BOOK REVIEW: The Night Angel Trilogy by BRENT WEEKS

One of the biggest fantasy authors of the last few years or so is Brent Weeks, who stunned the fanboy world with the debut of his Night Angel trilogy in 2008, when for three consecutive months a new book in the trilogy (The Way of Shadows, Shadow's Edge and Beyond the Shadows) was published. Pretty neat trick for a first-time novelist! I was made aware of these books after I was exposed to another fantasy phenom author, Brandon Sanderson, whose Mistborn series I read earlier this year.

The central character of the Night Angel trilogy is Kylar Stern, who starts life as an orphaned street ragamuffin named Azoth in Cenaria City. His only two friends in the world are Jarl and Doll Girl; they are all members of a group of street thieves called the Black Dragon guild. The head of the guild is Rat, who rapes Jarl and instead of raping Doll Girl, slashes her face so that her classically beautiful face is basically unrecognizable. Rat prepares to rape Azoth but Jarl gives him a number of coins that he has been saving for years and tells him to use them to become an apprentice to Durzo Blint, one of the most famous (and deadly) known assassins in Cenaria. Technically Durzo is known as a "wetboy" which is a hired killer who is also talented enough magically to insure that once he accepts a target it is only a question of when, not whether, that person will become a corpse in the near future.

The Night Angel trilogy is a large, sprawling tale populated by numerous characters that span the gamut from intensely (almost cartoonishly) evil to subtly balanced between doing evil or violent things for arguably reasonable rationales. There is no single character who is unquestionably "good."

Kylar and Azoth are the central characters of the entire series, especially in the first book. As the story develops in the second and third book other important characters are introduced, such as a female wetboy named Vi and the roles of Jarl and Doll Girl (we later learn her name is Elene) become more prominent.

Other important characters are the Gyres, Logan Gyre, who is the son of a Duke who becomes friends with Azoth in one of his impersonations, and Jenine Gyre, Logan's newlywed wife who is kidnapped on their wedding night.

Weeks does a very skilled job of keeping the action fast-paced and the plot developments surprising. These are books that once you start, they are hard to put down. Part of this is because of the multitude of characters and Weeks penchant for presenting the story from each of their points of view.

The books are not perfect. The writing is not complex and the large number of characters can become confusing and somewhat annoying, since some characters are more interesting or compelling than others. Another problematic feature of the series is the conclusion, which is somewhat overwrought. This is not unsurprising, because one would expect that the author would want to produce an end to the books to satisfy the reader who has been invested enough to persist through nearly 2,000 pages. However, the climax of the books ends up having basically every single main character converge on a certain battlefield, which strains credulity.

That being said, the series is definitely worth reading, and is at least as engrossing as Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. The two series are somewhat similar, in that they both have intriguing systems of magic, complex central characters who are flawed and multi-layered and plots which involve huge stakes. These are all features of excellent fantasy books, which include the books in the Night Angel series.

Title:  The Way of Shadows.

Author: Brent Weeks

Length: 688 pages.

Publisher: Orbit.

Published: October 1, 2008.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A.

IMAGERY: A-.

IMPACT: A-. 

WRITING: A.

Title:  Shadow's Edge.

Author: Brent Weeks

Length: 656 pages.

Publisher: Orbit.

Published: November 1, 2008.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A-.

IMAGERY: A.

IMPACT: A-. 

WRITING: A.

Title:  Beyond the Shadows .

Author: Brent Weeks

Length: 720 pages.

Publisher: Orbit.

Published: December 1, 2008.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A.

IMAGERY: A-.

IMPACT: A. 

WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Patrick Rothfuss is famous for having written one of the most celebrated debut fantasy novels of all-time, The Name of the Wind (see my A+ review). After that, he had to accomplish an even harder task, writing the sequel to the most celebrated debut fantasy novel in recent memory. Happily, in The Wise Man's Fear , Rothfuss has produced a work which has a different, but similarly entrancing effect as his first book had. I read the first one in paperback but once I heard that the sequel was being released in March 2011 right before my 20th anniversary trip to South Africa I ordered my advance copy from Amazon.com to ensure that I would be able to start reading it on the very first available day.

One of the highlights of the two 10-hour flights it took to get to Cape Town was that I was able to spend so much time reading The Wise Man's Fear, as well as enjoy the book during down time on the trip.

The Wise Man's Fear was released nearly four years after The Name of the Wind, but happily, the 3rd book, tentatively named The Doors of Stone will not take as long to appear.

The Wise Man's Fear has not had as universally acclaimed a reception as its predecessor, with people both praising and decrying it's similarity to the first book.

I think I probably fall somewhere towards the middle of the spectrum of the reviewers of The Wise Man's Fear, though closer to the positive end of the range of reactions. I agree that it is not as good as the first book (but it is hard to imagine how it could be, really) but I disagree with those who basically pan the book or who claim that Rothfuss is wildly over-rated. However, the second coming of Tolkien, Rothfuss is not.

Read for its own merits, there is no question that The Wise Man's Fear is still a major accomplishment and makes a genuine contribution to high-impact fantasy writing. The story of the central character of Kvothe continues to unspool in this second installment. One of the key conceits of the series is that the books are told as a story within a story. Someone who people call "Kote" is telling a first-person narrative about how the infamous "Kvothe the Kingkiller" got his reputation, and in the process explains the "real story" behind some of the outlandish claims of impossible feats associated with Kvothe. The story is being told in 3 days to someone called Chronicler, who is attempting to record a complete account of Kvothe's story.

Much of the story in The Wise Man's Fear is as compelling as the stuff in the first book. There are several elements which are combined to make the books incredibly attractive: the main character is an outcast, a member of a culturally subordinate group called the Ruh but yet he is attending a school (of magic) called the University where he is succeeding far rapidly and on a level which exceeds his social "betters." And he's only 17! Additionally, this main character is a creative/artistic type (musician/singer) who also has special powers which seem to elude other people. For the vast majority of fans of the fantasy genre, the characteristics of Kvothe are precisely the ones they most admire and would like to see in themselves and their (fictional) heroes.

That being said, there are defects in the second book which either were not present, or were more easily overlooked in the first book. The most prominent problem  (and even Rothfuss boosters I believe would acknowledge this point) is the agonizingly slow rate at which the story is advancing. There are many, many interesting and even captivating questions that the reader is dying to know the answer to, and that the young Kvothe is also trying to investigate but after 2,000 pages of exposition are still completely up in the air. In a similar manner that many are skeptical that George R.R. Martin will be able to conclude his epic A Song of Ice and Fire in a mere 7 books (only 2 books left!), it is very difficult to see how Rothfuss concludes his epic Kingkiller series in one last book of the trilogy. At the end of The Wise Man's Fear it doesn't feel like we are two-thirds of the way through an epic journey. However, only time will tell. I do know that I will be most interested to follow Rothfuss (and Kvothe!) down that path

Title: The Wise Man's Fear.

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Length: 1008 pages.

Publisher: DAW Hardcover.

Published: March 1, 2011.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A.

IMAGERY: A-.

IMPACT: A-. 

WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan

I spent most of my year-end holidays with my nose in the new book by Richard K. Morgan, one of my new favorite British speculative fiction authors. The Cold Commands is the second book in what he is calling his A Land Fit For Heroes series, which began with 2009's The Steel Remains (see MadProfessah's A review).

Morgan is most well-known for his "carbon-dark noir" Takeshi Kovacs novels (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies) as well other award-winning hard sci-fi works such as Thirteen and Market Forces. I loved the Takeshi Kovacs novels so much that I read  The Steel Remains without even realizing that it would have a special appeal to an openly gay fan of science fiction and fantasy books.


Morgan jolted the fantasy world with his first entry in the A Land Fit For Heroes series when he not only made two of the three main characters in the series openly gay (or lesbian) but also included explicit homosexual sex scenes between the primary male "hero" and the primary male "villain" in The Steel Remains. This was just one of many ways in which Morgan signaled that he wanted to make his first fantasy series something completely different from the swords and sorcery sub-genre, even though his book does contain a lot of swords and plenty of sorcery. It also contains, profanity, explicit sex, stomach-churning violence and breathtaking suspense.

In The Cold Commands the protagonists from the first book return, characters who are as nuanced and well-crafted as before. First in line is Ringil Eskiath, the openly gay, disgraced scion of the upper class Eskiath family who is also a fierce and feared warrior; Egar the Dragonbane, a huge blonde chief from a nomadic tribe of warriors called the Majak who is famous for killing a dragon; and Archeth Indamaninarmal, the half-alien child of immortal parents who also happens to be addicted to drugs and somewhat conflicted about her lesbian sexuality. The trio have been in several tough battles together, including several that are detailed in both The Steel Remains and The Cold Commands.


I don't want to go in to too much detail about the plot or story of The Cold Commands except to say that the events happen about one year after the events in The Steel Remains and that one should definitely read them in the correct chronological order. There are several reviews of  The Cold Commands around the web which can give you a good sense of what the book is about.

If you liked any of Morgan's hard sci-fi and enjoy the modern fantasy of people like Joe Abercrombie  and Scott Lynch, you should check out Morgan's books in the A Land Fit For Heroes books.

Title: The Cold Commands.
Author: Richard K. Morgan.
Length: 512 pages.
Publisher: Del Rey.
Published: October 11, 2011.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.917/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

2012 Hugo Nominations Announced!

The 2012 Hugo nominations were announced this weekend. The Hugo Awards, you will recall, are the awards for excellence in Speculative Fiction, voted on by the fans of the genre. This year's nominees for Best Novel are:

Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor) 

A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin (Bantam Spectra) 

Deadline by Mira Grant (Orbit) 

Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan / Del Rey) 

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (Orbit)

In addition to Hugo Awards, the Nebula Awards also recognize excellence in speculative fiction, but are voted on by the creators/authors who work in the genre. This year's nominees for the Nebula were announced in February 2012 and there are only two novels which appear on both lists: China Mieville's Embassytown and Jo Walton's Among Others.

I'm pretty excited by this year's Hugo Award Best Novel nominees. First, I have read 3 of the 5 nominees, and loved two of the three. (Click on the hyperlinked titles to see my individual reviews.) I would be very happy if either A Dance with Dragons or Leviathan Wakes won the Hugo (especially if it were the latter, since it is a "debut novel"). James S.A. Corey is a nom de plume of Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, who are well-known for the proficiency in the area  of fantasy writing. Amazingly, in Leviathan Wakes they have written one of the most amazing "hard science fiction" novels of the last decade.

Hat/tip to Whatever.

Nominations for 2011 Nebula Awards

According to Scalzi, the nominations for the Nebula Awards are out. I'm always interested in the nominees for Best Novel. Last year, Connie Willis won the Hugo and the Nebula for her diptych Blackout/All-Clear (which I loved).

This year the group of nominees does not look very promising:

• Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)
• Embassytown, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey; Subterranean Press)
• Firebird, Jack McDevitt (Ace Books)
• God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
• Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine (Prime Books)
• The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

The Nebula Awards are awards in speculative fiction by writers of that genre. (As opposed to the Hugo Awards which are awards in speculative fiction voted on by fans of that genre.) Repeat nominees from last year's list include N.K. Jemisin and Jack McDevitt. I found Jemisin's debut novel (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms) annoying enough that I did not finish it or review it for the blog. I have never read any McDevitt, but he does seem to be up my alley (hard science fiction) This year's nominee Firebird and last year's Echo are entries in his popular Alex Benedict series which I gather is a mystery series about an antiques dealer set 10,000 years in the future. An earlier work by McDevitt, Seeker won the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Novel. I have a vague recollection of trying to read Seeker (but it may have been Polaris)and giving up for some reason. I think I will try and give McDevitt a try in the near future.

Anyway, of the nominees this year, the only one I have read is China Miéville's Embassytown (which I did NOT love). It is built around an astonishing idea, and written in the British writer's signature "weird" style, so I would not be surprised if he won.

I'm more interested to see what the Hugo Award nominations are, they should be out in about a month.

BOOK REVIEW: Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson

I had previously heard about Brandon Sanderson as one of the new big names in fantasy fiction. He is most well-known for taking over the Wheel of Time series from Robert Jordan after the author's untimely death after publishing the 12th novel in that epic 14-volume gigantic series. I really don't have an interest in getting hooked on a story which is something like 11,000 pages long and 4 million words. I'm already screwed because I'm hooked on A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin which is now 5 books long and even though it is supposed to end at Book 7 most observers are skeptical of that happening, and of Martin being alive long enough to complete his masterwork. Speculative fiction lovers are burned from our experience with Frank Herbert, who published Chapterhouse: Dune the 6th book in his brilliant Dune series and then died in 1986, leaving his literature legacy in the hands of his son Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson who have abused the privilege by churning out mounds of simplistic unreadable crap set in the complex, compelling universe created by Herbert.

Anyway, most reviews of Sanderson's work point towards the Mistborn series as a good place to start, since it contains a fairly sophisticated system of magic as well as the presence of non-human semi-intelligent species set on a planet with a medieval level of civilization. That puts it pretty firmly in the sweet spot between fantasy and science fiction, which I found interesting.

The most unusual aspect of Sanderson's Mistborn series is that the primary character (i.e. hero) is female. Her name is Vin. Needless to say, this is very unusual in the male-dominated world of swords-and-sorcery books. Vin is a fascinating character, she becomes very powerful but Sanderson keeps her very femininity very much in focus, with detailed descriptions of the dresses and makeup she wears and gives the reader an insider's view at her internal monologue as she navigates her way through the world, loving and learning.

Another fascinating feature of the Mistborn series is the role of religion and the question of destiny. I hadn't thought about it before writing this review, but it is clear that Sanderson must have been influenced heavily by Herbert's Dune series. There are similar contours to the books: most chapters start with an epigram (in Dune they were interesting philosophical ruminations from important characters which added color to the world building, in Mistborn the epigrams are excerpts from an important historical text and constitute a parallel story in themselves), there is a tyrant who has ruled for thousands of years (Leto II in Dune and The Lord Ruler in Mistborn) and there is a race of oppressed peoples who eventually become dominant in society (the fremen in Dune and the skaa in Mistborn).

The themes of religion and destiny are common to both works as well. In Mistborn, there is a prominent character (who would probably get third billing in a movie adaptation of the series) named Sazed who all he does is muse about religion. He "collects" them, sort of like a librarian. He is known as a Keeper. He has access to another version of the magic system, called feruchemy, which is different from the one that Vin uses. That magic system is called allomancy, and is the primary source of power in the world.

Allomancy is based on the ingestion of metals, and they give the rare breeds who possess "allomantic" abilities powers that are reminiscent of some of our favorite superheroes: superstrength (iron), enhanced vision and hearing (tin), influence emotions of nearby people (zinc and brass) and physically attract repel/attract nearby metals (steel). There are many other metals and the system is nicely designed with a pleasant symmetry (some metals counteract the effects of other metals). Throughout the Mistborn series the number of metals grows and even by the end of the 3rd book it is clear there are metals in the system that are yet to be discovered.

The specific plot of the books I don't want to reveal but the writing and plotting are very strong and there are mysteries and puzzles that are only revealed on the way with a huge surprise (who is the Hero of the Ages?) only discovered in the last few pages of the last book.

Here is the blurb from Amazon.com:

Brandon Sanderson, fantasy's newest master tale spinner, author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple question: What if the hero of prophecy fails? What kind of world results when the Dark Lord is in charge? The answer will be found in the Mistborn Trilogy, a saga of surprises and magical martial-arts action that begins in Mistborn. 

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier "snapped" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.  

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

Another big influence for Sanderson must be Scott Lynch, the creator of the Locke Lamora books, because the "heist/caper" aspect of the books are also lots of fun. There are also lots of thrilling descriptions of hand-to-hand combat as well as conflicts between armies that have all the panache (but not the bloody gore) of Joe Abercrombie.

Sanderson's Mistborn series is the real deal; any lover of the greats of fantasy (Martin, Jordan, Lynch, Abercrombie, Peter Brett) and well-written, political science fiction (Herbert) will enjoy these books.

Title: Mistborn: The Final Empire

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Length: 672 pages.

Publisher:  TOR Fantasy .

Published: July 31, 2007.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.91/4.0).

PLOT: A.

IMAGERY: A-.

IMPACT: A. 

WRITING: A.

Title: Mistborn: The Well of Ascension

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Length: 816 pages.

Publisher: TOR Fantasy.

Published: June 3, 2008.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A.

IMAGERY: A-.

IMPACT: A-. 

WRITING: A.

Title: Mistborn: The Hero of Ages

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Length: 784 pages.

Publisher:  TOR Fantasy.

Published: April 28, 2009.

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A.

IMAGERY: A.

IMPACT: A. 

WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: George R.R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons

After a long wait of nearly six years since the publication of A Feast for Crows, the fifth book in George R.R. Martin's award-winning, best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Dance with Dragons was released in July 2011.

The entire A Song of Ice and Fire series has had a higher profile lately, especially since HBO started airing a mini-series called Game of Thrones based on the first book, A Game of Thrones. Their intention is to shoot each season of the series roughly based on each book in the series. Peter Dinklage won a very important Emmy award (Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series) for his portrayal of Tyrion Lannister, one of the fan's favorite characters.

A Dance with Dragons was reviewed by all the major papers of record (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Time) as well as the usual suspects of media outlets online, generally positively. Among fans, however, the reviews are somewhat mixed, with the feeling that the latest book is closer to A Feast for Crows than  A Storm of Swords. To me, that's to be expected because the timeline of events that occurred in A Feast for Crows occupy about half of the book in A Dance with Dragons, happily told from the perspective of the fan's favorite characters. The problem with this is that not much progress was made on the huge, series-spanning plots like: Daenerys' march to Westeros from Essos, John Snow's attempts to maintain the Wall against the invasion of Creatures of the Frozen North, Bran Stark's destiny to actualize his magical talents and whether the Iron Throne will be controlled by someone who actually deserves the power and cherishes the people they rule, just to name a few. (By some counts, there were around  11 central plots covered in just this book).

On extended reflection, I think my overall evaluation of the book is closer to the official reviewer' than the fans'. I've only read A Dance with Dragons once, but I would still rank it as the second best book of the series, behind the impressive A Storm of Swords which is still the best of the bunch with A Dance with Dragons close behind, followed by A Clash of Kings and A Game of Thrones (the less said about A Feast for Crows, the better).

I had the good fortune of only starting to read the series in 2011, so I have not had to experience the half-decade long wait for the next installment in the series. Sadly, now that I have caught up with Martin's production schedule, I will have to comfort myself during the long wait for Book 6 (widely reported to be titled The Winds of Winter) by re-reading the first five books and watching the excellent HBO television adaptations of the earlier books (apparently each season of the series will be an adaptation of the corresponding book). Hopefully the next book will be out before the television series catches up with Martin!

Title: A Dance with Dragons.
Author: George R.R. Martin.
Paperback: 1040 pages.
Publisher: Bantam.
Published: July 12, 2011.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.917/4.0).


PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: China Miéville's Embassytown

I have been a fan of China Miéville ever since I picked up his mind-bending books The Scar and Perdido Street Station after trawling through the Award Annals website looking for award-winning speculative fiction. China Miéville's writing has won him many, many awards. His work is generally relegated to "genre fiction" but the question is which genre? Miéville often doesn't just stick to one, or he purposefully reinvents and reimagines the genre he is working in.

His latest books, The City & The City (2009) and Kraken (2010), have been somewhat disappointing. They are still as hard-to-classify and mind-bending as his earlier works but they are not as rewarding (to this reader).

Embassytown was expected to be different, since it was announced as China's first book with actual spaceships. Expectations that it would be a true science-fiction book, instead of another one of his genre-benders were raised.

Unfortunately, China being China it means that even though Embassytown is definitely science fiction, it is also Weird.

The basic outlines of the story is that it is told from the first-person perspective of Avice Benner Cho, a "Immerser" (someone who helps pilot spaceships at faster-than-light speed through something called The Immer) who returns to her home town of Embassytown on her home planet of Arieka after a successful career with a husband named Scile who is a linguist. Embassytown is inhabited by aliens known as the Ariekei or Hosts. The Ariekei have multiple mouths and produce word simultaneously from two mouths simultaneously to produce what is known as Language.  Language possesses multiple unusual properties, the most important of which is that it is more than just sounds. If the sounds of Ariekei producing Language is recorded and played back for them they do  only hear it as noise. Somehow the Ariekei can only understand Language that is spoken with meaning by an intelligence. Another property of Language is that the statements and thoughts communicated using it must always be true, Ariekei can not lie. The Ariekei have advanced bio-technology and provide it to the humans (and other aliens) who inhabit Embassytown, which happens to be an important way-station on to a whole other section of the galaxy. In order to communicate with the Ariekei humans have produced Ambassadors, who are twinned humans (i.e. Cal and Vin become CalVin) who are so closely aligned with their thoughts that they can speak simultaneously and produce Language which the Ariekei can understand.

The plot is unsurprisingly complicated, and involves the arrival in Embassytown of a new kind of Ambassador which eventually results in the entire structure of Language being challenged and changed. The Ariekei are also forever changed, as well as life on Arieka itself.

Of course the reader is supposed to connect to the story through the lens of Avice. Avice, is a celebrity among the Ariekei because as a young girl she became a simile in Language, "the girl who sat in the dark and ate what was given her without question." Her husband becomes obsessed with the Hosts and plays a very important role in the development of the plot.

The main problem is that China is more interested in challenging (and impressing) the reader than actually entertaining them. He has interesting things he wants to show that he can do within the confines of familiar sci-fi tropes (faster-than-light travel, real-life aliens, human-alien contact, planet colonization and advanced technologies) while also incorporating things like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. But China spends so much time on these other things, in my view, he neglects to make the reader really CARE about the characters, and thus we really don't care what happens to them in the end.

Title: Embassytown.
Author: China Miéville.
Paperback: 368 pages.
Publisher: Del Rey.
Date: May 17. 2011.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).


PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson

Robert Charles Wilson's Spin is one of the great science-fiction reads of the past decade. It is the first book in a trilogy of books with similarly succinct titles such as Axis and Vortex. Unfortunately, the latter books of the trilogy were unable to match the brilliant heights reached by the first book in the series, though they are above average reads and I am glad that I read them.

The world of  Spin is one in which mysterious aliens, dubbed The Hypotheticals, have placed some kind of membrane around the entire planet Earth which causes the stars to disappear from the sky. eventually we discover that time outside of the membrane is passing by at orders of magnitude faster than time on Earth, and that the membrane is also protesting the Earth from the Sun's increased radiation as it accelerates its lifecycle as a star. Spin resonates with the reader because of its amazing premise: One night the stars disappear. How would humanity react? The various characters respond differently but happen to be intimately involved in finding out the cause of the phenomenon (which happens decades after the event).

More amazing events happen,  but the most significant result is the creation of gateways which allow humanity to move from Earth to other planets (which also have Spin membranes surrounding them). Axis, the sequel to Spin takes place primarily on one of these new planets, with characters related to the ones introduced in Spin. Wilson primarily organizes his books around these characters and how they react to the incredible events and circumstances.

One of the main problems is that the characters get progressively less interesting in the later books. For example, in Vortex the main characters are a psychiatrist named Sandra Cole, a police officer named Bose and a mysterious drifter (and patient of Sandra's) named Orrin Mather. These characters are interestingly set in the same time period that the events of Spin occurred in, while simultaneously there is a another storyline which is set more than 10,000 years in the future which involves Turk Findley (a character which appeared in Axis) and another new character named Allison Pearl who may or may not be a figment of the imagination of a character named Freya.

Other people had a more positive reaction to Wilson's characterizations but I think there is universal agreement that neither of the sequels to Spin do not match the unvarnished brilliance of that masterwork. Vortex is probably worth reading if you have already Spin, but if you haven't I would say you could just read Spin and save yourself the disappointment of a lack of a satisfying resolution of all the many issues raised in Spin.

Title: Vortex.
Author: Robert Charles Wilson.
Paperback: 336 pages.
Publisher: Tor.
Date: July 5. 2011.

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).


PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: B.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows

I have previously read and reviewed the first three books of the now-classic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin, for this blog: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords.

A Feast for Crows is considered by some the red-headed step child of the series so far because even though it is the most critically recognized entry in the series (nominated for the Hugo, Locus and British Fantasy Society awards although notably it failed to win any of these) it is also the book in the series which is rated the lowest by actual readers. There's a definite reason for this. A Feast for Crows was first published nearly 5 years after the publication of 2000's A Storm of Swords and the expectations of Martin's burgeoning fan base were extremely high. A Feast for Crows became the first book in the series to debut as #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and be an international publishing phenomenon. This is somewhat surprising, because several of the most popular characters from the series do not make an appearance in A Feast for Crows. Martin structures his novels as series of chapters with intersecting and overlayed points-of-views from specific characters on the same series of events. Because A Feast for Crows grew so gigantic during the five years Martin spent writing it, at some point he decided to concentrate on some of the less popular (some would say more villainous) characters in A Feast for Crows and push the perspectives of the more popular characters (Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen to name a few) into the still-to-be-written A Dance with Dragons (which despite this headstart still took an agonizing 6 years to be published).

You'd think that the 4th entry in a series which has been decreed to be no longer than 7 books long would be concentrating on reducing the scope of the story not expanding it. If you thought that you'd be wrong, because Martin introduces several new characters who of course come with their own plots and allegiances which somehow link up to the previously revealed plots and allegiances like a slowly growing intricate spider-web or moss spreading inch by inch over a stone tomb.

The theme of the book is about power, and of course we all know absolute power corrupts absolutely. The anti-heroine of the series, Cersei Lannister Barratheon is know fully ascendant at the seat of power in King's Landing, although due to the inherent sexism (some would say misogyny) of the culture she is not officially crowned and of course does not sit on The Iron Throne, as her husband and sons have. Cersei is the kind of character readers love to hate and Martin puts her in her place somewhat, saving the coup de grace for the next book, we hope.

The plots are too numerous to summarize here, but suffice it to say that the conflict which has animated the first three books, the War of the Five Kings is quickly hurtling to a conclusion and this book is about what people do after the war is over, and how the "winners" and "losers" are both affected in its aftermath.

The one good thing about Martin pushing all the story lines of the favorite characters into A Dance with Dragons is that it makes that book an even more desirable read, and one that I will try to review shortly.
Despite the slight lull that A Feast for Crows represents in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, it still points out how salient the stories and characters that Martin has created that even the secondary characters make for a compelling read, and promise that the next book should be even more so.

Title: A Feast for Crows

Author: George R.R. Martin

Length: 784 pages.

Publisher: Bantam.

Date: October 30, 2007.

OVERALL GRADE: B/B-.

PLOT: B-.

IMAGERY: B.

IMPACT: B+. 

WRITING: B-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Hunger Games Trilogy

The Hunger Games trilogy is the highest profile series of young-adult novels after J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. I read the entire series (see my reviews of the last two books: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and saw all the movies (see my reviews for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and Part 2 and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

It's really not fair to compare the two series. For one thing, Harry Potter consists of seven books which are on average well over 500 pages each and take the main characters from a pre-teen innocence through teen-age angst and into full adulthood.

Here is how the author, Suzanne Collins, describes the Hunger Games:

Katniss is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, “The Hunger Games.” The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When her sister is chosen by lottery, Katniss steps up to go in her place. 

By definition, The Hunger Games is a much more violent series of books than the Harry Potter books. There are deaths in both, but in The Hunger Games it becomes almost routine. Also, the fact that Katniss is 16 years old when the books begin makes the possibility of sex (or at the very least romance) a very real possibility.

The story revolves around the characters, starting with Katniss Everdeen and her little sister Primrose. Katniss has been feeding her family since her medicine woman mother was greatly affected by the death of her husband and Katniss' father. The relationships which animate the main plots in The Hunger Games is the (love?) triangle between Katniss and Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne. Although love triangles have been done to death in all sorts of fiction, Collins comes up with some novel ways of handling the tension, especially since life and death situations become involved.

A Wikipedia article says that the themes of The Hunger Games are "government control, 'big brother,' and personal independence." I'm not sure that I would agree, I would say that a more precise description of  the main themes are "deception, independence and authoritarianism." Basically, authoritarianism includes both the "Big Brother" aspects of the Capitol and the governmental control that it encompasses throughout the 12 impoverished districts of Panem.

The plot of the first book is based around Katniss and Peeta's experience in the Hunger Games, where the rules are kill or be killed. Obviously, at least one of them survives because there are two more books. What happens is that the scope of the books expands, although they still center around the actions of Katniss, the true goal of Collins is to demonstrate not just the change to Katniss, but also to her hometown and her whole country.

Overall, all three books are well-written and Collins skillfully maintains suspense even while the reader is pretty sure any of the characters we care about will not be killed, the body count is high, and not everyone we care about survives to the end of the third book.

Title: The Hunger Games.
Author: Suzanne Collins.
Paperback: 384 pages.
Publisher: Scholastic Press.
Date: September 14, 2008.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).


PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.


Title: Catching Fire.
Author: Suzanne Collins.
Paperback: 391 pages.
Publisher: Scholastic Press.
Date: September 1, 2009.


OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).


PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A.


Title: Mockingjay.
Author: Suzanne Collins.
Paperback: 400 pages.
Publisher: Scholastic Press.
Date: August 24, 2010.


OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).


PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Leviathan Wakes

One of the best new hard science fiction reads of the year is Leviathan Wakes from James S.A. Corey. Corey is actually a pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Surprisingly, both of these guys are known for their fantasy bona fides. Abraham is the author of The Dragon's Path, the first book in the Dagger and the Coin trilogy while Franck is George R.R. Martin's assistant. Martin, is, of course, the author of the wildly popular A Song of Ice and Fire series, whose first book the Emmy award-winning HBO mini-series Game of Thrones is based on.

It's interesting that with all this swords and sorcery experience that these two guys have written an absolute kick-ass hard science fiction classic. The universe of Leviathan Wakes takes place in a near future where humanity has established colonies on some of the solar system's planets and large asteroids. To be more precise, Mars, the Moon, and Ceres all have substantial human populations, with distinct and disagreeing cultures. The two big fish are Mars and the Earth, with the Moon and all the inhabitants of the Asteroid Belt (known as "Belters"). There are no aliens, but there are generations of humans that have only lived in non-Earth gravity and have been physically modified as a result.

The story that is set in this universe is a doozy. It is centered around two main characters: Jim Holden and Detective Miller. Holden is the "good guy," an idealist who runs into some Lovecraftian surprises in deep space of galactic significance. Miller is the hard-bitten detective who doesn't even have a first name who doggedly follows his hunch about a case no-one else cares about while history-altering events are happening around him.

The book is an interesting melange of multiple genres; it is definitely hard science fiction (there are space battles with sub-light space travel in the very first chapter) but veers sharply into horror (there are things called "vomit zombies") with a sprinkle of noir (Miller's character is clearly supposed to be some kind of 23rd century Sam Spade).

I don't want to say too much about the details except to say that the story hurtles along at breakneck pace, and although many issues are resolved, one can clearly see how this works as the first book of a planned trilogy. I can't wait until the next book in "The Expanse" series is released; if you read Leviathan Wakes, you will be hooked as well.

Title: Leviathan Wakes.
Author: James S.A. Corey.
Length: 592 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Published: June 15, 2011.

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Blackout & All-Clear by Connie Willis

Connie Willis is one of my favorite science fiction authors, having written the incredible Doomsday Book (see my A+ review). Last year she returned to the time-travelling universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing Of The Dog with the duology Blackout/All-Clear.

The diptych Blackout/All-Clear was immediately critically acclaimed and became Willis' second book to win both of the top awards in science fiction, the 2011 Nebula award and the 2011 Hugo award.

The books use the assumption that by 2060 time-travel is possible, although due to the chance of changing the future by changing the past, it is mainly only used by academics. The books are set in Oxford University and generally involved graduate students who need to go back in time as part of their "field research" for their studies on particular historical events.

The first thing to realize about Blackout/All-Clear is that it is really not two books, it is one book split into two parts, so you should not expect a conclusion at the end of Blackout. In fact, I would strongly recommend that however you procure Blackout to read it, you should save yourself the anxiety and just get the second half of the book as well, All-Clear.

The main characters are Michael Davies, Polly Churchill and Merope Ward who are sent back into World War II Britain as Mike Davis, Polly Sebastian and Eileen O'Reilly, respectively.

One of the most interesting things Connie Willis does is depict what life really was like to live through the Blitz, one of the most important and harrowing time periods in history, for any civilization. She does this through the seemingly insignificant details of how The War affected everyday, unknown people every day. Of course, what is also amusing and entertaining for the reader is that she also includes people who are famous now but who were not necessarily so famous then (Agatha Christie comes to mind).

Another important feature of the book to me was its depiction of gender. The fact that two of the main characters are women (really barely more than teenagers) in the mid-1940s decades before the equal rights movement allows Willis to really reveal the contours of sexism behind the veneer of polite British society.

One thing all time-travel stories have in common is that they have rules, generally the rule is that the time travelers can not produce a paradox (like going back in time and killing your own father or grandfather before you were born because then how could you be alive to go back in time in the first place?). Willis plays on this fact, and the idea tat no author would ever kill of one of her three central major characters to raise the level of suspense to heart-pounding levels.

In the end, the books end on something of an emotionally manipulative note, but that decision really ensures that readers of Blackout/All-Clear will not forget the experience any time soon.

Title: Blackout
Author: Connie Willis
Length: 512 pages.
Publisher: Spectra.
Published: February 2, 2010.

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.



OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.83/4.0).

Title: All Clear

Author: Connie Willis

Length: 656 pages.

Publisher: Spectra.

Published: October 19, 2010

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.0/4.0).


PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

2011 Hugo Winners Announced!

The 2011 Hugo Awards were announced last weekend at the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, Nevada. Two of my favorites, Christopher Nolan's Inception and Commie Willis' Blackout/All-Clear won the major prizes of Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form and Best Novel, respectively. Willis becomes the second female author to win the prestigious Nebula/Hugo double for the same book twice. She won the Nebula award for Blackout/All-Clear earlier this year and had previously won the double for an earlier book in the series, Doomsday Book, one of my favorite books of all time. The only other authors to win the Hugo/Nebula double for the same book twice are Joe Haldeman (The Forever War, Forever Peace), Ursula K. LeGuin (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed), and the now-odious Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead).

Here's the full list and here's the list of the winners in the most important categories::

BEST NOVEL

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)

BEST NOVELLA

The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)

BEST NOVELETTE

“The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010)

BEST SHORT STORY

“For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010)

BEST RELATED WORK

Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (Mad Norwegian)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY

Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse,
written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by
Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM

Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Warner)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM

Doctor Who: “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,” written by Steven
Moffat; directed by Toby Haynes (BBC Wales)

What's nice about the Hugos is that they also release the detailed breakdown of the preference voting results every year as well. It would be incredibly awesome if other awards (Oscars, Emmys, are you listening?) did that as well.

Also, notice that the titles of the winners of Best Novella, Novelette and Best Short Story are hyperlinks. By clicking on the links you can see these award-winning pieces of speculative fiction for free. Enjoy!