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,
November 7th, 2007. Bill Capossere, Kat Hooper, Terry Weyna and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Brandon Sanderson | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
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 |
“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 |
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,
September 7th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Angie Sage | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
As much as I enjoyed Wit’ch Fire, the first part of James Clemens‘ The Banned and the Banished, it has to be said that this is better.
Wit’ch Storm picks up the tale of Elena Morinstal shortly after where the last book left off. Once again, the prologue intimates that the reader is party to a text that has been banned for being dangerous and is clearly not true — a hook I have found effective every time Clemens has used it.
August 14th, 2007. Guest´s rating: 4 | James Clemens | SFF Reviews | no comments |
It seems lately that a lot of books have come out where setting plays as large a role as character. I’m thinking of Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris, China Miéville’s New Crobuzon, Gregory Frost’s Shadowbridge, and Jay Lake’s Mainspring. Books that haven’t simply created a new world, but whose world itself is an integral part of the story, rather than just the physical part the story moves across.
Felix Gilman’s Thunderer certainly falls into that category — more successfully than some and less so than others.
July 25th, 2007. Bill Capossere and Terry Weyna´s rating: 4 | Felix Gilman | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
As the sequel to Angie Sage’s first novel Magyk, a pre-teen wizarding fantasy heavily influenced by the HARRY POTTER series, Flyte picks up a year after the events of the first story, in which the magical Heap family discovered several amazing secrets about their past. Namely, that their adopted daughter Jenna was in fact a princess and that a young nameless boy they picked up in their adventures was their long-lost son Septimus,
July 7th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3 | Angie Sage | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Lion of Macedon by David Gemmell
The dearly-departed David Gemmell was, in his lifetime, acknowledged as a master of the heroic fantasy, and if you want any proof of that, read Lion of Macedon.
The tale begins in Sparta in the period after the end of the interminable Peloponnesian wars, when Sparta had begun to weaken, and several decades before the rise of Philip and Alexander the Greats. The eponymous hero, Parmenion, is a Spartan — a true Lakedaimonios — with a Macedonian mother.
June 15th, 2007. Guest´s rating: 5 | David Gemmell | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Let’s not beat around the bush. Angie Sage has clearly been inspired by the world of HARRY POTTER, which makes it somehow impossible to review her work without comparing it to J.K. Rowling. Since Rowling’s phenomenal series exploded across the world of publishing, there has been an onslaught of pre-adolescent youngsters with magical powers and unusual names popping up in the children’s sections of bookstores and libraries everywhere. CHARLIE BONE. PERCY JACKSON. ARTEMIS FOWL. And now, Septimus Heap.
June 7th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3 | Angie Sage | Children | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
I might say "formulaic" actually.
Your review made me curious, so I looked this book up. Sure enough: Tor. Tor seems to specialize in these…
It's a tightrope act for sure.
[…] Stuart (2 December 2015). “Roadside Picnic: Russian SF classic with parallels to Vandermeer’s Area X | Fantasy Lit…. fantasyliterature.com. Retrieved 8 […]
yes, I mean, there are certainly lots of good sci-fi/fantasy novellas out there, so they aren't impossible to do, but…