Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Bill Capossere

Acacia: Challenges us with an uncomfortable warp of the familiar

Acacia by David Anthony Durham

David Anthony Durham‘s Acacia has some of elements of epic fantasy we’ve all seen before: a large empire, a resentful race, a king’s children scattered and forced to grow into previously hidden strengths, a near-ritualized style of sword fighting, political intrigue, large battle scenes, and a few others. But anyone thinking to write off Acacia as simply another cookie-cutter fantasy would be missing a highly rewarding read — for Durham gives us these familiar set-ups only to repeatedly yank them out from under our feet.

February 20th, 2008. Bill Capossere, Kevin Wei and Stefan Raets´s rating: 2.5, 3, 4 | David Anthony Durham | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Scar Night: Doesn’t quite meet its potential

Scar Night by Alan Campbell

Alan Campbell’s Scar Night is the first book in a proposed trilogy (Deepgate Codex) and it’s a decent and intriguing start, though one hopes that succeeding books do a much better job of realizing the potential in the backstory than Scar Night itself does.

The strengths of the book mostly lie in its background. One is the underlying mythos: a millennia-ago war in heaven, a god who waits in the abyss below a major city as they feed him their dead (along with the dead’s souls) so he can create another army to storm heaven,

February 19th, 2008. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Alan Campbell | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Scepters: Not bad on its own but been down this road too often

Scepters by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Scepters, the third book of The Corean Chronicles, isn’t a bad book in its own right. If it could be read on its own (one really needs to have read the two previous books to follow this one), it would have been a decent if not great or even really good read. But coming as it does after the first two, my largest reaction was: haven’t we seen all this before?

By now the pattern of plot and character has become pretty rote.

February 11th, 2008. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | L.E. Modesitt_Jr | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Magic or Madness: Strengths outweigh flaws

Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier

Magic or Madness does a nice job of plunking us down in mid-story, giving us a sense of early momentum that seldom pauses the rest of the way. Reason Cansino has been kept on the move in the Australian bush for most of her 15 years, in order, her mother says, to keep her safe from Esmeralda, Reason’s dangerous grandmother. Serafina, Reason’s mother, has filled Reason’s mind with stories of Serafina being held captive as a young child in Esmeralda’s cellar, of Esmeralda’s animal sacrifices and dark rites all in the name magic,

Childe Morgan: Fills in the gaps

Childe Morgan by Katherine Kurtz

Katherine Kurtz’s first Deryni series introducing the land of Gwynneth and its young, just-made King Kelson and his advisor Alaric Morgan is a justifiably acclaimed fantasy classic. Since that first trilogy, Kurtz has given us several series of books dipping into Gwynneth’s far history as well as Kelson’s near future. While, as is true of just about any such multi-volume fantasy series, there have been some stumbles here and there, for the most part Kurtz has maintained the high level of quality set by that first trilogy,

February 3rd, 2008. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Katherine Kurtz | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Farthest Shore: One of the strongest books in the series

The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin

The Farthest Shore is the third book in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series, and the concluding one for several decades. Since it’s highly recommended to have read the first two, I’ll work on the assumption that the reader has. If book one, Wizard of Earthsea has the most action/magic and book two, Tombs of Atuan, is the slowest and most introspective of the opening trilogy, then The Farthest Shore is a nicely-balanced blending of the styles.

New Spring: The Wheel starts to (creeaak) turn …

New Spring by Robert Jordan

With New Spring, Robert Jordan offers himself up to two major criticisms up front. One is for releasing a prequel when you haven’t finished the first series yet and the other is for trying to grab a quick book by just padding out an already published first story. With regard to the first, I think it’s pretty silly to complain about an author’s choice of subject — perhaps he became inspired with something in terms of the back story and is excited to write it,

January 26th, 2008. Bill Capossere and Rob Rhodes´s rating: 3.5 | Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Naked Empire: Sad decline

Naked Empire by Terry Goodkind

The Sword of Truth, though a bit derivative, started off well and, while it has had its stops and starts, it has generally been well-worth reading.

Sadly, Naked Empire fails even the minimal standard of “if it’s in a series, you’ve gotta read it if only to know what happens.” So little of import happens here, and it’s so painful to get to what little does, that it simply isn’t worth it. The book is preachy, talkative, dogmatic, repetitive, one-sided, and simplistic,

January 25th, 2008. Bill Capossere´s rating: 1 | Terry Goodkind | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Gregor and the Code of Claw: Doesn’t quite match quality of earlier books

Gregor and the Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins

This is the fifth and series-ending (I shy from ever using the word “final” with regard to fantasy nowadays) book in the Gregor series, one of the most original and powerful young adult fantasy series now in recent years. It is not a standalone book, so if you haven’t read the first four, you should start. Assuming you have, however, how does Code stack up?

I have to admit to some disappointment. While much of what has made Gregor such a strong series can be found here: strongly distinct characters,

The Akhenaten Adventure: Solid if sometimes careless

The Akhenaten Adventure by P.B. Kerr

The adventure in The Akhenaten Adventures involves a pair of twins, 12-yr-old John and Philippa Gaunt, who discover after a series of odd events that they are not simple upper-class adolescents as they’ve always though but a pair of djinns (“genie” is considered vulgar) about to come into their own powers. Soon they’re off to London and the tutelage of their Uncle Nimrod. It turns out, however, that they need to learn their powers quickly, for Nimrod is involved in a dangerous quest to prevent the head of an evil djinn tribe from finding a source of great power,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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