Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 4

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The Death of the Necromancer: Intricate steam-and-sorcery mystery

The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells

Nicholas Valiarde is a man obsessed. Expertly assisted by a coterie of talented yet honorable thieves, he’s all but completed his master plan of revenge against Count Montesq, a corrupt nobleman who orchestrated the execution of Nicholas’s foster father on the basis of a false charge of necromancy. Nicholas’s plan is interrupted, however, by the appearance of the mysterious Dr. Octave, a professed medium who may or may not be a fraud, but who is somehow connected with the strange, magical spheres on which the false charge against Nicholas’s foster father was based.

June 21st, 2007. Rob Rhodes´s rating: 4 | Martha Wells | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Phoenix Guards: Very nice change of pace

The Phoenix Guards by Steven Brust

The brief review: I had a slight smile on my face the entire time I read The Phoenix Guards. It is, as a reviewer of The Three Musketeers might have once said, “charming.”

To elaborate: Steven Brust is very well (some might say “over”) educated and knows how to turn a phrase. The plot moves along briskly; the characters, while not fleshed out too thoroughly, do have distinct and effective personalities. I was,

June 21st, 2007. Rob Rhodes´s rating: 4 | Steven Brust | SFF Reviews | no comments |

So You Want to be a Wizard: First book in an impressive series

So You Want to be a Wizard by Diane Duane

So You Want to be a Wizardcame along well before the current trend of young fantasy so one shouldn’t dismiss it as “yet another Harry Potter follower.” Wizard centers on 13-yr-old Nita, a picked-upon young teen, and 12-yr-old Kit, another lonely young teen. Nita, taking refuge from bullies in the local library, stumbles across the reference book providing the title of the novel and into the world of wizardry. Shortly afterward, she meets up with Kit, who himself has just become a wizard.

Stormchaser: Large improvement over the first book

Stormchaser by Paul Stewart

Stormchaser is the second book of the Edge series and it is a vast improvement over book one — Beyond the Deepwoods. The book picks up a few years after Twig’s adventures in Beyond the Deepwoods. He is now sailing aboard the skyship of his recently-discovered sky-pirate father and has exchanged the monster-horrors of the Deepwoods with the more human horrors of city-life, pollution, and corruption (though monsters still make the occasional appearance).

Switchers: Slow start, but drastically improves

Switchers by Kate Thompson

Tess is a reasonably distant and lonely child, who takes long walks out into the forest and park lands each day, returning home each evening to somewhat bemused parents. They don’t believe anything is seriously wrong with their child despite the fact she has no friends — they just think she’s a loner that loves the outdoors. But it just so happens that Tess is very different from other teenagers, and harbors a secret that she keeps from every other person on the planet. She has had the ability from a very early age to change into any animal she desires,

Kushiel’s Chosen: A painful but beautiful story

Kushiel’s Chosen by Jacqueline Carey

Jacqueline Carey returns to the lush and decadent world of Terre d’Ange in Kushiel’s Chosen, sequel to the strange but beautiful Kushiel’s Dart, and produces a sequel that unfortunately doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor.

Our masochistic heroine, Phèdre, leaves behind her comfortable new life as a country countess when she begins to suspect that all is not well in Terre d’Ange. She believes that Melisande Shahrizai, from her hiding place in La Serenissima (Venice),

Mistborn: The Final Empire: So much to like!

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,

Sabriel: Intoxicating reading

Sabriel by Garth Nix

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,

The Blade Itself: Vivid, tense, action-packed, and droll

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 |

The Smoke Thief: The book equivalent of chocolate mousse

The Smoke Thief by Shana Abe

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 |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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