We now have a cover - another piece of beauty from artist Tom Roberts!
Be a hero and pre-order a copy!
The trilogy concludes in April.
"Each book in the We now have a cover - another piece of beauty from artist Tom Roberts!
Be a hero and pre-order a copy!
The trilogy concludes in April.
"Each book in the Library Trilogy has a shockingly unique ending that left me intellectually and emotionally destroyed in three completely different ways. The ending of The Book That Held Her Heart hits so hard that I feel like the publisher should include a packet of tissues between the last page and back cover."
I've not read this yet, but it's a finalist for the 10th annual Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #SPFBO, one of 1o chosen from 300 entries, so it must I've not read this yet, but it's a finalist for the 10th annual Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #SPFBO, one of 1o chosen from 300 entries, so it must be pretty good!
Norbert, a very nice guy, gave me a copy of this at Bristolcon last year, and with just days to go before the next Bristolcon, I've finished reading iNorbert, a very nice guy, gave me a copy of this at Bristolcon last year, and with just days to go before the next Bristolcon, I've finished reading it. Again, my productivity readingwise (matched by a slump writingwise) has been occasioned by my youngest daughter's prolonged hospital stay (she's out now) and daily bus rides to and from the hospital.
Sealed Empire tells a lot of story at a breakneck pace. If I'm honest, having just closed the back cover, I couldn't really tell you why a lot of what happened actually did happen. But, hey, I've enjoyed a number of films about which I could say the same. A significant part of this confusion might just be that the book is setting up a ton of questions for book 2 though. Certainly the explanation of the title only appears on the last page or three, and poses a big question in itself.
There are a good few books that mix fantasy and sci-fi, my own among them, but this is probably the book that does most of it out of the ones I've read. It leans HARD into the sci-fi stuff. We start off with a pseudo-medieval setting with armoured knights and such, but before long there are sky-ships that I imagined as those sky-worms that invade New York in the Avengers movie, along with ray guns of multiple colours (red, green, blue), body shields, AI, robots, the works!
The main characters are Edward (Ed), Erick, Emma, Emily, and Edem. Take that, advice-to-not-have-multiple-character-names-start-with-the-same-letter!
Zsivicz (a name to conjure with) puts them all through the wringer. Between them they sustain sufficient injuries to keep an A&E department busy for a decade, and they also get soaked in a lot of cold water (both salt and fresh (and also sewer)). The female PoVs are the deepest and you get far more of a sense of them as people, along with their hopes and ambitions, generally at odds with their duty and circumstance.
It's an imaginative, high-energy romp, with the kitchen sink thrown in. And there's plenty more promised by the story, though Goodreads does list it as a standalone rather than a book 1. Whilst the book is neither funny nor lighthearted, it is, in an old school kind of way, fun-fantasy. There's bags of imagination on show and the scenary changes swiftly, along with the challenges. If it sounds like your thing - dive in!
I should note that the book was written in Hungarian and translated by a Hungarian. Generally, book translators are native speakers of the target language. They master the second language to extract the meaning of the book, but it's in the target language that they really need that extra sensitivity and to be able to effortlessly pull on colloquialisms, phraseology, and all the tools in the literary box.
For a difficult language like Hungarian, unrelated to the other European languages, and spoken by a population that is outnumbered by some major cities, it's a tall order to find a native English speaker to translate your book.
A good example of the sort of thing that grated on me might be:
"her captors decided to play a challenge of strength with their arms"
Where I feel a native speaker would have just said "her captors began armwrestling".
Whether this next one is down to translation or just being too wordy, I don't know:
"Then the monster gave out what sounded like a roar."
Howard sent me the ebook (book 1) last year before publication and sadly I didn't get around to reading it.
On the heels of his terminal cancer [image]
Howard sent me the ebook (book 1) last year before publication and sadly I didn't get around to reading it.
On the heels of his terminal cancer diagnosis, I've got a paper copy and will put it to the front of my list.
+++++++++++
So, having spent the last 10 days going back and forth to the hospital on the bus to spend the days with/close to my daughter, I've had the chance to catch up on some reading! (I no longer have to stay with my daughter at night since she's an adult and her level of disablity qualifies her for dedicated night carers at the hospital - the same ladies who look after her at our home.)
And on these trips (2 hours on the way back today because of the flooding) I've finished this fair-sized book.
Everything about this book screams "Conan" to me - from the cover art that seems to hail from quite a few decades back, to the swords and sorcery travelogue format, to the aging hero who is still a mighty warrior. This is not a bad thing. I had many Conan books as a youth (still do), and only with regret recently turned down the chance to write for the franchise that is now into its 100th book or so.
The book feels like a collection of linked short stories, with each chapter starting in a new place, rather like that old Kung-Fu series. Although I never felt strongly emotionally engaged with the main character, despite his tragic backstory, I did really enjoy reading about his adventures.
The short story format means that each chapter has a beginning, middle, and decisive end, with a new and interesting problem/challenge delivered, puzzled over, and solved. Ideal for bus journeys, but a refreshing change under any circumstances given decades of reading more "modern" fantasy.
I'll note that while almost everything about the book is old school, it does have a more enlightened take on sexual politics. On the cover, after all, despite its Conan-esque vibe, the woman is the standing, more heavily clothed figure, and it's the nearly naked man crouching.
Our man, Hanuvar, is the fabled general of a glorious city-state that was destroyed in his absence by Romans-by-another-name, and Hanuvar could be considered as Hannibal-by-another-name. He's on a quest to free the remnants of his people from captivity within the notRoman empire.
I draw these parallells not to make fun, just to give the vibe - which appealed to me, and I hope a bunch of you will enjoy too.
I had a lot of fun with the book, and in a time when there's a great deal of interest in more traditional epic fantasy, particularly in the self-published domain, I'm sure there's a larger readership for this work out there.
Jones, in addition to being a fine fellow, is a skilled writer and excellent storyteller.
If this sounds even vaguely like your sort of book ... give it a go!
This is a slim paperback (103 pages) with all three of the Book of the Ancestor short stories on paper for the first time, for those folk who w[image]
This is a slim paperback (103 pages) with all three of the Book of the Ancestor short stories on paper for the first time, for those folk who won't read ebooks.
This was a LONG book - 774 pages, with a fairly small font.
I thought it was excellent. Really enjoyed it.
I've known about the book for image: [image]
This was a LONG book - 774 pages, with a fairly small font.
I thought it was excellent. Really enjoyed it.
I've known about the book for a long time but was put off by knowing that there are a great many (20?) point of view characters. I tend to prefer a small number of (often singular) points of view, and to get to know that/those character/s very well.
Contrary to expectations, the large field of points of view worked very well for me. The eponymous Red Knight's point of view gets a significantly larger number of pages than any of the rest, and helps glue it all together, as does the fact that all of the points of view are involved in the same drama, many of them in the same place, the rest converging on it.
I guess part of the reason I had such a good time with this book is that it's very different fantasy from the sort I've been reading lately. It spends A LOT of time on battles where our knight and men-at-arms and archers fight a wide variety of monsters including wyverns, trolls, bug-like things, things a bit like an elf-goblin cross, demons, and more!
These fights are generally small scale but almost always involving groups. So we might have two dozen on one side and a hundred on the other, or one big monster against twenty men etc. So tactics, formations, defences, war machines, and combined action are all important.
Moreover, it rapidly becomes clear that the author knows a vast amount of practical detail about weapons and armour and the clothes worn around them and the maintenance of such things both indoors and out in the wild. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Miles Cameron (AKA Christian Cameron) is a long time re-enactor of medieval encounters, an expert in the combat of the time, and has forgotten more than I shall ever know about the real-world mechanics of all these things.
That level of historical authenticity, projected into a fantasy world (that seems based on Europe / England) is a fresh experience for me and enhanced my enjoyment of what was an extremely well written book. I've read fantasy books by authors with experience of the weapons and armour of various periods, notably Viking (John Gwynne) and post-medieval sword experts (Douglas Hulick & Sebastien de Castell), and enjoyed the expertise on display, but Cameron dials it up to 11.
On top of that, it's a compelling story with lots of moving parts, all juggled in a way that kept me engaged.
The characters are interesting, though they do play second fiddle to the action, and I enjoyed their stories.
There are books I read and for which I can't understand how they aren't universally adored. With The Red Knight I can better appreciate how a number of readers will come away with rather different opinions to mine. It's a book that does a bunch of things extremely well and focuses on them. It serves those up to you on a platter. But if you're hungry for different dishes you might leave unsatisfied. Specifically, if you're not a fan of fights and battle (well, skirmish mostly) scenes, and if you've never cared about how knights get into their armour and whether it really makes a difference in a fight etc ... then this is probably not for you.
I had a great time with the book, and I hope I can find space in my scary-big TBR for the next book in the series.
I finished this on the way back home from Glasgow Worldcon.
It's an excellent read and I think M.L is due to become a much bigger name than she is now I finished this on the way back home from Glasgow Worldcon.
It's an excellent read and I think M.L is due to become a much bigger name than she is now (and she's well known now).
The thing (for me) that Wang does best is that she "sees" people and delivers them whole onto the page. She's great at generating strong emotion in a small number of lines, and she understands and uses restraint very well - it works for her rather like the silences in music build the whole. And like, Robin Hobb, she's wonderful when it comes to bringing relationships to life.
Her prose is good, but it's the above, combined with top class story telling that I'd highlight.
These are all highly commercial skills, and the romance in Blood Over Bright Haven is "more traditional" than the one in The Sword of Kaigen. All reasons I think this book will sell its socks off.
For me, The Sword of Kaigen was an even better book, more sophisticated and unexpected, marred by some rough edges at the start and end. This book is far smoother, and it certain does have sophistication - it's far from being on rails. You will almost certainly be surprised by how things turn out, and Wang digs down through different layers of morality and humanity, making us reassess the situtation several times.
It's clever, emotional, exciting ... all the good stuff. I highly recommend you give it a go. I hugely enjoyed it!
She's another of those authors who bulldozes my ego and makes me admit that I need to do better at this writing game.
The third, final and by far the longest book of Philip Chase's Edan series. This review contains some spoilers for the first two books.
The tril[image]
The third, final and by far the longest book of Philip Chase's Edan series. This review contains some spoilers for the first two books.
The trilogy started off wearing its Tolkein influences on its sleeve, and whilst that never really stopped (we even have a vaguely Gollum-like figure in book 3 and a multi-stage home-coming) the author definitely put his own stamp on the tale and turned it in unexpected directions.
Many authors might have concluded the story with the end of book 2, and many readers might have expected them to. A great victory was had, the fearsome architect of the destruction threading books 1 and 2 was defeated.
But we would have been left with nagging questions about this "elf", this great enigmatic power that allowed the victory against the odds. And we would have been served a filling meal of more traditional fantasy fare that contained, but did not elaborate on, many hints of deeper thinking and more nuance.
In book 3 Chase makes good on the intellectual promises of the first two books. It's still an exciting fantasy book with many battles, deadly warriors, and dangerous magics. But it also leans into the two-sides thinking that we saw in the other books. Chase's 'baddies' had motivations, beliefs, and often reasons to think of themselves as the force for good. For some reason I kept thinking of the Council for Truth and Reconciliation that held sway after apartheid. There was no such council here, or moralising to the reader, but as the factions stumble - often violently - towards peace, hampered by pride, misunderstanding, and the need for vengeance, you feel the lessons that the prophet of Edan is trying to impart.
Chase's interest in Buddhism and eastern mythology enter in an unlikely but effective mix with this more classical fantasy world, and again without lecturing, the story manages to explore more than just the map.
The ending of trilogies and longer series are often emotional as we say goodbye to characters we've spent considerable time with. Chase delivers an affecting conclusion where different characters and places get their chances to withdraw from the reader until we're left with a moment that circles back to the start of book 1.
I very much enjoyed the trilogy. It's well written, exciting, traditional-feeling fantasy with extra dimensions to it, and an intellectual edge that cuts deeper the more pages you turn.
But the headline is that I found it a very enjoyable book that I was keen to read.
I picked this one up primarily because I saw iI have A LOT to say :D
But the headline is that I found it a very enjoyable book that I was keen to read.
I picked this one up primarily because I saw it was doing so well, saleswise, and had an incredibly high average rating on this site, stratospheric compared to the vast majority of fantasy books with 10,000+ ratings (a book's average rating declines with number of ratings).
I'm always keen to see what magic sauce successful authors use.
Additionally, James Islington was a semi-finalist in my SPFBO contest with The Shadow of What Was Lost, so I recognised the name and was extra curious.
For marketing purposes books are often described as mixtures of other famous books - my own One Word Kill was described as Stranger Things meets Ready Player One. Whilst reading this book it was easy for me to play the same game and say to myself that this element came from X and this one from Y.
I'm about to tell you what those Xs and Ys are, but first, let's be absolutely clear that this mapping is absolutely not a claim that the contributions were copied from these sources - it's just a fun game to play. Anthony Ryan's book The Waking Fire contained insanely close ideas to ones I had written in a book 15 years earlier - but that book was never published and it was simply not possible that he had copied them/been inspired by that book of mine. I note this to show how often similar ideas bubble up wholly independently.
Imagine the book is a fine wine and me the wine sleuth, sipping it, gazing into space, and waxing lyrical about notes of oak, Tuscan sun on eastern slopes, a high zinc content in the soil...
Immediately I saw shades of both Blood Song and Empire of Silence - we have what's effectively a war school (Blood Song) and the son of a royal house now down and out in an empire he wants to learn about &/or destroy (Empire of Silence - which in turn has shades of The Name of the Wind).
As the magic system revealed itself I saw strong correlations with David Farland's The Runelords where individuals sacrifice some of their own power (strength, health etc) to their own detriment, and contribute it to another who sits at the top of a pyramid of contributed power, leading to individuals with superhuman strength, speed etc.
We then learn about a physical game / assault course at the school, with moving parts, which is said to help attune your mind to the magic system -- which of course has parallels with the blade-path in Red Sister.
All of these story building blocks have bags of potential, and Islington constructs an addictively entertaining tale out of them.
We have a single first-person PRESENT TENSE point of view, which loads of people winge about when other people do it, but everyone seems to buy into without complaint here. Which just goes to show that you can do whatever you like in writing, as long as you do it well...
Our man is - and I say this with zero disrespect intended, a Gary Stu. He's not just good at everything, he's insanely good at everything. Over the course of the book he is lined up against experts in various fields/disciplines, and it doesn't really matter if he studied it briefly ten years ago or has never used the equipment before ... he's going to win. Again, in the hands of a less talented writer this would draw endless complaint. But it's such damn good fun - we/I eat/ate it up.
There are plenty of books where the main character is super good at everything, The Name of the Wind springs to mind, the Gor books (Tarnsman of Gor), even Prince of Thorns to a significant degree. I feel our man here, young Vis, also falls into the 'archetype' mould where beyond being disadvantaged and being moral/good, he's a bit of a blank onto which it's easy to project ourselves. So we can more easily share in his victories as he doesn't have a bunch of opinions and flaws etc that get in the way of steering him around as a proxy. And this of course is a guilty pleasure that works well in many books. Characters who are more complex and individual can, in many ways, be harder to identify with than the more generic hero.
I mentioned Gor above (a series with MANY problems) purely because it's a good example of a series that has another element that comes into play here, and that's "fantasy chess". A good number of fantasy books over the years have featured "fantasy chess", which is simply a made up game that is not given to us in too much detail other than it's a proxy for war and played on a board (or with cards). In Gor, our hero, Tarl Cabot (who is GREAT at everything) is also great at Fantasy Chess, and beats people at that in important moments to mix it up a bit.
Vis also has his fantasy chess moment.
And a slightly painful animal companion moment where he stops in the middle of something important in an interlude that feels entirely crafted to give us the "important later" animal friend.
And EVEN THEN with every writer bone groaning at the obvious levers being pulled ... I was loving it :D
Another grouch is that because our man's so good at everything we need everyone to be horrible to him and set against him succeeding. And that's not unusual in these school stories - we need a bully etc, and we get them in The Name of The Wind, in Red Sister etc, so I'm not being holier than thou here... my grouch is simply that the explanations for these people's opposition to our man are so thin, especially given the extraordinary lengths these grudges are taken to.
One teacher "doesn't like his name" - i.e. the family name he's adopted into. The teacher knows our guy was plucked off the streets for a purpose and isn't responsible for any of this, and yet on the strength of this old grudge does outrageous stuff that puts his reputation and career on the line.
Another boy has a grudge that our man didn't save his sister in a scenario where our man had no reasonable expectation of saving anyone, wasn't near the girl in question, didn't know her, and (without being asked and at great personal risk) saved many others.
Again - I'll return to my refrain: if I wasn't enjoying the book so much I might have laid my dissatisfaction at the feet of these issues. But I was enjoying it a lot and I've no reservations about giving it 5*.
At the end things get frantic, emotional, and finally rather complicated. It's a great read. I can see why it's doing so well, and recommend you give it a go. You'll probably love it too!
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