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

Wrath of the Fury Blade – An Elven Police Procedural with Racial Overtones

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Wrath of the Fury Blade tries to be several things:  It is a police procedural, a commentary on Nazism, a semi-romance and a fantasy.  The story itself is engaging, with police elf Reva Lunaria untangling the mysterious murder of the First Magistrate, a murder where the victim is cut completely in half, in his own home, with no witnesses.  A second murder, this time of the kingdom’s finance minister, soon follows, then more attacks and murders.

Elvish Nazis

It’s clear that someone has a vendetta against a group of people, but what ties the group together?  Reva’s only clue is the pin that each victim wears, from a club dedicated to elven racial purity; the victims’ pins all have one black star, possibly indicating a secret sub group.

Here’s where the Nazi problem comes in.  The king promulgated Purity Laws three times, each one decades apart, and each one increasingly strict.  Now a person with a great grandparent who was not elvish is no longer an elf and cannot own property nor be married to an elf.  (The authors say this is Fascism, but Fascists revere the State, not the blood.  Nazis revere “pure” blood.)

This Nazi/Jim Crow/Apartheid nasty mess is a backdrop that doesn’t add much to the story.  It explains a little why some of the secret society is so careful to hide their Dark Elf ancestry, but we didn’t need the entire Jim Crow racial nonsense to make that point work.  The authors brought in a few incidents with the now-denigrated non-elves that felt pasted on, as if they initially intended to make those incidents a big part of the story, then changed their mind and left the stubs.

The primary story, Revi and her new partner Ansee, unraveling the murders and finding the culprit, is good.  It moves fast and is engaging.  The secondary story, with the Gestapo-like Sucra working hand-in-hand with the new police commissioner, is also quite well done.

This secondary story is terrifying all by itself as we see the Sucra’s Senior Inquisitor Malvaceä torturing, imprisoning without cause, extorting, killing and setting up false trails.  I’d like to see the authors further develop the primary story against the backdrop of this secret police threat to the king and kingdom.

Overall

Wrath of the Fury Blade is readable and I mostly enjoyed it.  There were a few spots that are far-fetched, for example, when Revi’s long time information source not only recognizes the pins but knows there is a centuries-long plot against the king that ties into the pins.

The characters were fairly interesting but not well developed enough to carry the novel without the fast plot.  Revi felt too much like a composite police/dectective/good guy crime fighter and the authors dropped a few clues that she may have more going on than the stock character they present.

Wrath of the Fury Blade leaves us ready for a sequel.  I think we’ll have more Revi/Ansee interactions, possibly more about Revi’s family and murdered father and we’ll see why Ansee and his sister do not get along. I’m hoping the authors build onto the Sucra threat.  I also hope the authors write a little less of a multi-genre mash up and concentrate on the characters and pick one or two main stories.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

3 Stars

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Review: A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne Early Pacing Issues, Otherwise Excellent

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A Plague of Giants is the first book in Kevin Hearne’s new series, The Seven Kennings.  I enjoyed Hearne’s Iron Druid series and was glad to get a copy of this new novel from NetGalley.  The good news is, NetGalley expects one to 1) Finish and 2) Review each book.  The bad news?  We have to 1) Finish and 2) Review.  I almost didn’t make it through #1.

A Plague of Giants begins with a bang.  A tidal mariner sees an invasion force, scuttles many ships and warns her country’s leaders in time to repel the invaders.  Right away this gets us interested.  What is a tidal mariner, who are these invaders, what is going on here?  We get hints of the magic system with this tidal mariner’s story:  She expends part of her life each time she uses her kenning (magical gift, in her case water-related), and large tasks cost her years.  That sounds intriguing!

I settled in to read the rest…only the next section bogged down.  And it got worse.  Slower, and slower until the only things keeping me reading were a guilty sense of duty and a dim memory that thee Iron Druid novels have slow spots that are not too long.

By 25% of the way through (thank you Kindle for telling me how much more to endure) I thought seriously about skimming the rest and writing a short, negative review.  By 30% through the book starts to pick up.  Some of the disparate strands of story start to come together, book has more action than politics, we learn about a few new characters with interesting stories.

The Good Points

Hearne uses the device of a bard recreating and retelling first-person stories to show snippets from 10 characters in 6 countries.  Not all the character have kennings and of those who do, they differ.  This method gives us a plausible sense of in-person viewpoint.

Some of the characters are fascinating.  We are supposed to dislike the viceroy Melishev Lohmet, although I find him quite interesting.  He is conniving, sneaky, sly, dedicated to himself first, last and always. He is despicable – but interesting and I enjoy his sections.  Gondel the scholar and Nel Kit ben Sah are also well done.

Plague of Giants has a plethora of plot, big, little, over-arching, tiny subs, enough that it is challenging to keep the characters and their plot involvements straight.  I wasn’t sure at first whether the two giant invasions were connected, and if not, which was the main plot.  Hearne hints at some plots; for example, one narrator’s house guest seems more than she appears on the surface.  On the good side he wraps up the main subplot by the end.

The Not So Good Points

It seemed to take Hearne several iterations to get the bard-telling-the-story method working well.  I wouldn’t say the first few viewpoints were confusing – it was always clear who was talking – but it wasn’t clear how they worked together, or even if they were supposed to connect.

After a few character sequences the bard starts each new session by introducing the character and sketching the background, how the little vignette fit in time compared to other events.  This is helpful to keep us focused and helps the pacing.

Characterization is uneven.  Some of the characters stari out as semi-reasonable folk, then slide down to nasty, murderous thugs, notably Garin Mogen.  Mogen is lava-born, controls fire, leads his people to escape the volcano eruption that destroys their home.  He is quick tempered and won’t let soft considerations stop him from settling where he wants. Mogen views things like ownership, permission, unauthorized forestry as soft, simply unimportant.  That part makes sense.  What doesn’t make much sense is that Mogen not only has no qualms about killing people with fire, he relishes it.  He wants to kill, to burn everyone who stands in his way.  At first Mogen was one of the most interesting people, but we readers quickly decide he needs to go, just as fast as someone can get him gone.

I don’t recall reading it in the novel, but it is as though one becomes the element one controls and it takes the kenning bearer over.  If that’s the case then it’s hard to see how Mogen had kept his people together as long as he did.

We are supposed to like Abhinava Khose (Abi) but I find him tedious, overly dramatic, in fact a typical older teen who thinks they are important.  This is not a flaw in the writer, but my reaction to a spoiled brat who later makes good, solely by accident.  In fact I think it’s to Hearne’s credit that he creates characters that are so realistic.

Some of the plot points were hinted.  Refugee Elynea lives with Dervan, the main POV character and a close friend of his country’s elected ruler.  She wants a job but when Dervan finds her one she is angry.  Supposedly she is angry because she didn’t need his help, but I feel her response to situations is slightly off all the way.  No doubt we’ll see more of Elynea in sequels.

The book does not have an ending.  Hearne stops telling the story at a point where a couple sub-plots finish and the main plot takes a breather, but it is clear that the story will continue in sequels.  I prefer books like The Iron Druid novels that flow sequentially, but one can enjoy reading them out of order.

There is no map and we readers need one.

Did I mention pace?  The excruciating slow start nearly swamps out the good points.  I don’t know whether a little more editing would help, or staying with one character longer at the beginning would make it more readable.

The pacing problems make A Plague of Giants hard to rate.  Do I base it on the last half, 4 stars?  The first quarter, 1 star?  Let’s say overall 3 stars.  Good story, interesting characters but a pace that derails the reader.

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Daughters of the Storm by Kay Wilkins Character-Driven Fantasy

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This book should have been great, featuring five sisters, daughters of the King of Thyrsland, each different.  One is the warrior queen-to-be, one a seflish romantic, one almost overwhelmed with her gift of foretelling, one an immoral tart and one drowning in religion and madness.  The king is ill and his wife, Gudrun, fears and hates Bluebell, her oldest stepdaughter, and distrusts and dislikes the other sisters.  She clings to her son from her first marriage and hopes to maneuver him into eventually ruling in place of warrior Bluebell.  Doesn’t that sound like an enticing novel?

The setting and back story should be great too.  Thyrsland follows the old religion, which doesn’t differentiate between men and women for ruling; the romantic sister is married to Thyrsland’s old enemy who calculates that switching to the Trimartyr religion will push his son to the fore as Thyrsland’s eventual ruler.

Unfortunately the story doesn’t jell.  The plot has many strands and parallel stories that don’t make full use of the inherent conflicts.  It felt like an extended set up instead of a story.  It didn’t hold my interest after the first fifth or so.

Plus, as a book that relies on characters, there is no sister to like, none is the eventual heroine.  All the sisters are flawed and Willow, Ivy and Rose are despicable.  I like Bluebell the best.  She cares for her country more than herself and is smart, cagey, realizes the religious threat.  On the other hand she has a genius for making people hate her (mostly deserved) and doesn’t seem to care that she exacerbates the threat from raiders, step mother, step brother and her erstwhile brother-in-law.

This novel did not work for me.   I got it from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  Had it not been for that I would have deleted it after the first fifth, as it was I managed to skim the last half.  I won’t look for the sequels.

2 Stars

The Scarab’s Curse (The Savage and Sorcerer, Book 1) by Craig Halloran

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The Scarab’s Curse (The Savage and Sorcerer, Book 1) by Craig Halloran is not deep.  It is light entertainment.  The first scene has the sorcerer Finster sitting in his office, the balcony over a small town bar, giving love (lust) tokens to a client – along with the bad news that the man’s wife has been unfaithful.  This scene is richly detailed, the setting is carefully drawn so we feel the fire’s warmth and see the steep stairs to the balcony.  Soldiers rudely interrupt, arrest Finster and drag him off to the Wizard Haven.

This first scene got me hooked.  I appreciate an author’s skill who is able to create a mood and setting without lots of boring telling, who keeps the narrative alive and moving while filling us in on the back story.  It is not easy to do.  Halloran did a good job on about the first third of the novel, carefully illuminating setting, mood and character.

The last two thirds or so feel rushed, all plot, minimal background or setting or mood and little character development.  Halloran’s writing style is good and he still tells a good story; he kept me reading.  Halloran says in the afterward that he wrote the story in 8 days, two of which were Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so he drafted and finished a reasonably entertaining read in 6 days.  Impressive.

It would have been more impressive had he taking his time and made the last part as good and as enticing as the first third; he would have had a very good novel.  Instead it’s a decent story, but not as good as it could have been.

There is a sequel, The Scarab’s Power, but it’s $2.99 on Amazon, a little pricey if it’s the same overall decent-but-not-great quality as this first novel.   I may look for other books by this author since he is able to tell a good story.

3 Stars

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Excalibur Rising – What Happens When a Crime Boss Wants a Sword?

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Author Eileen Enwright Hodgetts has a unique answer to why the legend of King Arthur is so strong yet we have little to no historical evidence the man existed.  (Best theories put him as a war leader fending off the Saxon invasion, not as a larger-than-life heroic king of all Britain.)  Her answer?  The king ruled in an alternate Britain around the 1100s and his knights slid through into our world to quest and run off their wild oats.

The novel Excalibur Rising picks up today, when an English historian offers an acquisitive Las Vegas crime boss the chance to purchase King Arthur’s legendary sword.  The boss assigns his curator, Marcus, a former television treasure hunter, to verify the details and get the sword if it’s authentic.  That starts a whirlwind of murder, trips to Florida, England, environmental protests, kidnapping, car chases, and semi-psychic tracking.

 

Characters

The main characters are Marcus and Violet, the semi-psychic that the mob boss contacts to help with the search.  Both are well written. We meet Marcus first and he’s about what you would expect from a man once famous, now slightly on the seedy side.  His television show is long gone as is his money and most of his self-respect.  He has not contacted his ex-wife or children in years and lives in his boss’s casino hotel.

Violet is pretty but plump, not at all active and lives in Key West with her brother and sister.  All three were adopted and no one knows anything about Violet’s background.  Violet’s brother is a wannabe actor and adds a lot of humor and snark to the story.  Violet herself is pretty greedy – that Conch house eats money! – and can often find recent history just by touching something.  She wants the mafia boss’s reward.

Despite initial reservations and distrust the two join forces before the meet a whole crowd of extra characters, some nasty, some nice and all too many dead.

Mordred (or his latest descendant) makes an appearance and is the same conniving, greedy, care-for-nobody that we all detested in the original Arthur stories.  His evil minions are alive and well and join to terrorize the people in their version of Albion.  King Arthur himself is the central point of the novel but appears only at the very end.

Plot

The author is telling a fantasy and writes well.  She sets her plot to move fast, from Las Vegas to London to northern England to Wales, picking up people and clues along the way.  The book moves fast enough that it’s easy to suspend disbelief, although after Marcus once more said there was no evidence for King Arthur whatsoever I wanted to raise my hand and point out the Saxon invader theory.  (As a theory it explains a leader, but none of the knightly trappings or round table or any of the Grail quest.)

Overall

I thoroughly enjoyed Excalibur Rising, in fact it was a very pleasant surprise to read a book as well-written with so many engaging characters.  It sets up for a sequel at the end, but can be read and enjoyed as a standalone.

Excalibur Rising is right between 4 and 5 stars.  It’s not quite there to get 5, but better than many 4 star novels.  I eagerly look forward to reading the sequel.

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Review: Age of Myth – Book One of The Legends of the First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan

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With a title like Age of Myth Book One of The Legends of the First Empire you expect a lot of set up as the author builds a fantasy world with plenty of action, good guys vs. bad and maybe some decadence lurking in the bushes.  What makes Age of Myth so good is that it stands on its own, no cliff hangers, and the story is set in a small geographical area and over a month or two.  Sullivan built his world and his characters to tell a story – and they do.

Michael J. Sullivan delivers the action and good/bad guys, lots of intriguing back story and he does it all intertwined with the set up for a series such that you don’t feel the entire novel was a pilot for a new series.  The book reads fast; we get to know six or seven characters; there are hints of a great back story and best of all, there are several plots all moving together.

So often the first-book-in-a-series is half set up and the story and characters are sketches.  Age of Myth is well done and I’m looking forward to the continuing saga.

Plots

The blurb talks about Raithe who killed a “god”, in actuality a Fhrey, a race of long-lived, highly cultured people.  The killing does kick off some of the action as it sets up confrontation between Fhrey and the contemptible Rhune (humans), but it is only part of the story.  The Fhrey are divided internally with the magic-wielding Miralyith feeling superior to – in fact as gods – the ordinary Fhrey who cannot work magic.  The other Fhrey left the Instarya clan out in the wilderness to guard against the humans and buffer the pampered city dwellers.  Naturally the Instarya feel oppressed and are not happy with this division and their low status.

On the human side Raithe doesn’t actually do much.  He arrives at Dahl Rhen, a more civilized human town than he is used to, where he meets Persephone who carries the other main plot thread.  Persephone is the widow of the former chieftain and although she herself is unaware of it, the new chieftain and his wife are afraid of her influence and try to kill her.

Along the way we have other bands of Fhrey who appear and are willing to align with the humans, we have the naive Miralyith Fhrey Arion, a young lady seer Suri, a demon-possessed wolf and more.  The plots are complex but easy enough to follow, especially as Sullivan doesn’t tip his hand.  We suspect there’s more going on with the new chieftain but we don’t actually see it until Persephone does.

All these plots are foundations for future stories with enough content and strands for several novels.

People and World Building

Sullivan’s characters are people in their own right.  His female leads are especially well drawn; they aren’t your stereotype fighters nor shifty prostitutes or thieves.  Instead they are realistic people doing things that make sense for their culture.

We ride along with Arion as she first sees first hand how the Instarya fear and resent the Miralyith.  She doesn’t like it and much of her story deals with her growing awareness of the inter-Fhrey tensions and her dismay at recognizing she herself may need to get involved.  I wasn’t fond of Arion although I can see she will be pivotal in the future.

Persephone slowly learns just how much the new chieftain and his coterie hate her and how much in danger she is.  She is loyal first to her people, the townsfolk of Dahl Rhen, then to her friends and those she sees as helping her people.  She is careful to not draw the town’s attention to herself at first but the chieftain doesn’t know what to do and won’t take her softly voiced suggestions.  Persephone learns how strong she is only as the story progresses.  She was my favorite character.

Suri is the young seer who plays a magic-helper role plus is an interesting character in her own right.  Suri intuitively knows what dangers threaten and counsels Persephone to escape murderous clansmen and an enormous possessed bear.

Raithe, who initiates the Rhune/Fhrey war, plays a minor role.  He gets in the middle of things almost by accident.  Nyphron, the Instaryon Fhrey, is Raithe’s counterpart.

Sullivan built a world that feels real.  We can almost smell the woods and our stomachs are growling as Raithe and Malcolm run for their lives.  We can see the dirt and grungy towns that the Rhunes live in compare to the splendor of even the remote Instaryon fortress.  Sullivan doesn’t harp on the decadence the Miralyith develop nor the growing despair the non-magic Fhrey feel, but it’s there like a bit of a bad smell. I expect he’ll build on that split in future novels as it offers so many story line opportunities.

Summary

I enjoyed Theft of Swords, Sullivan’s first book of the Riyria Revelations but wasn’t as fond of the rest of the Revelation series or the prequel novels, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Age of Myth is excellent, well constructed, written carefully to give enough back story and world building to entice us but not tell all.

If you like solid fantasy novels written for adults with little or no romance, no sparkling vampires, plenty of action and a world so well built you can feel the dirt on the floor, this is for you.

I received this from Net Galley for free in expectation of an honest review.

4+ Stars

Day of the Dragonking – Speeding Fantasy Goes A Bit Off the Rails

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Day of the Dragonking starts with a bang.  Steve Rowan sees and feels an airplane crash right outside his apartment.  He sees and hears the passengers and the crew, sees three people turn over tarot cards to cause the crash, sees the crash site furrow in his parking lot.  Yet he doesn’t see it.  There are no fireball, no emergency response vehicles, no television trucks.

This crash happened and it didn’t happen.  A mysterious cabal used the sacrifice of 400+ people to power the Change, bringing magic into the world.  Main character Steve assumes the avatar of tarot character The Fool with the Fool’s powers and weaknesses and is pulled into a runaway mess with female Seal Ace Morningstar, sentient NSA computer Barnaby and haunted cell phone Send Money.

Day of the Dragonking is non-stop action, sometimes running so fast that it wobbles.  It isn’t clear who the villians are, we hear of The Illuminati, but we hear they are only the side show, that Someone Else wants to wake up the World Serpent with a truly horrific sacrifice of 100,000 lives.

Meanwhile Steve and Ace plus cell phone and other characters picked up along the way are rushing around Washington DC trying to understand and help corral the Change.

I enjoyed the first part of the book when we meet the characters and the pace is slow enough that we can be bewildered right along with Steve and can share the terror and worry.  About a third into the novel the pace increases and gets a little harder to follow.  Also I found I really didn’t care.  The story switched from people-centric to event-centric and got a little silly around the edges.

A Bit Too Fast and A Bit Too Much

For example, somewhere author Edward B. Irving tells us that Steve’s cell phone is special because it contains the soul? memories? personality? of a dead Chinese Apple employee called Send Money.  I managed to miss this and it seemed as if the phone went from the anonymous “my phone” to “Send Money” without a blink.

Barnaby tells Steve and Ace that the Change centered in Washington DC, where the plane crashed, and that the effect is radiating outwards.  Yet all the computers in California and China, Russia and around the world are Changed immediately.

Irving doesn’t explain or show us what is happening to the rest of humanity.  Some folks apparently were tagged immediately by The Villians to stop Steve and Ace, but we don’t know how this happened or why the people went along with it.  The military detachment merely presents itself, declares they will stop Steve and Ace, Ace fights them and wins and we go on.  Huh?  Who got to these guys so fast and how?

There are some ha-ha/funny comments about Congress and lobbyists and such becoming elves or dwarves or trolls, but we never see this, we only hear about it.  Some reviewers commented on the political satire, but I expect to see something, not merely hear about it 3rd hand for satire.

Characters

At first I liked Steve Rowan and he was the best of a middling lot.  Steve is a 3rd rate journalist, twice-divorced, lonely and doesn’t believe in much.  Shoved into a corner he quickly picks up the basic Fool powers and manages to work magic by focusing on the tarot card.  Ace warns him against using blood magic, whether it’s his blood or from others’ but Steve doesn’t really believe her.  He uses blood magic three times before he realizes he just made a mistake, that the blood magic is addictive.

Ace Morningstar is a female Seal (at a time when only men could qualify).  She used her pre-Change magic to masquerade as a man and her own determination and ability to hone her skills to a frightening level.  No one realized she was a woman until another magic user saw through her glamour.  Ace is tough, smart, ferocious and single minded.  Her charge, as she reminds Steve, is his safety yes, but Send Money – the cell phone – even before Steve the living human.

Ace has magic and plenty of experience with it before the Change, but lost the magic in the Change.  She still has the knowledge and experience and understand the Tarot analogies and avatars.  Irving does a good job with Ace acting as both character and explainer-to-the-audience and to Steve.

Setting

The action takes place in Washington DC, mostly on or near the Mall.  I’m not familiar with the locale but the vivid descriptions made it easy to follow.  I loved the description of the Potemkin building the CIA quickly threw together to confuse any lurking enemies.

Summary

The Day of the Dragonking was middling good to good with some rough patches in the plot that made it hard to follow and harder to care about the characters.  The Kindle version I got could use serious copyediting as there are many copy/paste errors and formatting problems.

While I enjoyed the book overall I may or may not read the sequels.  If Irving is done with the set up then the subsequent books may flow better and make more sense.  He may be able to show the Washington Beltway satire too and help us care about the people.

Irving writes well with interesting phases and has a vivid imagination to create an intricate world similar to but far different from our own.  Dialogue is a little weak, especially between Ace and Steve.

3 1/2 Stars

I received a free copy of Day of the Dragonking from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Seven Forges by James A. Moore – Set Up for Sequels – Fantasy Review

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Seven Forges by James A. Moore is set up for an ongoing series, with the author showing us two cultures so different that one will be an existential threat to the other, and cast of traditional characters for this sword and sorcery fantasy novel.

Plot

Seven Forges starts with a bang.  Merros Dulver, retired from the Emperor’s army, leads an expedition to the freezing Blasted Lands, looking for any traces of the people who once inhabited the area before it was devastated by a mage war.  He and his band are fighting for their lives against Pra-Moresh, huge predators of the icy waste, when Drask, from the Sa’ba Taalor people, intervenes and kills the remaining monsters.

The plot thins after this, with isolated incidents that don’t flow together and no overarching conflict in the story telling sense.  The author sets up a major conflict that kicks off at the end of the novel, but dribbles out little fights that don’t tie together before that.

The expedition travels first to Drask’s land of the Seven Forges, then takes Drask and about 40 others of the Sa’ba Taalor back to the capital of the Empire to meet Emperor Pathra.  This begins the completely misunderstood engagement between the two peoples that is doomed to end in war.

Unfortunately the book falls flat at the point where Dulver and crew reach the Seven Forges.  Drask tells them that each Sa’ba Taalor does everything for themselves – crafts their own weapons, grows their own food, fights their own battles – and gives evidence that each adult is extremely capable with weapons and that every dispute is solved with combat.  The Sa’ba Taalor have gods that direct their actions and requires each to be self-sufficient.  Somehow Dulver doesn’t catch what this means.

The emperor, his wizard advisor Desh and Dulver all see the Sa’ba Taalor visitors as an embassy, a meeting designed to bring long term trade and good will.  They don’t realize that a people who sees everything as directed by their gods and to be resolved via violence will see the Empire as soft, as incapable, as undeserving.

The emperor agrees to let 10 of the Sa’ba Taalor go to Roathes, the southern country in the empire that is being invaded slowly by the neighboring Guntha.  The emperor believes the Sa’ba Taalor are there to scout the problem, confirm the situation.  The Sa’ba Taalor are there to “take care of the problem”, which in their lexicon means kill every Guntha on the shore.  Which they do.

At this point the wizard and Dulver wise up and realize they do not have compatible goals or understanding, that the Sa’ba Taalor do not value what the empire values.  And both get a bit suspicious and worried about their intentions.

Backstory and World Building

When I read fantasy novels I look for engaging characters, interesting backstory with tantalizing glimpses of what might be there, fun and fast moving plots, reasonable world building.  Seven Forges by James Moore has a good backstory but it falls flat.

First the idea that everyone is self-sufficient for food, for defense, for weapons crafting is intriguing but I kept wondering just how far that self-sufficiency extended.  Did each person mine their own ore and smelt it?  Did each one build their own house, weave their own cloth, tan their own leather?  We could see some cooperation among the Sa’ba Taalor who traveled to the empire, but where did they draw the line?

The fact that every one who wants something builds it themselves, yet that every dispute and every issue is solved by physical combat seems paradoxical.  In our world when violence is the only rule the weak are impoverished and we end up with warlords or gang leaders.

The Sa’ba Taalor demanded that the empire’s assigned ambassador, Andover, demonstrate his martial competence and stated that the Sa’ba Taalor would only respect him – and by extension everyone else – if he could hold his own with weapons.  The empire valued other things – the rule of law, the ability to solve problems with words and trade, commerce, art and music.   The Sa’ba Taalor see no reason to demonstrate their skills in the empire’s valued abilities, in fact it never seems to occur to anyone to show reciprocity.

Characters

The characters likewise lost their interest about a third of the way through.  I liked Desh the wizard and the emperor Pathra and Dulver was OK if two-dimensional.  The Sa’ba Taalor were boring.  You could substitute any generic bad guy/violent culture; the extreme self-sufficiency was the only novel point and as mentioned it didn’t make a lot of sense.

The character I like least is Andover whom the emperor appoints as ambassador to the Sa’ba Taalor.  This makes no sense.  Andover is nearly illiterate, about 18, unskilled, young, dumb, venal and gullible. Most emperors would appoint someone who knows something about the empire or its trade and can represent the emperor’s wishes.  The Sa’ba Taalor tell the emperor that their gods have chosen Andover, but why and why should that matter for something as important as the first ambassador to a neighbor.

Summary

Author Moore must have meant this as the set up for a series as we finally get to the real conflict between Sa’ba Taalor and Empire only at the end of the book and the whole thing feels like a set up.   Unfortunately Moore takes almost 400 pages to set up his world and the eventual conflict and after slogging through that much I really don’t much care.

3 Stars

(Amazon shows there are at least four books in the series now.)

Like Armor? Fantasy Novel The Red Knight – Miles Cameron

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If you like armor or sword and sorcery or just fantasy / alternate history novel you’ll enjoy The Red Knight (The Traitor Son Cycle). The novel is billed as book one of The Traitor Son Cycle, with book two recently published.

The Red Knight is the first fantasy by Miles Cameron, who has written historical fiction under a different name. The Red Knight is heavy with medieval combat, armor, knighthood, set in Alba which is somewhat similar to England.  They are at odds with The Wild, a poorly defined bunch of humans and non-humans, many with magic.  The Wild wants to take back their former stronghold, which a religious order now owns and is using as a convent.  It is the Abbess of this convent who hires the Red Knight’s mercenary company for security.

The Red Knight is complicated and long, over 600 pages, with at least 6 main groups of characters and over 50 individually named people. When I finally got to about page 500 I started skimming a little since some of the character groups did not seem germane to the story and did not interest me.

This story sprawls over and could benefit from editing. Do we really need to know the Sossig bands? They are barbarians in conflict with the Kingdom of Alba who played a peripheral role in the story, yet we had a good 50 pages and another 10 or so characters. The drovers and their group also did not seem important and didn’t add much. The last episode where they visit the Wyrm is a set up for sequels, but again, adds little except word count.

Two big improvements would be a list of characters and a map to make it easier to keep track of the people and places. Some characters had the same last names or similar first names that made them hard to keep straight.

Another huge improvement would be to cut down on the armor and weapons descriptions. Over and over and over we get to read about the armor, how costly, how heavy, how time consuming to put on and take off. Rinse and repeat, and then do it all over again. Frankly, I’m not real interested in armor. Tell me once and I’m happy. The author says in his Afterword that he is involved in medieval re-enactments and the novel shows his expertise. But unless you are really interested in swords and bill hooks and gauntlets and and and, you won’t care and you’ll wish he just GOT ON WITH IT.

These are flaws that made reading longer and a bit tedious, but overall the book is good. There were a few surprises.

One odious character was the Galle (aka French?) pompous knight, who said with complete sincerity that his sword was all the justification he needed to exert low, middle and high justice. He killed two squires, burnt an inn and threw the town constable tied up into a stable. Why? Because the innkeeper and the squires’ knight didn’t immediately recognize his innate superiority and give him the best room.

I expected that this creep would take the Lancelot approach and try to win over the Queen, but that never happened.

Another was that the Queen and the Abbess both play prominent roles and are figures of power. And the Red Knight does not win his fair lady.

Besides adding a map and character list, editing out a few groups of characters, telling us only once about each piece of armor and weapon, there are a few other factors that limited my enjoyment.

  • We never learn much about the main character, the Red Knight. We get glimpses, but little background and very limited character development.
  • The world building is sketchy.   Alba is a land that is recovering from a massive fight with The Wild a generation ago. Clearly there should be a lot going on politically and personally, but we don’t see it.
  • There are allusions to political brangles and possibly traitorous vassals, but I’d have liked more meat as that would explain a great deal of the back story.
  • For some reason Alba has a major agricultural fair at the convent, even though it is implied to be out of the way.  That begs the question of why there?  What’s going on behind the scenes that keeps a convent and its territory as the prime destination for millions of gold pieces?
  • We don’t know much about The Wild. Some are monstrous, some are described as “guardians” or “just folks” yet will eat their human enemies alive.
  • The magic system is sketchy.

I enjoyed The Red Knight enough to look for the second book. But if The Fell Sword (Book 2 The Traitor Son Cycle) is another 600 page rehash of armor, weapons and irrelevant characters then I won’t finish it.

Review: Ranger’s Apprentice Book One: The Ruins of Gorlan John Flanagan

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The Ruins of Gorlan, Ranger’s Apprentice Book 1 is listed as YA fantasy. Will, the hero is 15 years old, small and scrawny, an orphan raised as the ward of Baron Arald, lord of Redmont fief, along with 4 others his age.  Ever year wards that turn 15 must choose – and be chosen – by one of the castle craft masters who then assume responsibility for their new apprentice.

Will wants to be a knight but is rejected from Battle School due to his size. The Ranger Halt accepts him and begins his training which includes how to move unnoticed, archery and field craft. Rangers are a cross between the spies of the kingdom, couriers and advisers.

Will of course proves himself many times, showing bravery, smarts, ethics, honor and ability. At the end of the story he is offered the chance to join the Battle School and train as a knight, but decides to continue as a ranger.

The Ruins of Gorlan could have been formulaic but it is something more than our usual coming of age/fantasy story. Will is a real character, well drawn and interesting. True, we don’t feel like we would recognize him if we met, but for a 200 page juvenile fantasy the characterization is excellent. Halt and even Will’s old fellow ward Horace are also well crafted. A few minor characters are a bit on the flimsy side, but perfectly well done for a short book aimed at younger readers.

Best of all, The Ruins of Gorlan does not read like a book for kids. The ideas and language are perfectly enjoyable for adults who want a fast read that’s enjoyable and fun.

I expect most teens and pre-teens would enjoy this. The character is fun, the plot moves and the setting, especially the plain with the Stone Flutes, was great. The story moves right to the final action where Will, with the Baron, Sir Rodney and Halt confront the monstrous Kalkara. Will takes the decisive action, but it was hinted earlier and used his wits rather than his brawn, perfectly fitting the book.

The Ruins of Gorlan is listed as Book One of the Ranger’s Apprentice series and now (April, 2013) there are eleven books in the series with book twelve near release.

I recommend this one.

4 Stars