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Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
I was a fan of Brandon Sanderson’s first novel, Elantris, though the novel had some pretty clear flaws. I’m an even bigger fan of his follow-up, Mistborn, a book that has all the plusses of Elantris without the problems.
Mistborn takes places in an ashen, devastated world where the “Skaa” are a brutally downtrodden majority who do all the work for the aristocratic minority of the Great Houses,
June 7th, 2007. Bill Capossere, Kat Hooper and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5, 4, 5 | Brandon Sanderson | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Sabriel is one of the best fantasy books out there, full stop. Although not up to the deep literary analysis of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or Pullman’s His Dark Materials, it is a realistic, fantastical, intriguing and thought-provoking novel that’s right up there with the best of them. Garth Nix creates a dark, almost Gothic world that echoes with age and believability that is intoxicating to explore: the magically-imbued Old Kingdom that lies across the Wall from the more scientific-orientated Ancelstierre,
June 4th, 2007. Rebecca Fisher and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Garth Nix | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
By setting The Blade Itself (2006), the first book of his FIRST LAW series, in a well-built world and filling it with interesting, “gritty” characters, Joe Abercrombie creates a good balance of stage-setting and story-telling.
The story is told from the perspective of five major characters who are gradually drawn together and whose collected experiences create an engrossing tale. There is the mage, the apprentice, the barbarian, the gifted young noble, the crippled anti-hero… and so forth. Abercrombie writes engaging characters — perfect for my personal tastes.
June 1st, 2007. John Hulet, Kat Hooper, Rob Rhodes and Greg Hersom´s rating: 4 | Joe Abercrombie | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Sometimes I don’t get myself. It’s been years since I’ve enjoyed an actual romance novel and to be perfectly frank, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy The Smoke Thief.
Joke’s on me there, I guess. Shana Abe‘s writing is so light and airy that reading it is, if you’ll excuse the pun, a breeze. It just floats by without effort, easy and evocative (and occasionally slightly purple, especially during love scenes, but no one is perfect and I don’t expect them to be).
June 1st, 2007. Beth Johnson Sonderby (guest)´s rating: 4 | Shana Abe | SFF Reviews | no comments |
I like the ambiguities when the story leading up to them has inserted various dreadful possibilities in the back of…
COMMENT Marion, I expect that my half-hearted praise here (at best) will not exactly endear me to all of Ramsey…
Ramsay Campbell was all the rage in my circle of horror-reading/writing friends in the 1980s, and they extolled the ambiguity.…
Oh boy, I wish I could escape that Neil Gaiman article, too. I knew already he’d done reprehensible things but…
These sound like they're worth picking up.