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Weight of Stone: by Laura Anne Gilman
For two thousands years, the Lands Vin have enjoyed peace and prosperity thanks to Sin Washer’s strict separation of magic and politics, but it seems that someone’s been tasting forbidden fruits. When Master Vineart Malech and his student Jerzy set out to solve this nebulous threat to the peace, they soon become caught up in the forbidden currents of politics.
Laura Anne Gilman’s Weight of Stone, the second novel in The Vineart War,
October 11th, 2010. Ryan Skardal´s rating: 2.5 | Laura Anne Gilman | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Stormlord Rising by Glenda Larke
Stormlord Rising, the second novel in Glenda Larke’s WATERGIVERS trilogy, starts right where The Last Stormlord left off: Ryka is a captive of the marauding Reduners, Terelle is traveling to Khromatis against her will, and Jasper — the titular last stormlord — finds himself forced to work together with his nemesis (and now de facto ruler) Taquar Sardonyx to create much-needed rainstorms for the parched lands of the Quartern. With almost every main character forced into a situation they don’t want be in right from the start,
September 27th, 2010. Stefan Raets´s rating: 2.5 | Glenda Larke | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Lorna Freeman’s Borderlands series has seen its ups and downs for me. Shadows Past is cut from the same cloth; I just felt like it took a long time to tell next to no story, and then all the good parts were crammed into the end.
The main character, Rabbit, has been constantly changing throughout this series. His story is very interesting, between his upbringing in a wild and magical part of the world and his ties to the royalty of a nearby nation.
September 15th, 2010. John Hulet and Ruth Arnell´s rating: 2.5, 3.5 | Lorna Freeman | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Shadow Chase by Seressia Glass
The back cover blurb for Shadow Chase promises an adventure story revolving around the Vessel of Nun, an Egyptian artifact that has gone missing and, unless restored to its proper place, will unleash a worldwide flood.
This storyline, however, doesn’t start until after the 100-page mark (though there is one brief hint that foreshadows part of it), and this is to the detriment of the book. In the early chapters, most of the page time is taken up with introspection, discussions,
August 17th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2.5 | Seressia Glass | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Gail Carson Levine is best known for her retellings of traditional fairytales, (most famously Ella Enchanted) but here she draws on a mythological setting for her inspiration. Despite the fairytale-ish title, Ever takes place in an imaginary world that bears a resemblance to Greek or Middle-Eastern culture, particularly in regard to its climate, customs, clothing and food.
Kezi is a girl nearing her sixteenth birthday, living the simple life with her beloved mother and father,
August 12th, 2010. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 2.5 | Gail Carson Levine | Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Sweet Scent of Blood by Suzanne McLeod
Genevieve is the only sidhe fae in London and has a traumatic past involving vampires, which we readers learn about in flashbacks throughout the story. She works as a spellcracker, removing hexes from objects. There are two ways she can remove a spell. She can “crack” the spell, thereby destroying both the spell and the object, or she can absorb it into herself, which carries its own problems. As the story begins, a celebrity vampire stands accused of murdering his girlfriend, Melissa. The vampire’s father hires Genny to examine Melissa’s body for evidence of magic.
July 27th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2.5 | Suzanne McLeod | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Wizard at Work by Vivian Vande Velde
Wizards are supposed to be old men with pointy hats, so the young wizard professor at the center of this story makes himself look like an old man during the school year. He puts his disguise away at the beginning of his summer vacation and looks forward to a few months of puttering around the garden growing vegetables he won’t eat, when a chance encounter with a witch sets him off on a series of adventures to discover that appearances don’t always match reality.
Wizard at Work by Vivian Vande Velde is a collection of humorous takes on familiar fairy tale staples.
July 11th, 2010. Ruth Arnell´s rating: 2.5 | Vivian Vande-Velde | Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve
Here Lies Arthur is a YA deconstruction/demystifying of the King Arthur legend. And a pretty thorough demystifying at that. Philip Reeve doesn’t simply knock Arthur down a peg or two from chivalric magic-sword-wielding king of the Round Table, say, by making him simply a Roman general or an English chieftan who rallies the locals against the Saxons. No, Reeve takes him all the way down; in this incarnation Arthur is a small-minded petty brigand whose major qualities are that he is: boorish,
June 12th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | Philip Reeve | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Suburb Beyond the Stars by M.T. Anderson
As a reader, I find M.T. Anderson a bit all over the map. I tend to see his strongest work as aimed at the older crowd, while his children’s novels tend to leave me a bit cold. That was the case with The Game of Sunken Places, a children’s fantasy involving two boys playing a Game of high stakes involving trolls, ogres, etc. M.T. Anderson hadn’t done enough with the relatively “humdrum” concepts and his plotting and characters were a bit muddled.
June 7th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | M.T. Anderson | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill
The Cry of the Icemark has some excellent imaginative material to work with, but it’s almost as if once the author struck gold with the idea, he decided to leave it lying in the ground. The Cry of the Icemark therefore ends up disappointing more than rewarding.
It follows 14-yr-old Thirrin, princess and heir to the throne of Icemark, a small northern kingdom threatened by an aggressive massive southern empire and its never-lost-a-battle general.
May 28th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | Stuart Hill | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
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