The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
I have to admit to being rather disappointed with The Queen of the Damned. I came into the third book in Anne Rice’s VAMPIRE CHRONICLES fresh from the excellent The Vampire Lestat and ready for more. At the end of The Vampire Lestat, the reader is left with the distinct impression that everything in Rice’s meticulously constructed vampire universe is about to explode, and I was excited.
February 14th, 2012. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 3 | Anne Rice | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
There are two major traditions when it comes to vampire fiction. In the first and older conception of them, they are out-and-out monsters, demons lusting after mortal blood from beyond the grave. Examples of this would include Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot or the original Dracula to some extent. The second tradition humanizes vampires, focusing on the men and women they once were rather than the supernatural beings they have become. Interview with the Vampire is of the latter camp,
February 1st, 2012. Tim Scheidler and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Anne Rice | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Howl’s Moving Castle is a book that is very easy to love. Diana Wynne Jones is a consistently entertaining author, and her prose seldom fails to be enticing and comfortable as settling into a favorite armchair, even when opening one of her books for the first time. What is perhaps even more impressive is that it’s generally very hard to discern any effort beneath the workings. Jones almost gives the impression that she writes at perfect ease, never agonizing but instead kicking back and letting the words flow in an uninterrupted,
November 11th, 2011. Tim Scheidler, Tadiana Jones, Rebecca Fisher, Ryan Skardal and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4, 5 | Diana Wynne Jones | Audio, Children | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
THE SANDMAN series was originally released in comic form, later in trade paperback collections (above), and most lately in larger omnibus editions (the first one is shown here). It’s thus rather difficult (and time-consuming) to review the individual volumes, and so I’m going to review the series as a whole, noting as I do so that some volumes were better than others.
Despite some slight ups and downs, I overall found THE SANDMAN a remarkable work, well worthy of the praise it has received over the years.
October 4th, 2011. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 5 | Neil Gaiman | Comics | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Warriors: Into the Wild by Erin Hunter
There have been some great animal stories written for children. Brian Jacques’s Redwall series invested woodland creatures with a valor and camaraderie straight out of Tolkien, and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows charmed with its odd blend of comedy and bittersweet nostalgia. E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and Robert C. O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh are in many ways beautiful little stories of life and loss.
September 16th, 2011. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 3.5 | Erin Hunter | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Night’s Master is the sort of book that not everyone will like, but for what it is, it’s brilliant. The styling is exquisite, the characterization direct and to-the-point in a way I’ve rarely seen before, getting right to a character’s essence without any muddying around. The plot concerned me at times while reading, but eventually proved itself beyond my expectations. I rarely say this, but this is a novel that stays with you.
As I said above, I did have my doubts coming into it.
September 14th, 2011. Tim Scheidler and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5, 5 | Tanith Lee | Audio | SFF Reviews | 9 comments |
Tom Deitz spends rather a lot of time during the course of Bloodwinter telling the reader just how extraordinarily awful the winters of his fantasy kingdom of Eron are, how Herculean must be the efforts of those who seek to cross the frozen wasteland. Without getting cuter with this analogy, there were stretches where I felt much the same about reading the novel.
That isn’t to say that Bloodwinter is ever painful to read. Deitz has an excellent command of language and he uses it well,
September 1st, 2011. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 2.5 | Tom Deitz | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Squire’s Tale by Gerald Morris
The Squire’s Tale is what I love to see out of kids’ fantasy. It’s charming, it’s well-told, it’s entertaining for a number of age groups, and even as it simplifies and plays with the mythology it uses, it remains lovingly respectful of the original texts.
I was actually surprised by how closely the novel sticks to the Arthurian legends. The Squire’s Tale introduces the character of Terence, Sir Gawain’s squire, and gives the magical end of things more of an Irish mythological slant,
August 16th, 2011. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4.5 | Gerald Morris | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Child Thief by Gerald Brom
The Child Thief is one in a long line of novels, graphic novels, films, and cartoons concerned with giving “gritty retellings” of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, or to give that book its original name and set it apart from the play, Peter and Wendy. The phenomenon of taking an innocent old classic and muddying it up is and has been fairly widespread, but Peter and Wendy is particularly popular because it was arguably gritty enough from the start,
July 21st, 2011. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4 | Gerald Brom | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
THE GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME by Joel Rosenberg
Guardians of the Flame: The Warriors pleasantly surprised me. I’ll admit that going into it I was somewhat dubious: it looked like an obvious cash-in on a clichéd premise. Joel Rosenberg, however, turned out to be a more skilled author than I had anticipated, weaving a fun, fast-paced, often grim series that did exactly what it needed to. The Warriors is an omnibus volume consisting of the first three GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME novels: The Sleeping Dragon,
July 13th, 2011. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4 | Joel Rosenberg | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
I had it on my list to reread (which means I looked over at the bookcase one night, saw it…
Marion, I'm saving James (and Orbital) for after my semester ends so I can devote my undivided attention to them.…
Susan, glad you enjoyed. Samuel Jackson should absolutely play him in the movie!
Troy, 100% agreed. Sadly the BBC adaptation is also confused about this. They seem to think Orciny is some kind…
Hey Marion! The weather is the *same* in Ul Qoma and Beszel in the novel. They even have a recurring…