FBNR Stuff:
I had absolutely no time to read yesterday, so still stuck on 30% complete reading Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman on my iPhone. Quite a bit of my free reading time is also spent reading the online forums at B&N and Mobileread to keep up to date on the latest Nook info, to make sure my pre-order was the right move. So far, I still think it is.
Reviews:
Shepherd could have done more to make the belief systems a little vibrant and more real, since they are such a large part of the motivations of many of the primary and secondary characters. The story is about a religious civil war, but the religion part of it is the least understood of the whole novel and it sadly damages the effectiveness of the tale.
link: Book Review: Sasha by Joel Shepherd | Grasping for the Wind
Harry Potter and Hogwarts this ain’t. Nor is it very much at all like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. But, if you like reading books about sometimes witty, often kooky wizards and the academic halls where said wizards teach – in this case, the Unseen University – and which also include in their cast of characters trolls, vampires, goblins, and orcs, then you owe it to yourself to check out Terry Pratchett’s latest Discworld book, Unseen Academicals.
link: Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett Review » BSCreview
Bacigalupi is a voice that must be heard. Paolo's work is sure to influence the next generation of writers, but I fear he will become a writers' writer. Meaning that he'll garner high praise and good reviews, but not the large sales he truly deserves for the almost too realistic views and ideas of a future I hope never happens. In the end The Windup Girl is a bit too depressing for my taste but it has an amazing setting with a great opening and almost as good ending yet suffers in the middle with a less than great storyline and mostly unlikeable characters.
If you want to "feed" your brain holodeck with a sweeping mix of hard boiled detecive fiction, fantasy and a squeeze of mystery presented in a extreme vivid narrative style then put Burn Me Deadly on your to buy list.
link: Review: Burn Me Deadly, by Alex Bledsoe | Only The Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy
The prose is arguably the novel's strongest point: fluid and atmospheric, and underpinned by a classic, dry British humour that really makes the novel. There are some truly excellent puns, which I won't repeat here. That said, I must admit I didn't find the novel as funny as I hoped - much of the humour brought a smile to my face, but mostly didn't make me laugh (the bath-house scene was a notable exception - if only there were more scenes that made use of that style of humour). At times it did feel like the humour was a little excessive - less is often more.
link: Speculative Horizons: Book review: Triumff - Her Majesty's Hero by Dan Abnett
I thoroughly enjoyed these novels. The characters are unabashedly Christan, except when they are Muslim. The Muslim character’s Muslim-ness could have been explored a bit more. I could not classify this as a Christian novel, because the theme is not Christian-centric. Yes, the subjects are Christian, but you don’t get the impression that the author has an agenda here. There are evil Christians and there are good Christians. The character spends such a short amount of time in the Holy Land that you don’t really have the opportunity to explore any evil Muslims. Mr. Spradlin toes a delicate line here, but eliminated much of the difficulty for himself by keeping the characters mostly in Europe.
link: Debuts & Reviews – The Youngest Templar by Michael P. Spradlin
Taking 9 main characters, with 9 separate backgrounds and trying to develop their flaws and strengths proved to be an impossible feat. Along with the main characters, there is also the story line being built, and the occasional bad guy, such as the main leader of the werewolf clan, and the Oracle, that also have backgrounds and history that needed to be presented. With so much going on with the characters one would think that there be a lot going on. Sadly, it appears that a lot of characters got overlooked or not developed properly due to the fact that there are so many in this book. Occasionally a character that felt like he could use more would act very one sided or predictable.
Shame on me, for taking so long to read a book that I always expected to like yet somehow never quite got round to starting until recently. Robert V.S. Redick’s fantasy debut is an enjoyable, fast-paced and engaging book that left me wanting more (and fortunately, the second volume in the trilogy, The Rats and the Ruling Sea, is published at the end of October). There are shades of Scott Lynch’s approach to fantasy in Redick’s work: he does not sacrifice pace or narrative verve on the altar of excessive world-building, and he imbues his characters and plot with a hint of the melodramatic, to create fantasy that does not try to take itself too seriously, and which carries the reader along nicely.
link: Simon A’s Review: The Red Wolf Conspiracy, by Robert V.S. Redick | Bookgeeks
In all my years of reading, I don’t think I’ve ever met any character that is as black hearted, murderous, cold blooded and downright vicious as a single Grossbart. The fact that there are two Grossbarts means that the ‘evil quotient’ is doubled and, as a result, the reader is in for a bit of a treat if they’re after a ‘road trip of destruction’ that spans Medieval Europe and heads into Africa.
link: Graeme's Fantasy Book Review: ‘The Sad Tale of the Brother’s Grossbart’ – Jesse Bullington (Orbit)
Where The Way of Shadows leaned heavily on the action scenes the pace in this book slows down just a little, to allow a bit more worldbuilding to slip into the story. Personally, I feel Shadow's Edge is a bit more balanced and a much better read than previous novel. In fact, for a middle book it has a surprisingly satisfying end.
link: Val's Random Comments: Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks
3 comments:
Hey Jeff,
thank you very much for posting about my Burn Me Deadly review.
You're welcome, Michael. I thought I had added that blog to my google reader, but just realized today that it was missing. So I'll be linking to the reviews going forward.
Jeff,
no problem at all. The blog is not that old. By the way I'm the contributor of the blog. The owner is Alec. He lives in New York and I live in Germany near Frankfurt on the Main.
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