Bill Capossere | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

Gregor the Overlander: High quality YA fantasy

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

In the sea of young adult fiction out there, Gregor the Overlander makes for one of the more pleasant anchorages. The book starts off quickly with Gregor and his two-year-old sister “Boots” falling through a gateway into the Underworld, a sprawling underground land populated by giant talking cockroaches, rats, bats, and spiders, along with several thousand pale humans descended from a 17th century “overlander” who led his small group into the Underworld then sealed the entrances. This descendant left a string of prophecies,

The Anvil of the World: Uneven, funny, promising

The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker

The first thing that should be noted about Kage Baker’s The Anvil of the World is that though it focuses on a very small group of characters and one main character throughout and follows them chronologically, this isn’t really a novel. Unless it’s one with some major transition problems. Rather, it’s three novellas with some large gaps of time between the three different adventures. Like any collection of stories, then, The Anvil of the World tends to be a bit uneven.

June 13th, 2007. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Kage Baker | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Stormchaser: Large improvement over the first book

Stormchaser by Paul Stewart

Stormchaser is the second book of the Edge series and it is a vast improvement over book one — Beyond the Deepwoods. The book picks up a few years after Twig’s adventures in Beyond the Deepwoods. He is now sailing aboard the skyship of his recently-discovered sky-pirate father and has exchanged the monster-horrors of the Deepwoods with the more human horrors of city-life, pollution, and corruption (though monsters still make the occasional appearance).

Midnight for Charlie Bone: Solidly interesting, not particularly compelling

Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo

Any book nowadays that has its main character be a young boy who suddenly discovers he has magical talent is, fair or not, going to be compared to the Harry Potter series. Add in a school for geniuses and those “endowed” with magical talents, a small cadre of mixed (talented and not-talented) friends to aid the main character, suspicious professors, and a missing presumed dead father and you’re almost asking for it. It might not be right, but at least so many people have read Harry Potter that it gives us all a solid baseline standard.

Mistborn: The Final Empire: So much to like!

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

I was a fan of Brandon Sanderson’s first novel, Elantris, though the novel had some pretty clear flaws. I’m an even bigger fan of his follow-up, Mistborn, a book that has all the plusses of Elantris without the problems.

Mistborn takes places in an ashen, devastated world where the “Skaa” are a brutally downtrodden majority who do all the work for the aristocratic minority of the Great Houses,

The Black Cauldron: Mystery, suspense, adventure, and intrigue

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

The Black Cauldron is the second in Lloyd Alexander’s five-part Chronicles of Prydain, and possibly the most well known. When discussing these books with other people, you’ll usually get a blank look if you say “the Prydain books” or The Book of Three, but if you mention The Black Cauldron, you’ll probably get a vague sense of recognition. It is a Newbery Honor book and was made into a Disney film,

Gardens of the Moon: Erikson displays a prodigious imagination

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

It’s always a question for fantasy fans: do I really want to read a first book in yet another long series? Remember when we moaned about when everything was a trilogy — now I’ll be happy to take a simple three-book series. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell ahead of time if the trip will be worth it? Well, thanks to the quirks of international publication, you can with the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Gardens of the Moon,

June 1st, 2007. Bill Capossere, Rob Rhodes and Ryan Skardal´s rating: 2, 2.5, 5 | Steven Erikson | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Author: Bill Capossere

Gregor the Overlander: High quality YA fantasy

The Anvil of the World: Uneven, funny, promising

Stormchaser: Large improvement over the first book

Midnight for Charlie Bone: Solidly interesting, not particularly compelling

Mistborn: The Final Empire: So much to like!

The Black Cauldron: Mystery, suspense, adventure, and intrigue

Gardens of the Moon: Erikson displays a prodigious imagination

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