Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Elizabeth Moon
Brilliance Audio has recently been putting together some fine productions of many classic fantasy novels that deserve to be heard and I, as a reader, couldn’t be happier. I don’t have much free time these days, and most of my reading is now done by audio, so I was thrilled to find that I could finally listen to The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. The first novel, Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, has just been released,
November 30th, 2007. Kat Hooper and Ruth Arnell | Elizabeth Moon | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Armageddon’s Children by Terry Brooks
“I Will Grow Up to be Like My Mother…”
Best known for his expansive SHANNARA series set in a typical fantasy-realm of swords and sorcery, Terry Brooks is also the author of the WORD AND THE VOID trilogy, an urban-fantasy concerning the entropy of our world fought against by Knights of the Word. Although both series seemed unconnected (despite a few hints that the world of SHANNARA was set thousands of years into the future, a world built on the foundations of our own,
November 30th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 2.5 | Terry Brooks | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Care and Feeding of Sprites by Holly Black
Since the publication of the five-part Spiderwick Chronicles there have been three “spin-off” publications: Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You (a copy of the book that featured so heavily in the Chronicles themselves), A Notebook for Fantastical Observations, designed for readers themselves to fill out, and this, Care and Feeding of Sprites. If you can only choose one of them, then the pick of the litter is undoubtedly the Field Guide,
November 30th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3 | Holly Black, Tony DiTerlizzi | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
I am always vaguely amused at the debate that goes on over the reading order of The Chronicles of Narnia and how worked up some people get over it. True, some books should be read before others and The Last Battle should definitely be read last; but in my own experience The Silver Chair (published fourth, written fifth*, and chronologically sixth in the series) was read first! Was my love and appreciation of Narnia ruined because of this? Of course not!
The Silver Chair is set about a year after the proceedings of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
November 29th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 5 | C.S. Lewis | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
“Hate That Everything We Do is Dictated by These Secret Keepers…”
What was shaping up to be the best SHANNARA-based serial since THE HERITAGE OF SHANNARA stumbles on the finish line. Despite a promising start and a strong middle, THE HIGH DRUID OF SHANNARA goes out more with a whimper than a bang, due to several pointless chapters, unbelievable coincidences, the undermining of previously established plot-points and too much stupid behavior on the part of its antagonists.
Grianne Ohmsford was banished into the world of the Forbidding by her treacherous fellow Druids,
November 26th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 2 | Terry Brooks | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Ed Greenwood tries something a little different with Dark Lord. The main character is an author of both fantasy and other fiction who is magically tied to his created world of Falconfar and who has the power to shape this magical land with his ideas and words. It’s not a bad premise, but it would take some really great writing to avoid being too much of a personal fantasy.
Dark Lord is not a long book and it’s packed with lots of action. I felt like I was reading some of the Forgotten Realms books…
November 25th, 2007. John Hulet´s rating: 3 | Ed Greenwood | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Willow Tree’s Daughter by Pamela Freeman
It is a very sad fact that this book is so overlooked, as it is a rare gem that everybody should try to get hold of, filled with amazing characters, strange creatures and stereotypes that get twisted on their heads!
The most unique thing about this book however is that it does not as such have a clear plot structure, but rather each chapter relates an encounter or experience with its heroine Princess Betony. In fact, the story actually starts years before her birth when the Crown Prince Max,
November 24th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 5 | Pamela Freeman | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The High King’s Tomb by Kristen Britain
From early on in The High King’s Tomb (2007), alarm bells started going off in my head. It doesn’t take very long, if you’ve read the other two books (and you should have), to realize that a “grab the reader by the throat” event is conspicuously absent from the beginning of the story. There’s one in the first book, there’s one in the second book, but The High King’s Tomb starts out on a noticeably meandering path.
November 21st, 2007. Beth Johnson Sonderby (guest)´s rating: 3.5 | Kristen Britain | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Knight of the Dove by William A. Kooiker
Amaria Eversvale, known as The Knight of the Dove for her unusual, ivory-colored hair, is a peerless and respected warrior; but her physical prowess belies her inner turmoil. After calling upon evil gods for the power to avenge her husband by slaughtering an entire fortress, she goes into self-imposed exile, wandering for months until she at least reaches Valgamin, the last city before the mountain range known as Urak’s Edge/The World’s Edge. There, she finds herself drawn into a secret conflict between the priesthoods of two evil gods,
November 20th, 2007. Rob Rhodes´s rating: 2 | William A. Kooiker | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Treason Keep by Jennifer Fallon
Treason Keep, the sequel to Medalon, is more of the same: a fast pace and fun characters overshadow the not-so-tight plot.
Jennifer Fallon keeps things interesting by expertly developing a couple of characters who were briefly introduced in her first book: Damin Wolfblade, an intelligent barbarian warlord (always a good thing, in my opinion), and Adrina, a spoiled princess whose daddy wants to marry her off because he’s tired of paying for her escapades — she just demolished the city’s wharf while trying to dock a nobleman’s yacht while she was drunk (the yacht sank).
November 16th, 2007. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Jennifer Fallon | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Gentlemen, I concur! (Forgive me for jumping into your convo)
The cover is amazing. I love how the graphic novel (and the review!) hewed close to the theme of "good…
I've thought about picking that one up. The artwork looks perfect.
I like the way you think, Bill. I found the second one particularly objectionable; the one with Khan. It was…
I find if I take every Trek reference out of them (the title, the character names, the ship names, etc.),…