Reviews :: Book Genre :: 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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I mentioned in a previous review (HERE) that after thoroughly enjoying a short story by Patricia Briggs in that anthology, I was going to load myself up with her books and just read, read, read. Found a bundle of the first six in this series. Go me. Helps that we don’t have reviews up for the first four. Also chatted with V a little bit about it before writing up this review. Apparently she’d reviewed it a while ago (in her early years of doing so on another, now dead, site), and she was kind enough to send me a copy of it. So, this review will be somewhat of an amalgam of both our thoughts on the matter. But regardless, you should know that we both absolutely loved this thing.
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Occasionally, I’ll come across a book that just resonates with my inner core. At who I am, way down deep. This was one of those. The first time I saw the announcement–the author, the title, the cover–there just wasn’t any question. I was going to buy this book and it would be fabulous. I mean, look at that cover! How can that visual *not* just call to you? Maybe I’m biased by the fact that I’m a father and husband, by how hard I know life can be sometimes. So for me, pre-ordering this one was near instant, unknown publisher or not. Didn’t matter. I wanted to get this book into my greedy hands and devour it as soon as humanly possible.
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TRESS OF THE EMERALD SEAS might well have started with “Once Upon a Time” because it has much the same tone as any fairytale–original or modern. Tress is our main character, a teenage girl with simple wants, who also happens to be in love with the duke’s son, Charlie. But when his father discovers their budding romance, he takes the boy to court and attempts to marry him off to a young woman with more status. However, the duke underestimates the strength of Tress and Charlie’s friendship, and Charlie successfully bores the noble girls away (I know this sounds weird, but this is Sanderson and he loves his goofy camp). Unfortunately, his punishment is to be sent to fight the infamous sorceress of the Midnight Sea, which results in his capture.
And this is where Tress’ adventure begins.
Set in the world of the Cosmere, this standalone novel still has much of the same flavor as MISTBORN (with a little Terry Pratchett thrown in), but on a more […]Read the rest of this review »

When I saw the announcement for this anthology, I was totally on board. After my experience with SHADOWED SOULS (EBR Review), which was also edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes, how could I *not* immediately want to read something new from them? Granted, yes, it has a new Dresden Files story, and I am absolutely a sucker for anything Dresden these days, but even outside of the Dresden story in SHADOWED (which was AWESOME), nearly every story in that group was simply great reading.
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In THE LAST GRADUATE, our hero El and the students from the Scholomance have all survived graduation–except one. I know this is a spoiler, but you had better not come here without having read book 2, because I literally cannot talk about this book without giving spoilers. So go read it. Now. It’s totally worth it.
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In A DEADLY EDUCATION, we met Galadriel–better known as El–our heroine with an affinity for destructive magic. As a young witch, she’s a senior attending the Scholomance, a school of magic that is meant to prepare children for a world of deadly monsters. Unfortunately, over the years, the deadly monsters have decided that the Scholomance is the best hunting ground for tasty snacks (i.e.: the students). El, along with her allies and newfound friend Orion, have decided that this is the last year of the Scholomance and make a plan so over-the-top only El could have come up with it: make it so everyone can graduate. And they mean everyone.
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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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