Book Review: A Memory Of Light - Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson (Scott and Chris Review)

SCOTT:

This is going to be a rather shortish review since to do a long one would require spoilers and I’d rather not spoil anything.

I came on board The Wheel Of Time late. I began the first book sometime in 2003-04 but didn’t actually get around to finishing it till probably 2007-ish. Slowly over the course of the next few years I caught up. So I have only TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT and (now) A MEMORY OF LIGHT in hardcover as books I awaited for release on. Everything else was already out and in paperback when I read them. I’m not going to go into the particulars on the series that everyone knows. The bloating of the story, the books where nothing happens, Jordan’s sad premature death, Brandon Sanderson finishing the series ect. It’s all common knowledge. So 23 years (and fourteen books) after the story was begun, we finally have an ending.

Was it worth it?

I’m a little under a week removed from finishing the book (which immediately afterwards I found I’d enjoyed it more than I realized I actually did now in hind sight), and in those few days I’ve gained some perspective, and the resounding answer to that question is…no.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that the story (initially meant to wrap up in 3 books) became an unwieldy behemoth with a thousand plot strands (some worthwhile, some not) that for all intents and purposes slowed to a crawl and should have been edited far better. It’s basically (in my head) a six book series bloated to fourteen unnecessarily. Perhaps it’s the fact that I recently finished Steven Erikson’s Malazan 10-book series and the fact that for the most part Erikson kept everything arrow straight and headed towards the ending he gave us (even with multiple plot strands and a thousand characters)…that the meandering of The Wheel Of Time ends up causing me major issues. I don’t truly know why.

Was it a good book? Yes, absolutely. Was it worth reading? Yes…to finish the series and put it behind me.

Let’s get down to it. The book is (for the most part) a 900-page battle. The Last Battle. Is it good as a battle? Err…yes and no. It has a few heroic moments (only a few), but more often than not you saw the words “trollocs”, “weave”, “gateway”, “channeling”, “exploding earth” simply repeated ad nauseum. It was one battle section after the next in which small things might be slightly different on a character level, but it was still just hordes or trollocs, evil channelers, and one or more of the Forsaken causing our heroes further problems. The character stuff ends up either falling short of what one might wish as a fan (some characters get throwaway deaths or unresolved abrupt endings), or ends up being something abhorrent to serve the story (ie. Tuon and the Seanchan not changing their slavery/torture ways and Rand and Co. having to accept this for the help the Seanchan will be against Shadow) which I find convenient and horrible.

Everyone gets a bit of the spotlight in this book, and while some characters sing in their roles, others kind of flop lifelessly around on the page. Like Boba Fett showing up in the re-mastered STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE, they are only there to say “Look, here I am!” or fulfill some other needed plot point which was left hanging by RJ and Sanderson needed to tie up. The main characters get the most screen time and that is fitting of course, but once you’ve waded through 500 pages of these activities, even their plotlines become more of an “Okay, let’s move this along now please?”

The one thing I find really works in AMOL is the use of the Forsaken in a subverted way to try to win against the armies of Light. I enjoyed how that was accomplished and resolved in the book and it’s probably one of the things I came away from enjoying most. It's a small thing, but it seems more than plausible and in character, aside from the armies of Light not expecting it.

Does the book resolve things? Yes and no. Like I said, the book is nearly 900 pages of battle. That includes the fact that the only epilogue we get is one chapter, and it takes place right after the battle and concerns one event. So where I assumed we might have gotten through the Last Battle and then had a hundred or so pages of wrapping up (this is the finale a fourteen book series FFS!), we instead finish the battle and get a short chapter after that explaining one immediate aftermath event, and that’s about it.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

Consider me disappointed by that. Jordan can take like six WHOLE books to tell us about every damned Leatherleaf tree and hummock of ground surrounding our heroes as they wander around aimlessly...but we don't get ANYTHING after the biggest Battle in history? Right. Good. I see.


Ugh.

So what should have been a book that was full of win, ends up being just a book that finishes. It wraps up enough overall to be satisfied, but I am FAR from impressed. Where THE CRIPPLED GOD (the final Malazan book) left me bereft, emotional, impressed, and basically cradling my own brain and heart from the excellence (leaving me with a book hangover that lasted nearly two weeks)…A MEMORY OF LIGHT on the other hand felt like a petered out, final ending that I enjoyed, but it did not impress, it did not stun, or leave me with a book hangover of any kind. It just kind of IS.

“But Scott…” you say “The battle scene’s must have been worth it, right?”

Eh.

Yes and no. There was some VERY cool stuff, very heroic charges and last stands…but a lot of it was posturing and action with stolen payoffs. In fact I think Perrin says things to himself along the lines of “Once more into the fray” or “here I go, one last time” about 4 or 5 times. The second time he does it, I remember thinking, “Oh, he’s doing this again.” It’s kind of a thunder stealer. The same can be said for Lan who has more than one heroic final charge. Demandred seemingly existed as a rock for heroes to throw and break themselves against. And while that plotline was amusing to watch, it also felt like a way to carve some characters out of the final book…but then again kind of steals something from them in the process. That is one of the worst offenses in the book; the stealing of emotional beats. It's rife with that sort of nonsense, and always felt like "chickening out" to me. Don't chicken out. This is book fourteen; big stuff is GOING to happen, be okay with that and let it happen.

A MEMORY OF LIGHT is not the ending I think I expected or wanted from this series, and even though it began well (the first 200+ pages absolutely SANG by) I felt it drew on far too long, ended too  abruptly and became a manic tying up of loose ends instead of the dovetailing it should have been.

It’s not the ending I expected or wanted, but it was AN ending. Let’s leave it at that.

And now I can sell the books to the used book store.

CHRIS:

You can review A MEMORY OF LIGHT as a standalone novel, in and of itself, or you can view it in the larger context of the Wheel of Time saga.  Both approaches are equally valid and both will spit out some pretty interesting conclusions.

Regardless of your approach the end result is, unfortunately, supremely unsatisfying. The WoT story has been a going concern now for nearly a quarter of a century. It’s reached powerful highs, equally formidable lows, had an aborted prequel, lost its author (Robert Jordan), found another (Brandon Sanderson) and finished with a 900 page bang.

As time wore on and the series ground closer to its conclusion readers met new entries to the saga with a snazzy set of emotional baggage and an increasing amount of fatigue at having to remember all the ins and outs of an incredibly expansive story with a growing range of characters, settings and increasingly convoluted plot points.

Somewhere around book six or seven I started to lose track of some of the C-listers swirling around Perrin, Rand, Mat and their chummy fantasy entourage. And I didn’t have the patience to start from the beginning every time a new book came out just so I could find the two paragraphs buried a third of the way through some early novel that summarized everything I needed to know about a particular character.

But I knew that the WoT series was in trouble when some of the original three characters stopped appearing in the books entirely.

It’s a failing common to any long running narrative. As our principal heroes travel to new places and have new adventures they quite naturally meet new companions who have their own ongoing stories. To his credit Jordan refused to take the easy way out, embracing these new characters and enfolding them into his increasingly ambitious chronicle. But with so many new faces clamouring for the reader’s attention the pacing of the story started to buckle and the whole damn thing threatened to derail.

(see George R.R. Martin’s struggles with the same expanding cast problem in his A Song of Fire and Ice series for context)

AMOL isn’t like any previous entry to the WoT story. The bulk of the ongoing sub plots and character development came to a close at the end of Sanderson’s previous entry TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. With a clean slate to work from Sanderson has changed genre gears in AMOL, moving from a dramatic epic fantasy to a higher octane action adventure with fantastic trappings.

Essentially AMOL is one long battle scene, punctuated by short intermissions to pull back the curtain and check in on our ever dwindling cast of lead characters. If that set up doesn’t sound like your flavour than you probably won’t find this book to be your speed. If you’re a dedicated WoT reader like myself then you’ll definitely have to jigger a couple mental switches or two to get on board with the new mood.

AMOL has some failings. It’s hard to keep the workings of what is essentially 900 pages of a pitched running battle fresh and interesting. Sanderson tries his best switching rapid-fire between locales, switching up characters, strategies, tactics, threats, whatever it takes to help the reader escape the monotone nature of the material. And I think he succeeds for the most part. The ebb and flow of an ongoing battle with multiple fronts is going to result in the overuse of some awfully familiar plot motifs. (Seriously, how many one on one sword fights is Demandred really going to have in this story anyway? I’d think awfully hard about doubling my honour guard after the first one slips through.) And yes, Sanderson does stumble occasionally here, putting characters on a treadmill of repetitive story actions. But thankfully the rapid swift cutting between scenes ameliorates the worst of this ongoing déjà vu and quickly deposits us in another scene before too long.

Sanderson uses the Last Battle as a background to finally experiment with new uses of the One Power in earnest. Whereas new uses for the One Power used to be teased out over the course of book suddenly anyone who can channel a lick is testing the limits saidan and saidar in order to save their lives.

It’s fascinating to see the transformative effect these new weaves have on the WoT world, turning tried and tested military tactics on their head. Like everything else in AMOL these new additions to the One Power tool box come fast and furious, tumbling out fully formed onto the page.  Although I’m sure the odds are stacked against it I couldn’t help but wonder what a WoT sequel would look like now that the Age of Legends had seemingly been rediscovered, perhaps a less traumatic version of Aviendha’s vision of the future.

It was nice to see almost every surviving character from the entirety of the WoT saga get a paragraph or a moment in which to shine. Supporting players who’d been waiting in the wings for their part to play in the Last Battle are almost too numerous to mention. Some get only a passing reference, others get whole chapters. Readers will surely argue amongst themselves about whether Character A deserved more screen time than Character B.

But on the whole I think Sanderson respected the material and the characters who populate it as much as he could. There are simply too many ongoing characters in the WoT saga to give each one their proper due and it’s inevitable that some of them will be given short shrift. Having said that I was impressed how Sanderson was able to give some of the smaller characters moments to excel that could have easily been given to one of the central protagonists.

The ending was a bit disappointing, but not very surprising. AMOL suffers under the expectation of a thirteen book lead in and regardless of Sanderson’s interpretation of this epic showdown the end result was always going to be vaguely unsatisfactory. I think Sanderson did his level best to portray Rand’s final showdown with the Dark One in the only way that made sense. And his cute little time dilation trick was an interesting hook that allowed him to spread out a short conflict over almost the entirety of the book.  

Final thoughts? I’m just glad the series is over to be honest. Good, bad, indifferent – at one point or another the Wheel of Time saga embodied all of these aspects. There’s just so much real estate to the story that at times I feel buried under the weight of it all. It was still possible to enjoy the finished product, but more and more reading it felt like work that I was lucky enough to enjoy. But no matter how much you like your job, work is still work and it takes something out of you in the end.

I’ve suffered through the bad parts, been swept up in the good stuff and slogged through endless pages of unneeded description in order to get to a paragraph of actual content. It’s the first serialized fantasy story that I’ve ever liked and at one point I used to fret for years between new books. I’ve paid my dues.

A MEMORY OF LIGHT perfectly encapsulates the extreme swings of WoT saga, a somewhat flawed but ultimately enjoyable read.  I’m glad to know that, even if it was unfulfilling at times, the story has come to an end and I feel like I can move on to other tales that don’t have so much mental baggage to weigh it down. So I doff my hat to Rand, Mat and Perrin. A trio of lads of whom I have many warm memories but I don’t think I’ll be checking in with them again anytime soon.

Book Review: The Coldest War - Ian Tregillis

Someone is killing Britain's warlocks.

Twenty-two years after the Second World War, a precarious balance of power maintains the peace between Great Britain and the USSR. For decades, the warlocks have been all that stand between the British Empire and the Soviet Union-- a vast domain stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the shores of the English Channel. But now each death is another blow to Britain's security.

Meanwhile, a brother and sister escape from a top-secret research facility deep behind the Iron Curtain. Once subjects of a twisted Nazi experiment to imbue ordinary humans with extraordinary abilities, then prisoners of war in the vast Soviet effort to reverse engineer the Nazi technology, they head for England.

Because that's where former spy Raybould Marsh lives. And Gretel, the mad seer, has plans for him.

As Marsh is drawn back into the world of Milkweed, he discovers that Britain's darkest acts didn't end with the war. And as he strives to protect Queen and country, he's forced to confront his own willingness to accept victory at any cost.

Last week I read what is definitely the best book I read in all of 2012. I thought I’d read something special when devoured Ian Tregillis’s first book in his Milkweed Triptych series BITTER SEEDS. Now, if I thought that was good then the second book, THE COLDEST WAR, showed the first book to be the opening salvo it truly was in what is an ever-twisting, addictive and endlessly readable series.

THE COLDEST WAR is quite an amazing feat. The premise of the first book (Battery-powered Nazi Superpeople going up against British Warlocks who summon Lovecraftian demons/gods in their defense through blood magic) is taken and not only expanded upon, but perfected. Here we have a volume that takes place 22 years after the first book. The Cold War is in full swing and Britain is attempting to find ways to circumvent the Soviet Union’s seemingly unbelievable secrecy and power, while maintaining Milkweed’s secrecy. Unbeknownst to them they have an informational mole and in the first chapter, someone with similar powers to the Nazi Superpeople from the first book is systematically hunting down British Warlocks.

Immediately you will be aware of the “generational” nature of this tale. Here we are dealing with events quite removed from WWII, the protagonists have aged, as have the villains and the world stage growth is also evident. Milkweed itself is no stranger to this growth, but in a way that is not conducive to protection. With 22 years and the deaths of the higher command in Whitehall, Milkweed is now run by those who were just children during the Blitz and there is now a lackadaisical sense about the place. Complacency if you will. Now, while they are still actively doing things to further the cause, it is unavoidable to see the lax nature in comparison to the blacked out windows and hush-hush secrecy of the 40’s. I enjoyed that aspect of the narrative, as it helps you feel the 60’s and how Britain recovered from the War. An interestingly enough the mystery (while a different one from BITTER SEEDS) is still so thick that you can barely see through it with a map. I loved that, as the twists, when the come, are fast, furious and hard to guess at. Tregillis masterly handles his suspense without sacrificing pacing.

Having the protagonists older and showing how their lives carried on after the War is key to the enjoyment to this book, but the biggest part of that is this was never a “Happily Ever After”. Both Marsh and Will carry scars that never healed and in some cases are still festering. Watching them begin to relive their years at Milkweed and the deeds that can be placed at each’s feet is as interesting and compelling to read than any of the mysteries in THE COLDEST WAR. There is a wonderfully bleak realism about the way these characters interact with each other and how the crimes of the past are revisited on them ten fold. Once that Pandora’s Box is opened there is seemingly no stopping it as the hits keep on coming. Marsh and Will’s relationship is developed further, but it’s actually on the tail end of some very serious rifts that began in BITTER SEEDS and bloom into full flower here and again it’s one of the best relationship-goes-sour I’ve seen in print. It all rings incredibly true. Every time one of the two contests something to the other; you can actually take a side without stretching your own beliefs. That in turn creates a number of very creative moral dilemma’s as well which only adds to the narrative.

Another aspect are the things that Marsh and Will don’t know about each other, the biggest thing being that Will has kept secret just how badly things could have gone in the end of the events of BITTER SEEDS had he not done the thing he did. It’s that aspect of his motivations for what he does in the 2nd book that Marsh is unaware of, and the tension that creates as we go along is palpable.

There is some foreshadowing in BITTER SEEDS about a major component of THE COLDEST WAR’s story, but even with that foreshadowing when the revelation came in this book I was taken unawares and the gravity of it made the hair on my arms stand up. It was absolutely chilling and I truly think that it’s probably one of the more creepy things I’ve ever read in a book.

The German’s in BITTER SEEDS, most importantly the men and women of the Reichsbehörde, in that book come across as evil tools of their creators, but it made them no less evil in their actions. But there was always the inkling that Klaus (at the very least) was not inherently bad, but rather just a victim of circumstance. That is developed further here when he and Gretel see London and Klaus becomes obsessed with how free everyone is to just “live their lives”. It’s something that he’s never had, and he wants it. In his past life as a Nazi Super-GhostMan he might have just taken it if he wanted it, but here the growth in him allows for him to accept that it is something he might have to work for. This is most evident in a desire to paint with watercolours, at which he has to start at the beginning and work at it every day to be good. People are kind to him for the first time, and I think especially his relationship with Marsh is specifically emotionally affecting.

Gretel is still utterly FASCINTATING. I could not wait for stuff to do with her on each page. She is an unreadable riddle most of the time. Is she evil? Mad? Good? Benevolent? Driven? Loving? Dismissive? Yes, she is all of these things and none fo them. She is the heart of this entire trilogy and yet she isn’t at the same time. Tregillis has infused Gretel as the blood that feeds his story, but she is not what pumps it. That is Marsh and Will.

The vaguery of the Eidolons themselves is still this omnipresent menace that while somewhat leashed in the first book, spends the first half of THE COLDEST WAR haunting the edges of the reader’s sensibility. The success of them as characters works because of the nature of them in this very oppressive, dark way that will give even the most stalwart reader the willies. I think any time they showed up in the story I had to prepare myself.

Now, the third act of this novel will most likely do to you all what it did to me so I’m not going to spoil it. At all. I’m not even going to give you the slightest hint. What I will say is that the dénouement in THE COLDEST WAR is probably one of the finest, cleanly assembled things I’ve had the pleasure to read. It made my jaw drop and I actually turned to my girlfriend who was sitting across the couch from me and I said aloud “Holy gods. That was phe-no-men-al.” in a very serious voice. Right to the last sentence. Gobsmacked. Impressed. Yes, I’m aware I’m gushing. This is a gush-worthy book. It’s the kind of novel I will tell my friends about and discuss after in hushed whispers so as not to spoil it for others. What’s even better? There’s a 3rd book coming in April called NECESSARY EVIL and will finish out the trilogy. I personally cannot wait for it. I put it on my pre-order list and I will disappear into a book-reading fugue the day it drops.

The best book of 2012. THE COLDEST WAR. I don’t care what you have to do to get your hands on this book. Beg, borrow, buy, read it in snippets over someone’s shoulder. Just go out and grab a copy today. And if you’ve not read BITTER SEEDS yet…what on earth are you waiting for?

Ian Tregillis’ Milkweed Triptych is an enthralling historical epic full of twists, turns, believable characters and stellar set-pieces. It’s got chills, spying and action aplenty, all executed with the type of prose in which you know that not only every sentence, but every word was chosen deliberately and serves a greater purpose.

READ. THIS. SERIES. NOW.

Book Review: Bitter Seeds - Ian Tregillis

 

It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between

Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.

When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities—a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present—Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.

How can you tell when a book has really affected you?

By the quality and quantity of “Book Hangover” you get after finishing it. Basically that great gaping, sucking hole you experience after a particularly fantastic read. The kind that makes it very difficult to read anything else afterwards because the reverberations of the narrative are still rattling around in your skull. Basically leaving that world behind is tough.

I experienced this with Ian Tregillis’ Alt-history / Urban Fantasy / Sci-Fi novel BITTER SEEDS. The first in his “Milkweed Triptych” series, the novel is a look at WWII-era Europe. In this version of the events, the Nazi’s have spent the last 20 years or so perfecting the Super Soldier. Through conditioning from childhood with kidnapped orphans, and including attaching battery-run electrodes directly into the skull and into the brain itself, the Nazi’s have been able to create people who can walk through walls, set things on fire, become invisible, and even see the future. Set against this is a secretive portion of the War Office in Britain where a discovery is made that for centuries mad British warlocks have been summoning/negotiating with entities that could only be a cross between Lovecraftian gods and Demons. They decide that their only chance of stopping the Super Soldiers may lie in dealing with these otherworldly creatures and attempt to wrangle them into service. But the price they require of humanity is high.

The book was an absolutely unexpected treat for me. I picked it up on a whim having heard scattered good things about it, and didn’t think I’d get much from it. The book totally surprised me though and was totally gripping from the outset. Very descriptive without falling into overdoing-it territory, with a cast of characters that it was easy to get involved with. No one was cardboard and even the smallest character was given enough depth to be cared about.

The setting of WWII Nazi Germany and Blitz-era London are both quite well realized and never feel Alternate. Basically the alternate reality stuff is fused quite well into existing history, up to and including major events, like the Russians pushing towards Berlin causing all sorts of havoc on the German home front. I was talking the other day with an historical fiction author and I said that it was KEY (from the Reader point of view) to try to write your story and weave it into existing events otherwise you lose credibility. Well, Tregillis does this SO well that I began to imagine that the ideas of Nazi Supermen and British Warlocks dealing with Ancient Gods actually COULD be what happened. He basically makes it all seem quite feasible.

The characters within the pages (British and German alike) are so well crafted with realistic human style reactions to the events that I was truly impressed all the way through. In the characters of Marsh and will you have what are essentially old college buddies, who throughout the war begin to change as a result of their respective duties. When that relationships begins to fray around the edges you really FEEL it. The same goes for the German characters of Reinhardt, Klaus and his sister Gretel. While they are on the villainous side, you can feel as they go through their lives attempting to understand that they are just weapons to the German High Command and nothing more. The only one who realizes is the sociopathic, future-seeing Gretel, but even she hides her own ulterior motives. They feel suitably evil for what it is they are doing, but there was also a growth there, largely in the form of Klaus (who’s eyes we see through most often). It was a compelling aspect of thew narrative to have such insight into the villains of the piece.

Overall, I was wholly impressed with the book. Once it gets going and you get the German call signs and speech patterns under your belt, and things really pop off then the pace shifts into high gear and is relentless. I found it a very difficult book to put down at times because I always wanted to find out what came next.

The ending is a standalone result, and some of it is not at all what I was expecting. Some of it even decidedly uncomfortable to read (but in a good way), and then there is a cliffhangery aspect to the last bit. But it’s not enough of one to mean you HAVE to read the next volume…

…Ah, who am I kidding, if you read BITTER SEEDS you will be like me and chomp at the bit to read the sequel THE COLDEST WAR (which comes out tomorrow thankfully!). A very well-written Alt history sci-fi book with believable characters, a hell of a setting and a infinitely fascinating premise, I’m upset with myself for having waited so long to get around to it. A real triumph!

Book Review: Dragonfly Falling - Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Two young companions, Totho and Salma, arrive at Tark to spy on the menacing Wasp army, but are there mistakenly apprehended as enemy agents. By the time they are freed, the city is already under siege. Over in the imperial capital the young emperor, Alvdan, is becoming captivated by a remarkable slave, the vampiric Uctebri, who claims he knows of magic that can grant eternal life. In Collegium, meanwhile, Stenwold is still trying to persuade the city magnates to take seriously the Wasp Empire's imminent threat to their survival. 

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s SHADOWS OF THE APT series and I have a bit of a sordid history. When I first picked up EMPIRE IN BLACK AND GOLD (book #1) back when it was published, I’d heard some early buzz and it sounded interesting enough to buy. I grabbed it and when I started reading it I was initially quite impressed. Here was a fantasy book that eschewed the traditions of Elves, Dwarves, Ogres and the like and replaced it with Insect-aspected human races, who had traits in common with their namesake brethren. Beetle-kinden were shorter, squatter, and generally more industrious, Dragonfly-kinden were elegant, could fly and were lethal with a sword, Wasp-kinden were vast in numbers and had magic in the form of a sting that blasted out of their fingers and oh they were ruthless. Every possible insect imaginable can be used and Tchaikovsky spends a lot of that first book fleshing out the world. I was enthralled for the first half…but somewhere around the midway point my interest flagged and things got truly bogged down for the reading experience. The various young characters took on a bit too much of a teenage angst and the various situations they found themselves in were “trying” to say the least.

I put the book down, sad that it didn’t live up to the early excitement it gave me.

It wasn’t until a few years later, when fellow forum members had stuck out the series and got to the latter books (there are 7 volumes out now I believe), that I heard that not only did things improve greatly with each book, but that the things I disliked about the latter half of the first book were absent from the second one onwards.

So I randomly picked up the 2nd book DRAGONFLY FALLING one day and let it sit in my ToRead pile for a few months, and somewhere in that time I finished the first book as well. While the first book finished stronger than I thought it would, it still didn’t knock me out. So the 2nd book sat a little longer. Then one day last week I picked it up and began to read it.

And damned if the thing wasn’t immediately a hundred times better. Perhaps it was the situations that the characters were put into, or the fact that we’ve moved past a lot of the teenage growing pains that plagued the first book, but something was noticeably different…and for the better!

Let’s get one thing out of the way, the world is MUCH larger in this book, as the Wasps have begun their invasion in force and none of the Lowlands are safe from their onslaught. We are introduced to many more new kinden races (Mosquito, Mole Cricket, Fire Ants), while other kinden are further fleshed out (Ant’s, Beetles, and Wasps), and we even get a decent look at the Emperor Alvdan II of the Wasps and his young sister Seda and what exactly drives the Wasps to expand and conquer. Most notably though, reading this book is like being dropped into the middle of a war being fought on various fronts from the very get-go, and being able to see all facets of it. We see many battles, and how the various factions, events and even characters affect our heroes (or non heroes). There is added intrigue, with exiled Wasp Rekef Thalric attempting to regain favor after his failure in the first book…but he is being systematically hunted by a mysterious Dragonfly woman named Felise Mienn who seems intent on ending his life. Young Totho makes what he thinks is an honorable sacrifice only to end up in hotter water than ever before. Stenwold finally gets through to the council of the Collegium just in time for the Wasps to have sent the Ant-kinden armies of Vek against its walls. Mantis-kinden Tisamon and his half-Mantis/half-Spider daughter Tynisa head out to the sacred isle of Parysol for her to start on a path that he hopes won’t get her killed by his own brethren in Feylal (since to them Tynisa is an abomination born of one of their own Mantis-kinden and a Spider-kinden [their hated enemies]).

I don’t want to spoil too much storywise as this one really has a lot of meat to it (It’s nearly 700 pages long) and I don’t want to steal any of that enjoyment from you. I’d like to say that this book really doesn’t have a main protagonist, and that if it did…I’d say that protagonist is War. The main characters are thrown into the chaos of war, and this book is kind of like a diary of those various and disparate experiences in the face of such horrors. It makes the narrative altogether more interesting to see how each deals with those things. I think that some of the characters get heavy depth added to them (Totho, Thalric), while others do get the same depth, but it happens off-page (Tynisa) and that presumably will come up down the road, but it is all compelling.

The pacing is much better in this book. It only slowed down for me very briefly in the middle, but that was only for about 20 pages or so and was a personal foible with an extended sequence. I can definitely say that Tchaikovsky has improved as a writer between the volumes (and I hear he continues to do so in future books), since I thought his positioning of chapters and character arcs was very deft in DRAGONFLY FALLING. I always felt like just as things were getting truly interesting the chapter or section would end and I’d have to wait to the next one to see what happened. That’s always the mark of a good storyteller, leave us wanting more. I have my favourite characters in this series now, and I have my loathed characters (because they are evil, not because they are poorly drawn) and I have an ever-expanding world to explore. I’ve already gotten a brief look into the Spiderlands in Book 3 (BLOOD OF THE MANTIS, which I’ve already started) and it’s wholly different from the Lowlands or the Empire. It makes me feel like I’ve begun a truly special series.

If you enjoyed the first book (or at least had it entertain you on some level), then I really urge you to read the second book. It fixes most of the issues I had with that first book, and shows growth on the part of the author and his craft. But most of all, it’s a rip-roaring story set in a unique world populated by a unique and varied set of main characters, each of which are fleshed out quite well. The added facet of a slightly steampunkish mechanized world interacting with an older fantasy magic world just gives it more to excite you with. This book has swords, and magical Art wings, it has airships and airguns, it has buzzing-winged Orthopters and oldschool sailing ships, it has insect defenses (like Mantis claw) built onto human frames, and even has vampiric mosquito-kinden dinking blood. This whole series is probably one of the most unique and fresh settings in the entire fantasy genre today, and Tchaikovsky ought to be proud that he broke onto the scene with such a triumph.

I am now embarrassed of my initial sordid relationship with the series as I have since become such a big fan. So much so that the very moment I put down the 2nd book upon finishing it, I picked up the 3rd book and dove right in!

Book Review: Canticle (Psalms Of Isaak Book 2) - Ken Scholes

Title: Canticle

Author: Ken Scholes

Page Count: 496 Pages

Publisher: TOR

Come back to the Named Lands in this compelling sequel to Ken Scholes amazing novel Lamentation.

It is nine months after the end of the previous book.  Many noble allies have come to the Ninefold Forest for a Feast in honor of General Rudolfo’s  first-born child.  Jin Li Tam, his wife and mother of his heir, lies in childbed.

As the feast begins, the doors of the hall fly open and invisible assassins begin attacking.   All of Rudolfo’s noble guests are slain, including Hanric, the Marsh Queen’s Shadow.  And on the Keeper’s Gate, which guards the Named Lands from the Churning Waste, a strange figure appears, with a message for Petronus, the Hidden Pope.

Thus begins the second movement of The Psalms of Isaak, Canticle.

CANTICLE sat in my TBR pile for a long time. I read and thoroughly enjoyed the first book in Ken Scholes “Psalms Of Isaak” series, LAMENTATION, about two years ago. CANTICLE sat only because I had so many books come out and with beginning this site and all, it’s been a busy year. Not an excuse, I know. At any rate, I finally made time for this one and I’m quite glad I did.

Of Metal Men and Gypsy Heroics

The characters come alive a little more in this volume in the series. In the first book I feel that only Jin Li Tam, Petronus and Neb really get fleshed out at any decent level for most of the book, but here in CANTICLE all the other characters including Rudolfo, Lysias, and especially (Marsh Queen) Winters get significant time to grow and deepen. We learn Rudolfo’s fears about his infant son not to mention his upset about the Tam family’s involvement in his destiny which has levels and flavors to it. Winters story in this one is probably one of the most rewarding, as she spends time with her love Neb, then with her own people in the North, and finally alongside Jin Li Tam and the Gypsy Scouts as the true revelations about who is causing upset in the Named Lands begins to come to the fore. One character without a POV who I nonetheless REALLY liked was Gypsy Scout Captain (son of previous Captain Gregoric) Aedric. He is actually shaping up to be one of my favourite characters in this series. He’s got enough of his father in him whilst being his own man that I can’t help but be impressed by him. If you were concerned about the lack of depth to the characters in the first volume, then rest assured CANTICLE goes a long way to shoring up those inadequacies, putting most characters on an even keel. Isaak also rocks in this one just like he did in that last one, I mean I think Wert said it best when he coined the phrase "It has robot monks"! You can't go wrong with that.

Why Ye Torturous Dogs!

One thing everyone seems to mention when reading this book is the fact that one main character spends an inordinate amount of time being tortured by unknown tormentors. It’s fairly gruesome (but not to me, I’ve read Bakker, Abercrombie, and Morgan) and probably not for the faint of heart, but it’s not over the top and is dealt with in a respectable way. What’s really thought provoking is that Scholes has done this to this character to change said characters' mind about how things should work in the world. It’s impressive because of just how believable that makes it. In the real world changing someone’s mind that has been so set in their ways for a long time would take more than a little prodding, and this brings a realism to that change that I found quite refreshing.

Do you have any sevens? No? Go Fish.

The overall plot of the Psalms of Isaak moves forward a large amount in this book, but there are still more mysteries and new plot threads added to the fray as well. That’s a touchy thing though, simply because if an author keeps the reader completely in the dark for books on end it can become VERY frustrating. I think Scholes rides the fine line between giving too much away and keeping his secrets. Whilst playing his cards quite close his chest he still gives us enough to keep us interested not allowing us to want to give up on his narrative. That’s really good, if sometimes still frustrating because we want to know what's going on. There are more decades old machinations revealed here and things seem to have been set into place years ago. There is a fair amount more action in this book than the first. The opening action sequence at the Firstborn Feast is amazingly realized and a blast to read. There are other actions sequences sprinkled throughout, but the novel never loses its “slow burn” mentality that seems to be Scholes’ bread and butter. I like that this series is like that as it allows me to enjoy something wholly different in the fantasy genre.

Final thoughts

CANTICLE is a great follow-up to LAMENTATION. It builds on relationships in the world and events in that 1^st book. It takes a life of its own as well, visiting previously unseen places like The Churning Wastes and the Islands off the western coast. New factions come into play and the new evils are addressed. Prophecies and portents abound and Scholes revels in creating a work that has religious, historical and mysterious overtones that left me enthralled. Ken Scholes writes books who's greatness actually sneaks up on you when you aren’t paying attention and nips you in the ass.  After you finish you sit there a little stunned. Now, I’ve got to get my hands on a copy of the 3^rd book ANTIPHON and continue my journey through the Named Lands and The Churning Wastes, mechoservitor puffing and steaming at my side.

Book Review: The Last Colony by John Scalzi

Publisher: TOR Books

Genre: Space Opera/Military Sci-Fi

Page Count: 320 Pages

Author: John Scalzi 

 

What to do when you find yourself continuing to sing an authors’ praises again and again. Case in point: I am finding myself stymied for things to say about John Scalzi and his OLD MAN’S WAR series, since I’ve already said them in my two previous reviews.  The man writes excellent, easy to read space opera’s with compelling characters and plotlines.

What else can I say?

With the third book in this series THE LAST COLONY Scalzi brings back POV character voice from the first book John Perry. A character that is rye and wise, but also a smartass take-no-shit kind of guy and fun as hell to read about.  He is joined by his (now) wife, ex special forces officer Jane Sagan and their (now) teen adopted daughter Zoe Boutin Perry (daughter of mad traitor scientist Charles Boutin).

The story starts with John, Jane and Zoe (and her Obin bodyguards Hickory &
Dickory) leaving their colony world of Huckleberry (where John was an ombudsman) to help the CU start a new colony on the planet Roanoake with an amalgam of second generation colonists selected from ten different worlds. The only problem with that is that the mysterious 400 system alien Conclave have avowed that no one is to colonize in the system anymore…and they threaten anyone who does with swift and powerful retribution. So the crew skipping to Roanoake are headed for certain destruction…or are they. Things start to unravel almost immediately with challenges to John and Jane’s power as leaders from other colonists and with an initial twist that throws the whole story into a spin that changes it entirely.

From the moment they land on Roanoake the story takes of not only at a rocket pace, but with so many unique twists and turns that my brain didn’t know what to do. Every single turn is red-herring-less and completely unexpected. The Conclave is explained in its entirety, the mysterious Obin and their near worship of Zoe (whose father Boutin is considered a saint by their people for bringing them “souls”), and the true nature of the Colonial Union and the CDF is revealed.

The characters are even more fleshed out her than they were in the first two books, with Sagan and Perry becoming even more endearing as people than I previously thought them to be. The depth with which Zoe is handled is decent as well, though we only get a lot of her in the latter half of the book, and her Obin become major players in that section as well.

This book switches gears from the military aspect and uses the skills they learned therein to useful advantage when trying to control a whole colony of people, most of which have their own ideas on how things ought to be run. This was nice as we already had two books from the military standpoint and this book seems like the natural progression. Make no mistake though as there is still a lot of action and intrigue.

Basically I’ll say it a 3^rd time. This book is a winner. A ferociously paced, action packed winner that keeps you guessing about true motives till the last few pages. It brings things to a nice close (even though there is still ZOE'S TALE which tells these same events from her POV).

If you liked the first two books then you will certainly like this one as well. Scalzi has solidified his place as my favourite sci-fi writer.

 

Book Review: The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

Title: The Ghost Brigades

Author: John Scalzi

Publisher: TOR

Year: 2006

Page Count: 320 Pgs

OLD MAN’S WAR did something for me when I read it last year. It proved to me that sci-fi books don’t have to be super-hard SF with tropes that required a degree in astrophysics to understand, or be entirely based on politics. It proved to me that John Scalzi writes the kind of sci-fi I can not only enjoy, but  sci-fi that I can immerse myself in and escape.  Don’t get me wrong, I like my share of harder SF, but Scalzi just writes enjoyable fiction that can be ingested on so many other levels. Now when people ask me to recommend sci-fi, John Scalzi is one of the first names out of my mouth.

THE GHOST BRIGADES is Scalzi’s second book in the same universe of OLD MAN’S WAR. A universe where old people are drafted into the Colonial Defense Forces as humanity attempts to carve out its own niches in an ever-warring bunch of systems and planets. In the last book we were introduced to the Special Forces VIA John Perry’s love interest Jane Sagan. We found out that Special Forces are actually not live old people at all, but rather the consciousness of old people who died between when they signed up and had their brain scanned, and their subsequent military service and switch to new bodies. Therefore they are called the Ghost Brigades as they are technically...ghosts. This time around we don’t see John Perry, but rather we get more insight into Jane Sagan, and the Special Forces as a whole VIA our new protagonist, a Special Forces recruit named Jared Dirac. Jared is special because his consciousness is that of a traitorous scientist named Charles Boutin who gave BrainPal information to a race of aliens that are humanities enemy.

That’s where we start out, and what is great here is we get the same training process that John Perry went thorugh in the first half of OLD MAN’S WAR, but from the POV of Jared and the Special Forces. They are more connected and work more as a unit. They don’t have previous personalities in new bodies, and are essentially new constructs that have to be taught everything at a sped up rate. So you have soldiers who are only a year or two old that are weaned on only war and interacting as a mind-connected unit. It presents such an interesting look at the same things we saw in the first book from a completely different perspective and to me that was ingenious. Something that could have felt boring and repetitive, feels instead fresh and new.

As the second half of the book takes off Boutin’s memories start to surface within Jared and the CDF scientists and commanders hope to be able to control him and find out just why Boutin defected and what the other side knows. Jared finds himself going through a few transformations, some of which get him very close to Boutin himself, and what is very interesting here is watching Jared’s reactions to these situations and wondering if this was happening to me, how would I feel? Sagan is well used as a character and we get a lot more insight into her feelings, her way of thinking and we see just why John Perry ended up so attached to her (beyond the obvious that is). Jared really is the shining beacon in this book though. For a book that is a lot about human consciousness and how the brain thinks and how a brain would interpret the soul of another person entering into a new body…it is a surprisingly enthralling read. I found that the actions sequences were great, but that I was just as interested in the quieter, conversation-based scenes. In fact, this book has oodles more emotion infused into it than its predecessor. The last section contains some of the most heroic, heartfelt and genuinely human scenes in any sci-fi I have yet read. This is definitely Scalzi’s strength as his stories’ attachment to humanity and all that entails. The inclusion, for example, of a child’s stuffed Babar toy as part of the narrative makes for one of the more touching scenes of the book, and it also serves in one of the more caustic ones. 

THE GHOST BRIGADE builds on the first book, and achieves a whole new level for me of interest and excitement. There is believability about the science involved in these books, and Scalzi is adept at talking about his tech in layman’s terms that not only makes it easier to understand, but fun to read about. Contained herein is also the strains of a melody that will make up a longer thread arc for the other books in the series. Mysteries about the Conclave and the CDF and CU’s  true purposes are yet to be revealed, but more light is shed on those and I am sure they will play a bigger role in the other two books.

Scalzi, with his VERY readable books, has fast-tracked his way to the top of my sci-fi author list. THE GHOST BRIGADES is a well thought out, clever and exciting read that qualifies as one of those damn books that keeps you up long past your bedtime and makes you late for work in the morning…but to be honest I am totally not complaining!

I wholeheartedly look forward to the next book THE LAST COLONY.

Book Review: The Hero Of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

I have spoiler-ized the description below so as not to spoil for those who haven't read the first book (swipe it to read)...but if you haven't yet read it I would recommend doing so first.

Vin, after taking the power of the Well of Ascension at the end of the previous book, released it into the world instead of saving Elend. 

Elend, however, survived by consuming a bead of metal which made him an extremely powerful Mistborn. However, the entirety of the Terrismen prophecies were shown to have been changed by the god, Ruin, to escape from the Well. Now Ruin has been released and is already beginning to destroy the world. 

The Lord Ruler, in his wisdom, created storage caches containing valuables such as food and water in cave complexes beneath certain cities, each one providing directions to the next. Even as Vin and Elend struggle from cache to cache, the world itself begins to crumble, ash spewing forth in greater quantities and the mists claiming more and more people. 

Will humans be enough to stop their own destruction?

When I finish a really good book, I close it up and put it down sighing “Man that was a good book!” I do this out loud, whether people are present or not. It’s actually better if there is no one around because then I know I needed to express my wonder aloud regardless of audience.

When I put down THE HERO OF AGES, final volume in the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson I was by myself. I closed the book and put it down exclaiming aloud “Holy **** that was a GREAT book!”

I started the Mistborn series years ago after I became a fan of Sanderson with ELANTRIS (btw Brandon, we’d love to see more take place in that world sir!).  I rocked through the first book and loved it. It was a great inventive world, characters and magic system. It read like wildfire and would appease even the most discerning fantasy fan. The second book THE WELL OF ASCENSION, restarts things sort of. The world-building jumps in scale and the tone of the piece is a little different from the Heist/overthrow the Lord Ruler plotline from the first book. I’m not afraid to admit I had trouble with it the first time I sat down to read it. I put it down, and about a year later I came back to it and read it in a different mindset and succeeded. It was not quite the ride that the first book was, but it was awesome nonetheless with a few sizeable revelations that I enjoyed. It took this second try to bring me back to the Mistborn series. After this I had gone off and become a stalwart Sanderson fan when I read WARBREAKER and enjoyed it and then THE WAY OF KINGS came along to steal my best fantasy read of the year (and my first proper review here at Iceberg Ink!). THE HERO OF AGES went on my Christmas list months ago as I finally decided to finish the series.

To use an expression from the books, Lord Ruler! That was one hell of a read!

This third volume takes characters we know and love and adds even more depth and emotion to them. He also takes characters we didn’t like and adds SO much depth to them that he is once again able to modify our view of them and spin us 180.

I am literally in awe.

This book is for every other final volume in a trilogy that didn’t make it. This is for all those series that didn’t end how you wanted them to. This is for a story that is so heartfelt and powerful that just the telling of certain sections of it gave me gooseflesh. Once again we have the little pre-scripts before each chapter from someone’s writings and each one is told from the point of view from someone looking back over the whole of the affair. They know the outcome and how it all most of it relates. They are revealed in tantalizing little bits that push me on. Seriously, those little pre-scripts are almost as important to me in this series as the main text is.

Another thing that instantly stands out here in this volume. Elend commands here. Instead of the slightly impotent king of Luthadel he was in the second book, trying to be kind, even-handed and balanced he finally realizes that his world is dying. It requires not a king, it needs an emperor with a firm hand to force it into submission for its own good. From the outset in this book he is wholly believable in that role. His presence is tangible, and therefore he seems more evenly matched with Vin and her nature now too. Both characters benefit from this change. TenSoon and the Kandra storyline COULD have been (in another authors hands) boring, but here it is endlessly entertaining and mysterious. I loved reading every ounce of it. Then you have Spook’s storyline, and at first I wondered about it, as he didn’t start out doing too much and questioned himself a bit too much.  However, as it went on he started to embody and capture a little of the Kelsier personality, and his plotlines too became really interesting, not to mention heroic which was nice to see him grow into that. Marsh, poor Marsh. Marsh here is our window into the big baddie Ruin, and it’s a nice one. Sanderson is such an adept hand here that Marsh only stays in scene long enough to give you the little inklings you need about Ruin and his effect on the world and the nature of the third magic. That is hard to do, and Sanderson achieves it in spades.

The story never feels bogged down. In the middle there is a number of chapters where there is a bunch of exposition, and the characters spend some time discussing things but it wasn’t boring at all, and again it COULD have been. Nothing feels extra. You know how sometimes you read a book and think, man they could have left “that” out or “this” out and the story wouldn’t lose from it…well there is none of that here. I think this is where we can agree that this is why the pacing is so good in his books.

Somewhere around the middle of the book the pace shifts forward into light speed. You can hear the mechanical, standard race car gear shift go "KACHUNK!" I literally was only halfway done when I got home last night and I just couldn’t stop reading. I HAD to find out how it all ended up. The second half of this book should be called “How many revelations can you handle?” Seriously, every time something else was revealed to me I was like “No way! I had no idea!” The man is a sheer genius when it comes to red herrings and I bow to that skill. I love being surprised. Make no mistake, you will be surprised by the like 10 different revelations in the last half of the book. It was one thing after another, and after every revelation I’d sit there and think…sweet merciful crap…he set ALL these up in the first book and I had literally NO idea!

The Epilogue for this book is, for lack of a better world, amazing. It resolves things in such a great way and leaves you feeling not only content, but also happy.

I can’t express enough the love I have for this series, these characters and this world. There are only a few trilogies I would recommend to people on the whole. I feel that the Mistborn trilogy pretty much leads that pack.

I have only half of KNIFE OF DREAMS left before I get to dive into his two entries in the Wheel Of Time series and I can’t wait.

 

I also am VERY excited by the prospect of later this year getting to get back into the Mistborn world with the new novel set like 300 years later, and will have Allomantic Gunplay. Man I can’t wait.

Book Review: The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman

The world is only half made. What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared—the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they’re just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope.
To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how.


PLEASE NOTE: This is the final review for 2010 as I started the book in 2010, so it does not go on my list for reviews of 2011 even though the review went up today.


If my few forays into the sub-category of fantasy deemed “New Weird” are any indication, I am not the biggest fan of said sub-genre. That’s not to say I don’t think it is good, merely that I personally can’t seem to get as into it as easily as others seem to. That said, this novel (3rd book from fairly new author Felix Gilman, and the first in a new duology) kind of straddles the line between steampunk-infused western and new weird fantastical, so I can’t pigeonhole it into that category entirely.

I will say this, echoed by a few other bloggers who have read it, this book is probably one of the most unique I’ve ever read. I can’t recall a recent reading experience that has divided my thoughts so entirely. I was going to review this book this morning when I finished it, but I decided I needed a few hours to ruminate. Doing so has kind of settled me onto the middling-to-negative review though, so be forewarned.

Gilman has created a very interesting world, one which echoes both the American West and the Industrial Age, and at the same time is quite foreign and fantastical as well. We have a world where two factions of otherworldy-infused might. There is the Line, with their industry, huge Engine housing Stations, telegraphing machines, machine guns, squat, cranky Linesmen dressed in drab grays and their overlords who are the seemingly-sentient Engines. Then there are the lawless criminals who work for the Gun, a number of demonic presences who seek out this lower class element of society and “ride/possess" their guns, controlling them and spreading terror, death and blood sacrifice. The Gun and The Line have been at war for 400 years, and somewhere in the realm of 40 years before the novel takes place, a sect of people decided enough was enough and assembled a bunch of lawless states into the Red Republic in an attempt for peace. That’s where our General (the man with the shattered mind from the description above) is from, and his war-addled mind is sought after by both sides because only he holds the truth, whether that truth is a weapon or a source of peace is unkown.

There are three main characters, Liv (a Doctor who is sent to the Spirit-protected hospital in the West to help the General), Creedmore (Agent Of The Gun, an old criminal with a grudge against his demonic masters), and Lowry (Linesman who rises through the ranks of the Line to become a Conductor and leads the hunt for the General and Creedmore) and all three are well fleshed out and at least at a base level, quite interesting. That said, I can’t identify with protagonists who are too gray. I want to be able to at least like my main character, and in this book I couldn’t really LIKE any of the three. Creedmore is nasty, aloof and unrepentant. He comes off a lot as a big bully and gets away with it and that kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. Liv is too weak-minded for my liking. For almost the entire book (until she has the choices laid in her lap later in the book) she just gets pulled along and doesn’t really stand up for herself, let alone her charge and supposed friend, a simpleton called Maggfrid. She never does much in the way of noteworthy achievements, and is rather blind to the completely obvious plot point about the Spirit that resides and protects the hospital. Something I saw coming a mile away. Third character, Linesman Lowry spends a lot of his time travelling, bitching and complaining that he can’t get his hands properly on his quarry and falling ass backwards into promotion after promotion within the Line. He is, at beast, tolerable and his internal mind is more interesting than the other two, but he failed to hold all my attention either. I should also make note of the two other major "characters". The demons of the Gun, more specifically the one that rides Creedmore’s Gun named Marmion. The voice of the demon in his head was at first interesting, but as this trick went on in the book, the novelty wore off. The constant bickering between Creedmore and his demon got grating for me and began to make me wish that Creedmore would destroy his gun or that the demon would kill him VIA the Goad (a form of torture the demons use), cause enough was enough. Then there is the Engines of the Line, sentient machinery of which it keeps getting noted that there are 38....which kind of start off mysterious and then get less so as they are explained, but it is clear that they are, like their demon enemies do with the Gun, running the show for the Line in the same manner, by controlling humans.

The mystery at the beginning of the book was enthralling. What was an Engine? They make it sound so ominous! Well, they kind of get explained in a few different paragraphs over the course of the book and it turns out it’s not as ominous as you’d think and is pretty much what you assume it to be, albeit bigger and like I said before...sentient. The Gun are explained fairly early and more completely and I understood and liked them. Demon-possessed guns give you super powers? what's not to like?! When using the Gun's in conjuctuin with the demon influence the Agents enter something like a Gun trance where everything went gray and slowed down so they could avoid bullets and run really fast ect..basically be Neo from the Matrix. A great plot device and one I couldn’t wait to see used with the other Agents Of The Gun who were also introduced in that same explanatory chapter. Sadly this was not to be. For every time you hear about other Agents, they are either speaking to (AKA bitching at each other or) Creedmore VIA fire and the Gun demon’s “lodge” or Creedmore was being told they got killed in battle. Even their deaths at the hands of Lowry and the Line only take up a sentence or two. I think the book would have benefited from more of their involvement, as it would have given more weight to the Gun side. Sadly, instead they basically seem to exist to die and show us how ruthless the Line are in their hunt.

The middle section of the book concerns the hospital House Dolorous in the West, the General of the Red Republic housed therin and the Hill Folk Spirit/God that protects them from violence. I had a tough time with this section. Everything slowed down, the mysteries that interested me in the first half of the book ground to a halt and took a back seat to life in the hospital with Liv, Creedmore and Co. The revelation of the Spirit’s purpose (the key point of this whole section) is very easy to guess and not all that interesting. I just found that the pace of the novel didn’t pick up again till after they leave the hospital. At which point, we go further west and into the un-made part of the world....supposedly described earlier on as chaos, storms and the land just stops.

Whoa! That's interesting!

Not...really. I wanted it to be much more than it ended up being. It ends up for the most part, not to spoil anything, just being more of the same. The last half of the book is good, better than the middle section, but by no means amazing. I kept reading hoping that some mysteries would get solved and that they would be solved in a more interesting way than the House Spirit/God. That the Hill Folk would get more fleshed out and we would finally get to see what the “weapon” inside the Generals head was and why both sides wanted it. Sadly this book has a kind of non-ending ending. It leaves a lot of threads hanging and didn’t really impress me aside from Liv finally taking the reigns which I was pleased to see happen after her whole book of non-action.

Is it well written? Why yes it is. The First 100 pages are greatly enthralling and very cleverly executed. The prose is easy and flows nicely. Aside from a number of really, really run-on sentences that lacked proper punctuation and a bunch of spelling errors, I found it to be a very nice read. Gilman can weave a story quite well, but I just can’t be sure what story he was trying to tell me and why it needed two volumes. I suppose we’ll find out in the second book. To get down with this book you really have to be okay with gray protagonists though, so be aware of that. Whether they are “being used” or not, I need them to be a little more likable either at their base level or in a redemption or realization. Creedmore himself leaves a LOT to be desired and is at BEST tolerable, as does Lowry though I found Lowry to be the more interesting of the pair...which says something I suppose. Liv is okay, but she annoyed me at the best of times with her lack of gumption (<--oooooh, a western word!), and to be honest I only really LIKED Maggfrid, who kind of gets forgotten in the middle, which bugged me.

If you like New Weird and you like a little western-style steampunk then this book should be right up your alley. It’s written in a very odd way, but one that I found quite clever. It could have easily come across as pretentious and thankfully doesn’t.

Enough of the banter Scott....did you like it or not?

I think it succeeds on a number of levels, the most clear being the design of the world, and the mysterious Hill Folk (a First people who seem to have an inkling of what is going on with the world, if only they weren’t feared and reviled). Then I think it fails miserably on other levels, like characterization and lack of use of secondary characters except to drive the plot forward. There is, I tease you not, a character named Kid, who exists solely to execute a manoeuvre that will allow Creedmore to do something he needs to for the story to go forward, and then is promptly and callously forgotten. The character’s name could have been Kid Ex Machina.

So, what can I wish for in the second book (which I will be reading)? We need to sort out some of these messy plot threads post-haste, don’t wait the whole book to do so. Get them out of the way early and open the book up to far more epic things. Give us a lot more insight into the Hill Folk. Redeem Creedmore because for the love of the gods the man is unlikeable. Lastly, USE your secondary characters man! Seriously, I want to see an army of Agents of the Gun going up against the Line and their gunships and Engines. That would be not only be spectacular but suitably EPIC sir. That’s the only other bother I have. The actions scenes are kind of ho-hum. They present at a disconnected level that I found distracting, when they could have been much better with the ideas and creativity that abound here.

So this may be a book that people like and it may not. I myself found it unique and cleverly told, but the story and characters left me flat overall. Here’s hoping the concluding volume serves me better.

Upcoming: Cover Art: After The Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn

I've not read Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series, but I hear nothing but good things, and I've actually got a copy of her most recent non-Kitty work DISCORDS APPLE in my To-Read pile.

Consider me excited then with not only the premise of her next book AFTER THE GOLDEN AGE:

It’s not easy being a superhero’s daughter. The only daughter of Captain Olympus and Spark, the world’s greatest champions, Celia West has no powers of her own, and the most exciting thing she’s ever done is win a silver metal in a high school swim meet. Meanwhile, she’s the favorite hostage of every crime boss and super-villain in Commerce City. She doesn’t have a codename, but if she did, it would probably be Bait Girl, the Captive Wonder.
Celia has worked hard to create a life for herself beyond the shadow of their capes. But when her parents’ arch-enemy, the Destructor, faces justice in the “Trial of the Century,” Celia finds herself sucked back into the more-than-mortal world of Captain Olympus–and forced to confront a secret that she hoped would stay buried forever . . . .

...but also its cover art, which is nice and 40's, Golden Age Comics, Rocketeer-like. Love it.