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Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

The Thief – Megan Whalen Turner – Fantasy with a Touch of Greece

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Author Megan Whalen Turner states she was inspired by Greece and used bits and pieces of Grecian history and geography to write The Thief.  These basic blocks plus good character development and an intriguing plot with unexpected twists made The Thief an imaginative fantasy while avoiding a retelling of Grecian myths.

The plot features Gen, a braggart and thief currently imprisoned in the King’s royal prison in Sounis, a smallish state south of Eddis and west of Attolia.  Gen made the mistake of bragging about stealing the king’s seal, then doing it and then getting caught, so he’s in chains and unable to escape.  We can tell from the get-go that there is a lot more to Gen than these bare facts – anyone who reads fantasies will recognize the noble-born-but-pretending-to-be-common character.  Turner doles out bits and pieces of hints to clue us into Gen’s real status but holds out the complete story until the end.

The king’s Magus retrieves Gen from jail to steal the Gift of Hamiathes, the stone that is the kingship symbol in Eddis.  The king of Suonis wants to Gift to force the queen of Eddis to marry him.  The magus has two younger men, Sophos and Ambiades and Sophos’ man Pol along on the journey to retrieve the Gift from its hiding spot.

So far this sounds like a normal quest fantasy, enlivened with humor and questions about Gen, and The Thief is a quest on the surface.  It is more.  The characters are well done, with betrayal, mystery, and a background of geopolitical reality that drives the magus on his hunt.  If the magus is right then the three countries must ally to keep themselves whole.  Turner left enough open to write several sequels but The Thief is a complete novel on its own.

Most of the libraries shelve The Thief under YA fantasy.  The book will appeal to teens but it has enough complexity and interesting characters that adults can enjoy it too.  It’s not long, about 220 pages, and a fast read without a ton of elaborate writing.  The small number of characters, about 12 altogether, keeps it easy to follow, no hunting back and forth to remember who is who.

Turner so vividly describes the terrain with cliffs, ravines, arid volcanic residues, olive groves that you feel you would recognize the country if you saw it.  A map would have been a plus.

Overall I enjoyed The Thief.  The tension between Gen and the magus, Gen and the two young nobles, and finally between Gen and the goddess make the book lively and the rich characters make it an enjoyable, satisfying read.  4 Stars.

 

The Shadow Throne, Book 3 of The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen

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Jennifer Nielsen kept the same frantic pace with The Shadow Throne, the final book in her Ascendance trilogy as with the first two, but this third book felt flat, predictable and a bit silly.  Jaron, now the king of Carthya, knows that Avenia captured Imogen only to use her as a tool against him, yet he insists on going himself to free her.

Of course he gets captured, then tortured, which was the weakest and least readable part of the book.  King Vargan and his army commanders vacillate between wanting Jaron to cough up his military plans, or to force him to agree to bind his country to King Vargan of Avenia or, apparently they just wanted to hurt him.

Jaron acts like a clever thief, not like a king and the book is weaker for it.  Some of Jaron’s escapades are entertaining, as when he blows up the cannons sent to destroy his capital.  Some escapades reminded me of the nick-of-time rescues in the old Robin Hood television show.  He has an healed broken leg the whole time he’s prancing around Carthya and Avenia, dodging armies, rescuing friends, blowing up dams.

The characters didn’t seem important, more like pawns set up to fill the action.  I didn’t much like Jaron, he was a bit too selfish to be the real king he felt he was meant to be.  The ending where he somehow pulls a rescue out of the woodwork was fun reading but contrived.

I read The Shadow Throne right after finishing the second book, The Runaway King.  It was sort of like the feeling you get after eating a bunch of Halloween candy, yummy at the time but you really do know better.  I mostly enjoyed it even while recognizing the faults and despite getting bogged down in the very long section where Jaron is imprisoned.  (You can read my reviews of the The Runaway King here, and of The False Prince here.)

The Shadow Throne: Book 3 of The Ascendance Trilogy is the final book in the series, and wraps up the loose ends.  If you read the first two books you’ll want to read this just to find out what happens but be warned, it isn’t as good as the first two novels.

3 Stars

The Runaway King, Book 2 of The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen

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As the title notes, The Runaway King: Book 2 of the Ascendance Trilogy is the second book in the Ascendance series that features Sage, grown to take the throw under his rightful name, Jaron.  (See here for my review of the first book, The False Prince.)  Jaron is threatened within his kingdom of Carthya, by ambitious regents who seek to push him aside or use him as a puppet, and from the outside by King Vargan of Avenia, greedy to add Carthya to his rule.

Jaron suffers from extreme foot in mouth disease, incurable optimism, self confidence and unbelievable skills he honed for thievery, climbing, undoing chains and ropes, pick pocketing.  The book opens with an assassination attempt that leaves Jaron an ultimatum:  deliver himself to the pirates who already tried to kill him, or see his kingdom destroyed.  Jaron knows the pirates work closely with King Vargan.

King Vargan offers to take a spring in exchange for peace, such a good deal, otherwise known as tribute or appeasement.  Jaron’s father had made many such small-seeming concessions over his reign, leaving Vargan eager to take the rest.  Jaron refuses the deal.

From that point on the book moves at light speed, with Jaron joining the pirates under an assumed name, intending to turn the pirates into his men, his allies.  An audacious move, it nearly works.

Characters

Prince, then King Jaron, is both a cardboard creature and a person.  He is most stereotyped when acting as a thief, the bold challenger, the escape artist.  He is best developed when we see hints of his true nobility and kingship, as when he realizes that to give into Vargan once means giving him over all of Carthya, with timing the only question.

Love interest Imogen is a little more developed in The Runaway King than in The False Prince, but still a little weak.  It’s not clear why she and Jaron fall for each other.  Princess Amarinda is better drawn and an attractive character.  Jaron’s other friends and sometime foes are interesting but secondary.

Thoughts About The Runaway King

The Ascendance series is fantasy without a trace of magic.   You’ll find no wizards, no witches or sorcery.  Books like this, set in semi-medieval kingdoms with fast paced action, depend on the characters and the interesting plots.  Author Jennifer Nielsen does a good job with both, aligning the series to the older teen audience that enjoys plots and fun more than vampires and dystopian apocalypse.

I was restless and looking for something fun when I re-read my review for The False Prince and decided to check out the sequels from our local E library.  I’m glad I did as this was perfect for the evening.  Adults looking for a fast, enjoyable read that doesn’t challenge with a ton of mysterious magic or oddball names will enjoy this too.

4 Stars for adults, 5 for teens.

Madness in Solidar – Imager Series – Resetting Priorities and Alliances

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Madness in Solidar: The Ninth Novel in the Bestselling Imager Portfolio (The Imager Portfolio) is a stand alone novel occurring 400 years after Quaeryt helped form the united kingdom of Solis and built the Imager Collegium in the 5 book Scholar series.  Unfortunately Quaeryt’s successors lacked his skill and drive (or ruthlessness) and the collegium has faded along with the unity of Solis overall.  Imagers are weak; training is not rigorous; the collegium takes golds from the Rex but provides little in return.  In Solis the Rex alternates between temper tantrums and unrealistic demands.  He lacks funds and demands a 20% tax increase and insists the collegium assassinate the High Holders from strongest to weakest until they agree.

Alastar, the new collegium Maitre, seeks a compromise while simultaneously battling his senior imagers to build up the curriculum, re-establish the collegium as a force and find alternative sources of funds.  No one wants a compromise and the senior imagers are conflicted with at least one actively against Alastar and his fellows.

It’s hard work to establish – or re-establish – foundations for any organization, and I admire Modesitt for building a book around the work.  Nonetheless, it’s not exciting. Alastar spends more than half the book meeting with people, realistic for any leader but nothing that makes enjoyable reading.

Best Points of Madness in Solidar

The plot is better in Madness than in Rex Regis or Antiagon Fire, the previous 2 Imager novels, with fewer pages spent describing long travel days.  There isn’t a lot of action but the story keeps moving.

The conflict feels more realistic, incohesion that turns into internal division that turns into treachery. Alastar has no good option when Rex Ryen demands a solution – his solution, his way – and threatens to destroy Alastar and the collegium unless they abet him in murder.  Alastar works to a solution, albeit not a happy one, that allows his imagers to survive and patches Solis together.

So-So Points

Like most Modesitt heroes, Alastar is decent, driven, hard working, agnostic, sensitive and individually powerful.  He doesn’t feel or read like a real person and I didn’t have an emotional connection to him or any of the other characters.

Rex Ryen and his family members are sketched out enough to be foils for Alastar, not fully developed characters.  However they respond consistently and there are no magic turnarounds where villains become good guys or vice versa.  The other imagers, High Holders and factors are likewise thin but sufficient.  The army commander is the weakest character, drawn so unlikable that I wonder why anyone would follow him.

Not Good Points

The worst part of the book is Modesitt’s interminable word play between characters.  It allows us to see how shiny bright and righteous Alastar is compared with the devious and greedy holders, but frankly, it’s boring.  After reading the last couple Modesitt books I’ve lost my tolerance for this stuff.

It’s also unbelievable.  I don’t know anyone who would talk that way.  “Acquiring some knowledge may be more costly than it is wise to purchase.”  This is one of the first sentences from the first High Holder Alastar sees.

Overall

Madness is a comedown from the first three Imager books, set several centuries later and from the excellent Scholar and Princeps yet such an improvement on the most recent few novels that I’m hoping Modesitt is back to creating novels full of plot with interesting characters, conflicts, setting, and with fewer verbal dances that show off the hero’s sterling qualities.

Overall I’d give Madness in Solidar a solid 3 stars and will read future books in the series.

Ponderous, Plodding and Platitudinous – Rex Regis by L. E. Modesitt

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I read and enjoyed the first two books in the second Imager series, Scholar and Princeps, both of which had Scholar Quaeryt working to build a world where imagers could survive and prosper.  Both books were fun to read, Quaeryt was interesting and ruler Bhayer’s problems in building a prosperous country were a worthy backdrop.

The book after Princeps, Imager’s Battalion, was a bit boring with pages upon pages of Quaeryt marching with the army, Quaeryt uncovering more about Rholyn, Quaeryt finding treachery within and without Bhayer’s army, Quaeryt helping other imagers develop their skills, Quaeryt proving over and over how important, skilled and humble a hero can be.

The series starts to fall apart in Antiagon Fire, which follows Imager’s Battalion, with the same problems of slow plot, endless army marches, hard-to-visualize terrain and setting, and our over-the-top hero bringing one more country under Bhayer’s governance.  Antiagon Fire includes a semi-supernatural sequence that adds little and feels out of place.

Rex Regis, the last book featuring Quaeryt (thank heavens), is more of the same, except even less action, no character development, and pages upon pages of humble head shaking as he sees his imagers rebuilding the city, pages of platitudes about force, power and greed’s corruption and endless comments about the lack of sexual equality in Modesitt’s quasi-medieval cultures.

The plot centers around army leaders Myskyl and Deucalon, both of whom Quaeryt distrusts and fears are treacherous.  Neither has reported to Bhayer and Quaeryt hears that Myskyl has collected and withheld tarrifs.

Sure enough, Myskyl is plotting with one of the High Holders to either take over from Bhayer or to carve out an independent realm in the north.  Bhayer sends Quaeryt to find out the facts.  Typical of the prior books, Quaeryt does more than investigate, he resolves the problem.  Several plotters and imagers die.

Just for grins I opened Rex Regis at random and pulled these comments:

“The land is everything to the High Holders and golds are everything to the factors…”
“…there’s more there than meets the eye in a first reading.  Just as there is with you, dearest.”
“There is always treachery, especially by those who are powerful, but for whom no amount of wealth and position will suffice…and seek forgetfulness in the elixir of power.”

Modesitt had used these same themes of greed, power, force, gender discrimination in most of his books.  His books are more effective and much more enjoyable when he uses a lighter touch, letting us readers see the problems vs. shoving them at us every single page.

Rex Regis is spoiled by the sheer length relative to anything actually happening or to character development, the vision sequence with Erion and the fact that Quaeryt is much less likeable as he gets ever more certain yet humble.   The book is at least twice as long as it needs to be.

On the good side Modesitt wraps up Quaeryt’s and Vaelora’s story and shows how the early imagers worked with Bhayer and the others to forge a new country.  Madness in Solidar, picks up the imager story a couple hundred years later, with all new characters (and a few less platitudes).

I’ve read every book Modesitt wrote and own many, but the deterioration in this Imager series and the similar plodding in his latest Recluce novels, decided me against purchasing any of his future books.  I’ll get them from the library.

 

 

My Favorite Fantasy – Borderlands Novels by Lorna Freeman

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Have you ever felt you just had to re-read a favorite book?  I just finished re-reading (for the third or fourth time) the three Borderlands novels by Lorna Freeman, Covenants, The King’s Own and Shadows Past.  Once again the wonderful, complete characters, excellent plot, intricate back story and strong narrative writing kept me reading and once again I found more to enjoy with each book.

I will review each book separately in upcoming posts; let’s look at the three overall first.

Characters

Rabbit, otherwise known as Lieutenant Lord Rabbit ibn Chause eso Flavan, tells all three novels.  Rabbit is the son of Two Trees and Lark, formerly high born nobles from Iversterre who fled to the Border to become farmers and weavers and raise eight children in the land of the fae and magical.  Rabbit had been apprenticed to Magus Kareste, but fled in fear and came back to Iversterre to be hide, becoming a horse trooper in the Royal Army.

Lorna Freeman does an excellent job showing us Rabbit who is a most enjoyable young man.  He is courageous, loyal and intelligent, yet fears his magic and wants no part of politics, whether in Iversterre or the Border.  Rabbit matures through the three novels as he faces and reconciles to his magic and demands on his person and loyalties.

Laurel, the mountain cat Faena, is come to Iversterre to seek peace in the face of blatant smuggling and murder – and to seek Rabbit on behalf of the Border High Counsel.

Other key characters are well rounded:  Captain Suiden, Captain Javes, Enchanter Wyln, King Jusson, even minor figures like Ryson and Thadro and the assorted villains and other players in each novel

Not Really a Trilogy

You would enjoy these the most by reading in sequence but it isn’t truly necessary.  The individual plots stand alone and each has unique characters for the competing parts.

Covenants

Covenants is the longest and most complex of the three.  Rabbit and his troop are lost in the very familiar mountains they routinely patrol near the small northern town of Freston.  Even though they know the area they cannot find their way until Rabbit meets Laurel in a small dell.  Laurel shares cakes with Rabbit and gives him a red feather, signifying a meal covenant.  Suddenly the troop can see the town below and the way is clear.  This is the first magical mystery, but not the last.

Laurel turns out to be the ambassador from the Border High Counsel, sent to Iversterre in a final attempt to broker peace.  This is a surprise to the King of Iversterre, Jusson, and most of his government, since they did not realize there was a problem.

Covenants moves very fast.  It is over 500 pages long and complex and you may – like I did – find you see even more the second time through.  Lorna Freeman tells the story by dialogue and Rabbit’s thoughts and observations and the little vignettes build on one another.  Those vignettes are easy to read through and not see the significance until later.

The King’s Own

The King’s Own picks up after Rabbit and company return to Freston, where the king has stopped on his progress through the kingdom, a trip meant to reassure and bind the kingdom together.

Unfortunately the remnants of the plotters from Covenants also come to Freston, only this time they bring a demon.

The King’s Own is a little harder to follow than Covenants, partly because Rabbit himself is puzzled by the apparently senseless actions.  It also further develops the relationship between Rabbit and King Jusson, and brings in several stand-alone characters that are interesting, Chadde the peace keeper, Ranulf and Beollan the Marcher lords, doyen Dyfrig.  The plot is great but the characters keep us interested!

Shadows Past

Shadows Past marks the point where Rabbit realizes how serious is his situation.  He has sworn to the throne of Iversterre and to King Jusson personally, and Jusson has made Rabbit his heir.  Up to now Rabbit has been too busy fighting rebellions and demons to realize exactly what that means.

The crux of the book is about 2/3 of the way through when Rabbit is tempted to just leave, to get to the harbor and take the first ship away.  He gets as far as a couple of steps when he realizes what he is doing:  denying his oaths, denying his magic, denying his friends.

Shadows Past doesn’t have the intense plot threats and conflicts of the first two (although there are still plenty of both), instead Rabbit must fight through to what and who he is, remaining true to himself while remaining true to his oaths and loyalties.

Summary

I enjoyed all three books immensely. Covenants is outstanding, one of the very best fantasy books I’ve ever read.  The other two are excellent, and I found that re-reading them this week that I enjoyed them more than before and would rank them right up with Covenants.

Borderlands is hands down my favorite fantasy series.  According to Lorna Freeman’s page on Amazon, she intends to write a fourth book, The Reckoning Flames, but it apparently has not made it out to print.

Borderlands reminds me of the Ivory Series by Doris Egan.  There are many similarities:  one-and-done series that are enormously popular, well-written with engaging characters and settings, with authors that seemed to come out of nowhere.  I keep hoping we’ll see more books featuring Rabbit, Laurel and the rest.

Big Disappointment – He Drank and Saw the Spider by Alex Bledsoe

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After enjoying The Sword-Edged Blonde (reviewed here) I was eager to read more Eddie LaCrosse adventures by Alex Bledsoe. Unfortunately He Drank, and Saw the Spider: An Eddie LaCrosse Novel disappoints.

We still have Eddie, now on vacation with his girlfriend,  Liz Dumont, traipsing through the world, we have the refreshing modern names and vocabulary, we have other characters and flashbacks to Eddie’s first years as a mercenary.  We also have gaping plot holes, boring secondary characters, and a force-fit sets of problems.  Overall the book was boring with a predictable conclusion.

I read several other Amazon reviews and most enjoyed the book, giving it a 4 1/2 star overall rating which is darn good.  No one commented on the gaping plot hole, which means either it didn’t bother anyone else or the answer was in the book and I missed it.

In the flashback to 16 years before, Eddie encounters a group of soldiers sent by Crazy King Jerry with orders to kill the baby girl he protected.  We never found why the soldiers were sent after the baby, particularly puzzling since Crazy King Jerry wasn’t even aware there was a baby.  I was pretty sure who the baby would turn out to be, but kept reading because I couldn’t see why Jerry would want her dead.  This wasn’t answered and frankly, I don’t really care enough to go back through and see whether I missed it.

This was a big enough let down that I doubt I’ll look for any more books in the series.

Eddie Lacrosse Series – Alex Bledsoe – The Sword-Edged Blonde

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Enjoyable, fast read, fun characters facing real problems, lively pace, what’s not to like in  a book?  Add to that a nod to the Greek stories of Medea, Tantalus, Thyestes and even Attila the Hun’s wife and the fairy tale of the Seven Swans, and you have a winner. The Sword-Edged Blonde: An Eddie LaCrosse Novel is the first book in a series of fantasy/private eye novels by Alex Bledsoe.

Synopsis

The Sword-Edged Blonde: An Eddie LaCrosse Novel starts with Eddie LaCrosse getting hired to find and retrieve a princess who supposedly ran away to experience life (aka, lust), but who in fact was running to her real father to escape her supposed father, the king.  It was complicated and had nothing to do with the rest of the story except it put Eddie in the way to respond to his oldest friend, King Phil’s, request for help.

King Phil married a mystery woman, the blonde in the title, a few years back, had a child with her, but the queen was found locked in the baby’s nursery with a pot of boiling human-looking parts and strange symbols on the floor.

I knew this story.  I couldn’t recall where I read about a queen accused of murdering her own child other than the Greek myths of Medea and Tantalus, and the Seven Swans fairy story about the queen falsely accused of killing her child, but it is sure-fire horrible crime to kick off the investigation.

Eddie quickly discovers that the “baby” in the pot who was buried in the royal tombs as the prince is actually a monkey.  Eddie needs everyone to think the queen is guilty so he can track down the real villain.  Eventually he retraces his steps from a long-ago journey, tracks down the queen’s arch enemy and manages a happy ending.

The plot moves quickly and the fantasy is believable.  I didn’t feel trapped in a never-ending saga or tedious world building, both of which are all too common in first books in fantasy series.

Characters

Eddie was great and I enjoyed the other minor characters like King Phil and the queen Rhiannon/maybe-goddess Epona and Eddie’s traveling companions.  Even the villains were well done, believable people.

Bledsoe created an interesting, three-dimensional person, threw him into a crazy situation and let him go.  We learned a lot about Eddie by his occasional reminiscences and by watching him be the clever gumshoe.

 Setting, Backstory and Humor

Eddie’s world is a blend of today and imagination.  His Kingdom of Arentia is believable as are some of the other places.  Bledsoe basically took our world but with a dose of magic, realistic politics and swords and made it a believable backdrop.  That proved a worthy shortcut because we didn’t have to wade through world building and explanations of the current politics and magical systems.  Instead it was presented matter of fact, as Eddie’s world.

I really liked the fact Bledsoe used real names for people and short, easy names for places.  King Phil, Eddie, Janet, so much better than the usual made-up, grandiose names with strange consonants or apostrophes.  It helped make the backstory fun and easy to follow.

Eddie has a complicated history of his own.  Originally heir to the LaCrosse barony and Crown Prince Phil’s best friend and planned-to-be husband to Princess Janet, he made a stupid mistake that cost Princess Janet her life and Eddie his self-respect.  He eventually worked it out but took the final step only near the end of this novel when he had to compare what he had done with what the villains did.

I didn’t quite follow why Eddie chose to leave Arentia at the end and go back to being a sword jockey (aka, fighter/PI/whatever-else-you-need-and-can-pay-for), except it set up future novels with the same character.  Of course you can’t go home again exactly, but you can forgive yourself and pick up responsibilities from your family and king.  Instead Eddie makes his own responsibilities.

The book has some humorous scenes and dialogue that makes you smile, but it’s not a comic.  It reminded me a lot of the Garrett novels by Glen Cook, great dialogue, interesting setting, realistic and likable characters.

Overall

I enjoyed this so much I requested Blensoe’s latest, He Drank, and Saw the Spider: An Eddie LaCrosse Novel and stayed up a little late to finish in one evening. It too was pretty good, but I will take a break for a while before reading the others in the series.

Red Rising – Social Threats Played Out in a School Game

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I almost gave up on Red Rising (The Red Rising Trilogy) after about 30 pages or so. It seemed stale, just another future with brutal overlords and a rigged brutal life for the underclass. The book started to pick up a little, then it kept getting better. By the time hero Darrow was leading his Mars house the plot was moving and the characters were more complete.

A few words of warning. Red Rising is violent. People get killed. Most of the murders are not described in graphic detail but there is enough that you will get sick of it.

Plot and Background

The society Darrow lives in goes to extremes to maintain its vitality with the same families and castes on top. One method is the Board of Quality Control selects only a fraction of the highest caste Gold youth each year to attend the schools scattered around the solar system. And of that fraction, half are murdered immediately and others will die. Youth who do not score high enough to go to the schools are relegated to powerless roles, the dilettante Pixies and looked-down-on Bronzes.

In theory only the students who graduate as Peerless Scared or Graduates can assume roles of power. Another method to ensure only the best survive is the school testing ground. Students are divided into Houses, each based on a Roman god, and must themselves sort out who leads each school, and which school will win over all the rest. The schools do not get the same resources. Mars has nothing except a tall castle, no food, no weapons, no way to start a fire. Ceres has ovens, walls, food. Minerva has horses and archery weapons. The Mars adult preceptor tells Darrow that Mars burns hot and burns out quickly. And indeed we see this. For a while I thought Red Rising was a Lord of the Flies reprise with the Mars house losing all cohesion, factions and internal fighting.

When the Mars preceptor shows the Mars students their house, he asks them how they can possibly win.  The answer?  Enslave the others.  Each house has a standard that will mark anyone from a rival house as a slave.  When I was reading this, my first thought was “get allies”, and I was surprised when the answer was “take slaves”.   Each house strives to get slaves, capture the standards from other houses, take over their resources.  Darrow makes a new path, with allies.

Backstory and Ideas

This  novels had one of the more intriguing social backdrops. Superficially we have a rigid society with severe caste restrictions (called Colors in Red Rising), with the bottom caste of Reds relegated to dangerous mining work far underground. The Reds believe they work to help terraform Mars, not knowing that the planet already is home to millions of people, with atmosphere, plants, animals, cities. The Reds are kept in artificial strife, with a rigged set of mining quotas and awards for the most production, given barely enough to eat. Girls marry at 14 and people are old at 35.

The problem with this is that it is not sustainable. Violence and fear can keep people in line for a long time but not forever. The minute Reds realize the lie, they will have no reason to obey other than fear.

The other threat to the Gold rule is internal. There are more types of power than military, commercial or political. What happens if a Pixie becomes socially dominant? Is there a Gold version of the society leaders?

Then there is good old fashioned nepotism. In fact, Darrow realizes that the school game is rigged to favor the son of the Mars governor. Given the social structure Red Rising sketches, the governor takes a huge risk. He promises favors and position to the twelve Preceptors – if his boy wins. If his son does win, all is good, no one will have reason to talk about it. If his son does not win, then what hold does the governor now hold? It’s too good a story, too juicy a gossip, too funny a joke with too many who know, not to whisper about. The author may have painted himself into a corner at the end when Darrow pledges himself to a man who is going down, we just don’t see it yet.

I’m curious how author Pierce Brown addresses these internal issues in the next book in what is planned to be a trilogy. If he spends time on Darrow and the plot elements of Darrow gaining power and position and eventually changing society, the story will be a good read. But if he uses the political and social flaws in his imagined world plus Darrow’s drive, we could have a winning combination.

I am not real fond of the dystopia genre and ever since Hunger Games became successful we’ve been inundated with them. Red Rising is several notches above and I recommend it.

Set Up for A Finale? Or More? Alliance: The Paladin Prophecy

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The Paladin Prophecy: Book 1 was a fun read that moved at breakneck speed and left a lot of questions and holes. (You can read my review here.)  I couldn’t wait for the library to get Alliance, book two so I bought it from Barnes and Noble. (Thank you Deidra for the gift card!)

Alliance moves fast too, and leaves us with even more holes and questions and it ends on a cliffhanger. Parts are just darn weird. For example, they explore a tunnel that is lined with big statues of American soldiers. Huh? Why would someone drag a humungous statue down there and how did they even move something that large?

And why did the Knights set up a lab about a mile underground? Which came first? The tunnels from the island mansion or the lab? And how did either one know to go towards the ruined non-human city?

Yes, I still enjoyed Alliance and yes, I’ll look for the third book when it comes out. But I’m a bit wary now.

Will this series deteriorate from a fast-paced, well-written story with enjoyable and realistic characters (and a big dose of oddness) into an on-going, never ending series about Will and friends vs. the Knights of Charlemagne? I hope not. I prefer books that have a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s fine to split the story up over multiple volumes but I don’t care for books structured like an endless television series.

Overall, this was good, with interesting people, intriguing settings and back story and a fast plot. I liked it, just am a bit leery whether it’s setting up to be a never-ending series.