The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff is the second book in THE GALE WOMEN series. While I enjoyed the first book, The Enchantment Emporium, even though it had serious flaws, The Wild Ways was not good. I got to about halfway through and didn’t care about the characters. In fact, on a semi-regular basis, I couldn’t keep the characters apart.
I also had serious difficulties with the “too much power/too little consequences” system of magic in this book.
December 19th, 2012. Ruth Arnell´s rating: 0.1 | Tanya Huff | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Why are the second books of trilogies so difficult? Jade Man’s Skin is the second book of MOSHUI: THE BOOKS OF STONE AND WATER, a series set in an alternate China where dragons are real and jade has the power to make an emperor nearly invincible. I greatly enjoyed Dragon in Chains, the first in this series. And I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy Jade Man’s Skin; only that I enjoyed it less.
June 14th, 2012. Terry Weyna and Robert Thompson´s rating: 3, 4 | Ben Macallan, Chaz Brenchley, Daniel Fox | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Broken Universe by Paul Melko
In The Broken Universe, Paul Melko returns to the world of his Walls of the Universe, expanding on both the universe count and the character count as well as greatly raising the stakes. While doing so, unfortunately, he also carries over some of the first book’s flaws, making the sequel, like book one, a solid but uninspiring read.
The book picks up pretty much where Walls of the Universe finished,
June 5th, 2012. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Paul Melko | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Blue Magic by A.M. Dellamonica
Blue Magic is the second book in a duology by A.M. Dellamonica that began with Indigo Springs. I gave the first book three stars and while Blue Magic improves on book one in several ways, it also takes some steps back as well.
The first book introduces us to Astrid, who upon returning to her hometown of Indigo Springs discovered a powerful source of magic with which she can enchant objects and people.
April 11th, 2012. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | A.M. Dellamonica | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In Endurance, Jay Lake continues the exploration of a strange and beautiful world. We feel the smoothness of a length of silk, hear the sounds from the docks, smell the curries and the spices in the food cooked in the taverns. As Green, his main character, travels through Copper Downs, the reader sees the city from the roofs she travels, and wanders deep into the tunnels and caves beneath the city’s foundation. We see the rust-frozen machines used eons ago, built by the sorcerer-engineers to work the mines,
November 8th, 2011. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5, 3 | Jay Lake | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Always a Witch by Carolyn MacCullough
Alone among her relatives, Tamsin Greene grew up believing the family’s Talents had skipped her over, and learned to get by without magic. But in Once a Witch, Tamsin learned that she was far from powerless. Rather, she was one of the strongest of the Greene witches. Always a Witch concludes her story.
Tamsin is still getting used to having magic, and her sister Rowena is annoying her with her bridezilla antics. These concerns take a backseat when the family learns that the sinister Alistair Knight has altered the past and restored his ancestors to power.
August 19th, 2011. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Carolyn MacCullough | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Across the Great Barrier by Patricia C. Wrede
Eff is back in this alternative magical history of the settling of the West. After the encounter with the mirror bugs that almost destroyed most of the settlements across the Great Barrier and came close to killing Eff’s brother and father, Eff gets hired on to a small expedition to chart the extent of the mirror bugs’ devastation. What they find surprises everyone — magic has completely disappeared from the soil and all the magical plants and animals are gone. As their journeys continue,
August 15th, 2011. Ruth Arnell´s rating: 4.5 | Patricia C. Wrede | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
In Lev Grossman’s novel The Magicians, Quentin Coldwater — a geeky fantasy-loving high school senior — has his life turned upside down when he is invited to take an entrance exam for Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. After spending years learning the craft, and some time outside of school in a Bret Easton Ellis novel kind of existence, life is turned around again when he and several of his newfound magician friends discover that Fillory — the magical setting of a series of beloved children’s books (think Narnia and you’ve got it) — is real.
August 11th, 2011. Bill Capossere, Stefan Raets, Ryan Skardal and Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Lev Grossman | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Tattoo, the sequel to Ice Song, takes readers back into Kirsten Imani Kasai’s ravaged yet eerily beautiful world, picking up Sorykah’s story just after her rescue of her twin babies from the mad Matuk the Collector. She’d love to return to normal life, but fate has other plans.
Kasai’s prose is as beautiful as ever. In the haunting prologue, she once again evokes a fairy-tale atmosphere as she tells the creation myth of the octameroons: human/octopus hybrids like Sorykah’s acquaintance Rava.
July 27th, 2011. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Kirsten Imani Kasai | SFF Reviews | no comments |
City of Ruins by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
One of 2009’s most pleasant surprises was Diving into the Wreck, a short but excellent SF novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch about Boss, a specialist in the exploration of derelict spaceships. In this first novel, Boss discovered the wreck of a Dignity ship. This remnant of a legendary Fleet contained remnants of the mysterious and dangerous “stealth technology” that could possibly tip the balance of power between the Enterran Empire and a small alliance of independent planets.
In City of Ruins (2011),
July 5th, 2011. Stefan Raets and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.