Book Review: Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont

Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont is the most recent book set in the same universe of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson, which Erikson and Esslemont created together, and Esslemont's fourth book in that universe. It is set chronologically after the eighth book in Erikson's series, Toll the Hounds, and picks up on many plot threads from that book and other earlier books, so I would strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with the series before reading this one. Reading Esslemont's previous three books before Orb Sceptre Throne would also be a good idea, but isn't as essential.

As usual, the book is split into a number of different plot threads. The story is set on the continent of Genabackis, focusing on the city-state of Darujhistan and its environs. The region has been wracked by conflict, with much of the continent devastated by war and its northern areas brought under the rule of the Malazan Empire. Moon's Spawn, an ancient flying fortress that recently plummeted into the sea, has become a hot spot for treasure hunters seeking to make their fortunes-including Antsy, one of the deserters from the armies of the Malazan Empire who settled in Darujhistan- and for those who would prey upon them.

On an island to the south, the army of the Seguleh- a mysterious, isolated people whose warriors are swordsmen without compare- set out for the mainland and Darujhistan, in response to a prophecy that they believe is now being fulfilled. They are led by Jan, the Second, who is eager to lead them to what he believes is their destiny and purpose as a people after millennia of exile from their original homeland- not realizing just what has summoned them back and what that destiny is.

Meanwhile, the situation around Darujhistan remains precarious, with many of the formerly independent cities of northern Genabackis and the nomadic tribes of the continent's plains chafing against the continued presence of the Malazans. Torvald Nom has been newly elevated to a seat on Darujhistan's ruling council, and finds himself faced with something far worse than the city's Byzantine and already frequently deadly politics. The region will soon be thrown into turmoil by a discovery made in the ruins outside Darujhistan, remnants of an ancient era when the city was the seat of a great empire. Now the evil that ruled over that empire thousands of years ago is returning, seeking to regain its power, starting with Darujhistan itself.

Orb Sceptre Throne is an enjoyable book that is worth reading for Malazan fans, though I wouldn't place it in the top tier of that series. The main story is quite interesting, though some of the secondary plot threads drag early on.. There's some quite exciting action sequences, including our first look at the Seguleh fighting as an army- previously they've only appeared one or two at a time- and some scenes involving the fully u unleashed power of the Malazan Empire's mysterious allies, the Moranth. The story also ties up some plot threads and answers some questions left by previous Malazan, in what I thought was a very satisfactory way. Parts of the ending were too abrupt and something of an anticlimax, though it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the journey there, and there were also aspects of the conclusion that I quite liked.

I liked the characters, and especially Jan of the Seguleh- the ruler and greatest warrior of an army of the deadliest swordsmen on the planet, and yet trapped and paralyzed by what he believes his duty and the duty of his people to be. The reborn Tyrant of Darujhistan is suitably creepy and ominous, utterly silent behind a blank mask as he holds court while another man speaks as his “voice.” The book also sees the return of some old favorites including Antsy and the other former Bridgeburners settled in Darujhistan, Torvald and Rallick Nom, the mysterious Kruppe, and - my other personal favorite- Traveler, AKA Dassem Ultor, trying to withdraw into quiet anonymity now that his decades-long quest for revenge against Hood, god of death, was made pointless after he was cheated of his chance for vengeance during the events of toll the hounds.

As with his previous book, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne shows a marked improvement in Esslemont's writing style compared to his first two books, Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard, moving the story smoothly and confidently along without the occasional awkwardness seen in his earlier work. Esslemont's writing style is once again more straightforward less prone to digression than Steven Erikson's; whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste, but for the most part I thought the story benefited from Esslemont's approach.

While it's not at the same level as his previous book, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne is a solid effort by Ian C. Esslemont that I would definitely recommend it for fans of the Malazan series.  

Book Review: Gilded Latin Bones by Glen Cook

Gilded Latten Bones is the 13th book in Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. fantasy/detective series. Like all Garrett books, Gilded Latten Bones' primary plot stands alone, but I very strongly recommend reading the previous Garrett books before reading this one; the story is enjoyable on its own, but there's a lot about the book that is more effective if you've spent time with Garrett and company before.

As the story begins, Garrett has finally started to settle down. He and his longtime on-again off-again girlfriend Tinnie Tate are engaged, and Garrett has left his uncertain and often dangerous life  as private investigator for secure employment in his home city of TunFaire, capital of the kingdom of Karenta, as a security specialist for the wealthy Tate family's thriving manufacturing empire. This new-found peace is shattered by the late-night arrival of several armed thugs who had been hired by an unknown party to abduct Tinnie, followed by the news that Garrett's long-time friend Morley Dotes, elven assassin and underworld figure turned mostly-legitimate entrepreneur, is comatose after being brutally attacked and left for dead in a late-night ambush on the streets of TunFaire. Despite Tinnie's disapproval, protests, and volcanic temper, along with Garrett's own desire to leave the danger and economic insecurity of his old career as a private eye behind him, he now delves back into TunFaire' s criminal underworld to find out who is responsible for the attacks on his fiancée and his best friend- and whether or not they're related.

TunFaire has settled down, too. Karenta's decades' long war with its rival Venegeta, a devastating conflict over silver mines (fuel for the magic of the sorcerer-aristocrats who rule Karenta) that consumed whole generations of young men, is over. The omnipresent racial tensions that threatened to boil over into large-scale violence with the war's end, when thousands of newly unemployed conscript soldiers were thrust into a civilian society where many trades were dominated by nonhumans after decades of economic adjustment to the lengthy and often permanent absences of virtually all of its young human men, have cooled a bit. The establishment of a more professional and less corrupt police force by Deal Relway, the recently appointed commander of the city watch, has brought an end to much of the overt criminality that plagued the city and created an era of (comparative) law and order.

To resolve the mystery, he'll have to seek out the aid of his old ally the Dead Man, the 500-year old corpse of a member of a powerful nonhuman race called the Loghyr whose original occupant hasn't departed yet, and some other acquaintances from his less reputable past. His investigation will required him to face a cabal of corpse-stealing sorcerers and their grotesque creations, mysterious political interference with his investigation, corruption at high levels of TunFaire society, and, hardest of all to confront, the knowledge that his duty to his old friend may cost him the love of his life.

I greatly enjoyed Golden Latten Bones and think it's an excellent addition to the Garrett series. As always, Garrett's first-person narration and jaded sense of humor is highly entertaining and is a huge part of what makes the story so enjoyable. I liked the central mystery, though to a great extent it's a backdrop- this book is, probably more than any other entry in the series, about Garrett rather than the case he's working on. The book is somewhat more sedentary than usual, with Garrett doing less of the legwork for the case himself- his circle of allies, sources, and friends has grown greatly since the beginning of the series, and that comes into play here. The story remains interesting, however, and there are some nice action sequences as well.

The book is more character-focused than its predecessors, and the book has a particular focus on how Garrett and the people in his life have grown and changed- or how they haven't- since we first met them. Barrett is noticeably off his game when he first begins investigating after spending over a year in his less demanding job working for the Tate family, and begins to wonder if he's no longer cut out for the demands of his old career and lifestyle. When he first moves back into his old residence- which his assistant Pular Singe and long-time housekeeper Dean have continued to use in his absence- so that he can keep an eye on the wounded Morley, he's startled by just how much frailer the elderly Dean has become. Singe, meanwhile, has grown remarkably since first meeting Garrett. A member of a despised race called ratpeople, an unnatural hybrid species created a few centuries ago in some sorcerer's bizarre experiments, she has gone from living in desperate poverty under the yoke of her thuggish elder brother and working as a tracker due to her preternaturally sensitive sense of smell to working as the manager of Garrett's office and financial affairs, has learned to read and write (an uncommon skill in general and unheard of among ratpeople), and speaks to Garrett as an equal.

I especially liked the portrayal of Tinnie Tate. Tinnie has generally been portrayed as a short-tempered, possessive, and frequently unreasonable person. And she still is, but we see her in greater and more sympathetic depth here as someone whose driving emotion is not anger or jealousy but fear, who knows that her behavior is frequently unreasonable, self-destructive, and threatens to drive away the very people she loves and is so afraid of losing, but feels like she is so locked into that pattern of thought and behavior that she can't stop. Cook's portrayal of this is very effective, and rather poignant if you've known somebody like that yourself.

The city of TunFaire remains one of my favorite fantasy settings, taking many of the typical conventions of fantasy- fairly widespread magic, a roughly medieval level of technology, races like elves and dwarves- and creating something that feels quite different from the typical fantasy world. It's interesting to see how it, too, is changing, as society adjusts to the end of the war, new inventions make large-scale manufacturing more economically significant than it has ever been before, and Relway's reformed city watch brings a previously unknown level of law and order to the city- and is becoming a political force in its own right. TunFaire is more peaceful than it used to be- though that's a relative measure.

The overall tone of the story is more upbeat than many of the previous Garrett books. The Garrett, P.I. series has never been as dark as Glen Cook's Black Company series, and Garrett himself is a fun character and narrator, but nevertheless a number of the previous Garrett books have had a strong sense of sadness or melancholy about them. There's some of that here, too, but all in all the world seems brighter here than it often has in the past.

Gilded Latten Bones is is very strongly recommended for fans of the Garrett series, and I strongly recommend the series as a whole (starting with Sweet Silver Blues) for anyone who likes fantasy and is interested in something different from the norm.

Book Review: Out of the Waters by David Drake

Out of the Waters is the second novel in David Drake's “Books of the Elements” fantasy series, following The Legions of Fire. I recommend reading the first book before this one, though Out of the Waters is a self-contained story and stands up well on its own.

Like its predecessor, Out of the Waters centers on the city of Carce, the capital of a sprawling empire. Gaius Alphenus Saxa, a wealthy aristocrat, has been newly appointed as the governor of Lusitania, one of the provinces of Carce's vast empire, and is financing a lavish public spectacle to celebrate. The performance is going as planned when a shocking sight appears in the theater- images of a great city defended by strange flying ships, being attacked by a monstrous many-limbed creature from the sea that grows larger and larger as it advances on the city.

As the rest of the crowd continues to watch, enraptured, Saxa's son Varus has a prophetic vision. He realizes that they are witnessing a scene from the distant past, the destruction of ancient Atlantis by the mythical beast known as the Typhon- a vast, monstrous being that will soon return to lay waste to the entire world. His stepmother Hedia, a woman who fears almost nothing, is transfixed with terror at the sight of strange men made out of glass walking the battlements of the siege city- the same creatures she has seen in a series of recent nightmares. And his younger sister Alphena, watching the cataclysmic scene of destruction, doesn't see the monstrous Typhon at all- she sees a man.

Saxa and the crowd are delighted, thinking it must be some amazing feat of stagecraft, but Varus, Alphena, Hedia, and Varus' friend Corylus - have already witnessed too much to confuse the vision with some sort of stage trickery. Together, the five have already saved Carce from a doom foreseen in one of Varus' visions, and now they must find a way to do so again. There are many dangers in their path and many mysteries to unravel- the reason for Atlantis' terrible fate, the origins and nature of the Typhon itself, and how they can possibly stop something that crushed a civilization even more advanced than Carce, and said in myth to be so terrible that only Zeus himself was able to stop it.

I really liked Out of the Waters. The book follows a similar structure as The Legions of Fire, splitting up the heroes early on and sending them on separate journeys that eventually converge again, and like its predecessor this format works quite well. The plot is exciting and interesting, especially as the true nature and origins of the Typhon are revealed, and Drake does a really good job of actually making a grotesque, world-destroying monstrosity the heart of a very emotionally engaging story.

The different strands of the plot are written such that each of the four main viewpoint characters has a very distinctive voice, and Drake is very effective in using this to bring them to life. Varus' sister Alphena gets to take a more active role in the story this time, and it was interesting to see her grow as a person compared to who she was at the start of the first book.

The setting is unusual for this sort of fantasy in that Carce, its empire, and its culture are quite explicitly Rome in all but name- aside from “Carce,” even names are kept the same. In addition to making Carce feel very different from a more typical fantasy setting, Drake's attention to historical detail frequently makes Carce seem much more foreign to a modern reader than many imaginary worlds, even during mundane events. There are aspects of it that you'll get more out of if you already have some knowledge of the period, but the book explains things well enough that its not a requirement to understand what's going on. The Typhon is inspired by an interesting mixture of Classical and American Indian (Cherokee, more specifically) mythology, and Drake's combination and interpretation of them result in something that is both horrifying and poignant.

Many aspects of the book- lost Atlantis, the Typhon, some of the places the characters journey to- put me in mind of early American fantasy and “weird fiction” authors like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, or (to some extent) H.P. Lovecraft, not so much in their specifics but in the way they evoke the the sense of the cosmos as something frighteningly vast, in both space and time. This contributes to the overall tone of the book, which (like most of Drake's fantasy, now that I think about it) is probably best described as a high fantasy story set in a sword-and-sorcery universe. The world is indifferent to humanity and its fate, magic and the supernatural tend to be frightening, disturbing things, human life is frequently very cheap, and there's no sign of any sort of higher power watching over mankind, but the protagonists are nevertheless heroic figures who will undergo whatever it takes to protect the world.

I highly recommend Out of the Waters for fans of fantasy, and especially for fans of Drake's previous work.

Interesting new project from Angry Robot Books

This intrigues me: Angry Robot Books is starting a new project called "Worldbuilder" that actively encourages fans to create their own derivative works based on the universe of one of their upcoming books, Empire State by Adam Christopher. Once it's up and running, fans of the book will be able to upload their own creations to the official Worldbuilder website under a Creative Commons license. There are also plans for published anthologies based on this material.

The most similar project I can think of is the community of fans that has arisen around Eric Flint's 1632 and its sequels, which emerged out of fan discussions on the Baen Books message boards and has subsequently given rise to a regularly published online collection of new fan-contributed stories from Baen, the Grantville Gazette, as well as several paperback compilations. The Gazettes are overseen by Flint himself and are, if I'm not mistaken, actually considered a canonical part of the 1632 universe. The Worldbuilder project looks like it's going to be somewhat looser- anyone can contribute their fan works to the site, whereas fan-written 1632 stories have to go through a review and approval process and get Flint's imprimatur before appearing in the Gazette-  but it would be interesting to see if some of the Worldbuilder material becomes "official."

I would definitely like to see something like this take off. I've seen some very cool examples of storytelling and worldbuilding created through group efforts at somewhat in this vein,* so it's good to see another publisher and published author trying to tap into it. *(E.g.the SCP Foundation or Project LONG STAIR. Or the Cthulhu Mythos, for that matter.)

The book being used, Empire State, seems like a good choice for this sort of thing, since it's apparently a sort of noir superhero story set in a fantasy version of 1920s New York. Established superhero-based settings like the Marvel Universe are comprised of characters and locations created by a number of different authors, and I think the nature of superheroes as characters makes it easier to have multiple characters written by multiple authors, each possessing abilities and having experiences that wouldn't be possible in our world and have possible implications about how the fictional world works, without stepping on each other's toes too much. So Angry Robot is kicking off this project with something especially well-suited to it, which is good.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Book Review: Stonewielder by Ian C. Esslemont

Stonewielder is Ian Cameron Esslemont's third book in the Malazan epic fantasy setting that he created together with Malazan Book of the Fallen series author Steven Erikson. Like Esslemont's previous Return of the Crimson Guard, it's events are contemporaneous with those of Erikson's books but focused on other parts of their shared universe. Chronologically, it is set after Esslemont's Return of the Crimson Guard and seems to take place around the same time as Erikson's Reaper's Gale or Toll the Hounds.

The Korelri subcontinent  and it's numerous nearby islands are home to several nations, with a largely sea-based economy and culture. Stretching along its northern shore is the Stormwall, a vast fortification that holds back the yearly assaults of the Stormriders, a mysterious seaborne race wielding powerful magics who have assailed the wall for hundreds of years for reasons unknown. It is defended by the Stormguard, a military force assembled from professional soldiers, press-ganged conscripts, and religious warriors dedicated to the patron deity of the wall and of Korel, a goddess known only as the Lady whose worship is Korel's principle religion. Years ago, the Malazan empire's attempted conquest of the region ended ignominiously when their invasion force mutinied and its leaders set themselves up as the new rulers of the Korelri territory they had conquered, forming an uneasy peace with the other political powers of the region and the native Korelri now under their rule.
 

Greymane is a former officer of the Empire's army who left to fight for the Crimson Guard, a mercenary army dedicated to the Empire's overthrow, and is now trying to settle into a peaceful civilian life as a swordsmanship instructor. The Malazan Empire and its new Emperor have decided to send a new expedition to Korel to bring its traitorous former generals to heel- and for reasons unknown, he wants the wanted traitor Greymane to lead it.
 

Meanwhile, the Stormguard is struggling to continue fulfilling its ancient task, with its ranks growing thinner each year. The Stormwall itself is faltering, with the accumulated damage to the  Wall from the Stormriders' renewed assault each year accumulating faster than it can be repaired and threatening the ancient structure with collapse. No one knows who the Stormriders are or what they want, but if the Stormwall falls they have the power to lay all of Korel to waste. Like the rest of Korel, the leaders of the Stormguard place their faith in the Lady and Her protection... but what does She actually want?

Stonewielder is a fine addition to the Malazan universe and Esslemont's best book to date. The book is well-paced, and  Esslemont successfully juggles a large number of characters and plot threads and is able to keep things well-paced. The central plot is interesting and build to an excellent climax. As a Malazan fan, it was nice to get a closer look at locations that are only alluded to in Erikson's books, and Esslemont creates an interesting setting with Korel.

The action scenes are exciting and evocative, and there are some truly impressive sequences here. The battles tend to feel more “military” than those in Erikson's books, probably due to the comparatively lower level of power possessed by most of the characters here compared to some of the prominent figures in Erikson's books. The character's are a bit more life-sized, and there's less emphasis on the sort of awe-inspiring acts of individual skill and heroism common in Erikson's books and more on the clash of armies made of brave but relatively average men and women, standing side by side with their comrades. I like the sort of stuff Erikson does with the vast power of someone like Quick Ben or the larger-than-life prowess of characters like Kalam and Karsa Oorlong, but the contrast Esslemont provides is also quite interesting and effective.

Esslemont's abilities as a writer have developed noticeably. His writing style in Stonewielder has grown smoother, and lacks the occasional awkwardness or clunkiness of description or dialogue seen in Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard. Stonewielder seems, for lack of a better word, more confident than Esslemont's previous work. I enjoyed those books overall, but in them Esslemont's writing sometimes sometimes had an  awkward, stumbling, nervously restrained quality, like an intelligent but shy person giving a public speech. The awkwardness is gone, and Stonewielder feels much stronger as a result. 

 

Stylistically, Esslemont's writing is more straightforward and less given to digression and introspection than Erikson's. Which is preferable is subjective, but both writers do well with their respective styles and both have created a good fit between style and subject matter, with Esslemont's more austere writing working well for the more down-to-earth story he's telling.  (Down to earth by Malazan standards, I hasten to add, which is sort of like saying someone is “short compared to most other giants.”)
 

Stonewielder is a fine book and a worthy addition to the Malazan series. It's not something I'd recommend for people new to the series, who are likely to be quite lost without the context provided by earlier books, but it is very strongly recommended for anyone familiar with the previous Malazan books. (If you're not familiar with it, I strongly recommend the whole thing for fans of dark epic fantasy in the vein of things like Glen Cook''s Black Company series. Start with Erikson's Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates.) If you're a Steven Erikson fan who didn't care for Esslemont's previous work, I'd still recommend giving Stonewielder a shot. Esslemont is really coming into his own here, and I'm eager to see what he'll do next.

Book Review: De Bello Lemures by Thomas Brookside

De Bello Lemures, Or The Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica is a self-published book, about the length of a long novella, by Thomas Brookside.

De Bello Lemures is presented as a newly recovered and translated Latin text, originally written in the late 2nd Century AD by Lucius Artorius Castus, a Roman military commander. The story begins in Armorica (Brittany), a minor backwater of Roman Gaul where Artorius and his troops, a mix of Roman legionaries and Iazyges (an Indo-Iranian tribe that settled in Eastern Europe) auxiliaries, have just successfully put down a native uprising. When the surviving rebels are put to death by crucifixion, one of them calls out a curse in his native tongue just before expiring, saying that he will lead the dead to take revenge on the Romans.

Artorius, contemptuous of the natives and what he regards as their barbaric superstitions, thinks little of it. That night, however, while returning to camp after dining with a wealthy local citizen, Castus and his companions- Radamyntos, an Iazyges officer, and Pacilus, a tribune- are attacked on the road. Their assailants are men dressed in rags, covered in blood and filth, and bearing terrible wounds, incapable of any speech other than inarticulate moans. Possessed by bloodlust and able to shrug off wounds that no man should be able to survive, they fall upon the local farm boy serving as Castus' guide and tear him apart with their bare hands and teeth before Castus and his fellows are finally able to bring them down.

In the distance, Castus and his companions can now hear a low, dense droning sound- the sound of more inhuman voices like those of their attackers, filling the forest. With the countryside overrun by ferocious and almost unkillable madmen, they will need to find defensible shelter to survive the night. What fuels the murderous insanity of the men who attacked them is unclear, although Radamyntos recognized one of their assailants- he had killed him in battle and seen him dumped in a mass grave the day before...

I'm not generally a fan of zombie horror, but I greatly enjoyed De Bello Lemures. The storytelling held my interest, and the atmosphere was very strong. Castus is very effective as a protagonist and narrator, and Brookside does a good job of making him compelling without soft-pedaling or glossing over the sort of attitudes a man of his time, place, and station would likely have.

Brookside makes extremely effective use of his historical setting, and this adds to the story enormously. What makes everything work for me is that the historical element isn't a gimmick or an excuse to just retread standard zombie tropes in fancy dress. It's far more fundamental, and it greatly affects the impact of the book.

As described above, the book uses a “lost document” framing device and is built on the conceit that De Bello Lemures is an actual recovered work written by a second-century Roman Roman general. The story is prefaced with an introduction describing the discovery of the original text due to advances in the use of synchrotronic x-ray analysis on ancient documents, the provenance of the medieval palimpsest where the recovered text was found (including an explanation of why the title of the book, appended to it centuries later by a medieval copyist, is written in incorrect Latin) and the intense controversy incited in the scholarly community. It also includes information about Castus and the various theories that have been offered to explain its bizarre contents. The story is footnoted throughout to explain allusions made by Castus,  the historical and cultural context in which he lived, and the implications of certain statements and events in light of the overall body of knowledge about ancient Rome.

The main body is told by Castus in the first person. What really makes it work is that, while there are some concessions to modern writing conventions, primarily concerning dialogue (which the foreword explains as interpolations added to the English translation rather than features of the original Latin text), Castus' voice feels very authentic; Brookside does a very good job of capturing the tone and style of translations of genuine Classical histories.

The historical verisimilitude is enjoyable in itself, but it's even greater power is the atmospheric effect it creates. Zombies have become a very well-worn pop culture trope at this point, and for me personally they don't really work well as horror because they're too transparent and too concrete for my tastes- what they are, what they want to do, and usually some clue as to how they can be overcome or at least resisted usually becomes apparent to both the readers/viewers and the characters fairly quickly, even if their ultimate origin is not explained. While I'm sure I'd be horrified by the idea of a dead body coming back to life and attacking people in real life, in fictional contexts they usually just seem generic to me- they're orcs or stormtroopers or nameless hoodlums, except ickier.

De Bello Lemures manages to avoid this problem. The book's historical details and academic presentation, along with Castus' terse, no-nonsense writing style, creates a context in which the presence of zombies seems much more jarring and incongruous, much more wrong, than it would in a story set in present-day. This drives home just how incredibly bizarre, unnatural, and disturbing zombies would really be in a way nothing else I can think of really has. It made them seem truly horrifying, instead of merely dangerous

I'd strongly recommend De Bello Lemures for any fan of horror or dark historically-based fantasy. It's a short read, but well-worth getting and a very promising debut for Thomas Brookside. You can read a free preview here.

Book Review: Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson

Dust of Dreams is the ninth of the planned 10 books of the Malazan Book of the Fallen epic fantasy series by Steven Erikson.  Familiarity with the story up to this point is essential to understanding what's going on; this is definitely not a place to jump in if you haven't been following the series. Unlike the previous Malazan books, which are part of a larger story but meant to have some sort of resolution within each individual book, Dust of Dreams ends on a cliffhanger that will be continued directly in the forthcoming tenth and final book, The Crippled God.

(Newcomers should start at the beginning with Gardens of the Moon. I highly recommend the whole series for fantasy fans, especially if you enjoy books like Glen Cook's Black Company series)

The Bonehunters, renegade former Army of the Malazan Empire, have crossed the seas to the continent of Lether, a previously isolated land where beings of tremendous power are converging. Adjunct Tavore, their leader, intends to lead them past the civilized lands of the Empire of Letheras into the barren Wastelands beyond, and from there to the distant land of Kolanse- for reasons she will reveal to no one. Outlawed in their native lands and half a world away from everything they've ever known, the bone hunters have only their trust in the Adjunct and their loyalty to their comrades in arms to drive them as they march towards a lonely, lifeless land on a mission they don't comprehend or expect to survive.

Their allies have reached Lether are on the move to join them: the veteran cavalryman of the Khundryl Burned Tears and the Grey Helms, a warrior-cult dedicated to the war gods Togg and Fanderay. Meanwhile, other forces are at work. The matron of the last surviving bastion of the K'Chain Chemelle, the ancient species whose hive-like societies once dominated much of the world, is making a desperate and seemingly mad bid to save her people- one that rests on a human woman. Onos Toolan, the ancient and formerly undead warrior who has become chieftain of the nomadic White Face Barghast, struggles to maintain peace in the face of clan leaders and other rivals calling who are calling for war against the neighbors of the barghast and increasingly resentful of their new leader's opposition. The Errant, one of the ancient Elder Gods who ruled the world in its prehistory before being displaced by a younger generation of deities, is gathering his fellows in the hope of making a bid to regain his ancient power and glory. And somewhere in the midst of these events lurks the Crippled God, whose machinations to free himself from his torment and imprisonment have laid whole nations to waste.

I really enjoyed Dust of Dreams. Stylistically, the book lies somewhere between the more straightforward earlier books in the series and the more introspective and occasionally digressive style of its immediate predecessor, Toll the Hounds. The balance is mostly pretty successful, moving the action along steadily while still giving a lot of time to build up atmosphere. There are parts that get a bit too verbose, but the the book as a whole was more than strong enough to keep me reading. Erikson has a talent for evoking emotion through both large-scale, often cataclysmic events and individual struggles and tragedies, and the combination of the deeply personal and the implacably, pitilessly impersonal side by-side is very effective

The Malazan series has always been quite dark, despite containing a good deal of humor and inspiring heroism, and Dust of Dreams is even more so. The tone is relentlessly grim and foreboding, something reinforced by the book's events, the descriptions of the bleak, empty expanses on which most of the action takes place, and the thoughts of the characters as they march onward in a seemingly hopeless and senseless cause.

This is one of the ways the vast history of Erikson's setting, stretching back across hundreds of thousands of years, pays off. It's particularly striking in this book, and it adds a lot to the atmosphere. We finally get a close look at the K'Chain Chemelle-  hundreds of thousands of years ago the world's dominant intelligent species and builders of wonders far beyond any achievement of humans, now a single isolated enclave barely clinging to existence. We  learn more of the ancient history of the Tiste Andii; once the race whose vast power cast down the dominion of the  K'Chain Chemelle, now themselves a fading remnant that has all but vanished from the world. Lether itself is changing, it's long isolation and stasis shattered by the arrival of the Malazans. The Errant and his fellow Elder Gods, who once commanded fundamental forces of the world and were worshiped with vast offerings of blood and human sacrifice, are a shadow of what they once were and have been all but forgotten. The weight of history feels almost crushing, with vast gulfs of time swallowing up even the mightiest beings and empires, every civilization and event built atop the dust of countless once-glorious races, nations, and even gods long since dead and forgotten.

The darkness can seem almost overwhelming at times, and it's added to buy some brutal emotional punches in the story. Despite this, it still- like the previous Malazan books- has a certain positivity that distinguishes it from a lot of other fantasy on the darker, grittier end of the spectrum. The heroism of many of the characters, whether they're marching off to war like the Bonehunters or struggling to prevent one like Onos Toolan, is in many places quite inspiring and moving, and grows even more so set against the dark background of Erikson's story and setting.

I definitely recommend Dust of Dreams for anyone who's followed the Malazan series so far. It's a rewarding continuation of the series so far and a fine buildup to the series' climax in The Crippled God.

Book Review: The Legions of Fire by David Drake

David Drake is among my favorite authors, so I was quite excited when this book arrived.  The Legions of Fire is the first entry in Drake's planned four-book fantasy series, The Books of the Elements.

The story begins in Carce, capitol city of an empire that dominates the known world.  Corylus, a soldier's son with a scholarly bent who grew up on the empire's frontiers, attends a public recital given by his friend Varus, a young aristocrat and scholar with aspirations of being a poet.  Varus is reading his poem when he, Corylus, and Varus' sister Alphena are seized by bizarre visions, and Varus shocks the crowd- and himself- when he stops reading his poem, tears the manuscript apart, and begins making apocalyptic pronouncements warning of the imminent destruction of the world by fire.  Pandareus, Varus and Corylus’ rhetoric instructor, takes the two young friends to meet his friend Priscus, one of the commissioners of the Sybilline Books- ancient prophecies that only a few men have ever seen, kept under strict guard and opened only by order of the Senate of Carce.  During the meeting, Varus falls into another trance, and a startled Priscus reveals that Varus’ rants are in fact quotes from the Books.

Terrible supernatural forces are gathering around Varus'  family and friends.  Varus'  father Saxa has been spending most of his time with a strange man named Nemastes, who claims to be a sorcerer from Hyperborea.  Alphena, visiting the temple of Tellus with her and Varus' stepmother Hedia (who is not much older than they are) to pray for a suitable husband, is terrorized when the statue of the goddess moves and speaks in a man's voice, proclaiming that she will marry Spurius Cassius- a famous citizen of Carce put to death by the Senate centuries ago.  Corylus finds himself repeatedly slipping over the boundary into some other world, where strange beings urge him to kill his friend Varus before it's too late.   The cataclysm spoken of in the Sybilline Books that Varus has unwillingly prophesied is real, and its architects intend to use Varus as their instrument to bring it about.  The barriers between worlds are weakening, and Varus, Corylus, Alphena, and Hedia all find themselves drawn into strange realms nothing like the world they know, where they must struggle to survive and find out how they can stop what is coming.  If they fail, the entire world will burn.

I greatly enjoyed this book.  Drake once again demonstrates his talent for intense action and complex plotting, juggling four major plot threads and viewpoint characters as their stories separate and then intersect again.  Drake's use of historical and mythological inspirations is very effective, and he creates a world that feels very concrete and real and yet profoundly strange at the same time.

I liked the characters- the hedonistic yet grim-minded and duty-bound Hedia, earnest and straightforward Corylus, intellectual yet sentimental Varus, and fearful but determined Alphena.  With Alphena and Varus, Drake also does a nice job of portraying courage and determination shown by people who are in completely over their heads, each in their own way, and know it but still press on.  Drake has a knack for infusing the mindset of his viewpoint characters into the way each section is written without hitting the reader over the head with it, and makes each plot thread feel like its main character.

The setting is a little unusual.  The Legions of Fire is not historical fantasy, but the story is set, sort of, in the early Roman Principate during the reign of Emperor Tiberius; for most practical purposes, Carce is Rome.  Aside from Carce itself, even the names are kept the same: there are references to the Gauls and Carthaginians, real historical (to the characters as well as the reader) figures like Julius Caesar and Spurius Cassius, the Rhine and Danube rivers, and so on.  I found this a bit jarring at first, but quickly came to like it.  It allows Drake- who was a classics major in college and has frequently used his extensive knowledge of Latin literature and Classical history as inspirations- to set his story in a world that feels very solid and defined without the need for large digressions providing background information, and ancient Rome offers a setting that feels as alien as any fantasy culture.  In my case, it helped that Classical antiquity is a longstanding interest of mine, but I think the setting will be enjoyable even for people who don't have that background.

The fantasy elements, too, are in large part grounded in real Roman (and Norse) beliefs, such as the prophetic Sibyline Books that are consulted by the Senate in times of crisis.  Magic in Carce is likewise based on old Roman beliefs: It is secretive, feared, widely disapproved of both legally and socially and yet widely sought, and people who claim to wield it are more likely to be charlatans and con men than authentic magicians.  Genuine magic in Carce's world is rare, sinister, and frequently unsavory and disturbing.  Other aspects of the story draw on Norse myths.  Again, you'll get more out of this aspect if you know something about the source material, but even without that background  knowledge it's quite evocative and effective on its own.

I'd recommend The Legions of Fire for anyone who enjoys David Drake's work, fans of heroic fantasy, and readers of historically-based stories who are interested in something different from normal historical fiction.  It's a fine start to the Books of the Elements series and I look forward to whatever is next.

Book Review: Balefires by David Drake

David Drake is known first and foremost for his importance to the field of military science fiction, and many of his recent books have been space opera or heroic fantasy.  However, many of Drake's early publications were in the horror genre, often influenced by the classic pulp fantasy, horror, and "weird fiction" of writers like H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Manly Wade Wellman.

Balefires: Tales of The Weird and Fantastic contains 24 of Drake's fantasy and horror stories.  The emphasis is on Drake's early work from the 1960s and '70s, but the stories included span almost three decades.  A few have previously appeared in the David Drake collections released by Baen Books, but many have been largely unavailable since the 1960s or 1970s.

The settings are quite diverse.  Several of the stories, drawing on Drake's own experiences, involve American troops in the Vietnam War.  Drake's interest in history also frequently comes to the fore, with a number of stories stories set in Viking Age Scandinavia, the Roman Empire, or other eras.  There are also a number of stories set in contemporary America (including one about 30 miles from my home, which I got a kick out of.)  Some of the stories are clearly influenced by cosmic horror in the vein of Lovecraft or Howard.  Others portray evils on a more human scale, and a few stories are more in the mode of heroic fantasy, albeit of a very dark sort.  The one anomaly is "A Land of Romance," a fun, light-hearted story written in tribute to influential SF writer L. Sprague de Camp.

Drake's talent for depicting intense, furious action manifests itself a number of times, but the dominant mood of many of the stories is not visceral terror but a relentless feeling of cold.   Horror that draws its atmosphere from the idea of a pitiless, uncaring universe beyond human comprehension is quite common thanks to the popularity and influence of H.P. Lovecraft, but Drake does it better than most, and the effect is quite chilling.  (Among other things, I think Drake's relatively austere writing style, which is highly evocative while remaining very straightforward, is generally better-suited to this sort of bleak tone than the more ornate style often associated with Lovecraftian horror.)

Despite the cosmic horror aspects, however, much of what is horrifying in the stories is more personal in nature.  As is the case of in much of Drake other work (most notably his military SF),  the most terrifying things arise from human psychology- the psychological devastation left by trauma and violence, what suffering and brutality can twist people into, the dulling of emotion and conscience, and the things that  human beings will do, condone,  or become.

In addition, each story has a short preface written by Drake about how the story came about and the idea behind it.  These provide some very interesting information about various stages in Drake's career, as well as some of the influences that have shaped his work- growing up in Iowa, classic science fiction and fantasy, his military service in Vietnam, and his love of Classical history and literature.  It's quite interesting for the insights it gives on Drake's work, as well as his thoughts on horror fiction more generally and his first-hand accounts of what the field was like in the 1960's and 70's.

All in all, Balefires is a great collection of stories and an intriguing look at David Drake's roots.  I would enthusiastically recommend it for anyone who is a fan of Drake's work, and for anyone who enjoys horror and dark fantasy.

Stories collected in Balefires:

The Red Leer
A Land of Romance
Smokie Joe
Awakening
Denkirch
The False Prophet
Black Iron
The Shortest Way
Lord of the Depths
Children of the Forest
The Barrow Troll
Than Curse the Darkness
The Song of the Bone
The Master of Demons
The Dancer in the Flames
Firefight
Best of Luck
Arclight
Something Had to be Done
The Elf House
The Hunting Ground
The Automatic Rifleman
Blood Debt
Men Like Us

Review of Kingdom Beyond the Waves by Stephen Hunt

Stephen Hunt’s steampunk/fantasy novel The Court of the Air was one of the best books I read last year (see my review), so I was quite excited when the follow-up The Kingdom Beyond the Waves made its recent arrival in the United States.  It is set in the same world as its predecessor, and ideally I’d recommend reading them in order to get a better feel for Hunt’s setting, but The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is a self-contained story that works well on its own.

Like The Court of the Air, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is set in a world where magic and steampunk technology exist side-by-side.  Sorcerers who draw energy from the ley lines of the earth exist alongside industrial mass production, steam power, airships, primitive firearms, and huge mechanical computing devices.  The focus is once again on the Kingdom of Jackals, a mercantile nation kept safe by its monopoly on the jealously guarded technology to build airships.

The story focuses on Amelia Harsh, an archaeologist who has dedicated herself to the search for lost Camlantis, a glorious ancient civilization that the academic establishment of jackals regards as a myth.  Regarded as a crank for her obsession with Camlantis, she has been shut out of academia and deprived of funding when an unexpected benefactor appears: Abraham Quest, the greatest industrialist in Jackals, a renowned philanthropist, humanitarian, and social reformer, and the man whose brilliant manipulations of the stock market led to the bankruptcy and suicide of Amelia’s father.  Amelia is reluctant to work with him, but he can offer what she has sought all her life- ancient records revealing the place where Camlantis once stood and the chance to vindicate her theories at last.

Unfortunately, what had been fabled Camlantis 10,000 years ago is now a deadly, almost impenetrable jungle filled with hostile inhuman natives, huge predatory reptiles, and the agents of a vast collective mind that rules the deepest parts of the jungle and tries to subsume anyone who wanders to close into itself.  Harsh must travel upriver into the jungle via U-boat, accompanied by her old friend Commodore Black, Quest’s force of deadly drug-enhanced foreign mercenaries, a U-boat crew recruited from convicted slavers who have been promised clemency if they survive, and a steam man jungle guide of dubious mental stability.

Into these events is drawn Cornelius Fortune, a reclusive aristocrat who lives a secret life as Furnace-Breath Nick, feared vigilante and scourge of the brutal revolutionary regime that rules Jackals’ neighbor and greatest foe, Quatershift.  When a brilliant inventor he has rescued from the prison camps of Quatershift and brought to Jackals suddenly vanishes without a trace, Fortune is confronted with deadly political machinations involving the Jackelian criminal underworld, steam man bodies vanishing from their graves, and mysterious attempts on the life of Abraham Quest.  Somehow, these events are also connected to ancient Camlantis, and both Cornelius Fortune and Amelia Harsh will have to confront the legacy left by that ancient the utopia- a legacy that could mean the death of every human being on the planet.

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is an excellent follow-up to The Court of the Air.  Like The Court of the Air, it is very fast-paced and has lots of action, though it didn’t feel quite as frantic as its predecessor, perhaps because at least some of the concepts were already familiar to me from the previous book.  Nevertheless, the rapid progression of events, continuing revelations, and the book’s sheer volume of creative ideas give the book the same manic quality that I enjoyed in The Court of the Air.

The characters are not especially deep or complex, but nevertheless they are interesting and succeed well in inspiring emotional investment.  The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is somewhat dark in tone, but less so than The Court of the Air, and like its predecessor its relentless energy allows it to be dark without being depressing or dispiriting.  Some of the prominent themes of The Court of the Air are seen again here, with both books reflecting a sense of striving and hope combined with a distrust of utopianism.

Like its predecessor, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves does a great job of being extremely dense in both events and ideas without seeming overstuffed, and of being diverse and varied without seeming jumbled or incoherent.  In Hunt’s hands it feels perfectly natural that airships, lost civilizations, sorcery, a heterodox archaeologist/pulp adventurer, submarines, a race of intelligent steam-powered robots, a jungle ruled by an evil hive mind, and a character best described as “The Scarlet Pimpernel, if The Scarlet Pimpernel had been a shapeshifting steampunk cyborg” all show up in the same story.

Just like its predecessor, I can’t recommend The Kingdom Beyond the Waves enough.  It’s a fantastic book for people who like either fantasy or steampunk, or for anyone who likes fast-paced adventure stories.  Stephen Hunt has very quickly become one of the most exciting authors in fantasy, and I can’t wait to see the third book in the series, The Rise of the Iron Moon, reach the United States.

New home for Solaris Books

I've been kept busy lately by some work-related stuff, along with the seven or eight distinct illnessess that have all apparently taken up residence in my digestive system simultaenously and started battling for supremacy, but I'm back in action.  Look for new reviews both here and at BSCreview very soon.

Here's some very good news, via SF Crowsnest: Solaris Books has found a buyer.  It was announced a few months ago that their parent company, the Black Library, was going to start focusing solely on its primary purpose as the fiction-publishing arm of Games Workshop.   Solaris' new owner is British game developer Rebellion Developments.  Rebellion has experience with publishing, through creating their own SF/Fantasy/Horror imprint Abaddon Books and by acquiring seminal weekly comics anthology 2000 AD and RPG/tabletop game company Mongoose Publishing.  2000 AD is the source of Judge Dredd, among other things, and Mongoose is the publisher of the current edition of the legendary Traveller and the new RPG based on David Drake's Hammers Slammers stories, so presumably the new guys in charge know their way around the SF field.

(Though their greatest accolade may be this line from the Rebellion Developments Wikipedia page:  "Their first known title was Alien Vs. Predator for the Atari Jaguar, which was considered one of the few good games for that console."  Seldom has a single sentence been so coldly factual and hilariously brutal at the same.  Poor Jaguar.  I guess the world just wasn't ready for your 64 bits of processing power and godawful controllers.)

I've really come to like Solaris over the past year or so, and it's through Solaris that I've discovered a number of authors, such as Andy Remic, Eric Brown, and Jeffrey Thomas.  I'm very happy to see it will continue.

Review of Bone Song by John Meaney

John Meaney is known for his work in the science fiction field, most notably the Nulapeiron sequence (Paradox, Context, Resolution).  They are well-worth reading for their combination of an imaginative and unusual setting, scientific speculations, and furious action.  With Bone Song (Hardcover, Paperback ,Kindle), he enters the genre of dark fantasy, and yet also retains the virtues of the science fiction writer along the way.  The follow-up, Black Blood (Dark Blood in the United Kingdom), came out earlier this year.

Bone Song is set in Tristopolis, a city covered by a perpetually dark, purple skies that rain mercury, inhabited by humans both living and undead, as well as by incorporeal beings called wraiths.  Its technology is a bizarre amalgam of machinery and the supernatural, kept running by underground “necroflux” reactors that generate power from the bones of the dead.

The main character of the story is Lieutenant Donal Riordan, an officer in the Tristopolis police.  He is assigned to the task of protecting an international opera star making a stop in Tristopolis.  The energies of the thoughts, feelings, and memories of humans during life become embedded in their bones, and the bones of great artists are prized for the ecstatic experiences they can provide.  A mysterious organization has begun murdering famous artists and stealing their bodies, and the visiting diva may be their next target.

What starts as an assignment to protect a single woman soon expands up into something much bigger as Riordan is recruited into a special federal task force after narrowly surviving a sorcerous attack on his mind.  There he meets Xelia, a free wraith, and Commander Laura Steele, the group’s undead leader.  They are dedicated to pursuing the Black Circle, a secret society with an interest in the bones of the dead, agents all over the world, and members in the highest levels of Tristopolis society.

I greatly enjoyed Bone Song.  John Meaney creates a truly fascinating and bizarre setting in Tristopolis.  The book’s tone is interesting and a bit atypical.  The mood of Tristopolis is relentlessly dark and sinister, hanging oppressively over everything, and the premise of the plot is quite grim.  However, the story itself, with its combination of mystery and fast action, is intensely energizing and feels almost exuberant at times.  The book does a nice job of being extremely dark in setting and premise, and sometimes quite sad, without feeling dreary or depressing.  I don’t see that sort of contrast very often, but Meaney does it well.

Much of this comes from Meaney’s style of writing, which gives events, and especially rapid or physically intensive events, a tremendous sense of raw immediacy.  In the book’s more intense sections, Riordan’s actions and thoughts often felt as if they were being poured directly into me, without the mediation of words.  As in the Nulapeiron trilogy, Meaney’s own background in the martial arts definitely shows, not only in his technical knowledge but in the way he evokes a state in which events move faster than the fully conscious mind can keep up with.

The setting is very imaginative, and straddles typical genre distinctions in an interesting way.  The supernatural (at least by real-world standards) is so ubiquitous in Tristopolis society that much of it feels more like technology.  Necroflux energy harvested from the memories and emotions of the dead powers the city like electricity.  Wraiths are bound to complex machines like automobiles and elevators to give animation and at least limited capacity for thought.  The newly dead can be revived as the undead through a procedure that has supernatural elements but resembles surgery more than anything else.  Even victims of sorcerous mental attacks undergo medical treatment and rehabilitation analogous to real-world physical therapy.  Thus, while Bone Song is dark fantasy, in many ways it could also be described as science fiction set in an animistic universe.

I would strongly recommend Bone Song for anyone who likes intense, action-heavy stories or unusual worldbuilding.  I think it could appeal to a number of different groups: fantasy fans looking for something different from the usual high fantasy settings, science fiction fans who want to see a science fiction-influenced take on a world with some very different underlying principles, and perhaps people who like modern/urban fantasy (e.g. Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books) and want a story in a more distant and unusual setting.  John Meaney has a great talent for truly creative imaginary worlds, and I look forward to seeing what he does next.

Blog and souls for my lord Arioch!

Found the test via Andrew Wheeler.  I'm actually not a big Moorcock reader, but this still seems right somehow.  I'm not sure I'd call myself "high-brow," but the rest of it- violent, traditional, cynical, ruggedly manly facial hair- all fit.  If you try out the test yourself, let me know what you get in the comments.


Your result for Which fantasy writer are you?...

Michael Moorcock (b. 1939)

19 High-Brow, 21 Violent, -17 Experimental and 21 Cynical!

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Violent, Traditional and Cynical! These concepts are defined below.



Michael Moorcock is one of the most influential fantasy writers of all times, his impact rivalling that of Tolkien's. Perhaps China Miéville described it best when he said: "I think we are all post-Moorcock." Apart from being the editor of New Worlds twice in the 60s and 70s, thereby being instrumental in bringing on the so-called "new wave" of science fiction which changed all fantastic literature forever, Moorcock's own work has been an inspiration to more recent writers. He is also known for not hiding or blunting his views on fiction which he regards as inferior, a trait which has lead him to apply harsh criticism on authors such as J R R Tolkien, C S Lewis an H P Lovecraft.

His most popular work are the Elric books. Elric was originally conceived as a sort of critical comment to or even parody of R E Howard's Conan, but the character and his world soon grew to form a tragic and somewhat fatalistic drama. Elric's world is, in turn, only a small part of the huge Multiverse, a set of stories from all sorts of worlds (including our own) which is forever locked in a struggle between the two powers of Law and Chaos. Whenever one of these powers is threatening to become too powerful, an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, a group of warriors possessing the same spirit, is forced to fight to maintain the delicate balance between the two. Moorcock has worked several of his heroes into this cycle of books, including Hawkmoon, Corum and, of course, Elric.

Moorcock's stories are often stories about warriors, however reluctant they may be, and are usually explicitly violent, even if the purpose of all the hacking and slashing is to free humans and other beings from oppression and, ultimately, fear. There is little happiness, though, for those who are forced to do the fighting and all they can hope for is a short time of respite, sometimes in the town of Tanelorn, the only place in the multiverse that the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos can't reach.

It should also be mentioned that, even though Moorcock has done quite some experimenting in his days, it can't be ignored that a major part of his books are traditional adventure stories that become more than that by their inclusion into a grand vision. A little ironically , perhaps, for an author who has criticized the "world-building school" of fantasy, Moorcock achieves much of his popularity through building, if not a world, a world vision.

You are also a lot like China Miéville

If you want something more gentle, try Ursula K le Guin

If you'd like a challenge, try your exact opposite, Katharine Kerr



Your score



This is how to interpret your score: Your attitudes have been measured on four different scales, called 1) High-Brow vs. Low-Brow, 2) Violent vs. Peaceful, 3) Experimental vs. Traditional and 4) Cynical vs. Romantic. Imagine that when you were born, you were in a state of innocence, a tabula rasa who would have scored zero on each scale. Since then, a number of circumstances (including genetic, cultural and environmental factors) have pushed you towards either end of these scales. If you're at 45 or -45 you would be almost entirely cynical, low-brow or whatever. The closer to zero you are, the less extreme your attitude. However, you should always be more of either (eg more romantic than cynical). Please note that even though High-Brow, Violent, Experimental and Cynical have positive numbers (1 through 45) and their opposites negative numbers (-1 through -45), this doesn't mean that either quality is better. All attitudes have their positive and negative sides, as explained below.



High-Brow vs. Low-Brow



You received 19 points, making you more High-Brow than Low-Brow. Being high-browed in this context refers to being more fascinated with the sort of art that critics and scholars tend to favour, rather than the best-selling kind. At their best, high-brows are cultured, able to appreciate the finer nuances of literature and not content with simplifications. At their worst they are, well, snobs.



Violent vs. Peaceful



You received 21 points, making you more Violent than Peaceful. Please note that violent in this context does not mean that you, personally, are prone to violence. This scale is a measurement of a) if you are tolerant to violence in fiction and b) whether you see violence as a means that can be used to achieve a good end. If you are, and you do, then you are violent as defined here. At their best, violent people are the heroes who don't hesitate to stop the villain threatening innocents by means of a good kick. At their worst, they are the villains themselves.



Experimental vs. Traditional



You received -17 points, making you more Traditional than Experimental. Your position on this scale indicates if you're more likely to seek out the new and unexpected or if you are more comfortable with the familiar, especially in regards to culture. Note that traditional as defined here does not equal conservative, in the political sense. At their best, traditional people don't change winning concepts, favouring storytelling over empty poses. At their worst, they are somewhat narrow-minded.



Cynical vs. Romantic



You received 21 points, making you more Cynical than Romantic. Your position on this scale indicates if you are more likely to be wary, suspicious and skeptical to people around you and the world at large, or if you are more likely to believe in grand schemes, happy endings and the basic goodness of humankind. It is by far the most vaguely defined scale, which is why you'll find the sentence "you are also a lot like x" above. If you feel that your position on this scale is wrong, then you are probably more like author x. At their best, cynical people are able to see through lies and spot crucial flaws in plans and schemes. At their worst, they are overly negative, bringing everybody else down.

Author image by Catriona Sparks from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Moorcock.jpg Click for license info.

Take Which fantasy writer are you? at HelloQuizzy

The Stormcaller by Tom Lloyd

I've got a review of Tom Lloyd's debut fantasy novel over at Book Spot Central.  Have a look.

The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt

The Court of the Air is a novel by Stephen Hunt, combining elements of Victorian steampunk and fantasy. It was released in the United Kingdom in 2007, but didn’t reach the United States until this year. The follow up, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, is already out in the UK and will hopefully be reaching the US before too long.

Millennia ago, the world was in the throes of an ice age, and the people living on the surface were the slaves of the underground empire of the Chimeca and their monstrous gods. Eventually, the Chimeca were overthrown and the ice receded, allowing the nations of the surface to flourish again. Magic, steam power, and industrial technology exist side by side.

Above all other nations stands the Kingdom of Jackals, secure thanks to the Royal Navy and its flying aerostat warships. The Navy served the kingdom well in its recent war with the “Communityist” Commonshare of Quarter shift, a nation that has fallen under the rule of a brutal collectivist regime and seeks to spread its revolution by force. The Quartershiftians were forced back, and now the rulers of the Commonshare have sealed off the borders with a deadly magical “cursewall” to keep any invasion out- and to keep their own starving people in. Despite their military supremacy, the Jackelians are a mercantile people with no interest in conquest, preferring to attend to their own affairs.

The book tells the story of two teenage orphans from Jackals. Molly Templar is a resident of a grim orphanage in the capital of Jackals. The orphanage manager apprentices her out to a brothel, but her first customer turns out to be an assassin after her life. She flees back to the orphanage, only to discover that it has been attacked and all her friends slaughtered. Desperate, she flees into the underground warrens beneath the city, a legacy of the ancient Chimeca.

Oliver Brooks is a young man who lives with his uncle, a merchant, out in the country. As a child, Oliver suffered extended exposure to the fey mist, which can give people powerful supernatural gifts- or leave them violently insane or monstrously deformed. Oliver seems to have remained normal, but like everyone exposed to the fey mist he is considered a potential public menace, kept under government surveillance and forbidden by the state to travel far from home. His life is shattered when his uncle is murdered, and he himself is framed for the crime. He is rescued by a mysterious man named Harry Stave, an agent of the Court of the Air, the Kingdom’s enigmatic and ancient protectors. Oliver too must flee his home, and finds himself pulled into the deadly intrigues of Quartershift, Jackals, and the Court.

As the two young fugitives struggle to survive, they discover that they have key roles to play in a coming struggle involving agents of Quartershift, a revolutionary Communityist conspiracy against Jackals, traitors within the Kingdom, and the bloodthirsty worshipers of the ancient Chimecan gods, who seek to unleash something far worse than even the totalitarian horror of the Commonshare.

The setting is an interesting hybrid, magical but with the sort of grimy feeling you would expect from a story about orphans in the Industrial Revolution. The world of the story runs on a combination of magic and a sort of alternate physics. There is plenty of mundane technology that works on natural principles-firearms that propel bullets with exploding plant resin, skyscrapers held up by the pressure from pneumatic pumps, vast computer databases based on moving mechanical parts instead of electronics- but not natural principles as we know them.

The historical parallels are obvious, e.g. Jackals is an industrializing commercial nation with the world’s mightiest navy, and its enemy Quartershift is a former monarchy now ruled by brutal, oppressive revolutionaries, but this serves as a sort of initial framework and springboard rather than a straitjacket. There’s a lot of little nods to real history in the setting- the Oliver Cromwell-like historical figure who broke the absolute power of the ancient Jackalian kings, the practice of orphanages renting out their charges as a cheap disposable workforce, the “sun god” of pre-Revolutionary Quartershift, and so on-but nothing like a one-to-one correspondence. There are some strong hints that the story is actually set on a future Earth after some world-reshaping cataclysm, but it’s not made explicit.

I loved this book. It does a wonderful job of combining an exciting story and a great and imaginative setting. Hunt manages to make things detailed and evocative while simultaneously keeping the plot extremely fast-paced. The story and setting continuously build at breakneck speed, with events progressing and escalating while the setting offers new ideas at a relentless pace; the book sometimes seems on the brink of careening out of control, but it never does. You’d expect a book to seem either rushed, disjointed, or overstuffed when it simultaneously incorporates steampunk-style technology, a fantasy analog of 19th-century Europe, bloodthirsty cultists, sorcerers, assorted political intrigue, communist revolutionaries, ancient civilizations, a race of sapient steam-powered robots, and malevolent Lovecraftian deities, but Hunt does a great job of making everything work together. This kind of frantic pace and sheer density won’t appeal to everyone, but I thought it worked beautifully.

I really can’t recommend The Court of the Air enough. It’s one of the most exciting and inventive fantasy books I’ve read in some time, and one of my favorite books of 2008. I can’t wait to see what Hunt does next with the series.

Badly belated book meme

Back in the late Jurassic era, I was tagged with a book meme by John at Grasping for the Wind, and I figure better late than never.

Nightstand/Table: Nothing. I don’t like to read in bed.

Reading at the Moment: I like to read a lot of books concurrently, usually a few fiction and a few nonfiction. That way I can jump around according to my mood. Currently reading:

Saturn Returns, Sean Williams

Soldier, Ask Not, Gordon R. Dickson (Nostalgic for me- read a bunch of Dorsai books from the library when I was a kid and just starting out with science fiction.)

Bone Song, John Meaney

The Constitution of Liberty, F.A. Hayek (Last read this one in high school. Quite the chick magnet, I was.)

Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco

Annals, Tacitus (Which now has a largish Guinness stain on it, due to my fondness for reading at the bar and my poor hand-eye coordination.)

Political Writings, Benjamin Constant (Compilation of several works, including The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation and Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments)

Can’t Put Down:

Gathering Dust: I have two used bookstores within a relatively short distance of my house. When I take an interest in an author, I head to the used bookstore, find their supply of that author, and just clean them out. I then stockpile these books in my home, like a survivalist accumulating ammunition and canned food to sustain him in case a Russian first strike wipes out civilization. Thus, I have a truly colossal backlog of books I have yet to read.  I'm trying to pick up my reading pace, because I don't want to accidentally knock over one of my stacked cheap plastic storage boxes and meet my doom buried alive beneath an avalanche of Jack Vance paperbacks.

Secret Indulgence: Faeries' Landing, an appallingly cute manga series.  It looks a bit odd on the shelf next to my Hammer's Slammers books, but it's funny, and I like cute, damn it.

Looking Forward To: The January Dancer by Michael Flynn, The Devil’s Eye by Jack McDevitt, The Gods Return by David Drake