tough guy" and he is the one to be protected, work very well in a book that is the most "personal" of the author, as the stakes are not the world as in the First Law, or various countries as in the two previous standalones, but the fates of the characters introduced here. However, from the smallest touches - oxen called Scale and Calder (!) - Lamb, the current incarnation of Logen Ninefingers, is the true star of the novel and ultimately the main driver of action too. Yes, we do not get a POV from him and we see his actions at a distance or through the eyes of Shy and the others, but I think the decision was the correct one as it preserved the essential "mystery" at the core of Ninefingers. On the other hand, I was disappointed in Cosca; excellent in the first half but for what it seemed mostly like authorial intent than something deriving from the story, a cartoon villain with no subtlety in the second half. The rest of the large cast worked well overall, both known characters like Pike or Friendly and new like Dab Sweet for example - the whole ensemble mixed well and I thought the author did a very good job in balancing the over-the-top and cynical with the ironic and even the earnest on occasion... I also loved the ending which I found somewhat predictable from a point on, but still very good nonetheless. Overall, Red Country is not quite at the level of the author's signature works to date, Before They Are Hanged and Best Served Cold, but by escaping from the self-imposed shackles of its western sub-genre, it is better than the limited The Heroes and consequently a top 25 of mine for 2012, with its scope almost matching the superb writing and characters that Joe Abercrombie never failed so far to produce. ...more |
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1
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Oct 18, 2012
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Oct 21, 2012
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Oct 18, 2012
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ebook
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21
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| 0957261535
| 9780957261532
| 3.81
| 221
| Jul 26, 2012
| Jul 29, 2012
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it was amazing
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This is a book that came out of nowhere - basically I got interested as it has the same title with the huge Miles Cameron debut as it was pointed to m
This is a book that came out of nowhere - basically I got interested as it has the same title with the huge Miles Cameron debut as it was pointed to me here on Goodreads - so I checked the sample and it was compelling, so much so that I had to read the novel next. In describing this book, I would say that the narrative pull is extremely high, the main characters impressive in so far they are larger than life heroic and competent but brought down (though of course not for long) by schemers, meddlers and authorial intent that made kings and councilors act extremely stupid, the world building mediocre - or anyway not at the A level of recent debuts like mage's blood or Blood Song - and the storyline is soap opera with knights, sorcery, treason and blood; villains are cartoonish and the storyline has all the flourishes one expects in soap opera. This being said the power of the narrative and the compelling main characters (Alyda, Talin, Garian) carry the day and i am definitely interested in more. As sf this would have worked much better since there one can get away with much more campiness so to speak, but high class fantasy needs high class world building and a storyline that does not depend on the stupidity of the movers and shakers to make sense, so this series is not yet there but the author's narrative power should get it to the top with time. should have a fbc review in November most likely with more detail and some quotes for both the + and - aspects, but the " compelling soap opera with knights and sorcery' is very good shorthand description for the book ...more |
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1
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Oct 16, 2012
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Oct 17, 2012
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Oct 13, 2012
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Kindle Edition
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6
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| 3.87
| 4,643
| Sep 27, 2012
| Sep 27, 2012
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it was amazing
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I finished Mage's Blood by David Hair; the book itself - action, characters, portrayal of the cultures (Western, Islamic and Indian in barely veiled d
I finished Mage's Blood by David Hair; the book itself - action, characters, portrayal of the cultures (Western, Islamic and Indian in barely veiled disguise) and their clash well done with nuanced characters, good and bad guys and girls on both sides - the Sainted Mater-Empress Lucia takes top prize for pure evilness, though it degenerates into cartoonish stuff on occasion - but I had two structural issues that at least for now stops the series from being a top-top level one: The world itself or at least the known continents are just a shrunken version of Europe and Asia and that makes it feel a little like a small sandbox rather than a real world and second the cultures described have been in isolation one from another for untold millenniums before a few hundred years ago when the appearance of magic in the world allowed the West to get to the East so to speak (that would be a third flaw in a way, why not do it the other way, with the East getting the magic and getting to the west first) and I just cannot believe the unitary nature of the cultures as despite surface differences there is a fundamental similarity between the Western, Islamic and Indian cultures in our world and in the world of the novel, which of course is not surprising in our world considering how they interacted and influenced each other forever so to speak (compare to the pre-Columbian Maya, Inca, Mexica or even the North American Native cultures and see what I mean), but it stretches the disbelief thingy in the novel Still a gripping read, lots of twists and intriguing characters so I am in for the duration; a full FBc rv with Mihir in a few days and I will either c/p my part here or post the link; also a very good ending with a TBC sign but no real cliffhangers and revelations and big promises for the next volume FBC Rv INTRODUCTION: "Most of the time the Moontide Bridge lies deep below the sea, but every 12 years the tides sink and the bridge is revealed, its gates open for trade. The Magi are hell-bent on ruling this new world, and for the last two Moontides they have led armies across the bridge on 'crusades' of conquest. Now the third Moontide is almost here and, this time, the people of the East are ready for a fight ... but it is three seemingly ordinary people that will decide the fate of the world" Intriguing blurb, great sample so a novel that became a must read on publication, Mage's Blood is David Hair's first foray into adult fantasy. ANALYSIS: (Liviu) The setup of the series is as follows: the world of Urthe where the irregular orbit of the Moon creates huge tidal differences on a 12 year cycle while making sea navigation all but impossible outside locally coastal; for many centuries, the two main continents in which the action takes place, Yuros and Antiopia/Ahmedhassa have been in complete ignorance one from another despite being separated only by 300 miles of water and developing a Western like civilization in Yuros and Islamic (Ahm) and Indian (Lakh) - like cultures in Ahmedhassa. However some 500 years before the start of the novel in 927, magic - gnosis - comes to the West when the 1000 followers of a hippie-like prophet, Corineus, are touched by supernatural power in a terrible and unforgettable night. Some few hundred die, including Corineus, some few hundred are unchanged, but some few hundred become extremely powerful magicians called Ascendants whose gnosis gets transmitted linearly by blood - child of mage and non-mage gets 1/2 power and so it goes up to 1/16 mage blood which is lowest where gnosis manifests - with the caveat that mage with mage couples have very few children overall so "pure bloods" remain relatively rare, while mixed bloods abound. The original Ascendants split into factions - a militant one that forms a mighty empire in Yuros that rules to the present day and a peaceful one led by Antonin Meiros that retreats to the ends of Yuros in Pontus and sets up Ordo Costruo dedicated to improving the lives of people by magic; among other things, gnosis allows magical flying machines to work, so Anthiopia is discovered by air some 300 years ago and limited trade and visitations occur. Meiros - still living in 927, as Ascendants are very long lived - and his followers want to do good, so some 100 years ago he built a tremendous bridge appropriately called Leviathan Bridge, 300 miles long, connecting Pontus with the nation of Dhassa whose capital Hebusalim is the Holy City of the Ahm religion. The bridge opens for two years, every 12 years due to the tides - we learn more details later from Meiros himself. Trade and some colonization ensue and everyone prospers for about 100 years, but the leading imperial families are not happy as in the words of the evil-supremo of the series to date, Sainted Mater-Empress Lucia: "‘But Meiros, an Ascendant too craven to join the liberation of Yuros from the Rimoni yoke, left the fellowship of the Three Hundred and built that cursed Bridge, and from that Bridge do all of our woes come! I wonder, does Antonin Meiros even know what he has done?’ He seemed perfectly aware of it last time I saw him, reflected Gyle. He wondered whether Lucia Fasterius truly believed the bigoted dogma she spoke. She seemed intelligent, learned – kindly, even. But in her eyes something fanatic lurked, like a venomous snake. Lucia came to a halt behind her chair and gripped the wooden back tightly. ‘For a century we have seen the Bridge open every twelve years, when the tides drop to levels that permit traverse. We have seen the merchants pour across then return with all manner of addictive Eastern goods – opium and hashish, coffee and tea, even the silks and other luxuries that entrance our people. They can virtually name their prices on return. The bankers extend credit to merchants whilst squeezing the nobility, the magi-protectors who made Rondelmar what it is. Who are the richest men in Rondelmar? The merchants and bankers! Fat obsequious slime like Jean Benoit and his merchant cabal. And what have they bought with their ill-gotten gains? Our homes – our belongings – our art, and worse: they have purchased our sons and daughters, our Blood!’ Lucia was shouting now, spittle flecking her lips. ‘Those scum are buying our children and taking them to wife or husband, so that their misbegotten offspring will have everything, both gold and gnosis, and as a result, we are seeing a new breed, the mage-merchant, nasty, grasping half-breeds." So in an act of treachery, the Imperial legions attack over the bridge in 904 and take Hebusalim in an orgy of blood and destruction while Meiros chooses non-interference rather than breaking his famed bridge and open war with the Empire, so he ensures hatred from both sides... The Antiopian armies retake Hebusalim once the bridge submerges under the tide as air support from Yuros is not enough, so another round of massacres ensue, while in the second Crusade of 916, the Empire strikes back with ever more force and holds Hebusalim since. In the meantime, the hardships due to the Crusade led to a revolt in a southern province of the Empire, Noros, which while defeated is still shrouded in some mystery today and now in 927, one year before the next opening of the bridge, the Empire prepares the "Crusade to end all crusades", while the Antiopians have declares holy shihad to defeat the invaders... The main characters of the novel are: Elena Anborn, Norosian half-blood mage and former feared guerrilla fighter in the revolt under the (in)famous Gurvon Gyle who appears in the quote above as an intimate of the ruling Empress Mater as he was pardoned years after the revolt on condition to do the Empire's dirty work from then on. Ostensibly working as bodyguard for the Nesti ruling family of Javon which is an Antiopian kingdom which was partly settled from Yuros during the peaceful era and is unique in the normal - though tense of course - cohabitation of the two races, Elena is actually under Gyle's orders and unfortunately for everyone living there, Javon is very important strategically for both Empire and the Sultan. Alaron Mercer, Norosian quarter blood mage and nephew of Elena who is preparing to graduate the college of magic and get his accreditation. His story is in large part the typical coming-of-age one from fantasy, but in a nice twist, Alaron is still a quarter blood mage so not quite the usually powerful "boy of destiny", but he compensates with his agile mind and intense curiosity... Ramita Ankesharan from a Lakh family in an obscure city but whose father, Ispal, gets an offer he cannot refuse, so Amita's expected life is turned upside down and she will travel far away to a destiny we only start to glimpse for now... Kazim Makani, Ramita's fiancee, son of an Amteh warrior who became blood-brother with Ispal in Hebusalim during the terrible 904 - as in our history, Lakh is ruled by an Amteh emperor with the majority locals coexisting uneasily with the Amteh invaders and converts. When Ramita is taken away, Kazim goes berserk and later joins the shihad but of course things are not quite as they seem. The time of trials for all is approaching! Mage's Blood has great action and memorable characters; the portrayal of the cultures and their clash is extremely well done with nuanced characters, good and bad guys and girls on both side. On the negative side I had two structural issues: the world itself or at least the known continents to date are just a shrunken version of Europe and Asia and that makes it feel a little like a small sandbox rather than a real world. Then the cultures described have been in isolation one from another for untold centuries before the gnosis and the airships when the appearance of magic in the world allowed the West to get to the East so to speak - that would be a third flaw in a way, why not do it the other way, with the East getting the magic and getting to the West first - and I just cannot believe the unitary nature of the cultures as despite surface differences there is a fundamental similarity between the Western, Islamic and Indian cultures in our world and in the world of the novel. This of course is not surprising in our world considering how they interacted and influenced each other forever so to speak (compare to the pre-Columbian Maya, Inca, Mexica or even the North American Native cultures and see what I mean), but it stretches somewhat the suspension of disbelief in the novel With a very good ending with a TBC sign but no real cliffhangers, while having revelations and big promises for the next volume, Mage's Blood is a gripping read with lots of twists and intriguing characters so I am in for the duration. ...more |
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1
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Sep 26, 2012
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Oct 2012
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Sep 25, 2012
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Hardcover
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16
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| 0525952926
| 9780525952923
| 0525952926
| 4.36
| 150,840
| Sep 18, 2012
| Sep 18, 2012
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it was amazing
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1933-1949, 2nd generation, I would say characters even better than in the first volume - Carla Ulrich from Berlin, the Buffalo step-siblings Greg Pesh
1933-1949, 2nd generation, I would say characters even better than in the first volume - Carla Ulrich from Berlin, the Buffalo step-siblings Greg Peshkov and Daisy Peshkov and Ethel's son Lloyd Williams are the best by far, though Boy Fitzherbert as the conflicted sort of villain, Woody DeWar as the idealist like his parents and Volodya Pzeshkov (the "official" cousin, but of course actual step sibling to the American Peshkovs), Red Army Intelligence officer and cynical patriot are also excellent; pretty much all the surviving older generation appear too but in more of a supporting role. Lev Peshkov steals the scene whenever he appears with tons of memorable lines (now with 3 "official" women to boot, his long suffering wife Olga - Daisy's mom, longtime flame Marga - Greg's mom and a young movie star as Lev diversified in movies big time): "‘I used to belong to this club,’ Lev said. ‘But in 1921 the chairman told me I had to resign because I was a bootlegger. Then he asked me to sell him a case of Scotch.’" while Maud is still the most engaging character from the older generation writing definitely better too (or familiarity made me enjoy the style more), narrative pull, 900+ pages that just turn by themselves in a book you literally cannot put down... Full review in a week or so, but this is old fashioned epic at its best with an excellent ending too Curious if the author can top it in the finale ...more |
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1
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Sep 14, 2012
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Sep 16, 2012
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Sep 12, 2012
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Hardcover
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17
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| 1409114112
| 9781409114116
| 1409114112
| 4.38
| 1,338
| Sep 13, 2012
| Sep 13, 2012
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it was amazing
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Starting with Tyrant, C. Cameron has become the preeminent writer of our time for historical fiction set in Classical Greece and he has been getting o
Starting with Tyrant, C. Cameron has become the preeminent writer of our time for historical fiction set in Classical Greece and he has been getting only better in both style and structure - the research was always there as was the atmosphere and the larger than life characters but the first books had the occasional narrative wall and structural problems like the prophecy that essentially forced Tyrant 2 into a bit narrower narrative space than it should have been. So Poseidon's spear (3rd Killer of Men novel, following Arimnestos from the Marathon aftermath in 490 till about half way to Thermopyle and Salamis in 480, so till about 485) has been a novel that was simply impossible to put down the first time and one I reread immediately again at leisure, while going back to the eaelier two novels to stay in their universe It is mostly sea action, though there is land action too, romance, intrigue, slavery and we travel to Sicily, Rome, Etruria, Spain, Gaul, Ilyria and even Britain only to come full circle and prepare the return to Plataea and the war A full rv on FBC in a week, but a top 25 novel of the year, a great ending to boot and the next installment of this cannot come soon enough! Updated FBC Rv here: http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com... ...more |
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Sep 12, 2012
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Sep 14, 2012
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Sep 12, 2012
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Hardcover
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5
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| 0316212377
| 9780316212373
| 0316212377
| 4.19
| 22,348
| Oct 04, 2012
| Oct 09, 2012
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it was amazing
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on its way here; yes, it's here today (Sept 18); now to find the time/energy that this huge asap deserves... started the book tonight (Sept 18) and her on its way here; yes, it's here today (Sept 18); now to find the time/energy that this huge asap deserves... started the book tonight (Sept 18) and here is the first paragraph of the novel per se after a prologue chapter with talking ships (as you can see it is vintage IM Banks and awesome): "At sunset above the plains of Kwaalon, on a dark high terrace balanced on a glittering black swirl of architecture forming a relatively microscopic part of the equatorial Girdlecity of Xown, Vyr Cossont - Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont to give her full title - sat, performing part of T.C. Vilabier's 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, catalog number MW1211, on one of the few surviving examples of the instrument developed specifically to play the piece, the notorious difficult, temperamental and tonally challenged Antagonistic Undecagonstring - or elevenstring, as it was commonly known. T.C. Vilabier's 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW1211, was more usually known as "The Hydrogen Sonata". Finished first read of the novel and just few impressions for now, more later: it was excellent though maybe not the best Banks or the best of 2012; still need a reread and time, but it's very Excession like (with Excession itself mentioned a few times and its ITG - interesting times gang - a sort of model for the current group of "concerned" Minds), a sort of upgrade of that with the world building of Surface Detail, so it lacks a little the strong human(oid) characters from Transition or Surface Detail. The best characters are Minds (their names beat anything in the Banksian ouevre to date, true) and avatars and maybe the uber bad guy, though even there, the bad guy in Surface Detail was badder and cooler in many ways... Still sense of wonder galore and the book just stands far out in the sf of 2012 by that alone - maybe not since Consider Phlebas there was so much sense of wonder in a Culture novel though Surface Detail I think came close and Matter a little farther, but again the larger than life characters of CP (Horza, the SC agent, Krayklin etc are missing here) Hydrogen Sonata has so many cool little things that is hard to even enumerate them - some highlights are a guy with 4 heart and 52 penises in a continual orgy, someone else who retreats into sound so he takes out his eyes and replaces them with ears inside the eyeglobe, the special instrument to play the title sonata on and so on, so on... ...more |
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Sep 14, 2012
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Sep 22, 2012
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Sep 12, 2012
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Hardcover
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1
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| 1439152802
| 9781439152805
| 1439152802
| 4.15
| 153,159
| Oct 2012
| Oct 09, 2012
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it was amazing
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the Secret Keeper is a book that catapults Kate Morton from the rank of top historical fiction writers of today to my very short list of huge favorite
the Secret Keeper is a book that catapults Kate Morton from the rank of top historical fiction writers of today to my very short list of huge favorite writers period (of active authors who write historical fiction, Steven Saylor, Iain Pears and Christian Cameron are there, though of course Colleen McCullough would be there too if she were to write more historical fiction). Actually there is some resemblance between Stone's fall and The Secret Keeper in the way that you have to read the book at least twice, once before you know and once after you know (know what, well that would be telling...) just to pick up the clues, see how events you thought meant one thing, meant something different etc The setup of the book is similar to her earlier novels though this time it acquires an extra layer and while the modern (2011) part is occasionally slower, the 1938-1941 parts are pure spellbinding In 1961 (not 1959 as the blurb has it and not that it is a big deal, just that it is not possible as Laurel is 16 and her parents met in 1944 and she was born in 1945/6) Laurel has an idyllic life with her 4 younger siblings on her family somewhat isolated farm, when a stranger comes to farm and Laurel sees him greeting her mother Dorothy by name and telling her something in a low voice, while she immediately stabs him to death. Later in the police investigation, Laurel recounts the scene omitting the greeting part and corroborates her mother's story (stranger attacks her, tries to grab the baby, self defense etc) and the case is closed, while being 1961 and a gentler, politer time, the press does not make a big fuss. Life goes on, the incident is forgotten, her parents have a 50+ year long and happy marriage until her father's death some ten years earlier, but 50 years later, Laurel now a successful grand dame of British cinema, visiting her mother (now close to 90 and slipping in and out of lucidity) at her nursing home starts remembering the incident vividly and becomes determined to understand it. It was clearly tied to her mother's life before she became Dorothy Nicholson in 1945, and actually before she came from London in may 1941 to work as maid in the Nicholson household, never returning to visit London since, while keeping a lid on her history beyond the bare facts (left Coventry for London against the wishes of her parents, worked as maid to a rich old woman and was involved in the war effort, parents and younger brother dead in 1940 and the infamous Coventry bombing...) And from here the book starts moving between the past and the present, Laurel discovers that the intruder was a formerly successful writer Henry Jenkins who started his descent into drinking and obscurity (and some said madness) in 1941 after the death in a London bombing of his wife Vivien, who seemed to be an acquaintance of Dolly despite the huge social gulf between them (Vivien being quite rich, an Australian orphan with traumatic memories of her own, raised by her English schoolmaster uncle of whom Henry, older by some 20 years than her and from lower class origins himself was a protegee) There is a curious disconnect between the frivolous Dolly Smithan of 1938-1941, her desires to mingle with the rich and famous which somewhat estrange her from her photographer boyfriend Jimmy and the current Dorothy Nicholson, content mother of four and living a happy, prosperous but not particularly glamorous family life, but the dramatic pages (inserted just after the stabbing) that show Vivien and Dolly's last meeting seem to hint at the main reason for that change And so it goes and the more we delve into the past (both with Laurel who starts investigating Dorothy's life in London and with the young Dorothy and later Vivien's povs), the more things start coming together into what became a tragedy from misunderstood motives and different social expectations; but there is still something weird that bugs Laurel to the end... Just awesome stuff, book to be read many times for atmosphere, details, hints - even when you know what's what and the book is as powerful if not more - not to speak of Kate Morton's narrative pull that makes one compulsively turn the pages... FBC Rv (more or less the above polished plus some quotes) http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com... ...more |
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Aug 27, 2012
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Sep 08, 2012
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Aug 27, 2012
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| 031607991X
| 9780316079914
| 031607991X
| 4.42
| 83,453
| Sep 01, 2012
| Sep 11, 2012
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it was amazing
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awesome stuff so far about 100 pages in - had to reread Black prism and greatly enjoyed it again on the 4th or 5th read; great news that there will be
awesome stuff so far about 100 pages in - had to reread Black prism and greatly enjoyed it again on the 4th or 5th read; great news that there will be four books in the series as the author needs another 1000+ pages to finish it I finished the novel staying again way too late and turning the pages too fast towards the end to see what happens and I plan to start a reread later in the day to enjoy the book at leisure. A few points (review on publication which means either Sept 11 or when i see it in stores if early out) and will try to have no real spoilers: - slightly different structure as Kip takes center stage, though Gavin appears a lot of course; I liked how the "official" opposing side was handled using Liv's pov too - great ending at a tbc place with one major reveal and one twist (the reveal is something which I remember speculating a little in Black prism and thinking, no, cannot be, but still this is Brent Weeks so yes it could; gotta look at those lines there and read them now ...) - major universe expansion, geographical, magical and "theological" as there are new colors, old and new gods and new countries which may become important later - major character expansion with cool stuff like Seers, Mirrors, prophecy cards and "history cards" that are sort like recording video of our time, though of course you need magic to access them - twists, turns, lots of great moments, tragedy and triumph, narrative pull Like with Black Prism the major shortcoming of the novel is that it ended as i would have loved 600 pages more again (the book stands at ~630 pages of text, plus character list, plus glossary and the map in front is useful too) And the title, well Blinding Knife indeed... Overall, just great stuff, exuberant epic fantasy that I could read thousands of pages and a top 10 sff of mine for the year now rereading it and Black prism sort of together and hunting for clues especially in the light of the ending FBC Rv: http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com... ...more |
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Aug 17, 2012
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Aug 22, 2012
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Aug 17, 2012
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| B007RMY4GA
| 4.14
| 5,545
| Sep 18, 2012
| Sep 18, 2012
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it was amazing
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After a somewhat disappointing HFAF - had some great some stuff and the last 100 pages were very, very good, but a lot of repetition - I was wondering
After a somewhat disappointing HFAF - had some great some stuff and the last 100 pages were very, very good, but a lot of repetition - I was wondering if somehow DW's decision to change Safehold series focus from a multi-generational saga leading to the final confrontation to the Gbaba (afaik that was the original pitch of the series) to a series focused on the transformation of Safehold in detail, so with each volume spanning a year or less and covering all the facets of the titanic struggle between the reformist Empire and Church of Charis and the establishment led by the Group of Four and the fearsome Grand Inquisitor Clinton, fat and womanizer just to rub it in, I mean Clyntahn (I alternate between hating the naming conventions and having fun decoding them as I only now realized that Clyntahn's second in command in the Inquisition, Rayno, could be construed as Reno in another obvious parallel to the 90's), would not make me essentially lose interest after a while as the story seemed more bounded than I usual tend to like (so the repetitions issues I had with HFAF and the general feeling that the author did not say too much new there). Well, MTAT reiterated why DW is my top favorite author of today with a book that while only the beginning of the next chapter in the struggle, ending at a good tbc point but begging for more asap, and while missing a lot of the overt drama and twists and turns of the first 2 volumes, hit just the perfect balance between novelty and continuity of older themes, introducing or emphasizing new characters, while continuing developing older ones, as well as having a great mix between intrigue, technological development and battles with a last 150 pages or so of non-stop, must turn the pages to see what happens, action on multiple fronts. Also MTAT clearly establishes the series as a total planetary action with characters and action starting to be spread out everywhere, all of course withing the context of the great struggle for the soul of the "new" humanity on Safehold I will have more closer to the publication date, but a few tidbits: - a lot of great scenes, many centered on faith and how each individual approaches that; as sf tends to be agnostic and even straight-out atheistic with few exceptions, this series is worth reading even only to show how you can write great stories where faith is a central point (and note that both the most admired and the most hated characters of Safehold are priests in Maikel Staynair and Clyntahn respectively) - who knew Allayn Maigwair could be a competent army builder; well while this does not bode well for the Empire, it may even bode worse for Clyntahn himself as the usual tensions between the secret police and the military in a brutal repressive regime could surface here too; when the military loses as the Church navy tended to do, well it cannot do too much, but when it wins... - it is useful to have princes and princess of the line, even adopted ones, for alliance through marriage purposes - there are around 900 named characters in the character table at the end (41 pages long in my arc edition and about 22 on the page); a long glossary and a few more tidbits so the book clocks at about 540 pages of actual text out of 600+ total - at least as the arc goes but I think the final edition will be similar - the book needs the maps the finished edition will presumably have, but for now the detailed online map below is excellent and indispensable to follow the action http://jiltanith.thefifthimperium.com... - lots of little details that may or may not turn important later - finally, a much loved character returns Just excellent storytelling, compelling, impossible to put down, info dumps manageable (easy to skim for the essentials) and the evolution of the series to its second level (all around planetary conflict) complete; I have no idea how long Mr. Weber plans to spin this series, but I am in for the duration ...more |
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Aug 14, 2012
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Aug 16, 2012
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Aug 14, 2012
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Kindle Edition
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7
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| 0230757006
| 9780230757004
| 0230757006
| 4.13
| 1,792
| Aug 01, 2012
| Aug 02, 2012
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it was amazing
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(aug 3) I read some 100 pages from Air War and besides being the superb book one expected, there are some surprises in so far there are quite a lot of
(aug 3) I read some 100 pages from Air War and besides being the superb book one expected, there are some surprises in so far there are quite a lot of new characters who seem destined for starring roles - a new "tetrad" of special Collegium (more or less as, well, would not want to spoil it but there is a scene that strongly reminds one of how we met the original 4, Che, Tynisa, Totho and Salma...) youngsters, a cool Assassin Bug kinden on a mission, a Wasp kinden spy master with a secret... The lack of Che, Tynisa and Thalric that I was a little disappointed about, is at least for now more than compensated by the new guys and girls (aug 5) Finished this last night actually and now rereading it but one can only say wow as Mr. Tchaikovsky manages to keep the series fresh while juggling all the freight from the previous 7 books; Seda just takes over whenever she is on the page and The Seal of the Worm (title of the last book!) makes its quietly menacing appearance while the ending is not unlike the one from Dragonfly, at a good stopping point but with a clear TBC stamped on the last page; next book (War Master's gate) cannot come too soon... Full review for Tuesday (Aug 7) and I plan to either c/p it here or link it depending on length A little bit later than planned but the full FBC review is up; as it is long, but in essence it says what i said above within a lot of context regarding the series, 8th volume and all, just the link here http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com... ...more |
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Aug 02, 2012
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Aug 05, 2012
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Aug 02, 2012
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Paperback
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11
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| 0575127627
| 9780575127623
| 0575127627
| 3.70
| 2,424
| Jul 26, 2012
| Jul 26, 2012
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it was amazing
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Jack Glass is one of those "cannot read anything else until finished books" and despite the occasional gruesomeness inside, I thought it had the same
Jack Glass is one of those "cannot read anything else until finished books" and despite the occasional gruesomeness inside, I thought it had the same combination of inventiveness and exuberance that made Land of the Headless one of my most favorite sff books. Stone, Splinter and By Light Alone are also comparable in quality (all being among the top tier books I've read)though darker and arguably denser and "less accessible" to casual readers - however much i tend to dislike this expression, sometimes it just seems to be appropriate - and YBT is arguably funnier though also lighter, but Jack Glass hits the "sweet spot" in being inventive, literate, full of sense of wonder and "easily accessible" so it may work as a great introduction to the author's work also. The first paragraph which opens the book is so funny in so many ways "This narrative, which I hereby doctorwatson for your benefit, o reader, concerns the greatest mystery of our time. Of course I’m talking about McAuley’s alleged ‘discovery’ of a method of traveling faster than light, and about the murders and betrayals and violence this discovery has occasioned. Because, after all – FTL! We all know it is impossible, we know every one of us that the laws of physics disallow it. But still! And again, this narrative has to do with the greatest mind I have known – the celebrated, or infamous, Jack Glass. The one, the only Jack Glass: detective, teacher, protector and murderer, an individual gifted with extraordinary interpretive powers when it comes to murder because he was so well acquainted with murder. A quantity of blood is spilled in this story, I’m sorry to say; and a good many people die; and there is some politics too. There is danger and fear. Accordingly I have told his tale in the form of a murder mystery; or to be more precise (and at all costs we must be precise) three, connected murder mysteries." From here the book gets going with its first part, In the Box, where 7 men are dumped on an asteroid where they have to serve an 11 year prison sentence by making it habitable - they are given some tools and a start with a little air in a sealed cavern, but they have to keep digging, find water, grow food, make personal chambers... In-between the work and reminiscences of the world outside, the pecking order is established and at the bottom there is a legless man Jac who has an obsession with shards of glass and a very fat man, Gordius, former "son/sun god" of a cult. Things happen. The next two parts called the FTL Murders and the Impossible Gun are the heart of the story and deal with the structure of power and revolution in a Solar System of trillions with world building for the ages and just great characters and style, though the events of In the Box are important for the up-close-and-personal look we get at Jack. A full review for July 31, but to summarize, the last sentence of the blurb above "It is an extraordinary novel" is an understatement if anything. I would also note that in addition to the text of the novel per se the book contains an interesting collection of "poems and ballads" that are indirectly related with its action, but add depth to the world building - even here and Adam Roberts found a way to be different than the usual info-dumping (direct or indirect) as he does it through verse.... I will include the FBC review below: INTRODUCTION: "Jack Glass is the murderer. We know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged. Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, JACK GLASS is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain. JACK GLASS has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits and comes with liberal doses of sly humor. Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challenges notions of crime, punishment, power and freedom. It is an extraordinary novel" Ever since "Jack Glass" has been announced as above, the book has been a "super high expectations" one due to the combination of an irresistible blurb and its authorship by Adam Roberts who keeps producing the highest quality sf in story after story and novel after novel. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "Jack Glass" was one of the "cannot put down until finished books" and despite the occasional gruesomeness inside, I thought it had the same combination of inventiveness and exuberance that made Land of the Headless one of my most favorite sff books. Stone, Splinter and By Light Alone are also comparable in quality with all being among the top tier books I've ever read, though they are darker and arguably denser and "less accessible" to casual readers - however much I tend to dislike this expression, sometimes it just seems to be appropriate - and Yellow Blue Tibia is arguably funnier though also lighter, but Jack Glass hits the "sweet spot" in being inventive, literate, full of sense of wonder and "easily accessible" so I would recommend it as a great introduction to Adam Roberts' whole body of work. The first paragraph of the book is funny in so many ways: "This narrative, which I hereby doctorwatson for your benefit, o reader, concerns the greatest mystery of our time. Of course I’m talking about McAuley’s alleged ‘discovery’ of a method of traveling faster than light, and about the murders and betrayals and violence this discovery has occasioned. Because, after all – FTL! We all know it is impossible, we know every one of us that the laws of physics disallow it. But still! And again, this narrative has to do with the greatest mind I have known – the celebrated, or infamous, Jack Glass. The one, the only Jack Glass: detective, teacher, protector and murderer, an individual gifted with extraordinary interpretive powers when it comes to murder because he was so well acquainted with murder. A quantity of blood is spilled in this story, I’m sorry to say; and a good many people die; and there is some politics too. There is danger and fear. Accordingly I have told his tale in the form of a murder mystery; or to be more precise (and at all costs we must be precise) three, connected murder mysteries." From here Jack Glass gets going with its first part, In the Box, where seven men are dumped on an asteroid where they have to serve an 11 year prison sentence by making it habitable - they are given some tools and a start with a little air in a sealed cavern, but they have to keep digging, find water, grow food, make personal chambers... In-between the work and reminiscences of the world outside, the pecking order is established and at the bottom there is Jac, a legless man, who has an obsession with shards of glass and Gordius, a very fat man who is a former "son/sun god" of a cult. Things happen. The next two parts called The FTL Murders and The Impossible Gun are the heart of the story as they deal with the structure of power and revolution in a Solar System of trillions, with world building for the ages and great characters and style, though the events of In the Box are important for the up-close-and-personal look we get of Jack. The author continues to pursue the themes from By Light Alone though in a more expansive setting; the Solar System is colonized to the hilt by orbiting asteroids where the teeming masses live in squalor, but where also the movers and shakers of the day live in unimaginable luxury, pampered by servants chemically doped for blind obedience. It is a harsh world for the poor and a fabulous one for the rich, though in the pyramidal structure under the Ulanov (!) clan, nobody is really safe. Second in power are five genetically engineered clans - MOH, term explained in the glossary at the end of the book - of which the Argents are the information "ministry", led by the two "MOHmommies" of our main heroine Diana, who close to her majority at 16 is sent to a clan estate in the gravity well of Earth together with her older sister Eva. Bred for super-smartness and the future leadership of the clan, Diane is an expert in "practical" thinking, well at least as that is possible in her simulation upbringing where she is the ultimate master at virtual crime solving, while Eva is already on her seventh science PhD at about 21. And of course a locked room murder just happens on their estate. Here is another paragraph that is funny but also tells us a lot about the book, Adam Roberts' take on things and more; this is super funny if you are aware of the author's reviews of certain hard sf novels... "Put silly romance to one side, and take those three questions in order. First: who committed the crime? Narrowing the group of suspects down to only nineteen people already placed the solution in the 99.9+++th-increment. Even if you limited yourself to the population of the island (though, since the whole Argent group had only just landed, and had not yet interacted with any island natives, the murderer was massively unlikely to be found outside the group – but for the sake of argument) we were talking about 19 out of 102,530, which was the 99.998+th percentile. Eva had never reached such levels of near-certainty in any of her PhDs! It was ridiculous to ask for more. Trillions of people in the solar system, and Diana wanted to waste her time sifting through a group of nineteen? Let her. If Eva had been in charge, she would have treated all nineteen as guilty – and then either execute them all, or perhaps treat the group conviction as a technical mitigation and sentence them all to long prison terms." However larger happenings are afoot as there is a persistent rumor about FTL being invented despite its provable impossibility and that is the wild card which could shatter the stability of the System; of course Jack Glass - who is regarded by many as a nonexistent mythical hero or villain - and other Ulanov opponents have been working for the revolution for decades, but FTL can change everything overnight despite that it is impossible. And as the information clan, the Argents are in the bull's eye... So grand themes - the fate of humanity in both the "internal", what is a good society, what is the cost of overthrowing oppression, etc, and external, in the "are the stars for us or are we stuck here in our corner forever?", a hinted resolution of the Fermi paradox, etc - larger than life characters, even an impossible love story, lots of action, mystery and indeed a strong dose of Golden Age sf done with modern sensibilities and superb style and Jack Glass succeeds on all fronts. Maybe for the ending I would have wished a few more pages but I really did not want the book to end anyway... I would also note that in addition to the text of the novel per se and the aforementioned Glossary, Jack Glass contains an interesting collection of "poems and ballads" that are indirectly related to its action, but add quite a lot of depth to the world building - so even here and Adam Roberts found a way to be different from the usual info-dumping in sff novels as he does it through verse! A short quote too: "The Interplanetary Rebel’s Hymn You who govern Venus, where the disk is smooth and grey: The Ulanovs rule your System—but you’re greater, far, than they! Now as the laws are questioned and the police sloops blast and glide, Mithras, lord of the planets, give strength to those who died." ..... To summarize, the last sentence of Jack Glass' blurb above "It is an extraordinary novel" is quite the understatement. A top 10 novel of 2012 for me. ...more |
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Jul 26, 2012
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Jul 30, 2012
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Jul 26, 2012
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Hardcover
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4
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| 1602861803
| 9781602861800
| 1602861803
| 4.13
| 23,211
| Nov 01, 2011
| Sep 04, 2012
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it was amazing
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This is by far the most lyrical and beautiful (as in prose and atmosphere) book I've read in a long time. I bought it a few weeks ago (the UK edition This is by far the most lyrical and beautiful (as in prose and atmosphere) book I've read in a long time. I bought it a few weeks ago (the UK edition as I could not wait for the US edition) and when opening it I almost could not put it down. When the time came to read the book it had the same mesmeric quality from the first paragraph. "On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Not many people would have known of him before the war, but I did. He had left his home on the rim of the sunrise to come to the central highlands of Malaya. I was seventeen years old when my sister first told me about him. A decade would pass before I traveled up to the mountains to see him. He did not apologize for what his countrymen had done to my sister and me. Not on that rain-scratched morning when we first met, nor at any other time. What words could have healed my pain, returned my sister to me? None. And he understood that. Not many people did" The book alternates between 1987 and 1951 with reminiscences about the pre-war and war periods, though Yun Ling's camp experiences are only recounted in brief, central as they are to the whole book(now she is respected judge Teoh just retired from the Malaysian Supreme court due to a brain affliction that has her slowly descending into forgetfulness and so she decides to write down her memories so she can read about them if worse comes to worse). Born in 1923 into a very rich Straits Chinese (educated in the English schools, speaking English natively and not speaking Mandarin, so derisively referred to by some as "bananas" - yellow on the outside and white on the inside as Yun Ling's father's first official public words in Mandarin when he learns it late in life for political reasons are precisely "I am not a banana") family in Penang, Yun Ling is the 3rd child and second daughter, being very close to her three years older sister Yun Hong and one of her early defining moments is in 1938, when they visit Japan and the 18 year old Yun Hong becomes obsessed with the art of the Japanese Garden Later after the occupation and the camp - I will not spoil the rich tapestry of the book which includes all the revelations about the whys of what happened, just mention that things happened for definite reasons - sole survivor of three years in an ultra-secret Japanese extermination/work camp in the jungle, Yun Ling has two main goals - find out where the camp was and honor Yun Hong's memory by having a Japanese Garden created on her mountain estate by famed exiled Aritomo, former Imperial Gardener about whom the girls heard for the first time in the late 30's when he came to Malaya and settled near the estate of their father former business associate, now big tea producer, Boer war veteran Magnus Pretorius So Yun Ling gets a legal education, works in the Japanese war criminal cases and later as a public prosecutor against the (mostly Chinese) communist guerrillas that start waging war against the British administration and the Malay majority in 1948; however in 1951 she resigns after a disagreement with the colonial authorities and comes to the highland and her family friend Magnus to try and convince Aritomo to build the Garden. It is also a troubled time for the country as the guerrilla war very active in the uplands where the action takes place - "the Malay Emergency" - is at its peak and the terrorist scored a major victory by assassinating the British governor, while Yun Ling is a marked woman too for her prosecution work and despite desperate pleas from her very rich father (whom she now blames to a large extent for her and Yun Hong's imprisonment in the camp - as he refused an offer of shelter from Magnus who was protected to large extent by Aritomo as the famed Gardener still commanded enough clout with the Japanese occupation forces to help the local people), Yun Ling decides to stay and accept Aritomo's offer of apprenticeship Things happen, things are not quite as we think they are and lots of stuff is actually connected, though Yun Ling (and us) start putting the pieces together only in the 1987 thread, when she returns there after 34 years - in his will Aritomo left her everything, but while she maintained the property she never wanted to visit In a subplot, a controversial Japanese art historian who wants to write a definitive account of Aritomo and his work after his 1938 exile, manages to get Yun Ling's approval to come there and work with her on the project and his interesting story and the connections with everything are woven very skilfully into the tapestry also. Just great stuff, the best literary novel of the year for me and a top 5 for sure (could be #1 depending on how it will wear in time) and the clear favorite for me in the Booker longlist, though I think that if it makes the shortlist it would be a good achievement too - considering the list of this year and the 8 novels I took a look at, this and The Teleportation Accident are head and shoulder above the rest, with Bring up the Bodies a distant third, but name recognition goes against both ...more |
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Jul 26, 2012
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Aug 30, 2012
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Jul 25, 2012
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Paperback
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14
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| B0070NSPCU
| 4.42
| 81,784
| 2011
| Jan 22, 2012
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it was amazing
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Once in a while a book comes out of nowhere and blows me away; last year it was the indie sf Dancing with Eternity, this year it's Blood Song, a tradi
Once in a while a book comes out of nowhere and blows me away; last year it was the indie sf Dancing with Eternity, this year it's Blood Song, a traditional fantasy in many ways but with a narrative pull that is just unbelievable - last time I read a fantasy debut with this pull, it was in 2007 when Name of the Wind appeared and while there are notable differences in content, with this one much more traditional than Rothfuss' series, there are a few similarities there too - while getting a lot of other things right from tone, to structure, to general world building that has both space and extendability so you do not feel the usual "sandbox, everything local is known" common to many secondary world fantasies today. I plan a full review for next week and I am rereading the book also as I want to stay in its universe more, while quite a few early details are better appreciated on a second or later reading. I will only note that while starting as an indie novel/series, Raven's Shadow has been bought by Penguin Books (Ace/Roc) and will be published in print too starting next year most likely with Blood Song, and the author is working hard at the sequel (Tower Lord) which may or may not see an indie publication or just be first published by Penguin. Blood Song ends at a good point and at the equivalent of ~600 pages offers a complete reading experience, so even if Tower Lord does not come out until say 2014 assuming the usual traditional publishing time frames, get it now and read it, whether you are a series completist or someone like myself who loves open series... Full FBC Review (with Mihir) at the link below: http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com... ...more |
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Jul 08, 2012
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Jul 12, 2012
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Jul 08, 2012
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Kindle Edition
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9
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| 0525952411
| 9780525952411
| 0525952411
| 3.60
| 242
| Jan 20, 2012
| Jul 05, 2012
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it was amazing
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FBC Review INTRODUCTION: In 2009, Brian D'Amato published the superb In the Courts of the Sun first in an announced trilogy called The Sacrifice Game. FBC Review INTRODUCTION: In 2009, Brian D'Amato published the superb In the Courts of the Sun first in an announced trilogy called The Sacrifice Game. The novel was a combination of near-future extrapolations, time travel and a wonderful recreation of the Maya world of the 7th century, all narrated by unlikely hero Jed de Landa, or more precisely by Jed 1 and Jed 2 as the novel uses a form of time travel which leads to an instance of the consciousness of Jed to be time shifted to the brain of Chacal, a star Maya ball player of the Harpy clan of Ix. Here is my description of Jed in the FBC review linked above: "born in 1974 and displaced from his native Guatemalan village by military action, Jed is taken as a young age to the US and grows up in foster care in Utah, exhibiting physical frailty since he suffers from hemophilia so any wound or cut is potentially fatal, while showing great mental agility especially in fast numerical computations and ability to play games of skill and chance". I was entranced by the novel and its fascinating narrator and I kept looking for the second book in 2010, 2011 and then sort of forgot about it. Imagine my surprise to recently discover that the 2nd Jed de Landa novel that bears the trilogy title, The Sacrifice Game will be published on July 5. As the blurb of the novel includes a major spoiler for the ending of In the Courts of the Sun, I will not include it here just in case you have not read that but are intrigued by the above and want to pick it first, but I will note that The Sacrifice Game starts precisely where the earlier volume ends and the rest of the blurb is both true and misleading in the sense that there is no more "Jed", but Jed 1 and Jed 2 who diverged markedly - to say the least - in the first volume and some of the blurb refers to one, some to the other... OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "Sometimes—at times like this, I’d say, especially—one might as well just go with the cliché: I was crushed. Yes, it’d be nice to come up with a more clever word than crushed, but really, why bother? Crushed pretty well does the job. What surprised even me, though, was how much I wasn’t crushed just because I was a lazy slob and I’d thought I could relax. It was that I—even I—was rather annoyed, in fact more than annoyed, in fact, let’s say again, crushed—that the world was still doomed. And I even realized that I cared about it in the general sense, not just personally, that even if I died back here from my neuroblastomas or in a ball game or by the flint dagger or the wooden sword or whatever, even if I didn’t get back to the thirteenth b’aktun to see Marena and the gang and catch the next season of Game of Thrones, I still wanted the good old crazy ratty loathsome ridiculous old world to keep rolling on. Okay. Look. We can do this, I thought...." The Sacrifice Game is even badder, crazier and more explicit and brutal than In the Courts of the Sun - which was not tame by any stretch - as it is almost all narrated in the same unforgettable voice of Jed de Landa, though Jed 2, the 660's Maya one and to whom the stream of consciousness musings above belong, carries on for most of the book. Structurally, The Sacrifice Game starts with Jed 1 in the modern world after his momentous decision at the end of the last book and deals with its implementation and a few consequences, but soon it moves to the Maya world where the book just explodes as it gets even better than In the Courts of the Sun with unbounded sense of wonder, meticulous research and all around inventiveness that matches anything I've read in sf set on an alien world; of course here we are still on Earth, but in a civilization where the author hits the sweet spot in the mixture of alien and familiar in describing it: "A brace of bearers brought in the white-wrapped ball Hun Xoc had brought back from 31 Courts, holding the too-potent bundle with wooden hands, and tied it to the service cord. An umpire inspected the knot, signaled, and the ball was hoisted up, hanging above the central marker stone. “Now, One, Two, Four, Five, Seven, Nine, Thirteen,” the Magister Ludi chanted, switching from the second-person plural imperative to the apostrophic tense you used only when speaking to gods, “Now Twenty, Fifty-Two, Two Hundred Sixty, O Night, O Wind, O Day, O Rain, O Zero, Now, guests, inspect 2 Creeper’s blood-washed head.” 2 Creeper had been the greatest Ixian ballplayer in living memory, but he’d sacrificed himself thirty-nine solar years ago after an ankle injury. The Ball had been wound of white rubber around 2 Creeper’s skull as a hollow center—to increase the bounce—and then baked black and studded with painted thorns, like little nails. Finally the ball had been purified in two kinds of blood and then washed in original water boiled over the offering fires of both houses’ grandfathers-houses." Lady Koh, ultimate Sacrifice Game player of the age and big time politician to boot, 2 Jeweled Skull, leader of the Harpy clan in Ix, second most powerful man there, adoptive father to Jed/Chacal, currently in the contest of his life with 9 Fanged Hummingbird, the Ocelot clan supremo of Ix, Hun Xoc, son of 2JS, lead ball player of the Harpies team and Jed's main adviser/friend, 1 Gila, right hand man of Lady Koh and war leader of her followers are back, while of course quite a few new Mayan characters appear. As excerpted above there is one unforgettable game of hipball for the fate of Ix and by extension, our heroes and life as we know it, not to speak of many other goodies which I do not want to spoil for you... There are quite a few twists and turns and the author manages a rare feat as first person narration goes; while it would be a major spoiler to talk about it in detail, I am sure any attentive reader will observe it by the end of the novel. The last few chapters that take place back in the modern world have a thriller-ish feel to them - after all the book is set in 2012 close to 12-21-12 and the race to avoid the ultimate "doomster" is the main storyline in the contemporary part of the novel. The Sacrifice Game has another surprising but fitting ending giving the book the feel of a complete experience which also leaves one quite in the dark about where the series will go next as it's supposed to be a trilogy. Overall The Sacrifice Game - top 25 novel of 2012 and currently in the number two slot - came with very high expectations and I was really surprised by how effortlessly it blew past them and offered the most sensual and visual reading experience of the year for me. ...more |
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1
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Jun 12, 2012
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Jul 03, 2012
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Jun 12, 2012
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Hardcover
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2
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| 031617775X
| 9780316177757
| 031617775X
| 3.87
| 1,518
| Jul 05, 2012
| Jul 17, 2012
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it was amazing
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Sharps is vintage KJ Parker but also the most complex of the author's standalone novels, while bringing elements from all the author's oeuvre and conn
Sharps is vintage KJ Parker but also the most complex of the author's standalone novels, while bringing elements from all the author's oeuvre and connecting with earlier works like Purple and Black which is alluded in the book - though of course as it is KJ Parker, the details may not be precisely the same in so far the Empire in P&B worshiped the Invincible Sun (like the Western Empire and Scheria here, Scheria being the country of our heroes and either former province of the Western Empire or never conquered depending on whom you listen to) while here the Eastern Empire (former conqueror and now ally of of our heroes' opponents, the Permians) to which the allusions are made worships the Fire God (s?) But this is one of author's trademarks, describing a deep but mutable history depending on who is writing it... Anyway back to the book and the story goes like this (as I do not have yet an e-version, I cannot c/p quotes but the novel is full of quotable lines and i hope to have some for the full review later in the year): - two former border provinces of the Western and Eastern Empires left independent more or less as detritus after the Empires long war a few hundred years ago, manage to get into a war of their own for the possession of a barren border land-strip that is rumored to contain huge mineral deposits More populous Scheria and richer Permia go at it for a long time - some four decades, Scheria with conscript manpower, Permia mostly with Imperial and barbarian mercenaries, "the Blue Skins" and the Aram Chantat respectively, in addition to their less numerous conscripts - but ultimately they both run out of money and people and the military aristocracy in both countries which ran the war falls from power and becomes mostly bankrupt, while the Bank in Scheria and the mine owners in Permia have an uneasy seven year truce going at the beginning of the novel in 614 AUC. However the last and most notable feat of war, the total flooding and submerging under water of a major Permian city, by the best general of the war (and some say, best such in centuries), Scherian general Carnufex known forever as "The Irrigator" sort of gave Scheria the "moral win" though as mentioned both countries are almost bankrupt as the treaty negotiations go nowhere fast so the riches of the DMZ cannot be exploited to prop both economies. Adding some recent instability in the Permian economy as their mainstay, silver mining is getting competition in the Empire and the plotting of the still standing not bankrupt members of the aristocracy like Carnufex (retired with honors but privately seething at the current Bank run government of Scheria) and the situation is quite unstable, when a new factor that can make or break it appears, namely a Scherian fencing team invited to visit fencing-mad Permia and give three exhibit games. And in the first few pages we get to meet the mostly unlikely members of the team: Suidas Deutzel (mid 30's), fencing champion of Scheria, habitual drunk with an expensive actress girlfriend and numerous creditors to satisfy from the winnings game to game, former war hero or war criminal depending on who tells it, who needs the money the Scherian government offers him for a trip to Permia; of course as he is not that stable there is a clear possibility he may run amok and restart the war single handed Iseutz Bringas (early 20's) - the one girl on the team, she is tall and not that polished, a former junior ladies champion from a middle management bank family, who accepts the highly risky tour as alternative to a political marriage Giraut Byrennius (early 20's) - perennial student from an upper class family, highly skilled amateur fencer who prefers bedding upper class university girls to pretty much anything else including work and study, until his latest "conquest" leads him into big trouble, so it is the gallows or Permia... Addo (Adulescentulos) Carnufex (24), youngest son of the general (out of 4, three surviving, one dead in the war), good fencer as all the nobility, pacifist, chess master, highly intelligent and attractive who worships his father who in turn seems to regard him with contempt for his pacifist views And then we have the team manager/coach, 51 year old wool merchant Phrantzes, former 3 time fencing champion of Scheria (record at the time), former supply major under Carnufex in the war, recently and somewhat scandalously married to a 37 year old lady of foreign and unseemly origins (former prostitute etc) who is "convinced" to lead the team despite being manifestly unsuited and unwilling Supervising them, political officer Timizces, anonymous looking and always disappearing when bad things are ready to happen and the s**t starts looking like hitting the fan. And of course there are the secrets, personal and political, the power players, real and pretend, the machinations and the intrigue. High stakes indeed and unclear what chance at survival our five unlikely heroes have... Coming back now to a discussion of themes and characters, for people familiar with the author's work, Suidas is not unlike the heroes of The Company, Addo not unlike Gignomai, Iseutz not unlike the heroine with the same name in the Fencer trilogy though with less baggage, while Giraut and Phrantzes are the seemingly expendable nobodies that appear in various places (including for example Ziani in the Engineer trilogy); what is the right thing to do, can the honorable thing be wrong and the dishonorable thing be right, the ambiguity of morality as dictated by circumstances etc etc - among the very numerous super touches of the book there is a game the heroes play when each names a thing they are sure they would not do under any circumstances and the cynical Suidas creates scenarios under which they agree they actually would do it -, all the familiar themes as mentioned combined with great prose and world building. Outstanding and I would say this is probably the best KJ Parker novel so far and definitely will be a huge favorite mine (for now of course it is #1 of 2012 but there is IM Banks and the Culture coming soon...) alongside The Hammer, The Scavenger trilogy and Purple and Black which so far are my personal favorites from the author's work Here is the full rv link (done together with Mihir): http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com... ...more |
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1
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May 22, 2012
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May 29, 2012
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May 21, 2012
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Paperback
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12
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| 0765330954
| 9780765330956
| B001I848AG
| 4.21
| 2,936
| May 22, 2012
| May 22, 2012
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it was amazing
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Excellent sequel to Scholar; Quaeryt and Vaelora solve one problem at a time until the **** hits the fan badly. Typical Modesitt ultra-competent hero d Excellent sequel to Scholar; Quaeryt and Vaelora solve one problem at a time until the **** hits the fan badly. Typical Modesitt ultra-competent hero deals with one problem at a time yes, but I love the style, the world building and the main two characters here; a minor spoiler below about how the series differs a little from usual fantasy in a way that appeals quite a lot to me one thing I like about this series (Imager in general both Rhenn and this) is also that rather than having the hero's love interest suffer unexpected reverses and the two being apart, the author has the hero getting engaged fast and then he marries too so there are two main characters, and possibly kids to come too. Will have a full review asap but a top 25 novel for sure and I really want next (Imager's battalion and next, Antiagon's fire and last with Quaeryt aka Rex Regis, all written btw asap...) Full FBC Rv below: INTRODUCTION: After the trilogy consisting of Imager, Imager's Challenge and Imager's Intrigue that introduced us to Rhenn, one of the most enchanting narrators in recent fantasy, LE Modesitt goes back in time before the unification of Solidar to give us a tale that introduces another great character, scholar and secret imager, Quaeryt Rytersyn. This time we will be treated to five Quaeryt volumes in the next few years - all written and all but the last titled and edited to go - so Princeps which picks up exactly where Scholar ends is the second volume of a huge five volume novel. I will try to keep spoilers for Scholar at the minimum but obviously there will be some, so if you have not yet read the first Quaeryt novel and do not want to find out some major developments there, check my review of Scholar above instead. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: First a quick refresher of the setup: the island continent of Lydar - in Rhenn's books named Solidar - separated in various states since time immemorial has recently been consolidated into three countries, of which big bad Bovaria in the East under sinister Rex Kharst plans to unite the whole continent with fire and sword and cleanse it of undesirable elements like the Pharsi minority - darker hued merchants, industrialists and seers famous for their beautiful and beguiling women as we have seen Seliora, Rhenn's wife in the original trilogy - the learned scholars and the magic wielding Imagers. Opposing it, Telaryn is the other main continental power which has expanded to conquer most of the Western part of Lydar under its warlord Yaran dynasty, while the smaller southern Antiago stands for now mostly due to the reputation of its war Imagers and dreaded Antiagon Fire weapon. Married with beautiful Pharsi women, so their prophetic capabilities run also in their family, the lords of Telaryn, brutal and unforgiving as they may be, are still better than the alternatives, and current Lord Bhayar is actually milder than his father and grandfather, though of course that invites ambitious governors with armies at their back to plot against him as some feel they offer a better chance to fight bigger Bovaria. But Bhayar has a secret weapon - not that he fully knows it to start, though as the master manipulator he is slowly revealed through the first two books, he soon realizes it and becomes ruthless in using it -and of course that weapon is his former childhood classmate, Quaeryt, orphan raised by scholars, blond but with Pharsi blood so making him one of "the lost ones" as he keeps hearing it, super competent trouble shooter, scholar and secret Imager. And as Quaeryt starts solving some of Bhayar most pressing internal problems, while keeping a semi-official correspondence with Vaelora, the headstrong and very intelligent youngest sister of Bhayar, what better way for the manipulator lord to marry the two and get rid of a potential domestic problem and tie Quaeryt even stronger to Bhayar's reign - not that Quaeryt does not realize it but as this dialog with Bhayar shows it, that's how it is: "Quaeryt could not have expected anything else, he supposed. “Not Vaelora. Don’t bring her into it—” “I won’t, not so long as I can count on you.” You truly are a bastard. Quaeryt didn’t speak those words. “What other choice do we have?” He kept his voice level. “Not much. You more than anyone should know what Kharst—or any other ruler—would do … has done to imagers and scholars.” “Why do you think I’ve done what I’ve done—even before Vaelora?” While keeping the same essential structure as "Scholar" - third person narration focusing on Quaeryt and storyline divided into three parts with the short first, more of an introduction, and the second and third parts being the "meat" of the book all ending with a concluding few pages at a good "to be continued" point, "Princeps" has a few differences, most notably the addition of Vaelora as main character whom we see quite a lot of as Quareyt's wife and the clearer division between Quaeryt as problem solver and Quaeryt as soldier since they roughly correspond to the second and third parts respectively. I actually quite like that in this series - unlike the usual genre approach - rather than having the hero's love interest suffer unexpected reverses and the two being apart for contrived reasons, the author has the hero getting engaged and married fast so there are two main characters, and possibly kids to come too. Another good point that is driven very well home in Princeps is that competence is not necessarily appreciated in a society that does not follow a democratic capitalist organization like ours, as being good at what you do may be threatening to the vested interests and may also rub them in the face with the fact that money or noble blood does not really make one superior. "Still, as he waited, Quaeryt couldn’t help but ponder about the situation in which he found himself. For far more than the first time, he wanted to shake his head. If he provided flour at a reasonable price for the poorer inhabitants of Extela, the factors and holders complained. If he didn’t, the poor complained." This very sfnal approach to fantasy - which is a trademark of both the Imager and the long running Recluce series is also something I really like and it is part of why with around 30 books read from his 56 or so published to date, L.E. Modesitt is second in living authors ranked by how much I read from and any new book of his is at least a "try" if not a must. Overall Princeps is a top 25 novel of mine for 2012 and I will end with the one phrase summation from Goodreads that could stand in place of the longer review above: "excellent sequel to "Scholar"; Quaeryt and Vaelora solve one problem at a time until the **** hits badly the fan." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 21, 2012
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May 23, 2012
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May 21, 2012
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Hardcover
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22
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| 1841498890
| 9781841498898
| 1841498890
| 4.01
| 12,696
| May 03, 2012
| May 03, 2012
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it was amazing
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As I may not be able to do a full FBC rv close to the US publication date, I will try to have a longer "raw thoughts" review here. The book is secondar As I may not be able to do a full FBC rv close to the US publication date, I will try to have a longer "raw thoughts" review here. The book is secondary world fantasy at its best and in addition it has a writing style quite above the usual "utility English" of the genre; maybe not quite at (the top of) literary fiction levels (see Hari Kunzru's Gods without Men for recent such), but close, while pretty much all the things that I would mark as negatives come from the nature of the genre rather than from the author. I would try to avoid spoilers so I will talk only a little about the storyline, just to mention that it is a direct continuation of The Dragon's Path and a lot of things happen by the end of the novel (at a good stopping point with no cliffhangers but not much global resolution beyond tbc either - in this sense the first two volumes of the intended 5 book series are truly volume 1/2 of a huge novel) The structure is similar with Dragon's Path and features POV chapters from Cithrin, Dawson, Clara, Geder and Marcus with interludes from Master Kit. As mentioned lots of things happen including intrigues, conspiracies, wars, pirates, deaths of named characters, while the world is expanded to some extent and the roles of the 13 races are made a little bit clearer here, though again mostly regular humans aka "firstbloods" are of importance (and Cithrin of course who is half-blood Cinnae but much closer to her firstblood half by upbringing) There is an appendix written from the pov of a scholar of one the "superior bloods' (of course he would claim that...) and discussing the 13 races, while many secondary characters - some new, some old and some who may become important later appear and some have really great moments The pages turn by themselves and I literally could not put the book down and read it in one very long sitting, but i expect to revisit the world and probably reread Dragon Path too soon. I put 2 paragraphs below in spoiler tags as they discuss my expectations about some characters in future volumes - this implies said characters will be part of future volumes (though I would say that is not a surprise from the way the series is structured); other than that (showing that these characters survive), no real spoilers, but still read this at your choice (view spoiler)[ As for the main 5 POV characters I would say that all but Marcus truly shine in this novel - Marcus has little to do for most of the book, give or take a confrontation with pirates, but his storyline starts getting interesting towards the end. The only major qualm I have is that in future volumes the author will do a "Fall of Thanes" with Geder who together with Cithrin (clearly marked as "the" heroine so far, so there no worries and I expect her only to grow and deepen) is the most interesting character imho (you can look my review of Fall of Thanes but in essence one of the main characters of that series - Godless World/B. Ruckley - who was very interesting in the first two volumes as a conflicted "villain" but also driver of action becomes a pure caricature with scenes like the Emperor and Luke in the last original Star Wars movie that are truly laughable and I hated that transformation from a nuanced and deep character to a cartoon villain) (hide spoiler)] As for negatives - as mentioned mostly due to genre - the book like most sff is about politics and the organization of society and like most fantasy it is a retrograde such where "what is your blood" counts more than anything else outside of specific commercial cities - true that say Geder who is minor nobility raises himself with luck and a strong dose of magic, but he is still noble - nobility and blood with the role of women very traditional in the "high society" - again the lower and commercial classes are different but over 60% of the book is about the nobility, a bit smaller world building than expected and occasionally feeling like a sandbox - but ultimately the novel captivated me again and showed that great writing and characters and a reasonably well thought secondary world (with the caveats above) still can keep me interested in traditional fantasy despite my feeling of "exhausting the genre" in the last 4 years. A few more thoughts - the book also has an elegant rather than visceral feel and consequently the more emotional moments are still cerebral to a large extent rather than pure emotion and the action flows naturally rather than twisting and turning - here I tend to prefer the more visceral feel and the twists and turns with "what..?" moments, but as that is a pure personal preference, I would not count it against the book especially that it executes so well in these two categories (elegant style, natural story lines) All in all King's Blood was the first 2012 fantasy that satisfied my expectations and of course it will have a place on my top 25 list of the year and i hope the series will continue to keep this extremely high standards all the way - i also believe that there is scope and depth for 5 books though I expect considerably more universe expansion ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 02, 2012
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May 04, 2012
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May 02, 2012
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Paperback
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24
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| 0982773471
| 9780982773475
| 0982773471
| 3.83
| 922
| Apr 24, 2012
| Apr 24, 2012
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it was amazing
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Last Will is one of the most charming and uplifting book I've read in recent years - last year's Lover's dictionary and 2010 Thera are other similar b
Last Will is one of the most charming and uplifting book I've read in recent years - last year's Lover's dictionary and 2010 Thera are other similar books I greatly enjoyed - while staying very grounded in "reality", though of course both main characters (Bernie and Meda) who alternate first person narration (with few interludes from Bernie's aunt who sort of functions as an outside/back story pov) are quite unlikely themselves, but the skill of the author is such that both just stand out, take over and made me not able to put this book down once i opened it as well as doing an immediate reread to stay more with them. The book itself came out of nowhere for me - saw it a few days ago on Net Galley and being in the mood for a change of pace I checked a sample and enjoyed it enough to request it for a review, but I never expected the wonderful engaging experience Last Will provided or the fact that I simply could not put it down once I idly opened it to see where it will fit in my reading plans... I plan to have a coherent FBC review with more quotes probably for the publication date next week, but a few points: - the novel shines in the two characters and their interaction but the way the author structured it as generally alternating first person narrations dealing with the same events from Bernie or Meda's perspective works very well and I think it is a key to the book's success - the secondary cast of characters - especially Meda's family - are also very well drawn and the small town feel is authentic and not glossed over in any way; a special mention goes to Meda's mom, Muriel whose "alien abduction" stories are both pathetic but also a way to cope with her not-so-easy life as Bernie understands the best - despite their very different situations, Bernie's abduction as a child and what happened then, all recounted at key parts of the book and essentially defining him, coupled with his parents and most family low regard for him, made him closest psychically with Mureil, while Meda generally tough minded resembles her more practical grandma and aunt who kept the family going - the storyline is not particularly complicated, though there are a few surprises here and there, but that is beside the point as Last Will lives in Bernie and Meda - the back stories are quite important and the way they are inserted leading to the final piece of the puzzle that explains some of Bernie's stranger peculiarities like his inability to sleep with someone else (sleep as in sleep not sex btw, where Bernie is reasonably normal, though of course with some strangeness too) fit very well the general structure of the book - the blurb is more or less accurate but it does not convey the power and richness of the book: Bernie, now 30 and moonlighting as an assistant librarian in Kansas city, last male scion of a very rich family, returns to the childhood mansion when his grandfather dies and leaves him his billions, but said childhood mansion was also the place where Bernie was abducted for ransom as a 9 year old - at the local school more precisely - and where the events that shaped him in the retiring and not really able to deal with society man of today took place, in addition to the tragic accidental deaths of his "golden boy" older brother and father, deaths which his estranged mother somehow blames on him, or maybe not blames directly but you get the idea... Lots of peculiarities we slowly discover but Bernie's voice is very compelling and he is fundamentally a good man At the mansion he meets Meda who is an early 20s year old local exotic looking beauty with facial scars that somehow make her even more compelling - the ugly history of those is recounted too - from a weird downscale family living in and out trailers, single mother of a 2-3 year old girl, who works as assistant housekeeper for her aunt who is now the domestic help in charge of Bernie's mansion; tough minded and knowing that "sleeping with your boss" is unlikely to lead anywhere but to social opprobrium and heart break, Meda walks a fine line between humoring the immediately struck Bernie and keeping him at a distance, but as her good looks tend to attract the local tough boys, she is slowly attracted by Bernie's goodness and loneliness; of course a lot lies between them, from his peculiarities, to both their histories to the social gulf... All in all this is a top 25 novel of mine and one I highly, highly recommend for a great compelling, charming and uplifting novel. As promised though a little later than hoped, full FBC Rv done; as it is essentially the above but more coherent and with some quotes, I will just include the link: http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 12, 2012
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Apr 15, 2012
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Apr 12, 2012
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Paperback
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20
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| 030795711X
| 9780307957115
| 030795711X
| 3.65
| 4,112
| Aug 04, 2011
| Mar 06, 2012
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it was amazing
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Gods without men is a very fascinating book though it left me a little dissapointed in the end as I expected more coherence. It is easier to set up an Gods without men is a very fascinating book though it left me a little dissapointed in the end as I expected more coherence. It is easier to set up an intriguing premise and throw in more and more complications and tantalizing stuff but harder to either bring some sense of completion or just keep things rolling but performing a magic trick on the reader so he or she is happy enough with the local resolutions. David Mitchell did it in his masterpiece Cloud Atlas to which Gods without men compares - though here the unifying thread is a magical desert location as opposed to the story discovering story of Cloud atlas while the narrative range has breadth but still does not reach the Mitchell polyphony - and this book comes close but ultimately the tapestry remains unfinished This being said the book is a joy to read and the various storylines read quite authentic for their times. Overall a highly recommended novel though there were moments of sheer brilliance that left me expecting another Cloud atlas masterpiece and the novel stopped a little short of that ...more |
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not set
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Apr 05, 2012
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Mar 18, 2012
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Hardcover
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18
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| 1409132676
| 9781409132677
| 1409132676
| 4.25
| 1,063
| Jan 01, 2012
| Jan 05, 2012
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it was amazing
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I am a big fan of Christian Cameron "Classical Greek World" novels - there are two duologies so far in the Tyrant series of which I reviewed King of t
I am a big fan of Christian Cameron "Classical Greek World" novels - there are two duologies so far in the Tyrant series of which I reviewed King of the Bosporus (the fourth novel and second dealing with the children of Kineas who is the main hero of the first two books) and two novels in the Killer of Men series that take place some 150-200 years earlier and feature Arimnestos of Plataea, hero of Marathon and ancestor of Kineas and his twins, Satyrus and Melitta. So while expecting the fifth Tyrant novel (which should have been published in Jan/Feb) and the third Arimnestos one (due in the summer), I was a bit disappointed that Mr. Cameron published God of War which supposedly tells (again and after a ton of similar novels and a few popular movies) the story of Alexander. However I read a review and realized that actually God of War is told by Ptolemy, king of Egypt and important secondary character of the Tyrant series to Satyrus about the time when the twins found refuge in Alexandria and I realized that actually this book ties in perfectly with the series, so of course it became an asap and I got and read it immediately despite its almost 800 pages. And of course Kineas is quite important in the book though indeed the novel focuses on Ptolemy's life from childhood till the death of Alexander in Babylon in 323. As "legal" son of the richest Macedonian noble and rumoured that he was actually Philip's illegitimate son, so Alexander's step brother, Ptolemy is raised with Alexander and becomes a principal adviser and general, though he never attains the influence of Alexander's intimate friend Hephaestion. Nicknamed "farm boy" for his forthrightness and occasional less of sophistication, Ptolemy both loves and later almost worships Alexander, while also trying to keep him grounded. If Hephaestion told Alexander what he liked to hear, Ptolemy told him what he "needed" to hear and the unquestionable loyalty he showed during their early years and later during the difficult years of Alexander's marginalization by his father, made Ptolemy the only possible person who could tell hard truths to the increasingly "god like" king. That made Ptolemy less than popular on occasion with the king, but his immense wealth and later his relationship with Thais, famous Athenian hetaira and unofficial spy-mistress of the Macedonians, his friendship with Kineas, the Athenian nobleman and cavalry commander and his camaraderie with his soldiers and officers compensated for that, though of course after the Persian conquest it became more and more dangerous to offer the slightest hint of dissent to Alexander as numerous Macedonian noblemen and generals paid with their lives for that. "‘What’s he thinking of?’ I asked Thaïs, who rode between me and Kineas. Thaïs smiled. ‘He isn’t going to lay siege to it,’ she said. ‘He’s going to make love to it.’ She was at her most witty when she was enigmatic. So I smiled at her and kept my scouts moving." So the novel spans about 20 years, starting their early teen years at Pella and their study under Aristotle, though the bulk of it deals with Alexander's ascension and then his Persian conquest, while his last seven years after the burning of Persepolis in 330 are mostly summarized in the last hundred fifty or so of pages which are more vignette like. As this is a Christian Cameron novel, the world building is exceptional and the description of army life, marches and supplies is as exciting and thorough as the description of battles and sieges. While Alexander, "the God of War" is always the main focus of the big picture, Ptolemy and Thais are the main characters and their relationship from their first meeting in Athens to their quasi-marriage and lifelong partnership are the keystone of the novel and what raises it above the many offerings on the subject. As I tend to believe that the author's take on Alexander is as close to reality as it can be done, 2300+ years later and few original sources beyond the brute facts - details of which are still unknown and/or controversial - the novel worked very well from this point of view. "I didn’t think he was insane – if he had ever been sane by the standards of normal men, he still was. But the enormous wound he’d taken and the drugs Philip must have put into him to keep him on his feet – by Apollo’s bow, I still look for any excuse to cover him. He ordered almost fifty thousand men and women killed between Tyre and Gaza, and for nothing. Everyone else had already submitted. There was no example to be made. And the killing of Batis went clean against his code – except that more and more frequently, he seemed to be set on the annihilation of all resistance, rather than the honourable combat and complex warrior friendships of the Iliad.It was a paradox – the kind on which Aristotle thrived – that Alexander seemed to want to create the world of the Iliad – a world of near-eternal war and heroism – and yet seemed to want to destroy all of his opponents so that they could not continue the struggle." God of War is a top 25 novel of mine in 2012 and as a standalone page turner with so much great stuff and an epic story that has stood as a model for such for all these 23 centuries, I think that anyone who loves epics should give it a try. ...more |
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Jan 26, 2012
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Feb 06, 2012
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Jan 26, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 1848874634
| 9781848874633
| 1848874634
| 3.77
| 7,458
| Jan 01, 2012
| Jan 01, 2012
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it was amazing
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A few points as i plan to have a full rv soon I finished Dark Eden (the novel I mean as I read the story with same name a while ago) and I quite liked A few points as i plan to have a full rv soon I finished Dark Eden (the novel I mean as I read the story with same name a while ago) and I quite liked it, though it is ultimately a bit limited as sfnal scope. As story goes, it is not unlike the Eden (!) series of H. Harrison (or your favorite early/proto human stuff, lots out there both sfnal like the Harrison series or even Helliconia in some ways for that matter, but lots just pre-historical fiction like say the Auel stuff) but on a planet in intergalactic space, with no sun but life, atmosphere and heat coming from underground volcanic activity; very well written and if you have not read its story before, it will probably impress you more but as mentioned I've read it quite a few times; still I enjoyed it and would be happy with more Eden adventures as there is a lot of scope for such and even for more sfnality if a more advanced society is built; highly recommended, though its limited scope will probably keep it out of my top 25 for this year FBC Rv: INTRODUCTION: I heard of Chris Beckett's work when The Turing Test collection won the prestigious Edge Hill Short Story prize in 2009. I immediately bought a copy of the collection and I read a few of the stories there. I generally enjoyed them and I plan to read all of them as time goes by, but they seem to work only in smaller doses for me maybe because they are quite concentrated. However his previous two novels, Holy Machine and Marcher never really tempted me, so when Dark Eden was announced with the blurb below I was not sure either. Remembering vaguely that I read a story with the same title in The Turing Test, I checked the collection and sure enough the story Dark Eden is in there and it is precisely the tale of Angela and Tommy told through their two quite distinct voices in alternating parts. As I quite liked it and some reviews showering great praise on the novel appeared too, I decided to buy a copy for myself and try it immediately. "You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest's lantern trees, hunting woollybuck and harvesting tree candy. Beyond the forest lie the treeless mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it. The Oldest among you recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross between worlds. One day, the Oldest say, they will come back for you...." OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: In talking about Dark Eden, there are two different aspects that need to be considered, namely literary quality and sfnal scope. In short, Dark Eden is superb as a literary novel but something I've seen many times before as sf or (pre) historical fiction and not only that, but its scope is very limited since there is only so much you can do with a primitive society as sense of wonder and big picture - in other words the attributes that define high class sf - go. After all, you are given a small grouping of people - no advanced tech to sustain too many or too hostile an environment and the tech base of the society is not able to tame said environment - relatively rigid rules which where justified once upon a time when survival was the first imperative, rules that lead to what the current younger generation perceive as stagnation, and the maverick hero/heroine who is set to change all that and in doing so breaks the social compact for better or for worse. This is the sfnal structure of Dark Eden too and as mentioned I've read this so many times that in terms of the big picture there is not much to surprise and there is a clear logic of events that you can already guess from the blurb. The specific world building - planet in intergalactic space, with no sun but life, atmosphere and heat coming from underground volcanic activity - is interesting though and there is a lot of potential for complexity if the author chooses to develop this universe more. If sfnally the novel is just good due to its limited scope, literary Dark Eden is superb. Its structure alternates narration mostly from John Redlantern and his girlfriend Tina Spiketree - they have 21 and respectively 16 of the 46 total chapters - with a few other characters with their own distinctive voices presenting their take on events at various points. The rules and habits of the Eden society, their way of life, rituals, food gathering and hunting, mating, division into "normal" humans and the disfigured ones - as expected the descent of all 532 humans which live in Eden at the start of the book from Angela and Tommy has quite a few genetic negatives - are slowly revealed and the author balances action with world building and back story perfectly. The transitions between chapters are very smooth and all characters that narrate even for only a chapter come alive. Of course as they have the bulk of the story John and Tina are the most nuanced and developed of all and we see their growth from a wondering but confused boy who is well liked by most women in the colony to a mature and determined leader in John's case: "And in the back of my mind a little thought came to me that there were other worlds we could reach that weren’t hidden away in Starry Swirl, or through Hole-in-Sky, but here on ground, in Eden. They were the places where the woollybucks went, the places they came from." and from a young girl who cherishes her "desirability" by men but does not really question her society and its way of life to one who discovers the courage to confront the "public opinion" and follow John in looking for a better life: "John was interesting. I mean he looked nice, and I fancied him in that way, but what fascinated me most was the way he behaved. All that hunting trip he was trying to be different, trying not to be the same as all the other newhair guys. He went right up that icy ridge. He annoyed Old Roger and David by questioning the True Story." So despite that almost everything that happens is predictable as it follows the logic described above, I was still captivated by the novel and turned the pages to see what happens with John, Tina and their growing band of followers. While a standalone novel and with a very good ending that leaves open a lot of possibilities, I wish the author will return to Eden and tell us more about the fascinating human society he created there. Dark Eden is a highly recommended novel of 2012 and excellent literary sf that I can easily see shortlisted for both genre and mainstream prizes that appreciate writing style and "realistic" characters rather than sense of wonder and big picture speculations. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 19, 2012
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Jan 26, 2012
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Jan 19, 2012
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| 145163806X
| 9781451638066
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| 4.10
| 9,110
| Mar 01, 2012
| Mar 06, 2012
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it was amazing
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Of course as a March 2012 release in stores, I will have a full review then but in the meantime a few thoughts here (no spoilers): "While as known for Of course as a March 2012 release in stores, I will have a full review then but in the meantime a few thoughts here (no spoilers): "While as known for some time A Rising Thunder is a first half of a bigger book - there was a split as the original ART became way too big, but the good news is that the yet unnamed second part is in final editing and it should be available in late 2012, early 2013 - and it shows a little, ART is considerably better than Mission of Honor which was way too predictable and more of a "dot the i's and cross the t's novel" than anything else. I loved all the little interludes and they interspersed well with the main political and military developments; there is a special "phone" call with an interesting aftermath and that was perfectly done too. All in all a great installment that starts for good the new Honorverse direction with a bang and left me wanting more asap, while confirming the status of the series as my #1 ongoing sff one." Full FBC Rv: INTRODUCTION: As mentioned a few times here, The Honorverse is my number one ongoing sff series and represented a number of firsts for me in terms of getting books in various formats (first hardcover bought in this country years ago, first earc, first edraft, while I read each book quite a few times and I can probably talk in detail about all at any time from memory ...) and A Rising Thunder kept this going as some minutiae discussion on the author's Honorverse forum and at the Baen Bar about the differences between the earc and the recently released final ebook version, made me buy this one too in addition to the earlier earc and of course I read it the same night which made the fourth full read of the book so far. For people who are not that well versed in the Honorverse, you can read (for free) all the books to date in the series except for the last (5th) collection In Fire Forged and this present one from the Baen CD site on the Mission of Honor CD. ANALYSIS: As known for some time A Rising Thunder is part of a bigger story arc - there was a split as the original ART became convoluted enough to intertwine all three main current fronts of the series so the author decided to keep the action generally separate in three different novels while focusing here on the Manticore/Core Solarian League confrontation and featuring the main classical players of the Honorverse - Honor herself, Elizabeth, the Havenite leaders, the Solarian masters etc. The Talbot sector, Mesa and the League's periphery will feature more extensively in the next two books which will be again concordant for a while, though the extent of that and conversely of the advancement of the story beyond the end of A Rising Thunder is unclear as of now. The good news is that David Weber's solo one, tentatively titled Shadow of Freedom, is done but it is not yet clear how it will fit with the Eric Flint/David Weber collaboration that is still being written and so there is yet no decision on the order of those two. I expect the Mesa/Torch/League periphery Flint/Weber novel to go first in early 2013 and then Shadow of Freedom to go next in mid 2013 as next year is the 20th anniversary of the series debut and the author plans it to be big... Even so and A Rising Thunder was a superb series installment for two related reasons. It was the first "fully into the unknown" move in the series after the 2005 At All Costs which is my favorite single series novel to date and arguably the best such. The following three parts huge installment (Storm from the Shadows, Torch of Freedom and Mission of Honor) had lots of great stuff but we (the dedicated fans) knew their rough outline and there were only a few surprises. Here in A Rising Thunder there were at least two major surprises and some new stuff that is really promising for the future, while some tantalizing hints have been argued quite a lot on the forums since the earc has been released last winter. I also loved all the little interludes and they interspersed well with the main political and military developments, while the main battle of the novel was so well done by the author that it kept me tense throughout despite that the outcome was clearly predetermined by the balance of force and its twist at the end was foreshadowed long ago. The second reason A Rising Thunder (novel # 17) worked so well was that it solidified the third transformation of the series, this time from military space opera to political space opera - the first transformation which started in Echoes of Honor (#8) and became fully fledged two books later in War of Honor (#10) was from local, one larger than life character and secondary cast action within a larger context, to multi front, multi character, global military space opera. The canvas has becoming truly huge and the military developments so dominating that large scale battles have become 15 minute millions of casualties massacres, so the contest for the public opinion, the ability to bring together technological and scientific resources and the economic front have become more and more important, in other words politics and intrigue are now front and center. From the "Mandarins" conclave, to the councils of the Grand Alliance and various other venues, public and private, the Honorverse's Galaxy with its thousands of worlds and trillions of humans is entering a period of turmoil and great upheaval after some 1500 years of relative stability and A Rising Thunder's panoramic view of the center stage shows clearly the beginning of this process. There is one scene towards the end of the novel where two characters who are not particularly major movers and shakers - at least so far of course - discuss the events of the day in a calm, wonderful setting with the view of the great lake that borders on what is still humanity's capital city - scene that captures perfectly the "end of an era" mood of the novel. "The two of them sat on benches across a small outdoor table from one another, eating their lunch as the warm summer sun spilled down across them. Lake Michigan’s waters stretched limitlessly towards the horizon below the restaurant perched on a two-hundredth-floor balcony of the Admiralty Building, and gaily colored sails and powerboats dotted that dark blue expanse as far as the eye could see." All in all, A Rising Thunder (top 25 2012 novel) is a great installment that starts for good the new Honorverse direction with a bang and leaves me wanting more asap and combing the forums for any tidbits and snippets of the upcoming events, while confirming the status of the series as my #1 one. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 17, 2011
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Nov 19, 2011
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Oct 28, 2011
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Hardcover
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| 0575100737
| 9780575100732
| 0575100737
| 3.69
| 451
| Jan 19, 2012
| Mar 06, 2012
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it was amazing
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FBC Rv INTRODUCTION: As I have read and hugely enjoyed almost all sff Paul McAuley has written to date as well as a few of his near future thrillers, I FBC Rv INTRODUCTION: As I have read and hugely enjoyed almost all sff Paul McAuley has written to date as well as a few of his near future thrillers, In the Mouth of the Whale has been one of my most awaited novels of 2012. While events in the duology The Quiet War/Gardens Sun impinge a little, this novel takes place far away in time and space and it's a standalone which can be read independently. One thing of caution: as the main points of the two above novels are retold here, In the Mouth of the Whale contains huge spoilers for the preceding duology, though to be honest the characters and world building are such a big part of the enjoyment of the author's novels, that storyline spoilers are ultimately not that important. And of course I highly recommend you to try The Quiet War and the stories from its universe, part of which the author has recently released inexpensively HERE. The author describes the novel much better than I can on his website and I will reproduce his "overview" below, while the first 12 chapters can be read at the link above. As Paul McAuley says (and on reading the book I feel this overview presents the book pitch perfect): "After you die, what do you do for the rest of your life? The posthuman Quick settled the system of the star Fomalhaut long ago, and created garden worldlets and thistledown cities in its vast dust ring. An empire that after centuries of peace fell to a second wave of settlers, the fierce and largely unmodified True People. And now the True are at war with interlopers from another interstellar colony, the Ghosts, for possession of Fomalhaut's gas giant planet, Cthuga. In the damaged and perilous Amazonian rainforest, the precocious Child is being groomed for her predestined role. But control of her story is fraying, and although she is determined to find her own path into the future, others have different plans. In the war-torn worldlets of Fomalhaut, a librarian, Isak and his assistant, the Horse, are harrowing hells, punishment for a failure they can never live down, when they are given a new mission. The Library of Worlds has been compromised by a deep, mysterious conspiracy; as Isak and the Horse attempt to unravel it, they're drawn into the final battle for Cthuga. And aboard a vast scientific project floating in Cthuga's atmosphere, a Quick slave, Ori, is snared in the plans of an eccentric genius. As the Ghosts mount their final assault on Cthuga, she discovers that she hold the key that determines the outcome of the war. Three lives. Three stories that slowly draw together. And at their intersection is the mystery at the heart of Cthuga. Something dangerous and powerful. Something that may not only shape the future of humanity, but may also give control over the shape of its past." ANALYSIS: Structurally, In the Mouth of a Whale is pleasantly symmetric with four main parts in which each of the three threads alternate modulo 3 starting with the unknown god-like narrator of the Child's journey, followed by Isak's first person narrative and ending with Ori's thread told in third person pov style. These parts have 12,12,9,12 chapters respectively, while the last part that concludes the stories of our main characters in three final chapters reverses the order, so now Ori's story is first. The transitions are handled very well as they make you want to read what comes next in that particular thread, but also what comes next in the upcoming thread and the book maintains this balance to the end. The style transitions well too, from the more serene and slower moving chapters where the unknown entity narrates, to the immediate saga of Isak, the Horse and later Prem, where Isak comes as the typical "naive do gooder but very likable" hero of sf, so you cheer for him, to the action packed, darker story of Ori and the Quicks. Overall the first three quarters of the novel were the kind I really wanted to just go on and never finish, while also reminding me why sf is still the most interesting literature when done superbly like here; sense of wonder, great characters, and for once the (as genre sff goes of course) stylistic daring I mentioned above. The last quarter was all action and things converged well with a great ending. A combination of real - space shoot outs, strange habitats with everything from primitive life forms, dangerous animals to post modern grifters - and virtual action - harrowing hells, immersive drone combat -memorable characters and world building involving human/posthuman clades, slavery and superb references ("wreckers", "the True"...) weave into a rich tapestry that contains hard sf - biology and physics with a sprinkle of math - sociology and politics as well as a deep sense of history and what evolution means, while the speculations about future technologies and future possibilities for humanity are very convincing. I also want to emphasize the "realistic feeling" that the author's exquisite world building induced, without info-dumps or too much jargon. I will direct you to chapter eight, so #3 in Isak's narration for a great example of this, while I will quote a few paragraphs here: "A steady spout of water poured from a notch in the fountain's bowl, feeding a stream that ran off along a channel cut in the lawn, rippling clear as glass over a bed of white and gold quartz pebbles. We followed it through a rank of cypresses and emerged at the edge of a short steep slope of loose rock and clumps of dry grass. The parkland I had glimpsed from the flitter stretched away beyond, a mosaic of dusty browns and reds enlivened here and there by vivid green stands of trees. The sky had taken on the dusky rose of sunset, and clumps of stones glowed like heated iron in the low and level light. Rounded hills rising on either side hid the margins of the platform: the parkland seemed to stretch away for ever, like the landscapes of sagas set on old Earth. Lathi Singleton dismissed my praise of the illusion, saying that it was simple stagecraft. 'My interest is in the biome itself. The plants and animals, and the patterns and balances they make. This one is modelled on Africa. You have heard of Africa?' 'It's where we first became what we are, Majistra.' 'I once kept a species of early hominin in this biome. Australopithecus afarensis. The reconstructed genome is contained in the seedship library; it was easy to merge it with Quick templates. And of course we hunted the usual Quick variants as well. But those happy days are long gone,' Lathi Singleton said, and walked off down the slope, stepping quickly and lightly beside the stream, which dropped down the slope in a ladder of little rills and waterfalls and pools, its course lined with red and black mosses and delicate ferns as perfect as jewels. It grew warmer as we descended, and by the time I caught up with Lathi Singleton, at the bottom of the slope, I was out of breath and sweating. The stream emptied into a wide pool of muddy water whose margins had been trampled by many kinds of feet. Scaly logs lay half in and half out of the water on the far side. When one yawned, its mouth two hinged spars longer than a man's arm and fringed with sharp teeth, I realised that they were a species of animal. 'They won't hurt you because they can't see you,' Lathi Singleton said. It was the first time I had seen her smile. 'None of the fauna can see or smell anyone unless I want them too. Come along. I've arranged a little picnic. We'll eat, and I'll tell you what I need you to do, and why.'" Overall In the Mouth of the Whale (top 25 novel of mine in 2012 and very likely a top 10, possibly a top 5) delivered what I expected and more and shows Paul McAuley at the top of his game. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 19, 2012
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Jan 21, 2012
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Oct 28, 2011
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Hardcover
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