Servant of a Dark God
Here at Elitist Books Reviews, we are always on the lookout for that next series that will get us (and in turn, you) excited. What makes a series exciting for us? Well, if you’ve been paying attention to our reviews, you know that we feel the first book in a new series is extremely important. It starts with the cover of the book. Is it awesome? Does it make you want to pick up a copy of the novel just to read what it is about? Then, with the actual book itself, do we as readers feel interested in the new world we are presented? Do we get a sense of newness and wonder at the world, magic, characters, and story? Does the story leave a ton of room to grow and expound on the ideas introduced in book 1?
You see, we ask for a lot. (You better give it to us when we ask too. Or so help us, we might… uh… be mean.)
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The Devil You Know
Remember when we said we found a few new series? This is another one of them. And it came with our friend, Tom Lloyd’s recommendation. We know right? How could we NOT start this series up?!
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW by Mike Carey (Amazon) is an Urban Fantasy that you will mostly likely find shelved in the horror section of your local bookstore. It is about an exorcist, Felix Castor, who is looking to get out of the game, but predictably takes one last job. That job is a haunting of a museum in London. Obviously, things go to hell in a hand-basket. Quite literally actually. Demon’s and all that.
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Flesh and Spirit
It was in 2008 that Carol Berg‘s FLESH AND SPIRIT (Amazon) was published, so it has had some shelf time, like a few other books we have reviewed. We have received quite a large number of emails requesting a review of this book — and it’s sequel BREATH AND BONE (Amazon) — and since we do aim to please, here it is.
Anyone who has read Carol Berg before, knows that she is pretty dang good at what she does, and has written some great books. So we picked up this first half of the series without much hesitation, and cracked it open.
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Margaret Weis Interview
There are certain authors that hold a special place in our hearts. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are two of them. So, when Wizards of the Coast came calling and asked if we would like to interview Margaret Weis as part of her blog tour, we jumped at the opportunity. Without any further delay, we are excited to give you our brief interview with Margaret.
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The Electric Church
In our continued quest to bring you new authors and new series we have come across a number of candidates. You have a lot to look forward to. We, however, decided to start with this book, simply because it really has the coolest cover. (Hey…turns out even WE judge a book by its cover.)
THE ELECTRIC CHURCH by Jeff Somers (Amazon) is a loose SF/Cyberpunk novel set in a post-apocalyptic near-future USA (and London). In this particular world, a new religion, The Electric Church, guarantees Salvation and Eternal Life…
… with a catch.
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The Grave Thief
Every now and then, we get a little hesitant to pick up and read a novel. We know, this is a dangerous admission on our part–believe it or not we are human sometimes (the rest of the time we are Review Gods, remember?). You see, when we find a series of novels that we like, each subsequent novel in that series becomes more exciting and terrifying to pick up. Why? Because we are afraid of being let down (read: Jim Butcher).
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Ghost Ocean
GHOST OCEAN by S.M Peters (Amazon) is an Urban Fantasy that, to put it simply, rocked our socks off. S.M. Peters is the author of the awesome WHITECHAPEL GODS (Amazon) which you may remember Nick recommended in the 102 class of the University of Fantasy here (If you paid attention and were a good student, that is). We already knew he was a very creative and imaginative author, and were not surprised in the least with the way GHOST OCEAN held our attention.
Te Evangeline, the main character of the book, is more than she seems (it’s all we can do not to make a Transformers reference here… oh wait, did that count anyway?), and so is the city she lives in. The city of St. Ives is home to a multitude of supernatural creatures and an eclectic crew of very unique individuals that keep them in check. The story is, at once, about the mysterious pasts of these team members and the present exploits of a creature that had been imprisoned and is now broken free.
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Contest Results
Here are the contest results and we, to put it simply, had a blast reading all of your submissions. There were a handful of potential winners that we debated back and forth in deciding who would be declared the winner. So without further ado we give you:
Meg! You are the grand prize winner and will be receiving the ARC of I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER. For the rest of you, here is her submission.
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Dark Time
Let us just start, right from the get go, by saying that DARK TIME: Mortal Path by Dakota Banks (Amazon) is NOT written for guys like us. In fact we would go so far as to say its not written for guys at all. So we feel an obligation for some leeway in the way we review it. Don’t worry, we will still do it in style, as you have come to expect from us.
DARK TIME is an entry into the current trend of Urban Fantasy with a touch of eroticism and a strong female lead. It follows closely in the footsteps of the likes of Laurell K. Hamilton and Faith Hunter. Is this a bad thing? Well our feelings our mixed on that score. It doesn’t stray from that tried and true formula very much, if at all, which is somewhat disappointing. However, that means that what content there is works (for the most part, as we will demonstrate later).
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The Company
K.J. Parker’s THE COMPANY (Amazon) has a paperback release here shortly. We figured after reading the Engineer Trilogy that we should give her (K.J. Parker) another chance. Bottom line here: we really wanted to like this novel, but at the end of the day, we were left unsatisfied.
Let’s be clear here, we didn’t hate THE COMPANY, but we sure didn’t love it either. This novel follows the story of A Company, a small group of soldiers who were considered the most fearsome during a past war. THE COMPANY is partially about their attempts to reintegrate into society after the war, and partially about their attempts to colonize an island they… procured.
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