Books shelved under “Fantasy”

I have to admit that I'm not a Harry Turtledove connoisseur. I read a couple of his books when I was younger and have somehow retained romantic memories of how great a writer he was. This has motivated me to go back and read his oeuvre. I started with this series more by coincidence than anything: I noticed The Breath of God on my library's New Books shelf and took out both it and this…

Honestly, I'm a little intimidated.

I didn't realize that The Master and Margarita is an "unfinished" masterpiece, complete in its narrative but still unpolished prior to Bulgakov's death. As with any published unfinished work, there's a certain amount of third-party editing that will alter the interpretation of the text. To compound this problem, I'm an Anglophone reading a translation from Russia. I'm not as familiar with Russian literature or Russian history as I could be.…

The arc of Codex Alera is certainly proceeding in the proper direction. I liked Furies of Calderon, but I really liked Academ's Fury. Although the plot itself wasn't as inspired and thoughtful as it could have been, it had hints of originality. Where the second book of the Codex Alera truly shines is in its characterization and the difficult themes therein revealed. This isn't just 400 pages of macho "we've got to save…

It took me several years after discovering Jim Butcher to actually read his epic fantasy series, the Codex Alera. It was worth the wait. Furies of Calderon is everything I like in a fantasy series. I'm going to try to avoid comparing the Codex Alera to Butcher's urban fantasy, the Dresden Files. If you're really interested in how they stack up, skip to to the end.

The story takes place in Alera, ruled by First…

As a caveat, I found the description on this edition of the book quite misleading. Its tone is glib. Phrases like "task force" and "add in a hapless fire inspector who's just trying to get his paperwork in order" cultivates a tongue-in-cheek feel that made me expect a zanier book than Cherie Priest delivers. So if you're basing your decision to read the book on the description, don't be surprised if Fathom defies your expectations.

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There are so many ways to describe Ekaterina Sedia's The Alchemy of Stone. It's a sombre symphony of motifs, ranging from women's independence and sexuality to the ramifications of rapid industrialization. And deceptively so—despite the intriguing back cover copy and the seductive tagline, "a novel of automated anarchy & clockwork lust," I wasn't quite convinced of The Alchemy of Stone's brilliance until the denouement, when everything suddenly came together in a wonderful, cathartic…

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…