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| 2.5 stars out of 5 |
"Yer eyes'll shine when ye see the rivers runnin' silver in Mithril Hall!"
Bruenor
the dwarf, Wulfgar the barbarian, Regis the halfling, and Drizzt the
dark elf fight monsters and magic on their way to Mithril Hall,
centuries-old birthplace of Bruenor and his dwarven ancestors.
Faced
with racism, Drizzt contemplates returning to the lightless underworld
city and murderous lifestyle he abandoned. Wulfgar begins to overcome
his tribes's aversion for magic. And Regis runs from a deadly assassin,
who, allied with evil wizards, is bent on the companions' destruction.
all fo Bruenor's dreams, and the survival of his party, hinge upon the
actions of one brave young woman.
Reading
this series is more fun that doing housework. So that’s what I’ve been
doing—reading this book, and not doing housework (which actually needs
to be done quite badly at the moment).
Now, I never played
Dungeons & Dragons, so I don’t really understand how these Forgotten
Realms books fit into that whole scene, but I did obsessively read and
re-read Tolkien as a teen (and I still re-read him on occasion, when I
need comfort). So it’s pretty difficult for me to overlook how much of
this whole plot is lifted directly from The Hobbit and LOTR. Specifically, Thorin Oakenshield Bruenor Battlehammer and the Mines of Moria
Mithril Hall. I would have felt better about it had Salvatore tried to
change things up a bit, but by and large he used many, many of Tolkien’s
details. It had been done before (The Sword of Shannara anyone?), but I still find it strange that an editor would let it pass.
I
get the impression that Salvatore was one of the first writers to cash
in on the cultural phenomenon of D&D and fantasy literature. It
seems that publishers in the 1980s figured out that these fantasy quest
tales would sell, whether they were well written or not, and flooded the
market with a ton of such material. Perhaps Salvatore was one of the
better ones? Is that why he made it on the NPR’s list of notable science
fiction & fantasy? I note on Wikipedia that there is a listing of
D&D writers—of the 60ish listed, I recognize only 5 names (and only
Salvatore for the D&D writing). His writing is very florid and
everything, even eating, is very dramatic.
If you enjoy
these books, read them. Far be it from me to discourage your enjoyment.
But if you, like me, find them a bit lackluster, let me make some
recommendations: if you really enjoy Bruenor the dwarf or Regis the
halfling, read Tolkien (if you haven’t already). If Wulfgar the
barbarian is your favourite character, try Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian books. If you enjoy the magic and the adventure, look for Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
series. All three of these authors can really write—the plots flow,
there are shades of gray in their heroes and villains, and their
vocabulary is excellent, and they write beautifully.
Since I’m
certainly at risk here of sounding like a cranky old woman, let me also
note that I think these books would be excellent for young readers—the
violence isn’t excessive or described in too much detail, the romance is
very chaste, good & evil are very obvious, and the vocabulary
shouldn’t be too taxing. (But do try to encourage them to read the good
stuff like the books listed above once you have them hooked on
reading—you’re never too young to read the good writing).
This is book number 235 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy reading project.
 |
| 3.5 stars out of 5 |
Journey to the land of the dead. All expenses paid!
Not my idea of an ideal vacation, but this was work. After all, even an assassin has to earn a living.
The trouble is, everyone knows that a living human cannot walk the Paths of the Dead, and return, alive, to the land of men.
But
being an Easterner is not exactly like being human, by Dragaeran
standards anyway. Thus, the rule doesn't apply to me... I hope.
Another prequel, as we learn
both how Vlad came to the be ruthless assassin that he is and how he
got involved in/survived one of his old war stories. Brust must not have
figured out yet how to move on after book 3, in which Vlad and his
wife, Cawti, find themselves in conflict over a resistance movement.
A
return to the past gives us the old Vladimir, who is cheerfully amoral
and who only experiences twinges of conscience from time to time. The
wise-cracking Loiosh (his familiar, a flying lizard) provides some comic
relief, as do Vlad’s wry comments. I am sure that Brust must have been
familiar with Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series—he created
another charismatic criminal in Vlad, though maybe not quite so
conscience-free as Slippery Jim DiGriz. Giving Vlad magical talents was
an inspired addition.
Because there are two stories involved,
there is a fair bit of shifting back and forth between the two. This can
be a bit confusing until you get into the rhythm of it. Once you are
aware of what to expect, things go smoothly.
Series like this one
foreshadow the snarky, smart-cracking main characters that I currently
enjoy in urban fantasy. Vlad’s weakness (teleportation makes him
nauseous) humanizes him a bit. He also builds a group of people around
himself—perhaps not friends, but at least co-operative allies. Those are
perhaps some of the reasons why Vlad’s stories appeal to me as much as
they do. I can see Vlad as the predecessor of characters like Harry
Dresden (The Dresden Files) and Atticus O'Sullivan (The Iron Druid).
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| 4.5 stars out of 5 |
Hag-Seed is a
re-visiting of Shakespeare’s play of magic and illusion, The Tempest,
and will be the fourth novel in the Hogarth Shakespeare series.
The
Tempest is set on a remote island full of strange noises and creatures.
Here, Prospero, the deposed Duke of Milan, plots to restore the
fortunes of his daughter Miranda by using magic and illusion -- starting
with a storm that will bring Antonio, his treacherous brother, to him.
All Prospero, the great sorcerer, needs to do is watch as the action he
has set in train unfolds.
In Margaret Atwood’s ‘novel take’ on
Shakespeare’s original, theatre director Felix has been unceremoniously
ousted from his role as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Festival.
When he lands a job teaching theatre in a prison, the possibility of
revenge presents itself – and his cast find themselves taking part in an
interactive and illusion-ridden version of The Tempest that will change
their lives forever.
I really enjoy Margaret
Atwood’s writing and her sense of humour. I also really enjoy
Shakespeare’s works—in fact, I’m working on a project of seeing all 37
of his plays performed. So this modern retelling of The Tempest was right up my alley.
Felix
(Atwood’s Propero) is reduced from the avant-garde theatre director of
the Makeshiweg Festival to an older guy living in a hovel in the
countryside. Maybe not quite as dramatic as being a deposed Duke, but
these changes never feel good. Felix takes a number of years to come to
terms with the loss of the job that he had derived most of his identity
from, tacked on to earlier tragedies which deprived him of his wife and
daughter, Miranda. Eventually, we see him take his talents to a
correctional facility to teach literacy and theatre arts to prisoners.
[Atwood seems to be using some of her research from The Heart Goes Last
and using a prison setting again]. Felix is surprised to find that he
enjoys the work and that the inmates seem to benefit from it too.
And then the opportunity for revenge presents itself! As I knew it had to, to mirror the original work. I also was aware that The Tempest
isn’t the most logical or sensible of plot lines—there’s a lot of magic
and mayhem. The revenge plot in Atwood’s version is also highly
unlikely—that’s the main reason for my deduction of half a star from my
rating, but I’m dithering about whether that’s even fair, given the
unlikelihood of the events in the original. But somehow, Atwood makes it
work quite well, getting everyone appropriately punished, restored,
and/or married, just as Shakespeare did.
Bonus points for Felix
only allowing his students to swear in Shakespearean form—they must
scour the play for the swear words and use only those while in the class
space! [I notice that Atwood lists a Shakespearean insult generator as a
source in her bibliography]. And for all the ways that Felix makes The Tempest more palatable to the men with useful reinterpretations.
For
those who are interested in seeing the prison system from the inside, I
would recommend Stephen Reid’s brutally beautiful memoir A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden, which was also in Atwood’s bibliography.
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| 3 out of 5 stars |
In his modern
classics One Man’s Owl and Mind of the Raven, Bernd Heinrich has written
memorably about his relationships with wild ravens and a great horned
owl. In One Wild Bird at a Time, Heinrich returns to his great love:
close, day-to-day observations of individual wild birds. There are
countless books on bird behavior, but Heinrich argues that some of the
most amazing bird behaviors fall below the radar of what most birds do
in aggregate. Heinrich’s “passionate observations [that] superbly mix
memoir and science” (New York Times Book Review) lead to fascinating
questions — and sometimes startling discoveries. A great crested
flycatcher, while bringing food to the young in their nest, is attacked
by the other flycatcher nearby. Why? A pair of Northern flickers
hammering their nest-hole into the side of Heinrich’s cabin deliver the
opportunity to observe the feeding competition between siblings, and to
make a related discovery about nest-cleaning. One of a clutch of
redstart warbler babies fledges out of the nest from twenty feet above
the ground, and lands on the grass below. It can’t fly. What will happen
next? Heinrich “looks closely, with his trademark ‘hands-and-knees
science’ at its most engaging, [delivering] what can only be called
psychological marvels of knowing” (Boston Globe). An eminent biologist
shares the joys of bird-watching and how observing the anomalous
behaviors of individual birds has guided his research.
If you are a back yard bird
watcher who keeps a nature journal, you might well take inspiration
from Bernd Heinrich. He takes it a step further than most of us would, I
suspect, because of his background as a biology professor. For
instance, I don’t know how many people would be willing to thaw, count,
and examine grouse scat in order to prove a theory!
The writing
certainly reminded me that the author has an academic background. It is
not as stiff as a professional paper, but neither is it as
conversational as I would prefer for such a work. Having said that, it
is inspirational in the level of observation and effort that Heinrich
was willing to put into his record. A birder doesn’t have to travel to
the far-flung places on the map in order to have a satisfactory birding
life—looking deep into the world just outside the window has its
rewards. His illustrations are admirable (much superior to anything in
my field notebook) although certainly not up to field guide quality,
encouraging to those of us who will never be professional artists.
I
would imagine that this book would have a limited audience of those who
are devoted birders or nature enthusiasts, but I think such people
would find it a worthwhile read. Definitely an stimulus to me to spend
more time in the outdoors and in the environments right around my own
city and to take more time to watch each bird and its behaviour.
 |
| 3.5 out of 5 stars |
When
nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a beast-like
creature arrives to demand retribution for it. Dragged to a treacherous
magical land she only knows about from legends, Feyre discovers that
her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin—one of the lethal, immortal
faeries who once ruled their world.
As she dwells on his estate,
her feelings for Tamlin transform from icy hostility into a fiery
passion that burns through every lie and warning she's been told about
the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But an ancient, wicked shadow
grows over the faerie lands, and Feyre must find a way to stop it . . .
or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.
This story is an
interesting mash-up of a couple older stories—there are elements of
Beauty & the Beast plus the old Tam Lin fairy tale. Please don’t go
into this expecting anything too complex! I read it while stranded at
home with a throat infection and it was the perfect antidote, easy to
follow (or swallow?).
The first part of the tale, Feyre’s
abduction & captivity in fairy lands, is very much a Beauty &
the Beast tale, as she gets to know Tamlin and realizes that he is not
the brute that she has anticipated. Once that is achieved, she is ready
to take on the semi-impossible tasks that are set for her by the Queen,
as in the old Tam Lin story. Feyre is very much a Mary Sue character,
the strong one who has taken care of her mortal family, taught herself
to hunt and to paint. That she could immediately paint well enough to
impress the magically talented fae was pretty difficult to believe.
I
did find that the heroine, Feyre, changed rather easily, suddenly, and
conveniently. I enjoyed the tale despite that, but then I have a
definite soft spot for the world of Fairy. Just once, however, I would
like it if the big bad enemy could be a Fairy King instead of an evil Fairy Queen.
I’m
surprised at the maturity of the themes explored in a young adult
novel—it had been my impression that they didn’t usually explore
sexuality explicitly, which Roses & Thorns definitely does.
I am also left wondering at the ending and where there is left for the
author to go with this tale. But, there seem to be 6 books planned in
the series, so I will check out A Court of Mist and Fury in the near future to see what Tamlin and Feyre get up to next.
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| 4 out of 5 stars |
After breaking
from life with the Pack, mercenary Kate Daniels and her mate—former
Beast Lord Curran Lennart—are adjusting to a very different pace. While
they’re thrilled to escape all the infighting, Curran misses the
constant challenges of leading the shapeshifters.
So when the
Pack offers him its stake in the Mercenary Guild, Curran seizes the
opportunity—too bad the Guild wants nothing to do with him and Kate.
Luckily, as a veteran merc, Kate can take over any of the Guild’s
unfinished jobs in order to bring in money and build their reputation.
But what Kate and Curran don’t realize is that the odd jobs they’ve been
working are all connected.
An ancient enemy has arisen, and
Kate and Curran are the only ones who can stop it—before it takes their
city apart piece by piece…
Another enjoyable installment in the Kate Daniels series and I am now caught up to the latest volume that my library has. Magic Binds is still ‘on order’ and I’m tenth in line for when it arrives & gets processed. Yay!
I’m
enjoying the new mythologies being used, in line with Kate’s discovery
of her Middle Eastern heritage and how the authors are incorporating
creatures from previous books (ghouls) into their new framework.
In many ways, this story should have been over in the last book, but after that Star Wars-esque “I am your father” moment in Magic Breaks,
how could we not want to know how Kate’s relationship with her god-like
father would go? Just like all the rest of us, she gets occasionally
cornered into doing things that she doesn’t actually want to do (dinner
at Applebee’s, anyone?) and despite her protests, there is father-like
interference.
I enjoyed the running gag through the book of
random people telling Kate how obnoxious the Beast Lord is, always when
she had Curran in tow. The humour in the series is one of the huge
pluses for me. I also enjoyed seeing an equal relationship between Kate
& Curran and getting a glimpse into what is happening in the Pack
that they have left behind. Most entertaining!
I am almost sorry
to be caught up on this series—I’m going to be waiting impatiently for
the as-yet-untitled number 10 sometime in 2017.
 |
| 4 out of 5 stars |
The Culture--a
humanoid/machine symbiotic society--has thrown up many great Game
Players. One of the best is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, Player of Games, master
of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh
travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel & incredibly wealthy, to try
their fabulous game, a game so complex, so like life itself, that the
winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh
accepts the game and with it the challenge of his life, and very
possibly his death.
First, let me say how much I
want to live in The Culture! Where even some of the machine drones go
bird watching! I really enjoyed Consider Phelbas earlier this year and I liked The Player of Games even more.
Jernau
Morat Gurgeh (Gurgeh to most people) is well known in The Culture for
his game playing abilities—there isn’t a game of strategy that he
doesn’t excel at and he’s spent his life either playing the games or
writing about them (and other game players). This is totally foreign to
me, as I avoid almost all games as often as I can—I don’t find them fun,
I find them boring. Why would I spend my valuable time on something
that produces no real effect in my world? That’s one of the things
that’s so fascinating about The Culture—people have unlimited time for
anything that catches their fancy.
The interesting thing about
the beginning of the book is that Gurgeh has started to share my boredom
with the game playing scene. His ennui is palpable during the first
pages, as he realizes that he’s been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
This is how he gets tempted to try the official game of the Empire of
Azad, a non-Culture society, a game with real-life consequences because
the winner becomes Emperor. Gurgeh re-discovers his enthusiasm as he
wades into the fray—adrenaline & testosterone seem to be the spices
that wake him up from his torpor. But is the famous game player being
played?
A teensy bit predictable, but a very enjoyable journey to
get to that ending. Banks tends to wrap things up more neatly that I
care for—I prefer a more ambiguous ending—but as I say, the drama on the
journey makes up for that. I look forward to Use of Weapons sometime in 2017!
 |
| 3 out of 5 stars |
Once upon a time -
there was terror and dragons and princes... evil wizards and dark
dungeons... and an enchanted castle and a terrible secret. With this
enthralling masterpiece of magical evil and daring adventure, Stephen
King takes you in his icy grip and leads you into the most shivery and
irresistible kingdom of wickedness... The Eyes of the Dragon.
This
seems to be one of those books that people either love or hate—how
strange to find myself right in the middle! I’ve never been one of
King’s Constant Readers and have only read a few of his books over the
last number of years. This one is written very much in the form of a
fairy tale and is dedicated to his daughter, who may have heard the
first versions of it as bedtime material? I was disappointed that the
dragon of the title was only a mounted head on the wall—live dragons are
much more entertaining.
King recycles some material here—anyone who has read The Stand will recognize the villain, Flagg. There is also some overlap with the Dark Tower series.
I found The Stand to be a very black & white tale, with very little nuance. The Eyes of the Dragon
takes that to a whole new level, despite the fact that King tries very
hard to convince us that Thomas isn’t as bad as he seems. However, that
is the nature of fairy tales, so it fits in this case.
I chose to
read TEotD because it was on the NPR’s list of Science Fiction &
Fantasy finalists back in 2011 (they were asking people of vote on the
top titles in the field). Other children’s books were omitted from the
list (e.g. Harry Potter) so I’m not sure how this one squeaked through
to be included.
It is the 232nd book that I have read from this NPR list.
