Reviews :: Book Genre :: Dark Fantasy

It’s not often I come across a modern book that’s been written from the 3rd-person omniscient viewpoint. Especially recently. For those of you not in the know, this means the story is told from an external perspective (like a god) that knows the thoughts and feelings of all characters, knows information that a given character doesn’t know but that you the reader should, and almost always employs the use of “head-jumping”.

There are very few instances where a book written in such a way will not turn me off very quickly. For me, an experiential reader, consuming a story from the viewpoint of one character, and then suddenly finding myself experiencing the story from the viewpoint of a different character, without some kind of obvious change in the narrative (a chapter end; a break in the text to denote a change of scene) is very disorienting and immediately off-putting.

Every once in a while though, a book written in this way will come along that doesn’t completely ruin the experience of the story for me. Almost invariably, this is because the story “sticks” to a single POV for the large majority of the time. I.e., minimal head-jumping. DUNE is one that immediately comes to mind, but that was written in another era completely.

I can’t think of any others. Though, I might be guilty of having some selective cognition here.

The point is that this book is a second that succeeded for me where others have failed.
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I feel like I owe Gareth Hanrahan an apology. I mean, that review I put up for his most recent book– Yeah. Not exactly the brightest shining star in the firmament. Not that I’m going to apologize for my opinion on it. Nope. Just that I ended up leaving it at the top of our site for the past two weeks. Totally meant to get this review up more quickly than I did to hopefully overshadow some of the negativity I’d left hanging around. Because, I think this guy has a stellar imagination and knows his stuff, and up until that most recent book I’ve thought that everything I’d read from him was pretty impressive. So, even though my review for this book will absolutely be spot-on as to what I thought about it in particular (no apologies, remember?), hopefully it’ll also help to wash away any lingering bad taste left in our reader’s mouths with regard to his stuff in general.

Because, MAN, this one was abso-freaking-awesome-tastic and you really need to read it (and the rest of the series, if you haven’t) right now.
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It’s been a long time since I’ve been really disappointed by a read. Guess I was about due for one.
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Jonathan Maberry is another one of those authors that just seems to put out good stuff, over and over and over again. Joe Ledger, Rot & Ruin, thrillers, stand-alones, short stories… the guy is a writing machine and seems to knock it out of the park at every turn. So when I heard he was finally going to give Epic Fantasy a go, I could hardly contain myself. Automatic pre-order, check. Anticipation extreme, you better believe it. And then, in the midst of a bunch of truly bummer reads, in swoops one of my favorite authors to save the day!

What do you think? Over-selling it a bit? Yeah, I thought so too. I mean, I know you can see the rating I gave this one from here. Ugh. Is this string of disappointments from my core favorites ever going to end?
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Once upon a time, there was a boy named David, and he did everything to keep his mother alive. So begins THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS by John Connelly, the story of a 12-year-old boy who tries to escape a life of trauma and disappointment only to discover that fairytales aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
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So, it’s been a minute since I’ve sat down to write a review for EBR, and to be honest, it’s proving to be every bit as difficult as I thought it would be. No, that’s a lie. It’s worse. I’ve written and re-written this opening paragraph so many times now I’ve lost count, and every time my fingers stop moving, I want to get up and walk away.

Not because I don’t want to write this review. Yeesh, no. I’m so ridiculously excited for Steve and what this book portends for his career as an author. He’s been banging on the wall of publication for a long time now and has found some limited success thus far. To see him succeed like this now, absolutely means the world to me. The very fact that I’m here in my computer chair, banging on this keyboard, once more in search of the right words to use, instead of deciding again to put it all off, should identify to most of our readers just *how* important this is to me. I can’t begin to comprehend exactly how I’ve found my way to this place, where it’s dark and heavy and frustratingly hard to participate in an activity that is so near and dear to my heart. But I’m here and have yet to find my way out.

So, maybe this will be the hit that knocks me loose. Maybe this is the one that rattles me from my paralysis. Regardless, I’m here to get this done. Because Steve’s my friend, and he deserves the best I can give.

And this book is really good too. 🙂
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Back during one of my interminable years of college, I was able to take Sanderson’s Creative Writing course. This was before things took off for him with the Wheel of Time. Mostly I just took the class because I’d begun to dabble with writing my own stuff–instead of just reading–and the teacher happened to be a local author of some minimal renown. Deal. One of his lectures that semester was about how to use perspective and point of view in our stories, and we talked about all sorts of things, not the least of which was the several options we had to choose from.

I remember one question in particular from our discussion being about mixing first-person and third-person POVs within a single book. My recollection is that he said something along the lines of “being careful” but that you could do it, if you wanted to. That’s not something you come across very often though: first- and third-person POVs in the same book. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I read a book that did things that way.

Well, not before this one, anyhow.
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Potential. Potential. Potential.

This was my mantra after having read the first book in this series, THE GUTTER PRAYER. In what ended up being the most influential way, that single repeated word kept me from picking up this second book in the series for quite some time. Then I came across a picture of Rob J. Hayes (EBR Archive) on Twitter where he was reading a copy of this book… and for some reason, I couldn’t get the freaking thing out of my head. Something about the way he was looking at its open pages almost haunted my reader brain. Thus, when I came across an announcement that the third in the series had an upcoming release date (yesterday, as it happens), I bit the bullet and bought all three. I just couldn’t help myself.

And, man, am I glad I did.
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I’ve been in a real funk lately. I know. Join the club, right? It seems like no matter which direction I turn, there’s always some new disappointment waiting to greet me. Hello, 2020. If I had any choice in the matter, and I could pick a single thing that this year might have left alone, it would have been my books. Yes, I know this is ludicrous. There’s no need to remind me of the fact that books published this year have long been completed, and that 2020 did nothing to affect them in the slightest. And yet. After reading this book, I’m seriously beginning to think that some part of me has been broken. It just doesn’t seem possible that my impressions of the story contained therein might be valid. Like in the slightest. But in the end, they are at least consistent in their nature, and for that I’m still holding onto the hope (barely) that something more will come of my current epic disappointment with The Age of Madness.
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A lot of books can’t wait to reveal all of their secrets. Others dole them out slowly, reeling the reader in little by little. And while unintentional disorientation is the sign of bad writing, intentional disorientation can be fun. It requires a little more work and patience from your reader, but once you figure out the game, it can heighten the pleasure inherent in reading, the tension and relief of revelation.
MIDDLEGAME takes the ‘low and slow’ approach, revealing its secrets bit by bit. It’s effective because McGuire centers a complex story structure around compelling and simple character stakes to make an unusual story.
Asphodel Baker, a talented alchemist who was ignored and underestimated because she was a woman, had a big idea. She wanted to embody the Doctrine of Ethos, which McGuire describes as the “balance between language and mathematics” (kindle location 108). Basically Baker believed that these two forces shape the world, and could bring magic back into it if […]Read the rest of this review »