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The Ships of Air by Martha Wells
The Ships of Air, the second book in The Fall of Ile-Rien, builds upon the strengths of the first while also improving several of the first book’s flaws. As in The Wizard Hunters, the main character’s depth and likeability is a major strength. Tremaine is a complex character, displaying a variety of emotions and pursuing a variety of actions, some of them not so clearly understood by those around her or even herself.
October 21st, 2007. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Martha Wells | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Wizard’s Dilemma by Diane Duane
The Wizard’s Dilemma continues the story of Nita and Kit, young wizards at work. If you haven’t read the others, you should. Though one could get through this and the others without prior knowledge, lack of background knowledge robs the reader of the full impact of the story.
The Wizard’s Dilemma is a darker, more personal book than the previous ones, which is made quickly clear when Nita’s mother is diagnosed with cancer. As one might expect,
October 19th, 2007. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Diane Duane | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear
Elizabeth Bear may have given her novel a rather generic title, but within the covers of the book is a story of intrigue, politics, family relations, romance, mystery and magic, as well as one of the best depictions of Faerie I’ve read in a long time. If you love fantasy, but are sick of boring Tolkien knock-offs, then Blood and Iron should fix you up nicely. Reminiscent of several other original fantasists, (Patricia McKillip and Jan Siegel spring to mind) this is an interesting take on the world of Faerie and its relationship to our own world.
October 16th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Elizabeth Bear | SFF Reviews | no comments |
There are lots of reasons to like a good Le Guin novel — her spare prose, her sharpness of description, her ease of storytelling, but in simple terms, when Le Guin writes well (nearly always), it boils down to the fact that reading becomes bare unadorned pleasure. Pleasure at its purest and simplest. And that is the gift of this book.
The backstory is pretty simple — families living in the Uplands have hereditary magical abilities or “gifts” (one type to a family) that can and usually are employed to harm: gifts of “unmaking”
October 7th, 2007. Bill Capossere and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4, 5 | Ursula K. Le-Guin | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin
The Tombs of Atuan is the second book in the Earthsea series that began with A Wizard of Earthsea. Wizard is a true classic, and it wouldn’t be much criticism to say Atuan doesn’t match it. It’s true, but The Tombs of Atuan is still well worth the read, quite strong in its own right.
The Tombs of Atuan is a near complete shift of character,
October 5th, 2007. Bill Capossere, Kat Hooper and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Ursula K. Le-Guin | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The House of Storms by Ian R. MacLeod
The House of Storms takes place roughly a century or so and in the same world as MacLeod’s The Light Ages. Though it could therefore be called a sequel, one needn’t have read The Light Ages to jump into The House of Storms, as the characters and the culture aren’t quite the same. The House of Storms is not as strong as the first book,
September 29th, 2007. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Ian R. MacLeod | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Prince Caspian is the direct sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This novel was published second, but technically comes chronologically fourth in the Narnia series. In The Lion, the four Pevensie children become kings and queen of the magical Narnian realm and reign for many years, but when they return home they find themselves back in their child bodies, on the exact same day that they stepped into the wardrobe many years ago. A year later, the children are waiting at the station for their train to take them back to boarding school when they feel a strange pulling at them — and all of a sudden they are back in Narnia!
September 29th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | C.S. Lewis | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay
In this homage to the troubadours and the “court of love” of medieval France, Guy Gavriel Kay comes down from the dizzying heights of The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy and creates a beautiful and memorable tale of mere mortals ensnared by political intrigue, enmity and love. (GGK does allude to Fionavar quite nicely, however, in a brief lullaby.)
While the plot is perhaps too complex for adequate summary here, it’s certainly not too complex for your reading pleasure.
September 27th, 2007. Rob Rhodes and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4, 4.5 | Guy Gavriel Kay | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
A Fortress of Grey Ice by J.V. Jones
As one might expect from the obvious length, there’s a lot going on in J.V. Jones’ second work of the Sword of Shadows series. A Fortress of Grey Ice is constantly shifting between locales and characters, offering many storylines, each of them interesting and tension-filled in their own right. Jones has a nice touch for when to turn away and when to return, seemingly having no trouble juggling the multiple plots, which in turn means the reader also has no problem.
September 26th, 2007. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | J.V. Jones | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Five Hundred Years After by Steven Brust
If there were justice in the literary world, you’d think Steven Brust would have received more acclaim and notice, as Brust’s writing is crisp and lively, his pacing excellent.
As explained in an “interview” with the book’s pompous narrator, Brust writes for those who love to read, i.e. those who enjoy a good vocabulary, good grammar, good phrasing, and (indeed) a good story. This is not some “page-turner” to be engulfed at one-sitting; if you did that with a box of Godiva chocolates,
September 21st, 2007. Rob Rhodes´s rating: 4 | Steven Brust | SFF Reviews | no comments |
It would give me very great pleasure to personally destroy every single copy of those first two J. J. Abrams…
Agree! And a perfect ending, too.
I may be embarrassing myself by repeating something I already posted here, but Thomas Pynchon has a new novel scheduled…
[…] Tales (Fantasy Literature): John Martin Leahy was born in Washington State in 1886 and, during his five-year career as…
so you're saying I should read it? :)