Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 2009.02


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The Wild Ways: Did Not Finish

The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff

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.


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Jade Man’s Skin: Not as enjoyable as first book

Jade Man’s Skin by Daniel Fox

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.


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The Broken Universe: Solid but uninspiring

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,


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Blue Magic: A mixed bag

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.


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Endurance: Weak plot and narrative voice undercut interesting character

Endurance by Jay Lake

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,


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Always a Witch: Enchanting, quick-moving, spooky duology

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.


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Across the Great Barrier: Great adventure for young adult readers

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,


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The Magician King: Postmodernism meets Narnia

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.


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Tattoo: Back to Kasai’s ravaged yet eerily beautiful world

Tattoo by Kirsten Imani Kasai

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.


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City of Ruins: Adventure, excitement, solid world-building

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), 


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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

We have reviewed 8279 fantasy, science fiction, and horror books, audiobooks, magazines, comics, and films.

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    How can cats not have an official Patron Saint? I call foul! This must be fixed at once.

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    "Renegade Nell" looks interesting! Reminds me a bit of both Queen of Swords and The Nevers.

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