Fantasy Review: 'The Sound of Shiant' by Hereward L M Proops

It's hard to know how to categorise this. It's historical fiction, certainly, and it's a murder mystery complete with investigating detective, and there's enough paranormal flavour to make it (I suppose) fantasy, so take your pick. The setting is Stornoway, in the Outer Hebrides, and the dialogue is littered with plausible Scottish dialect and Gaelic, but don't let that put you off, because it's all very easy to read.

The plot is simple. It's 1882, and policeman Edmund Forrester is asked to investigate the disappearance of a young man from a fishing boat. The boat owner swears he fell overboard during a storm, but the victim's parents think there's more to it and the incident occurred in the Sound of Shiant, a mysterious body of water near the Shiant Islands hedged about with rumour and myth. Naturally, as soon as the hero begins to investigate, he's faced with opposition and downright obstruction from most of the locals, with a few more helpful souls and even just a teaspoonful of romance (sort of). Oh, and there’s a comic relief sidekick, as well.

My biggest problem with the book is the historical details. I don't know what Stornoway was like in 1882, so I'll assume the author's done his research there (although I did wonder a bit at the idea of pubs with booths), and London's Metropolitan Police did indeed have a Criminal Investigation Department and a small number of Detective Inspectors at that time (although only just). And all the characters seemed to smoke cigarettes constantly which seemed a bit unlikely. It was the divorce that got me. Forrester is divorced from his wife, yet he attends her second wedding, which takes place in church with the bride wearing a white dress amidst the usual celebrations. Why did they divorce? Because he devoted too much attention to his job.

Now divorce in 1882 was a very rare business indeed (a few hundred cases a year), and involved proving in court adultery, cruelty, desertion, bigamy or something equally major (and no, being obsessive about your work was not one of the allowable causes). There was always blame (one spouse had to sue the other for divorce), and even a hundred years later it was incredibly unusual and stigmatising for both parties. To this day it remains difficult to remarry in church (in England, anyway; Scotland is a little different). As for the white dress - you had to be rich to wear anything so impractical (even for a first wedding). It's not that any of this was actually impossible, I don't suppose, but the implausibility of it grated on me, and I almost gave up at that point.

What kept me going was the setting, the beautifully described Western Isles (or Outer Hebrides, or nowadays Na h-Eileanan Siar) and the waters round about. There was Gaelic and dialect scattered about everywhere, which seemed to my inexpert ears to sound exactly right. My Gaelic is negligible, but even so I recognised a few phrases and even spotted the odd occasion where a character mistranslated for the non-Gaelic-speaking main character.

Unfortunately, a nice way with language isn’t enough, and the book was a disappointment to me on almost every other level. The murder mystery wasn’t any mystery at all, the supernatural aspects were revealed in the prologue and the ‘hero’ is one of the most uninteresting and unlikeable I’ve ever come across. Determination to get to the bottom of things is a fine quality in a detective, but in this case it manifests as an aggressive refusal to give up, wilful disregard for his own or anyone else’s safety and some breathtakingly stupid decisions. Plus he decided at an early stage that the supernatural element was involved, even when he was told repeatedly that such things belonged to mythology. It’s an odd thing when the sophisticated English detective is more superstitious than the traditional islanders. A strange book. I couldn’t get past the improbabilities, but for those with a better developed ability to suspend disbelief this is a perfectly readable little story. Two stars for the atmospheric setting and the Gaelic.

Fiction Review: 'The Remains of the Day' by Kazuo Ishiguro

Goodreads has 42,945 ratings of this book, and 2,892 reviews. What can I possibly say that hasn’t been said already, and considerably better than any combination of words I can come up with? Nothing at all, probably, but I’m going to have a bash anyway.

I first read this many years ago, and regarded it as one of the best books I’d ever read. This time, I tried the audiobook version, read by Dominic West, who has the appropriate gravitas for Stevens the butler. The plot - well, it hardly matters, being merely a vehicle to demonstrate the buttoned-up and rather tragic personality of Stevens himself, reminiscencing on the past glory days of the house where he serves. His memories of past events, coloured entirely by his own fossilised perspective of the professional nature of being in service, form the body of the story.

This has to be one of the finest descriptions of a single mind I have ever read. The author uses language with such skill that the reader completely understands Stevens and his world view, while also appreciating that the events described solely from his perspective are capable of alternative interpretations. While Stevens performs his duties with impeccable care, he is completely oblivious to the social nuances emanating from the people and events around him, which leads him occasionally to behave in misguided, almost wilfully blind, ways. Meanwhile his employer, Lord Darlington, is equally misguided in his efforts to promote the cause of Fascist Germany and equally oblivious to political nuances. Several times Lord Darlington is referred to as an amateur in politics, which contrasts elegantly with the professionalism of the butler.

I am not sure that I agree with the apparent suggestion of the later parts of the book that master and servant have both wasted their lives on inappropriate efforts. History is written by the victors, and if the war had turned out differently, then those who, like Lord Darlington, made approaches towards Hitler would have been fêted as heroes, not lambasted as near-traitors. And any employee who has done his job to the very best of his ability for many years can hardly be said to have wasted his life. I’m not sure that Stevens would ever have been capable of a normal life, regardless of occupation, so it seems unlikely that he made unreasonable sacrifices for his job. Frankly, I wondered quite what Miss Kenton saw in him.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, I still see little wrong with this book. The language is perfectly tuned for the voice of Stevens, the insight into his personality is profound and there is enough social commentary hidden below the surface to satisfy the need for depth. Five stars.

My Other Blog: Weekly Roundup

My fellow blogger Nathan has written some posts that might interest you over on the blog I share with him:

Fantasy Review: 'Mort' by Terry Pratchett

Series Review: 'Obsidian and Blood' by Alliette de Bodard

Fantasy Review: 'The Rise of Ransom City' by Felix Gilman

The Pratchett review is part of Nathan's project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here. Note that the blog has had a name change - it's now Fantasy Review Barn.

Fantasy Review: 'Daughter of the Flames' by Zoë Marriott

This is a short but very readable young adult book, with the standard-issue feisty female lead, plenty of action, large dollops of angst and a romance at its heart. It doesn’t stray very far from fantasy conventions: the heroine is the heir to the kingdom, brought up in secret in a religious order, the only survivor of a massacre by the villain, and there’s no real-world messing about with giving him a believable personality or realistic motivations - he’s essentially barking mad. The plot is the usual series of set-piece narrow escapes and dramatic encounters, while the heroine gears up for her save-the-world role. This makes for a fast-paced roller-coaster ride, and it’s all fairly entertaining.

Mystery Review: 'Brilliant Prey' by Brenda Wallace

The pundits say that the opening of a book is the most important part to captivate the reader, and I suppose it’s just as important as a way of losing the reader, too. So it is with this book. I had only got to page 2 and I was floored by a simple puzzle. Our heroine receives a letter which contains six hangman puzzles, which she and her sister proceed to solve in no time - all by themselves. Forgive me for being stupid, but isn't hangman a game where both sides, originator and guesser, have to participate? It's not like a cryptic crossword puzzle, where the whole point is to deduce the answer by yourself.

So that set me off on the wrong foot straight away. Then there were a bunch of new characters introduced, a lot of brand-name dropping (do we need to know the heroine has a Gateway computer?) and then more puzzles... And I couldn't get interested because half my mind was still trying to get past the hangman incident. Now maybe there’s some ingenious way to play a one-sided game that I don’t know about, and if someone explains it to me I’ll give this book another go, but for now it’s just too off-putting for me to concentrate on the rest of it. Lots of people seem to like this, so I guess it’s just me. One star for a DNF.

Fantasy Review: 'Affirmation' by S J Faerlind

I read ‘Prophecy’, the first book in the ‘Lirieia’s Children’ series, a few months ago and I enjoyed it although I had some issues, but after that slightly tentative debut this is a much more assured piece of writing. The story picks up exactly where the previous book left off, with the Gryffin split into two camps, Kratyn the rebel taking his supporters elsewhere, and Jurel uniting with the Orryn to attempt to defeat the aggressive Lord Defender, ruler of the plains humans, in the belief that Anarion is the Child of Prophecy.

The first book spent a lot of time introducing the various races of Gryffin, Orryn and humans (and not forgetting the tiny Grovale, who act as servants for the Gryffin), and building the characters, particularly the strangely bonded pair, Anarion the human/Orryn and Teryl the Gryffin. This one hits the ground running, with action almost right from the start, but there’s enough information to remind readers of events and characters from the first book. I enjoyed seeing the extraordinarily timid Orryn coming out of their sheltered valleys and undertaking dangerous missions on their own. The author cleverly shows us some fairly familiar human activities, like music-making, dancing and the copious consumption of beer, through bemused Orryn eyes (although surely they have music in Orryn society?). I loved the way they diligently took notes of everything they saw, in a properly scientific manner. The Orryn make a refreshing change from the typical fantasy hero type, who is often brimming with self-confidence, or at least a willingness to swing a sword where necessary. The Orryn, by contrast, are so averse to aggression that they keel over into unconsciousness whenever confronted with it.

The magic system is made clearer in this book, and it turns out to be rather simple, but powerful in an ingenious variety of ways. I very much like the way humans need to power their magic with stones, but the Orryn have an innate ability. This distinction leads to some surprising (although completely logical) differences in their abilities. More specifically, both races have some powers which the other is incapable of. As with most fantasy, magic is used both to spring surprises on the characters, and also to enable them to get out of trouble, but the possibilities are laid out well in advance so that it never feels like a cheat.

I grumbled a bit in my review of the first book that too little was revealed about Sharra (Anarion’s mother) and the Lord Defender (the villain of the piece). Both omissions are rectified very satisfactorily in this book. The Lord Defender, in particular, steps out of the shadows now and becomes a character in his own right, and although it doesn’t entirely make his motivations clearer (but then I’ve never understood the desire for global domination, frankly, so maybe that’s just me), nevertheless it makes him a more real and rounded person instead of a nebulous bad guy. I rather like his sidekick, Branden, too, who's rather more intelligent than is usual for the villain's henchman.

The ending was something of a surprise, not exactly a let-down, but a relatively low-key moment. But then the whole book is very much about the characters and how they come to adapt to their changed circumstances rather than being a high action affair, so this was very much in keeping with the rest of the book. In fact, the last few chapters, and especially the revelations regarding Jinelle and Bashide, were very moving. It's not an easy task to create non-human characters that resonate with the reader just as much as humans while staying true to their own natures, but this is something the author has achieved magnificently, as well as creating clearly distinct cultures, even amongst the various humans. This book is a huge step up from its predecessor. It's still rather wordy and formal, but that is, after all, part of the Orryn nature, so it's highly appropriate. In the end, it's the characters who stick in my mind - Anarion and Teryl, the enterprising Kaidal and Talla, Shayla, dignified in captivity (and perhaps influencing the Lord Defender in positive ways), and many more. A thoroughly enjoyable read, and a good four stars.

My Other Blog: Weekly Roundup

My fellow blogger Nathan has written some posts that might interest you over on the blog I share with him:

Fantasy Review: 'Stormlord Rising' by Glenda Larke

Fantasy Review: 'Master of the House of Darts' by Alliette de Bodard

Nathan also has a project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here.

Romance Review: 'A Scandalous Season' by Nancy Lawrence

This is a gentle Regency romance which starts with rather a splendid flourish, but degenerates quite quickly into a dull and predictable tale. This sort of book inevitably runs on rails - heroine meets hero, dislikes him on sight, begins to like him but there are insuperable obstacles and so on and so forth. It’s entirely up to the skill of the author to overcome the constraints of the formula and develop the characters and plot-twists in interesting ways. In this case, the heroine has a certain naive charm, but the hero seemed to veer from sympathy to sneering dislike to anger and back again at the drop of a hat. The conceit of two men competing for the lady as a wager is a very overused one, and again, the hero wavers, telling himself one minute that such a thing is despicable behaviour and the next chasing after her enthusiastically. I also wasn’t very enamoured of the author’s habit of telling us the thoughts of several characters, jumping from one to another within the scene. There’s no law against it, but it does make the story somewhat unfocused, I find. For those who enjoy Georgette Heyer, this is a pale imitation, nothing but froth, but is a pleasant enough way to pass the time, if you don’t mind the mistakes. I do; there are numerous editing errors, and the third use of ‘ingenious’ instead of ‘ingenuous’ was the final straw. One star for a DNF.

Mystery Review: 'The Dark Shepherds' by Ian Kennedy Martin

So - there's an alcoholic ex-cop, half Welsh and half Irish and a quarter Corsican (I may have got this slightly wrong), and there's a murderer, with multiple identities, always on the run. And yes, the murderer is a main character, who gets his own point of view. And there's a murder in Paris and another one at a vineyard, seemingly not connected, and it's all very complicated and written in a style which is perhaps meant to be ironic noir, or stylishly gritty, or possibly satirical, I can't really be sure. Basically, I found it very hard to follow, and wasn't interested in the characters either, so I'm abandoning ship. The author has a distinguished career behind him as a screenwriter of cop shows, so possibly things perk up later on. One star for a DNF.

Fantasy Review: 'The Bones of the Earth' by Scott Bury

[Review rewritten for greater accuracy and clarity]

This is a curious book. The setting is unusual, sixth century Eastern Europe, although it didn’t feel any different from a great many other fantasy works in that respect, at least not in the early parts. The protagonist, Javor, is an interesting character, an immature fifteen year old who doesn't fit in at all with his family and society and is shunned as an outcast. Of course, he has strange powers, not yet fully developed and... Well, I think we can see where this is going.

Now there's nothing wrong with retelling a familiar story, and this one has some nice original twists. Still, it does feel rather hackneyed at times. There’s the wise old mentor guiding the young man along and encouraging him to fulfil his true potential. There’s the inevitable quest, there are a couple of magic gizmos and some monsters to be defeated - and no, there’s never any doubt that they will be defeated. However unoriginal the trappings of the story, though, it’s refreshing to see a hero who is, in many ways, very unhero-like. He seems, to my inexpert eyes, to be almost autistic in his aversion to social interaction. This might be a part of his abilities or it might be unconnected, but it’s interesting.

So, having defeated a few monsters, the hero and his mentor are about to set off on a journey to Constantinople when - the book ends with the dispiriting words: ‘End of Part 1. The remainder of The Bones of the Earth: Initiation Rites can be purchased for 99 cents on Smashwords.’ Well, no it can’t. If I want to read the rest of the story, it seems my only option is to pay the full cost of the whole book, having already paid for what is apparently only a sample. If I were enthralled by the story so far, perhaps I might do that, but while it has its moments, it's a bit meh, so I think I'll pass. One star for a DNF.

My Other Blog: Weekly Roundup

My fellow blogger Nathan has written some posts that might interest you over on the blog I share with him:

Fantasy Review: 'The Wizard Hunters' by Martha Wells

Fantasy Review: 'The Light Fantastic' by Terry Pratchett

Fantasy Review: 'The Spirit War' by Rachel Aaron

Steampunk Review: 'The Inexplicables' by Cherie Priest

Fantasy Review: 'Equal Rites' by Terry Pratchett

The Pratchett reviews are part of Nathan's project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here.

Mystery Review: 'Landed Gently' by Alan Hunter

This is the fourth of a very long series featuring the genial but persistent detective, George Gently. As the terrible pun of the title suggests, this episode sees Our Hero staying with the great and the good (or at least the rich and titled) over Christmas, where the festivities are inevitably interrupted by a murder. The setting, a large country house of some antiquity, gives the book the atmosphere of Agatha Christie fanfic. I usually enjoy the period details of these books, written in the fifties, but this is ground that has been covered a thousand times before - the creepy attics and winding stairs, the secret passages, billiard rooms and libraries, the butler and housemaids, the dressing for dinner and stuffy formality. There are some details of the meals which would interest foodies, but otherwise I found it a little ordinary.

The characters never quite seem to work in these books. Gently himself is almost too self-effacing, allowing others to take the lead in the investigation and then mildly asking the one crucial question that reveals the significant little detail. But this is better, perhaps, than the over-the-top buffoonery of his superior, who blusters and expostulates his way through the interrogations, completely confident in the innocence of the aristocracy and insistently looking for the murderer amongst the obviously less trustworthy lower classes. Then there is the lady of the house, who lies outright to the police and, when pressed, has hysterics or falls into a swoon at Gently's feet. Did women ever fall into swoons under stress? Perhaps Victorians struggling for breath in their tightly-laced stays, but certainly not normal, healthy women in the more accommodating fashions of the nineteen fifties.

The ending was slightly melodramatic, but not a huge surprise, on the whole. The murderer was apprehended, justice was done and so on and so forth, according to the conventions of such books, and no tricks were employed by the author to deceive the diligent reader keeping track of the likely suspects, so a satisfactory conclusion all round. The series isn’t great literature, and doesn’t compare with Agatha Christie, but this is a pleasant, undemanding read with an interesting backdrop of upper class and upper middle class life at the time. Three stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Life Shift' by Michelle Slee

I have no idea how to categorise this - paranormal with essence of quantum physics, I suppose, and not really a romance, being more about love and consciousness and being a parent and (perhaps) destiny. Whatever it is, it’s a perfect example of the value of Goodreads - there I was, trawling through the digest of posts on the Goodreads forums I frequent when I came across a post by the author mentioning this book. A couple of clicks later, I was reading the sample, came to the end, clicked again and... just kept reading. So, the value of Goodreads combined with Amazon, I suppose.

The premise is that the main character, Christine, starts to experience flashes of another life, where she’s married to a man she barely knows and a daughter she doesn’t remember at all. Only problem is - both she and the man are married to other people. There ensues a great deal of discussion of electrons and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Schrödinger’s cat, but it never gets heavy enough to qualify this as science fiction. This part of the book involves Christine in a lot of angsting of the this-can’t-really-be-happening-to-me type, interspersed with the far more interesting reveals about the ‘other’ life, where many things are the same but a few key things are different (Christine’s job, for instance - she’s a theology lecturer in the ‘other’ life, but some sort of office drone in this life; if the actual job was mentioned, I must have missed it).

Most of the book runs on fairly simplistic and predictable rails - increasing amounts of hopping about, Christine ‘remembering’ more about her ‘other’ life, including her feelings for ‘other’ husband Matt, and trying to reconcile this with her feelings for her husband in this world, Damien. And, perhaps more profoundly, she recalls her love for Teresa, her daughter with Matt, while with Damien she’s been unable to have children. I would have liked more detail about some of the people in Christine’s two lives, and the places are merely sketched in. The writing style is a little too sparse for my taste, and there’s a great deal of dialogue, making it seem more lightweight than it really is.

There are some improbabilities - the terribly convenient appearance of a quantum physicist, who not only explains the sciencey bits but also talks about souls; and the astonishing coincidence of Christine encountering surely the only NHS doctor in Britain who listens to her, believes her and doesn’t instantly put her on anti-depressants or have her sectioned. And then, almost too quickly, the end is rushing up at a rate of knots. I rather liked the ending, actually, which eschews the obvious options and instead takes an unexpectedly grown-up line (although the characters worked out how to get there a bit too easily).

This is not really a profound book, despite the quantum physics and discussion of consciousness, the characters don’t have much depth and it suffers from a writing style which is almost skeletal. It would have been improved, I think, by taking a little more time to describe the settings and allowing the characters to show their feelings and personalities in subtler ways, rather than expressing everything in dialogue. Nevertheless, I found it an easy, enjoyable read, hard to put down, with an unexpectedly sophisticated ending, so despite the flaws I’m going to give it four stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Moon Over Soho' by Ben Aaronovitch

This is the second in a series of urban fantasy/police procedurals set in London. They are rather whimsical, in a very British way, so if you’re allergic to self-effacing heroes, dry, understated humour and a severe lack of gun-battles, you should probably avoid this. I liked the first in the series, ‘Rivers of London’ (bizarrely called ‘Midnight Riot’ in the US), with a few reservations, but this one worked even better, I thought. It’s always a problem writing the first of what could be a lengthy series, since you have to establish the characters, the premise and the setting, while also constructing a major plot and weaving in a number of subplots which will run for some time. The second attempt is often much easier with the heavy lifting already done, as it were, and such is the case here.

The big attraction for me is the central character, Peter Grant, a fairly ordinary London copper who has been co-opted into the Metropolitan Police’s ‘magic’ department to train as a wizard after showing signs of magical ability. Unlike many such fantasy works, however, Peter doesn’t become all-powerful overnight, nor does he display unusual levels of ability. On the contrary, he struggles to learn anything at all, his spells often go wrong, and he regularly has to fall back on his not especially quick wits to get him out of trouble, leading to a surprising amount of (very entertaining) destruction of property. He is very male, however, which means that it isn’t always his brain which is doing the thinking, and in this book this leads to some improbably athletic sex.

The other characters are mildly interesting in their different ways, but not particularly compelling. The river spirits, who were a feature of the previous book, have a very small role in this one, and one-time potential girlfriend Lesley (a fellow cop who magically lost half her face in the first book) is sidelined here, but clearly is going to be developed further in future books. It’s a curious thing that almost all the female characters are either termagants (Tyburn, Stephanopoulos) or evil vampire-like creatures (several of those) or in some way weird or eccentric (Molly, Peter’s Mum). Then there’s the one who could be described literally as a man-eater. Ouch.

I do like a book that makes me laugh, and this one is laugh-out-loud funny (for those who get that low-key British humour, of course). I do wonder just how this sort of thing plays elsewhere - all those references to postwar architecture and A-roads and chavettes and Morse, and sly digs at Cheam and the peaceable nature of Glaswegians. Some of it is so subtle that many of the jokes must whizz over the heads of non-Brits. I’m sure I missed a few myself. The descriptions of London - Camden Market and Soho and the Trocadero - are probably less problematic, since the author describes them well enough for the reader to get some idea.

The plot - well, it’s not really the point of a book like this. Let’s just say that it’s a bit flimsy, but it serves well enough to get Our Hero to the appropriate number of setpiece encounters, where his limited magical abilities combined with some improvisation more or less get him out of trouble. As is usual in this type of book, the main plotline is neatly sewn up, with a scattering of characters and incidents left to bubble up in future books in the series. I’m not a big fan of urban fantasy as a rule, as it veers too close to horror for my taste, but this one is milder than the previous book in that respect, and the humour and gentle charm made it a totally enjoyable, if lightweight, experience. Four stars.

My Other Blog: Weekly Roundup

My fellow blogger Nathan has written some posts that might interest you over on the blog I share with him:

Fantasy Review: 'Vessel' by Tominda Adkins

Fantasy Review: 'Harbinger of the Storm' by Alliete de Bodard

Fantasy Review: 'Lonely Werewolf Girl' by Martin Millar

Fantasy Review: 'The Color of Magic' by Terry Pratchett

The latter is part of Nathan's project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here.

Fantasy Review: 'The Riddler's Gift' by Greg Hamerton

At first glance, this is a very traditional fantasy story about a magic ring which slips away from its evil owner at a critical moment, and finds its way into the hands of the most unlikely person imaginable. There’s a benign wizard acting as mentor and guide, there’s an evil wizard spreading darkness over the land, with the help of some evil minions, and there’s a collection of good guys uniting to defeat evil. You might think you’ve read something with a plot not a million miles from this one before. But not so fast; this book is proof of the theory that even the oldest and most overworked tale can be infused with new life in the hands of a good storyteller.

The plot isn’t really as unoriginal as I made out. Tabitha is the teenage girl who ends up with the magic ring, but she uses it to sing the Lifesong, the music that (somehow) triggers or even transcends the magic in this world. Ashley is an apprentice Lifegifter (or mage) who finds himself with the convenient ability to read thoughts. Garyll is the Swordmaster (chief warrior and law enforcer), and also love interest for Tabitha. The Riddler is the good wizard, there to help Tabitha. Kirjath Arkell is one of the minions. And although there are good guys and bad guys, things aren’t at all as clearcut as is usual in this type of fantasy.

The worldbuilding has been quite carefully done. The setting, Eyri, is rather small, being no more than two to three days riding from one side to the other, but there’s a reason behind that, and hopefully a later installment will see the story expand into the outside world. One grumble: there is a point where some of these external places are mentioned, with a string of incomprehensible names like Lûk and Jho-down and lots more, in the worst kind of infodump. Fortunately this is brief. The setting is the usual pre-industrial-revolution affair - a rather idyllic and twee collection of villages filled with more or less honest, upright citizens. The author has made efforts to avoid the standard generic fantasy template for his settlements, so each one has some distinguishing characteristic. Russel, for instance, is an artists’ colony, with houses built on stilts. While these distinctions seem a little artificial, it’s better than every place being the same as all the others.

The magic system is very nice. There are three ‘axes’ of magic: the axis of darkness and light, that of energy and matter, and that of order and chaos. I liked the way that it’s necessary to keep the opposing forces in balance, which leads to some very elegant methods of keeping the heroine and the villain apart until the right moment. The Lightgifters (mages who use the magic of light to heal and uplift the spirits) call upon sprites to power their spells, which are charged each morning by a communal song. There are also Darkcasters, who control a dark equivalent to sprites, known as motes, and spread gloom and despair. This all works rather nicely.

The characters fall neatly onto the good or bad side of the equation, and although sometimes it’s not immediately clear which side a character is on, ultimately it’s a black or white distinction, there really aren’t too many shades of grey here. What’s even more depressing is that so many of the characters are quite passive. Tabitha and Ashley, the two youngest, are essentially pushed around by circumstance and the machinations of other characters, and when it appears as if they might drift into the wrong place or make a mistake, someone more competent comes along to rescue them. If that fails, then they just happen to realise what they ought to do - Tabitha by way of her magic ring, and Ashley by virtue of his oh-so-convenient ability to hear thoughts, although not all thoughts, you understand, just certain key thoughts. Even Garyll the Swordmaster with his named sword (Felltang, since you ask) who strides around fearlessly as the epitome of well-honed manly virtue, imparts backbone into his weaker subordinates, and accosts the bad guys in stern brook-no-nonsense tones, is pushed here and there by the schemes and devices of others. Meanwhile Kirjath the evil minion and his boss the Big Bad are running rings round everyone, and the Riddler - well, OK, the Riddler is actually interesting. He has a certain complexity, for a start, and isn’t a straightforwardly good or bad character, although he does tend to turn up at crucial moments to rescue poor Tabitha from yet another tricky situation.

The romance - no, on second thoughts, don’t get me started on the romance. Putting Garyll of the Manly Virtues together with Tabitha the Meek and throwing in a few burning glances and shivering touches does not a romance make. I’d rather an author skip that part of the story altogether than make such a ham-fisted effort, especially since a large part of it is just about motivation. Tabitha’s in danger, so Garyll must ride heroically to her rescue or Sacrifice All for her sake. But there is one interesting aspect in the apparent equating of sex with the dark side. The good guys go for romantic dinners and in moments of excitement hold hands or exchange chaste kisses. Even thinking about sex pushes them over to the dark side (apparently). Then they make very questionable decisions because they’re in love. The bad guys, on the other hand, indulge in wildly passionate sex while casting spells of extraordinary power (which sounds like a lot more fun, actually). But maybe I’m just overthinking this.

I liked the writing style, and although there are a lot of point of view characters, the author uses them to good effect to drive the story forward. I enjoyed the little 'riddle' at the start of every chapter, too. But this is a huge book. I’m a fast reader but it took me forever to get through it. In a sense, this is a strong point, because the story is detailed enough to sustain it, and there's very little filler. There are a few places where scenes dragged on a bit too long, and some questionable motivations, where the plot was pushing characters along, but most of it felt necessary. Nevertheless, I found myself tiring of it more than once, especially during the more horrifically graphic torture scenes or the multitude of depressing oh-no-the-bad-guys-are-too-powerful moments.

There was one major irritant to me and that was Tabitha’s complete inability to work out what she needed to do. I wouldn’t say she was stupid, exactly, just very, very slow on the uptake. Even when the Riddler led her step by step, she never seemed to make the necessary jump until it was blindingly obvious. It was quite painful sometimes. I enjoy a story where the author drops enough clues for the reader to work things out a moment or two before the protagonist does, but not when it happens ten chapters before and I find myself muttering: ‘Come on, it’s so obvious!’. I wanted to slap her upside the head sometimes.

The ending was suitably dramatic, and the last few chapters flew by with all the usual swings and reversals, one or two not terribly surprising reveals, and a satisfying, if slightly overwrought, conclusion at both the overarching plot level and the human level. For those who like a straightforward traditional fantasy, with clearcut heroes and villains, a battle between good and evil, and a young innocent discovering amazing powers, this is an excellent example. It's very well written, with a large cast of characters who are well drawn and memorable, and a clever and elegant magic system (and bonus points for the very ingenious use of mathematical principles; any author combining magic with möbius bands has my vote). I found it just a little too predictable for my taste, and I look for a bit more complexity in my characters, but that's personal preference, and the solid ending and neat magic system make it a good four stars.

My Other Blog: Weekly Roundup

My fellow blogger Nathan has written some posts that might interest you over on the blog I share with him:

Series Review: 'Crossroads' by Kate Elliott

Fantasy Review: 'Red Country' by Joe Abercrombie

You can find them here.

Mystery Review: 'The Last Exile' by E V Seymour

This has quite a bitty opening, as the author tries to squeeze in a lot of backstory as well as a dramatic first chapter. Inevitably there’s a lot of jumping about as a result. However, things soon settle down and it’s into the main plotline. The main character, Paul Tallis, a former cop with obligatory tricky past and now down on his luck, is recruited for a secretive undercover job - track down four criminals recently released from prison and inadvertantly not deported back to their home countries afterwards. The four cases are tackled one after the other, an unusual approach for a book like this, and everything gradually becomes more complicated as Paul realises things are not quite as they seem.

I rather enjoyed this. Each individual storyette is solved relatively easily, but there’s enough going on in the background to make this an absorbing read. The slow build of tension and the gradual revelations of back-scene machinations make for a solidly pacy story. Paul is an interesting character, with a past which is intriguing while avoiding the usual hackneyed stereotypes (he’s not an alcoholic, reformed or otherwise, he doesn’t have a broken marriage and he’s not a cynical, world-weary type). He’s intelligent and physically fit without being a superhero, and his decisions are generally sensible ones, albeit slightly naive. Perhaps he’s a little too unrealistically good, in the moral sense. The minor characters are believable, too. I particularly liked the chainsmoking cop. The writing style is nicely unobtrusive, and works very well, and it was good that not every tricky situation was resolved with a shootout.

The story builds to the inevitable dramatic climax, and the usual whirlpool of double-crossing and trying to work out just who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in all this. I have to say that this wasn’t entirely convincing, and the big reveal at the end was just too easy. There was also a bit too much political soapboxing over the last few chapters for my taste. Yes, we get it, these are Very Bad People. But despite a few minor flaws, I found this an enjoyable read which kept me turning the pages. Four stars.

Announcement

I've joined forces with fellow fantasy reviewer Nathan (Skynjay) to collaborate on a joint blog, Nathan's Fantasy Reviews. That way we can cover more ground and include more reviews than we could individually. More reviewers may be added later. In future all my fantasy and sci-fi reviews will be posted both here AND at the new blog. Some of my old reviews will also be reposted there. New blog is here.

Pauline's Fantasy Reviews will continue unchanged, featuring all my Goodreads reviews, including an assortment of murder mysteries, the odd historical romance and my occasional essays as well as my fantasy and sci-fi reads.

Essay: On Choosing A Fantasy Book To Buy

There was a time when choosing a fantasy book was easy. You went to the library, and looked for something - anything - you hadn’t read before. You went to your local bookstore and scanned the one or two shelves of genre books. Once in a while you went to the big smoke and found a proper-sized bookstore, and came back loaded. I was lucky enough to live not far from London, so from time to time I got lost in Foyle’s, wide-eyed by the sight of so many books. Amazon changed all that, and now the difficulty is trawling through the thousands of offerings there. Just how do you evaluate a book well enough to decide whether you’ll enjoy it?

The advent of self-published books has made this process more difficult. When every book had been through the hands of a traditional publisher, a reader could assume a basic degree of competence and, although occasionally such optimism was misplaced, it wasn’t a bad guide. But self-published works are variable - some are every bit as professionally presented as anything from the big six, and some are appalling. Many are just unpolished, the work of first-time authors that could have done with a little more editing.

I’ve been burned more than once, buying a book that sounded terrific, but turned out to be trite and unoriginal, or full of dangling plot threads, or populated by cardboard characters (and this applies just as much to traditionally published as to self-published). Sometimes the typos and creative grammar were overwhelming. As I already have a backlog of many months’ worth of reading, a book has to be quite unusual to tempt me to buy it. So I’ve devised a fairly rigorous evaluation system, and it occurred to me that it might be helpful to self-publishing authors if I document the steps I go through when deciding whether to buy a book.

The first thing I see is...

The Title

And it might well be the last. Yes, if the title doesn’t strike me as interesting, that may be the end of it right there. I’m quite happy to reject a book purely on the basis of a dull title.

Fantasy titles tend to follow a pattern: ‘The Talisman of Doom’, ‘The Tale of the Raven’s Stone’, ‘The Orphan of the Lost Storm’ and other such nonsense (I just made those up, so I hope they’re not real books). Titles like these tell me the book is fantasy, but they also suggest that they’re fairly conventional fare. I like something a little different, so they don’t hold much appeal for me. What’s an appealing title? For me, it’s something I don’t immediately understand, something that makes me stop and think: what does that actually mean? Some examples: ‘The Silence of Medair’, ‘The Adamantine Palace’, ‘Ravenmarked’.

Every day I get a list of free Kindle books from eReaderIQ, which usually gives me four fantasy titles. Here are four recent offerings:

Whill of Agora - By: Michael Ploof (Createspace) - 4.0 Stars (4)

Sea Change - By: Iain Rowan - 5.0 Stars (2)

Elf Killers - By: Carol Marrs Phipps (Carol Marrs Phipps & Tom Phipps) - 5.0 Stars (1)

Of Elvan Heroes (The Chronicles of Brawrloxoss) - By: J. R. Knoll - 5.0 Stars (1)

So how do they strike me? I’m not big on elves, really (they’ve been done before, just a few million times). I don’t mind a few in the background, but any book focused largely on elves is out, for me. And ‘The Chronicles of Brawrloxoss’??? That’s a fail in the bizarre spelling category. So two are out purely because of their titles. And ‘Sea Change’, although the title is quite appealing (what sort of change?), turns out to be YA (young adult), which is not my preferred type of reading.

That leaves just ‘Whill of Agora’. The title’s unusual enough to pique my interest. Who or what is a Whill anyway? And Agora might be a place, or it might be something more interesting. Minor points: I like that the author puts his publisher as Createspace, so he’s not trying to hide his self-publishing, and the ratings are realistic, not just an array of 5*. So the next stage is to click the link to Amazon, and have a look at...

The Cover

This isn’t a bad cover at all. The two characters in the foreground are very fantasy, without being horribly clichéd, and I like the light on the water, and that intriguing city with its tower and odd sculpture. It suggests some interesting world-building, although covers are nototiously unrepresentative. I don’t judge a book solely by its cover, but it gives me an indication of how serious the author is. A cheap-looking cover is a warning sign that the author has cut corners, or not bothered to pay a professional. I’m no expert, but this one doesn’t look cheap to me, just a little old-fashoned perhaps, and not as mind-blowing as the best of the traditionally published covers (but if it’s only to be sold in ebook format, it doesn’t need to be - it’s physical books that need the spectacular artwork).

So then I move on to...

The Blurb

It’s difficult to write a good blurb, one that gives the flavour of the book and also intrigues, without revealing too much. This one is very good, I think, and tells me plenty about the book. Here it is in full:

‘Every so often, an epic adventure emerges that makes the blood surge, the spine tingle, and the heart smile page after exhilarating page. Such is Whill of Agora, Michael James Ploof’s action-packed fantasy that visits strange new lands as it unveils how one exceptional young man named Whill makes full use of fierce wits, superior skills, and relentless will to help defend the land of Agora from the monstrous Draggard. With plenty of drama and action packed battle scenes, Whill of Agora will enthrall anyone on the quest for great adventure, good times, and an infectiously optimistic outlook on even the darkest and most dangerous of days.
‘It is the year 5170 in the land Agora, where humans, dwarves, and elves have existed in peace for centuries. Now, however, the human King Addakon has invaded and waged war on neighboring Isladon. The once peaceful Kingdoms of Agora are on the brink of continental war. The Dark Elf Eadon, Addakon's master, and his army of Dragon-Elf crossbreeds, the Draggard, threaten to conquer all kingdoms. The final hour has arrived.
‘Enter young Whill, a nineteen-year-old ranger with battle savvy and untapped abilities. Having spent years roaming Agora and training with his mentor Abram, Whill has become a bright intellectual and a master of combat. What he seeks most, however, is the identity of his birth parents. Instead, he finds a tumultuous terrain and a prophecy placing him in the center of the struggle.
‘Along the way, Whill encounters an equally inspired group of companions that are matched in skill and mission. These include Rhunis the Dragon Slayer, the young Tarren, the fearless Dwarf Roakore, the beguiling warrior Elf Avriel, and the powerful Zerafin. As Whill joins forces, he forges bonds far mightier than their escalating travails. With high adventure and fierce friendship, Whill of Agora will capture your imagination and grip your heart during every super-charged escapade that Agora’s bold and grinning brotherhood embraces.’

It’s clear that this is a very traditional type of fantasy: keywords like ‘quest’, ‘prophecy’, ‘mentor’, ‘brotherhood’, ‘war’, ‘elves’, ‘dwarves’, ‘dragon slayer’ and so on. There’s also the unknown ‘identity of his birth parents’ - so I guess he’s the orphaned heir to the kingdom. That may have been done once or twice before. The blurb also tells me that this is a cracking good read, without being too obvious about it: all that surging blood and tingling spine stuff, and phrases like ‘great adventure’, ‘grip your heart’, ‘action packed battle scenes’ and so on. And I like the sound of ‘infectiously optimistic outlook’, which sounds like the touch of humour which always lifts a book, especially fantasy which is often pretty grim.

More generally, there are no typos in the blurb, no extraneous exclamation marks and only a few capital letters scattered around. Nor does the author assure me that his book is the best thing I’ll read all year or as good as [insert famous author here]. This is all positive - nothing here to frighten the horses. That’s given me a good idea about the book, so next I look to see what other readers thought in...

The Reviews

Now some people only really skim reviews - if there are plenty of 5* reviews and not many negatives, they will take the plunge. But I like to read them more thoroughly than that. It’s what they actually say that matters, not the rating or the volume of them. Amazon.co.uk (my local, so to speak) has only 4 reviews, 2x5*, 1x4* and 1x2*. The most gushing ones may have been written by the author’s friends and family, or may even be paid for, but anything negative is likely to be real, so I always look first at the lowest rated. Here’s the 2* review:

Good intentions isn't enough to make it work  In many ways this is a very sympathetic book. The main caracters are likeable, the story is not uninteresting per se. But someting is missing. There is nothing original or new, the characters lack depth and I never really came to care about them. It seems like a rehash of Robert Feists Magician/Krondor series, but without the charm, humour and character og those books.

And here’s one of the 5* reviews:

great book: At last another author to stand along side David Gemmell, Joe abercrombie and Patrick Rothfus. More please.And a good price to boot.

Abercrombie? Rothfuss? I don’t think so (meaning no disrespect to the author here, he may really be the next Rothfuss, but statistically it’s improbable). I really distrust reviews that say the author is another X, they sound too gushing by half. The 2* review, by contrast, sounds all too plausible.

Over on big Amazon, there are 26 reviews, 13x5*, 8x4*, 3x3*, 2x2*.

Here’s one of the 2* reviews:

Fast and shallow This is yet another YA fantasy written to an overused formula: boy (Whill) has a mysterious background and is accompanied in his (initially pointless) travels by a wise older person, boy has some sort of undefined destiny, boy discovers he has untrained magical power and discovers he is an uncrowned king. Great evil stands in his way, but we all know he will overcome. Dwarfs, elves and other characters abound. Whill is unbelievably good at everything he does and is too good in the moral sense, and his adolescent love interest is indescribably beautiful.
The story is not badly written but the characters are shallow, sometimes stupid, and lack any dimensionality beyond being very good or very bad. Where are the mistakes made for which a price must be paid? Where is the confusion and uncertainty that any young man feels? Where are the unpredictable events and detours in the storyline?
I was unable to identify with the story and will not bother with the next in the series.

And by contrast, here’s one of the 5* reviews:

Move over Tolkien Fantastic book. I had low expectations, having never heard of the author and seeing the discounted price. This has the potential of becoming a classic. I can't wait until the next in the series is published.

This is very similar to the previous pair of reviews (except that the comparison this time is to Tolkien!). A pattern is beginning to emerge. Goodreads (my review source of choice) has 21 ratings for the book, mostly 5* and 4*, but no reviews yet, so no information from there. I feel I’m getting a good picture of the story now and whether it’s likely to appeal to me, but there’s still the final step...

Look inside/sample

Amazon now seems to have the Look Inside feature for pretty much everything, and it’s really eliminated the need to download a sample. It doesn’t always format quite right, but it’s quick and easy to read the first few chapters. The first thing I find inside ‘Whill of Agora’ is a map - yay! And it’s properly drawn, so bonus points for that. And the chapters have proper titles: ‘The Road to the Mountains’, ‘Unlikely Companions’, ‘The Drums of War’ for example. That’s a small point, but it makes it much easier to keep turning the pages when each chapter has some sort of intriguing title.

So to the writing. This book is written in fairly formal language, literate and descriptive without being overwrought. I didn’t spot any typos or grammatical errors. There’s action interspersed with quieter passages. The setting is the usual pseudo-medieval affair, with knights and inns and tournaments, the pacing seems good and the characters are likeable enough. At this point, I have enough information to make a decision, but there’s just one more factor I take into account - the price. For an author I’ve heard of, or read before, I’m happy to pay mass market paperback prices, but for an unknown - no more than half that. It’s just too much of a risk. This book is free today, however, so that isn’t a consideration. So finally...

Did I buy it?

No. I like my fantasy to surprise me, and this one is cut from a very familiar template. I know there’s a huge market for this kind of story, and there are some very like it in the Amazon bestseller lists, but it’s just a little too predictable for my taste. There's nothing wrong with the author's presentation, in fact it's rather well done, but there's a fundamental mismatch between this book and my personal interests.

I should point out, perhaps, that there’s no significant reason for choosing this particular book to analyse in this way, except that it happened to crop up on the email, and I went through all these steps to make my decision. It takes a lot less time to do than to write about, of course. But the moral is clear: for authors trying to attract sales, every part of a book's presentation - title, cover image, blurb, reviews and sample - is important to draw potential readers. Even if an author does everything right (as in this case), the book simply may not appeal to many readers, who may be looking for more (or less) action, more (or less) romance, more (or less) magic and so on. It's only a failure if the reader turns away for the wrong reason - because the cover image is poor, or because of typos or self-aggrandisement in the blurb. Once the book is bought, it’s all down to the quality of the storytelling and the author’s skill, but the very first task is to sell the book, and that’s where the initial presentation is crucial.