Category :: Review :: Page 89

Miles Vorkosigan is reliable. Reliably clever. Reliably entertaining. Reliable at finding trouble. But does reliability equal excellence? For Miles it does because he’s reliably awesome, but for Lois McMaster Bujold, who can and has written better, CRYOBURN (Amazon) is merely better-than-average entertainment.

Something’s rotten on the planet Kibou-diani, and Miles is trying to sniff out the secret. Known for their use of cryonics to preserve the ill or aged until medicine advances enough for a cure, the crybobanks pretty much run the planet and are looking to expand and provide services for a new population on another planet. But there’s more to it than a business making money, and Miles is determined to get to the bottom of it–even if it means breaking a few rules and stretching beyond his own diplomatic immunity.
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It happens more often than you think. Sometimes we just don’t read certain books. It has to do with time, opportunity, cost, motivation or whatever. The end result is the same, and the book sits there in the “To Be Read” pile. It’s a shame, because we miss a lot of great novels this way. We were recently asked to review some of the various novels out there that don’t seem to get a lot of push, and this reminded us of those copies of Alan Campbell’s novels that we bought forever ago.
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We get asked all the time who our favorite authors are. Two years ago the answers would have been absurdly simple, but we read a lot more novels these days. A WHOLE lot more. As a result, who we consider our favorites tends to shift and slide. Barely more than a year ago we hadn’t yet read anything by James Barclay. Now with each novel of his that we read, he solidifies himself as one of our favorite authors.
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By chapter two of LORD OF THE CHANGING WINDS (Amazon) I began to worry that Rachel Neumeier would make me suffer through new-author syndrome: the first fifty pages stiffly sets up a predictable story, using too-formal prose, repetitive descriptions, and clumsy world building. But I kept reading, because despite a not very illustrious beginning, the prose has some delightful metaphors and turns of phrase that spoke to the author’s cleverness with words.
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We rarely read any novels from Pyr that could be deemed a “miss.” The number of stellar novels put out by Pyr since its inception is astonishing. But every now and again even they miss the mark. THE HORNS OF RUIN by Tim Akers (Amazon) is Sword & Sorcery/Steampunk hybrid. Sounds cool on the surface. In fact a lot of this story sounds fantastic on paper…unfortunately that paper doesn’t include the actual execution of the idea.
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I know what you’re thinking: “This is a girlie book.” Your first impression of the cover/title may be justified, but at the same time it doesn’t fully describe the depth of the setting and characters of PEGASUS (Amazon), this is more than a fairytale.

When a member of the royal family reaches twelve years of age they are bound to their own pegasus. Princess Sylvi’s birthday is coming up soon, but she’s ambivalent about the event, even if it means binding herself to one of the gloriously lovely pegasi. This is because the process involves the most dreaded of people to Sylvi… magicians.
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THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO by Patrick Ness (Amazon) is one of those wonderfully deceiving Young Adult books that reminds us all of the days when there was no such thing. It’s a simple story…in a gritty, continually plot-twisted, thought provoking and emotional thrill-ride kind of way.

I could simply call it a story about a boy and his dog, or boy meets girl, or coming of age…but then I’d have to mention that the dog talks, the girl is seemingly the only one on the planet, and that being a man isn’t exactly something worth envying here.
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There is something oddly comforting about reading a James Barclay novel. It’s like when the holidays roll around and the smells of good, home-cooked meals automatically make you relax and enjoy the day a tad more than usual. ELFSORROW (Amazon) fits this role perfectly.
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To all those looking for my review of this book, I have two words for you:

talking cats

THE END

Oh, hold on, my phone’s ringing…

((beep, beep, boop, eep, eep, boop, oop))

((…ring))

((…ring …click))

Hey, Steve. How’s it going?

((wah))

Cool. So yeah, I just finished reading that POISON THRONE (Amazon) book you guys gave me and I’m throwing a complete blank on how to write the review for it because just about nothing happened in the whole thing. I–

((wah, wah, waah?))

Yeah, really. Nothing. Well, nothing interesting anyhow.
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ALL CLEAR by Connie Willis (Amazon) is the sequel to this year’s BLACKOUT (EBR Review). Although “sequel” isn’t really the proper word for it. “Sequel” makes it sound like the first book had some closure to it, a conclusion. “Sequel” makes it sound like this book, ALL CLEAR, is going to recap what happened in the previous volume and catch you up. Both of those things are not true of this duology. ALL CLEAR, better said is the second half of the story begun in BLACKOUT. The reason for the split in the story is that it’s so long. ALL CLEAR clocks in at 640 pages in hardback and BLACKOUT was about the same. I’ve seen Brandon Sanderson books that are shorter than these two put together (I kid, we love Brandon around here).
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