"Kushiel's Dart"

Kushiel's Dart (Jacqueline Carey)

A big fantasy novel about a courtesan who's tossed into a high-stakes world of political intrigue in late medieval fantasy Europe. For the first 300 pages or so this was really hard to put down; Carey's great at world-building and weaving exposition, and the world she's made is pretty interesting. Unfortunately the book eventually slows down and starts dragging, hamstrung by two issues, one big and one small. The big one is that it's simply too, well, big - the paperback comes in at a hair over 900 pages, and it's not hard to suggest some useless parts that could be cut (my recommendation would be the entire Master of the Straits storyline, which not only adds almost nothing to the story, but feels very out of place having a super-powerful wizard in a very low-magic setting). The second issue is that the characters are not always fleshed out as much as one would hope; our heroine and the main cast mostly come off pretty well, but the head antagonist is barely more than a sketch.
All in all, I guess this is a good beach book, but it's hard to really recommend seeking it out unless you pass it on the shelf at the library.

Grade: B

"A Natural History of Dragons"

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent (Marie Brennan)

This book stumped both Hams to come up with a clever and witty opening, so I'll just recommend it from the both of us.

Oh, you wanted to know what it's about? FINE. This one you can judge from the cover; it's a natural history of dragons, written as part memoir, part natural history. Dragons are presented as being very real animals in a fictitious world that bears a strong resemblance to Victorian-era Earth with the names switched around. Here there are no talking dragons or majestic rideable dragons; these dragons are presented in a realistic fashion, and you'll probably find yourself both fearing them as they attack the main characters and fearing for them as in turn they're hunted by poachers and have their habitats invaded by smugglers.
This book is the first in a series, covering the main character's first interest in dragons up though the end of her first adventure (complete with sequel hook). Writing her memoir - the book in your hands - allows the author to drop in asides that both flesh out the setting and the main character herself, who is now a crotchety old woman who doesn't give a fig. Given the faux-Victorian setting, there is some anachronisms about women having a place in the home; beyond this I'm not sharing any more plot details (it's only $12 on Amazon or free at your local library).

Grade: B+

"Dragon Age: Asunder"

Dragon Age: Asunder (David Gaider)

This is one of the most dreaded works out there: A video game tie in (bum bum bummmm). The three Mass Effect novels were alright (I'm not sure in retrospect they quite reached that A- I gave out), but this novel is a cut above those, and the only thing that holds it back from being an easy recommend is that it's absolutely steeped in Dragon Age lore. If you haven't played both games you'll probably be pretty lost, and even someone like me who's not just played but also read most of the optional material in those games had no idea who someone from one of the previous Dragon Age novels was when she showed up.
If you can surmount that formidable barrier to entry, though, there's a great story in here packed full of the kind of interesting, fleshed-out characters that you probably wouldn't expect from a video game tie-in novel. My only nitpick is that the villain comes off as a bit of a mustache-twirling cartoon bad guy - the author does attempt to give him some depth and motivation for his actions, but this comes as too little, too late to make him into a believable person at cross-purposes with our hero instead of a naughty antagonist for our heroes to look good fighting. This is the only thing I can complain about, though, and if you know enough about the setting to consider buying this, I highly recommend it.

Grade: A-

"Absolute Promethea" (Book 3)

Absolute Promethea: Book Three (Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III & Mick Gray)

Not to be confused with Prometha: Book Three, this is actually Books Four and Five collected in one huge volume. (I know it's confusing; this is what happens when you switch formats halfway through a series!) Since Promethea only runs to five books, this collection wraps the series up. Upfront, I'll say that it's quite good, and then I'm going to get into some minor spoilers...

A big part of this book is Promethea getting ready to end the world, with the series just about wrapping up as she does so. However, her actions don't really bring around anything like the end of the world. Instead, it's more like she's giving out a revelation. There isn't any widespread distruction, and the only people who die are people who kill themselves because of what she tells them. This is certainly tragic, but not exactly the END OF THE WORLD!!! that so many of the book's other charecters were trying so hard to prevent throughout the book. Also, the revelation she gives out falls a little flat to me; maybe you had to be there.


Anyways, the spoilers are over, and that one issue aside, this is quite good. Actually, wait, there is one other thing; the last issue is Promethea talking directly to the reader, and while I would have really liked to read this, the backround of every page is a huge garish rainbow smear of color, rendering it basically unreadable. Even in this extra-large format under a strong lamp, I could feel my eyes writhing in terror at trying to make out the text.
So that's really the only negative things I can say. Since this is the Absolute edition, there's some nice extras at the end, including two mini-comics about the least-seen aspect of Promethea drawn in early 20th century style that I found quite charming. All in all, if you've come this far you owe it to yourself to finish the series, and if not, uh, I really hope you didn't read those spoilers up there.

Grade: A-

"Dragon Keeper"

Dragon Keeper (Robin Hobb)

I tried with this book, I really did. This is another free Kindle e-book, a genre which I have not exactly enjoyed in the past. In this case, I tried to make it 50 pages (this is not easy to measure with the Kindle's "location" system), and after three and a half chapters I just couldn't stand it anymore. Reading this book is like wading through hip-deep mud: It's slow, heavy, turgid, and your mind constantly wanders to something more interesting. The book opens badly, starting with a bunch of dragons cocooning themselves, but they're all weak and dazed and half of them die, and it's so ham-handedly GUYS THIS IS SAD that it becomes silly; I couldn't help but imagine these dragons drunkenly bumbling around to comical music.
Then we switch to focus on a deformed harpy girl and her dad, and nothing happens, and while reading this part I was missing the dragons stumbling around. After a bunch of pages of nothing of interest happening we switch to focus on Alise, our mary sue who LOVES DRAGONS GUYS, and while reading this I was somehow missing the earlier parts about nothing happening to a deformed harpy girl. At this point (I was reading the book in the bathroom) I would have rather just listened to the various gross sounds coming from the next stall than continue reading this book, which I guess is very mean to say, but there you have it.

Grade: F

"Sheepfarmer's Daughter"

Sheepfarmer's Daughter (Elizabeth Moon)

This book is not what I expected. After looking at the cover (yeah, don't judge it, I know) and reading the back cover, I thought I had a enjoyable slice of 80's fantasy cheese here. And at first, that's what it is - Moon kicks the story off admirably quickly, as our heroine flees her arranged marriage and joins the military in like three no-bs pages. Then follows our heroine's military training, which is more interesting than it has any right to be, and then we get a fifty page medieval fantasy rape trial. (This is where you should drop in the record-scratching sound effect that was mandatory in movie trailers for several years.). I counted, and the rape trial and assorted drama starts on page 33, and was not over when I hit page 83, at which point I gave up. Fifty pages of this was far too much to hold my attention. I found myself wondering who this material was meant to appeal to, and discovered that whoever it is, it isn't me.

Grade: D+

"Queer Pulp"

Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions form the Golden Age of the Paperback (Susan Stryker)

I really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately, it has one fatal drawback that keeps it from being a great read like Lesbian Pulp Fiction - there's no samples. Stryker describes what's in the book and you see the cover, but that's all, and it can get really aggravating when she'll say something like "The book's contents don't match the lurid cover". Great - let me see some of the contents! Maybe it's a copyright thing, I don't know, but it really hurts the book. It's still entertaining to read, but I started just flipping through and looking at the covers after a while. For die hards only.

Grade: C-

"Lord of Light"

Lord of Light (Roger Zelazny)

I thought this book was great - imaginative, overflowing with ideas, and reading as strikingly modern for a book that came out in 1967. The basic plot is... you know, this is one of those books you might want to just read; Zelazny introduces a lush setting that sounds kind of silly compressed to a paragraph, but here goes:
The book's story is a conflict between a group of colonists from Earth who have anointed themselves gods and rule over a planet with advanced technology indistinguishable from magic, and our hero Sam, who struggles against them in the guise of the Buddha. I can't really say more except that this is a wonderful read. My only caveat is that the book's structure is a little strange - the book kicks off with Sam being summoned down from a radiation belt, which is actually almost the endpoint of the story told in the book. After one flashback it goes into a linear narrative that barely goes past this beginning point before the story is over, which did leave me a little confused (although I more chalk that up to reading this while being sick and in a daze). All in all, this book is a gem, and you shouldn't miss it.

Grade: A

"The Mists of Avalon"

The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

Let's take a nice break from massive, nerdy history books to read a massive, nerdy women's studies retelling of the Arthurian legend. (I'm not kidding about how massive it is - the parts just dealing with Arthur's mother is enough text to have been a full-sized novel by itself.)
Where viewing the story through the eyes of the female characters didn't really work for The Penelopiad, it works wonderfully here, breathing new life into the old, tired story. The male characters stay offscreen unless what they're doing effects the women, so the book's real hero is Morgaine, with the villian being played by Geunievere. Gwen here seems to have severe agroaphobia along with the intellect and emotional maturity of a five year old - in other words, she comes off as a perpetually terrified, charmless, child-like, dumb weirdo. Arthur doesn't come off that much better, and neither does Lancelot, come to think of it. I think part of the problem - and this is so wide-spread that it even effects Morgaine - is that the main cast at times acts forehead-slappingly out of character. This seems to be a result of the story having to hew more or less to the original myth. It's annoying, but I suppose in the end a good tradeoff for how well the end result turns out. Even though the book runs over 800 pages, it really only drags when we're following Gwen around being dumb and scared, and these stretches are a drop in the ocean (albeit parts I recommend skipping anyway). Highly recommended.

Grade: A

A Clash of Kings

A Clash of Kings (book 2 of A Song of Ubiquity and 25% off at Target)
George R. R. Martin

As I had said in the previous review, this book was better in hindsight having made it through the second book, which I found to be a vast improvement.  Which was true.  And now, having finished the third one, I can say, jeez, I dunno.

In any event, it's a great improvement over Game of Thrones, in that the intrigue is more interesting, and there's a hell of a lot more action, which certainly helps make this one the best I've read in the series so far.

Good:

ACTION.  Jeez, and how.  Yes, this book is talky, but you can't say that shit doesn't happen in it.

Different characters.  Davos Seaworth's chapters especially are interesting reads, bringing new perspective to the story, especially as one of the few people in the book not constantly under oligarchic pressure from their noble blood and kin.  It's also nice to see some characters formerly sitting out the story in the background get the spotlight for once as well.

Better characterization.  Catelyn Stark actually gets some dimensions, and this book is all the better for it.  Her sorrow and frustrations were one of the most well written parts of the book I thought, even if they were a bit un-subtle.  Arya Stark's chapters got a lot more interesting as well, and it was nice to see her given more to do other than mope about not wanting to act like a lady.

Bad:

Drags at points.  This is an improvement over Game of Thrones, but, honestly, starts to get worse again in the next book in the series (review forthcoming.)  Again, I often would sigh to myself that another Sansa chapter was coming up, or the real offender this time, Danerys Targaryen, whose story really has yet to interest me very much even three books into the story.  Obviously it's a slow build with her, but jeez, this is pushing it for me.  The most improved award goes to the aforementioned Arya, whose chapters got pretty compelling.  Sadly, Jon Snow's chapters, which, after his initial "okay, sigh, he's getting into trouble again" phase, got quite interesting, seemed to slow back down into literal slow, plodding marches through the snow.

The dialogue isn't great.  Tyrion Lannister seemed wittier in the first book, to me.  At least no one was given the wind again.  But, geez, Danerys has some hokey lines.

Grade:  A- (this will drop back to reality for the next book.)

"Black Orchid"

Black Orchid (Neil Gaiman)

There's one great moment in Black Orchid, and it appears right off the bat. (It's also spoiled in the introduction, which I recommend you skip). Unfortunately, once this great moment is passed, the shock, interest, and forward momentum it generates is disappated as the story wanders around and becomes boring and, in the last chapter, nonsensical. In this last chapter, the heroine's ex-husband - a gun runner with no combat skills - somehow and without explanation becomes Billy Badass, sneaking around the jungle blow-darting mercenaries and sneaking up on and murdering a character who's presented as a great hunter. Even worse is the ending, which I am about to spoil:

At the end, the bad guys, paid mercs and thugs, catch up with our heroine, who they've flown down to Brazil to kill or capture, and have been following her through the jungle for days. When they finally catch up to her, they refuse to kill her, because "she's beautiful". Then they leave. Seriously. This is really what happens.

Apparently this is one of Gaiman's first books, and he obviously got better, but I honestly can't even recommend this for Gaiman completions. You're not missing anything except some nice art and one great moment, and that falls pretty short of the price of admission.

Grade: D

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin

I had a hairdresser ask me how I could have possibly put this book down and start reading other books when I had trouble getting into it at first.  Apparently your mileage may vary with this, was the lesson I got.

So, yes, obviously, I had trouble getting into this book.  It doesn't help that it has slightly fewer characters than a Suikoden game.  I have to say, watching an episode or two of the TV series helped.  I've only seen one or two episodes of the TV series, though.  It helped put a face to the at first endless parade of new characters being introduced, and afterwards I was ready to give the book another go (and apparently putting aside all hope of ever finishing the Iron Warriors omnibus.)

There's a dramatis personae at the back of the book, which I didn't notice was there until I was done with the book.  It would have helped immensely to know it was there.  Or if it had been printed at the front, so I could have known whom the Westeros equivalent of Hetman of Genome Brigade 321 Gilead was.

I've already finished the second book, which addresses at least some of my complaints about the first book, which is largely the lack of characterization or character development.  It's much improved in A Clash of Kings, but throughout Game of Thrones, I felt confined by some of the characters, especially since the whole story is divided into chapters as seen by specific characters.  I can't say how many times I skipped ahead in a Sansa chapter to see who would be next out of frustration with Sansa being frustrated.  The only characters that actually seem to grow throughout the book are Arya Stark and Jon Snow, both of whom only seem to grow when they resign themselves to being stuck with life having dealt them a shitty hand and can't mulligan it.

Another frustration is some major characters never have a "chapter," and spend a lot of time "off camera," leaving me, two books in, wondering just what kind of character some people actually are, since we only see them through other characters reporting far-away actions and reminiscing about how great/terrible they are.

Overall, once you get over the initial hump, the book glides along on all cylinders, and the court intrigue and medieval combat actually becomes gripping and compelling, in spite of the oft too archetypal heroes and villains.  (Most of whom eventually improve anyway.)

Grade:  B+

"The Scar" (Second Look)

The Scar (China Mieville)

Up until now, all the Mievelle books I've been read have been feast or famine: You either get a gangbusters book crammed with great ideas like Perdido Street Station, or you get a tedious, unreadable slog like The City & The City. As it turns out, The Scar is neither; It's more of a big, tasteless buffet, the first mediocre Mieville book I've read. Never let it be said Mievelle doesn't have original ideas, and the book is fairly bursting with them. The problem is that there's no beginning, middle, and end the to plot. There's no climax. Instead, the book reads like "Here's a bunch of shit that happened," and the result is that while I wasn't bored, the story never kicks into high gear. Instead, the story remains shapeless and flabby. It's kind of like this: Imagine the first Indiana Jones movie is six hours long, and at the end, instead of opening the Ark, the Germans decide it's a bad idea and go home, and also let Indy go because they're not that bad after all.
I can't really recommend this one, and at this point I'm starting to worry that Mieville has already written his one great book and needs to hire a new editor.

Grade: C-

"Devil's Tower"

Devil's Tower (Mark Sumner)

Here's an interesting concept: The post-civil war Wild West, except people are developing magical powers (and no, this is never explained). The book starts off well ("The shaman rode into town on a dead horse"), and exploring the wild west with magic is fun, but the book doesn't stay that great, unfortunately. It's hard to put my finger on why; The book is competently written, and the setting is certainly imaginative. I think what it comes down to are two connected issues, namely the book's pacing, and the author's decision that Custer should be the main villain, but then doesn't appear until the heroes attack him at the very end of the book.

(spoiler alert!)

The secondary villain, Quantrill, shows up and murders a bunch of people and sells the female lead into prostitution, but he dies three quarters of the way through the book. Then the heroes decide that they need to go stop Custer, although he has only appeared in flashbacks, and only then killing someone in a legal duel. It's like if Star Wars had Princess Leia blow Darth Vader's head off 3/4 of the way through and then Luke was like "Well, I guess we should go fight the Emperor" - it doesn't really make any sense, and drains most of the tension and drama.

(There's also the minor issue of our hero being a generic boring white guy, whereas his supporting cast - the aforementioned female lead, and the moronically named "Bred" who can turn himself into a giant bear - are much more interesting.)
Overall, this book isn't bad, and I guess I got my $3 out of it, but I wouldn't be running out to pick it up, unless you really love wild west were-bears.

Grade: C

"The Age of Darkness"

The Age of Darkness (Edited by Christian Dunn)

Yes, more Horus Heresy novels. More like the Age of Dorkness am I right!!!!!!!!!
Ahem. Normally I'm not one for short story collections, but when all the short stories are pretty good even I don't have anything to complain about. In fact, my only issue is with the first short story, which is by the usually dependable Graham McNeill, ends with a horrible, cliched, unexcuseable ending (spoiler) where IT'S ALL A DREAM. Well, a simulation, but still, a meaningless nothing that frankly makes everything preceeding it a waste of time. Oh, and it's also about how awesome the Ultramarines are, because that's breaking news.
Luckily, that's only one short story, and the rest are excellent. Even better, they provide a nice wide spectrum of legions that usually are wasted off-screen; The Salamanders show up in two stories (although they're getting beaten up by the Ultramarines in McNeill's), and the last loyal Iron Warriors get a great sendoff in one of my favorite shorts. Another excellent one has Horus Aximand, demi-villian of the opening trilogy of the Horus Heresy, literally gettings his face chopped off by one of the White Scars. It doesn't get much more 40k than that. Great stuff.

Grade: B+

"Fraggle Rock"

Fraggle Rock (Various authors and artists)

Here's a collection of short Fraggle Rock comics. Why? I dunno. I guess it's cute, but unless you're a huge Fraggle Rock fan, I don't think you're going to get much out of this. Not a lot of ideas or much of a message besides HEY, FRAGGLES and Fraggle Rock's omnipresent flavor of Canadian crypto-socalist utopian thinking where little green people who really enjoy their work come and build things out of food for weird monsters to eat.
Also, Red is still an asshole, surprise.

Grade: C

"The Horus Heresy: Collected Visions"

The Horus Heresy: Collected Visions (Alan Merrett)

Well, I didn't think I was going to read this whole thing, but here we are. This is a nice big hefty coffee table book about the Horus Heresy, mostly art comissioned for some collectible card game that's too nerdy even for me. The art makes up probably 80% of the pages and is the real star, although the text isn't bad, describing the entire Heresy from start to finish. Fellow W40K nerds should beware that the text contains a few passages that may charitably be described as perhaps inaccurate and maybe more accurately described as heretical; This includes the Emperor directing Russ and the Space Wolves to flat out destroy the Thousand Sons instead of just ferrying Magnus back to earth (and the text later contradicts itself on this point anyway), and weirdest of all, having the Emperor and Horus have a big dumb hollywood fight at the end where Horus pulls one of the Emperor's arms off and stuff. (I was under the impression that the Emperor could have defeated Horus any time he wanted; It was only his love for his son and his humanity that was staying his hand, not that Horus was able to beat him up as depicted here.) (Also, if you understood any of what I just said, you are a giant nerd.)

Highlights:
Page 200, which features what appears to be a demonically laughing woman zooming across the page powered by what can only be described as a massive jet fart
Pages 362 & 363, a full page spread of probably the greatest piece of W40K art of all time featuring the Emperor confronting Horus on the bridge of his ship

Grade: B

"The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb"

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb (Text by, I guess, God; Illustrated by, yes, R. Crumb)

 Just like the title says: Here's all 50 chapters of the Book of Genesis in graphic novel format. The cover promises that nothing will be left out, and it isn't; You get everything from God creating the heaven and the earth in chapter 1 to Joseph dying in chapter 50 (spoiler alert). In between, you have the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah getting destroyed (with awesome pictures), and people begatting each other. Really, the only downside of the book is that whoever wrote Genesis is obsessed with this, so you have a bunch of material that's just people begatting the shit out of each other. This means Genesis is full of lists of who begat who, and even R. Crumb can only do so much with pages of this, although he does make it easy to skip with postage stamp-sized pictures of all the people who were begatted. Otherwise, this is a great book, and Crumb's art style fits the material much better than I anticipated (after all, I guess this was before the bra was invented). Absolutely not for kids, but - and I'm going to give this book points just for letting me write this sentence - not to be missed by Bible fans and R. Crumb enthusiasts.

Grade: A

The Magicians

The Magicians is, obviously, about magic. Magic done realistically, if there is such a thing. I hate to use the 'blank meets blank' cliche to describe it BUT it reminds me of Harry Potter and Narnia written for adults in an upstate New York setting (at one point the characters even reference a trip to Albany! Cheap pops for my hometown!).

Just as not all animated works are made for children, not all books about magic are for children. The characters drink, swear, and have sex. Just like real teenagers! And that's what I enjoyed about this book. I didn't have to roll my eyes at Boy character and Girl character (or boy character and boy character, this book portrays a gay relationship--bonus points for making the gay character one of the coolest in the book) chastely holding hands and even kissing once at the finale. The book also doesn't portray marriage as the most perfect thing two people can do...marriages can be messed up and children can be pissed about it.

"A Song of Ice and Fire"

A Song of Ice and Fire (George Martin)

God help me, I really tried with this one, but this is another book I never finished. When I got to page 300 and the author was still introducing whole new casts of charecters, I just couldn't stand it anymore. How about you go back to some of the 85+ charecters you've already introduced? Honestly, I'm not sure I'm missing much giving up at the 1/3rd point. Apparently I'm the only person who feels this way, but I didn't find the writing that great. About the time a lady given a horse is bellowing "Tell my husband he has given me the wind," and then repeating it for emphasis, I started to think this book wasn't everything all the hype said it was. I've heard defenders of this work say that, well, it's the first part of a seven-book epic, so you can't judge it in isolation, and I'm sorry, but that's nonsense; If you can't make the first book in a series any good, maybe you should re-think your series. I'll just ask: Was the first Harry Potter book bad? That was the first book in a seven-book series; Was he given the wind???????

Grade: F