Fantasy Cafe

Review of By the Mountain Bound

2009-11-23T21:40:00.000-05:00


	By the Mountain Bound by Elizabeth Bear 320pp (Hardcover) My Rating: 9/10 Amazon Rating: 5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 4/5 Goodreads Rating: 2/5

By the Mountain Bound is the second book in The Edda of Burdens series by Elizabeth Bear even though it is actually a prequel to the first book, All the Wind-wracked Stars (review). The series is based on Norse mythology and the first novel began with the end of the world. By the Mountain Bound fills in the backstory leading up to this cataclysmic event. The third book, The Sea thy Mistress, is scheduled for release in October 2010.

For over 500 years, the Children of the Light (other than the outcast Mingan, the Wolf) have lived together in Valdygard where they follow their leader Strifbjorn. In spite of his status with the other Children, Strifbjorn is rather fond of Mingan, who does visit Valdygard for major events including the wedding that the historian Muire recalls as the beginning of the end. For after the wedding, Strifbjorn found what appeared to be a nearly dead mortal woman washed up on the shore. However, it soon becomes apparent that she is no mortal as the woman defeats warriors with an uncanny strength. She claims to be the Lady they have been waiting for, and the Children of the Light are then divided, leading to the events the previous novel began with.

The narrative in By the Mountain Bound is divided among three perspectives: that of the Wolf, Mingan; the Historian, Muire; and the Warrior, Strifbjorn. Mingan and Muire's parts are both told in the first person, but Strifbjorn's sections are told in the third person. This seems fitting as Mingan and Muire both seem to be more central characters, particularly Mingan who was the most prominent one of the three and my favorite to read about (although Muire was a close second).

Bear is not easy on her characters and all three have it pretty rough, especially Mingan. Mingan is feared by all the einherjar and valkyrie with the exception of Strifbjorn. When he shows up at the wedding, Muire ends up having to serve him because nobody else will go near him, and even she runs away once she has given him his drink. It's hard not to feel sorry for Mingan when reading the parts told from his perspective. Although she is not an outcast, Muire does not seem to quite fit in with the other valkyries since she is more of a scholar than a warrior. Like most of the valkyries, Muire is in love with Strifbjorn, who is not particularly keen on choosing a wife even though he is expected to. Of course, those who have read All the Wind-wracked Stars know that it will only get worse for Muire at the end. Strifbjorn may seem to have it pretty good as a leader loved by his people, but even he is haunted by expectations and past mistakes.

The pacing is somewhat slow since there is a lot of time spent on the world and characters. It's one of those books in which one is thrust right into the story and may feel a little lost at first. There's a rare subtlety, and personally I love the fact that Bear treats her readers like they are intelligent people who do not need everything spelled out for them (and as you read more, it becomes much clearer). After reading this novel, I suspect that I'd get more from a reread of All the Wind-wracked Stars, which is another reason I love not being told all the details about everything right up front. All the layers make it far more interesting and a better candidate for reading multiple times.

The language and writing are lovely - it's not dense but it is still descriptive and packed with emotion. Bear did post some excerpts from the beginning on her blog so I'd suggest anyone who is interested check those out:

By the Mountain Bound is one of those books that appeals to me since it has so many of my favorite story elements - the basis in mythology, the broken characters, the beautiful writing, and the subtlety and layers. It was even more enjoyable than All the Wind-wracked Stars or even any of the other novels I've read by Elizabeth Bear, and learning about the events leading up to the previous volume added new depth to it.

9/10

Where I got my reading copy: I received a copy from the publisher.

Other Reviews:

Adventures in Reading
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review (where there is also a giveaway for this book running until November 29)

The Leaning Pile of Books

2009-11-22T17:22:00.003-05:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I've had any TBR additions, but this week I do have one review copy I received.

The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay

This debut urban fantasy is coming out on Tuesday (November 24). For a while, I was urban fantasied out (especially if it had vampires with the exception of the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs) but I read the first four pages and think I'll be reading this one after I finish the book I'm reading right now. It seemed fast-paced and easy to get drawn into. This is also urban fantasy of the non-vampire variety, so that's a plus as well.

Tia from Debuts & Reviews will be reviewing it soon and mentioned on Twitter that she is enjoying it so far, and Donna from Fantasy Dreamer's Ramblings also had good things to say about it.

Another Goodreads Giveaway: Lips Touch

2009-11-20T23:26:00.004-05:00

As I was browsing the giveaways on Goodreads tonight, I noticed they are giving away 10 copies of Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor (it is only available to US residents, though, unfortunately). This was the last book I reviewed and I absolutely loved it - it is even one of my top reads of the year so far.

It has been a little slow here lately, but I'm planning to get back on track this weekend. For a while I was busy and didn't have as much time for reading and writing, but I have been working on a review of By the Mountain Bound by Elizabeth Bear this week (which I liked even more than All the Wind-wracked Stars). So I am hoping to get a review of that up in the next couple of days. I also just finished reading a short book to review, An Illustrated Guide to Mythical Creatures. And with a four day weekend coming up, there will be more time for reading and writing reviews soon.

The November reading plan has failed since I was being a very moody reader and ended up deciding none of the books I tried next were working with that mood. Black Ships by Jo Graham did, however, so I've been reading that and really like it so far.

Review of Lips Touch: Three Times

2009-11-14T18:58:00.000-05:00


	Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor 272pp (Hardcover) My Rating: 9/10 Amazon Rating: 5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 4/5 Goodreads Rating: 4.23/5

Lips Touch: Three Times is the newest book by Laini Taylor, author of Blackbringer and Silksinger from her Dreamdark series. Like her other two novels, Lips Touch: Three Times is a YA book, although it is darker and seems to be aimed at an older audience than the Dreamdark books (not that the Dreamdark series is not perfectly enjoyable to read as an adult but more parents would feel comfortable giving younger children the Dreamdark books than they would Lips Touch: Three Times). Lips Touch: Three Times was recently nominated for the National Book Awards in the Young People's Literature category.

This book is actually a collection of three novellas, each involving a story of dangerous love. It contains beautiful illustrations by Taylor's husband, Jim di Bartolo, who also does all of her gorgeous book covers. I felt the artwork added a lot to each tale. There were several pictures at the beginning of each novella, and after reading it, I'd always flip back to the art at the beginning and see how each set of art seemed to tell a piece of the story.

Each novella was better than the one preceding it, which is especially good because I was rather disappointed in the first one. However, the next two were both exactly to my taste (they were also darker than the first).

Goblin Fruit

The first novella was the one I thought was the weakest, but it was also by far the shortest since it took up about 1/5 of the entire book. "Goblin Fruit" stems from the author's love for Christina Rosetti's poem "Goblin Market." All of her life, sixteen-year-old Kizzy has been warned about the goblins by her grandmother since her aunt was taken to their land in which she ate of their fruit. Kizzy has always wished to be someone else, which makes her the perfect target for goblins. For the goblins do not seek to ensnare the popular, beautiful girls but prefer the ones who yearn to be so much more than what they are.

The main reason this story did not appeal to me as much as the others is that there was quite a bit of teenage drama - a group of girls hanging out discussing the boys and the other girls. Personally, I'm not at all a fan of reading about what seems like rather shallow, high school conversations about who's hot or popular. It also contains one of those relationships where the new boy at school likes the plain, unpopular girl (Kizzy) and that storyline doesn't tend to do much for me, either.

While I did not like most of the story, there were two parts of it that I appreciated. The first of these was the details about Kizzy's weird family who believed in ghosts and, obviously, goblins. The second and better of the two was the writing, which was beautiful as always and also really managed to capture that feeling of wanting so badly to be more than what you are - dreaming of being able to do anything and everything. This was one of my favorite descriptions of Kizzy's longing:

Kizzy wanted to be a woman who could dive off the prow of a sailboat into the sea, who would fall back in a tangle of sheets, laughing, and who could dance a tango, lazily stroke a leopard with her bare foot, freeze an enemy's blood with her eyes, make promises she couldn't possibly keep, and then shift the world to keep them. She wanted to write memoirs and autograph them at a tiny bookshop in Rome, with a line of admirers snaking down a pink-lit alley. She wanted to make love on a balcony, ruin someone, trade in esoteric knowledge, watch strangers as coolly as a cat. She wanted to be inscrutable, have a drink named after her, a love song written for her, and a handsome adventurer's small airplane, champagne-christened Kizzy, which would vanish one day in a windstorm in Arabia so that she would have to mount a rescue operation involving camels, and wear an indigo veil against the stinging sand, just like the nomads.

Kizzy wanted. (pp. 41)

On merit of the actual story, I'd give "Goblin Fruit" a 4/10 but due to the fabulous writing and descriptions, it gets an extra point.

5/10

Spicy Little Curses Such As These

"Spicy Little Curses Such as These" begins in Hell with the meeting between a demon and an ambassador to Hell, a woman known as "the old bitch." The demon despises children, and it is Ambassador Estella's job to save as many of the children that the demon kills as she can. In return for their lives, the ambassador must sacrifice people, murderers or other criminals. On this particular day, the demon offers her all ten of the children he just had killed in an earthquake for free. As usual, "free" is too good to be true and comes with a price: the young ones will be saved if the ambassador will curse a baby girl with the most beautiful voice ever heard. The catch? Anyone who hears her utter a sound will drop dead. Estella is horrified but feels she has no choice but to allow the baby to be cursed since it will save ten innocent lives. So she places the curse on the newborn as required but adds an addendum of her own - that the child will not make a sound until she is old enough to understand what she does.

This tale of the curse and the young woman in India who must live with it is exactly my type of story and I loved every moment of it. Like the previous story, it is beautifully written but it is also excellent storytelling in addition to the prose. It was dark with some supernatural intervention and tough decisions, plus it had some wonderful arguments about superstition as the cursed girl wrestled with whether or not her belief was based on fabrication. If I had one complaint, it would be that the ending was wrapped up too neatly, although it is also not quite as happy as it could have been.

9/10

Hatchling

"Hatchling" was the longest, darkest, most fleshed out story and my favorite of the three. Only a few days before Esme's fourteenth birthday, she awakens to discover her eyes are no longer both brown but one is blue. In addition to this strange occurrence, Esme finds she also remembers events that did not happen to her and comes to the very creepy realization that:

These weren't her memories. This wasn't her eye. (pp. 146)

The first thought Esme has is to show her mother, who becomes completely freaked out and flees her home with her daughter. It's obvious that this is somehow connected to her mysterious past, although she does not know what is happening.

As you read more, Esme's mother's tale is revealed and eventually the rest of what is going on is made clear. This is one of those instances that in spite of how much I want to talk about it, I don't want to give away what happens. So I will just say that what happened to Esme's mother as a child is rather disturbing and the reason I loved "Hatchling" so much was this darkness, the way information slowly became available the more I read, and the fact that it had the most developed world mythology.

9.5/10

Lips Touch: Three Times is difficult to rate overall since it contained one story that I was not crazy about as well as two that were some of the very best of everything I have read this year. Since the two novellas I loved so much were about 80% of the book and I did enjoy them so thoroughly, I'm going to weigh them far more than the shorter, weaker novella.

9/10

Where I got my reading copy: I bought it (because I very much enjoyed the two books by Laini Taylor that I received as review copies).

Review of The Bone Key

2009-11-07T19:54:00.000-05:00


	The Bone Key by Sarah Monette 253pp (Trade Paperback) My Rating: 7/10 Amazon Rating: 5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 4.15/5 Goodreads Rating: 3.9/5

The Bone Key by Sarah Monette is a collection of ten necromantic mysteries featuring one central main character, a museum archivist who becomes involved with the supernatural. In the introduction, Monette states that these stories are a tribute to two authors she very much admires, H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. In spite of her love for their work, she did find them lacking in character development and feminism so she wrote some stories in the same vein but remedying these shortcomings. Since I have read neither Lovecraft nor James, I cannot say if she achieved that goal. However, the stories are well-written and atmospheric with a rather unusual main protagonist.

All the short stories in this book follow the adventures of one man - the shy, awkward, bookish Kyle Murchison Booth. In the opening story "Bringing Helena Back," Booth (who usually goes by his last name instead of his first name) becomes involved in an old friend's quest to resurrect his wife and becomes a magnet for strange events involving everything from ghosts to incubi afterward. Instead of going through each story individually, I will just discuss a couple of my favorites.

One of the most haunting stories was "Wait for Me" which made me fear mirrors more than the creepy museum (if this book convinced me of anything, it's that I never, ever want to be alone in a museum at night). In this tale, Booth comes into possession of a poet's diaries that were donated to the museum upon her death. Booth and a coworker went to collect them from the remaining members of the Stapleton family, and then Booth forgot all about them until he cannot sleep one night (as happens to him often). During this particular bout of insomnia, Booth goes to his office to sort through some papers and comes across a pamphlet entitled "Of Spirits and mirrours":

Instantly, and with a force like being hit by a bolt of lightning, I remembered Miss Stapleton, lying on the floor of that bedroom saying, The girl in the mirror. The girl with no eyes.

The pamphlet discusses how eyeless spirits appear in mirrors to do the work of the devil, which makes Booth question some of the strange occurrences in the Stapleton house, including the incident in which they found Miss Stapleton pinned under a vanity mirror. Booth promptly scours the diaries of Mildred Truelove Stapleton and discovers the dark story of a dead girl whose cries of "Wait for me!" can still be heard.

My other favorite story is the titular "The Bone Key" in which Booth receives a letter from a lawyer claiming he knew his mother, who died along with Booth's father when he was a young boy. When Booth meets the lawyer, it turns out he actually almost married Booth's mother and knows many details of his family's past that Booth was never told - including the curse that killed his father.

The main reason I read this book was that I love Sarah Monette's The Doctrine of Labyrinth series. Although I enjoyed The Bone Key, I did not think it was nearly as wonderful as her other books, but that is most likely due to my personal preference for novels over short stories and fantasy over horror (even if it's more psychological horror like this book than gory and icky horror). It was very well-written and it did have some similarities to The Doctrine of Labyrinth in that it was somewhat slow-paced and atmospheric. There was emphasis on character development and I really liked Booth, but he was not as vivid as either Felix or Mildmay in The Doctrine of Labyrinth though he was very sympathetic. Of course, this was a much shorter work than even a single book in the aforementioned four book series so there was much less room for getting to know the main protagonist, but the fact is that Booth does not have a particularly vivid personality.

Each story is told from the perspective of Booth, a very withdrawn man who avoids contact with others as much as possible. When he does converse with other people, he tends to be very quiet and unsure of what to say to them. There are a few recurring characters he interacts with, particularly the people he works with at the museum, but there are none that he is particularly close to so it doesn't have the same tension and drama as the Felix/Mildmay relationship. (This isn't necessarily a bad thing and I do think he is a rather well-written character - I personally just preferred reading about Felix and Mildmay and the city of Melusine.)

The Bone Key was enjoyable for its writing style and subtle creepiness. It was a good Halloween read and a book that I'm glad I read, but it was not as attuned to my personal taste as the other books I have read by Sarah Monette.

7/10

Where I got my reading copy: After it languished on my wish list for a while, a friend (and fellow fan of Monette's The Doctrine of Labyrinth series) sent it to me for my birthday.

November Reading: The Plan

2009-11-03T19:30:00.000-05:00

In an attempt to try to clear a few books off the pile that have been sitting there for too long, I've come up with a November reading plan. Right now I am reading By the Mountain Bound by Elizabeth Bear, which I absolutely love for its mythology, subtlety and troubled characters. For reviews, I am working on The Bone Key, a collection of ghost stories by Sarah Monette.

I just read a book I need to read for work last night so I'm going to reward myself next with a book I absolutely cannot wait to read - Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor.

After that the plan is to read the following:

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington (This one sounds dark and I really like the sound of it)

Busted Flush edited by George R. R. Martin (one of the Wild Cards books in preparation for Suicide Kings, the next book in the new trilogy, coming out next month)

Then depending on how much time is left after I finish those, I'd like to read as many of these in November as possible:

Twilight of Avalon by Anna Elliott
The Dragons of Hazlett by Michelle Scott
The Wolverine Files by Mike W. Barr

If I get through two of the above, I may swap one out for Graceling, though, since I'm also really looking forward to that one and would like to read it sometime in the near future.

What's everyone reading this November?

Asimov Estate Authorizing New I, Robot Books...

2009-11-02T12:00:00.001-05:00

...and they're already getting slammed:

They should not be followed up and continued. Isaac Asimoc(sic) died forty years after they were first written. If he had wanted to follow them up, he would have. The author’s intentions need to be respected here.

Ok, I'll agree there's logic to that. I'm sure if Asimov had wanted to toss another robot book in there, he would have. It's not like he had any shortage of opportunity to publish new books, there's only a few hundred titles out there with his name on them.

However, can't we at least wait for the books to come out before we declare them a desecration? We've been down this path before, with both well-known (Bear, Benford, and Brin with the Second Foundation Trilogy) and lesser-known authors (Robot City). The Second Foundation Trilogy, while not Asimov books, were excellent in their own right, and Robot City was at least an acceptable read. (We won't discuss the movie; in fact, it's best to just pretend it never happened since it was never really intended to be related anyway.) Even though they're never "the same" as what came before, when a series is extended by a different author it can still result in excellent work–let's hold off on the pitchfork-and-torch brigade until we at least have something to look at.

The Leaning Pile of Books

2009-11-01T15:29:00.000-05:00

This week I have five new books I added to the TBR pile. They're all books I bought myself this time and they're all ones I really can't wait to read, although I probably won't get to more than one of them this month (I'm still trying to figure out my November reading list other than By the Mountain Bound by Elizabeth Bear, which I'm reading now).

Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor

I received review copies of the two books in her Dreamdark series and ended up really enjoying both of them (Blackbringer and Silksinger). So when I heard about this newest book by Laini Taylor, I was intrigued. Then I heard it was nominated for the National Book Award, and I also heard it was very dark, moving it up to must-order-right-now status. After flipping through it some, seeing the gorgeous pictures, and reading parts of it (especially the intro to the second story, "Spicy Little Curses Such as These"), I'm pretty sure this is a book I will be making sure to read in November.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Like the Laini Taylor book, this is one I bought because I received a review copy of another book by the author and ended up loving it. In this case, that was an ARC of Fire, which is one of my very favorite books I've read this year. Graceling was Cashore's debut novel and Fire is a prequel to it, so this was another must-have. I'd like to read this one this month as well, although I'm not sure if I'll have time to.

The Living Blood by Tananarive Due

This is the sequel to My Soul to Keep, which I recently read and really enjoyed. It was nearly impossible to put down and I really liked how dark it was, the characters, and the amazing ending. This one was another must-have for those reasons.

The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams

This is the first book in the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy. I'm always looking for new space opera (unfortunately, a genre I've not read that much of this year even though it's one of my favorites) and after hearing some pretty good things about this one, I decided to get it. This is another potential candidate for SciFi Month when I do one.

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn
This one is not science fiction or fantasy but a mystery. It's the first of the Lady Julia Grey mysteries and ever since Angie of Angieville recommended it to me (her review), I've really wanted to read it. After she mentioned it, I looked it up on Amazon to see what it was about and was very curious about reading more after seeing the opening lines:

To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.

Review of Tempest Rising

2009-10-31T19:09:00.001-04:00


	Tempest Rising by Nicole Peeler 368pp (Paperback) Read Chapter One My Rating: 7/10 Amazon Rating: 5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 3.63/5 Goodreads Rating: 4.38/5

Tempest Rising is the first book in the Jane True series and is Nicole Peeler's debut novel. Its official release date is November 1, although Amazon started shipping it on October 27. This urban fantasy series is supposed to be at least three books long with the next book, Tracking the Tempest, coming out sometime in the spring/summer 2010 season according to Orbit's website. The third book is entitled Tempest's Legacy.

For her entire life, Jane has lived in the little coastal tourist town Rockabill in Maine. When she was very young her mysterious mother disappeared just as suddenly as she first appeared in the town, completely naked in the middle of the storm. Due to her mother's oddness and the fact that many of the residents believe Jane to be just as strange as she was, Jane has always felt like an outcast, especially after she was blamed for the death of her boyfriend. It doesn't help that Jane herself has always felt a bit weird since she tends to go swimming in the middle of the winter and doesn't even notice the cold.

During one of these swims, Jane finds a dead body in the ocean. Since she'd rather people didn't associate her with yet another corpse, she doesn't inform anyone but drags the body onto the beach where she knows someone will find it. The next day Jane is followed by a huge dog that looks like some sort of hellhound who takes her to a gnome and a kelpie. They reveal to her that her mother was a selkie, making her a halfling - half human and half supernatural. The man who died was also part supernatural, and since Jane found him and will be questioned, they have decided it is time she knew the truth. As part of the investigation, Jane meets - and becomes rather close to - the handsome vampire Ryu, who has been assigned to the case. In the process, she learns more about the paranormal world and her own heritage, while becoming entangled in solving the mystery.

Tempest Rising is a short, entertaining read. It had some humor, which was rather hit or miss. Sometimes it was quite humorous, but other times it seemed to be overdone and trying too hard. There was a lot of sex - too much for my taste - and for a while I was thinking it seemed more like a paranormal romance. I decided I wouldn't actually label it a paranormal romance, though, just because it didn't seem, well, romantic. Jane and Ryu hooked up really fast, but it wasn't at all like love at first sight. It was more like lust at first sight, which seems a lot more realistic. Jane doesn't delude herself into thinking her relationship with Ryu is anything like her previous relationship - nor should she since she barely even knows Ryu when they sleep together for the first time. It doesn't seem like a completely shallow relationship, either, since she and Ryu do care about and look out for each other - it's just a rather fast one that seems nothing like love but has the potential to turn into it.

In spite of having too much time devoted to sex for my personal taste, some overdone humor and also an obsession with describing clothes far too often, it did win me over in the end. This was mainly due to Jane herself, the barghest Anyan, and the plethora of supernatural which fortunately was not limited to just the typical vampires and werewolves. Yes, there was one vampire (and I am started to get a bit tired of vampires at this point, especially since I was never a big fan of them in the first place), but this supernatural world also contains kelpies, selkies, gnomes, djinn, nahual, a barghest, and nagas. Many of the paranormal races are shapeshifters of some sort and I do love shapeshifters. The nahual can assume any form, and most others are two-formed, meaning they can be either human or some sort of animal.

Jane herself was very sympathetic and likable, which is particularly important since this novel was one told from the first person perspective of the main character. It's easy to empathize with her both for her tragic past and her place as the town outcast who is picked on for no good reason other than prejudice against people who are different from the norm. She's not really a kick-ass heroine but a more vulnerable one, and others tend to take care of her instead of her saving the day herself all the time. It will be interesting to see how she develops now that she is part of a community in which she no longer has to hide what she is. Her struggles are not over yet, though, since not all paranormal creatures are willing to accept those who are half human. I'm also looking forward to learning more about what she can do as a half-selkie, and as a resident of Maine myself, I think she has one of the best powers for the climate one can have - never getting cold. For about half the year I am freezing so I'd love to have Jane's tolerance for cold temperatures.

The next book is supposed to have more Anyan, which makes me very happy since he was one of the main reasons I wanted to keep reading this book. Anyan, the barghest, is one of those mysterious characters and there are a few intriguing hints about him that are dropped here and there. Some revelations about him toward the end that made me curious about finding out more. It feels somewhat formulaic since it seems similar to another character I've read about recently, but I have to admit it's a formula that hooks me.

Tempest Rising is an entertaining story, although it did some issues that did not agree with my personal taste. The humor was also a bit of a mixed bag, but some of it did work very well. In spite of some problems, the world populated with some lesser seen paranormal creatures and some of the characters, including the main protagonist, made me want to read the next book.

7/10

Where I got my reading copy: I received an ARC from the publisher.

Other Reviews:

SciFiChick

Halloween Week & Horror Book Review

2009-10-29T18:14:00.004-04:00

It's Halloween week over at The Book Smugglers, which means there are tons of posts about horror books and movies. There are also a lot of guest posts, and Thea and Ana invited me to post over there this week. Thea also sent me one of her favorite scary books to write about today - Christopher Pike's Whisper of Death, which is about a couple of teenagers who come home to find their town deserted except for them and 3 other teens from their school. The review is now up and if you are a Halloween fan, there are plenty of other spooky books and movies to read about.

For other reviews, I've been working on a review of Nicole Peeler's debut Tempest Rising, which will be out on November 1 and is now shipping from Amazon. I'm almost done with Sarah Monette's The Bone Key, and then I'll be eagerly devouring the newest from Elizabeth Bear, By the Mountain Bound.

The Leaning Pile of Books

2009-10-25T11:12:00.012-04:00

It's Sunday so it's time to post any new additions to the TBR for the week. I have three new ones and they are all copies I received for review.

By the Mountain Bound by Elizabeth Bear

I was psyched to get a copy of the second book in The Edda of Burdens series a few days ago - it is one of my most anticipated 2009 releases (it's out on October 27). Elizabeth Bear is one of my favorite authors and I loved the first book in this series, All the Windwracked Stars. (Well, I called it the first book but this is actually a prequel to it even though it is the second book - which excited me even more because I cannot wait to read about the events leading up to All the Windwracked Stars.) The Edda of Burdens series is based on Norse mythology, and I just absolutely love how Bear writes anything based on mythology. I just started The Bone Key by Sarah Monette for my last Halloween read (I can't believe I forgot about this book when I was trying to think of horror/Halloweenish novels - I was going to read Sunshine but decided I'm vampired out for the moment), but as soon as that is finished, I'm reading By the Mountain Bound.

Servant of a Dark God by John Brown

Ever since I first read Tia's review of this book over at Fantasy Debut (which has just moved to Debuts & Reviews), I've been intrigued by it. Plus I really like how ominous the title sounds and enjoy reading new debuts, so I'm looking forward to reading this one.

An Illustrated Guide to Mythical Creatures by David West and Anita Ganeri

This is a children's book that's exactly what the title says - information on mythical creatures with illustrations. It's relatively short so it's not an exhaustive guide by any means, but it looks as though it could serve well as an introduction to these creatures for younger readers (of course, I haven't read it yet - only flipped through it a bit to see what was there).

Review of My Soul to Keep

2009-10-20T23:10:00.000-04:00


	My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due 352pp (Trade Paperback) My Rating: 8/10 Amazon Rating: 5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 4/5 Goodreads Rating: 4.24/5

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due has two sequels: The Living Blood and Blood Colony, respectively. The ending isn't quite a cliffhanger but I wouldn't call it a complete ending, either, since it is very clear that there is a lot more of the story left to be told. It's often classified as horror, but I thought it was more contemporary dark fantasy/suspense than horror. Also, I've often seen it labeled as a vampire story and it really is not - or if it is, it is a retelling that is drastically different. Although it does contain some humans who achieve immortality through a ritual involving an injection of blood, they are not nocturnal, nor do they have fangs, suck blood, turn into bats, sleep in a coffin or even so much as sparkle in the sunlight like a wussy imitation vampire.

Note: I'm not really sure how to write this review without giving away what may be considered spoilers. The excerpt from the book on Due's site is actually the part of the book that mentions the part I am worried about, so I don't think it was supposed to be a shocking revelation, especially since I thought it seemed pretty obvious where this was going from the opening pages. It's also confirmed so there can be no doubts about 15% of the way in, but just in case, I'm adding a warning.

Jessica couldn't ask for anything more from her life - she has a doting husband dubbed "Mr. Perfect" by a coworker for his attentiveness, an adorable 5-year-old daughter, and her dream career as a reporter. Her husband stays home with their daughter most of the time, which enables her to work long hours at her job as a journalist. She has been working on an article about poor care in nursing homes, and her friend and coworker Peter obtained a book deal for the two of them based on this story. They are pursuing information on a particularly nasty case involving an 80-year-old woman who was smothered to death one night while most of the staff was out due to a storm. Unfortunately, her husband comes across the files one night when he's waiting for her at the office with some dinner - and immediately throws them out since they threaten to unveil his secret.

Unknown to Jessica, her husband David is about 500 years old despite the fact that he appears to be no more than 30 years old. He and several other men underwent a ritual in which they died in order to come back to life again - forever. These "Life Brothers" always heal and even come back from the dead if they are killed. They have sworn to protect their origins no matter what the cost and most of them spend their lives studying. However, David ended up falling in love with a mortal woman and is torn between protecting his mysterious identity and his family.

My Soul to Keep had two major strengths: it made me care about Jessica and her family while keeping me on the edge of my seat for almost the entire book. There was a good mixture of character interactions in between suspenseful moments that made me want to find out if Jessica would ever find out her husband's secret. There are quite a few sections dealing with David's past from how he became immortal to some time he spent as a slave in the South to his experiences as a musician in the 1920s. Because of this, the reader knows far more about Jessica's husband and his mysterious life than she does, and there's a lot of tension that builds up about when/if she finds out and what exactly she discovers, if so.

Yet sometimes one has to wonder how a woman as intelligent as Jessica is portrayed to be seems to be can be so dumb, but in the end, I decided it made sense with her character. They say love is blind and she certainly proves that saying true. She's been married to David for several years and he has never gotten sick in all that time and he very adamantly refuses to ever go see a doctor. If he's injured in any way, the wound is always gone by the next morning. In all those years, Jessica doesn't seem to have seriously questioned these oddities but has always dismissed them. However, it seemed more like this was due to her personality than actual stupidity since it is mentioned in the very first chapter that she has a tendency to ignore problems and hope they will go away.

David himself does not always appear to be as intelligent as one might expect, either, but I felt like he did not have as good a reason for that appearance as Jessica. Sometimes he gives away some information that could very well get him into trouble if his wife were paying enough attention to put two and two together. After approximately 500 years of practice at being secretive, one would think he'd be good enough at it not to make careless mistakes like that (or maybe he just noticed the pattern of his wife ignoring anything that seems the least bit odd or like something she doesn't want to deal with and figured it didn't matter). It could be argued that he was trying to open up to his wife and was perhaps a bit less careful than he should be in attempting to do so, but his wife's failings were far more believable as the classic example of someone ignoring the truth. This is also because sometimes David made mistakes without even realizing how they would affect others - and immortal or not, he really had the types of experiences that should have taught him better than that.

They were both very far apart when it came to morality - Jessica is a Bible-believing Christian who would never harm a soul and David glowers at the pictures of Christ on the few occasions he goes to church with his wife and has far fewer scruples. In fact, David has committed some truly horrific acts and even though he seems cold-hearted at times, it's also very apparent that he really cares about both Jessica and his daughter Kira. There are usually reasons for his actions, although there are a couple of times where he really has no excuse for being that numb.

The immortality factor was very intriguing, although this book only covers a very small part of what the immortals can do. There are glimpses that there is more to some of them than just healing and living forever, and I hope and suspect that more of this is revealed in the next book.

This novel can be very dark and it certainly contains some content that some may find objectionable. I would not recommend it to anyone who has difficulty reading about violence toward pretty much anyone, including animals and children, for this reason. It has a truly shocking and tragic ending, although Due does foreshadow it so readers are somewhat prepared for what is coming and even puts a little bit of a happy spin to a very devastating event.

There was one minor problem I had with the novel other than some moments of character stupidity, and that was the tendency to tell a lot instead of showing. Sometimes David's sections would go on and on about what he felt and why more than was necessary. The enjoyment I got from reading it far outweighed any issues I had with it, though, and I mostly ignored them while I was racing through the novel (I had to add mostly after remembering I did yell at David once or twice for being a moron).

Despite some flaws with character believability and too much telling, My Soul to Keep had me glued to the pages from beginning to end wanting to know what became of Jessica and her immortal husband. The end promises even more exciting developments and I am very much looking forward to the next book, which I have already ordered.

8/10

Where I got my reading copy: I bought it.

By Special Request: War on Sci Fi

2009-10-19T12:00:00.003-04:00

So, whilst I was off being a good little grad student, apparently there was a Thing in the blogosphere about this fun little rant. By special request of RRRJessica, here's my take on the subject:

He's got a point.

Wait! Stop! Before you fire up the hate mail, I should probably clarify that a bit. There is a valid point in there. It's a tiny little thing; like most points it is 0-dimensional, lacking depth, width, and breadth, and is easily missed in the massive Calabi-Yau manifold of fail that makes up most of the post and would force us to use specialized mathematics to determine its true extent. But...it's a point that should be dealt with before dismissing the rest of the article as the sincere troll that it is.

Science fiction has, for several generations now, been one of the bigger sources of inspiration for the engineers and scientists in our society. There isn't much wiggle room there: anecdotes and studies both seem to agree that sci-fi, while not necessarily a determining factor, is certainly a critical factor in motivating many of the people who end up in those fields. So sci-fi, whatever it may be now, does have a history of pushing kids in the direction of curiosity and discovery that is so important to keeping them going through the decades of training that are now required before most researchers can even dream of making any sort of significant contribution to their fields. Hyperspecialization sucks folks, and if you're going to put in the investment of essentially all of your time for your entire life, there better be some kind of idea to grasp tightly and don't-let-go when your eyes are blurring over the latest dataset to process at 3AM. In the sciences, that role is often filled by sci-fi.

But the question is, does sci-fi now do what it did for several generations in the 20^th century? Certainly, sci-fi has changed. In general, I'd agree with the observation that it has become more character-oriented as the decades went by–it's even visible in the course of the careers of individual writers, as I hinted at in a writeup on Asimov's work a little while ago. But that's not the question; the question is if those changes have damaged the utility of sci-fi in general. I don't have any convenient answers for that one, other than to say that I find the whole invasion of the gays and women angle from that article to be ridiculous at best.

I would, though, suggest one way I can think of that it could be making sci-fi less effective than it used to be. The most successful people–in any field–often have a certain degree of monomania in their personalities. Golden Age sci-fi, whatever else it may have been, was usually characterized by a highly focused storyline and world that I suspect made/makes it more attractive to those personalities. Modern sci-fi is much more aware of character and relationship and may not be as interesting to the sort of personality that doesn't want to wade through all that other crap to get to the stuff that inspires and motivates them. (It would be easy to generalize that into being a geek-thing, and maybe it is to a degree, but monomania is a feature of successful people in a variety of areas, not just science and engineering.) So, in making the product less attractive to the potential pool of future contributors, yeah, maybe it does hurt the cause a bit.

But I would also point out at least two caveats to that idea. The first is that even Golden Age sci-fi was almost never just about science and math. While the most basic formula started out with the author imagining a new technology, the key was that they then extrapolated an entire world (or more) based on the impact of that technology on society. In the very best sci-fi, the technology really only acts as a setting through which the author can explore humans. Kirk may have gotten all the (green) girls, but Spock was the icon of the original Star Trek because he was the one that was outside of humanity and could act as a proxy for the viewer who was trying to understand the strange new worlds Roddenberry was creating. 1984 and Brave New World featured unusual technologies, but they were really about unusual societies. My favorite sci-fi series, The Beggars Trilogy, was written in the 90's (by a woman, Mr. Spearhead!) and followed this same formula. So sci-fi has never been just about the technology, and maybe monomania just isn't a factor; but then again, the societies and technologies were so inextricably connected that it could be that they would both be considered as extensions of the same tunnel vision concept. I'm not sure that would apply as powerfully to the focus on character and interpersonal relationships that is so common in sci-fi now.

The second caveat is that, while I might acknowledge that something has been lost, I'd also have to look at what is gained by strengthening character relationships. The sci-fi stories I mentioned in the last paragraph are significant because they not only posit new societies, but also because they critically examine the ethical ramifications of the cultures and technologies they discuss. Obviously the ones I mentioned have all been successful to varying degrees, and for the most part it's because they take the standard sci-fi formula and then add in enough empathy to reach readers and get them to truly understand what it means to, say, be a genetically-engineered super human in a world that fears you. It's an integrative aspect that differentiates significant, world-changing science fiction from pulp sci-fi about guys with fancy guns and spaceships.

Character and empathy, human relationships? That sounds a lot like what this guy is complaining about...and yet, it's what made all of this classic sci-fi, well, classic. Why would you then complain about those features growing in the modern realm of sci-fi? Of course there will be cases when it does nothing but add emo-drama to an otherwise perfectly good book, but more character and more empathy really just means that there is more opportunity for really good sci-fi. The sci-fi is not going to be the same as it used to be, but really, how can anything improve if it never changes?

I've pretty much ignored what the guy in the original article wrote, and I'm sure a lot of my arguments above have already been mentioned in the blogsplosion that I didn't have time to read. Mr. Spearhead reads like a bad parody, and my general philosophy is to avoid feeding the trolls. But while gender may be a bad way to slice the data, I do think that the changes in sci-fi will make it more or less attractive to people with certain personality characteristics. Frankly, I'd much rather have somebody who is capable of integrating science and society doing the research of the future than some of the tunnel-vision types that have been at the switch in the past. Maybe if there was more banking fiction we could have avoided a lot of problems lately.

Shiny New Books

2009-10-18T17:52:00.011-04:00

I've decided to join in with the book blogosphere trend of posting books bought and received on a weekly basis (unless I did not happen to buy or receive books that week). So every Sunday I'm going to put up new additions to the TBR pile just for the fun of it and since I know many of you, like me, probably enjoy seeing books that they may not have noticed before. I've always avoided these posts since I was afraid I'd just bore everyone, but personally I like reading the "what I received this week" posts. And you can always ignore them if you find them dull. Or just look at the shiny covers.

Since this is the first time, I'm going to go back two weeks.

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

John is a huge Discworld fan, and I enjoy the series as well so when we found it on Amazon for $14, we just had to order it. He's already read it and really liked it, but due to grad school mayhem, I'm not sure when/if he'll get a chance to review it. And I'm not sure when I'll get around to reading it, but there is a review over at Graeme's Fantasy Book Review.

Principles of Angels by Jaine Fenn

You can't order from Amazon without getting free shipping (really, it's a rule - at least I abide by it like my life depends on it) so I ordered this one along with the new Discworld. I can't remember exactly where I heard about it, but I've heard some good things about it and am considering reading this one when I do my Sci Fi reading month at some point (because I have not read nearly enough science fiction lately, especially compared to last year).

Whisper of Death by Christopher Pike

This one was sent to me by Thea of The Book Smugglers since we were discussing Halloween-related books and she suggested I try one of her old favorites. Even though I'd never read a Christopher Pike book in my life, it was a trip down memory lane. The cover said it was $3.50! Ah, how sweet it is to remember the day when you could purchase brand new books for that little. And it has those order forms at the back of books that I hadn't seen since I was a kid. This is the only one on this list I've actually read - it was short and I read it all yesterday afternoon.

Bitter Night by Diana Pharoah Francis

I received this in the mail from the publisher yesterday. This new urban fantasy will be out on October 27. I read another book by this author (The Cipher) and didn't really like it but this had blurbs from both Patricia Briggs and Ann Aguirre, so I'll give it a try. Plus I read this review of it over at Book Love Affair a while ago and was wondering if it might be worth trying anyway. And the word Armageddon caught my eye.

Review of Medicine Road

2009-10-17T20:00:00.000-04:00


	Medicine Road by Charles de Lint 192pp (Trade Paperback) My Rating: 6/10 Amazon Rating: 5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 4.24/5 Goodreads Rating: 4.15/5

Medicine Road by Charles de Lint was released this year in trade paperback for the first time, as it was previously only available in a more expensive limited edition. It's a relatively short contemporary fantasy book at just under 200 pages and contains some lovely illustrations by Charles Vess. Although it is part of the Newford series and directly related to another book by de Lint, Seven Wild Sisters, it stands just fine on its own. This was my first book by de Lint and it was not at all confusing without having read Seven Wild Sisters, although I did get the impression there must have been another book containing more detail about some of the characters as I read it.

Nearly one hundred years ago, Coyote Woman encountered a wild red dog chasing a jackalope. As she often does, Coyote Woman gave the two animals a gift they had forgotten they even had - the ability to walk as a "five-fingered being" (human) or use their respective animal forms. However, Coyote Woman's gift is not unconditional. If both Jim Changing Dog (the former red dog) and Alice Corn Hair (the former jackalope) do not each find true love in one hundred years, she will return both of them to their old forms without the ability to shapeshift into a human.

With only two weeks remaining of this hundred year timespan, Alice and Jim are feeling rather desperate. About 30 years ago, Alice found her soulmate, but Jim has never found true love and has given up all hope of ever finding it. At least until he sees two red-haired twins performing their bluegrass act and becomes enamored of one of them, Bess. He has very little time to get to know her and find out if she could be the one, and it's not only his life on the line but Alice's as well. Furthermore, a snake woman has decided to meddle in his affairs to get back at Coyote Woman for a former grievance.

Medicine Road is another one of those books that I have mixed feelings on. The opening intrigued me, particularly since it dealt with the mythology, which I thought was the best part of the book. For a while, it seemed a bit drawn out to me and it was difficult for me to really connect with some of the characters. In spite of that, I did find myself surprisingly touched by some of their scenes toward the end and I also rather enjoyed the conclusion. It had some strengths and was readable enough that I wanted to finish it, but I didn't like it quite enough to want to read the related book or any of the other Newford books.

The mythos was the main strength of this novel. It takes place in the state of Arizona in the United States, and the mythology feels Native American although it's supposed to have existed before the Native Americans. The old natives of the land such as Coyote Woman had the ability to use two different shapes - their animal form and their human form. There are other people and animals who have the blood for this ability (referred to as "cousins"), but many of them have forgotten about it and do not remember how. I loved this part of the story and how Coyote Woman changed the jackalope and the red dog so they would remember their roots and that there should not be enmity between them. Reading about the curse, Jim and Alice and Coyote Woman was all very interesting.

However, I felt that far too much time was spent on Bess and Jim's relationship and those parts bored me. It felt to me like their romance happened too fast and it just lacked good emotional moments. Perhaps this is partially because I grew to find Bess very annoying, although I didn't mind her early in the story (for some reason, I always liked Laurel better, though). It also seemed as though the friendships within the story were far better written than the love story. There were moments with Alice and Jim and Alice and Laurel that were very touching and much more memorable.

As far as the characters go, I really liked sweet Alice and open-minded Laurel and I liked Jim and Coyote Woman. Bess irritated me, but I cannot really say why without spoiling part of it. I thought Ramona was going to be interesting since I love tricksters but she ended up making a rather lame one. Her plans were rather poorly done and did not tend to have the effect she wanted at all.

The structure is five chapters, each containing different sections with the name of a character (or in one case, characters). Some of these sections are told from the first person perspective of that character and others are told from the third person perspective.

Medicine Road had an intriguing main story and mythology, but it had too much of a rather dull romance for my taste. The friendships were well done with some memorable moments, but while some of the characters were great, others were not. It was a good enough book to keep me wanting to find out how it ended, but it didn't make me want to read more in the series. However, I do seem to be one of the few people who didn't love this one so be sure to check out some of the other review links below or on some of the book sites linked at the top if it sounds like it may be a book you'd enjoy.

6/10

Where I got my reading copy: I received a copy from the publisher.

Other reviews:

Review of Fire

2009-10-14T20:28:00.000-04:00


	Fire by Kristin Cashore 480pp (Hardcover) Read Fire Excerpt My Rating: 9/10 Amazon Rating: 4.5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 4.51/5 Goodreads Rating: 4.33/5

Fire is a YA fantasy novel by Kristin Cashore. It is a loosely connected prequel to her debut novel Graceling and takes place approximately 35 years prior to it in a different land. Without having read Graceling, Fire was perfectly accessible and I did not feel at all lost reading it. However, Cashore's site does say that reading Fire first gives away a spoiler for Graceling so she thinks it is preferable to read them in the order of publication. Currently, Cashore is writing Bitterblue, a sequel to Graceling with a different main protagonist which takes place about 6 years after the first book ended.

Seventeen-year-old Fire, named for the color of her hair, is not shocked when she is hit by an arrow - until she learns that the man who hit her mistook her for a deer and is sorry to discover he shot a girl instead. As a rare human monster, Fire already carries several scars from attempts on her life made over the years. Monsters are extraordinarily beautiful and possess the ability to control minds. Many hate Fire because of her dead father, who abused his abilities severely and made a mess of the kingdom as an adviser to the former king. Others would like to kill her simply because they cannot possess her. Yet this hunter merely saw her brown clothing and thought he was getting some dinner. In spite of that, it is a bit suspicious that he's not the first stranger to be seen on this land lately and he is imprisoned once he returns Fire to her friend, the overprotective Lord Archer.

The next morning, the man who accidentally shot Fire is found dead, killed by an arrow wound that had to have been made by a very skilled archer. Soon after that, another stranger is found dead, and Archer decides to ask the former queen, Roen, for some soldiers and any information she may have on why this is happening. Fire insists on accompanying him and does so even though Archer insists she would be better off locked in her room where no one can harm her. On this trip, Fire meets King Nash, who is fascinated by her, and his brother Brigan, who looks on her with a wary eye and guards his mind against her. This leads to her involvement with trying to discover a plot against the kingdom when King Nash eventually asks for her aid due to her unique gift - which she very rarely uses after the example of her father before her.

While I was reading the completely haunting and creepy prologue, I was hooked. It was quite a switch going from the prologue, which did not contain Fire, to the first chapter. At the beginning, I found it a little slow-paced at times but it wasn't that long before I was hooked again - and I ended up absolutely loving Fire. I loved the world with its brightly colored monster animals, the story itself, the way the story unfolded and all the different plots tied together (some were predictable but there were a few I didn't see coming), and the various characters.

Part of its appeal was its themes and the struggles that Fire and her friends faced. Fire and Prince Brigan both seem to both feel the need to compensate for the sins of their fathers before them. In particular, Fire never wants to abuse her power the way her father did, and when she has the opportunity to offer valuable assistance to her kingdom through her gift, she has to decide what her beliefs are about using her ability to control minds - whether or not there are any circumstances under which she thinks it is acceptable to use her power and how far she can go with it. For her whole life, her father taught her that it was their right to manipulate the minds of others however they pleased and she always shied away from using it for fear of being cruel as he was.

As a character, Fire does seem to be a bit too flawless. She's one of a kind as the last human monster, she's gorgeous, she can control minds, she's a talented musician, men beg her to marry them, she's brave and she's also very gentle and kind. Even when she is shot by the hunter in the beginning, she tells Archer not to be too hard on the man who could have killed her and has a pillow and blanket sent to his cell. Yet I really liked Fire anyway even though I often felt she was too good to be true. In spite of her advantages, Fire doesn't always have it easy - there are those who would kill or rape her, she's never known her mother and her father is dead, and the animal monsters like the scent of her blood far more than normal humans (which leads to the embarrassment of everyone knowing just when it's that time of the month since she needs extra guards then). Further into the book, it becomes very clear that she isn't invincible and Cashore is very hard on her. Plus it turns out Fire has a horrible secret and she may not be quite as obviously good as she seems.

As for the other characters, I loved pretty much all of them that were supposed to be likable (most of the ones that showed up fairly regularly other than the super creepy kid from the prologue). Brigan was easily my favorite character other than Fire, even though he was also on the very good side. Archer got on my nerves sometimes since he was so possessive of Fire - he was constantly asking her to marry him even though she always said no, keeping any guards away from her if she so much as said they were nice, and throwing lots of fits. He had been her friend since childhood, but sometimes I still had to wonder why she put up with him even if this was a fairly recent change in his attitude. That's not to say she let him control her since she most certainly did not and sometimes distanced herself from him because of it - but she still always saw him as someone she really cared for.

Even though the main protagonist was on the perfect side, she had enough hardships that did not magically disappear and obstacles in dealing with her uniqueness that she was still sympathetic. Fire was a pleasure to read and I found myself very invested in the what happened to the characters and finding out how the story unfolded.

9/10

Where I got my reading copy: I received an ARC from the publisher.

Other Reviews:

2009 National Book Awards

2009-10-14T19:47:00.005-04:00

Today I read that Laini Taylor's Lips Touch: Three Times was nominated for the 2009 National Book Awards for Young People's Literature. I haven't read this one, but I loved both of her Dreamdark books (Blackbringer and Silksinger) so I was rather happy to see this. Congratulations to Laini Taylor!

Review of Doubleblind

2009-10-10T19:55:00.000-04:00


	Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre 320pp (Paperback) My Rating: 8/10 Amazon Rating: 5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 4.3/5 Goodreads Rating: 4.38/5

Doubleblind is the third book in the Jax series by Ann Aguirre. This romantic space opera series should definitely be read in order - Grimspace, then Wanderlust, and finally this book. The fourth book, Killbox, is scheduled for release in October 2010, and there are supposed to be six books total.

Note: There are spoilers for the previous book in the plot description. If you haven't read the first two books and want to avoid spoilers but still want to hear some about the book/series, skip past the part of this review above the horizontal line. Everything below the line is safe.

Sirantha Jax now finds herself in one of the most precarious situations yet - as a diplomat to Ithiss-Tor, a planet inhabited by a bug-like race of aliens who despise humans. If Jax does not succeed in procuring an agreement with the Ithtorians, all of humanity will pay the price for her failure. More and more human settlements have been attacked by the Morgut race of aliens, and the only way they can think of to protect themselves is to get the Ithtorians, whom the Morgut respect and fear, on their side. Since Jax is in the unique position of being the only human to befriend an Ithtorian (the bounty hunter Vel who once tried to kill her), she was chosen to represent humanity with Vel's assistance as a guide and translator.

Meanwhile, Jax must also contend with the problem of March, who has still not recovered from the war he fought in the previous book. Ever since then, he's been ready to kill anything that moves, and he no longer feels anything for Jax although he sticks with her because he can remember caring for her once. Jax refuses to give up on him and keeps him as part of her entourage even though she worries he may go crazy and jeopardize their mission. Instead of having to do one impossible task, she has determined to do two - secure an alliance with the Ithtorians and fix whatever is wrong with March.

Ever since I first read Grimspace shortly after it came out, Ann Aguirre has become an auto-buy author for me. The moment one of her books comes out I run to the bookstore and buy it. Actually, that's not quite true - ever since I discovered books are sometimes on the shelves before their release date, I've tried to find her books a little early. I was so excited about Doubleblind that I looked for it three times in the same week and was rewarded by finding it one week early. As soon as I finished the book I was reading at the time, I started Doubleblind (which is rare for me as I tend to have book ADHD when it comes to what to read next).

This series appeals to me because they are fast-paced, entertaining, and have some great characters that I really enjoy reading about. Sometimes they are humorous, other times they are touching and they are always pure fun. They keep a great balance between character development/relationships and a plot that moves at a pretty good clip. Plus they are relatively short and easy to read (while I love long books, sometimes it's nice to read something that isn't going to take me more than 2 or 3 days to get through).

This newest novel was a little slower paced at the beginning and a bit harder to get hooked on than the previous two books for me. As with the previous book, the first chapter was largely summary of who everyone was and where the book had left off, but I was still completely unable to put the previous installment down by chapter 3. Although I did get to the point of not wanting to put this one down as well, it did take a bit longer than normal compared to the other books in the series.

Doubleblind was less action-packed than the previous books and more about politics and diplomacy, which I rather enjoyed once it did get going. One of my favorite types of space opera is the type in which a different people or species with a very different way of life is explored. Learning more about the Ithtorians was the main highlight for me, particularly since it revealed a lot more about the alien former bounty-hunter Vel.

Vel has become the most interesting character in the series to me, although perhaps that's at least partially because I like outcasts as well as inhuman characters who occasionally show glimpses of humanity. Not only do we get to see the planet he came from in this book, but we also get to find out more about his past and why he left his home in the first place. Plus there are a few little bits of information about him that will hopefully be described in further detail in future installments. One of my favorite parts of Wanderlust was Vel and his developing friendship with Jax, and their interactions remained one of my favorite parts of this novel as well.

Jax herself has also grown a lot, as can be seen from her refusal to give up on March and her seriousness about her role as a diplomat. The roles have been reversed in her relationship - March used to always be the one looking out for Jax but now she's the one looking out for him. Their situation (referred to in the above plot summary) provides some conflict for their relationship, but ever since the second book I've felt the focus has shifted away from the romance and more toward friendships. This one has more romance than the previous book, but I still felt that the plot and friendships were a better reason to keep reading.

Other than Vel, March and of course Jax herself, most of the other characters are in the background in this book. They show up but they don't undergo any major development.

Although I do find the Jax series to be immensely entertaining, this does not mean I don't have to suspend my disbelief quite a bit when reading them. I don't mean because it has psychics, aliens, genetically engineered super people, talking computers and all the things I love about space opera. In this book, I found it difficult to believe that anyone would send Jax on a diplomatic mission of supreme importance. Although it becomes clear in this novel that she's matured a lot, not all that long ago Jax was a party-girl infamous for getting drunk and flashing her tits in bars. She does not seem like the responsible type one would trust with the fate of the galaxy. Sure, she had a genuine Ithtorian to help her, but Vel was an outcast on Ithiss-Tor since he ran away from it and lived among the humans. So I don't see why his presence would help endear them to the Ithtorians, although it was useful that he could teach Jax what she needed to know about their customs. Not only did they send Jax to Ithiss-Tor as a diplomat, but they did not send any humans with actual experience in this arena to keep an eye on her and make sure no disasters occurred, which would have at least made a little more sense to me.

Also, there was one point toward the end where Jax and Vel were trying to solve a mystery and the solution seemed rather obvious long before they figured it out. Although I can see Jax having difficulty putting two and two together, it really seemed like Vel should be smarter than that, although I suppose he didn't have some of the information that Jax did.

Even though I did find it difficult to believe at times and a bit more difficult to get into than the other two books in the series, Doubleblind was as much fun as the previous books once it got going. Jax is still a great heroine to read about, and if you are a fan of Vel or curious about Ithiss-Tor, you definitely won't want to miss this one!

8/10

How I got my reading copy: As mentioned in my review, I bought this one.

Read an excerpt

Other Reviews of Doubleblind:

Calico Reaction

Reviews of other books in the Jax series:

Interview with Gail Carriger

2009-10-08T08:00:00.001-04:00

After I had a delightful time reading Soulless, I contacted Gail Carriger to see if she would be a guest on the blog. She kindly agreed to an interview and I am pleased to have her answers today to share with all of you.

About Gail Carriger (from her website):

Ms. Carriger began writing in order to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in Higher Learning. Ms. Carriger then traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag. She now resides in the Colonies, surrounded by a harem of Armenian lovers, where she insists on tea imported directly from London and cats that pee into toilets. She is fond of teeny tiny hats and tropical fruit. Soulless is her first book.

FC: How did you begin writing?

GC: My Mum used to read to me in bed and if I didn't like the end of the book I would explain to her very carefully that the author got it wrong and then inform her of the real ending. That was the start of the madness.

FC: Was it difficult to go through the process of publishing your first novel?

GC: Some aspects were challenging and some were frustrating but never the parts I expected. In the end, looking back, I was pretty darn lucky.

FC: Did you learn anything about the process that you wish you’d known beforehand?

GC: Lots of terms that I won't bore you with here (like "in house copy"), a few behavior modifications, and one or two better luck next times. The one specific thing I feel compelled to pass on to budding authors is: the response when you get The Call, even if you have no agent, is: "Thank you so much for your interest, let me pass you along to my agent." Nothing more.

FC: Your website says there will be two more books after Soulless. Is it likely there will end up being more than three books in the series total?

GC: My contract is for three books. Which isn't to say I wouldn't love to write more. I think we have to see how readers like Soulless first.

FC: Have you considered writing any prequels about the history of the vampires and werewolves and how they became accepted in Great Britain?

GC: I'd love to write a bit about Alexia's father, but to go that far back, I'm not sure. That would be during the time of the Tudors, not a period of history that greatly interests me, and more clockpunk than steampunk. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind. I'm intrigued by both Lyall's past and Lord Akeldama's past, there may be books hidden there. I'd also love to explore the future, turn-of-the-century Old West steampunk has always appealed to me.

FC: You have mentioned that vampires and werewolves were your explanation for how such a small country like Great Britain became such a conquering force. Once other nations begin to see what a powerful weapon the supernatural is for Britain, what is keeping them from following suit?

GC: Ah, that is an excellent question and all I can say at the moment is that you'll learn much of this in the third book, Blameless. The nature of this alternative world and its history is one of the things that is revealed more and more as the series progresses.

FC: The vampire and werewolf cultures each played a role in Soulless but although the ghosts were mentioned they never made an appearance. Will we see more of them in future novels?

GC: Ah, yes, quite a bit more. Ghosts of various personalities have small but pivotal roles to play, particularly in the second book, Changeless.

FC: Which group would you be most wary about causing offense to – the vampires or the werewolves?

GC: With immediate effect – the werewolves. In the long term – definitely the vampires.

FC: If you were to attend a ball along with each of the characters from Soulless, which one would you hope to be seated next to at dinner?

GC: Oh, Lord Akeldama, definitely! Even if he talked nothing but frivolities, they would excellent and highly entertaining frivolities.

FC: Is there anyone in particular whose presence would be so horrifying to prompt you to (discreetly, of course!) switch their place card with another if you found it next to your seat?

GC: Hum, I don't think so. I tend to find most of my characters intriguing in some manner or another. I'm not sure I could tolerate an entire dinner next to the Countess, but even she can be charming – if she is in a pleasant mood.

FC: Soulless is a very diverse blend of genres – particularly urban fantasy, steampunk, and comedy. What are some of your favorite books from each of these?

GC: In urban fantasy I adore anything by Patricia Briggs, so far as steampunk is concerned I enjoy Girl Genius, and in the arena of comedy, I have to stay true to my first love, Douglas Adams.

FC: What are Alexia’s personal pet peeves when it comes to ill-mannered behavior?

GC: Introductions are very important to her, as are good table manners, well-behaved children, and respect for the social order. I think she is less concerned with proper dress than she pretends.

FC: How would you react if you were you attacked by a vampire without even a proper introduction? And you found yourself without a hair stick or a parasol?

GC: Oh, I have no pride or gumption. I would run to the nearest public area yelling for the constabulary.

FC: Can you tell us anything about what to expect from the next book, Changeless?

GC: This one is all about the werewolves!

Thank you so much for stopping by and answering some questions, Gail! I'm even more excited about the next two books knowing there where be more about the alternate history and the ghosts.

Yet Another Post on the New FTC Guidelines

2009-10-05T21:37:00.013-04:00

As this affects a great deal of bloggers, you've probably already read a post somewhere on the new FTC guidelines. Just in case you haven't, here's the basic scoop.

Today the FTC published their guidelines pertaining to testimonial advertisements, bloggers and celebrity endorsements. As of December 1, 2009 it is required that bloggers fully disclose any types of payment, which includes products received for free for review purposes. Violation of this could result in paying a fine amounting up to $11,000.

When I first got home from work and saw all the panic on Twitter and in blog posts, I started feeling a bit panicky myself. Eleven thousand dollars is quite a hefty punishment for not mentioning you reviewed a book you received that's worth $7.99. Then I read what Cheryl of Cheryl's Mewsings had to say about it and felt quite a bit better. It does sound as though book bloggers are not the main concern and are not likely to be closely monitored (I would hope not).

I have the same feelings on this as many of my fellow bloggers have stated in their own posts on it. Disclosing what I receive does not bother me, but being forced to does, especially with such a high penalty for failure to meet this requirement. Plus it seems like a rather difficult thing to regulate. How do they know I did or didn't buy a book myself if it's one that I reviewed close to the time of or after the release date?

I've decided not to get too worked up about it, but from now on, I will be stating exactly where I got any book I am reviewing - whether or not I bought it myself, received it from the publisher or author, won it in a contest, was forced to read it at gunpoint against my will, etc. It will probably be somewhere at the end of my review - I'll have to decide where it fits best next time I write one (hoping to get to that review of Doubleblind soon).

Although I have never been paid to write a review, I do occasionally receive review copies (and on one occasion a bookshelf and a couple of times books for giveaways). Most of the books I have reviewed here are ones I have bought myself, but some of them have been books publishers or authors have sent me. Lately I've been reviewing more of these books as I have begun receiving more of them.

I never, ever promise to write a positive review in return for a book, nor do I feel obligated to write one just because I received a free copy in the mail, just like the vast majority of book bloggers. Most of us blog because we love reading and talking about the books we read - sure, the free books are a nice bonus, but most of us ~~are book addicts~~ buy enough books on our own that we're not going to suffer if someone is so offended by a review that they quit sending us ARCs.

Any further thoughts/rants on the new FTC guidelines?

Halloween Reading

2009-10-05T19:35:00.006-04:00

Is anyone reading any special books for Halloween this October? I realized what month it was and decided I want to read one or two books that are fitting, but it's hard to pick those types of books when you're too much of an easily creeped-out wuss to be much of a horror fan (as a kid, just hearing the spooky Unsolved Mysteries music on TV kept me awake at night - and I saw the movie Aliens on TV when I was about six years old and was spooked out of my mind anytime I was alone for at least a year).

Last year I read a book that was not horror but was very fitting for Halloween - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. After looking through the bookshelves, I'm not sure what else I have that fits but came up with a few possibilities:

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due (which I was considering reading this month anyway)

The Good, the Bad and the Undead by Kim Harrison (Although it is shelved in horror, the first book was not horror, but it does have vampires, demons and witches so it may be somewhat fitting.)

The Duma Key by Stephen King (Confession time: I have never read a book by Stephen King, even though he's a local author - and someone just about everyone has read. So one of my friends who is a big fan loved this one and sent it to me for my birthday. It's the only book that I own that is definitely horror, but it also doesn't sound like "Halloween" season horror. Plus it's a little longer than I wanted to read right now with the amount of spare time I have.)

So, to anyone who has read those books... Are any of them good reads for Halloween? Or are there other books I should read instead?

Review of Soulless

2009-10-01T21:40:00.000-04:00


	Soulless by Gail Carriger 384pp (Paperback) My Rating: 7.5/10 Amazon Rating: 4.5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 4.17/5 Goodreads Rating: 3.85/5

Soulless is the first book in the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger. Its official release date in the US is today, although I first saw it in the new books section in my local bookstore over a week ago. The second book Changeless is scheduled to come out in April 2010, and there will be at least one more book following that one, Blameless. Even though this is the first book in a series, it is the type that is a complete story - no cliffhanger ending but it still leaves room for more adventures. Soulless is a blend of many different genres - it's part steampunk, urban fantasy (but not contemporary since it is set in Victorian London), comedy, and romance.

While at a rather unenjoyable private ball, Alexia Tarabotti retires to the library where she meets a vampire, who is all too pleased to meet a lone lady in a low-necked gown. The vampire attacks Alexia to her great surprise - after all, even vampires adhere to social etiquette and only feed upon those who give their consent. Fortunately, Alexia is not harmed since she is a preternatural, a person who has no soul and cancels out the effects of the supernatural. Therefore, when the vampire attempts to bite her, he is puzzled to find his fangs have completely disappeared. When his attempts at biting her do not break the skin, the vampire decides to strangle her instead. Alexia tries to drive him off with the threat of her hair stick/stake, but accidentally whacks it right into his heart with her parasol. To make matters worse, a group of young men approach the library when she prepares to sneak out unseen so Alexia pretends to do what any sensible woman would do when happening upon such a sight - faints.

Although she succeeds in fooling the young people, Alexia's pretense does not fool Lord Maccon, who arrives to investigate while she is lying supposedly unconscious upon the floor. Lord Maccon is not only an earl and an Alpha werewolf but also an agent of BUR (Bureau of Unnatural Registry) - and is not in the least surprised to find the exasperating woman who instigated the hedgehog incident involved in such a situation. Once Alexia explains what happened to her, it becomes clear that this was no ordinary vampire - not only was he ill-mannered but also uneducated (for he did not even know what a preternatural was!) and most unrefined (for he had a rather un-vampirelike lisp).

In spite of Lord Maccon's best efforts to keep Alexia out of the investigation, an invitation to visit the local vampires and Alexia's own inquisitive nature can't keep her out of trouble for long...

When I found a copy of Soulless in my mailbox, I was a little unsure about it after I saw the front cover said "A novel of vampires, werewolves and parasols," particularly since I'm not someone who gets excited at the thought of reading about vampires and werewolves. (This doesn't mean I completely avoid those books, but I tend to gravitate more toward urban fantasy without them unless it's a series that comes highly recommended for great characters such as Mercy Thompson.) [Ed: And the parasols? What of them?] Then I read the back and thought it sounded like it could either be very odd in an over-the-top way or very quirky in just the way that I like. Once I read the first chapter with the rude vampire attack and Alexia's reaction, I found it to definitely be the latter. Soulless is so much fun - it was light and humorous and I could hardly put it down.

It's also a very unique book, partially because it's such a diverse blend of genres (steampunk, urban fantasy, alternate history, comedy, romance, and there's a bit of a mystery too!) and also because of its setting. There are so many books gracing the shelves these days that contain vampires or werewolves but the vast majority of these are set in modern times. Instead of examining what our lives would be like if paranormal creatures existed, Carriger shows us what might have happened in the past, particularly if vampires and werewolves were integrated into Victorian society. In an interview, she mentioned that there needed to be some sort of explanation for tiny Great Britain's great success as a conquering empire. She figured it would be a very fitting for Victorians to look at it this way: "Ah yes, vampires, jolly good chaps, excellent fashion sense, always polite, terribly charming at cards, we just won't mention that little neck biting habit." In her series, Britain is very open to accepting the supernatural and using them for the good of the country while some other nations are not as open-minded, particularly America, which is shown to be rather fearful and disapproving of vampires and werewolves. This is a very interesting alternate history and I'm hoping to see more of how this affects other nations in future installments.

Alexia was a great character and I liked her immensely - she's very unconventional, nearly fearless, and strong-willed. At approximately a quarter of a century old, she's a spinster and her entire family persecutes her but this never seems to bother her. She's perfectly happy to read, go for walks with her friend Ivy or have dinner with her friend Lord Akeldama. Eventually she does get involved in a romance, but it's never something she looked for or made a first priority in her life - and she never becomes one of those mopey, angsty heroines who pines all day.

The secondary characters are also very fun to read about. Lord Maccon, Alpha werewolf and BUR agent, is forward and ill-mannered, but he can be at least partially excused, being from Scotland where people are not civilized. His calm, well-mannered Beta Professor Lyall always keeps him in check. Spymaster Lord Akeldama is a gay vampire who keeps up with the latest fashions and uses lots of italics throughout his speech (which I admit I found a little annoying at times even though it worked well with his pretense at being a bit more simpleminded than he really is). Alexia's best friend Ivy has a new ugly hat every time she visits, and Alexia's mother and sisters are very silly and reminiscent of Lizzie's family in Pride and Prejudice, especially since Alexia, like Lizzie, is far more sensible in contrast.

I did feel that the end of the book wasn't quite as good as the beginning, but that was mainly because there was a lot of sex. Personally, I prefer reading about the emotional aspects of a relationship and tend to get bored with physical descriptions. These scenes were more humorously told than most, but toward the end I did get tired of them. Also, some of the jokes were beginning to get a bit repetitive - such as Alexia's half Italian heritage and Ivy's hats.

Soulless is one of the more entertaining and unusual books I've read this year. Although some of the recurring gags and sexual encounters were excessive by the end, Alexia herself and the humorous scenes and writing style kept me unable to put it down. I will definitely be reading the sequel and am eagerly awaiting finding out what kinds of mishaps Alexia will get into next.

7.5/10

October Reading

2009-09-30T23:18:00.004-04:00

Where did September go?

This was a slow reading month and I didn't end up getting through as many books as I'd hoped since I wasn't very far into The Magicians at the start of September. I did make it through Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett, Soulless by Gail Carriger and Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre, but I've only just begun Fire by Kristin Cashore. It was a good month though - Havemercy was just my kind of book and Soulless and Doubleblind were both tons of fun. The Soulless review is almost complete - I just finished a rough draft of it a minute ago so hopefully I can get it up tomorrow night.

Fire and Medicine Road (by Charles deLint) were on my list for September so finishing up the former and beginning the latter will be first on my list. After that, I'd like to read something I don't recall seeing reviewed before - perhaps Night's Master by Tanith Lee or My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due. Then it will be on to Tempest Rising by Nicole Peeler. After that, I refuse to plan - it will all depend on how much of the month is left at that point.

What's everyone reading/thinking about reading this month?

Review of Havemercy

2009-09-26T16:43:00.000-04:00


	Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett 448pp (Paperback) My Rating: 9/10 Amazon Rating: 4/5 LibraryThing Rating: 3.87/5 Goodreads Rating: 3.67/5

Havemercy is a collaborative debut novel written by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett. In July, an indirect sequel (i.e., a related book with a different set of main characters, some of whom were introduced in the first book) called Shadow Magic was released. On its own, Havemercy has a satisfying ending, but as one of my favorite reads of this year so far, this character-driven fantasy/steampunk novel has me eager to read more by Jones and Bennett.

There are two main storylines that eventually merge in Havemercy, each focusing on two characters somehow brought together as the result of two separate scandals offending the same foreign country. One of these disgraceful situations was caused by Rook, a dragon rider in Volstov's Dragon Corps. The wife of the diplomat from Arlemagne was perfectly happy to go to bed with him - until he tried to pay her afterward. Since the Dragon Corps are the main advantage Volstov has in its hundred year long war against Ke-Han, punishing them too harshly is out of the question. However, some measures must be taken to appease Arlemagne for mistaking a diplomat's wife for a common prostitute. The solution is bringing in Thom, a bright student from the 'Versity, to teach a sensitivity training course to the Dragon Corps. This task proves to be far harder than Thom anticipated - the Dragon Corps is rather spoiled, and Rook in particular takes a strong dislike to their new professor.

The other scandal involves Royston, a well-known magician who was in a relationship with Erik, a foreign prince from Arlemagne. Since the prince's country is not as accepting of homosexuality as Royston's, Erik betrays Royston once the connection between the two is discovered. He blames his entanglement with Royston on seduction by magic, even though Royston's ability has nothing to do with charm. To appease the nation of Arlemagne, Royston is then exiled to his brother's home in the countryside. While he is there, he meets the children's tutor Hal, a very intelligent young man who is perhaps better suited to city life and a 'Versity education than the country life Royston despises.

When the war against the Ke-Han takes an unexpected turn, it is up to these four very different men to use their unique positions to aid Volstov.

The main reason I picked up Havemercy was that I kept hearing it compared to Sarah Monette's The Doctrine of Labyrinth series, which I'm sure you are all shocked to hear once again is one of my all-time favorites. There are definitely similarities - the emphasis on more character development than plot, the story told through the first person perspective of multiple characters, the setting being background without a lot of explanation, the contrast between the viewpoint of an educated person and an uneducated person who both grew up in the slums, and the inclusion of a gay wizard. However, it wasn't quite as strong as Monette's series, which had more vivid characters (but then, Monette's characterization is first-rate and rarely matched). My personal preference is for darker books, too, and this was lighter than The Doctrine of Labyrinth series.

Havemercy was definitely well worth the read for fans of character driven fantasy, though. It is one of those stories in which the protagonists take the forefront and the plot is secondary so readers who prefer lots of action and adventure may be disappointed. That's not to say that there is no action or adventure, but most of it is toward the end and felt rather rushed. As a reader who enjoys characterization the most, I didn't care and found reading about these four very different men the main reason for reading this book.

Toward the beginning, I liked Royston, Hal and Thom but could not stand Rook, the obnoxious young dragon rider who thought a bit too much of himself and stirred up trouble. He was horrible to women and homosexuals, mean to Thom and overall pretty awful - yet he also had the most interesting point of view and by the end I found him my favorite to read about other than Thom. This was because Rook was brutally honest - he had no qualms about restraint or politeness and he never held anything back. Plus, as the character who had a connection to the mechanical dragons, he was the gateway to that part of the world, as Royston was to the magical side of it. By the end, Rook had also grown somewhat, which helped, although he still has a ways to go and I wouldn't say I actually liked him even then. He also had the most unique voice since Hal, Royston and Thom were not all that different from each other despite their diverse backgrounds. All three of them had a more literate voice and a thirst for knowledge and learning, so although they were different, their narrative voices were not as distinct as Royston's ungrammatically correct, vulgar one.

The story of Thom and Rook was definitely my favorite over Hal and Royston's. As one of the most important people to the safety of the realm, Rook could do whatever he wanted and get away with it so Thom certainly had his work cut out for him when it came to teaching Rook some manners. I love a good conflict and their tale had plenty of that, as opposed to Hal and Royston's, which quickly wrapped up any sort of conflict. Also, I found Thom and Rook's parts had a lot more humor than Hal and Royston's, who both tended to be more serious in their thoughts. One of my very favorite scenes was the role-playing sensitivity training session/competition Thom did in which each member of the Dragon Corps had to pretend to be everyone from "The Arlemagne Diplomat's Wife" to "That Whore Rook Insulted the Other Day for Having Ugly Breasts" to "That Kid Ghislain Hit on the Head When He Dropped Merritt's Boots out the Window."

The world is a combination of fantasy and steampunk - there are magicians with various powers who built the mechanical dragons that are the big advantage Volstov has in the war. The main glimpse of the dragons we get to see is on the few occasions when Rook is out with his dragon, the titular Havemercy (who really has very little to do with the book in spite of that). Although these dragons are not truly alive, they seem very much so since they can converse and their riders do form emotional attachments to them. I would like to know more about the setting since several aspects are mentioned but not fully explained, such as how exactly the magicians get their powers. Since there is another books set in this universe, it may be explored in further detail later, but in this book at least, the setting, like the plot, takes a backseat to the characters.

Although it is not the best character-driven novel I've ever read, Havemercy is an excellent debut and well worth reading for those who prefer a slower paced look at some different characters to heavy action, a fast-moving plot, or massive worldbuilding. I'm very much looking forward to reading more from Jones and Bennet, particularly the sequel to this book.

9/10

Other Reviews:

The Bibliophile's Seven Deadly Sins

2009-09-22T22:15:00.001-04:00

By popular demand, here is the complete list of the Bibliophile's Seven Deadly Sins:

1. Destruction

This is the BIG sin and however one destroys thine book is how they shall be repaid if they were terrible enough to go to bibliohell. Destruction includes but is not limited to burning, bending back the cover, breaking the spine, tearing out pages, staining pages, dropping the book in water, shredding pages, and running it over with a lawn mower.

2. Sloth

With all these book piles bibliophiles tend to collect, it can be very easy to get behind on one's reading by succumbing to this sin. Getting too far behind can result in drowning in the book pile, or in very extreme cases, being devoured by the mass of angry, neglected books never to be seen or heard from ever again.

3. Marking of pages

The defacing of a book with a writing implement is forbidden. The one exception to this rule is in the case of getting your books signed by the author. Therefore, I will not be confined to a single room and forced to write every single word from the Bible on the walls for all eternity for getting my copies of The Orphan's Tales duology signed by Catherynne Valente this past weekend. When writing the text, every time a mistake is made, the damned must erase everything and begin all over again.

4. Disorganization

This includes two big no-nos: alphabetical impurity and the mixing of kinds. Books by authors shall be kept together in alphabetical order with all the books in a series in the proper order. Mixing of kinds is only permitted in cases where greater sins would be committed by keeping hardcovers and paperbacks apart, such as if you have part of a series in each. Committing disorganization will lead to book filing in a library containing sentient, hyperactive books that hate to stay on the shelf forevermore.

5. Skimming

Thou shalt not skim but must read every word. Those who become distracted and miss a word must reread the same paragraph over and over until every word is caught and committed to memory - or spend their entire afterlife reading and rereading The Eye of Argon without skimming a single word.

6. Spoilage

No spoiling the best parts of books for others. The penalty for this sin is being visited by annoying imps who taunt you by telling you about what happens in all the books you never got to read before you ended up in bibliohell, especially when the new book in one of your favorite series comes out.

7. Prejudice

Do not judge a book by its cover. Or its genre. Or anything else, except perhaps, in very special circumstances, its author. A life of book prejudice will result in an eternity spent reading books with the most horrifyingly embarrassing covers in public places - without even the consolation that the contents of the book do not match its cover.