Archive for the ‘Book reviews’ Category
Just reviewed Mercedes Lackey’s “Redoubt” at SBR
Folks, if you like Mercedes Lackey’s writing, or if you’re a big fan of her Valdemar series, you’re in luck. Because REDOUBT, the fourth novel in the “Collegium Chronicles,” is out . . . and I just reviewed it over at Shiny Book Review (SBR).
Go check out my review, then go grab the book! (And Happy Friday!)
October 2012 Quick Hits, Pt. 2
Time for some more quick hits, folks . . . especially as I’ve been too busy to come up with a complete blog post this week. Yet it’s wrong to neglect my blog, now, isn’t it? (Don’t answer that.)
Anyway, here’s a few things I’ve been thinking about since my last blog:
- I’m sick and tired of all the sniping about the election on Facebook. Whether you’re liberal, conservative, independent-minded or somewhere in between, watching people who otherwise like each other decide to savage each other instead over differing political beliefs just disgusts me. Jason Cordova wrote an excellent blog about this very thing; I strongly urge you to read it, then reflect upon it.
- In case you missed it, Shiny Book Review turned two years old (and Jason Cordova got the domain name, finally) . . . and I forgot to get it a present! (Unless you figure my ongoing series of book reviews is a present of sorts, that is.)
- The San Francisco Giants, behind Madison Bumgarner, won again tonight and have gone up two games to nothing over the Detroit Tigers in the 2012 World Series. So far the Giants look like a juggernaut, while the Tigers look like they’ve run out of gas. Look for more of the same in Game 3 unless the Tigers are able to regain some sense of life or energy in the meantime.
Other than that, it’s all writing, editing, and commenting, as per usual . . . and I will be reviewing Mercedes Lackey’s newest Valdemar novel, REDOUBT, tomorrow at SBR. (Due to circumstances beyond my control, my review of Michael Casey’s THE UNFAIR TRADE is going to have to wait for next week. That book requires more concentration than I’ve had lately to explain, and I want to do it justice.)
So keep an eye out for tomorrow’s book review, folks . . . and maybe between now and then, I’ll figure out something to blog about, else.
Just Reviewed “Arcanum 101” at SBR
Folks, if you’re looking for a short, but really good, urban fantasy novel — better yet, one written by such masters of the craft as Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill — look no further than Arcanum 101: Welcome New Students. (My review over at SBR is available here.) This is a fun, fast read that does many good things — it introduces two good characters, Tomas Torres, a fifteen-year-old pyrokinetic (read: fire-starter) from the barrio, and teenaged techno-shaman Valeria Victrix Langenfeld (always called “VeeVee”), who’s been raised with magic, accepts it as her due, and has more talents than she knows what to do with. Both end up at St. Rhiannon’s School for Gifted and Exceptional Students — St. Rhia’s, for short — and both are attracted to each other within moments of their first meeting.
As this is a young adult story, their romance is PG-rated. I appreciated this, because it seems most unlikely that a young romance needs to become explicit right away — especially while in a school setting.
Overall, I enjoyed Arcanum 101 thoroughly, and think if you enjoy urban fantasy, anything written by Mercedes Lackey and/or Rosemary Edghill, or better yet, all of the above, you will enjoy it as much as I did.
So what are you waiting for? Go read my review — then go grab the e-book!
Just Reviewed Sharon Lee’s “Carousel Tides” at SBR
Folks, if you’re looking for a really good urban fantasy novel to read, look no further than Sharon Lee’s CAROUSEL TIDES. This is an excellent read that does a number of things, all extremely well — it’s a coming of age story for its heroine, Kate. It’s a story of female empowerment, again for Kate. It’s a great quest story (where has Kate’s grandmother gone, and what’s happened to her?). And it has a very nice, yet understated romance between Kate and the enigmatic, sea-going Borgan.
Oh, yes — there’s a really nasty evil guy to root against, too, a guy named Ramendysis. This is a guy who’s into destroying as many other people with magical ability as he can, partly because he believes might makes right and partly because he’s just a terrible person. So the “big bad” is hiss-worthy, too — as if you needed any more reason to read this novel.
I said much more about CAROUSEL TIDES in my review over at Shiny Book Review (SBR). So please, read my review, then go grab the book! (You’ll be very happy you did, especially if you love urban fantasy.)
Just Reviewed Two Books at SBR
It’s Romance Saturday at Shiny Book Review (SBR), which is why I reviewed two of Sherry Thomas’s Victorian romances — her two newest, in fact. These books are BEGUILING THE BEAUTY and RAVISHING THE HEIRESS . . . and are available here:
Now, my brief take on these books? They’re not up to the standard of Thomas’s earlier romances such as her debut, PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS, nor her third romance, NOT QUITE A HUSBAND. They’re also not up to the standard of her second and fourth books, DELICIOUS and HIS AT NIGHT, respectively.
The upshot is that Sherry Thomas can write, and write well; in fact, her writing far outshines these plots, and makes getting through these books a pleasure while you’re reading them.
However, once you’ve finished the books, you realize, “What was that all about, anyway?” And then wonder why a writer as good as Sherry Thomas would write books that, put simply, are fluff — well-written fluff, to be sure, with some emotional depth and resonance balancing out the extremely convoluted, yet stereotypical plotlines.
I’m sorry. I love Sherry Thomas’s writing, but I did not love these plots. And because of that, the better-rated romance of the two was a B (for RAVISHING THE HEIRESS; even though I actually enjoyed BEGUILING THE BEAUTY more, the unbelievable contortions of the plotline made it impossible for me to grade it out any better than a B-).
Now, for those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’re well aware that HIS AT NIGHT rated a B grade, which seemingly matches the B grade I gave RAVISHING THE HEIRESS tonight at SBR. But there are B’s and B’s — to coin a bad phrase — which is why I point out that had I reviewed HIS AT NIGHT along with these two novels, I probably would’ve given HIS AT NIGHT a B-plus or better.
At any rate, the two latest novels from Sherry Thomas will divert you, engage you, and once read, make you shake your head. There’s some genuine emotion here, which is a plus; it’s the unbelievability of it all that vexed me to the point that I wanted to throw the books across the room.
So read these books, because Sherry Thomas is a great writer; then go back and read her truly excellent PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS and NOT QUITE A HUSBAND to study how great writing and great plotting enhance books, while great writing and really strange plotting are, at best, extremely confusing.
Wrote Guest Blog for Stephanie Osborn About Book Reviews
Folks, I’m excited. I just did my first guest blog ever for author Stephanie Osborn, writer of the Displaced Detective series featuring physicist Skye Chadwick and everyone’s favorite detective, Sherlock Holmes, brought into our time via physics and the parallel worlds theory.
Here’s a link to my guest blog, which is called “The Oft-Misunderstood Art of Book Reviewing.” And here’s just a little bit of it, to whet your whistle and perhaps make you visit Stephanie’s site (a very worthwhile site it is, too; Stephanie’s a physicist herself who knows more about space travel than most, and can actually explain it in a way non-scientists like me can understand, as she did here in an extensive interview at Blog Talk Radio for the JeffTrek program):
Now, you might be wondering, “Why talk about book reviewing at all? Surely it can’t be that difficult to review a book – can it?” Well, that all depends on the book.
And the fact that book reviewers are often just as misunderstood doesn’t help. Some of the popular misconceptions run the gamut from, “Those who can’t write, review,” and, “What does she know about books, anyway?” Yet writing a book review isn’t that much different, if you do it properly, than writing anything else – the trick is to read whatever book you’re planning to review thoroughly, then ask yourself a number of questions.
As for what the questions are, you’ll just have to head to Stephanie’s blog to find out, now, won’t you? (Insert evil laugh here.)
Reviewed E.C. Myers’ “Quantum Coin” at SBR
Folks, as I originally wrote this on September 11, 2012 — and for some reason, it wasn’t published on that day — take it as read that I have had alternate universes on my mind all week.
To wit — what would’ve happened had Al Gore, not George W. Bush, been our 43rd President of the United States? Would he have stayed on top of al-Qaeda, as he was well aware of the threat al-Qaeda posed to the United States? Or would he have been distracted by the many other concerns that can’t help but keep every President awake at night (unless he’s a particularly sound sleeper, as it appeared Ronald Reagan must’ve been)?
I’d like to think that in another universe — even if it were still a universe where George W. Bush was President, but had different advisors, or maybe took a different path with regards to foreign policy — that the horrible events of our version of September 11, 2001, wouldn’t have happened.
Such is the belief of the parallel worlds theory, something many writers have dealt with in both fantasy and science fiction. Because my own novel, ELFY (forthcoming from Twilight Times Books in 2013) has elements of parallel worlds in it, I have an affinity for other novels that use this particular theory; that’s one reason I enjoyed reading E.C. Myers’ debut novel, FAIR COIN, as it dealt with the multiverse, modern physics, string theory, and because of this couldn’t help but also talk about parallel worlds and how physicists believe they come about.
In FAIR COIN, when Ephraim Scott, Myers’s hero, figures out how parallel worlds work (because his love interest, Jena Kim, is a budding physicist and kindly explains it all to him) and then ends up enmeshed in them, it all made sense. Ephraim sees the various ways the world could’ve unfolded; some places have no humans at all, some have constant war, some have already been burned up (nuclear winter), and just about any other possibility aside from alien contact or other types of life is explored.
This is different from what I do in my novel, ELFY — I treat the universes as a fact also, but there are many other intelligences that humans have to deal with — at least the magical humans, those who know we’re not alone in the multiverse. But the theory being used is exactly the same.
Anyway, Myers’s sequel, QUANTUM COIN, will be out in early October of this year, which is why I reviewed it at Shiny Book Review (SBR). QUANTUM COIN takes up with the same main characters — Ephraim Scott and Jena Kim (and her alternate universe analogue, Zoe Kim) — has a similar premise dealing with alternate universes, and ups the ante in other ways due to how much Myers’s storytelling ability has improved from the previous novel.
To be blunt — QUANTUM COIN has more to it than fancy physics theories (nifty though that is). It has action. It has drama. It has ethics, situational and otherwise. It has great characterization. And it has some nicely written low-key romance that’s based off shared experience and friendship, not just hormones and built-in stuff from expectations based off the other person’s analogue (one of the problems I had with FAIR COIN that wasn’t present here is that the romance between Zoe and Ephraim was too rushed; things are fast-paced, yes, but I had a far better sense that Zoe saw our Ephraim as an individual rather than as an archetype).
I enjoyed QUANTUM COIN thoroughly and believe that if you enjoy interesting science as well as a compelling story, you will really enjoy E.C. Myers’ latest effort. It won’t be released until October 2, 2012, but you can pre-order it now — and really, what’s stopping you?
That way, you, too, can ponder alternate universes, and wonder — do they actually exist? And if so, what will we do once we discover them?
Just Reviewed Dave Freer’s “Dog and Dragon” at SBR
Folks, if you enjoy Dave Freer’s lighter efforts, you will enjoy DOG AND DRAGON, which I just reviewed at Shiny Book Review (SBR) It’s a fine and funny sequel to DRAGON’S RING that’s charming in its way but isn’t up to the standard of DRAGON’S RING, mostly because one of the characters seems to have things happen way too easily for her — and partly because most sequels have difficulty living up to the previous book in the same universe/multiverse.
The main reason to read DOG AND DRAGON, though, is the humor. Fionn the black, shapechanging dragon, and Dileas, a sheepdog, have some rather interesting adventures that amused me and kept me laughing at the oddest of moments. (Mind, that’s just not possible for Meb, the other main character; she’s doing her best to save the benighted land of Lyonesse, and that’s just not something with much humorous potential.)
That’s why I say if you like Freer’s lighter books, you’ll really enjoy this. But if you’re expecting a weightier read similar to this book’s prequel, DRAGON’S RING, you may end up feeling like me — glad you read the book, yes. But a bit disappointed that DOG AND DRAGON, fine and funny though it is, wasn’t up to the previous book’s standard.
Just Reviewed Books 6 and 7 of “The Mageworlds” Series at SBR
Folks, if you haven’t read Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald’s writing yet, you really should. These two writers have written interesting, relevant novels for the past twenty-five to thirty years; their signature series, “the Mageworlds,” ran to seven books, is intricate, rousing, and extremely moving. (Not bad for a series initially dismissed by some as a Star Wars knockoff.)
Anyway, here’s a link to my review of books 6 and 7 — these books are THE STARS ASUNDER and A WORKING OF STARS, respectively:
Go read my review, then go read these books!
Barb Caffrey's Blog 