Fantastic Reviews Blog

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: London Eye by Tim Lebbon vs. WorldSoul by Liz Williams

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:30:00 +0000

Here at the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books, we've had a tenday's delay, as I focused on completing a story of my own instead of reading work by accomplished writers. (I'll let you know when the story appears in Asimov's——of course, Sheila Williams will have to buy it first, but gosh, how could she not?)

With that disruption behind us, we enter the bottom half of Bracket Six of the Battle of the Books with London Eye (Toxic City Book One) by Tim Lebbon versus WorldSoul by Liz Williams. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

London Eye: Pyr hardcover, October 2012, 228 pages, cover art by Steve Stone. London Eye is the first volume of Lebbon's Toxic City young adult series. Tim Lebbon is a successful author of horror and fantasy, with some three dozen books to his name (about two dozen novels, a half-dozen collections, and a half-dozen tie-in books). Lebbon has won the Bram Stoker Award and is a four-time British Fantasy Award winner, including for his novel Dusk. He has also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, among many other honors.

London Eye takes place in England, two years after the release of a devastating biological agent in London, beginning at the London Eye Ferris wheel. The government has declared it a terrorist attack and quarantined the city, but our young characters——particularly Jack and Lucy-Anne, who are boyfriend and girlfriend but starting to drift apart——believe there is more to it, that there are survivors in London who have developed remarkable, strange abilities. By the end of 25 pages, they meet one of those survivors, and Jack learns that his mother, believed lost in the attack, may still be alive in London.

WorldSoul: Prime trade paperback, June 2012, 311 pages, cover art by Oliver Wetter. WorldSoul is a fantasy novel in which the magic involves lots of books. (Another example of this will be in an upcoming bracket of the Battle of the Books, Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines. So we have a new subgenre, which I hereby christen "bookpunk.") By my count, Liz Williams has published fourteen novels and two collections of short fiction. Her work includes multiple varieties of science fiction and fantasy, including the five-volume Inspector Chen series of fantasy/mysteries, beginning with Snake Agent. She has been shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British SF Award, and others.

The protagonist of WorldSoul is Mercy Fane, a librarian in a strange vast library. The library apparently includes volumes from across space and time; for instance, the prologue shows us that most of the Alexandria Library was not really lost in the fire. In the opening chapters, Mercy selects a weapon and heads into Section C of the library, where something is amiss. Meanwhile, a pair of other magical characters plan incursions into the library.

The Battle: This is a first-round battle between two top-flight British authors.

London Eye is setting up a series about people with superpowers, a subgenre that doesn't much appeal to me. But Lebbon does such a solid job with the opening sequence that he has interested me in the book despite myself.

His teenaged characters are likeable and resourceful but believable. Lebbon establishes the uncertain relationship between Jack and Lucy-Anne nicely. And with an impeccable sense of timing, Lebbon ends his first 25 pages with Jack learning that his mother may yet be alive, setting the stage for our young characters to make an incursion into the derelict city of London, which I would like to see.

Conversely, as a book lover and collector, I was very interested by the book-centric premise of WorldSoul, but the first 25 pages didn't pull me in as much as I hoped.

The problem for me is that Williams is too cryptic through her opening about what's going on here. I know there is a vast library. I know some of the characters can do some sort of magic. That's about all I know after 25 pages. I have no idea so far as to the significance of this library or what's at stake in the story. I've read enough by Liz Williams to be confident the tale will gain more interest as it goes along, but the Battle of the Books tends to punish books that start a bit slowly.

THE WINNER: London Eye by Tim Lebbon

London Eye advances to the second round, to take on either Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey or Blood of the City by Robin D. Laws.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: Technomancer by B.V. Larson vs. Pazuzu's Girl by Rachel Coles

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:55:00 +0000

The first round of Bracket Six of the Battle of the Books continues with Technomancer by B.V. Larson going against Pazuzu's Girl by Rachel Coles. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

Technomancer: 47North trade paperback, July 2012, 366 pages, uncredited cover art. Technomancer is the first book in a new urban fantasy series starring Quentin Draith. B.V. Larson is a new writer who has managed to release a dozen books in the past three years, mostly self-published——I believe Technomancer and its sequel The Bone Triangle are Larson's only titles so far that are not self-published, part of Amazon's strategy of picking up some of the most successful independent authors for its 47North imprint.

Technomancer begins with Quentin Draith waking in a sanatorium with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He quickly decides that he is a prisoner, that the staff has kept him heavily sedated so as to hold him against his will. The evidence for this is rather flimsy, since he really has suffered severe injuries, but he's confident enough in his conclusion that he promptly beats the crap out of an orderly and holds a nurse at gunpoint to get out. He confronts the person in charge, Dr. Meng, who proves to have magical powers. She teleports him out of the sanatorium, telling him to continue his investigations.

Pazuzu's Girl: JournalStone trade paperback, February 2012, 266 pages, cover art by Philip Renne. Pazuzu's Girl is the self-published first novel of Rachel Coles, who previously published a short story in the anthology What Fears Become, as well as two indie collections of her other short fiction.

Pazuzu's Girl brings the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu into the present day. The heroine of the story is his daughter Morpho Wilson. Morpho is having a little trouble fitting into high school life. We get an example why when she meets a boy she likes, who is promptly scared witless by a visit from Pazuzu in the form of a plague of locusts. Other problems to emerge in the first 25 pages include a warning from the homeowners' association that said plague of locusts is a covenant violation, and hints that Pazuzu's former demon lover, who killed Morpho's mother when Morpho was an infant, may soon be coming after Morpho as well. Pazuzu fears that he may not be able to protect his daughter.

The Battle: We have two urban fantasies going head-to-head, rendering my mild prejudice against the sub-genre irrelevant.

Technomancer begins with the protagonist waking up with severe amnesia. This is a bit cliché, so Larson needs to give me a reason pretty quickly to stick with the story. Instead he has the protagonist immediately start bashing heads, when it has not been clearly established this was necessary. Indeed, it seems it was not necessary, since it soon turns out Dr. Meng was perfectly happy to release him. We get a glimpse of magic, as Dr. Meng gives Draith the vague instruction to continue his investigations. Unfortunately, this does not give me any reason to continue my reading, since I have no clue what these investigations entail or what may be at stake. No doubt Larson intends to reveal that eventually, but such gradual disclosure of what the book is about tends not to go over well in the Battle of the Books format.

Pazuzu's Girl also eases us into the story gradually, but with some important distinctions. First, Coles has let us know in broad terms what's at stake: Morpho's life is in danger from another demon, perhaps too powerful for Pazuzu to stop. Second, there is some effective humor, such as Pazuzu's warning from the HOA to get all those locusts off his property. Third, and most importantly, Coles does a nice job of interesting us in her characters. Here, for example, Morpho introduces herself to her potential love interest JD while serving detention:

"Morpho. That's a cool name. Like the butterfly. Did your parents name you that or did you change it?"

Morpho sat up straight. He knows what my name means, she thought. No one ever knows what my name means. "My parents. My mother. She was——" Suddenly wistful, she cleared her throat to get control again. But it drew Mr. Johnson's attention.

"JD, Morpho, stop talking and write, or you get another detention added onto the list."

They put their heads down for a few minutes. Then JD's hand slid over to the middle of the aisle with an inked word on his palm. Was?

Morpho nodded. JD nodded back. I'm sorry, he wrote. She smiled and scribbled aimlessly on her page. "Me too," she whispered.

I accused B.V. Larson of cliché, and this dialogue——"My mother's dead." "Oh, sorry."——could also come across as cliché, except Coles turns it into a charming moment by having JD write the words "I'm sorry" on his hand. Little touches like that can be the key to making me want to read further.

THE WINNER: Pazuzu's Girl by Rachel Coles

Pazuzu's Girl advances to the second round, to face After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: The Skybound Sea by Sam Sykes vs After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:55:00 +0000

In the third battle of the first round of Bracket Six of the Battle of the Books we have The Skybound Sea (The Aeons' Gate, Book 3) by Sam Sykes versus After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Skybound Sea: Pyr trade paperback, September 2012, 494 pages, cover art by Paul Young. The Skybound Sea is the final volume of the Aeons' Gate trilogy of high fantasy, following Tome of the Undergates (I always read that title as Tomb of the Undergraduates, which sounds like a slasher film set in a sorority house, but alas, it ain't) and Black Halo. I've never met Sam Sykes and I can find no evidence that he existed before 2009, when he published his first piece of short fiction, cowritten with Diana Gabaldon; still, I've decided I like him, because he took the time to explain to the world once and for all that cats cannot solve mysteries. Incidentally, The Skybound Sea wins the damning-with-faint-praise award for the most understated cover blurb ever published, courtesy of John Scalzi: "I do not wish Sam Sykes dead."

As the third in a trilogy, The Skybound Sea starts with the action already in full swing. The book begins with a short summary of the story so far, followed by a scene in which a troubled fellow named Hanth scrambles to prevent a dangerous god called Daga-Mer from being released into the world. Then we check in with Lenk, a warrior I suspect is the main protagonist, who dreams of betraying and being betrayed. Next a man named Dreadaeleon, who is suffering from an unnatural degenerative condition called "the Decay," participates in an autopsy of a "netherling," carried out by companions who dislike and distrust one another.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall: Tachyon trade paperback, April 2012, 183 pages, cover design by Elizabeth Story. After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall is a current nominee for the Hugo Award foe Best Novella (although if it's under 40,000 words, it can't be by much). Kress has already won two Hugo Awards, four Nebulas, and a host of other honors.

As the title suggests, After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall follows three parallel timelines. In 2013, mathematician Julie Kahn is helping Agent Gordon of the FBI——with whom she has obvious sexual tension——to analyze the pattern behind a string of bizarre child abductions. In 2014, new strains of bacteria are forming. In 2035, the last few surviving humans cling to life with a time machine, which they use to obtain supplies and reinforcements from the past. They believe the world was destroyed by aliens they call the Tesslies, and that these aliens later provided the time machine for their own ineffable reasons. But none of the survivors has seen one of these creatures, so we don't know if that's right.

The Battle: The Skybound Sea has a brash, bold style——if it's ever filmed, the FX and make-up people will have a ball with the monsters while the score will be very heavy on bass drums. It takes a certain flair to pull this off, and Sykes demonstrates that, right from the book's opening lines:

No matter what god he believes in, a man is not entitled to much in life.

The Gods gave him breath. Then they gave him needs. Then they stopped giving.

I like that line, and the whole prologue, in which Lenk bitterly contemplates vengeance against everyone who has betrayed him. But after a few pages, Sykes' melodramatic style, filling the narrative with "viscous gossamer ooze" and "flaming urine," gets to be a bit much to my tastes. The idea of 470 more pages feels as much daunting as appealing.

Meanwhile, Kress masterfully eases us into the narrative of After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall. We start with an action sequence, one of the child abductions, from the point of view of the desperate abductor. There is an implicit moral issue about what the future remnants of humanity are doing, but Kress doesn't press the issue yet, giving the reader time to digest what's happening. Kress effectively interweaves the different timelines, building interest simultaneously in all three threads, while at the same time suggesting a lesson in how our future is at the mercy of the past and present. The characterization in the opening passage is also strong; I particularly like Pete, the doomed young man of the future, and I very much would like to read more about him. And that desire to keep reading is what the Battle of the Books is all about.

THE WINNER: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall moves into the second round, to take on either Technomancer by B.V. Larson or Pazuzu's Girl by Rachel Coles.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

"The Coldest Room in the House" by Lon Prater :: Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sat, 04 May 2013 14:18:00 +0000

My story recommendation of the week is for "The Coldest Room in the House" by Lon Prater, from the Second Quarter 2013 issue of Abyss & Apex. (Abyss & Apex published my story "Random Fire" so, y'know, they're awesome.)

"The Coldest Room in the House" begins in familiar but very well-executed territory:

She'd tried to leave him in a blizzard once, hoping the wind and snow would fill in her footsteps the same way her own creeping indifference had filled in the holes that years of frustration had gnawed into her heart. It was so much like a hollow winter day, this business of being married to a driven man.

Our protagonist Bernice——Bernie to her friends, except her husband calls her Bernsy, even though he knows she hates it because it sounds like a cow——has suffered through an unhappy marriage and feelings of inadequacy because she couldn't have children. Now her husband is dead (heart attack while masturbating to internet porn), but still she hears his voice calling to her from the bedroom, the coldest room in the house.

This first part of the tale is a standard ghost story, but worth reading for the superb writing. But then the story takes an unexpected turn, as Prater uses his haunting to show that resentment of one's partner can turn into a kind of addiction. The story plays out effectively, and serves as a wonderful metaphor for how a couple can both become trapped in an unhealthy, codependent relationship.

Lon Prater is a fellow winner of the Writers of the Future Contest (for "Deadglass" in Volume 21), and his short fiction has appeared in such publications as Borderlands 5, Apex, Daily SF, IGMS, and many others. He has self-published some of his longer work, most recently That Time We Saved the Planet.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: The Snow by Ross S. Simon vs. Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:16:00 +0000

The second match-up in the first round of Bracket Six of Battle of the Books features The Snow by Ross S. Simon against Earth Unaware (The First Formic War) by Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Snow: Damnation Books trade paperback, March 2012, 145 pages, cover art by Dawné Dominique. The Snow is the debut novel of Ross S. Simon, who sometimes masquerades under the name Sam Ridings. The Snow opens on Leif Erickson's Viking longship, in the middle of a fatal meeting with the Norse trickster god Loki. We skip ahead to 1942 aboard a German U-boat, where a Nazi warrant officer has a strange encounter, presumably with the same deity. Next in Loki's path is a modern-day New York stockbroker. Across town, our protagonist Donald Holly is attacked by a possessed bum, prompting him to decide to move back to Minnesota. But it does not appear Loki is through with him.

Earth Unaware: Tor hardcover, July 2012, 364 pages, cover art by John Harris. Earth Unaware is the opening volume in the First Formic War series, a prequel to Card's classic novel Ender's Game. Orson Scott Card is a four-time Hugo Award winner along with a great many other honors, and clearly one of the preeminent science fiction writers living today (although many who dislike his politics pretend otherwise). Aaron Johnston is a former improv comedian who coauthored the novel Invasive Procedures with Card and has adopted many of Card's books to screenplays and graphic novels.

The opening of Earth Unaware takes us to the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Pluto, where clans of humans mine comets for valuable metals. Our teenaged protagonist Victor Delgado learns that his best friend Alejandra is being sent off to live with another clan, because the elders feared the two of them were falling in love, and love affairs within the clan are taboo. Victor deals with his pain by working hard on an invention that will ease his clan's mining operations. The first 25 pages end with Alejandra's sister confiding in Victor that she has detected an object approaching the solar system. The object is decelerating, suggesting it just might be an alien spacecraft.

The Battle: The opening pages of The Snow feature some gruesome imagery and high-voltage action, albeit a little over the top for my tastes. (The scene of a bloodbath is described as "the dead flesh, the severed heads, mangled arms, legs and penises"; a Nazi soldier fires his gun while screaming, "Eat motherfucking blazing lead!") But the first 25 pages do not give us much reason to feel connected to the protagonist Donald Holly.

And that is where Orson Scott Card always excels. He immediately gets you interested in and sympathetic toward his main characters. Here, right from the opening page, Card and Johnston convey Victor's heartbreak at losing his best friend, all because the clan elders believed he was falling in love with her, which he promptly realizes he was. The authors succeed at making Victor an engaging character right from the outset, even if I find Victor's reactions rather too coldly rational for a teenager. (Throughout the Ender series, Card's young characters do not behave like ordinary children, but that is because they are all super-geniuses; the same has not been established as to Victor.)

Having opened with an emotional punch, Card and Johnston quickly turn to showing us some of the nuts and bolts of mining operations on the edge of the solar system. Then they finish the opening chapter (which is exactly 25 pages——obviously Card & Johnston have written this novel with the Battle of the Books in mind) with the suggestion that humanity may be on the brink of its first contact with an alien species, contact that Ender readers know will not go smoothly. It is an exhilarating opening sequence.

THE WINNER: Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

Earth Unaware advances to the second round, to face False Covenant by Ari Marmell.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: False Covenant by Ari Marmell vs. Vampire Empire: The Kingmakers by Clay & Susan Griffith

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:53:00 +0000

We begin the first round of Bracket Six of the Battle of the Books with False Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) by Ari Marmell vs. The Kingmakers (Vampire Empire: Book Three) by Clay & Susan Griffith. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

False Covenant: Pyr hardcover, July 2012, 280 pages, cover art by Jason Chan. False Covenant is the second book in the Widdershins YA series. The first book, Thief's Covenant, competed in the Winter 2012 Battle of the Books, defeating Mark Hodder before falling to Stina Leicht. Marmell has written three other original fantasy novels as well as various tie-in works.

Widdershins, the heroine of False Covenant, is a skillful young thief in the medieval city of Davillon, with the minor god Olgun her constant companion. The book opens with Widdershins, in her alter ego as the young lady Madeleine Valois, attending a high society party hosted by Clarence Rittier, the Marquis de Ducarte. Widdershins is casing the place for a late-night robbery. But when she returns that night, she finds another band of thieves with the same plan, and the City Guard lying in wait. The opening pages also give us a glimpse of a high-ranking clergyman, Bishop Sicard, engaged in some surreptitious dealings.

Vampire Empire: The Kingmakers: Pyr trade paperback, September 2012, 391 pages, cover art by Chris McGrath. The Kingmakers is the third volume in the Vampire Empire series, which places vampires in a steampunk/alternate history universe with elements of romance. The Griffiths are a husband-and-wife writing team, who started out doing tie-in work, before launching the Vampire Empire series.

The Kingmakers opens with trench warfare pitting the Equatorians, fiercely loyal to Empress Adele, against a vast horde of vicious vampires. In this universe vampires are powerful and have the ability to fly, but they can be killed by ordinary means, without need for a stake to the heart. Sirdar General Anhalt leads an Equatorian army, aided by the famous warrior Greyfriar (himself a vampire), bogged down outside Grenoble, France. The Empress herself comes to their aid, using her power of geomancy to fend off the attacking vampires. The Empress and Greyfriar are in love, but he cannot approach her while she uses geomancy. The Empress is determined to use her power to take the fight to her vampire adversaries.

The Battle: These are both sequels, so a key to this Battle will be which author(s) can settle me quickly into their novels' universe. False Covenant has an advantage going in, that I read 50 pages of the previous volume, which I found most interesting——it took a spirited effort by Stina Leicht to knock Thief's Covenant off.

False Covenant also has an effective opening, quickly reintroducing us to Marmell's charming young protagonist Widdershins, with some amusing banter between Widdershins and her companion deity Olgun. Marmell gives us a good action scene early on, while unobtrusively summarizing his setting of Davillon and its complex web of competing religions. Marmell tells the story with a fun narrative voice. I especially liked that in the opening scene, party guests are scandalized by the incompetent servants working for the Marquis, which later proves a clever hint that the servants were really disguised Guardsmen laying a trap for Widdershins and her fellow thieves.

The Kingmakers has a good premise: steampunk with lots of vampires. We only get a glimpse of the Empress in the opening passage, but it is already obvious she is an admirably strong-willed female character. But the initial 25 pages do not give me a very good sense of what vampires actually add to the authors' steampunk setting. There is a horrific battle scene in the early pages, but is it any more horrific than real trench warfare? Placing a vampire battle in World War I trenches doesn't make much sense to me——what is the trench for when the vampires can fly and they don't shoot at you?——and has the unfortunate effect of making the fight seem familiar instead of strange.

THE WINNER: False Covenant by Ari Marmell

False Covenant advances to the second round, to take on either The Snow by Ross S. Simon or Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 18:33:00 +0000

Announcing Bracket Six of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books!

Battle of the Books continues with Bracket Six. For why we decided to do a Battle of the Books, click here. For the rules, click here.

Previous Battle of the Books winners have been Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear, The Man from Primrose Lane by James Renner, The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis, The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi, and Harmony (alt.human in the UK) by Keith Brooke.

Aaron will review and judge Bracket Six, which features a new group of sixteen (16) contenders. (Amy pulled together and formatted all the book cover graphics.)

We've selected four "seeded" books -- four we are especially looking forward to (marked with asterisks) -- placed one seeded book in each quarter of the bracket, and then filled in the rest of the bracket randomly. Here are your matchups.

First Quarter of Bracket:

Ari Marmell
False Covenant
(Pyr)
vs.
Clay and Susan Griffith
Vampire Empire:The Kingmakers
(Pyr)

Ross S. Simon
The Snow
(Damnation)
vs.
Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston
Earth Unaware
(Tor)***

Second Quarter of Bracket

Sam Sykes
The Skybound Sea
(Pyr)
vs.
Nancy Kress
After the Fall Before the Fall During the Fall
(Tachyon)***

B.V. Larson
Technomancer
(47North)
vs.
Rachel Coles
Pazuzu's Girl
(JournalStone)

Third Quarter of Bracket:

Tim Lebbon
London Eye
(Pyr)
vs.
Liz Williams
WorldSoul
(Prime)

James S. A. Corey
Caliban's War
(Orbit)***
vs.
Robin D. Laws
Blood of the City
(Paizo)

Fourth Quarter of Bracket:

Bernd Struben
The13th Zookeeper
(Strider Nolan)
vs.
Megan Powell
No Peace for the Damned
(47North)

Ian McDonald
Be My Enemy
(Pyr)***
vs.
Rowena Cory Daniells
Besieged
(Solaris)

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Some notes on the field:
-- Several of the books are difficult to classify, but by my best count, 6 are science fiction, 4 high fantasy, 3 urban fantasy, 1 YA fantasy, 1 YA science fiction, and 1 horror.
-- The field is comprised of eight men, five women, and three collaborations (James S.A. Corey is two people).
-- The contestants include 5 books from Pyr, 2 from 47North and 1 each from established publishers Orbit, Paizo, Prime, Solaris, Tachyon, and Tor and small publishers Damnation, JournalStone, and Strider Nolan.
-- 4 of the books are labeled as book one of a series, 7 are books continuing an existing series, 1 is a tie-in to the roleplaying game Pathfinder, and the rest appear to be stand-alone books.

We will begin announcing results on Wednesday, and try to make a Battle of the Books post every other day from then until we are done. Best of luck to all the competitors!

"The Visited" by Anaea Lay :: Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:54:00 +0000

My story recommendation of the week is for "The Visited" by Anaea Lay, from the April 2013 issue of Lightspeed magazine. This is Anaea Lay's second SROTW.

"The Visited" is the obituary of musician Manuel Black, written by a former fan and lover. Black became a huge celebrity, because his music somehow helped people to make sense of the "Visitation," when everyone in the world had a vision of an unnaturally beautiful man or woman, accompanied by an intense sense of longing. But our narrator was a devoted fan even before the Visitation; here she describes his earlier work:

It’s still him, but now he’s angry. He hasn’t found his Morrisonian black leather pants yet, but he’s not afraid of the audience anymore. Curls fly around his face as he stares them down, challenging them to answer the questions he raises with his lyrics, to justify the world in the face of his seething despair and melancholy. Critics of the time wrote the music off as angst-ridden wankery. Audiences found it unpalatably depressing and turned instead to catchy dance pop. Listen to it now and you’ll realize his melancholy was a foreshadowing of the post-Visitation malaise waiting for all of us, that his anger was founded in an optimistic belief that things could be different if we’d just bother to acknowledge they ought to be.

In this elegantly written story, Lay makes no attempt to explain what the Visitation really was. Her focus is on the enigmatic Manuel Black, and how an artist's work can transform the meaning of what is happening in his audience's lives, to tragic or transcendent effect.

I once had a friend, who had been a Deadhead in an earlier phase of life, try to explain what compelled fans to follow The Grateful Dead from concert to concert, but I didn't understand the communal experience he was describing. "The Visited" is a piece of fiction, a form of art, yet it enables me to appreciate my friend's real-world experience in a way his factual words couldn't——and oddly enough, that's just what this story is about.

Book Review Teaser :: God's War by Kameron Hurley

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:14:00 +0000

New on Fantastic Reviews is Patty's review of God's War by Kameron Hurley.

Here's a some from Patty's book review of God's War :
Kameron Hurley has a serious thing for bugs. Inventor of a subgenre of the New Weird, she initially described her first novel God's War as "retro-cyberpunky," but added: "It's funny, when you don't have a word that describes exactly what you want, you sort of just cobble them together from existing words. Because I think what I meant was, you know, steampunk without the steam, but with a little cyber, only organic-cyber...er, organic punk? er...Bugpunk."

For Hurley, bugs are integral to credible world building. And for the most part, it works, as shown by the novel's 2012 Nebula Award and James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award nominations. Bugs enrich the landscape of God's War to the point where they are a fact of everyday life and a major component of the economy....Bugtech is used for powering automobiles, practicing medicine, detecting weapons, and other feats of magic/science....

God's War occurs on the planet Umayma, colonized thousands of years ago by humans. The two countries where most of the action takes place, Nasheen and Chenja, have been involved in a centuries-long war whose reasons for fighting have been forgotten.

The protagonist is Nyx, a solid woman, broad through the hips and breasts, and heavily muscled. In short, she's a brick house. Her physical aspect only reinforces her unstoppable nature. Like the terminator, she just keeps coming back....

To read the entire review -> God's War

Book Review Teaser :: Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 01:58:00 +0000

New on Fantastic Reviews is Aaron's review of Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear.

From Aaron's book review of Range of Ghosts :
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear won the very first bracket, the Winter 2012 bracket, of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books, and a wonderfully deserving winner it was.

Elizabeth Bear is still a fairly new author - her first novel Hammered appeared in 2005 - but it feels like she is a veteran of the field. She has already published over twenty books, ranging between science fiction and fantasy in both series and stand-alone books, and she has won the Campbell Award for best new author and two Hugo Awards for her short fiction.

Range of Ghosts is the first in Bear's epic The Eternal Sky fantasy trilogy, drawing heavily on the history of the Mongol Empire. As the story begins, the Great Khagan has died, and his descendants have fought a bloody battle over succession, the kind of civil war that actually fractured the Mongol Empire. Temur, grandson of the Great Khagan, fought on the losing side for his brother. Temur survived the battle only because he was so grievously wounded he was left for dead....

...Our second major viewpoint character is Samarkar, from the neighboring Rasan Empire. Samarkar has willingly left her powerful family and undergone surgery leaving her barren, so that she may train to be a sorceress. Sent to investigate reports of dark sorcery, Samarkar encounters Temur...

To read the entire review -> Range of Ghosts

“The Long View” by Van Aaron Hughes :: Patty’s Story Recommendation of the Week

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:02:00 +0000

Hi. Let me introduce myself: I'm Patty Palko, a new reviewer to Fantastic Reviews. I thought that my first post should concern Aaron's story "The Long View" just published in the March/April 2013 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I was afraid that Aaron would be too humble to tout how great this story really is. So, I thought I would do it for him.

"The Long View" follows genetic engineer Emzara Ghali-Gordon on a trip into deep space with a shipload of colonists. Many authors have used faster-than-light drives, suspended animation, or multi-generational ships to bridge long travel times. Instead, Aaron's Ghali-Gordon is responsible for altering the settlers' genetic code to slow their bodies to 1/20th their normal speed. Aging a mere 6.25 years for a 125-year journey is an ingenious method of allowing humans to explore the universe. As a doctorate holder in the biological sciences, I was impressed with how well the science and complications of gene therapy were communicated.

Yet from the beginning, it is clear that this is a tale of loss:

What makes a person decide to desert everyone she knows and leave the whole world behind? My name is Emzara Ghali-Gordon, and the first time I did it was easy.

Through the well-integrated flashbacks, Emzara describes her history as jabaan, or "coward," for fleeing her native Egypt due to its unprogressive ways. As the story advances, her actions result in an emotional impact wrapped within an unexpected ending. It's time well spent following this sympathetic character to find what she gains, and loses, along the way.

(If you like "The Long View," I recommend my favorite Hughes story "The Dualist," from the anthology Writers of the Future Volume 27. There is some damn fine storytelling in those pages.)

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Wrap-up

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 18:01:00 +0000

We have just concluded Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books. There were good, competitive matches along the way, perhaps even some upsets. Hope you had a good time!

Congratulations to Keith Brooke's Harmony (aka alt.human), winner of Bracket Five of the Battle of the Books! Let's give a round of applause for all the participating books!

To see the whole bracket, click here.

All sixteen of these books are now available. Listed below are the featured books, sorted alphabetically by author. Click on the book title links to go that book's most recent book battle review.

The Croning by Laird Barron (Night Shade)
Paradox Resolution by K.A. Bedford (Edge)
This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova (Tor)
Harmony by Keith Brooke (Solaris)
The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown (Abaddon)
Kangazang! Star Stuff by Terry Cooper (Candy Jar)
Wildcatter by Dave Duncan (Edge)
A Guile of Dragons by James Enge (Pyr)
Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor (Tor)
The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh (Innsmouth House)
Nightglass by Liane Merciel (Paizo)
Railsea by China Miéville (Del Rey)
Fated by Alyson Noël (St. Martin’s)
City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt (Paizo)
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (HarperCollins)
Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem (Solaris)

Some of these books and authors may be new to you, but after reading Aaron's book descriptions and battle reviews, I hope some of them sparked your interest. Perhaps we introduced you to a few new books. Only one book can win the bracket, but there were many good books in the competition.

Battle of the Books match-ups are decided based on reading a sample of the book. Most upon reading a mere 25 pages or 50 pages. So if a good book starts slow, in this review format, it may face an uphill battle. These matches are inherently subjective. Battles are decided based on which book the reviewer, Aaron, would rather continue reading.

Stay tuned for Bracket Six of Battle of the Books. We have another sixteen books lined up for the next competetion. Aaron will be reviewing. We'll be announcing the new group of contenders soon.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Championship Round :: Harmony by Keith Brooke vs. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:01:00 +0000

We have arrived at the championship of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books. In one corner we have Harmony by Keith Brooke, a science fiction novel set on an alien-occupied Earth. In the other corner we have The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers, a near-future science fiction novel featuring a virus that kills pregnant women. So two books in the SHTF ("shit's hit the fan") sub-genre of SF. I (Aaron) have read through page 200 of Harmony and The Testament of Jessie Lamb, and the book I most want to continue reading to the end will be the champion of Bracket Five of the 2012 Battle of the Books.

Harmony: Solaris paperback, June 2012, 413 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Harmony (published in the UK under the title alt.human) reached the championship by defeating Wildcatter by Dave Duncan in the first round and The Croning by Laird Barron in the second round, then edging Railsea by China Miéville in the semifinals.

In Harmony, Earth has been taken over by multiple races of aliens, who have herded all the humans into "Ipps," Indigenous Peoples' Preserves. Our teenaged hero Dodge inhabits the caves of the Craigside Ipp. Refugees from the nearby town of Angiere arrive, reporting that humans have been eradicated from that town. Our second viewpoint character, Hope, was among those who left Angiere just in time. Hope previously escaped some sort of hospital, where she woke with severe memory loss. Dodge knows there is something strange about Hope, because she lacks the "pids," personal identifiers, aliens have placed in all humans' bloodstreams. When aliens seize the leaders of Craigside, Dodge finds himself suddenly in authority, desperate for a way to save his community from the attack he fears imminent. One possibility is to bolt for "Harmony," a fabled city where humans and aliens live as equals.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb: Harper Perennial trade paperback, May 2012, 240 pages, cover photo by Clayton Bastiani. The Testament of Jessie Lamb advanced to the championship with wins over This Case is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova in the first round, A Guile of Dragons by James Enge in the second round, and Nightglass by Liane Merciel in the semifinals.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the memoir of a teenager imprisoned by her father (for reasons I don't want to say, since they are not expressly revealed unil halfway into the book, but careful readers will know long before that). In Jessie's near-future world, bioterrorists have unleashed the MDS virus, which makes it fatal for any woman to become pregnant. Scientists, including Jessie's father, work desperately to find a cure. The best they have managed so far is to create a vaccine to immunize frozen embryos, permitting healthy children to be born to comatose "Sleeping Beauty" mothers, who will never wake. Deprived of its future, society is rapidly deteriorating. Jessie experiments with various protest groups but finds little comfort there. Finally, Jessie makes a momentous decision that her parents refuse to accept.

The Battle: I am required at this point to name a winner, and I will wish to justify my selection, which may misleadingly suggest that one of these novels is flawed. So let me first say that these are both excellent books, and either would be a worthy Battle of the Books winner.

In Harmony, Keith Brooke does an outstanding job of taking our own planet and turning it into a bizarre and frightening place. Here, for example, is Hope first arriving in Dodge's town:

She had understood those people [in Angiere], she had known how to get the right responses from them.

But here . . . she did not know what to make of a club where grey-skinned, bug-eyed aliens went to have their skin painfully flensed with metal graters, or where liquid was poured on a creature that was something like a slug on many legs, the liquid attracting a seething mass of bugs to eat the creature's flesh. She was strangely disturbed by the alien scabs that latched onto buildings and watched everything that passed with individual slow-moving eyes, colours flashing across their crusty surfaces. She did all she could to avoid the humans she came to know as nearly-men, the ones with dead emptiness in their eyes and alien growths on their bodies, with twitching faces and limbs and naked bodies covered in scars and filth and bruises.

Brooke conveys the strangeness of his transformed Earth and its various types of alien occupiers so effectively that it feels as if the humans, like native Americans today, have become outsiders in their own land. Even better, Brooke shows us this strange landscape through the eyes of a likeable young protagonist, who faces a host of challenges, some quite familiar and others nearly beyond our comprehension.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb also features an appealing young protagonist, who similarly has to navigate becoming an adult against the backdrop of an awful future. Jane Rogers tells Jessie's story through superb prose, including an exquisitely written scene where Jessie loses her virginity, then afterwards remembers that her boyfriend is soon to leave on a dangerous protest:

I couldn't bear to be left on my own, I was so sensitised I needed him to keep his arms around me at all times. It was like I had been peeled. When he asked, "What is it?" I told him, and he hugged me and said he'd be back soon. But I couldn't help it, and I cried. "Stop it," [he] whispered, "stop it, stop it," and he licked the tears off my face like a dog until I couldn't help laughing, and he called me an idiot. . . . Part of me wanted him to stop talking and just start kissing me again, my blood was fizzy and it made my whole body tingle. But another part of me wanted to have my clothes on and be outside in the cold night walking home, breathing the dark air and letting the thinking bits of me catch up with the feeling bits.

The battle between these two excellent novels comes down to their respective stories.

Early on, I felt that Rogers was effectively using Jessie's personal struggles to suggest the larger societal turmoil caused by the MDS epidemic. But in the second hundred pages, the balance has shifted, with nearly all the focus on Jessie's personal decision and her resulting conflict with her parents. What is happening with society at large, including whether the human race will survive at all, has been relegated to the background. After 200 pages, it is apparent that Rogers is using MDS to frame various metaphors about parent-child relationships, gender issues, etc., but society's battle with the MDS virus is rather tangential to the book's actual plot——how Jessie's story ultimately plays out will do nothing to resolve the larger story about the death, or at least transformation, of society as a whole. This is not a criticism of Jessie Lamb. Rogers deliberately chose to keep a narrow focus to her tale and for the most part it works, but it's an authorial choice that, in the end, makes it a bit easier for me to put the book down.

Meanwhile, Harmony is also very closely tied to a single young protagonist. But, unlike Jessie Lamb, Brooke's protagonist Dodge finds himself in a leadership role where his decisions carry consequences for many other people. The first 200 pages close with a harrowing scene, which requires Dodge to react quickly. What's more, there have been plenty of hints to suggest that Dodge and Hope will be the key figures in a greater story that will impact all of Earth. And that compels me to keep reading Harmony to the end.

THE WINNER: Harmony by Keith Brooke

Congratulations to Keith Brooke, who is our fifth Battle of the Books winner, joining the illustrious company of Elizabeth Bear, James Renner, Ian Tregillis, and Paolo Bacigalupi. We will feature Harmony in a full review at Fantastic Reviews, and we will also try to arrange an interview with Keith Brooke (who has already blogged about the Battle of the Books, so we hope he'll be open to that).

Thanks for joining us for Battle of the Books #5. Stay tuned for Battle of the Books #6, which will feature yet another array of talented authors, including James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck), Orson Scott Card, Nancy Kress, Ian McDonald, and many others.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 23:29:00 +0000

I drafted this back in the Fall, when The Hobbit was first hitting the theaters but neglected to post it. So belatedly, the Book of the Week is The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien, the second in the legendary Lord of the Rings trilogy. This is the 1965 Ace Books "pirated" edition, the first American paperback, with cover art by Jack Gaughan.

I previously covered the story of Ace's unauthorized edition of Lord of the Rings, and you certainly don't need me to tell you who this fellow Tolkien was. So let's use this space to discuss another aspect of the Lord of the Rings intellectual property rights, unrelated to the dispute with Ace Books. I confess I've never watched the animated Lord of the Rings films, so I was not aware of this oddity until researching the Ace editions for this blog.

It seems that when Ralph Bakshi was creating the 1978 animated version, the studio persuaded him to adapt the three books into two films. (That's not as odd as it sounds, since Tolkien himself never conceived of the story as a trilogy.) So for the first film, confusingly released (over Bakshi's objection) under the title The Lord of the Rings, the studio only acquired the film rights to The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. That left the door open, when Bakshi ended up not making the second film, for Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. (who did the previous animated version of The Hobbit) to make the 1980 animated edition of The Return of the King. The trouble is, they only had rights to the third book, so most of what occurs in the second half of The Two Towers, including the defeat of Saruman and what happens in Shelob's lair, is omitted from any of the animated films. Thankfully, Peter Jackson came along and made the whole issue moot.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Semifinal :: Nightglass by Liane Merciel vs. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 23:41:00 +0000

Our second semifinal in Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books features Nightglass by Liane Merciel against The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. The book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 100 pages will reach the championship round.

Nightglass: Paizo paperback, July 2012, 345 pages, cover art by Tyler Walpole. Nightglass reached the Final Four by defeating Paradox Resolution by K.A. Bedford in the first round and The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown in the second round.

Nightglass is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game. "Shadowcallers" control the unpleasant region of Nidal. Our young protagonist Isiem, identified by the shadowcallers as having magical abilities, has begun training against his will in the shadowcallers' dark form of sorcery. This training includes requiring Isiem and his fellow students to practice torture on slaves, on each other, and even on the shadowcallers themselves. Those unable to master the magical techniques face dire consequences. Isiem is among the most talented of the new recruits, but he is beginning to realize that may be an even greater curse.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb: Harper Perennial trade paperback, May 2012, 240 pages, cover photo by Clayton Bastiani. The Testament of Jessie Lamb advanced to the Final Four with wins over This Case is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova in the first round and A Guile of Dragons by James Enge in the second round.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the memoir of Jessie Lamb, imprisoned by her father for reasons she has not yet revealed, although they are becoming pretty obvious by the end of 100 pages. Jessie lives in a near-future world where the MDS virus has made it fatal for any woman to become pregnant. Jessie has flirted with various protest groups, whose youthful idealism contrasts with her father's cynicism. Jessie's father is a scientist, and from him we discover that doctors have learned to induce comas to allow pregancies to come to term, although the "Sleeping Beauty" mothers will never wake. They have also developed a vaccine that can be used on embryos frozen before the spread of MDS (and thus not already infected) to make the motherless children immune to the MDS virus.

The Battle: Here are two very well-written books with interesting stories, but between pages 50 to 100 both authors have introduced unpleasant story elements, which make it a challenge for them to keep their readers engaged.

In Nightglass, Liane Merciel has the daunting task of showing us how her likeable young character Isiem becomes indoctrinated in very dark arts without rendering him completely unsympathetic. To her credit, she mostly succeeds. She manages to show how a young man who means well could be so overwhelmed by the evil system around him that he begins to lose the ability to discern right from wrong:

Was it wrong to torture a helpless slave, if serving as their practice subject was all that kept that slave alive? Was it still wrong if he inflicted the same pains on his closest friends, and suffered them in turn? Not eagerly——not because he was able to take any pleasure in it, as more devout Kuthites seemed to——but because he, too, survived only by the lash?

If it was not wrong, was it right?

Isiem didn't know. He was increasingly unsure whether he cared. Questions of that sort seemed relics from another world . . . They were things that existed in books, and they had no place in shadow-swathed Pangolais.

Isiem will soon participate in a ceremony of torture, in which one of his classmates plans revenge against a despised teacher. The teacher richly deserves what is coming, and Isiem will be at a loss whether to help the other student or try to save the teacher.

I admire Merciel's ability to show Isiem falling into evil even as he remains a mostly sympathetic character. That said, I don't much enjoy reading extended descriptions of torture, and since I don't have a clear concept of where the story is headed——one suspects eventually Isiem will rebel, but there is no hint of that yet after 100 pages——it's difficult to feel enthusiastic about continuing.

The story of The Testament of Jessie Lamb has taken some similarly distasteful turns, including a scene in which Jessie suffers physical abuse from her father and a flashback to when Jessie was assaulted and a close friend raped. But somehow these scenes have been less offputting than the torture and oppression in Nightglass, perhaps because I have a stronger sense how this brutality is advancing a larger, important story.

When Jessie learns that the MDS vaccine will only work if surrogate mothers sacrifice their lives to produce immune children, she is at first appalled. But her own awful experiences lead her to an epiphany (while observing sea horses at the aquarium whose males carry the young) that society cannot survive without its hope in the next generation:

I knew Dad and I were both thinking about those frozen embryos which can be put in a surrogate mother and vaccinated against MDS. It's exactly the same thing. It gives us a chance of survival. And quite suddenly it struck me how amazingly clever that was. I was thinking about the extraordinariness of the way sea horses must have evolved over thousands of years, and then about how humans know so much that within a space of days they can use their brains to choose to incubate their babies in a different way. The shining sea horses hung like question marks in the water, staring at me with their sideways eyes. I remember staring back at them and realising that human beings are beautiful and clever and ingenious.

I suspect Jessie's father is soon to have a reverse realization, that what he viewed as a hopeful development for society carries terrible implications for his family that will cause father and daughter to become violently opposed.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb mostly focuses on the small scale, on Jessie and her family and closest friends. But Jane Rogers is telling a big story, about what happens to all of society when it loses hope in the future. This is what science fiction is for, and I very much want to see where Rogers is taking this tale.

THE WINNER: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

The Testament of Jessie Lamb advances to the championship round, where it will face Harmony by Keith Brooke.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Semifinal :: Railsea by China Miéville vs. Harmony by Keith Brooke

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 17:08:00 +0000

Our first semifinal in Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books features Railsea by China Miéville going against Harmony by Keith Brooke. The book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 100 pages will reach the championship round.

Railsea: Del Rey hardcover, May 2012, 424 pages, cover art by Mike Bryan. Railsea reached the Final Four by defeating The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh in the first round and Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor in the second round.

Railsea takes place in a bizarre world where trains travel rails criss-crossing a deserted tundra to hunt moldywarpes, moles that grow to incredibly vast sizes. The molehunters' homes are on "islands" somehow constructed above the railsea. People live in mortal fear of the earth, and indeed, the one time our young protagonist Sham actually touches the ground he is immediately attacked by vicious mole rats. Sham's train is commanded by a female Captain Ahab, whose "philosophy" hinges on finding the moldywarpe that took her arm. (It turns out that in this world, every train captain has lost a limb and is obsessed with the land creature that claimed it.) Sham and the captain find a photograph of a strange place where only a single line of rail crosses the land, but the captain does not share Sham's fascination.

Harmony: Solaris paperback, June 2012, 413 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Harmony (published in the UK under the title alt.human) reached the Final Four by defeating Wildcatter by Dave Duncan in the first round and The Croning by Laird Barron in the second round.

In Harmony, the Earth has long been occupied by multiple races of aliens, who have herded humans into "Ipps," Indigenous Peoples' Preserves. Our teenaged hero Dodge scratches out a living in the Craigside Ipp, which is visited by refugees from another town, Angiere, where aliens recently slaughtered nearly all the humans. Dodge also rescues a strange woman who lacks the "pids," personal identifiers, aliens have placed in all humans' bloodstreams. Tellingly, her name is Hope. A single chapter from Hope's point of view tells us she was in Angiere just before its destruction, which likely was no coincidence. Meanwhile, Dodge learns that a group of aliens is trying to help the humans, while others would prefer simply to wipe us all out.

The Battle: My guiding criterion in the Battle of the Books is not which book is better but which book do I most want to keep reading. Usually those are the same——I'd rather keep reading the book I think is better——but not always. Case in point: if you ask me which, Railsea or Harmony, strikes me as a better book after 100 pages, I will hem and haw and sincerely tell you they are both very good, but in the end I will say Railsea is probably the better of the two. Both books are very much about cognitive dissonance, creating a sense of strangeness, and nobody but nobody does weird better than China Miéville. The railsea is a striking construct, and his multi-layered world is wonderfully memorable.

But Harmony also contains plenty of interestingly strange elements, for instance the way humans have learned to convey immediate emotional responses through alien clicks instead of facial expressions. And I'm more attached to Harmony's key characters, Dodge and Hope; the only character developed so far in Railsea is Sham, and he doesn't much grab me so far.

There is a terrific scene at the end of the first 100 pages of Harmony where the aliens carry off the leaders of Dodge's community, then an alien asks the remaining people who is their leader now, and Dodge is startled to realize they are all looking at him. This tells me much about his personality, and it suddenly makes those around him his people in a deeper sense, which makes me care more about what happens to them all. This in turn makes me care about where the story is headed. I want to know whether Dodge can navigate the strange alien politics he has been caught up in, and whether he and Hope and Dodge's people can survive, and perhaps even find their way to a freer life.

In contrast, in Railsea, it doesn't matter to me very much whether Sham finds the place with only one railway line, or whether the captain tracks down her great white moldywarpe.

But wait! some of you cry. If Harmony has stronger characters and a more compelling storyline, doesn't that mean it was really the better book all along? Hmm, I answer. You could be right. If so, then what you're telling me is the Battle of the Books format is the best way to test how good a book really is. What an intriguing suggestion!

THE WINNER: Harmony by Keith Brooke

Harmony advances to the championship round, where it will face either Nightglass by Liane Merciel or The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five :: Final Four

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:01:00 +0000

Here we go! After completion of the second round, we're down to the Final Four in Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books:

Railsea by China Miéville vs. Harmony by Keith Brooke

Nightglass by Liane Merciel vs. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

We hope you've enjoyed this tournament so far. This sixteen-book bracket, our fifth, contained books from across the genre. There were science fiction, contemporary fantasy, high fantasy, historical fantasy, and horror books. Hopefully some sparked your interest. I know there are books that I (Amy) would like to read. Now only four books remain.

Stopping reading good books after only 25 or 50 pages can be difficult, and so can judging between two completely different books, but this format allows us to sample and spread the word about many more new books and authors than we otherwise could.

Three of the four "seeded" books made it to the Final Four: Railsea, Harmony, and The Testament of Jessie Lamb. The dark horse of this group is Nightglass, which is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game.

Thanks again to all the authors and publicists sending us great books to consider. If you're an author or publicist, click here for the rules and an address to send your book if you'd like to be included in a future bracket.

We have had a great response to the Battle of the Books format. More brackets are to come!

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: A Guile of Dragons by James Enge vs. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 05:55:00 +0000

Our final second round match of Bracket Five of Battle of the Books pits A Guile of Dragons by James Enge against The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

A Guile of Dragons: Pyr trade paperback, August 2012, 264 pages, cover art by Steve Stone. A Guile of Dragons reached the second round with a win over City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt.

The first 25 pages of A Guile of Dragons showed the circumstances of the birth of Morlock Ambrosius, hero of all of James Enge's books to date, whose mother betrayed his father Merlin. The second 25 pages show us the early life of Morlock, as he is raised by dwarves fiercely loyal to Merlin, although Morlock seems to feel nothing but resentment for his absent father. The first 50 pages end with Morlock being engaged by Merlin's old nemesis Earno to guide him across the northlands where the dwarves dwell.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb: Harper Perennial trade paperback, May 2012, 240 pages, cover photo by Clayton Bastiani. The Testament of Jessie Lamb got here with a first-round win over This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova (aka Melinda M. Snodgrass).

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the memoir of the title character, written from captivity at the hands of her father. In the opening 25 pages, she told us of the spread of the MDS virus, which kills any woman who becomes pregnant. In the second 25 pages, she recalls her involvement with a post-MDS youth movement, the idealism and (arguably foolish) enthusiasm of which contrasts with Jessie's father's cynicism. We also learn that, while there remains no cure for MDS, doctors have learned how to induce a coma in pregnant women in order to save the babies.

The Battle: This battle pits a high fantasy against a near-future science fiction novel, both focusing on a teenaged protagonist who does not understand his or her role in the sweep of history. I have no complaints about the writing in either book, but in both novels the significance of events in the characters' early lives is not immediately apparent. The battle comes down to which author nevertheless gets me involved in the main character's story.

A Guile of Dragons is well-written and easy to read, with plenty of vibrant details. Through 50 pages, however, there is little dramatic tension; the whole affair has the feel of an extended prologue to the other Morlock Ambrosius books. Reading this opening section does not make me feel especially compelled to continue with A Guile of Dragons, altough it does leave me very interested in checking out Enge's first novel Blood of Ambrose.

The opening of The Testament of Jessie Lamb is more successful at interweaving Jessie's small-scale personal experiences with the grand scope of the impending collapse of society. I think the key is the frame story, from which we know that Jessie has made a decision so drastic that her father feels compelled to imprison her for her own protection. Much of what Jessie describes doing with her activist friends seems trivial, as she acknowledges in hindsight——who really cares about discouraging air travel to reduce carbon emissions when the whole human race is dying out?——but Rogers has convinced me that it all ties into the story yet to come:

But looking back, if I hadn't done all that——the meetings and arguments and petitions and demonstrations, the hours hunched over the computer——if I hadn't done all that in good faith, and then been so totally frustrated——then maybe I would never even have found the next thing to do. If I'd never felt the thrill of imagining we could change things——perhaps I wouldn't have looked for it again.

At the end of this section, I am very interested to learn what decision Jessie has made and how her relationship with her father has so completely broken down, and I want to read more.

THE WINNER: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

The Testament of Jessie Lamb moves into the semifinals, where it will face Nightglass by Liane Merciel.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: Nightglass by Liane Merciel vs. The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:39:00 +0000

This third match in the second round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books features Nightglass by Liane Merciel against The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Nightglass: Paizo paperback, July 2012, 345 pages, cover art by Tyler Walpole. Nightlass advanced to the second round with a win over Paradox Resolution by K.A. Bedford.

Nightglass is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game. In the dark realm of Nidal, strange and unfriendly "shadowcallers" come to the home of our young protagonist Isiem, looking for young people with magical abilities. Isiem has no wish to go with them, but is forced to reveal his talents in order to save a friend. The shadowcallers take Isiem to Pangolais, to be trained in a dark type of magic. He proves quite adept, but has little enthusiasm for his new home.

The Devil's Nebula: Abaddon paperback, June 2012, 350 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. The Devil's Nebula reached the second round by defeating a "seeded" book, Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem.

The Devil's Nebula is the first volume in the Weird Space series. The series is set in the distant future, when humans battle an alien race called the Vetch. The three-person crew of The Paradoxical Poet arrives illegally on the evacuated world of Hesperides, in search of a lost work of art as well as wreckage from a mysterious alien spaceship, only to find a Vetch ship already there. After an initial contact with the Vetch, the commander Ed Carew leads his crew through the alien ship. The first 50 pages end with The Paradoxical Poet being captured by a human patrol vessel.

The Battle: The entries in the second round of this Battle of the Books continue to maintain a very high level. Nightglass gives us imaginative and evocative fantasy, while The Devil's Nebula is good fast-paced space opera. You could hardly go wrong with either one.

I loved the last scene of the opening 25 pages of Nightglass, but the next 25 pages begin with an even more vivid passage. Isiem and his friend and two other children from their village arrive in Pangolais, where they are immediately told "the Joyful Ones" must see them:

The ironwork on the pillars held odd, egglike shapes hoisted high above the children's head. They resembled huge maggots, pallid and featureless in their cocoons of bent metal——but as Isiem walked toward the first one, it blinked open eyes he had not known it had.

"Ah," the thing croaked in a rusty, gurgling voice. Its face was a soft white sack of flesh, its mouth a wet glimmer between pouches of suet. Yellow sand caked the corners of its pinkish eyes. Caged from the neck down in iron, the creature could not wipe the crusts away. "Young blood. Come, children. Let me taste you."

It was a man. Hairless, limbless, locked immobile on a pillar in this seldom-visited section of the Dusk Hall . . . but at one point he had been human, whatever he was now.

* * *

Isiem held back, too frightened to obey. The other boys quailed with him. Helis, casting an angry look over them all, shoved between them to approach the crippled man.

"I'm not afraid of you," she announced, crossing her arms and closing her eyes. "Do it."

"A lie," the limbless one replied, his words thick and wet with yearning, "but I will." His tongue rolled out——long, long, infernally long——and engulfed her head in its slimy, blue-veined coils. Helis issued a muffled protest, but the tonge wrapped around her face suppressed it.

Eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww! And I mean that in a good way.

The Devil's Nebula has also started well, with our main characters exploring an enigmatic alien ship, which suggests there is more at play in this future galaxy than they realized. However, although I don't have any complaints about The Devil's Nebula, through 50 pages it hasn't offered any passages quite so memorable as some of those in Nightglass. And while the characterization is certainly not bad, the characters are painted with a rather broad brush. Ed Carew is "a loner. He had no emotional attachments of any kind, and no wish to form them." One of his crewmembers, Jed, is found after their encounter with the Vetch "still cowering in the undergrowth."

So far I have the sense there is more depth to Isiem and the other characters of Nightglass, and I want to learn more about them.

THE WINNER: Nightglass by Liane Merciel

Nightglass advances to the semifinals, to face either A Guile of Dragons by James Enge or The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: Harmony by Keith Brooke vs. The Croning by Laird Barron

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:35:00 +0000

The second round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books pits Harmony by Keith Brooke against The Croning by Laird Barron. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Harmony: Solaris paperback, June 2012, 413 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Harmony (published in the UK under the title alt.human) got here by defeating Wildcatter by Dave Duncan in the first round.

Harmony takes place long after the occupation of Earth by multiple varieties of aliens. Humans live in "Ipps," Indigenous Peoples' Preserves. In the first 25 pages, our teenaged hero Dodge saved a young woman who, inexplicably, lacked any "pids," the personal identifiers the aliens have placed in all humans' bloodstreams. In the second 25 pages, he learns that a human community in another region has been entirely wiped out for unknown reasons. Sol, the leader of Dodge's Ipp, sends him to a nearby Ipp in hopes of joining forces to prepare for the possibility of another such attack. While there, Dodge spots the woman he previously rescued.

The Croning: Night Shade hardcover, May 2012, 245 pages, cover art by Cody Tilson. The Croning reached the second round with a win over Fated by Alyson Noël.

The Croning began with a dark reimagining of the Rumpelstiltskin story, then took us to 1958, where an American man named Don frantically searches Mexico City for Michelle, his lost wife. In the second 25 pages, Don's search ends badly but not quite fatally. Don does not understand his strange occult experiences in Mexico City, and it seems Michelle knows something she is not telling him. We then get a brief glimpse of federal agents investigating a shooting in 1980, before flashing ahead to the present day, as octogenarian Don takes Michelle for a romantic getaway to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary.

The Battle: I hope the Battle of the Books is successfully conveying to all of you how many excellent writers we have today doing interesting work in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genre. For once again, here is a battle which forces me to choose between two very well-written and engaging novels. Both novels have done a nice job of pulling me in by placing their characters in grave danger from the outset.

As I mentioned in his previous battle, Keith Brooke has a marvelous knack for conveying strangeness. The bizarre scenery of Harmony's occupied Earth makes for a fascinating setting. Dodge takes it for granted, for instance, that the aliens use scent to manipulate humans, and that humans have added alien clicks to their language to express emotions. Every page introduces an interesting nuance to Dodge's strange life in the future. The first pages of The Croning depicted a similarly strange world of the past, or at least the past of an odd and frightening fairy tale. The next chapters bring us into the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, but with effective hints of something unfathomable lurking in the shadows.

I'm enjoying both these books and would be happy to continue with either. Forced to make a choice, it comes down to the characters. I liked the brooding "Spy" of the first chapter of The Croning, but I believe we're done with him. Now that we've switched to the present, I am not so attached to Don and Michelle. Don strikes me as a bit of a twit, and pretty much all I know so far about Michelle is that she has kept an important secret from her husband for over fifty years, which doesn't make her too sympathetic.

Meanwhile, in the opening of Harmony, Dodge has emerged as a very interesting and likable character. He inhabits an almost unimaginably strange world, but Brooke smartly also gives him mundane experiences to which his readers can relate. In a recent battle (ironically, the first-round battle that The Croning won) I made sport of a book's extremely lengthy description of teenagers kissing and groping. Here, in contrast, is a description of a teenage kiss that to me works perfectly:

Her lips pressed against mine, firm and cool, over in an instant. I flinched, surprised, and clicked, "!¡fear ǀ excitement¡!"

I reached for her but she had turned, stepped away, and almost before I could react she was pausing at the entrance to the villa, dipping her head to me in parting, and then she was gone.

I could taste her on my lips still. I could close my eyes and feel the pressure of her mouth on mine.

I care about what happens to Dodge, and I want to see more of Brooke's future world.

THE WINNER: Harmony by Keith Brooke

Harmony advances to the semifinals, where it will face Railsea by China Miéville.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor vs. Railsea by China Miéville

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:40:00 +0000

We begin the second round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books with Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor vs. Railsea by China Miéville. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after the first 50 pages.

Ghost Key: Tor hardcover, August 2012, 351 pages, cover photo by Marta Bevaqua. Ghost Key reached the second round by defeating Kangazang! Star Stuff by Terry Cooper.

Ghost Key is the sequel to Esperanza. Both books concern the struggle against malevolent spirits called "hungry ghosts" or "brujos." The first 25 pages were from the point of view of Kate Davis, a middle-aged bartender in the Florida keys embroiled in strange happenings she does not understand, and Nick Sanchez, a "remote viewer" for the government who senses the Florida disturbance but does not know what it represents. The second 25 pages are from the point of view of two characters who know perfectly well what is going on. Wayra, a centuries-old werewolf, arrives in Florida following the scent of his former lover Dominica. Apparently in Esperanza, Wayra defeated Dominica's plans to create a city of ghosts, but she has escaped to try again.

The next section gives us the point of view of Dominica herself, who is indeed attempting to create a city of ghosts in the Florida keys. She has recruited some 200 hungry ghosts (although so far "horny ghosts" might be a more accurate moniker), who have occupied the bodies of living humans. The section ends with Maddie, the human woman occupied by Dominica, managing to make contact spiritually with Nick Sanchez.

Railsea: Del Rey hardcover, May 2012, 424 pages, cover art by Mike Bryan. Railsea advanced to the second round with a win over The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh.

The opening pages of Railsea introduced us to a strange world where trains cross a deserted tundra in search of moldywarpes, moles that can grow to incredibly vast sizes. Our young protagonist Sham is experiencing his first moldywarpe hunt, on a train led by a female Captain Ahab, determined to find the moldywarpe that took her arm. In the second 25 pages, we learn a little more about the nature of this strange universe, composed of six layers, of which the railsea and the moldywarpes' subterranean lair are the bottom two. We then see Sham try to rescue two small birds thrust into a cockfight. The exhiliration of the resulting chase emboldens Sham to sneak onto a cart dispatched from his train to investigate another train lying on its side off the rails, a salvage venture which quickly turns dangerous.

The Battle: Ghost Key is populated with pretty standard fantasy creatures, werewolves and evil ghosts and such. But Trish MacGregor ties them together effectively, and does a nice job in generating interest in her characters. I particularly liked the section from the point of view of hungry ghost Dominica, who is flabbergasted at the suggestion that she and her followers are evil. "Brujos weren't evil. They only wanted to experience physical life."

What immediately stands out about Railsea is the bizarre setting. But equally impressive is Miéville's depiction of his protagonist Sham, a kind-heaerted lad who yearns for adventure but is intimidated when he finds it. Here, for instance after sneaking onto the salvage cart, he is called into action as the only one small enough to fit through a wedged doorway:

"I ain't even supposed to be here." Sham hated how his own voice suddenly quavered to his own hearing. But he was here, wasn't he? Snuck on in a sudden pining for excitement, & the universe had called his bluff. His job was to apply bandages & brew tea, thanks very much, not to haul arse into sealed-off wrecks.

Oh Stonefaces, he thought. He didn't want to go into the cabin——but how he wanted to want to.

* * *

All his crewmates were looking at him. Was it shame or bravery that made Shem say yes? Ah, well. Either way.

What Sham encounters on the other side of the door makes for engrossing reading.

While I'm not a huge fan of urban fantasies, I can appreciate them when they're done well, and so far Ghost Key is done quite well. If you like urban fantasy, you should check it out. But given a choice, I respond more to a fantasy story with original and unusual concepts, and Railsea is unlike anything I've read before.

THE WINNER: Railsea by China Miéville

Railsea advances to the semifinals of Bracket #5, to take on either Harmony by Keith Brooke or The Croning by Laird Barron.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers vs. This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 06:55:00 +0000

The final first round match of Bracket Five of the Battle of the Books features The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers going against This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova (aka Melinda M. Snodgrass). The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb: Harper Perennial trade paperback, May 2012, 240 pages, cover photo by Clayton Bastiani. Jane Rogers is the author of eight generally well-received mainstream novels. The Testament of Jessie Lamb is her first try at science fiction. It was originally published in England in 2011 to a very favorable reception, including being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winning the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is set in a near-future world in which it has become impossible for women to have children. (Please don't say Rogers borrowed the idea from The Children of Men by P.D. James, because the premise was used well before that, notably by Brian Aldiss in Greybeard.) Teenager Jessie Lamb writes this memoir from the locked room in which she has been imprisoned, apparently by her father. She recounts the general panic and unrest when Maternal Death Syndrome, or MDS, first spread through society. MDS is a virus created by bio-terrorists, which has infested everyone. Triggered by pregnancy, it is fatal within a few days to any woman who becomes pregnant. But the threat of death is not sufficient to keep the boys and girls in Jessie's circle of friends from desiring each other.

This Case Is Gonna Kill Me: Tor trade paperback, September 2012, 318 pages, cover photo by Veer & Getty Images. Phillipa Bornikova is the urban fantasy alter ego of Melinda M. Snodgrass, the author of seven original SF/F novels, as well as a Star Trek tie-in and extensive work in George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards universe. Snodgrass also wrote several romances in the 80's under the name Melinda McKenzie. Her background as a fellow lawyer is easy to spot in much of her work, notably her Circuit/Circuit Breaker/Final Circuit lawyers-in-space trilogy, all of which were nominated for the Prometheus Award. Her most recent books under the Snodgrass name were The Edge of Reason (2008) and The Edge of Ruin (2010). Snodgrass also wrote several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and was story editor for the show's second and third seasons.

This Case Is Gonna Kill Me is urban fantasy slash legal thriller. Our protagonist Linnet Ellery, fresh out of Yale Law School, has just started work at a prestigious New York "White-Fang" law firm. In this society, vampires hold most positions of authority. In particular, all of the senior partners at the firm are vampires, and the male associates are vying to be made partners and also made vampires. But in this world, vampires only bite men; so as a woman, even if Linnet manages to become a partner, it will only be for one mortal lifetime. In the first 25 pages, Linnet is shunned by her fellow new associates and stuck in a drab assignment, assisting with a stale probate case. She gradually comes to realize that she is a pawn in a political contest between two of the senior partners.

The Battle: I am happy to say this is a battle between two excellent women authors who have created two strong, albeit inexperienced, female protagonists.

I like the opening of The Testament of Jessie Lamb very much. The prologue with Jessie Lamb in chains is a solid hook, immediately letting the reader know the gravity of her situation, which is very far from our experience and yet at the same time rather familiar, a father unwilling to let his little girl grow up. I find it quite believable that Jessie and her friends are terrified by MDS, yet still infatuated with each other, and also secretly thrilled by the whole thing:

But during that evening, before I started feeling ill, when we were all madly dancing and making the world spin around us, I had this fantastic sense of freedom. I thought I could be free of my Mum and Dad and their petty squabbles. I could soar. No one could say a thing to me, especially not anyone older than me. Because it was them who had messed things up.

The beginning of This Case Is Gonna Kill Me is also nicely done, but I'm sorry to say that, as much as I admire Melinda Snodgrass as a writer, I'm not her ideal reader for this one. I often have a hard time engaging with urban fantasies, and this one is a particularly hard sell for me because the opening section strongly emphasizes the legal side of the story rather than the urban fantasy. Through 25 pages, nothing fantastic has happened at all. I mean, Linnet is told all the senior partners at her firm are vampires, but hell, they told me the same thing when I started work as a lawyer. So far, the thrust of the story is big law firm politics, which I've experienced far too much of in the past twenty years (albeit not in a snooty Manhattan firm) to enjoy.

I feel badly for not giving Snodgrass more of a fair shake here, but then there is little shame in dropping a battle to a Clarke Award-winning novel with a very strong opening.

THE WINNER: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

The Testament of Jessie Lamb moves into the second round, where it will face A Guile of Dragons by James Enge.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt vs. A Guile of Dragons by James Enge

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 06:55:00 +0000

The penultimate match in the first round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books pits City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt against A Guile of Dragons by James Enge. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

City of the Fallen Sky: Paizo paperback, June 2012, 353 pages, cover art by J.P. Targete. Tim Pratt is the author of The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl and Briarpatch, as well as two collections, three media tie-ins, seven urban fantasies as by T.A. Pratt, and one novel under the name T. Aaron Payton. Pratt won a Hugo Award for his story "Impossible Dreams" and has been nominated for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, among many other honors.

City of the Fallen Sky is a Pathfinder role-playing game tie-in. (Another Pathfinder book, Nightglass by Liane Merciel, has already advanced to the second round in this bracket.) Our protagonist is Alaeron, an unscrupulous scholar in possession of magical artifacts he has stolen from Technic League. In the opening scene of City of the Fallen Sky, Alaeron uses one of those artifacts to rescue a beautiful woman named Jaya from two menacing thugs. But Alaeron soon will be menaced himself, both by an agent of the Technic League and the rich employer of the two thugs, and he may need Jaya to come to his rescue.

A Guile of Dragons: Pyr trade paperback, August 2012, 264 pages, cover art by Steve Stone. James Enge is the author of the Morlock Ambrosius trilogy, beginning with Blood of Ambrose, which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. Enge also teaches at Bowling Green, under a funny name.

A Guile of Dragons is the first in a prequel series, showing the early days of Enge's character Morlock Ambrosius. In the opening chapters, Nimue Viviana discovers she is pregnant by her lover Merlin. Fearing that Merlin will cast her aside, Nimue is persuaded by Earno Dragonkiller to betray Merlin. Earno transports Nimue across the Sea of Worlds, and she and her unborn child are transformed by the voyage.

The Battle: This battle matches up two excellent fantasists. Enge is going back to the origins of his signature universe. Pratt is working in the Pathfinder RPG universe, and the two previous Pathfinder books in the Battle of the Books were both impressive.

The opening of City of the Fallen Sky is also nicely written, but it lacks the engaging characterization of the other Pathfinder books I've sampled. Through 25 pages, I don't have a good sense of the character Alaeron. Hopefully as the book proceeds, he will develop enough personality to carry a novel, but the Battle of the Books can be unforgiving of characters who need time to grow on you.

A Guile of Dragons opens with a very clever short chapter explaining how our hero Ambrosius earned the enmity of the universe's competing Two Powers: "They both hated Ambrosius. He would suffer for inspiring them to agree on anything." From there, we flash back to before his birth, when his mother Nimue faced some agonizing decisions. Even if readers believe she was wrong to betray Merlin, her reasons are understandable, and we can still sympathize with her. Although I have not read Enge's previous books, the opening section of A Guile of Dragons is most engaging, definitely leaving me wanting to read more.

THE WINNER: A Guile of Dragons by James Enge

A Guile of Dragons advances to the second round, to meet either The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers or This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown vs. Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 18:53:00 +0000

Continuing with the bottom half of Bracket Five of the Battle of the Books, we have The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown going up against Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Devil's Nebula: Abaddon paperback, June 2012, 350 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Eric Brown is the author of over two dozen science fiction books and is a two-time winner of the British Science Fiction Award. The Devil's Nebula is the first volume in the Weird Space series. Brown has a second book in this series forthcoming, Satan's Reach, and further volumes are likely. Abaddon Books specializes in ongoing shared universe series, mostly fantasy and steampunk and zombies, but this new series is all space opera.

The Devil's Nebula takes place in a far-future universe, in which humans have battled an alien race called the Vetch. Ed Carew is the captain of the ship The Paradoxical Poet. His three-person crew has been dispatched to Hesperides, a former human colony evacuated when the Vetch captured this area of space. Their ostensible mission is to recover a rare piece of art inadvetently left behind, but a secondary objective is to find the wreckage of a mysterious spaceship that crashed on this world. When they arrive on Hesperides, Carew finds a Vetch ship has arrived ahead of them, looking for the same wreckage.

Deadfall Hotel: Solaris trade paperback, April 2012, 301 pages, cover art by John Kenn Mortensen. By my count, Steve Rasnic Tem is the author of eleven books, seven solo and four in collaboration with his wife Melanie, and a half-dozen chapbooks. His work emphasizes horror, but also includes a fair amount of fantasy and science fiction. He has won a World Fantasy Award, two Bram Stoker Awards, and two International Horror Guild Awards, among other honors.

The protagonist of Deadfall Hotel is Richard Carter, whose wife recently died when their house burned down. Richard was able to save their daughter Serena, and now he struggles to care for her while dealing with his own grief. A strange man named Jacob Ascher offers Richard the chance to succeed him as the manager of the Deadfall Hotel. The first 25 pages end with Richard and Serena arriving at the secluded hotel, which readers suspect is filled with supernatural presences.

The Battle: We have here two top-notch authors working at the top of their form, and now I'm supposed to try to justify putting down one of their books after only 25 pages.

Through 25 pages, The Devil's Nebula is engaging, fast-paced space opera. We have already had our first encounter with the bad-guy aliens, which ended in an interesting hint that maybe they aren't so bad after all, and maybe there's a greater threat lurking out there in the universe. At the same time, Brown has done a nice job of introducing the dynamic between his three human characters. I particularly like how Jed is the brash member of the crew, but when they get into a scrap, it's pint-sized Lania who suddenly steps forward to take charge.

The opening of Deadfall Hotel is by design less dramatic, as Tem hints at the strange nature of the Deadfall Hotel and slowly develops the relationship between Richard and Serena:

"Daddy?" came Serena's sleepy voice out of the back seat. "We're in the mountains already? Why didn't you wake me up?"

"They're not as close as they look, honey." But he wasn't really positive about that. . . .

"When I was little, I used to think all my good dreams floated up into the mountains," Serena said softly. "But the bad dreams, the nightmares, they floated down from the mountains, and through the city streets until they found the bedroom they were looking for. Isn't that funny, Daddy?"

On a sentence-by-sentence level, Deadfall Hotel is exquisitely written. Not that much happens in the first 25 pages, but the quality of writing by itself would be enough to get it past many first-round opponents. But unfortunatey for Tem, The Devil's Nebula is also very nicely written, and Brown has advanced the plot far enough in the opening section to get me engaged in the story. While both books are well done, that makes The Devil's Nebula a bit more difficult for me to put down.

THE WINNER: The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown

The Devil's Nebula moves into to the second round, where it will face Nightglass by Liane Merciel.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: Paradox Resolution by K.A. Bedford vs. Nightglass by Liane Merciel

noreply@blogger.com (Fantastic Reviews) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:53:00 +0000

We turn to the bottom half of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books, beginning with Paradox Resolution by K.A. Bedford against Nightglass by Liane Merciel. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

Paradox Resolution: Edge trade paperback, August 2012, 253 pages, cover art by Martin Pasco. K.A. Bedford is an Australian author who has published five novels with Candadian press Edge Publishing. Bedford's novel Eclipse won the Aurealis Award for best Australian science fiction novel of 2005. Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait, the prequel to Paradox Resolution, won Bedford a second Aurealis Award and was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Paradox Resolution is the second novel featuring "Spider" Webb, an ordinary Australian bloke who is good with machinery. He keeps finding himself in strange situations, simply because the machines he's especially adept at repairing happen to be time machines. In the opening section of Paradox Resolution, Spider looks in the office refrigerator and find the severed head of his former boss, who was not so affectionately known as "Dickhead." Disconcertingly, the head speaks to Spider, pleading for help. Spider later learns from his policewoman friend Iris that the Dickhead mystery has attracted attention from the highest levels of government.

Nightglass: Paizo paperback, July 2012, 345 pages, cover art by Tyler Walpole. Liane Merciel is the author of the Ithelas fantasy series, consisting so far of The River Kings' Road and Heaven's Needle. My fellow middle-aged aspiring writers will be disgusted to know that Merciel (under the name Jennifer Andress) published a story in Lucy Snyder's Dark Planet webzine when she was still in high school. (If you don't remember Dark Planet, it also published writers like Kelly Link, Gary A. Braunbeck, Tim Waggoner, and Robert Boyczuk.) Merciel is a prosecutor in her copious free time.

Nightglass is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game. It's the second Pathfinder book to try its luck in the Battle of the Books——Song of the Serpent by Hugh Matthews (aka Matthew Hughes) made it to the second round of the Fall 2012 Battle. Nightglass takes place in Nidal, an especially foreboding area of the Pathfinder universe. In the prologue, the only survivor of a survey party into Nidal is nursed back to health by a fearful single mother. In chapter one, the mother's oldest son is due to be tested for magical abilities by the strange and malicious "shadowcallers." The boy, Isiem, pretends not to have any such powers, at first.

The Battle: I like the tone K.A. Bedford is going for in Paradox Resolution——Spider is just an ordinary joe who wishes all this weird crap would stop happening to him. But I think in the first 25 pages, Bedford overplays it just a bit. In particular, a good portion of the opening section focuses on Spider's impending divorce from a woman for whom he still carries a torch, but who doesn't seem to care a whit about him. This is meant to make Spider sympathetic to us, but to my tastes it shades too far into making him into a schmuck. Still, I like where Bedford is going with the character, and I am interested in the talking Dickhead mystery, even though we haven't seen any actual time travel yet. That should be enough to get Paradox Resolution past an RPG tie-in, right?

Except that through 25 pages, Nightglass has utterly failed to deliver the kind of routine, by-the-numbers story I snobbishly expected from a tie-in book. This is my second venture into a Pathfinder novel, and I am most impressed with the quality of this series. I wasn't so surprised that Song of the Serpent was good, because I know Matthew Hughes is an excellent writer. But I had never before read anything by Liane Merciel, and I am pleased to report that her writing so far is also extremely strong.

Nightglass is absorbing from the outset, without any need for prior familiarity with the Pathfinder game. I like that Merciel trusts her readers to make connections that are not explicitly stated; for example, nobody ever mentions Isiem's father, but the boy strongly resembles the pale and powerful shadowcallers. Merciel also does a nice job conveying her characters' emotions through their dialogue. Here, for instance, Isiem asks his mother why the group of shadowcallers, just arrived to test the village's children, laughed at the villager who stepped forward to tend their horses:

"Because their horses aren't real. They're shadow and magic; they never needed tending. In a few hours they'll vanish, and Belero will have fed and watered empty stalls."

"Does Belero know that?"

"Yes."

"Then why did he do it?"

"Because he knows, as we all do, that their contempt is what keeps this village safe. If we're stupid yokels who can't tell false horses from real ones, then surely we don't know enough to evade their other sorceries. Ignorance is safety." She pinched his chin, turning his head so that his eyes met hers. It hurt, but there was such intensity——such raw fear——on his mother's face that Isiem bit back his protest. "Do you understand me? Ignorance is safety. And nothing they offer you, nothing they promise, is real. It's all shadows and lies, like their horses."

From this, Isiem knows to feign no reaction when the shadowcallers later have him look into their magical "nightglass." But he is soon forced to give his own magical abilities away, in order to save a friend about to be killed by the nightglass. The chapter ends:

His mother was wrong, Isiem thought. Not everything they promised was shadows and lies. They promised death, too. And that was real.

When you end your first 25 pages on a note like that, it compels me to read more.

THE WINNER: Nightglass by Liane Merciel

Nightglass advances to the second round, to take on either The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown or Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem.

To see the whole bracket, click here.