Search Results for: the strand

Mortal Engines: A new brand of fantasy for the 21st century

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

In the years beyond the 30th century, after life as we know it is destroyed in the Sixty Minutes War, the world is divided into three: the Static communities, who live in farms and buildings firmly stationed on the earth, the aviators, who travel the Bird Roads in the sky, and the Traction Cities, the giant cities on engineered wheels who live by the Municipal Darwinism — the big cities devour the little cities for their resources. And the biggest Traction City of them all is London,

Bill Chats with Alma Alexander

Recently I had a chance to chat with Alma Alexander, author of the young adult epic WORLDWEAVERS. Please find synopses, cover art, and my reviews of Alma Alexander’s WORLDWEAVERS novels here. Alma Alexander’s website is here.

How much of a “plotter” are you before you start — do you have detailed outlines of where you are going, a general sense of conclusion? Have you ever found any of your characters “getting away from you,” in the sense that they end up involved in ways you hadn’t anticipated?

July 10th, 2008. Bill Capossere | Alma Alexander | Author Interviews | 1 comment |

The Door in the Tree: Nothing overly special

The Door in the Tree by William Corlett

This is the second book in The Magician’s House Quartet and sees the three children of the previous novel (The Steps Up The Chimney) return to their uncle Jack’s Golden House, where the year before they had meet a time-traveling wizard called Stephen Tyler, befriended a number of wild animals and mastered the magical art of sharing their bodies, and helped deliver their uncle’s girlfriend’s baby when the wizard’s assistant Morden had attempted to sabotage the birth.

A Secret Atlas: Slow in places, solid start

A Secret Atlas by Michael A. Stackpole

A Secret Atlas has its flaws, but overall makes for a solidly enjoyable read, especially as it generally (with some exceptions) improves as one moves through it.

The story begins in Nalenyr, one of the “Nine Principalities”, the divided remnants of an empire that along with much of the known world was brought to near ruin centuries earlier in the Great Cataclysm. The novel focuses most of its attention on the Anturasi family, whose patriarch Qiro has the Talent (capital T intentional) of mapmaking.

June 10th, 2008. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Michael A. Stackpole | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Lord of the Isles: Not bad, but not engrossing enough

Lord of the Isles by David Drake

David Drake has a considerable reputation as a science-fiction writer, but Lord of the Isles was my first introduction to his work. To be frank, it is not a good introduction.

Lord of the Isles begins in the tried-and-tested high fantasy tradition — ancient events outlined in the prologue, cut to the present on a bucolic location, unexceptional adolescent male character introduced, and on you go. The island of Haft in the Isles of the title is then shocked by the appearance of a ship from the past.

May 16th, 2008. Guest´s rating: 0.1 | David Drake | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Blackwood Farm: Settings, language, atmosphere and imagery are second to none

Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice

In the ninth book in The Vampire Chronicles (though the books are self-contained and can be read out of order) we meet Tarquin “Quinn” Blackwood, a fledgling vampire with a serious problem. The book opens with a letter he has written to the famous Lestat, begging him for advice in how to deal with the continued presence of Goblin, a spirit that has dwelt with Quinn for his entire life but is now taking on frightening new characteristics and powers after Quinn’s conversion to vampirism.

March 6th, 2008. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3 | Anne Rice | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Elantris: Above average stand-alone

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

At the start, I want to give Brandon Sanderson props just for doing what seems to be the unthinkable nowadays — writing a standalone fantasy, a book that actually comes to a close, a book that is just that, a book and not the “start of a bright new fresh trilogy that out-Tolkien’s Tolkien!” Luckily, Elantris holds up well and even merits beyond being a standalone.

Elantris is the name of the city that until ten years ago was inhabited by near-gods,

The Blood Knight: Solid if uneven “bridge” book in the series

The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes

Anyone who reads a lot of fantasy knows by now to come with some trepidation to any sort of “bridge” book — the second book in a trilogy or the 2nd or 3rd book in longer series. Too often they simply exist to get us from the exciting stuff that got us hooked in book one to the exciting stuff that will wow us in the conclusion. Other times they read like they simply exist because the author can sell a trilogy more easily than a standalone or a simple sequel and so plot events are stretched out so thinly they almost snap.

September 28th, 2007. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Greg Keyes | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Jarka Ruus: Promising start to a new Shannara series

Jarka Ruus by Terry Brooks

“The One that Plays the Others as a Master Does his Puppets…”

It’s been twenty years since the events of The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, in which a combined group of Elves, Men and Dwarves sailed under the leadership of the Druid Walker Boh in an attempt to reclaim archaic knowledge from lost islands far to the West. Though the mission failed in this respect, it did achieve one of Walker’s chief desires; to redeem the life of Grianne Ohmsford.

September 26th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3 | Terry Brooks | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Physik: Sophisticated plot, intriguing resolution

Physik by Angie Sage

I gave this book’s predecessors rather lukewarm reviews, finding them a little too simplistic and reliant on the success of Harry Potter, with rather weak villains and too many periphery characters to keep track of. However, all that changes with the third installment in the series, which has a sophisticated plot with an intriguing resolution, a truly unnerving villain and a very real sense of danger and suspense. The protagonists of the series are Septimus and Jenna Heap, the former the Apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard and youngest son of the Heap family,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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