Category: Book Reviews: Fiction

Love and comfort in fantasy, or why George R. R. Martin isn’t the American Tolkien

I often hear Mr. Martin called "The American Tolkien." I can see why people say that. Both write (or wrote) extremely complex fantasy novels, both have very passionate fan bases (with a great deal of overlap), both have created British Isles-inspired worlds rich with invented history and languages, and, well, both authors have the initials "R. R." in their names. But honestly, I think the resemblance ends there. The similarities are superficial at best.

Book Review: City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte

The Prague of City of Dark Magic is a city steeped in legends of magic, a history of blood, and a legacy of secrets. It has been home to geniuses and eccentrics. It is also a city of secrets as music student Sarah Weston discovers. Sarah has come to the Prague Castle for the summer with a team of colorful academics to restore the Lubkowicz Palace to its former glory and turn it into a museum filled with centuries old treasures. There, she finds clues that might finally unravel the mystery of Beethoven's famous immortal beloved. What follows is a tale of mystery, politics, murder, a time traveling prince, a centuries-old dwarf, and even a portal to hell. Yes, and its a romantic comedy. This isn't a book that follows genre conventions, it lays them out like toys and plays with them.

Musing on Some Elements that Work in Fantasy, Part Two: Iconic Imagery

As we build the ePic Books brand, we're focusing on a single genre (or range of subgenres, I guess), at least for the first year or two: fantasy. A part of our strategy involves looking for certain elements that the very best and most successful fantasies—I'm talking the classics, the most beloved and enduring works that stand out, across years and even generations. One of those elements, Iconic Imagery, is very closely related to the Iconic Locations detailed in Part One.

Musing on Some Elements that Work in Fantasy, Part One: Iconic Locations

When asked to picture Narnia, you probably think of something rather like this, don't you?[/caption]If asked to close one's eyes and picture Narnia, I am willing to bet that just about everyone will picture a snow-covered wood surrounding a clearing where a lamppost sheds a soft, golden light ... just beyond a wardrobe door. Something about that image, that specific location, is iconic. It's a strong, concrete, visual image. It's something we almost can't help responding to, almost like it, that one place, was a character in a story. When we revisit, years later, it's like meeting an old friend.

Book Review: Jo Walton’s amazing “Among Others”

I readily confess: I am not above flights of hyperbole. Nonetheless, I don't think I am indulging in it even in the least when I say, Jo Walton's lovely, startling Among Others is more than amazing. It's a book that's going to save someone's life some day.

Book Review: “The Magicians and Mrs. Quent” by Galen Beckett

was about halfway through reading, and thoroughly enjoying, Galen Beckett's The Magicians and Mrs. Quent when I decided to pop online to check out the reviews. It's a rather irritating habit (irritating to me; I can't imagine that anyone else cares), but I like see if every one else agrees with my own assessment. The first review I read (I tried to find it again to link, but alas, it seems to have vanished) offered this critique: "nothing new." For the record, that doesn't seem to be the majority opinion, but frankly, I can't say I disagree. None of the ingredients, or few of them, anyway, are what you'd call groundbreaking. But then, it's not always the ingredients that make the stew; it's how they're mixed. Sure, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is pastiche. But it's very good pastiche. Outstanding, even. My wife and I too turns reading it aloud to one another, and we had an absolute blast.

Belated Book Review: “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke

If there was ever a book I truly don't know what to say about, it's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Don't get me wrong—I adored it. I've recommended it to dozens of my friends. But not all of them. I don't even recommend it to all of my friends who like fantasy, or mythic fiction, or British drawing room comedies of manners. It's a massive book, something like 400,000 thousand words (that's a guess; I haven't actually counted them). Nonetheless, I found myself enchanted from page one. Magic and sly witticisms were so thick I had to swat them away like flies, and the oh-so-English narrative delighted me. The characters are engaging and well-drawn, and the period voice, complete with obsolete spellings and elaborate, fanciful footnotes (don't dare skip them!) delighted me. All the same, when I was nearly halfway through, I found myself still wondering when the actual story was going to get started. It had been going all along, but Ms. Clarke, like any good magician, had distracted my attention.

Book Review: “The Wise Man’s Fear” by Patrick Rothfuss

The sequel to The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear, was released a few years later than promised, but it was worth the wait. The new volume picks up right where the last one ended. The central character, Kvothe, has been narrating the truth about his life—already a legend—to a scholarly young man known as Chronicler. Kvothe promised that the telling would take three days. The first volume was day one; the new one is the second day. The final volume, day three, should be released within our lifetimes, if all goes well. There's apparently a sequel trilogy coming after that. I have no idea when, but I feel utterly safe in saying that whenever it arrives, it will, like The Wise Man's Fear, be worth the wait.

Book Review: “Guardians of the Desert” by Leona Wisoker

The sequel to Secrets of the Sands, Guardians of the Desert, actually expands on the earlier book's strengths—the world is deeper and more complex and the characters have grown. Leona's sense of pace hasn't dulled, and the mental pictures conjured by her spare but elegant prose and much more vivid. Her subtle, wicked wit is still apparent—and still luring to catch the reader unaware.

Book Review of something utterly new, strange, and powerful: “The Orange Eats Creeps”

It makes me uncomfortable to picture Grace Krilanovich crafting The Orange Eats Creeps. I get these fleeting, nightmarish image of a young woman, wild-eyed and too thin, scrawling the words on the underside of a bridge somewhere, or on the walls of the kind of bar I'd be afraid to enter, even if I was cool enough to know how to find it. I picture her mainlining caffeine laced with meth, or something, some drug I've read about in newspapers, not for stimulation but to dull the fire of stranger substances screaming though her veins like electricity. Because you see, witnessing the birth of an new kind of literature, a utterly new way to pound and twist blocks of English into something mind-blastingly fresh, is a little frightening.

Book Review: “Mr. Timothy: A Novel” by Louis Bayard

I am not generally a fan of writers making use of another author's characters. While I have enjoyed more than a few modern takes on, say Sherlock Holmes, more often, we wind up with something like Scarlet, the unworthy followup to Margaret Mitchell's brilliant Gone With The Wind. Mr. Timothy: A Novel succeeds largely because in Dickens' original, Tiny Tim is little more than a caricature, a sort of cherubic plot point with a crutch. Building on our shared memory of "God bless us, every one!" Bayard shapes Timothy into a fully realized character—one that fascinates and, yes, makes us care.

Book Review: Looking for the King, An Inklings Novel

A very special Christmas gift brightened this past gloomy December: a chance to spent some remarkable evenings in conversation with the Inklings, that famous band of readers and writers that counted among its members C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Hugo Dyson. This remarkable experience came in the form of a new book, Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel by David C. Downing. It's a delightful read. The story tells of a young American, Tom, who has come to England in the years just before World War II to research a book on the historical King Arthur. Along the way, he encounters a lovely young woman, Laura, who is haunted by dreams that seem to be leading her to specific historical sites, all of which are connected to a famous lost artifact—the Spear of Destiny that pierced the side of Christ as he hung on the cross. Along the way, our heroes are fortunate enough to receive some help from the Inklings themselves, especially Williams, Tolkien, and Lewis.

Book Review: “The Meaning of Night” by Michael Cox

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post listing my fifteen favorite first sentences in literature. At the time, I hadn't read Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night: A Confession, or I would have been forced to give serious consideration to including it. It begins: After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an Oyster Supper. Now that's a pretty good start. It's an opening that hooks us immediately on the story, certainly. It's hard not to wonder what's going to follow that. More, it hooks us on character—who is this narrator, and how can he describe an act of terrible violence in such a casual manner? I'm happy to report that the book lives up to the promise of that first sentence. It is a dark, chilling read, and an utterly compelling one.

“Total Oblivion, More or Less” by Alan DeNiro

Read Total Oblivion, More or Less: A Novel Total Oblivion, More or Less is a strange novel. In a lot of ways, in fact, it's a novel about strangeness, and how ordinary people deal with it. Imagine Huck Finn's raft drifting through a post-apocalypse American wasteland. Things have changed. The government has disappeared, geography itself … Continue reading “Total Oblivion, More or Less” by Alan DeNiro →

Throw-back SciFi in “Deuces Wild: Beginners’ Luck” by L. S. King

The arc that makes Deuces Wild: Beginners' Luck work is the at first reluctant friendship that grows between the two leads. Imagine what might have happened in Star Wars had Luke met Han in that bar without Obi Wan and some urgent mission. Imagine them slowing coming to respect, and even like each other and they drift planet to planet, constantly finding new trouble to get themselves out of. The growth of that friendship is what keeps you smiling in spite of yourself and turning the pages.

“The Ruling Sea” by Robert V. S. Redick

Pretty much everything I said in my review of The Red Wolf Conspiracy also applies to it's sequel, The Ruling Sea. Once again, Robert V. S. Redick has created a fantasy that recaptures the swashbuckling adventure that I first fell in love with in my youth in books like The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood, The Three Musketeers, Treasure Island, and those marvelous, under-appreciated tales of Lloyd Alexander.

“The Angel’s Game” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Yesterday, I reviewed Carlos Ruiz Zafón's brilliant novel, The Shadow of the Wind. Continuing with the "holy crap this is good" theme, today I'm taking a look at his follow up, The Angel's Game. While both The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game are completely stand-alone novels, they are subtly connected. The two novels both a part of what Zafón says will eventually be a four-book cycle of loosely connected stories with overlapping narratives and characters. While either can be read alone, reading both makes each a deeper and richer experience. In fact, I read The Angel's Game at the same time that my wife Carol and I were reading The Shadow of the Wind aloud to one one another, a strange and wonderful experience.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I've wanted to review Carlos Ruiz Zafón's brilliant and lovely The Shadow of the Wind for a while now. I've hesitated largely because I needed to think of something to say other than simply, holy crap this is good! I first read the book back when it was first published in the United States—it was already a best seller in Europe—about four years ago or so. Over the holidays, faced with some sixteen hours in the car with two trips to Morristown Tennessee and Birmingham, Alabama, my wife and I decided to take turns reading it aloud to each other. I wondered, frankly, if it could possibly be as good as I remembered. It was. No, wait. It was even better.

“Last Night in Twisted River” by John Irving

I am happy to report that Last Night in Twisted River is the product of an author completely unafraid to brave the danger plunge deeply into the river that twists through his own psyche. The journey, part Twain, part Dickens, and all Irving, is one well worth taking.

“The Magicians” by Lev Grossman

When I first browsed through Lev Grossman's The Magicians at Blue Elephant Bookshop, I knew it was a book that was coming home with me. The jacket blurb promised a book for adults who, as young readers, had adored the Narnia, Oz, and Harry Potter stories, and books like T. H. White's The Once and Future King. And indeed, The Magicians draws liberally and lovingly from those sources. There is a magic school filled with eccentric professors and strange wonders, teaching by turning students into animals (as Merlyn does with the Wart in The Once and Future King), and even a hidden fantasy world accessed through a sleepy "between" world filled with pools, a motif familiar to anyone who has read C. S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew, one of the best of the Narnia books. Even the characters in The Magicians grew up reading and loving a series of fantasy books. That fond, nostalgic love is one of the reasons we are so drawn to them. But don't get the idea that The Magicians is a mere pastiche. The Magicians is told from a decided, utterly (even ironically) original, and heartbreaking, adult point of view.

“Silverlock” by John Myers Myers

In his introduction to the 1979 paperback edition of Silverlock (I still have my first 1979 Ace paperback, as well as a hardcover first edition and a lovely new hardback that includes the Companion), author Larry Niven enthuses: “You’ll get drunk on Silverlock. When you finish reading, you will feel like you got monumentally drunk with your oldest friends; you sang songs and told truth and lies all night or all week; you’ll sit there grinning at nothing and wondering why there isn’t any hangover.” I couldn’t agree more.

Two books (that aren’t quite) within other books

It's a joy to discover, after the last page of a good book is turned, that there is still more content to discover. Especially when the storytellers have the talent of Alice Hoffman and Catherynne Valente. This kind of expanded "book within a book" content is a trend I applaud enthusiastically. I hope we'll see more.

“The Third Angel” by Alice Hoffman

In The Third Angel, Alice Hoffman's prose is as lovely as ever. She is a master of a sudden and lyrical turn of phrase that seems as effortlessly graceful as a dancer's casual step. Every line has magic and poetry in it, the kind that makes you smile and, more than occasionally, look back to reread a phrase or passage. An example: "It was that silver-colored time between night and morning, when the sky is still dark, but lights are flicking on all over the city. It was quiet, the way it is in winter when snow first begins to fall." How perfectly and specifically evocative, concrete detail spun from froth and lace, and without a wasted syllable! Her prose has always been elegant, the way Earthbound angels would write, and she only gets better.

“Palimpsest” by Catherynne Valente

The joy of Palimpsest is in it's lush, dense, baroque, poetic and, yes, even haunting language. Every line is lovingly wrought, a treasure. Every paragraph aches with loveliness. It is utterly sensual and at times even erotic. It's also refreshingly witty. But it's like rich food; it's delicious, even decadent, but it's hard to take too much at once. It's a book to savor, in small bursts of bliss, and return to. It's not a book for careless beach reading; it is for autumn, with blanket, firelight, and blood-red wine.

“Coyote Moon” By John A. Miller

As fond as I am of trickster tales, it's hard to imagine anything with a title like Coyote Moon can be anything other than mythic. Coyote Moon doesn't have a lot to do with coyotes, or even with tricksters (although I have a feeling that author John Miller himself may qualify), but the novel is certainly mythic. First, baseball plays a major role in the story. As the brilliant book Ground Rules: Baseball and Myth shows, baseball is a goldmine for mythic material. Add in liberal doses of cutting edge physics (if you're not up on your science, don't worry), possible reincarnation, and the search for meaning and miracles, and the result is a myth lover's delight.

“Spirits in the Wires” By Charles de Lint

Spirits in the Wires is fun and entertaining. As a thriller, it's a page-turner. But the myth and the poetry of the writing make it lovely, and the characters make it come alive. Our compassion for de Lint's beautifully-drawn characters moves us, and makes the novel linger long after the last page is turned.