Review
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Book Review: Age of Myth
by I was a bit worried going in. I quite enjoyed the Ririya Revelations and was worried that Mr. Sullivan is pigeon-holing himself into only writing in a single world with this third series. My other concern was that I was getting another primitive barbarian story with the old “elves are gods” trope as a central facet. The second piece of that is accurate, although the author takes steps to break down that barrier throughout the book. Whether the author has pigeon-holed himself into a single world remains to be seen, but it’s happened before. First, the issues I had. The first third or so of the book is slow,…
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Book Review: Dreamsnake
by Part of my quest to read all of the Hugo and Nebula novel winners. This book won both in 1979. So I’m pretty tired of the whole post-nuclear holocaust theme. Post any holocaust, really, but Dreamsnake worked for me. Points for a well written, strong female lead in 1978. Points for a well thought out setting and a wider universe that’s only hinted around the edges. Points for a cast of multi-dimensional characters. Snake is a healer, moving from place to place trying to help people as best she can, often in the face of fear and ignorance. She’s also a realistically constructed character, with understandable motivations and emotions…
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Book Review: Into a Dark Realm
by Book two of the Darkwar trilogy, which I plan to read all of this year, just not in a row. A middle book, according to common wisdom, often has issues. I’m not sure if all of the issues I had with this story are the standard ones projected for a middle book, but they make me hope for an exciting conclusion to the trilogy, mostly to make up for the first two books. I said that Flight of the Nighthawks wasn’t quite as exciting as I’d hoped. Into a Dark Realm is even less so. I’d actually go so far as to say boring. First, the standard middle book…
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Book Review: Our Lady of Darkness
by Part of my quest to read all of the World Fantasy Award novel winners. This book won in 1978. Meh. I spent a lot of this book waiting for something to happen. I spent even more of it waiting for that to be something with a speculative bent. All I had up until the last dozen or so pages was the main characters seeing something that might have been a figure at the limits of his visual acuity through a set of binoculars. I want to say there’s a Lovecraft influence here (a lot of other people have), and there are certainly plenty of references, but while Lovecraft tended towards…
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Book Review: Storm Dancer
by I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did. Steampunk isn’t my thing, whether or not it’s got a flavor I don’t usually get in my fantasy. Steampunk with a Fantasy bent doesn’t help much because it’s still Steampunk. But I’m trying to push boundaries in the fiction I read, to break out of molds, to see through different lenses than I’m used to seeing through. And I got a copy of this for Christmas in 2015 that’s been sitting on the shelf staring at me for quite a while now. While reading, I found the book has other strikes against it. It’s kind of info-dumpy…
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Book Review: The Dwarves
by There are a lot of standard tropes and clichés here, Tolkien-esque fantasy seen through a continental lens and translated back into English for North American consumption. In fact, the farther I got into the book, the more it read like the novelization of someone’s RPG campaign where the events just get more and more implausible. The main character can be talked into just about anything so long as he thinks it’s for the greater good. The rest of the characters have varying, and variable, degrees of depth, but are mostly caricatures. There’s the beserker warrior dwarf. His brother, the calm warrior dwarf. The noble but misguided king dwarf. The…
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Book Review: Gateway
by Part of my quest to read all of the Hugo and Nebula novel winners. This book won both in 1978. Most of the time, I hate it when part of a story is told in a later timeframe, especially when that later timeframe makes it clear the main character survived to live a long and full life. It robs any dangers or difficulties of immediacy or tension. It steals most of the drama from the story, making it a mere description of imaginary past events. It makes me wonder why I should care. Frederik Pohl, however, was good at it. Conceptually, the story has a pretty neat hook. There’s…
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Book Review: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
by Part of my quest to read all of the Hugo Award novel winners. This book won in 1977. Dystopias are making a comeback in the last few. So are end of the world stories. Neither is a new story, and if some of the modern ones give an interesting twist here and there, most of them are more or less walking over the same ground, sometimes with new technology or slightly more inclusive casts. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is an end of the world as we know, staring across the edge of human extinction, dystopic, far side of the apocalypse story. Actually, it’s three of them. And…
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Book Review: Year’s Best Fantasy Stories 6
by I’m not sure about “best”. Other than containing a mediocre Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser story, it seems like there are a lot of fairly standard, stereotypical stories in this collection. Not one of them, sadly, jumped up and grabbed me. None of them were horrible, but none of them were really good, either, and I can’t pick a story out of the batch that stands above the others. And there’s not a lot of variety in the fantasy represented here, with the bulk of it, even admitted by the editor, falling into the Sword and Sorcery camp. That’s clearly what Mr. Carter preferred at the time, which is…
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Book Review: Quantum Night
by As I read this, it’s near future SF. Very near. Like three years from now near. The story takes place in 2020 and in Saskatchewan, which is kind of neat. There are a lot of Canadian references dropped that are more than just prairies-related, as well, so that adds to the fun for me. And this book was fun. I’ve read many (most) of Mr. Sawyer’s books and I’ve enjoyed all but one so far, and this one falls firmly into the enjoyed category, with a couple of small caveats. The basic principle underlying the book is the tying of quantum mechanics to consciousness. There’s a lot of research…
