Fantasy Book Critic

Catherynne Valente author of the acclaimed "Orphan's Tales" duology reviewed HERE(In the Night Garden) and HERE(In the Cities of Coins and Spice) as well as the recent Palimpsest, needs our help!!

Times are challenging today and sometimes bad fortune hits unexpectedly. Last night I saw THIS on sffworld and today Cheryl Morgan also talks a bit about Ms. Valente's project as a way of coping with the hard times.

So in Ms. Valente words:

"Over the course of the Palimpsest tour, people asked me one thing more than anything else.

What about The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland? Is it a real book? Will you write it?

And I said no. It's impossible, a YA book that is a book-within-a-book in a deeply non-YA novel. I even said no to a very sweet six year old.

Starting Monday, I will start posting chapters of a full-length novel version of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. I will be writing it in real time, posting every Monday. It will be free to read--but please know that the sheer calories to make my brain create it require funding, and I would very much appreciate your support. Pay whatever you like for it, whatever you think it's worth. It's kind of like an old-fashioned rent party. There's a button at the bottom of the post to start things out.

This is a book about a little girl named September who gets herself a ticket to Fairyland on the back of The Green Wind and a somewhat cranky Leopard. There she discovers the realm of the capricious Marquess and the dangers of the Perverse and Perilous Sea. It is going to be something else."

So go and check it out and help if possible. Check out the The Omikuji project too, maybe something there will be for you!!

10:24 AM |

Posted by Liviu |

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Thursday, June 11, 2009

The PKD Award Nominees, Part 5 - Fast Forward, Vol. 2, ed. by Lou Anders (Reviewed by Fábio Fernandes)

Fast Forward 2 is an above average anthology. So far, it has collected a fair share of rave reviews -- and nominations: some of its stories, like Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow´s True Names and Paolo Bacigalupi´s The Gambler, were nominated for this year´s Hugo Award. FF2 was also the sole anthology running this year for the PKD Award.

Though I´m not familiar with the nomination criteria for the PKDs, my guess is that FF2 was chosen because of its variety. This is not a theme-oriented anthology, like Ann and Jeff VanderMeer´s The New Weird and Steampunk, for example, two other excellent anthologies, but what it would possibly lacks in focus it more than compensates for in strength and quality. Am I being too vague? Ok, then let´s move to the stories. I assure you they are everything but vague.

The anthology opens with a steampunk space adventure. In Catherine Drewe, Paul Cornell tells the story of Hamilton, a seasoned Irish Major in the service of the British Empire, who is comissioned to do an out-of-uniform job. He must go to Mars and kill revolutionary Catherine Drewe, who is working with Russian mercenaries to take over the red planet from the Czar and topple down the domination of the House of Savoy in the Solar System. It´s an intriguing story, in part because of its kind of "counter-steampunk" style: technology here has advanced to cloning and nanotech, though mores and fashion are pretty much Victorian/Edwardian. Maybe not likely, but what the hell! It is appealing, it is beaufitul, and it is believable on the page. It can´t get much better than this.

Kay Kenyon´s Cyto Couture also reminds us of a steampunk-ish setting, but not enough to make us yawn and think, oh, same stuff again? Definitely not. Nat is a trash boy who, after his mom´s death, goes to work in the plantation great house. He is going to be servant to the astonishingly beautiful Lorelei, first daughter of the plantation and designer of haute couture. She makes garments of living tissue, and gives Nat a job taking care of the mitos, somers, and golgi, basically pillars of synthetic flesh bathed in nutrients and that exsude clothing. But he treats them so well that he creates a bonding with them, and, together with fat, ugly Deri, second daughter of the plantation, he will (though in spite of himself, for he´s dumb as a doorknob) change things there forever.

In The Sun Also Explodes, Chris Nakashima-Brown pays a beautiful homage to Ernest Hemingway, telling the story of an impotent man in a far future of posthuman beings where everybody can be (and have) whatever he/she/it desires, and shows that size (not even performance) matters after all - but to be master of your own desires is the most important thing in the all-too-real end. The scenery and the endless, movable posthuman feasts are a treat to the eyes, to the palate, and to the imagination. Nakashima-Brown does a beautiful job with words in this story.

The Kindness of Strangers is one more reason why I love Nancy Kress. She has the ability of telling a story as if it was a real, daily affair - even though it involved major posthuman genetic mutations (Beggars in Spain) or strange alien invasions (the recent Steal Across The Sky). In this story, Kress tells us the end of mankind as we know it. One day, suddenly, every major city in the world is vaporized. Aliens in human form arrive and treat the survivors with exceeding kindness, offering food and shelter. Humans, of course, despise them, and even try to kill them, but they are indestructible (if they are holograms of if they have powerful force fields, it´s far beyond our understanding). Jenny, a woman in one of the refugee camps, caught in the middle of all this pain, suffering, and confusion, must cope with the growing anger of his lover, Eric, who left wife and child to die in Chicago only to make peace with her after a breakup. Jenny must keep her head straight and do all her best to help when things start hitting the fan and people start getting hurt. The Kindness... reads like a classic, top-notch Twilight Zone episode. And I´m a huge fan of the classic series.

Along with David Marusek, Jack Skillingstead is one of the most intriguing authors I have met in the past few years via the pages of Asimov´s. Alone with an Inconvenient Companion is almost a slipstream story, but it keeps nagging at you with that strange feeling you have only know for real when you have known too many hotels in unknown cities (I have); Douglas Fulcher is in a hotel bar, supposedly for a convention, minding his own business, when he is approached by a much younger woman from another convention who just wants to make conversation. He´s not much in the mood, but complies all the same. And, when he starts talking to her about his fervent belief in a sort of "cyborg conspiracy" among us, well, you can´t blame him. If the story was just about that, we would call it a slipstream and that would be that. But there is more (with Skillingstead, as with Marusek, there´s always more). Nothing too fancy, nothing too miraculous. But it´s definitely something that keeps disturbing us long after we finished reading the story.

True Names, by Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, is, along with Chris Nakashima-Brown´s story, another major feat of the written word. In the extremely far future, a being called Beebe (who apparently contains inside herself - the use of the pronoun here is arbitrary, obviously - a plethora of information, a veritable universe of it) is threatened by a former version of herself, who calls himself Brobdignag. It´s a cosmic, eternal (from human POV) battle for dominance. This battle, as we watch the dialogue of Nadja and Alonso (both non-human filters), have already happened many times before - epic apocalypses in a post-human continuum of a very far (and uncomprehensible) future. Cory Doctorow is one of the best names of his generation. He is one the very few writers who knows how to conjure words of technique and make them real, because they are, and them integrate them in science-fictional systems. He pulls a sort of Greg-Eganism, only without all the math and quantum mechanics - or with all of it, but wrapped in a different package. True Names mixes hard sf, mythopoetics, opera (and space opera, to an extent) and a flavor of the 19th Century with a Modernist language - something akin to what the Dada and the Surrealists did, but with a sense. It also has a taste of the French feuilletons of old, like The Count of Monte Cristo - with sockpuppets! References are also apparently abundant: characters like Nadja reminded me of André Breton´s classic Surrealist novel, and wouldn´t Alonzo be a tribute to famous mathematician Alonzo Church? A complex, multilayered story, which should be read not one, but several times.

In the short Molly's Kids, Jack McDevitt plays deliciously with the Frankenstein Complex (or it would be the Hal Complex?), throwing us in the middle of a story (the launching of the first AI probe to a distant system) where not everything is what it seems to be, for the probe happens to be a very reluctant one and must be coaxed in a very convincingly way in order to get off. Ok, maybe all of you will think, "oh, I been down this road before. It´s something Matrix-like, right? " No, it´s not. And it´s not the Wachoswki Brothers, it´s Jack McDevitt. Respect! This story, short as it was, gave me the creeps and made me think of Harlan Ellison and his classic I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Molly's Kids gave me what every short story should give his/her readers: awe.

Paul McAuley´s Adventure is a welcome respite after the emotional rollercoasters of the previous two stories. It is a very short piece featuring some years in the life of Ian Brown, a British guy whose family was killed in the Third World War and who won a ticket in the emigration lottery, a place in one of the arks to the colony world First Foot. He was no hero, but simply a civil servant, who wanted to live an easy, cozy life. Soon after arriving at the planet, he married an American woman he met on the ark, and they settled down, for a quite tranquil, adventureless life. So adventureless that, seven years later, Brown looks around and sees that his life has amounted for nothing. Will he be able to change it? Will he have time yet?

Not Quite Alone in the Dream Quarter is a Mike Resnick and Pat Cadigan collaboration. It´s a kind of noir story with elements of Outer Limits/Twilight Zone. Apparently it´s a typical murder scenario: a man wakes up with a dead body and he has no remembrance of who the dead is. But he knows one thing: it is not a human being: it is a Dream. For this is a world in which Dreams have substance, and they inhabit it along with "normal" humans, who has no jurisdiction over them. They look like humans, they bleed like humans, they can be killed like humans, but other than that they are very alien. All in all, a good, a bit terrifying story, but it lacks something in the end. It´s as if if - maybe just as the Dreams themselves - they lackes resolution, and also closure.

In Eligible Boy, Ian McDonald returns to his Future India setting of stories like Sanjeev and Robotwallah with this homage (at least in its title) to Vikram Seth´s A Suitable Boy. McDonald tells the exploits of shallow Jasbir Dayal, a boy whose only thought is to be beautiful in 21st Century India. He must take an exceedingly good care of himself and his body, for in a Delhi of twenty million people, "and a middle class with four times as many males as females", things are tough, and if he wants to find the wife of his dreams, then he must fight for her with all his weapons. His parents will go even to the trouble to hire him a matchmaker, but this is only not too disgraceful too him, but also unfashionable, and for Jasbir, as for all Eligible Boys, fashion is of the essence. What Jasbir couldn´t expect is that his housemate, Sujay, also an artificial-intelligence designer for Indian soap-operas, would create just for him a persona to help him winning the hearts of a suitable girl. The aeai "Ram Tarun Das, Master of Grooming, Grace, and Gentlemanliness" will then teach etiquette, discipline, and even Tango lessons to Jasbir. And then he meets Shulka, a very interesting girl with whom he starts a game of seduction - with some interesting, clever twists. It´s a very nice story, with only the appearance of shallowness and suddenly an almost bottomless pit opening from beneath the reader´s feet right at the end.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch´s SeniorSource is an old-fashioned detective story - and old means old. SeniorSource is a Moon-based company which outsources "all kinds of highly skilled jobs, from laser surgery to art restoration. Even detective work, with its combination of interrogation, observation, and forensic skills, could succeed from a distance." And it did: the no-name protagonist, one of the younger elderly workers for the company (because that´s what SeniorSource is all about: hiring retirees who nobody wants anymore on Earth, because they would be literally dead weight down there), finds a corpse - a little boy, son of Shane Proctor, head of the largest mining company on the Moon. The thing is: he has to be not only a detective but also an expert scientist, a lawyer, and an authority on the Moon in just a few short hours - for his own sake, for the tiniest mistake in determining the causa mortis of the kid could mean his being sent back to Earth. And, after five years living on the Moon, that would mean certain death to him. SeniorSource is an intriguing, well-told story not only on whodunits and forensics, but most of all on ethics and morality.

Karl Schroeder and Tobias S. Buckell´s Mitigation takes the ecological proactive approach the hard way. Almost in a Kim-Stanley-Robinson fashion (that´s a compliment, by the way), they tell the story of two men, a Caribbean and an Inuit, caught in the middle of greedy companies, ecoterrorists, and UN regulations in the middle of a now ravaged Arctic Ocean and trying to make a difference - but not necessarily being the good guys: they associate with a scientist plus the Russian mafia to steal some patented DNA samples of extinct grains so they can thrive far from the greedy claws of these corporations. But, naturally, things never are what they seem to be: full of twists and turns (not to mention the occasional explosion and shooting) Mitigation reads like a mix of James Bond plus Indiana Jones story. Fast-pacing, action-packed, choose your high-octane adjective and there you go. A hell of an adventure tale.

In Long Eyes, Jeff Carlson reminded me of Anne McCaffrey´s The Ship Who Sang, but only in its basic idea: a spaceship directly connected to the brain of its pilot. All else differs: Clara, the pilot, still a homo sapiens despite being "a human-shaped component in a cradle of gel and splice-wire", was in fact a failed experiment, "grown ex utero, originally gene-crafted to be an asteroid mining dock controller". Then she convinces her creators to let her go, and they fit her into a ram ship, where she become a sort of USS Enterprise of one, boldly going where no one has gone before, in a mission that is already six hundred years old at the beginning of the story. Eventually she gets in touch with human colonies, but she never seems quite to fit, preferring to stay apart - until she finds the wreckage of a ship in an habitable planet, but its survivors, or their descendants, were reduced to the condition of savages, becoming, in a way, less human than her. This is a quite common trope in science fiction, a classical one indeed, but Carlson does a very nice job here, and his portrayal of Clara is so credible that sometimes we tend to forget she´s a post-human entity.

The volume closes with Paolo Bacigalupi´s The Gambler. The story takes place in the near future America, where Ong, a exile from Laos, must use all his gambling skills (inherited from his father) to survive as a journalist interested in feature really interesting ecological and poltical stories. The question is - is the people, so much into popularity, "karma points" and such, still buying human interest stories? Ong will compromise to get what he wants and interview Kulaap, a famous actress from his country who is the talk of the town - and who he despises. But he will play the game - even though, and that´s the supreme irony of the story - he is no gambler at all. And that´s what makes this story a pungent one.

The reason I took so long to review this anthology is that I wanted to read it at least twice so I could review all of their stories the way they deserved to be reviewed. Lou Anders has outdone himself as an editor, and all that I have to say is that I´m looking forward to FF 3.

12:38 PM |

Posted by Fabio Fernandes |

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Interview with John Connolly (Interviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)

Official John Connolly Website

Order "The Lovers: A Thriller" HERE(US) and HERE(Europe and Overseas)

Mihir Wanchoo expands FBC's horizons with an interview of mystery/thriller author John Connolly. Read and enjoy!

1] It's been more than a decade since your first book was published, how do see your journey from the publication of "Every dead thing" up till now?

JC: Er, with some surprise, I think. Like most authors, I never really expected the first book to be published, so to have reached this point without being found out seems like a miracle.

Seriously, I think the books have become better, although I know that there will always be readers who have a fondness for an author's first novel, and that's absolutely fine. I think I've kept trying to do new things, and I've been fortunate in that a portion of my readers have taken chances on books like NOCTURNES and THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, books that don't necessarily fit into the standard pattern of a genre author. In the end, I've been very lucky with my readers, my editors, and my publishers. Lucky, period.

2] What point of time did you decide to become a writer? What made you choose to write in this genre?

JC: I've always written, but I think that's probably true of most published authors. I began with school essays, moved into journalism, and then, eventually, novels.

As for choosing mystery fiction, well, it was what I read, along with old ghost stories, so it's not surprising that the two genres should have come together in my work.

3] To any reader who hasn't read one of your books, how would you convince them to give one of your novels a try?

JC: Oh, that's a rotten question. I usually point people in the direction of Ross Macdonald and James Lee Burke first, and when they've exhausted their books I tell them, well, mine are a bit like those, except not as good. (Memo to self: work on sales pitch.) That really is a hard question to answer. Thankfully, I don't have to convince people in person very often. I suppose I'd tell them that they're mysteries, but probably a little different to the mysteries that they're used to reading. Scarier, perhaps, and interested in language as well as character and action.

4] In your blog you have mentioned how titles of your books often come from poems [Every Dead thing, The White Road] & songs [Dark Hollow]. What is it about certain words or phrases that makes you pick them as titles?

JC: I've always found titles very difficult. In fact, I argued a lot with my publishers over DARK HOLLOW, which they didn't like at all, at least in the UK, but I really couldn't come up with anything more apt. As you point out in your question, some song titles, snatches of poetry, or lyrics are just evocative, but I've tried to make sure that when I pick up on someone else's words for a title those words really do say something about the book in question. Lately, I've been working with two word titles because I like the simplicity of them, but already I know that that will change a couple of books down the line, as the prospective title for book, um, 14 or 15 is a four word title.

5] Where do you find the inspiration for your stories, (i.e.: nature, events, people, etc.)? And is there a particular life experience that influenced your writing?

JC: I don't tend to draw upon real life at all, at least not for the plots. Elements of the world around me, or contemporary events, will inevitably creep in, but writers who make a big deal out of reality in their work are misguided, I think. Writers, like filmmakers, create a version of a version of reality: subjective reality filtered a second time through a creative imagination to produce something that's owes only a passing debt to reality.

I suppose that there have been a lot of formative influences on my work. I was troubled, and marked, by the unsolved murder of a young call-girl named Belinda Pereira that I covered as a journalist. That certainly filtered into the books, and DARK HOLLOW in particular.

6] In many of your interviews you have frequently mentioned Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler & James Lee Burke. Could you enumerate their influences on you and why you feel they ought to be read more?

JC: Actually, I tend to mention Chandler only because I think he unfairly overshadows Macdonald, who was the better novelist of the two. The importance of empathy in my novels is down to the influence of Macdonald. Burke, meanwhile, taught me that mystery writing can be lyrical and poetic.

It can aspire to the status of literature.

7] The term "Honeycomb world" is often spotted amongst almost all your novels. Could you tell us about its origin & the context of this reference?

JC: It came about when I was writing THE KILLING KIND, and was a way of explaining how the memory of events in the past could find a way to leach into the present, and how history falls in uneven layers, leaving these little pockets of memory that can be breached. Oddly enough, Macdonald used a similar metaphor in one of his books but, while I've borrowed a great deal from him, and been influenced by him, that wasn't one of the things, or certainly I wasn't conscious of it. I think that, for a brief moment, I was just thinking about a subject in a similar way to him, and the same image presented itself.

8] Your favorite authors? Feel free to quote as many authors in as many genres as you like!

JC: Well, Macdonald and Burke, obviously. Cormac MacCarthy, particularly BLOOD MERIDIAN and THE BORDER TRILOGY. Then odd ones: P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster books; Dickens; the ghost story writer M.R. James; and Stephen King, who was one of the first genre novelists I read. Oh, and Ian Fleming. I loved James Bond, but I think I loved the villains more.

9] Is it true that you have also co-written a non-fiction book "Married to a Stranger: A True Story of Murder and the Multi-Million Dollar Mail-Order Bride Business". Could you tell us more about this?

JC: Actually, I didn't write that. I probably just share a name with the guy. That happens a lot. I was once mistaken for Joe Connelly the guy who wrote BRINGING OUT THE DEAD. I only realized it when the woman interviewing me asked if I missed driving an ambulance in New York, which I kind of did because I'd never done it.

10] You have 2 books releasing this year, a Charlie Parker novel "The Lovers" & a solo book "The Gates". Tell us something general about them & then something specific as well.

JC: Well, THE LOVERS is a reaction to THE REAPERS. I've noticed that each novel tends to be a reaction to the one that went before it, in the sense that I'll often follow a very action-packed, fast-paced novel with something more reflective. In THE LOVERS, Parker is investigating his father's death and, by proxy, his own history. One whole, long section is just two guys sitting down at a table, one telling a story while the other listens, but I tried to make it the most gripping conversation possible. We'll see.

THE GATES is a book that I've wanted to write for a long time. It wasn't written to contract, but was done simply because I was desperate to write it. It's a funny, odd little book about a boy named Samuel Johnson and his dog, Boswell, who discover that his neighbors are Satanists who are trying to open the gates of Hell.

It's filled with bits of science, and quantum physics in particular. There's no magic in it .I'm so sick of books in which kids have superpowers, or are secretly magicians. Samuel is just a quirky, smart little boy who is faced with a situation that he finds terrifying, but also kind of interesting. So far, both the adults and younger readers who've read it have liked it an awful lot, for which I'm very relieved.

11] If not thrillers, which other genre would you have chosen? And
do you have any plans to publish books in any other genres?

JC: Well, I have published in other genres already. NOCTURNES is a collection of ghost stories, and THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS touches on fantasy and fairytales, but I don't think that it falls into either of those categories. THE GATES is something different again, and over the next year or two I hope to write a novel about food, and a particular moment in culinary history. I'm very fortunate because I've been able to write just what I want to write, and to flit between genres, thanks to tolerant publishers and readers.

12] On your site, you have interviewed several authors, can you give us any insights into what made you choose the authors you interviewed and any special anecdotes to share about the various interviews.

JC: By and large, with maybe one or two exceptions, they were authors whose work I liked, or who I found interesting in some way. Most of the anecdotes ended up in the interviews.

It may be the case that when a writer is interviewed by another writers, some of the barriers that are sometimes there between a journalist and his or her subject come down, or are blurred slightly, so I get a slightly different interview from a journalist. That's not always the case, though. Both Kathy Reichs and James Patterson are writers who don't seem to care much for the interview process, or who want to use it in a very particular way, and, as a consequence, interviewers perhaps don't get as much out of them.

I think that's unfortunate. I understand, as someone who straddles both sides of the divide that writers, like other public or semi-public figures, are under no obligation to give anything of themselves away beyond what is contained in their work, but the interview process doesn't have to be adversarial.

13] What book/books have you read recently that have made an impression on you?

JC: I really do struggle to remember what I read yesterday, let alone further back than that. There's a book called THE TWELVE (or GHOSTS OF BELFAST to give it its American title) that I think is just a fabulous debut novel, and one of the best thrillers to have emerged from post-Troubles Northern Ireland.

14] There are 2 films releasing soon in the future, one based on a short story of yours and the other one on the book "Bad Men". How much did you contribute to the script & what was your involvement in both the projects?

JC: Nothing to either script, and I have no involvement at all beyond giving everyone involved my blessing and wishing them the best of luck. I visited the set of THE NEW DAUGHTER, and had a great time, and John Travis, who wrote the screenplay, and I stay in touch. I like him a lot, and I think he's very talented. But I think that novelists who choose to get involved in the filming of their work almost inevitably find it a difficult experience. Books and films are too different: at the most basic level, the creation of the former is a solitary affair while the creation of the latter requires a huge team of people, and most authors don't play well with other people.

15] Do you have any official title for the Charlie Parker series & how have you envisioned the end of the series? Do you have a fixed number of books planned?

JC: No to all of the above. Well, not quite 'no' to the second question. I have some idea of how the sequence may end, but not when. I still enjoy writing about Parker, and as long as that's the case, then I'll continue with those books. They're very personal to me. Actually, all of the published books are personal on some level, but there's a lot of me in Parker.

16] Your last 2 books have had music CDs released with them, with songs specially chosen by you to tie in with the book & its content. Can you tell us a bit more about this & how do you envision the future with music being intricately tied in with your novels?

JC: Music is used a lot in the books – as titles, section breaks, or simply to suggest a mood. It just seemed like it would be a nice thing to allow people to hear a lot of that
music. It was a hugely expensive project – twice! –and I don't think we sold one book more on the basis of it, but I loved doing it. I had hoped to do one more for THE LOVER, but it
didn't work out. Maybe for THE WHISPERERS next year. We'll see.

17] As a writer, what still challenges you and what do you want to accomplish?

JC: Every book challenges me, because with every book I try to do something different instead of falling back on a formula. It's giving me grey hairs, but if I didn't feel that the books were a struggle, however good and positive a struggle they may be, then I'd have to look hard at what I was doing.

Like all writers, I'd like to reach more readers. I'd like to continue to experiment with other genres. Then again, I'm getting to do what I always wanted to do: I'm writing, and being published. My work involves doing something that I love, and being paid enough to keep doing it. I should never be off my bended knees thanking God.

18] In closing, any last words for your multitude of fans worldwide especially about what we can expect from you next?

JC: Next will be THE GATES in October, then the new Parker book, THE WHISPERERS, sometime next year, and after that there will be at least one non-Parker book. As for last words: No Refunds . . .

12:01 AM |

Posted by Liviu |

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

"Consorts of Heaven" by Jaine Fenn (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Official Jaine Fenn Website
Order “Consorts of Heaven” HERE

INTRODUCTION:Last year there was a crop of new Gollancz debuts that were highly touted , so from those 3 or 4 novels, I ordered on publication the books that held some interest for me. Principles of Angels was one such and while I knew very little about it, I was hooked when I opened the book on arriving on my doorstep courtesy of The Book Depository and realizing it's a sf adventure rather than a sff fantasy that I sort of expected based on the title and not doing my homework.

I liked "Principles of Angels" quite a lot and Ms. Fenn became another writer that I would get any book from asap, so "Consorts of Heaven" became one of my most awaited books of 2009 since it was announced last year.

I am happy to say that "Consorts of Heaven" not only met my very high expectations, but it exceeded them. A different novel than "Principles in Angels" both in tone and setting, "Consorts of Heaven" expands the range of Ms. Fenn's work being more character oriented, but with lots of twists and enough action to satisfy every sff adventure fan too.

OVERVIEW: Sometime in the future mankind falls and rises again—with help—leaving human-occupied space as an apparently stable area of several hundred semi-autonomous systems, no two alike, while space travel is based on powerful technology, legacy of an alien race called the Sidhe that dominated/helped humanity a long time ago but is presumed extinct now.

However when you open "Consorts of Heaven" you are plunged into the backwoods ("uplands") of a typical medieval-like theocratic un-named fantasy world. What's going on?

Well the blurb makes it clear that the novel is related to "Principle of Angels" so we already know that there is much more here than it meets the eye. The world of Consorts is based on the worship of five Goddesses whose earthly representative, the Cariad, rules from the far-away citadel of Tyr, helped by a council of five supreme priests ("Escorai").

The world is strongly patriarchal, women being restricted to "home duties" or to the well-known second oldest profession. When a boy can do magic, he is "blessed by Heaven" and if the magic is strong enough (making the boy autistic) he is called a "skyfool" and on his 15 birthday he is called to testing in Tyr to see if he is fit to become a Consort of the Goddeses. If the magical powers are not that strong, the boy usually becomes a priest; incidentally all priests have the right of asking sexual favors from pretty much any woman.

When a girl can do magic, she is "cursed by The Abyss" and she is to be killed on sight, unless she can hide her abilities or is taken by the Cariad as a special "holy prostitute".

There is a "holy text" which restricts what can or cannot be done (eg all food has to be grown by hand, technology is very severely restricted) and every generation a plague descends on the population, killing many though not all afflicted, unless it is eliminated by the benevolence of Heaven which heralds a renewal of the bond with the Goddesses. Of course priests are generally immune from it and their prayers are considered to be the only way to keep the patient alive until it passes; it even works sometimes.

Kerin is the strong widowed mother of 15 year old Damaru who is a "skyfool". Damaru is strongly autistic (which means also that he has strong powers) and until his magical talent asserted itself, he was considered just mentally impaired; of course the novel being sf, we later find out what "magic" is truly.

Sais (stranger in the local language) is a memory-less man, found in a "haunted" place by Damaru and later taken in to her hut for healing by Kerin.

Einon is an upper priest from Tyr who fell from favor in the convoluted politics of the capital - for discovering, well it would be a spoiler to say what, but it is something that today we take for granted, but historically indeed it was considered a major development in the scientific evolution of humanity and that is is another nice touch of the author. He is sent by his Escorai mentor to lead a village "drove" in the middle of nowhere. It just happens that Damaru is on that drove on his way to be tested in Tyr, while Kerin inveigled herself a place on it as the only one who can control him with Sais following to try and figure out who he is.

"Consorts of Heaven" stands at about 320 pages and is narrated from the POV of Kerin, Sais and later Einon. The ending is excellent tying all the threads of the novel and connecting it clearly with "Principles of Angels" and its characters, while the next installment "Guardians of Paradise" should be another superb one.

ANALYSIS:A page turner with lots of unexpected twists - though we *know* the general direction of the book before opening it - I could not put it down until I got to the superb ending.

From the first pages, I loved Kerin's narration as she tries to take care of her autistic son, tries to finally come to terms with the sudden death of her husband two years ago and faces the prospect of losing Damaru soon to the drove that will take him to the testing in Tyr.

Not a typical fantasy heroine, being neither of exalted blood nor young, beautiful or spunky, Kerin is actually one of the most memorable sff leads that I encountered and the way she copes with the unexpected is just great. Elarn in "Principles" who is her high tech analog to some extent was much more "naive" and confused, though the two women share some characteristics.

So when Sais is found unconscious and almost dead by Damaru it is understandable that she throws herself into saving him and later uses very cleverly his presence and mystery as well as Damaru's powerful but hard to control magic to get a place on the drove, where it is almost unheard for a woman to go. After all women cannot come near domestic animals because the "feminine essence" may lead to said animals becoming barren; and so it goes with the restrictions that women face on the Consorts world...

While it seems quite predictable form the above, the relationship that develops between Kerin and Sais is far from simple as the reader will discover; again it will not do to spoil the reasons, but do not expect a cookie-cutter fantasy romance.

Damaru is also portrayed very well as the autistic boy-magician that needs to be cosseted, protected and managed; after all if he gets upset who knows what can happen; as a bullied young child his first magical manifestation led to very unpleasant consequences for the bullies and as almost a force of nature he is unpredictable but powerful, so the village chief is very happy to have him out of his responsibility and if it means allowing Kerin to go, that's how it is.

Sais slowly recovering his memories and understanding what's going on since as expected and not a real spoiler, he is a true outsider, assumes more and more a central role as the novel goes on, but it still mostly Kerin's book.

Einon the smart and well intentioned upper priest has also a very good and natural in hindsight character evolution, though again it may not be what is expected from the standard sff adventure.

The world building is magnificent and while the narrower focus - at least for most of the novel - seems limiting, it also allows the author the opportunity to showcase additional skills with a combination of the familiar and the strange.

I loved the book a lot and while it's early and all, it will definitely be a notable sf novel of 09 and possibly a top five too.

Highly, highly recommended and this one goes beyond the "personal favorite" label of "Principle of Angels" establishing Jaine Fenn as an accomplished sff author.

12:12 AM |

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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

“Cemetery Dance” by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Reviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)

Official Preston & Child Website
Order Cemetery Dance HERE:

Read Mihir's Interview with the authors HERE:

Book Info: The hardcover edition of the novel is 435 pages long. The story is divided into 85 chapters with an epilogue as well. The book also has an authors' note regarding all their works, the chronological reading order and a bit about the agent Pendergast series.

The Cast of Characters include regulars of the earlier books like Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, Captain Laura Hayward, Nora Kelly along with cameos of a few others. In all their novels, Preston & Child have either a one-off or a couple of chapters POV from minor or new characters and in "Cemetery Dance" we are introduced to Caitlyn Kidd. The usual cameos from Wren, Proctor & Cornelia Pendergast leave the readers wondering more about their enigmatic pasts & the authors will hopefully reveal more in future series installments.

The book is narrated in the 3^rd person and has POV's from Pendergast, D'Agosta, Nora Kelly & Laura Hayward as well as the above mentioned minor/new characters like Caitlyn Kidd.

Overview & Analysis: "Cemetery Dance" is another of the many collaborations of the two authors in 15 years now and the readers can let go of their triskaidekaphobic thoughts since the novel is not cursed by its 13th label so to speak, but it is excellent. The novel is also the ninth appearance of FBI Agent A.X.L. Pendergast, while being the seventh book with him as the main protagonist. In "Relic & Reliquary", Pendergast was more of a supporting character than a leading protagonist.

However his first solo appearance in "Cabinet of Curiosities" gained the authors a multitude of fans as they ventured into horror-thriller territory. Since then the Agent Pendergast books have been a staple diet of many fans as layer by layer of intrigue has been revealed about the hero in each book leading to this one.

Though "Cemetery Dance" is written as a standalone novel & can be enjoyed as such, it would be more sensible for the reader to have some previous knowledge of the characters and their past. Readers who would like to understand the entire back-story might want to start from the 1^st book "Relic" and then work their way through the remaining books. This will also lend credibility to the authors' thoughts and purposes in the creation & development of Pendergast. If you are impatient to read this book, just go ahead, but you have been warned and there are spoilers ahead for the series!!

The novel begins with the murder of one of the most beloved characters in the DPLC-verse which has happened previoulsy; however the authors insert a hook: the assumed murderer, Colin Fearing has already been dead for 10 days & by most bystander accounts he seemed to have been moving akin to a zombie.

The novel then races off with further attacks on Nora Kelly, Smithback's wife as well as certain other gruesome murders & events. Pendergast who is usually very scientific in his approach to investigations accepts where the Occam's Razor principle leads and begins his case checking out known things about Haitian Voodoo & Zombiis. There is also a strange cult in NYC which has a past history of animal sacrifice & various other nefarious activities. The authors keep the relentless paceend to end and also pepper the book with quirky facts about Haitian customs, the practices of Voodoo, Obeah & the word "Zombiis".

However as in previous novels, the reader is never sure which track the authors intend to follow & the actual happenings surrounding the murder will indeed come as a surprise to many. The authors have also mentioned previously that no one is truly safe in their books & they prove it here with the death of Smithback.

This book is more in the vein of "Cabinet of Curiosities" having a huge horror element running through it; most readers will be immediately sucked into the story. "Cemetary Dance" is highly recommended for series regulars as well for newer readers searching for great thrillers.

Just a statutory warning: these books are highly addictive!!; once you read one, you will be compeleld to re-read it as well as read the other series installements to expand your DPLC-verse experience. I believe Messrs Preston & Child strive for this and I think they achieve it superbly.

The story ends with some premonitions about Pendergast's future while the threads started here have a concrete ending. It will indeed be fun to find out about what the future holds for Agent Pendergast.

As a further tidbit, I note that the authors have revealed that the next book will feature a new character who has played a crucial role in Pendergast's life, while remaining a mystery to the readers so far. Who might it be? I think I know for sure; the clues for you dear reader might lie within this book.

12:01 AM |

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Monday, June 8, 2009

"The Edge of the World" by Kevin Anderson (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu and Cindy Hannikman)

Official Kevin J. Anderson Website
Order "The Edge of the World" HERE(US) and HERE(Europe/Overseas)

INTRODUCTION: "The Edge of the World" is a joint co-review by Cindy Hannikman and Liviu Suciu so we will have two takes on it in the Analysis part.

Kevin J. Anderson, while well known for his work in shared universes like Dune and Star Wars has come to my attention with the science fiction Seven Suns saga which was quite an enjoyable fast paced old-fashioned "golden-age" like space opera with every sf trope thrown in for good measure. And it worked for me so I keep recommending it to this day to people looking for a good introduction to large scale sf, since it is very accessible and clearly written, while also exhibiting the sense of wonder that attracted me to sf many years ago. True, it went a little bit too long for its depth and its sense of wonder soon became somewhat diluted while the characters could not truly pick up the slack, but the first 4 volumes at least were just great fun.

So when Mr. Anderson announced that he will write an epic fantasy trilogy with the appropriate tropes, so sail-ships and swords instead of spaceships and guns, I was very excited and had high expectations for an entertaining and page turning novel. And I have to say that "The Edge of The World" exceeded my expectations, being a book that hooked me on first page and I could not put down till the end, while the next installments are asap novels.

OVERVIEW: The known world consists of a huge North-South landmass joined by a narrow isthmus on which the Holy City of Ishalem stands.

The northern continent Tierra, consisting of several semi-independent provinces and ruled by King Korastine from his capital at Calay is the land mythically settled by Aiden, who is worshiped now in the Church of his name and has clear similarities with medieval Christendom.
The Tierrans are famous merchants and seamen. Tierra is also the home of most Saedrans, famous mapmakers and indispensable navigators who occupy positions of power and respect despite their different religion. So a somewhat tolerant Christendom analogue.

The southern continent Uraba led by the peaceful, but tired Soldan Shah Imir and his heir Omra is the land of Urec, the brother of Aiden. Urec's priesthood the Ur-Sikara is all female, but other than that, there are marked similarities between Uraba and medieval Islam, including bazaars, harems and harem politics. The Seadrans are less prominent than in Tierra since the Urabans are less inclined to undertake long sea voyages. However, while Tierra ends in a sub-polar like region which is essentially a frozen wasteland, Uraba ends at the edge of a desert and there are rumours of people living beyond it.

At the start of the novel there is an uneasy peace between the two countries, but when greed and misunderstandings lead to small scale hostilities, the two leaders Korastine and Imir agree to meet in the commonly held Ishalem to sign a perpetual peace including an edict dividing all the world in spheres of influence based on latitude. With the help of the Seadrans Guild, king Korastine also plans an expedition of discovery into the unknown Oceansea where the mythical sea monsters are supposed to live and commisions the ship Luminara to undertake it.

Criston is a talented seaman who leaves his young wife Adrea and her younger brother in charge of their fishing business in a small coastal village and goes to Calay to enlist on Luminara for fame and fortune.

Mateo is a young ward of Korastine and close friend of the young Princess Anjine, heir to Tierra, who plans to be a soldier like his dead father.

Hannes is an Aidenist prester who is asigned to live as an observer among the Urabans to observe their culture.

Aldo is a young Saedran who wants to become a famous mapmaker as his father.

"The Edge of the World" stands at almost 600 pages and it is divided into 126 chapters, each told from the POV of one of the main characters, Criston, Adrea, Aldo, Omra, Anjine, Mateo, Hannes, Imir as well as from the POV of several less prominent ones. There are several maps at the beggining of the novel, a glossary of names and places at the end and an interview with the author as well as an extract from the next installment of the trilogy.

Note that the Glossary contains some notable spoilers as I found out to my surprise, so I recommend to avoid it at least for the first 200 or so pages.

The multiple threads of the novel weave very nicely, there are several unexpcted twists and turns and the ending is essentially where the next novel will start. No particular cliffhangers, but no true resolutions either.

ANALYSIS:

(Liviu's Take) Fast moving, engrossing, clear prose and great characters you learn to care about. This is how "The Edge of World" read to me and despite its length I finished it quite quickly since it's a very easy read. However this does not mean straightforward, since the novel twists and turns in quite unexpected directions and when you think you have an idea where it goes next, you are soon confounded.

Also the novel takes place across quite an extended period of time, so we see characters change, grow, children become adults, babies become teenagers and that adds a lot to the depth of the novel in contrast to many series that compress a lifetime worth of events in a short period.

Reading the Glossary early in the novel I found out about one of the major twists and about a character that becomes quite important later on, and that is a reason to avoid doing that at least for a while.

Despite its name, the novel is not a maritime one, most action takes place in palaces, cities and other land based places, though map-making, exploration and voyages of discovery always hover in the background. While saying that hot air balloons play as important a role in the story as ships is an exaggeration, the fact that we can compare the two illustrates the point above.

If you start liking a character a lot, be aware, since Mr. Anderson tends to put them through trials and tribulations that change them and their circumstances a lot, another big plus in my opinion.

Comparing with the "Seven Suns" saga with which this novel shares quite a lot of themes and character sketches, I have to say that the "limited expanse" of the Tierra/Uraba world actually focuses the novel much better, than the sprawling galactic action in "Seven Suns", and while the sense of wonder of the latter is much less seen here, the characters are more interesting, more developed than the somewhat steoretyped ones in "Seven Suns".

So I would say that on the whole "The Edge of the World" is the superior book unless you look only for sense of wonder and unlimited vistas, where "Seven Suns" excels.

"The Edge of the World" was a positive surprise not in that I liked it a lot, which I expected based on my prior experience with "Seven Suns", but in that it is a deeper novel, one that re-reads much better, with characters I really care about and want to see their fates in the next volumes which became true asap's for me.

Highly, highly recommended and a notable 2009 fantasy novel for me.

(Cindy's Take) I had never read any of Kevin Anderson's previous works before picking up "The Edge of the World". The idea of a fantasy debut really attracted me and I wasn't disappointed in what I read. While not the normal fantasy that I'm usually drawn to there were plenty of surprises throughout my reading that pulled me in from the beginning.

I found "The Edge of the World" a very quick read. Mostly because I was anxious to see what would happen to a character, and it was very easy to get drawn into the universe that Anderson created. Several elements made this novel a great read.

First, there is the depth of the world and characters. Anderson does such a wonderful job of establishing characters, traditions and religions that it's hard not to get pulled in and believe that you are part of this word. There are good characters and bad characters, some people will love instantly and some that take time to grow on readers. This could be attributed to the fact that this novel covers such a huge amount of time, as Liviu mentioned, that you practically grow up with the characters. However, Anderson doesn't drag things out during the novel. There's just the right amount of details to catch readers.

The second element that pulled me in was the whole idea of expanding the world. I was intrigued with the expansion of the world and how the nations dealt with exploring new territories. It'll be an interesting concept that I look forward to seeing how it expands in the other novels.

Another plus of the novel is characters and rulers have real life issues. No one is safe in this book, readers aren't going to encounter that squeaky clean character that does everything right all the time. Instead, the characters think about actions and have to deal with issues across the board.

Lastly, the set up of the novel in that it has both sides of the conflict bring the book to a whole. Readers are presented with both sides and while from an outside point we see what causes a certain conflict, Anderson shows how both sides can misconstrue a certain action and take it upon themselves to seek revenge or hold it against the other nation. This was a creative way of portraying the plots in the story, and definitely brings a sense of closeness to this reading experience.

In the end, I really enjoyed "The Edge of the World" and look forward to the rest of the novels in the trilogy. It's a book that I would recommend to any fantasy fan or even those that aren't so much into magic but love to read about different worlds or cultures.

This novel definitely caught my attention as a worthwhile quick read. There's great characters, world development and of course great writing. As it's unpredictable it'll be fun to see where Anderson takes this series and I can't wait to read the next installment.

12:01 AM |

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