Reviews :: Book Genre :: Fantasy :: Page 37

It’s too soon to be declaring any book as the best of the year in any category. But! It can be said that THE DIVINERS by Libba Bray (Amazon) is pos-i-tutely one of the most enjoyable and promising of 2012. This is an urban fantasy, historical fiction, mystery epic that accessible to young adults while still managing to be entertaining to an older audience. Finding the rare gem like this is the very reason I read.

Evie O’Neill has been shipped off to live with her uncle in New York City. The exile is intended to be a punishment but Evie sees only opportunity in the bright lights of the Big Apple. The city is full of potential and Evie’s uncle is only concerned with managing the The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult – jokingly referred to as “The Museum of Creepy Crawlies.” Life is good until the police seek Uncle Will’s assistance with solving a series of occult-based murders. Evie has a very unique and unnatural gift that may enable her to help catch the crazed killer…if the killer doesn’t catch her first.
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Ephraim is your typical high school socially awkward guy. He doesn’t much like school. He’s got a goofy best friend, but not many other friends. There’s a pretty girl he likes who doesn’t know he exists. There’s the bully who picks on him. Unfortunately his dad left years ago and his mom is a drunk. He really can’t imagine life worse than it is now.

But that all changes when a quarter shows up in his his locker with the note: “Make a wish and flip the coin to make it come true.” Only nothing goes as Ephraim plans.
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I think I’ve mentioned before how I like to see authorial “progress” from one book to the next. Seeing them get better in at least one aspect of their craft with each progressive offering to the reading masses gives me hope that there will, someday, be more authors that I love to read. In general, I think that most authors fall into this category. It’s hardly ever that I find one that seems to have regressed further from the goal that I think each of them should strive for: greatness in storytelling. As I’m sure you can guess by now, this book is one of those.

LANCE OF EARTH AND SKY (Amazon) is the second in the planned Chaos Knight trilogy and continues the story of Vidarian Rulorat and the empire of Alorea. Mostly, however, this is a story about the empire, as Vidarian factors so little in what actually happens.
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Over the last couple of years, Adrian Tchaikovsky has become one of my favorite authors. Very few authors actually take their setting and story and move it forward technologically. In Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt series, we get exactly that, along with huge amounts of character progression, thrilling large-scale battles, and intense small-scale fights.

THE SEA WATCH (Amazon) is the sixth book in this projected 10-book story. I guess the best way to describe it is by saying THE SEA WATCH, in a way, is the Shadows of the Apt series’ 20,000 leagues under the sea. The results overall are great, but that doesn’t mean the novel is absent some missteps.
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Anyone out there like movies that are based on actual historical events? I think there’s something to be said for them, but in general I find that regardless of how much I love them, the endings always end up being particularly less that I had anticipated. This book was totally like that. Steve’s going to love this, because this time around, I totally agree with his overall opinion of Ms. Parker’s latest offering, SHARPS (Amazon): full of unfulfilled promises. I do still disagree that this description applies to the Engineer Trilogy, but in this case, he’s totally spot-on.

SHARPS is another stand-alone from the veritable K.J. Parker, an author whom the reading public still knows so little about. It’s another book about war, and what people are willing to do to get what they want. It’s another book full of sarcasm, and multi-hued characters. It’s another book of swords and mayhem. And if she didn’t write it so dang well, I probably wouldn’t have liked it as much as I did.

But I did. Cause, boy, was it fun.
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My first introduction to Tim Lebbon was in the SWORDS & DARK MAGIC anthology (EBR Review) a while back. In a collection of stories full of absolute WIN, Tim Lebbon’s “The Deification of Dal Bamore” was one of the best. After that I read ECHO CITY (EBR Review) and was similarly impressed. Lebbon’s ability to write Horror the way Miéville writes Weird Fiction is astounding.

And then I heard Lebbon was going to write a YA novel, and it would be published through Pyr SF&F. Holy anticipation, Batman!
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I’ve been on a bit of an urban fantasy kick of late. So much of the genre is about gritty, inner city vampire staking that HIDDEN THINGS (Amazon) by Doyce Testerman registered to me as an original. HIDDEN THINGS isn’t urban fantasy so much as a modern rural fairytale. It features folkloric fantasy creatures (dragons and satyrs instead of vampires and werewolves) and tells a moral story. I found this novel approach endearing and as a result I quite liked HIDDEN THINGS despite some flaws.

Calliope’s partner has been declared dead. The police are investigating the matter and suspect foul play. Calliope knows little of the case Josh had been working but refuses to accept that he is gone for good… because she has a message on her answering machine from him that was taken two hours after his alleged demise. Now Calliope must travel to Iowa in search of answers with hopes of finding her ex-lover/best-friend/business-partner. The only clue she has is a warning, “Watch out for the hidden things.”
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Celia’s life hasn’t been easy since she was turned into an abomination in BLOOD SONG (EBR Review) — not quite human, but not quite vampire, either. At the same time her siren abilities manifested, giving her supernatural skills she only wished she had in a profession (bodyguard) that needs all the advantages she can get.

Be careful what you wish for.
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I like being proven wrong. Well, let my qualify that statement, because I hate being told that I’m wrong.  I do, however, enjoy being surprised by finding out for myself that something is not the way that I thought it was. After reading several short stories and a novel by Mr. Lake, I’d pretty much written him off as someone that I wouldn’t enjoy reading any more of.  So having this book land in my pile was an interesting experience to say the least.  As with my most recent foray into Science Fiction, I of course felt obligated to read the first book in the series before I read this one.

ENDURANCE (Amazon) is the second book in the “Green Universe” authored by the prolific Jay Lake.  I had previously read the first book in his “Mainspring Universe”, MAINSPRING (Amazon), and was less than enthused by what I found.  In essence, great writing, interesting characters, a decent–if slightly wandering–plot, with a horrible lack of an ending.  It is a tribute to Mr. Lake’s prose and storytelling ability that he made me forget about that final point when I dove into GREEN (Amazon) and subsequently with ENDURANCE.
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Oh man. I don’t even hardly know where to begin. It seems like only yesterday that Pyr’s Lou Anders was talking up this new series he had acquired. It all started with Tom Lloyd‘s THE STORMCALLER, and Lou Anders was telling everyone who would listen that it was the start of a series that would please all those rabid Steven Erikson fans. Being one of those Erikson fans myself, I was intrigued. I personally picked it up based solely on Anders’ description.

Fast-forward several years later, and here we are with the fifth and final novel in The Twilight Reign. THE DUSK WATCHMAN (Amazon). I had the privilege of reading this novel quite a while ago, and it’s been absolute agony not having anyone to talk with about it. I was going to wait for the US release of the novel to write up this review, but I just can’t do it. Not enough willpower.

I’m just too dang excited to tell you what I think of this novel, and the series as a whole.
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