Books shelved under “Fantasy”

I dug into The Years of Rice and Salt with much gusto, for its premise was an intriguing example of why alternate history can be so seductive. Yet almost immediately, my expectations were completely torn apart and shoved in my face. Sometimes this can be good; other times it ruins a book completely. In this case, while I quite enjoyed some of the philosophical aspects of the book, it failed to sustain my interest for…

Too often a good fantasy book with a solid story suffers because its author is too busy showing off the awesome world in which the story takes place. Not so for The Briar King! No, instead of bad worldbuilding ruining good writing, Keyes' writing ruins his superb worldbuilding.

The Briar King starts with a prelude 2000 years in the past, when humanity unites to overthrow its Skasloi slave masters. In the present, humanity has…

As the title implies, Imager is the first book in a new fantasy series where certain people can visualize things into existence. The cover of the book is a bit mislead—at least it was for me—because at first I thought that people did magic by drawing things. It's much cooler than that; once again, L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s talent for worldbuilding, and in particular for creating systems of magic, is evident throughout this book.

Modesitt manages…

I won a copy of Stones of Time through Goodreads' first reads giveaway.

This is the sequel to Demons of the Past, and immediately I liked Stones of Time better. Although Demons of the Past was OK, I felt that its plot did not delve deep enough into the social ramifications of this neo-medieval America, nor was the plot complex enough to make up for the dearth of dimension in Durante's characters. Stones…

Four hundred years have passed since the fall of civilization As We Know It, society has reverted to a series of medieval monarchies, where technology has become magic and the genetic mutant experiments who now roam the Earth are the eponymous "demons of the past." Our protagonists are on a quest for a magical ocarina needed to refresh the magical barrier keeping more demons from escaping their four-hundred-year-old prison. Of course, soon we learn…

It's always a pleasure to sit down and begin a book you know you'll enjoy. It takes a lot of the pressure off, as a reader. You don't have to worry that if you take the book out with you somewhere you'll end up wanting to dump it after five pages and find yourself with nothing to read. Although I read The Trouble with Demons on my day off in a chair outside my house,…

Sometimes I worry I've become too cynical in my old age (says the nineteen-year-old). When I read The Magic of Recluce for the first time, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, and I went on to devour the next several books of the Recluce saga before promptly breaking for lunch.... (Well, OK, the span of several months may have elapsed sometime among all that, but you get the idea.) Now I…

The Confessions of Max Tivoli was a nice break from the plot-driven fiction I've been reading of late. Conforming to the style of a memoir, the book tells the story of the eponymous character from his point of view. The catch, of course, is that Max ages backward--born with the appearance of a seventy-year-old, growing younger until he only appears twelve at the time of his writing. Max's unusual attribute causes no end of trouble…

I read Soon I Will Be Invincible in a single sitting (although the two-hour rain delay before the ball game began helped). It has an easygoing, tongue-in-cheek style that makes it a pleasure to read. Sometimes it feels like a comic book, other times it feels like a parody of the superhero/supervillain genre in general. In making an effort not to be too serious, Austin Grossman has created a literary mélange of Douglas Coupland–style humour,…

On the whole not a bad book, but it didn't strike a chord with me. The story was lacklustre and the writing, while at times good, was also pretty bland. That’s Underground’s major problem: I couldn’t bring myself to love it, nor could I let myself hate it. It’s mediocre.

Harper Blaine, the female once-nearly-dead PI with a touch of magic, is a fairly likable character. She doesn’t get on my nerves the way…

Faerie Tale is at times delightful urban fantasy and at other times heavy-handed and forced. I really liked it the first time I read it, several years ago, but upon re-reading it I’m forced to pay attention to its flaws as well as its fun parts.

My attraction to and enjoyment of Faerie Tale stems from the atmosphere that Feist creates and sustains through the entire book. The threat of the mischievous faeries to the…

There's more to epic fantasy than sword fighting and magical duels. Patrick Rothfuss seems to know this, and that's really the best way I can think to praise The Name of the Wind.

Since this is a story about a single man, it seems appropriate to start my review by talking about him as a character. A man of many names, Kvothe first appears as an innocuous innkeeper in a small town. He's hiding,…

In one sentence: my review of The Man with the Golden Torc stands double. In fact, I'm beginning to feel almost as repetitive as Simon R. Green, just by reiterating this! However, there are things I missed in my previous, somewhat-hastily-written review, so I shall address those now.

Firstly, Green has too many characters and doesn't know what to do with them. I wonder if he just can't control his urge to explore every cool…

After discovering Simon R. Green through his Nightside series, I was looking forward to this new series. While The Man With the Golden Torc is occasionally entertaining, overall I was underwhelmed.

The culprit in this case is a repetitiveness on the part of the author. He reuses certain phrases often, and it's not clear whether this is done intentionally, for the sake of irony, or if he's just not that inventive. Also, is this book…

I won't lie: I plucked this book from the library shelf because it had a blurb from Jim Butcher on the cover. I was not disappointed.

Simon R. Green's created a wonderful milieu in the Nightside, a shady alterna-London where it's eternal night and its supernatural inhabitants fit the mood. His protagonist, John Taylor, is the perfect mix of capable and scary-dangerous. He's not quite as fun as Harry Dresden, but he's got a good…

Raymond E. Feist is probably among my favourite fantasy writers, simply because he's mastered the ability to create such realistic fantasy settings while still populating them with fantastic feats of magic. However, Rides a Dread Legion did not live up to my expectations for a new book in a new series of Feist's ever-expanding oeuvre.

A caveat: my experience with the Riftwar Cycle is spotty at best; I think I've read at least one book…

What began as a fairly bland, contrived plot soon became an entertaining adventure. Living with the Dead was a pleasant surprise.

I can't say many good things about the book's main character, Robyn Peltier. Kelley Armstrong has her flee the scene of a murder not once, but twice, purely because the plot requires Robyn to be a murder suspect. From that point onward, I expected the book to be fairly clunky. Instead, it rapidly…

Is it just me, or are books about dead characters living in an afterlife increasingly common? There must be something innately fascinating about making one's protagonist already dead. Fortunately, the eponymous afterlife known as "Elsewhere" is a pleasant, non-threatening environment where dead people age backward and then are born again as babies.

If I had a choice, reincarnation would not be my first choice of afterlife. The concept hinges on the idea that everyone has,…

Throughout Scar Night, Alan Campbell occasionally manages to create pockets of drama and suspense, but he fails to sustain this atmosphere for the duration of the book.

The city of Deepgate, suspended above an abyss by chains, is an interesting concept in and of itself. To go along with this temporal construction, Campbell has created an interesting ecclesiastical mythology centred around the abyss and what haunts its depths. The people of Deepgate believe that…

Why, why did Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water precede this book?! Ink and Steel possesses the best qualities of its predecessors and few of their flaws. Elizabeth Bear's skill flourishes in an alternate Elizabethan England where Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are agents for the Queen and have dealings with Fae.

By far, my reviews of the previous books singled out an overly-complicated mythology as the Promethean Age's major flaw. Ink and Steel…