Thursday, November 22, 2012
The 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards Final Round November 19-27 (with comments by Liviu Suciu)
On Monday November 19th the top ten in each category were announced and the final round in each of the 20 categories has become available for us to vote. As the voting ends on November 27, get your vote in quickly!
I noted in my earlier post my choices and the predictions for the final round. Now I will present again the books in the three main fields of interest, fantasy, sf and historical fiction and discuss my earlier predictions, what actually got in the top 10 and how I see the final vote shaping.
Once the results are published with the final statistics, a final round-up in December. For the predictions below I used the Goodreads metric: # reviews times average rating.
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Fantasy
How did I do?
I correctly predicted 7/10 including my choice The Blinding Knife; the wrong predictions erred towards epic, namely Red Country and Forge of Darkness, while I should have included the Fforde novel but realized it too late.
The surprises for me, Some Kind of Fairy Tale (ok but not great imho) and Alif the Unseen which I opened but then it went on my huge "to read" pile.
I correctly predicted 7/10 including my choice The Blinding Knife; the wrong predictions erred towards epic, namely Red Country and Forge of Darkness, while I should have included the Fforde novel but realized it too late.
The surprises for me, Some Kind of Fairy Tale (ok but not great imho) and Alif the Unseen which I opened but then it went on my huge "to read" pile.
My Vote: The Blinding Knife again
Prediction: The favorite by far is Stephen King (always popular - which is a bit of a mystery for me as I find his work very boring at best) who leads by a lot in the Goodreads metric so it's the overwhelmingly likely winner.
A slim outside chance: Brent Weeks or Robin Hobb
For The Blinding Knife I expect a very good 2nd or 3rd place.
***********************************************************************
SF:
How did I do?
I correctly predicted 6/10 including that my choice The Hydrogen Sonata will not make it. The Goodreads sf tastes do not really match mine as of the 10 finalists, the only one I finished is Caliban's War which I liked but thought a step below the superb Leviathan Wakes.
Of the rest, the Pratchett/Baxter is juvenile, tie-ins are rightly known as the "mine pits of genre", Orson Scott Card's fiction never appealed, steampunk is banal today, Angelmaker lost my attention fast, while Wool is written well and I may read it when in the mood for post-apocalyptic, but I feel I exhausted its sub-genre so it may take a good while for that...
My Vote: Caliban's War
Prediction: Based on the Goodreads metric, Wool and Redshirts battle and I see Wool winning on quality versus a sub-mediocre spoof.
A reasonable outside chance: The Long Earth
For my less than enthusiastic choice Caliban's War I expect a 6-7th place finish.
***********************************************************************
Historical Fiction:
How did I do?
I correctly predicted 6/10 including that my choice The Secret Keeper will make it. Here I did no research and the genre is only partly familiar, so I missed the two huge favorites based on the Goodreads metric, The Light Between Oceans (ok but nothing special imho) and The Snow Child (better prose but a bit limited).
I correctly predicted 6/10 including that my choice The Secret Keeper will make it. Here I did no research and the genre is only partly familiar, so I missed the two huge favorites based on the Goodreads metric, The Light Between Oceans (ok but nothing special imho) and The Snow Child (better prose but a bit limited).
My Vote: Obviously my #1 book of the year, The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton.
Prediction: The Snow Child battling The Light Between Oceans with The Snow Child winning on numbers outweighing higher rating.
An outside chance: Bring up the Bodies
For The Secret Keeper I expect a respectable 5-6th place.
12:00 AM | 
Posted by
Liviu |
Official Author Website
Order “Trapped” HERE
Read chapter one HERE
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of “Hounded”
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of “Hexed”
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of “Hammered”
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of “Tricked”
Read my review of “Two Ravens and One Crow”
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s interview with Kevin Hearne
Order “Trapped” HERE
Read chapter one HERE
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of “Hounded”
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of “Hexed”
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of “Hammered”
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of “Tricked”
Read my review of “Two Ravens and One Crow”
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s interview with Kevin Hearne
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Kevin Hearne graduated from Northern Arizona University with a degree in English literature and currently teaches high school English. He is a self-confessed comic book fan and collector. He also collects and paints miniature dwarves in his free time. He currently lives with his family in Arizona and is the author of The Iron Druid Chronicles.
OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: After twelve years of secret training, Atticus O’Sullivan is finally ready to bind his apprentice, Granuaile, to the earth and double the number of Druids in the world. But on the eve of the ritual, the world that thought he was dead abruptly discovers that he’s still alive, and they would much rather he return to the grave.
Having no other choice, Atticus, his trusted Irish wolfhound, Oberon, and Granuaile travel to the base of Mount Olympus, where the Roman god Bacchus is anxious to take his sworn revenge—but he’ll have to get in line behind an ancient vampire, a band of dark elves, and an old god of mischief, who all seem to have KILL THE DRUID at the top of their to-do lists.
CLASSIFICATION: Like its predecessors, The Iron Druid Chronicles is an urban fantasy series in the vein of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher and K.A. Stewart’s Jesse James Dawson series, and features an exciting mix of comedy, action and mythology.
FORMAT/INFO: Trapped is 320 pages long divided over twenty-eight numbered chapters and an epilogue. There’s also a Pronunciation guide for all the names and phrases mentioned in the book and an excerpt for the next book Hunted. Narration is in the first-person, solely via Atticus O’Sullivan. Trapped is the fifth Iron Druid Chronicle and it would be extremely ill advised to jump into the series with this book as the plot has a ton of references to the many events and characters in the preceding books.
November 27, 2012 marks the North American Mass Market Paperback publication of Trapped via Del Rey. Cover art is provided by Gene Mollica.
ANALYSIS: Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles has grown from strength to strength since its publication in 2011. Kevin’s writing style along with his characterization has made him the darling of urban fantasy readers all over the world. He’s often talked as the next-in-line author for Jim Butcher fans to go to and for many he has become an author to be followed in his own right. I was very much enamored by Atticus and Oberon in Kevin Hearne’s Hounded and since then with each previous release has made me love this quirky series even more. After reading Tricked earlier this year and along with Two Ravens and One Crow, the novella released a couple of months ago, the author had laid down the track for the future of his series.
With Trapped, we get to phase II of the journey that Atticus, Oberon & Granuaile have chosen to undergo, the twelve years of Granuaile’s druidic initiation are drawing to a close and finally when Atticus is ready to bind her with the Druidic tattoos. Perun makes a surprising return to the Earthly plane and is followed by a mad Norse god who has recently been released from his captivity. Before he can make sense of things, Atticus finds out that his cover is blown and now Roman gods including Bacchus are actively hunting him. A trip to the Tuatha Dé Danann plane further complicates matters than resolving it and soon Atticus has to juggle Roman, Norse and Celtic deities whilst trying to keep himself and his friends alive. This time it will be tough, as he has no clue in regards to who is friend or foe and every side seems to drag him into quagmire-like situations. Granuaile’s initiation along with her future as a druid also hangs in the balance and it will be a race to get everything right while avoiding all the poisoned daggers and treachery.
Trapped has a terrific premise and even more upbeat pace that refuses to let the reader read at a sedate pace. The book has multiple twists and has a ginormous amount of tie-ins to the previous storylines and lots of past characters make their re-appearance along with previously only heard-of characters & races make their first appearance. The author has been known to indulge himself by playing around with multiple mythologies and in this book that very ability comes to the fore as the readers see characters from multiple mythological backgrounds interact in vicious ways. The story also has an important focus on Granuaile and as with her cover appearance I believe she will be getting center stage after the events of this book due to the changes in her personal, physiological and magical status. Plus in the last couple of books Oberon has been getting a smaller role due to the story demands however he’s back to fine form in this one as we get his usual thoughts on Bacon, Genghis Khan and other such important matters.
This book was also the first book of Kevin’s that I felt slightly disappointed with, on one hand it continued some of the aspects that I had liked in the previous books, but as a whole the book cannot sustain the awesomeness of its parts. My major gripe with the book was that the actual story felt a little bloated, it felt like the plot could have been resolved in a novella form however was stretched to novel lengths and that perhaps hampered the story’s focus. There are also the multiple events and plot-threads that occur in the book and this amalgamation doesn’t quite gel together so well. In the previous couple of books the author adroitly handled multiple plot threads however in this one they become one too many. Secondly the ending of the book leaves a lot of those plot-lines hanging for the next book. This perhaps was done on purpose but as a reader we don’t get the requisite closure from Trapped as we got from the previous titles.
The book though does carry on the saga begun in the previous volumes and leaves the readers with quite a huge cliffhanger of sorts and the title of the next book should provide a strong clue as to what travails await Atticus and company. I’m too enamored by this series to be stumped by this book and so I’ll be eagerly awaiting Hunted next year to see what new plot surprises Kevin plans to spring on us.
CONCLUSION: Kevin Hearne has been a maverick writer who combines quirky plots with inane comedy and excellent characters. His previous books have been swashbuckling page-turners however the law of averages seems to have caught up with Trapped. This book on its own is a good book but after the excellence shown in the first four, my expectations were sky high and this book didn’t quite meet them all. Fans of the series will have to give it a read to decide for themselves and as for me I’m hoping that Hunted brings the series back to its former excellence.
OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: After twelve years of secret training, Atticus O’Sullivan is finally ready to bind his apprentice, Granuaile, to the earth and double the number of Druids in the world. But on the eve of the ritual, the world that thought he was dead abruptly discovers that he’s still alive, and they would much rather he return to the grave.
Having no other choice, Atticus, his trusted Irish wolfhound, Oberon, and Granuaile travel to the base of Mount Olympus, where the Roman god Bacchus is anxious to take his sworn revenge—but he’ll have to get in line behind an ancient vampire, a band of dark elves, and an old god of mischief, who all seem to have KILL THE DRUID at the top of their to-do lists.
CLASSIFICATION: Like its predecessors, The Iron Druid Chronicles is an urban fantasy series in the vein of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher and K.A. Stewart’s Jesse James Dawson series, and features an exciting mix of comedy, action and mythology.
FORMAT/INFO: Trapped is 320 pages long divided over twenty-eight numbered chapters and an epilogue. There’s also a Pronunciation guide for all the names and phrases mentioned in the book and an excerpt for the next book Hunted. Narration is in the first-person, solely via Atticus O’Sullivan. Trapped is the fifth Iron Druid Chronicle and it would be extremely ill advised to jump into the series with this book as the plot has a ton of references to the many events and characters in the preceding books.
November 27, 2012 marks the North American Mass Market Paperback publication of Trapped via Del Rey. Cover art is provided by Gene Mollica.
ANALYSIS: Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles has grown from strength to strength since its publication in 2011. Kevin’s writing style along with his characterization has made him the darling of urban fantasy readers all over the world. He’s often talked as the next-in-line author for Jim Butcher fans to go to and for many he has become an author to be followed in his own right. I was very much enamored by Atticus and Oberon in Kevin Hearne’s Hounded and since then with each previous release has made me love this quirky series even more. After reading Tricked earlier this year and along with Two Ravens and One Crow, the novella released a couple of months ago, the author had laid down the track for the future of his series.
With Trapped, we get to phase II of the journey that Atticus, Oberon & Granuaile have chosen to undergo, the twelve years of Granuaile’s druidic initiation are drawing to a close and finally when Atticus is ready to bind her with the Druidic tattoos. Perun makes a surprising return to the Earthly plane and is followed by a mad Norse god who has recently been released from his captivity. Before he can make sense of things, Atticus finds out that his cover is blown and now Roman gods including Bacchus are actively hunting him. A trip to the Tuatha Dé Danann plane further complicates matters than resolving it and soon Atticus has to juggle Roman, Norse and Celtic deities whilst trying to keep himself and his friends alive. This time it will be tough, as he has no clue in regards to who is friend or foe and every side seems to drag him into quagmire-like situations. Granuaile’s initiation along with her future as a druid also hangs in the balance and it will be a race to get everything right while avoiding all the poisoned daggers and treachery.
Trapped has a terrific premise and even more upbeat pace that refuses to let the reader read at a sedate pace. The book has multiple twists and has a ginormous amount of tie-ins to the previous storylines and lots of past characters make their re-appearance along with previously only heard-of characters & races make their first appearance. The author has been known to indulge himself by playing around with multiple mythologies and in this book that very ability comes to the fore as the readers see characters from multiple mythological backgrounds interact in vicious ways. The story also has an important focus on Granuaile and as with her cover appearance I believe she will be getting center stage after the events of this book due to the changes in her personal, physiological and magical status. Plus in the last couple of books Oberon has been getting a smaller role due to the story demands however he’s back to fine form in this one as we get his usual thoughts on Bacon, Genghis Khan and other such important matters.
This book was also the first book of Kevin’s that I felt slightly disappointed with, on one hand it continued some of the aspects that I had liked in the previous books, but as a whole the book cannot sustain the awesomeness of its parts. My major gripe with the book was that the actual story felt a little bloated, it felt like the plot could have been resolved in a novella form however was stretched to novel lengths and that perhaps hampered the story’s focus. There are also the multiple events and plot-threads that occur in the book and this amalgamation doesn’t quite gel together so well. In the previous couple of books the author adroitly handled multiple plot threads however in this one they become one too many. Secondly the ending of the book leaves a lot of those plot-lines hanging for the next book. This perhaps was done on purpose but as a reader we don’t get the requisite closure from Trapped as we got from the previous titles.
The book though does carry on the saga begun in the previous volumes and leaves the readers with quite a huge cliffhanger of sorts and the title of the next book should provide a strong clue as to what travails await Atticus and company. I’m too enamored by this series to be stumped by this book and so I’ll be eagerly awaiting Hunted next year to see what new plot surprises Kevin plans to spring on us.
CONCLUSION: Kevin Hearne has been a maverick writer who combines quirky plots with inane comedy and excellent characters. His previous books have been swashbuckling page-turners however the law of averages seems to have caught up with Trapped. This book on its own is a good book but after the excellence shown in the first four, my expectations were sky high and this book didn’t quite meet them all. Fans of the series will have to give it a read to decide for themselves and as for me I’m hoping that Hunted brings the series back to its former excellence.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Interview with Christian Cameron about the Tom Swan Serial (with comments by Liviu Suciu)
Christian, you are fairly well known for your novels about
Archaic and Hellenistic Greece. This
seems like a new departure. Care to
explain?
Sure, Liviu. First,
I’d like to ‘break in’ to the US market.
The format of the Tom Swan stories—that is to say, Conan Doyle like
episodes set in the late medieval (or Renaissance, depending on how you define
your period) was aimed to be appealing.
And cheap. I’m not writing Tom
Swan to make money, but to reach new readers.
I chose the period because it’s one that lots of people are familiar with, all of a sudden, thanks to media events like The Borgias, The Tudors, and Assassin’s Creed. Leonardo, Cardinal Bessarion, Pius II, Mehmed the Grand Turk; Venice and Florence and the Medici and the Sforzas—the Borgia’s are a little later, and so are Isabel and Ferdinand Of Spain, but this is a time period with many fans.
I chose the period because it’s one that lots of people are familiar with, all of a sudden, thanks to media events like The Borgias, The Tudors, and Assassin’s Creed. Leonardo, Cardinal Bessarion, Pius II, Mehmed the Grand Turk; Venice and Florence and the Medici and the Sforzas—the Borgia’s are a little later, and so are Isabel and Ferdinand Of Spain, but this is a time period with many fans.
There’s another reason, too.
Last year, thanks to my sometime fencing instructor, Tom Leoni, I became
enthralled with the techniques of the later Italian masters—what we call ‘sword
and buckler.’ Literally—swashbuckling (that the sound a sword makes hitting a
buckler, BTW.) After I’d fenced the
technique for some months, I had to write about it.
And a final reason—this is the renaissance—literally, the
rebirth of Greek and Roman learning. So
it allows me to explore the chivalric (and less than chivalric) martial arts I
love, while dealing with antiquities and artifacts from the ancient world.
Can you talk about some of the artifacts, and why they are
central to the stories?
Sure. First, Tom Swan
isn’t a soldier. He’s sort of thief, and
sort of a scholar, and sort of a rogue, and sort of an archaeologist. I based him, very roughly, on Cyriac of
Ancona, an Italian scholar and adventurer of the same period. The two men might overlap….
The stories will each center on objects—real objects, where
possible. The Head of Saint George was
given by Cardinal Bessarion to the state of Venice and is still there, in a
church. There are currently five heads
of St. George, and not my place to say which one, if any, is real.
The ring of the conqueror—Alexander the Great’s signet ring—is probably still out there in a private collection in Italy. It is a large diamond cut with the head of Herakles, set in rose gold. As far as we know, it belonged to Alexander and to Ptolemy and then to lots of other famous people and eventually ended in up on the finger of a Venetian galley captain. And then—well, you’ll have to read the stories!
The ring of the conqueror—Alexander the Great’s signet ring—is probably still out there in a private collection in Italy. It is a large diamond cut with the head of Herakles, set in rose gold. As far as we know, it belonged to Alexander and to Ptolemy and then to lots of other famous people and eventually ended in up on the finger of a Venetian galley captain. And then—well, you’ll have to read the stories!
The stories have a different tone from your Greek books…
One of my favorite authors is George McDonald Fraser, who
manages to be bawdy and irreverent and politically incorrect and still teach
the reader a great deal of history. I
thought I might aim a little more towards his approach to history. I like heroes—I love epic and as a former
military officer, I think that heroism is, in fact, ‘real’ and a lot of what
modern authors call ‘gritty’ is just our cultural distance from the world of
violence. But—not everyone needs to be a
pure, idealistic young man, and my sharp and rather greedy Tom Swan seems to be
gaining popularity. And he’s good with
girls.
Why are you writing them so short?
I wanted them to be cheap and accessible, and I wanted to write them as a ‘lead in’ to my medieval series (in print) that comes out next spring, starting with ‘The Ill-Made Knight’ about Sir John Hawkwood and his period. They are a different period, but Ill Made Knight will be more in the Tom Swan style. I hope that makes sense! Also, at the moment I’m writing several thousand pages a year, and the project needed to be—er—approachable.
I wanted them to be cheap and accessible, and I wanted to write them as a ‘lead in’ to my medieval series (in print) that comes out next spring, starting with ‘The Ill-Made Knight’ about Sir John Hawkwood and his period. They are a different period, but Ill Made Knight will be more in the Tom Swan style. I hope that makes sense! Also, at the moment I’m writing several thousand pages a year, and the project needed to be—er—approachable.
What else are you doing?
I’m writing a series of graphic novels for Neal Stevenson’s FOREWORLD (that’s the Mongoliad world). The graphic novels are set in about 400 BCE and involve characters like—well, like Plato and Phokion. My friend Dmitry Bondarenko is illustrating them—he does the figures that decorate the maps in my Tyrant and Long War books.
I’m writing a series of graphic novels for Neal Stevenson’s FOREWORLD (that’s the Mongoliad world). The graphic novels are set in about 400 BCE and involve characters like—well, like Plato and Phokion. My friend Dmitry Bondarenko is illustrating them—he does the figures that decorate the maps in my Tyrant and Long War books.
I’m writing the fourth Long War book, about the Battle of Thermopylae and Artemesium, the more important naval battle that was taking place a few miles away. I’ll try to cover the ground very differently from Steven Pressfield, whose book Gates of Fire remains one of the finest ever written in the genre.
I’m writing the second ‘Ill Made Knight’ which will, I think, be called ‘The Long Sword,’ set in 14th c. Italy and going to Greece and Turkey with the Green Count’s crusade. The fifth book of my Tyrant series will be out in a few weeks—that’s ‘Destroyer of Cities’ about the siege of Rhodes in 306 BCE and what followed.
Don’t you think you should stop slacking and work harder?
I should, and my house needs a new front porch. And there’s all this amour I want to buy—and a horse. Have I mentioned wanting a horse?
You must do quite a bit of research…
Sometimes I feel that it’s all I do. I love to fence—or whatever word you want to use for sparring with various weapons—so that’s a pleasure all the time. Reenacting—whether ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, or the American Revolution-is also always a pleasure, so my life isn’t that hard. And I love to read. The problem is that if I was allowed, I’d read a steady diet of historical fiction and fantasy with some Space Opera thrown in.
However, what I actually read is research stuff, so right now I’m reading military manuals—De Re Militare by Vegetius, the Strategikon by Maurikos, Ascham on longbow archery (1545) and a book on the formation of the Greek language. Next comes a major dose of Central European history, because Tom Swan is going to the Siege of Belgrade, and I need to learn a lot about Janos Hunyadi and medieval Belgrade.
Anything else you would like to say?
I want to thank the illustrator of Tom Swan, Darius Wielec, whose website is full of his art. Darius is as much of a nutter about authenticity as I am—and a far better horseman, too. I hope his illustrations help the reader—they certainly inspire me!
I want to thank the illustrator of Tom Swan, Darius Wielec, whose website is full of his art. Darius is as much of a nutter about authenticity as I am—and a far better horseman, too. I hope his illustrations help the reader—they certainly inspire me!
And thanks for the pulpit.
I hope you’ll have me on again!
*****************************************************************
I want to thank Christian Cameron for this wonderful interview and emphasize again how much adventure fun are the Tom Swan books and urge you to try the first if you have not done so. Different from the grimmer Tyrant and Long War series and more in the historical romance tradition of Waltari or Dumas, though with a serious dose of historical realism and grittiness too.
I am also really excited about the author's new series set to debut next Spring and where the 100 Years War comes into focus closer to the beginning than the ignominious end (on the English side) shown in the first Tom Swan installment, while of course the next three installments of this one will be asap buys and reads hopefully in Jan/Feb/March of 2013 with a review after the 6th.
Not to speak of the author's Greek World novels which are also automatic buy/read on publication! So 2013 should be another great year if you are a fan of Christian Cameron!
Not to speak of the author's Greek World novels which are also automatic buy/read on publication! So 2013 should be another great year if you are a fan of Christian Cameron!
Read an excerpt HERE
Order the book HERE
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Moses Siregar is the third of his name. As a child he was fascinated by Robotech the anime series that lighted a passion in him for epic fiction. He has since then striven to hone his writing skills via various non-fiction writer stints. He has also indulged in podcasting over at the Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing and guest blogged over at Grasping for the Wind. He lives with his loving family in Arizona and this is his debut.
OFFICIAL BLURB: Against the backdrop of epic warfare and the powers of ten mysterious gods, Lucia struggles to understand The Black One.
Her father-king wants war. Her messianic brother wants peace. The black god wants his due. She suffers all the consequences.
King Vieri is losing his war against the lands of Pawelon. Feeling abandoned by his god, he forces his son Caio, the kingdom's holy savior, to lead his army. Victory ought to come soon.
To counter Caio's powers, Pawelon's prince enters the war. Rao is a gifted sage, a master of spiritual laws. He joins the rajah to defend their citadel against the invaders. But Rao's ideals soon clash with his army's general.
The Black One tortures Lucia nightly with visions promising another ten years of bloodshed. She can no longer tell the difference between the waking world and her nightmares. Lucia knows the black god too well. He entered her bed and dreams when she was ten.
The Black One watches, waiting to see Lucia confront an impossible decision over the fates of two men--and two lands.
CLASSIFICATION: The Black God’s War is an epic fantasy book set in a medieval world featuring nations that are facsimiles to Greece and India; the prose style and world settings of the story seem to be a cross between Brandon Sanderson and Kate Elliott.
FORMAT/INFO: The Black God’s War is 382 pages long divided over eighty-five numbered and titled chapters. Narration is in the third person via many different characters such as Caio, Rao, Lucia, Narayani, Ilario, Aayu, Devak, Indrajit and a few other minor characters as well. There is an Acknowledgments section, an Afterword page and a map showing the regions mentioned in the book. This is a standalone story.
July 31, 2011 marked the Trade paperback and e-book publication of The Black God’s War and it was self-published by the author.
ANALYSIS: The Black God’s War is an Indie debut that has slowly gained a multitude of reviews and heaps of praise since its release last year. The author had contacted us for a review request and I was very intrigued by its blurb to not give it a try. The book was originally released as a novella that contained the first fifteen chapters and the novella is still free for those interested in giving it a shot.
The blurb details two nations at war. The Eastern kingdom of Rezzia is ruled by its kings and a theology that involves ten Gods. They are awaiting the birth of a special child who is prophesied and is titled “Haizzem” whose birth will herald the nation’s ascent in the war and finally lead them into victory over the western nation of Pawelon. The main story deals with the two protagonists who are the princes of each nation and who are tasked with resolving the crisis facing their nations. Rao is the Pawelonian prince who has acquired a reasonable command of his “Sadhna” or magical prowess. Caio is the Haizzem prince who has his magical powers and the blessings of the ten Gods to contend with. Lucia is Caio’s elder sister and the one person who understand the enormous pressure on him. She however has bigger problems as one of the Ten, Lord Donato the Black One seems to be hell bent on punishing her for reasons hitherto unknown. It will however be up to these three individuals to figure out their destiny and possibly save their nation.
Moses Siregar’s debut is a much nuanced one, it basically focuses on a war between two nations that are analogues for Greece and India but the actual story is focused via the individual characters. The story has many strong features beginning with its characterization; which is such a strong facet of the story that makes it that much more of an engrossing read. We get narrative threads from both sides of the field and from both major and minor characters. This gives us a fully three dimensional view into the happenings on the field of war and off it. Not only with Rao & Caio but also with Lucia and Narayani, Moses shows his versatility in showing characters from different social and marital backgrounds as well as gender. The characters are what emphatically power the story and the readers will be strongly enticed to discover what each and every one of them truly wants.
The world and back history is quite vast and makes for an intriguing read. Originally this was supposed to be the first book in a trilogy but the author has recently revealed that this is a standalone book and will serve as a prequel to the upcoming trilogy. The book perhaps takes a while to get into the meat of the story but the author wonderfully utilizes the time to build up the story via the world and its back-story. One thing that I liked a lot about the story was how the author used two of the oldest civilizations and then created dual facsimile nations that share a border and are at war for theological and political reasons. These nations have their own theology which point towards Greek & Buddhist mythological roots and this was a very cool thing to read about. Another plus point of the story is the tight focus provided by the author who narrows the narrative lens to the characters throughout the story and thereby maintains a very intimate view of the events.
The prose is another highlight of this story as not only does the author vividly describe each nation and its practices, he does it with aplomb and while he draws upon real world influences. He gives enough originality to his creations to distinguish them from the real-world counterparts. As a reader it’s always great to see something other than the pseudo-European medieval landscape and in this case, Moses hits a double whammy with his world-building skills. Lastly the story heads to a strong climax a la Kane and Abel however the end twist is something that will be hard to predict.
The story however loses some points because of its lackluster pace in the first half of the story, while the eventual plot is being set up and the characters are introduced. This setup is very reminiscent of Brandon Sanderson’s books wherein the book gains pace slowly and surely. The author also doesn't quite convincingly explain many parts about the back history of the world. Perhaps this was done purposefully as originally this book was supposed to be a part of trilogy and therefore the author would have had further unveiled the world in the future books. This partial non-disclosure however might not go down all too well with some readers. Overall however the negatives are few and are decidedly overshadowed by the positives.
CONCLUSION: Moses Siregar has written a debut that showcases talent and a desire to tell stories that are epic in scope and also incite wonderment. Give this Indie debut a try as it’s one of those that heralds the debut of a talented author, who hopefully will continue to enthrall his readers for a long, long time.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Spotlight on Three Tor 2013 Titles: Marie Brennan, M.C. Planck and R. S. Belcher (with comments by Liviu Suciu)
"You, dear reader, continue at your own risk. It is not for the
faint of heart—no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such
study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon’s presence,
even for the briefest of moments—even at the risk of one’s life—is a
delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten. . . .
All
the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know
Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist.
She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the
misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of
modern science. But before she became the illustrious figure we know
today, there was a bookish young woman whose passion for learning,
natural history, and, yes, dragons defied the stifling conventions of
her day.
Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation, her prospects, and her fragile flesh and bone to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever"
Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation, her prospects, and her fragile flesh and bone to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever"
In February 2013, the unexpectedly charming book A Natural History of Dragons, subtitled A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan will be published. Similar in style and world building with the wonderful All Men of Genius by Lev Rosen, though this time there are dragons instead of crazy inventions and the lady in cause marries a naturalist and goes on expedition with him at least to start with, rather than going to college disguised as her twin brother as in All Men of Genius...
I read some 100 pages so far and as mentioned the book is really fun and charming; expect first impressions on Goodreads soon and a review next January/February.
The first paragraph (earc so possible to change in the final version):
"Not a day goes by that the post does not bring me at least one letter from a young person (or sometimes one not so young) who wishes to follow in my footsteps and become a dragon naturalist. Nowadays, of course, the field is quite respectable, with university courses and intellectual societies putting out fat volumes titled Proceedings of some meeting or other. Those interested in respectable things, however, attend my lectures. The ones who write to me invariably want to hear about my adventures: my escape from captivity in the swamps of Mouleen, or my role in the great Battle of Keonga, or (most frequently) my flight to the inhospitable heights of the Mrtyahaima peaks, the only place on earth where the secrets of dragonkind could be unlocked."
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"Centuries after the ecological collapse of Earth,
humanity has spread among the stars. Under the governance of the League,
our endless need for resources has driven us to colonize hundreds of
planets, all of them devoid of other sentient life. Humanity is
apparently alone in the universe.
Then comes the sudden, brutal decimation of Kassa, a small farming planet, by a mysterious attacker. The few survivors send out a desperate plea for aid, which is answered by two unlikely rescuers. Prudence Falling is the young captain of a tramp freighter. She and her ragtag crew have been on the run and living job to job for years, eking out a living by making cargo runs that aren’t always entirely legal. Lt. Kyle Daspar is a police officer from the wealthy planet of Altair Prime, working undercover as a double agent against the League. He’s been undercover so long he can't be trusted by anyone—even himself.
While flying rescue missions to extract survivors from the surface of devastated Kassa, they discover what could be the most important artifact in the history of man: an alien spaceship, crashed and abandoned during the attack.
But something tells them there is more to the story. Together, they discover the cruel truth about the destruction of Kassa, and that an imminent alien invasion is the least of humanity’s concerns."
Then comes the sudden, brutal decimation of Kassa, a small farming planet, by a mysterious attacker. The few survivors send out a desperate plea for aid, which is answered by two unlikely rescuers. Prudence Falling is the young captain of a tramp freighter. She and her ragtag crew have been on the run and living job to job for years, eking out a living by making cargo runs that aren’t always entirely legal. Lt. Kyle Daspar is a police officer from the wealthy planet of Altair Prime, working undercover as a double agent against the League. He’s been undercover so long he can't be trusted by anyone—even himself.
While flying rescue missions to extract survivors from the surface of devastated Kassa, they discover what could be the most important artifact in the history of man: an alien spaceship, crashed and abandoned during the attack.
But something tells them there is more to the story. Together, they discover the cruel truth about the destruction of Kassa, and that an imminent alien invasion is the least of humanity’s concerns."
In January 2013, the hard sf/space opera debut The Kassa Gambit by M. C. Planck will be out. I only took a look so far and the book reads reasonably well so I definitely plan to give it a serious try soon. I cannot say yet if the book is a planetary adventure or closer to epic space opera, but the first pages I checked had rhythm and the jargon was limited and acceptable.
The first paragraph (earc so possible to change in the final version):
The first paragraph (earc so possible to change in the final version):
"Dropping out of node-space, Prudence instinctively knew there was trouble. Seconds later the computer complained there were no navigation beacons, and after a moment, that there was no radio chatter at all. But she already knew.
She flipped the switch and shut off her own radio signature. Should have done it when the feeling struck, but she hadn’t wanted to believe. Hadn’t wanted it to be real."
****************************************************************
"Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a
cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The
sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a
dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to
coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker’s wife
belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose
fingers are in everyone’s business, may know more about the town’s true
origins than he’s letting on.
A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn…and so will all of Creation."
A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn…and so will all of Creation."
Also in January 2013, another debut, The Six Gun Tarot by R. S. Belcher will be published. While the title is cool and I like the cover, the novel is not really my cup of tea, but Mihir expressed a great interest so there is a good chance you will see a review of it here too.
The first paragraph (earc so possible to change in the final version):
"The Nevada sun bit into Jim Negrey like a rattlesnake. It was noon. He shuffled forward, fighting gravity and exhaustion, his will keeping him upright and moving. His mouth was full of the rusty taste of old fear; his stomach had given up complaining about the absence of food days ago. His hands wrapped around the leather reins, using them to lead Promise ever forward. They were a lifeline, helping him to keep standing, keep walking."
****************************************************************
Note: I decided to include the first paragraph of each of the three books as together with the blurb they clearly defined my interest - the Marie Brennan book is an asap read based on the writing style, the M.C. Planck is a serious try to read at some relatively soon point, but not yet as the writing style is fairly standard sf, while the R.C Belcher is not of that much interest for me as Western stuff with/without magic rarely is, while the writing just doesn't have anything to change that.
****************************************************************
Note: I decided to include the first paragraph of each of the three books as together with the blurb they clearly defined my interest - the Marie Brennan book is an asap read based on the writing style, the M.C. Planck is a serious try to read at some relatively soon point, but not yet as the writing style is fairly standard sf, while the R.C Belcher is not of that much interest for me as Western stuff with/without magic rarely is, while the writing just doesn't have anything to change that.
Order The Red Knight HERE (UK) or US (pre-order)
Read Chapter 1 HERE and Chapter 2 HERE
Check artwork from the book - images of main characters - HERE
Read Chapter 1 HERE and Chapter 2 HERE
Check artwork from the book - images of main characters - HERE
INTRODUCTION: One of the most expected fantasy series debuts of the year, The Red Knight by Miles Cameron, introduces us to a bleak and brutal world where life is cheap but things, especially well made ones like armor and swords are expensive. With an extensive cast of humans and various races of the Wild, a developed historical and religious background and a dual magic based on the opposition of light/order and nature/green/chaos, the series promises to be a standout epic fantasy for the ages.
"Twenty eight florins a month is a huge price to pay, for a man to stand between you and the Wild.
Twenty eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern's jaws snap shut on your helmet in the hot stink of battle, and the beast starts to rip the head from your shoulders. But if standing and fighting is hard, leading a company of men - or worse, a company of mercenaries - against the smart, deadly creatures of the Wild is even harder.
It takes all the advantages of birth, training, and the luck of the devil to do it.
The Red Knight has all three, he has youth on his side, and he's determined to turn a profit. So when he hires his company out to protect an Abbess and her nunnery, it's just another job. The abby is rich, the nuns are pretty and the monster preying on them is nothing he can't deal with.
Only it's not just a job. It's going to be a war. . ."
Twenty eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern's jaws snap shut on your helmet in the hot stink of battle, and the beast starts to rip the head from your shoulders. But if standing and fighting is hard, leading a company of men - or worse, a company of mercenaries - against the smart, deadly creatures of the Wild is even harder.
It takes all the advantages of birth, training, and the luck of the devil to do it.
The Red Knight has all three, he has youth on his side, and he's determined to turn a profit. So when he hires his company out to protect an Abbess and her nunnery, it's just another job. The abby is rich, the nuns are pretty and the monster preying on them is nothing he can't deal with.
Only it's not just a job. It's going to be a war. . ."
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "The Captain of Albinkirk forced himself to stop staring out his narrow, glazed window and do some work.
He was jealous. Jealous of a boy a third of his age, commanding a pretty company of lances. Riding about. While he sat in a town so safe it was dull, growing old
Don’t be a fool, he told himself. All those deeds of arms make wonderful stories, but the doing is cold, wet and terrifying. Remember?
He sighed. His hands remembered everything – the blows, the nights on the ground, the freezing cold, the gauntlets that didn’t quite fit. His hands pained him all the time, awake or
asleep.
The Captain of Albinkirk, Ser John Crayford, had not started his life as a gentleman. It was a rank he’d achieved through pure talent.
For violence."
The Red Knight takes place in the country of Alba at the North-West edge of civilization; while there is a manned wall supposedly protecting it from the Wild, the fact is that humanity's footprint in the northwestern parts of Alba is very low, with only the outpost abbey of Lissen Carak and its subordinated villages and farms situated on a site of power that belonged to the daemons - the highest sentient life of the Wild - not long ago.
In a famed battle a generation ago, the previous king, his court mage Harmodious and the combined knights, bowmen and infantry army of Alba decisively defeated the Wild and set it back to what people believed would be a sustainable peace for a long time. But the Wild has been creeping back towards Lissen Carak, the daemons want their old place back and the wild magus Thorn decides to help them.
When a foul murder happens on a farm near Lissen Carak, the powerful Abbess contracts the up-and-coming mercenary company led by the young and mysterious Red Knight who has recently made his name in continental wars.
In the capital of Harndon, the King prepares a tournament, exiles a braggart knight and lets a trusted guardsman go and seek his fortune to be able to marry a court lady, Queen Desiderata is her usual flirtatious self, Harmodious is lost in contemplation, while ambitious merchant Gerald Random prepares the biggest convoy of his career to go to the famed market fair at the abbey.
And to add to the mix, Jean de Vrailly an arrogant, rich and powerful knight of Galle is told by an angel to come - with a powerful army of his own of course - to Alba for great deeds, a Moreean slave joins the Iroquis-like "outwaller' tribes of the wild, the freemen "jacks" also of the wild prepare to help Thorn and the daemons in their war and strike back at the hated class society of Alba and the Lachlan drover clan of the northeast is taking their cattle to Lissen Carak and the fair too!
Seems complicated, well it is and it takes a while to get the hang of the big picture, but do not worry as the pages turn by themselves and the main action following the Red Knight, his mercenaries and their fight against the Wild is straightforward at least for a while...
The Red Knight tries and mostly succeeds to combine three things:
A very historical fiction approach to medieval fantasy with detailed realistic descriptions of the society of those times, as for example appearing in authors like Maurice Druon and Zoe Oldenbourg. The writing is very unsentimental, quite brutal on occasion and is much closer to historical fiction than to fantasy even of the "gritty" kind.
A magical system based on the power of the wild nature, green rather than dark so to speak and embodied in various creatures and people versus the power of the sun, light embodied in the Church and people; this system reminds one strongly of CS Friedman's Cold Fire while the memory chamber approach of the hermetic magic also reminds of KJ Parker's "rooms".
A strong military component as most of the book is war; this gets a bit tiring at the end when slaughtering "boglins" by the thousands becomes tedious, but it has a lot of great moments where the combination of medieval weapons and tactics with modern such given by sorcery - eg aerial bombardment by wyverns, but much more - brings something new to the table; this part is done very well, only it is a bit too long in the end.
The structure of The Red Knight is in short chunks from multiple POV's and it works mostly well with narrative flowing, though I can easily see it leading to confusion especially in the beggining where character after character and setting after setting are introduced. There are a ton of impressive characters of all kinds, most notably the title hero, the mysterious to start Red Knight about whom we find out in due time most everything about parentage and upbringing with the rest being implied, the real bad boy "Bad Tom" Lachlan, the two sorcerers Thorn and Harmodius, The Abbess, Queen Desiderata, some local and foreign knights as noted above, a few daemons, the escaped slave who becomes a member of the Sossag one of the "outwallers" Iroquis like tribes and not least a wise and very powerful Dragon.
Where I have some reservations about the novel is in its balance and integration of these quite disparate elements, so the book is occasionally less than the sum of its parts. Also as in most fantasies, the separation of the main hero and his love interest seems artificial, however needed for narrative momentum.
The ending of The Red Knight is actually superb as it goes beyond solving the main storyline and setting up the next book The Fell Sword, while it brings new main players into focus and has a "conversation" for the ages.
Overall, The Red Knight - top 25 novel of mine - is an excellent debut that I hope will find its audience as it combines a few things that usually stay separate in various genres. I am convinced that the technical aspects will only get better as the series progresses, so give it a chance and I think you will be won by the intricate story and sophisticated world building the author put so much thought into.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
The 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinal Round November 12-17 (with comments by Liviu Suciu)
On Monday November 12th the five "people's choices" were added to the original 15 and the full 20 novel field in each of the 20 categories has become available for us to vote. As the voting ends on November 17, get your vote in quickly!
I noted in my earlier post the choices I made to add to the original 15 and now I will present the three main fields of interest, fantasy, sf and historical fiction and try to predict which 10 will make the final round.
Fantasy: my vote The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks (currently my #2 fantasy of the year and #5 overall as my top fantasy of the year, KJ Parker's Sharps did not make the people's choice 5).
Predictions for the final round: The Blinding Knife, Traitor Queen, The First Confessor, The Killing Moon, King of Thorns, Red Country, City of Dragons, The Wind Through the Keyhole, Forge of Darkness and Cast in Peril.
Comments - here my reasons are the popularity of authors in 8 of the cases with NK Jemisin and Michelle Sagara as the vote of people who do not like the usual epic, traditional, exuberant or gritty.
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SF: my vote obviously my write-in choice, The Hydrogen Sonata (FBC rv next week promise!) by IM Banks (#1 sf of the year and #4 overall)
Predictions for the final round: Wool, Redshirts, A Rising Thunder, Kill Decision, Caliban's War, The Long Earth, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Blue Remembered Earth, Darth Plagueis, Alien Proliferation
Comments: I would be very happy to be wrong and The Hydrogen Sonata to go to the final 10, but I doubt it as the book is very recent and IM Banks is much more popular in the UK than here; of course Goodreads is international so who knows...
For the rest, just my guesses.
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Historical Fiction: my vote again obviously The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton which is still my top book of the year.
Predictions for the final round: The Secret Keeper, Bring up the Bodies, Winter of the World, Death of Kings, The Prisoner of Heaven, The Sins of the Father, The Shoemaker's Wife, The Kingmaker's Daughter, The Dressmaker, The Gods of Gotham
Comments: here just guesses based on what I saw commented on the Internet.
Next week, the reckoning - see how many I got right, predictions for winners this time based on numbers and popularity and of course my final votes!
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