Vengeful Spirit (Graham McNeill)
I'm scared to start a Graham NcNeill book now; when he's good he's great, and when he's bad, he's infuriating. I'll cut to the chase here: Good McNeill showed up for this book, and the biggest flaw has nothing to do with his writing; it's the fact that we're deep in the Hersey now, but the story's possibilities are still limited by knowing the ending. The reader knows there's no way that Horus is going to die during the course of this book, neither is the titular Vengeful Spirit going to be destroyed.
That being said, McNeill mostly works around this by drawing on the now well established setting of the Horus Hersey (over 30 novels!) - to the point where even giving a basic sketch of the book's story risks running into spoiler territory, as a pivotal character thought dead returns in first few pages. The tradeoff here is that McNeill is able to sidestep the majority of the predetermined ending problem, but in turn the book is almost totally inaccessible if you haven't been reading the Heresy up to this point.
In short, if you've read enough of the series that you'll catch the book's references, it's an easy recommend; otherwise, take a pass.
Grade: B
Friday, February 20, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
"Elizabeth"
Elizabeth: England's Slandered Queen (Arlene Okerlund)
I didn't really enjoy this book; mostly it made me want to re-read Allison Weir's the Wars of the Roses, a historical event that takes up about half of this book, and quite honestly the more interesting half. The parts that are actually about Elizabeth are ultimately doomed by the author stopping quite frequently to defend Elizabeth's reputation; While these parts do sound convincing to me, I had barely heard of Elizabeth before reading this book, and the author introducing arguments against Elizabeth to then refute them started turning into a real drag. I appriciate the author's attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of "England's Slandered Queen", but I'm afraid it doesn't make for terribly interesting reading, and I'd probably recommend steering clear of this one.
Grade: C
I didn't really enjoy this book; mostly it made me want to re-read Allison Weir's the Wars of the Roses, a historical event that takes up about half of this book, and quite honestly the more interesting half. The parts that are actually about Elizabeth are ultimately doomed by the author stopping quite frequently to defend Elizabeth's reputation; While these parts do sound convincing to me, I had barely heard of Elizabeth before reading this book, and the author introducing arguments against Elizabeth to then refute them started turning into a real drag. I appriciate the author's attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of "England's Slandered Queen", but I'm afraid it doesn't make for terribly interesting reading, and I'd probably recommend steering clear of this one.
Grade: C
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