Posts from 2011 :: Page 11

Anyone else just LOVE the movie Mary Poppins? Yes, the one put out by Disney. Of all the movies I watched as a child, this is one of the few that I really remember enjoying every time I watched it. As I read this novel, my mind ran back to those days: I kept seeing that view over London when Dick Van Dyke took the group across the rooftops, I kept tapping my foot to Step in Time, and at random moments I would begin to whistle Feed the Birds. The atmosphere of this book was just… ah, well, I get ahead of myself.
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Matthew Swift has already died once and isn’t interested in doing so again. Unfortunately he has the knack of finding himself in the right place at the wrong time, and now London’s Aldermen (the magical kind) believe Swift killed the Midnight Mayor. Kinda ironic considering he didn’t even believe the guy existed in the first place…

To avoid punishment for a crime he didn’t commit, Swift searches for the mayor’s killer, but realizes there’s more to this story than the death of one man: it involves the survival of London itself.
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For some unknown, benevolent reason, we fantasy readers have fallen into the good graces of the genre gods. Why is that? you ask. I simply don’t know. Truly. But isn’t it obvious? We’re smack in the middle of a veritable geyser that has brought, or will bring to our greedy little eyes and hands titles from those authors that we most love: WAY OF KINGS, THE HEROES, WISE MAN’S FEAR, THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR, BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH, THE CRIPPLED GOD. And who can forget the recent announcement for A DANCE WITH DRAGONS (maybe it will actually happen this time)? Enough big-name books to keep any good fantasy reader satisfied for most of a year, entire. And yet, despite the excitement, despite the fervor, despite the sheer giddiness of it all, there was no other book that I anticipated more than this one. It wasn’t even close (sorry KJ Parker, even this one trumped you).
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In case there was any ambiguity before, we want to set the record straight regarding Jonathan Maberry. He is freaking awesome. On every freaking level. Maberry’s THE KING OF PLAGUES (Amazon) was just released, giving us our much needed Joe Ledger fix.

In this latest novel, Joe Ledger is drawn back into the world of horror and terrorism when the Royal London Hospital is leveled by bombs without any warning. As the death toll rises, Ledger realizes he can’t watch from the sidelines–regardless of his life being left in shambles following the climatic events of THE DRAGON FACTORY (EBR Review). Ledger faces off against old enemies and new as a secret group weaponizes the Ten Plagues of Egypt.
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Hypothetical situation for you. You live in the US, and one day you get a phone call from a doctor that tells you your father has just suffered two major heart attacks, possibly received some brain damage as a result, and that he has consequently sunk into a deep coma. Naturally you rush to his bedside, forget about your life entirely, and fret over every blink and shift until finally, several weeks later, he wakes up. When he does, he starts rambling about how he’s traveled forty years into the future to a little village in South America where he made enemies with some bad ghosties, and that he needs to get back there to figure things out. Then he leaps out of the bed, grabs the lamp, and proceeds to smash it into the wall, stating that one of the ghosties has come to get him. Again, naturally, the doctors at the hospital throw him in the psych ward.

What do you do?
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I found this book in the most unusual way. I went to the bookstore and saw it on the shelf. I know, weird right? I didn’t see it on some blog, or see it in some random post from another site. It wasn’t recommended to me by a friend or any of that. Nope, I was just at Barnes & Noble one day and thought I would check out what was new and what looked interesting–and there it was, calling to me. I then did the only sensible thing and I went home and ordered it off of Amazon.

I’m glad I did.
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One of the lessons we have learned during our time reading and reviewing novels is that it is hard just to get a book published. Making that first novel solid? Even harder. But you know what’s even MORE difficult than that? Writing a series where every novel gets better and better.

Dan Wells‘s horror series staring John Cleaver—a teenager who has all the early tendencies of a serial killer—comes to a conclusion (just for now hopefully) with I DON’T WANT TO KILL YOU (Amazon). The novel is fantastic, even better than last year’s terrific MR. MONSTER (EBR Review).
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CAN YOU SURVIVE THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? (Amazon) by Max Brallier has managed to break us out of our staunch anti-zombie book stance. It is a choose-your-own-adventure book for an adult, with a setting of… you guessed it, a zombie apocalypse. We figured it was different enough we could relent on our anti-zombie attitude for one more book.

We are glad we did. This book is a riot!
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Buzz, buzz, buzz. Can you hear it? Bees? you wonder, but no. Not bees. Did someone leave the stereo speakers on? No. Not that. Huh. Then what? I’ll tell you what. It’s the buzz of advertisement. Every once in a while we see it pop up. There’s some new book or author that gets people talking and soon it’s all over the place and everyone wants to know more. There was a bundle for NAME OF THE WIND, a grip for TOME OF THE UNDERGATES, and yes there was enough for this book that I got caught up by it. Thus.
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Morwenna is an odd girl. At least that’s how she perceives herself. And it may very well be true since the other girls at the English boarding school have confirmed the points against her: she reads endless stacks of SF, she uses a cane as the result of a lame leg, she’s from Wales so doesn’t have a posh accent, and her mother is a witch.

This oddity means that the girls leave her alone, which is fine with Mor, but it also leaves her lonely. And she has many reasons to feel lonely. Her parents divorced when she was young, so she barely knows the father just recently come into her life. She ran away from home to get away from her evil mother, leaving behind a beloved grandfather. And her twin sister died mere months ago.
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