Fantasy Short Story Review: 'The Bone Knife' by Intisar Khanani

I’m a huge fan of the author, having given five stars to both ‘Thorn’ and ‘Sunbolt’, so this was a must-have for me. It’s a charming little short story, a prequel to a future novel, with all the author’s trademarks: great characters, a well-defined setting and an intriguing plot, beautifully written, creating an altogether beguiling experience.

Rae is the eldest of three sisters, who live with their parents. No, the main character isn’t an orphan, isn’t mistreated and actually has a great relationship with her siblings and parents, a refreshing change from so much fantasy. But Niya, the middle sister, has a secret: a talent for magic, which she uses in delightfully domestic ways, enhancing the bread or the stitches in the curtains. But in this world, magic-users are obliged to be trained as mages and serve the king, so Niya has to keep her ability hidden. Into this placid setting comes potential trouble, a man wanting to buy horses. He just happens to be a faerie...

It’s difficult in a short story to create characters who have any real depth, but the author carries this off with aplomb. Rae, the girl with a clubfoot, sneered at and ignored by the villagers, is also intelligent and resourceful. The rest of the family have their own distinctive personalities. But the star of the show is the faerie, a creature both frightening and eerily compelling at the same time, and very much ‘other’, something not human. He steals every scene he’s in, frankly, and I hope we see more of him in the full-length novel.

My only quibble with the story is that the villagers seem to be rather different from Rae and her family. In short, they are somewhat lacking in common sense, and I’m not sure why they are so overtly hostile towards the faerie, when Rae’s father is quite happy to do business with him. It may be that there’s some reason behind that, which isn’t being made clear, but it struck me as odd. It’s a very small point, however.

I really enjoyed this, but be warned: it is very short, and stopped at 47% on my Kindle, the rest being taken up with samples of the author’s other works. A good four stars.

Paranormal Thriller: 'Reviver' by Seth Patrick

Such a tricky one to categorise: a real genre-bender. There are shades of sci-fi, but it’s a flimsy connection - no squids in space and it’s (more or less) present day. It might be called fantasy, but there are no truly fantastical elements like magic or dragons or demons. It’s sorta, kinda paranormal - yes, let’s go with that. A paranormal police procedural action thriller...

This is a fascinating premise: certain people have the ability to revive the recently dead and talk to them. The effects only last a short time, but it's enough to allow loved ones the opportunity to say goodbye, or to allow a murder victim to name their killer. The hero here, Jonah, is one such reviver, working with the police to catch villains or, in some cases, to exonerate the most likely suspect. It sounds all good, right? But of course, there's a catch. The act of revival takes a toll, mentally and physically, on those performing it, and sometimes strange things happen. Cue dramatic music...

This is a real curate's egg of a book. Some parts, especially the actual revivals, are absolutely terrific - emotionally engaging, dramatic and oh so spooky, and quite unpredictable (to me, anyway). Other parts I found a total drag. After a great opening chapter, the author feels the need to dump the entire backstory of revivals, and various characters, on our heads. This means, sometimes, entire chapters of dry exposition. Sorry, but I just don't need to know that much, and definitely not all in one go. If parts of the backstory are relevant to the here and now, then dribble it out in small quantities at an appropriate time.

The characters - well, the author has tried his damnedest to give everyone a suitably affecting background so as to make them sympathetic, and to some extent that works because it's relevant to the story. Jonah's history, for instance, led directly to his becoming a reviver, and moreover a certain type of reviver which becomes crucial later in the story (not wanting to give too much away here), so I can accept that. But somehow it never quite worked for me. I never really cared much about any of them. The main problem, though, is way too many characters. There must be dozens of named characters here, and I just can't keep that many straight in my head. Towards the end, several dramatic reappearances were spoiled for me because I was saying: who?

Towards the end, the plot devolves into standard formulaic thriller territory. You know the sort of thing: people suddenly turn up waving weapons of one sort or another, or behaving in increasingly extreme ways, culminating in the giant oh-my-god-we're-all-going-to-die palaver that goes on and on, getting increasingly over the top. And of course, people inevitably stop to explain things to each other, or rush back into the burning building/line of fire/whatever to rescue people they don't even like very much. Unbelievably silly, in fact. I know it's pretty much what everyone expects from this kind of story, but personally I'd much rather the characters behaved sensibly and stayed within their realm of expertise.

Overall, an intriguing premise ripe with possibilities which the author explores quite thoroughly, let down by too much exposition and a way too melodramatic and long-drawn-out finale for my taste. Recommended for fans of all-action high-adrenalin summer-blockbuster-style drama, with a little horror thrown in. Four stars for the spine-chilling revivals, two stars for the info-dumps and three stars for the ending, averaging out at three stars.

Fantasy Romance Review: 'The Conspiracy' by Erica Dakin

This is the second in the 'Theft and Sorcery' series. I really enjoyed the first book, 'The Ritual', and this one is even better. It's not serious or grimdark or heavy or profound, but it is a whole lot of fun. It wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, let's get that straight right from the start; there's a fair amount of graphic sex, although nothing kinky or disturbing to my eyes, and there's swearing of a similarly earthy nature, so anyone who's bothered by that should steer clear.

Although this book is essentially a stand-alone, it is directly connected to the first book, but set some sixty years later. The two main characters in 'The Ritual', Rin and Zash, turn up again here in a minor role. Being half-elves themselves, a sixty year gap makes them still young and active, not pensioners. The main leads, Sita, the first person point of view, and Kai, both half-elves, are new characters here. Last time, Rin was the thief and Zash a sorcerer, but this time both Kai and Sita are thieves, and Kai is also a sorcerer, a nice twist. The two meet while both are trying to burgle the royal palace, the joke being that Sita actually lives there, but she is being trained on the queen's instructions in various nefarious pursuits, as well as forms of combat.

This is a romance, first and foremost, but that doesn't mean that the fantasy element is perfunctory. The world-building has ramped up somewhat from the first book, where it felt decidedly sketchy. This time, the author fleshes out the political element, and a conspiracy by the various high magistrates (kind of like dukes, ruling a domain of their own) to assassinate the queen. Sita is part of a group sent off with the heir to the throne, Tio; his role is to make a royal tour of the kingdom and cosy up to the magistrates, and hers is to uncover evidence of the conspiracy. As they travel through the countryside, there is some interesting detail of the economic strengths of each one. It isn't very complicated - the coast has fish, the mountains have mines, the warm south has vineyards - but it serves to make the world feel more fleshed out and realistic.

The other aspect that I found interesting is the three races - elf, human and half-elf. In the previous book, elves ran everything, humans filled the equivalent of the middle classes and half-elves were mostly slaves. The end of the story saw a change, with the incoming queen giving all the half-elves citizenship. In this book, we find (unsurprisingly) that not everyone is happy with that situation (hence the assassination plot), and that things are a lot more complicated than they seem. Since elves have low fertility, humans breed like the proverbial rabbits (contraception seems to be unheard of) and half-elves are infertile, there's a lot of potential for sexual exploitation. Male elves in this world are horny devils, and have a thing for human women, hence the numbers of half-elves. This book explores some of the uneasy relationships between the races.

The plot rattles along beautifully. There's plenty of action, some truly dramatic moments and a scary twist at the end - one of those phew-we're-all-safe-oh-no! moments. And yes, of course there's a happy ever after at the end (this is a romance, after all), but there were quite a few heart-stopping, page-turning, gotta-keep-reading incidents along the way. The magic is nothing unusual - muttered incantations, hand-waviness, almost anything goes, although the user gets tired so there is a price to pay. I liked some of Kai's illusions, though; the coloured light thingies sounded lovely. So as a fantasy, this holds up very well.

What about the romance side of things? Short answer - terrific. The relationship between Sita and Kai is perfectly believable, the obstacles (an essential component of any romance) were realistic, even the instant attraction is nicely done. I have to say that Kai is one of the most charming heroes I've ever encountered, with none of the smug arrogance that so often characterises the male lead these days. There were moments when Sita was pushing him away and I was muttering: look, if you don't want him, dear, send him my way. You just don't find blokes as nice as that too often. I had slight issues with him turning out so well after the sort of experiences he'd had, but let's not quibble over that. The sex was well written without being over the top, and there were some moments of pure romance that were perfectly lovely (sigh...). One other aspect that struck me - even though our athletic heroes spent a lot of time screwing each other silly, and the early encounters were given in great detail, the author was restrained enough to skip much of the graphic description for the later episodes, so it never became overly repetitive.

I do have some issues with the morality question. In the first book, the main characters were thieves almost by necessity, since the alternative was slavery. Here, Kai is a thief from choice, and although he attempts to justify that (he only steals one or two items from those rich enough to afford it), it's still fairly questionable. More seriously, there is a point when our heroes decide to kill a number of guards in order to free a lot of slaves. The author doesn't avoid the issue, showing the characters' unease with the decision, but it still made me uncomfortable. The guards were, after all, just paid employees following their boss's orders, not the enemy in a war, and it seemed extreme to kill them. I would have liked it better if a more subtle way could have been found to free them. But it's a minor point.

This was a hugely enjoyable read that had me grinning from ear to ear at times, and was also an exciting page turner. It's not deep, and the characters fall neatly into the good or evil columns (no shades of grey here, moral ambiguities aside), but it's a lot of fun, and both the romance and fantasy elements work very well. Recommended for anyone who enjoys their fantasy entertaining and fast-paced, with a hefty dollop of sex thrown in. A good four stars.

[Edited to remove spoiler - oops!]

Fantasy Review: 'The Light of Kerrindryr' by H Anthe Davis

This could be the world's shortest review. I could just say: this book is piking awesome. Read it. The end.

Or I could tell you exactly why it’s so awesome (a much, much longer review). So let’s do that. Settle down, I’m going to ramble a bit so this may take some time.

I read a lot of debut fantasy, and there's no way to predict exactly what you might get. Even the sample isn't a good guide, because a promising opening can sometimes tail off disappointingly. Mostly, I find them to be varying shades of mediocre; imaginative but ploddingly written, or nicely executed but trite. Very occasionally, something truly exceptional turns up. I've been lucky enough to find a few such gems in the last year or two, and this one is right up there with the best of them. It has great characters, awesome world-building, an incisive writing style and a rapid-fire plot with a surprising twist on almost every page. There’s a slightly slow start with a deluge of hard-to-grasp detail, but once I got past that, the story sucked me in and never let go.

I have to mention the world-building first. There are two kinds of fantasy authors: one kind draws a squiggly-edged continent, adds several kingdoms, three rivers and a mountain range, decides how many gods are in the prevailing religion and - we’re done! On with the story! And then there are those who actually invent worlds. Some are so complex and layed and nuanced that they make our own world look simple. Tolkien invented entire languages for his. Others create architectural styles, clothing, flora and fauna, cultural variations, weaponry, even cutlery. I haven’t found invented cutlery in this book, but pretty much every other detail you could wish for has been thought about. You want to know where the highest rainfall is? [1] Which are the best grain-producing regions? Where the stables are in the army camp? How the ogres count? (Seriously; in base six, if you want to know, which gives the mathematical module in my brain a frisson of pure delight.) And yes, there are languages and fantasy’s second-best invented swearword. [2] The author has it all worked out, starting right at the beginning, with the creation. And the best part of it is that all this world-building isn’t slapped on like theatrical make-up. Instead, there are little snippets here and there, where the story needs it (or lightly brushed on, to continue the make-up analogy). The result feels extraordinarily real. I love it.

Cob, the main character, a slave in the Empire’s army, is frustrating in a lot of ways. He’s seventeen, possibly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, has been messed about with mentally for years (as all potentially rebellious slaves are), and his stubbornness level is set to eleven, at least. He believes absolutely everything he’s been told by his parents and, more recently, by his Empire masters, has a touching faith in their dogmatic religion, and did I mention how stubborn he is? So every time someone tries to help him or rescue him or intervene in any way, he reacts with a certain amount of negativity, shall we say. For much of the book he’s merely a pawn in other people’s machinations, reacting to events (mostly by saying no) and constantly trying to be normal, even when it’s obvious that he really isn’t. Even his escape from slavery is very much against his will (and isn’t that a wonderful break from tradition, a slave who doesn’t want to escape?). He absolutely wants to conform, to be a good Imperial citizen. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to ache for poor Cob, caught up in events way out of his league and finding out some truly heart-breaking things about his past. And the present, come to that. Or finding himself temporarily in the midst of a real family and being astonished that the children play around.

There are a number of other characters who also have point of view episodes, sometimes quite briefly as the plot requires, and this could have been a mess, hopping from one character to another. It works very well on the whole, although there were a few times when the rapid jumps from place to place felt a bit choppy. Fortunately, all the characters have depth, even the walk-on parts. Darilan and Sarovy, who both end up chasing after Cob, are wonderfully deep and nuanced characters, and just as tragic, in their different ways. Only Lark fell a bit flat for me; although she had her moments in the early parts of the story, she became not much more than baggage for a while, and I didn’t feel I got to know her well enough to get under her skin, so to speak. But I loved her pet goblin, Rian, who stole every scene he was in (even while fast asleep), while never saying much more than ‘Meep’ and ‘Ys’ (yes). And there are some peripheral characters that I would love to see more of, like the Archmagus and the Crimson General (although from a safe distance, perhaps).

The magic is fairly straightforward. There are mages who use sigils and runes and words and hand-waviness to create their spells, so there’s a fair amount of hurling of thunderbolts and the like going on. So far, so conventional. There are portals (yay for portals!), some permanent, some created on the fly. Some mages are also mentalists, able to probe into the minds of subjects, see their memories and moderate them. Mindwashing, it’s called, and the process and its after effects are truly unsettling. Almost everyone in the army, freesoldier or slave, is subjected to it at regular intervals, to keep them content by removing distressing experiences from their minds, with odd effects, but like any such capability it also becomes a means of keeping control.

The author’s world comes fully stocked with a range of interesting lifeforms, not just humans. There are ogres and skinchangers, goblins and some really creepy beings called eiyet. Creepy oozes out all over the place, actually, and there are moments of pure horror, in the Hitchcock sense of chills up the spine, rather than the more usual sense these days of grossness and spilled entrails. There are also magically enhanced - well, things, for want of a better word, about which I will say no more . There is a certain blurring of the distinction between alive and not-alive which gave me the heeby-jeebies, frankly.

The plot... look, if I say that the book’s about a slave who escapes and is chased across several countries by a bunch of people who mean him harm because of something powerful inside him, something he’s not even aware of, well, it sounds like a million other fantasy books, doesn’t it? So let’s not worry about the plot. In reality, it’s not at all trite, and everything fits together beautifully, the characters all behave perfectly believably and it’s anything but predictable. It’s absolutely the opposite of predictable, in fact. I just never knew what was coming next, not once.

Where the book excels for me is the way it deals with the spirit world, the shadow world, dreams and not-dreams, things which are beyond human understanding (to express it in a very pedestrian way). It’s very difficult to convey these sort of airy-fairy concepts effectively, but the author does it brilliantly here. I generally have real trouble visualising these non-world (and non-rational) experiences, but here I always knew what was happening, even if I didn’t always know why. The author’s writing style is a big help, with a precision of word-use that is a joy to read.

I've found it difficult to write this review. I enjoyed this book so much, and at a much deeper level than the usual run-of-the-mill fantasy, that it’s hard to express. It's not easy to write intelligibly about an experience which wound its tendrils around me and burrowed inside my mind. It’s still in my head, buzzing round and making me think about memory, and belief, and friendship, and good and evil and (worst of all) good intentions, and people who aren’t what you think they are, and who knows what else. There are parts that are unforgettable: Cob doing his thing in the tavern; Lark getting left behind by the shadowbloods; the wolf; Darilan's dagger and bracer; some of Cob's dreams (or not-dreams, maybe); Lerien; the crows; the thing that Weshker encountered; the teardrop pendants (and who would imagine that a modest piece of jewelry would be so scary?). The characters are unforgettable too, and I cared about all of them (well, OK, maybe not Annia!). The story is complex, subtle and many-layered, and yet I never felt out of my depth, never wondered what the hell people were doing, never had to go back and look up who a character was or what a reference meant. That’s an outstanding achievement in a genre that too often mistakes cryptic for clever. And - a bonus - there are outbreaks of humour at the most unexpected times.

You’re probably getting the picture by now. I liked it, quite a lot actually. Compelling characters, a fully-realised world, an action-packed plot that zooms along at a rate of knots and never feels in the least contrived, and a wonderful ending with plenty of emotional resonance. A beautifully conceived and written book with real depth. Highly recommended. Five stars.

[1] If you really want to know this sort of thing, I recommend the author’s website, which is amazing.

[2] The best is in Glenda Larke’s ‘Stormlords’ trilogy: ‘pedeshit’. But ‘pike/piking’ is close, very close. And then there’s ‘Morgwi’s balls’. Gotta love an author who can invent great swearwords. ETA: well, who'd a thunk it, apparently 'piking' isn't an invented swearword after all. It's been around since the 18th century, and is an integral part of the Planescape D&D setting. So now we know. Still think it's a cracking word, though.

Fantasy Review: 'Sunbolt' by Intisar Khanani

I discovered the author’s debut novel, ‘Thorn’, quite accidentally, one of those magical reads where you start on the sample and find yourself so swept up in the story you just can’t put it down. It was one of my best reads of last year, so I approached the author’s latest offering with trepidation. Can the next book possibly be as good? Quick answer - yes, it can. This is a novella, the first in a projected series of perhaps six altogether, a beautifully written piece which displays all the author’s trademark originality, terrific characters and an intriguing world.

Hitomi is an orphan, struggling to survive on her wits - no, it’s not the most original scenario, but this is possibly the only aspect of the book which has that problem. This has to be one of the most unpredictable stories I've ever read, a new twist at every turn, and as the book is incredibly fast-paced, that means a breathtaking ride. There are one or two jarring moments, though. Just as the reader gets accustomed to one setting and its cast of characters, there’s an abrupt shift to a new location, a new villain, new challenges for Hitomi. But it’s all perfectly logical, and just served to keep me on my toes.

Hitomi is a lovely heroine - spirited, enterprising and imaginative, and never, ever prepared to be pushed aside. I loved the way in the early chapters she always did exactly what she wanted to do, regardless of whatever instructions she was given. Later, she shows her indomitable spirit, and never gives up, even when things look black. Some of the other characters were fascinating too - Val, in particular, but all of them had depth. I hope we find out more about the character left behind in the cells, too. I loved the way the author managed to fudge the question of who were the good guys and who were the villains. Things just aren’t that simple here.

One doesn’t expect much in the way of world-building from a novella, but there’s surely enough background here to fuel a full-sized trilogy at least. There are kingdoms and religions and races and magical capabilities and cultures, all beautifully defined and nuanced. The speed of the book was a real hindrance here, since every few pages I found myself saying: wait a moment, that’s interesting, I’d like to know more about that. Hitomi’s family history, her magic, Ghost and the secret society, Blackflame, the breathers, the mages... But no, the plot swept on relentlessly. Hopefully, with another five or so books to come, the author will be able to develop these aspects in more detail.

This is a wonderful book, with memorable characters, some great world-building, an action-packed plot that never lets up for a moment and a surprising twist every few pages. All this in a beautifully written novella format. Highly recommended. Five stars.

Fantasy Review: 'In Wilder Lands' by Jim Galford

And now for something completely different... or at least, new to me. Estin, the hero of this book, is a wildling, a kind of humanoid animal, one of whole variety of such animals superficially resembling actual animals (fox, bear, ferret, etc) but able to speak and act in many ways like humans. They live in packs in the woods, but their lifestyle is not unlike a kind of technology-free human existence. It's an uneasy juxtaposition. Estin has an enhanced sense of smell, he has fur, he climbs well with clawed paws, yet he walks on two legs most of the time, he talks and thinks and in many ways behaves in very unanimal-like ways. The wildlings are not anthropomorphised animals, they're a hard-to-define mixture of human and animal. I'm not sure whether I like it.

The story opens in a very traditional way. Estin was orphaned at a young age, his family slaughtered before his eyes, and since then he's scratched a precarious living stealing and scavenging on the city streets, and avoiding being captured by slavers. He's asked to undertake a difficult mission to settle some debts. So far, so very dull. But his accomplice is a gypsy girl with an agenda of her own and during the mission Estin encounters Feanne, another wilding, and the first he's seen in the city who isn't a slave. They escape together and Feanne takes Estin back to meet her rather bizarre pack.

None of this is original in plot terms. The orphan finding out about himself and his heritage is a trope almost as old as the genre. There's always room for a new spin on things, though, and the author's inventiveness is exemplary. The wildlings themselves are original enough to leave plenty of scope for revealing new and intriguing twists. The wildlings based on predators don't get along terribly well with the wildlings based on prey animals, for instance.

The use of magic is a bit random. It seems that they can do whatever the plot needs them to do. If there was any logical system to it, I never found it. The healing power is particularly convenient. An injured good guy can be healed almost without constraint (there are a few limitations, but not many). Even when dead, they can be coaxed back to life by healing their injuries and then cajoling the detached spirit back into the body (which doesn't always work, since the spirit has a mind of its own). Eventually the healer will get tired, but a lot of healing can be done before the batteries are flat (so to speak).

One aspect the author did rather well was the way different characters spoke in different ways. The gypsy girl had a very strong accent, and Soren the ferret-like character has a kind of speech which bounces uncontrollably just like he does. Then there is Finth the dwarf, who (again traditionally) fulfils the role of plucky comic relief. Humour is always welcome in a long, battle-heavy work of fantasy, but some of Finth's joke were a little too modern for my taste - I have difficulty suspending disbelief when a dwarf talks about rugrats, for instance.

The characters are quite nicely drawn. Even if they never quite came alive for me (the human/animal thing mentioned above) there was a lot of depth to many of the characters which I appreciated. There was also some interesting philosophy in there, between battles or skin-of-the-teeth escapes, especially between the various races (or species, I suppose). Estin himself isn't quite as riveting as he might be - again, he falls square into the traditional line of little person who becomes central to the plot. He isn't quite the long lost heir to the kingdom, but he does acquire a lot of abilities - warrior skills and magic - in a very short time. He's also way too restrained and honourable for my taste. I like a hero who has a few human (or wilding) weaknesses. Feanne, the complex and driven fox-type character, is, to my mind, far more interesting. Although she’s unstable and overly aggressive, with a tendency to fight to the death first and then (possibly, if she feels like it) ask questions later, this makes a refreshing change from subservient or the typical sort of warrior babe. I was disappointed when such a strong character fell apart emotionally half way through the book.

One grumble. Estin knows nothing of his heritage because he was orphaned (obviously). This means that he transgresses in some way or other every few pages, just from not knowing the rules. Yet no one ever seems to make allowance for him, or to explain properly what he's done wrong. It's all "Oh no, you shouldn't have done that!" and then maybe some pretty nasty repercussions. His training in the wildling group is all pretty cryptic too, so that when someone turns on him, he's not sure whether it's a genuine problem or a test of some sort. He is very patient about all this, but I would be seriously ticked off about these repeated tests and the lack of clear-cut explanations.

A minor grumble. There are quite a lot of little typos and such-like - 'taught' instead of 'taut', for example - and odd words missing or misplaced, which mar an otherwise professional piece of work. However, I've had the book sitting on my Kindle for over a year, however, so it's possible these have now been tidied up. There is a certain sloppiness in the writing, however, which only a ruthless rewrite would eliminate.

After the midpoint, the book becomes quite episodic, jumping from one situation to another unpredictably and abruptly. While I like to be surprised, this was a little too choppy for my taste. It also ran into the typical problem of the nobody-to-hero trajectory: Estin becomes very powerful, especially in his magic, and that becomes a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card in numerous situations. I also disliked what I can only describe as a lot of soppiness over the children, and a great deal of artificially generated tension between Estin and Feanne. In fact, much of the later part of the book felt rather contrived, as if, having got the characters to a certain logical point within this book, the author needed to rearrange everything ready for the next volume. Either that or the author had a quota for fight scenes. Some of this is inevitable, but it felt to me very drawn out and stretched beyond sensible limits. A little tightening up here, eliminating the in-camp arguments altogether (oh no, not another leadership challenge...), and perhaps reducing the number of hooray-we’ve-escaped-oh-no-we-haven’t moments, would have been a great improvement.

This is an unusual and readable story, well written bar a few quirks. For those who enjoy action, there’s plenty here, with an array of traditional fantasy races (even halflings! don’t see many of those nowadays), as well as the wildlings, a whole zombie army, fae, dragons, elemental spirits of some sort and a really creepy mist thing. The magic is a pretty mixed bag, too. The ending lost the plot a little, with one melodramatic moment after another, without a respite or much detectable logic. There’s some depth to both world and characters, and the themes of family, race and slavery were well made, if a little heavy-handed. I found the mixing of animal and human characteristics problematic, it just didn't work for me. I'm equally happy with human or non-human characters in a book, but I found this to be an uneasy blend of the two. That's a personal preference, no more than that, and in other respects the book is excellent, but I can't give it more than three stars.

Paranormal Romance Review: 'The Binding Stone' by Lisa Gail Green

“My eyes snap open the moment I feel it. The magic is palpable. It tingles as it travels up and down my arms. I am not happy. Whoever dares disturb my century-long slumber will suffer my wrath.” So begins 'The Binding Stone', one of the most intriguing openings I've ever come across.

Leela is a Djinn (genie) awakened from sleep by an unwitting new Master, Jered. This is not the three wishes kind of genie, but a powerful enslaved Djinn, compelled to do whatever her Master of the day tells her to. Mostly what Masters want is sex, riches, sex, power, sex, revenge and sex. With a little light torture thrown in for light relief. Are humans really so horrible? But no, Jered isn't like that at all, and wants nothing except world peace. And sex, of course (well, duh; this is a romance, after all).

But Leela has a long history with fellow slave Djinns and some evil Masters who are bent on - well, see above. So the story becomes a merry-go-round of battling Masters and Djinns. It's all good exciting stuff. I really like the premise here - the story of the entrapped genie, but told from the genie's point of view. The backstory, the interactions of a thousand years earlier which resulted in the enslavement of the Djinni, is interwoven with the present day, so that the significance of certain events and characters gradually becomes clearer. This was quite neatly done, although I sometimes found the transitions between then and now rather jarring.

The plot is wonderfully convoluted, and I defy anyone to foresee all the twists and turns. There's a vast amount of people being captured and others rushing off to the rescue, in various combinations of characters, and to be honest I lost track sometimes of who was where, who was captured and who was rescuing them, who was definitely evil and who might be and who wasn't and who would be if they were free and who was but only because they'd been commanded to be, but I just let it wash over me, and kept turning the pages. It’s that kind of book. I didn’t always know what was going on, but I was confident the author had got it all worked out.

The characters worked well enough without being terribly real to me. Leela was the best portrayed, but then she is the sole point of view and the book is written in the first person, so that's not surprising. There were moments when her tragedy was very affecting. The other characters? Jered is a little too implausibly nice. Gabe makes a great sidekick. The bad guys are evil personified, and therefore entirely uninteresting (to me; I’m sure some people like that sort of thing). The child is a little too grown up for her age, but never mind. I rather liked Taj though, the ever so slightly camp Djinn. Maybe that's just because he had some of the best lines (I do like a bit of humour in my fantasy). The romance was a bit insta-lurve, but that's par for the course.

A couple of grumbles. First, Djinn magic is almost infinitely powerful. You want to fly, or tunnel through solid metal, or be transported instantly, or be invisible? No problem (except when it might divert the plot, of course; then it's impossible). There seems to be very little cost to any of this (again, except when the plot requires it).

Secondly, I often found it difficult to work out exactly what was going on. Several scenes I had to reread to understand, and there were many, many times when a character would apparently switch sides in a heartbeat. Taj is here to kill you. No he isn't. Oh, it's Mira who's going to kill you. Apparently not. All these rapidfire oscillations were tricky to follow, I didn't always get the reason and it got tedious after a while. Probably if I'd slowed down a bit, I could have worked it out, I suppose.

A third grumble: Leela herself repeatedly came up with a cunning plan only for it to fall apart instantly. Oh dear, I should have thought of that, she wails. Many, many times. So ten out of ten for good intentions, none out of ten for forward planning.

What I liked very much was that the slave Djinni were obliged to follow their Master's commands exactly, but a clever Djinn could obey the literal meaning of the order while subversively not following the intended meaning. This led to some interesting and creative twists to the plot. It's a very nice idea, having a slave who is forced to obey but is constantly working to undermine his/her Master at every step, but without attracting a spectacularly unpleasant punishment.

I found this one difficult to rate. On the one hand, it's a cracking read full of page-turning drama. It doesn’t pay to think too deeply about it, but the author has a light touch and a sure hand, so it all flows beautifully. There’s some nice emotional resonance in the Djinni’s situation, too. On the other hand, the constant oh no we're doomed/hurray we're saved/oops we're really doomed/nope saved again cycling got tired really quickly. That and the anything goes magic kept it to three stars for me. But for anyone less picky than I am (which is most of the planet) I can highly recommend it.

DNF: 'Gently Go Man' by Alan Hunter

This is the eighth in the series of relaxed murder mysteries about genial detective George Gently, written in the later fifties and early sixties. I've enjoyed my previous forays into the series, as much for the authentic slices of post-war British life as for the murders themselves, which were always a bit ho-hum. But this is the first to lose me completely. Hunter has always fancied himself as a chronicler of regional accents and dialects, with (in my opinion) very limited success, and the last few books I read he happily stayed away from such dangerous distractions. But this time he plunges headfirst into a whole world of cultural slang, the bizarrely unreadable language of 'hip chicks', with their talk about squares and being cool. For example:

‘You wouldn’t dig it,’ said Maureen. ‘If you’re a square you’re a square. It’s nowhere jazz to a square. But Laurie was cool, he went after it. Shooting the ton, that sort of action. But like I say you wouldn’t dig it. So what’s the use me talking?’

Here’s another sample:

‘Throwing a curve,’ Deeming said. ‘That’s not lying, it’s trying it on, hoping it’s going to fit some place. You don’t like hipsters in Squaresville. You like to put the heat on them. So you make a deal out of Johnny and come pushing us around with it.’
‘And like we don’t stand for it,’ Bixley said, stepping up closer.
‘Cool it, Sid,’ Deeming said. ‘Pitching screws is for squares.’
‘He bugs me, this guy does,’ said Bixley. ‘Me, I could spread him on the wall.’
‘Dicky says cool it,’ Maureen said. ‘So cool it quick, you big ape.’

There are entire chapters of this sort of stuff and frankly, life's too short to wade through it. One star for a DNF.

Historical Fantasy Review: 'Enoch's Device' by Joseph Finley

The blurb says that “Enoch’s Device is a fast-paced medieval adventure steeped in history, mythology, and mysteries from a dark and magical past” and the only part I’d argue with is ‘fast-paced’. I found it rather a slow book overall, and although it’s not without plenty of action, there’s also a heavy dollop of the above-mentioned history and mythology. Long and detailed explanations, it has to be said, don’t exactly help the plot to skim along. The setting is Ireland, France and Moorish Spain in the year 997, with the threat of the coming apocalypse when the millennium ends, and a race to prevent disaster for Irish monks Ciarán and Dónall and French aristocrat Alais.

This is historical fantasy at its best - so deeply rooted in its period that to my inexpert eyes it seemed entirely authentic. The weaving together of historical data with biblical references, religious and pseudo-religious details (druids and the zodiac), mythological elements like the Fae and outright fantasy (demons and just a hint of dragons!) is masterfully done, with a wealth of detail, and I had very little idea which aspects were solid fact, which were inference or speculation, and which were invented wholesale. Whether it’s an Irish monastery, the streets of Paris, the rich farmlands of rural France or the Moorish city of Córdoba, the author paints a nuanced and believable picture. Sometimes I felt there was a little too much detail for the needs of the story, as if the author had to squeeze in every colourful bit of his research, but that’s a matter of personal preference.

Where the story really sagged, for me, was the vast amount of backstory that had to be revealed. Sometimes it seemed as if most of the interesting action had happened years before, and was told in flashback. My heart sank every time I came across a paragraph beginning: ‘It seemed as if it were only yesterday when...’ or similar. Despite the drama of these events, it’s still the past and therefore less interesting than the actual story (the journey of Ciarán and Dónall), which seemed very slow by comparison. Worse still, much of the backstory was told in a very dry, text-book style which I struggled to get through. For example:

“She had been born a child of Aquitaine, the richest province in Gaul. Her grandfather was the third William, called Towhead for the pale flaxen color of his hair. He was both count of Poitiers and duke of Aquitaine, and her grandmother was the daughter of Rollo, then duke of Normandy. Her father, Odo, was cousin to the fourth William, called Iron Arm, who had ruled Aquitaine for nearly thirty years. William Iron Arm had strengthened his alliances by marrying his sister to Hugh Capet, the late king of France and father of the current king, Robert, and by arranging his own marriage to Emma, daughter of the count of Blois, who was lord of neighboring Touraine. Alais’ mother, Adelais, too, had been bound in a political marriage— a gift from her father, the count of Toulouse, who was currying favor with the house of Poitiers.”

I’m sure this sort of stuff is endlessly fascinating to some readers, but I was (mentally) tapping my feet and muttering, ‘Yes, yes, but are these people important? Does the colour of his hair matter? And if not, can we get on with the story, please?’.

The characters are well-delineated and mostly believable, the only exception being Alais, the token female, whose role is merely to be rescued periodically, to act as plot device and to inspire and motivate Ciarán as the object of his desire. I wonder how many captivatingly beautiful women have to be captured/almost raped/burnt at the stake before this particular seam of fantasy clichés is finally worked out. Alais spends the book gasping in horror, clinging to Ciarán's hand, or standing frozen with terror as various sharp implements are hurled at her, so that the nearest man has to leap in front of her or drag her out of danger. And finally, the one useful role she seems destined to play is snatched away from her at the last minute. Bleargh. I hate these useless hand-wringing females. There’s a slightly unpleasant tone to the writing sometimes: one character was described as being fond of his wife ‘despite the fact that she had borne him no children’. I get that this is an era when women were subservient by law and custom (the nuns are required to be silent in church, for instance), but there’s no need for that attitude to spill over into authorial voice. As for the bad guys, they are out and out evil, which is par for the course if not particularly interesting.

Fortunately, the plot is nicely convoluted, and once the bulk of the backstory is got out of the way things go along swimmingly. There are puzzles for our heroes to solve, clues to follow, crypic utterances to interpret and symbols to speculate about. There's also a prophecied apocalypse to avoid, and a mysterious device (the 'Enoch's device' of the title) to be discovered, understood and (perhaps) deployed. It’s all hugely detailed and impressively academic-sounding. For example:

“There is a text, the Sefer Yetzirah— the Book of Creation— that tells how Abraham received a divine testimony of mystic lore. He lived long before Moses received the Torah, so he must have received something different. Abraham was the father of Jewish mysticism, much of which focuses on the origins of the many names of God, and the various combinations of sacred letters that make up those names, all in the quest to realize the one great name of God. That is the knowledge that many believe Abraham received. If this knowledge was embodied in a physical object, one theory is that it was a gemstone.”

There’s a lot of this sort of stuff, and it may all be complete tosh, but if so, it’s impressive sounding tosh and I found it quite easy to let it all slide by, mostly way over my head. Sometimes, it has to be said, the interpretations of all these not very obvious puzzles seems a bit glib (if it were that easy, how come no one else has worked it out?) but it still made a nice story as piece after piece fell into place, and our heroes are driven from place to place in their quest. As with the backstory, the interludes when the characters sit around interpreting and speculating and saying ‘Gosh, it must be...!’ (paraphrasing ever so slightly here) slow the pace down to glacial levels, but as the action gets more frantic and intense towards the end, the pauses are a welcome respite from the drama.

There were moments when the theological debate got quite interesting. Our Irish friends were very confident of the truth of their interpretations, which the more conventional priests saw as simple heresy. There is a moment when one of the priests makes a pronouncement about the apocalypse, and Ciarán immediately says 'How do you know that?' It's a good question, but the priest deflects it with an outraged 'How dare you presume to question me!' The voice of absolute authority putting down the ordinary person who has the temerity to say 'Yes but...'. I'm not sure whether the author is making a general point about organised religion, or illustrating the religious dogma of the day, or simply painting the character as a bad guy, but it struck a chord with me. In this particular case, the Irish interpretation of events is presumed to be the correct one purely because they are the protagonists in this particular story, but more than once I was wondering how exactly they could know particular facts. Some chains of logic seemed rather tenuous to me.

This is a long, intricate book, literate and full of convincing historical detail, with demons, magic swords, a prophecy, mad monks and a whole host of great fantasy elements to spice up the well-realised setting. It's a pity there's so much sitting around analysing texts between the battles and so much dry exposition, and for my taste the battles got a bit over the top towards the end. But hey, this is the apocalypse, after all, so it's allowed to be epic in scale. For those who are riveted by the tiny details of medieval life or enjoy puzzling over the hidden meanings in religious texts and zodiacal symbols, I highly recommend this book. Anyone who is prepared to put up with the explanations to get to the juicy battles with demons, it's still a great read. For anyone who, like me, would willingly sacrifice historical accuracy for a more evenly paced story, it doesn’t work quite so well. The action scenes are terrific, the long sections of exposition less so, and I would have liked a less insipid female lead character. Three stars.

Paranormal Romance Review: 'Dreams and Constellations' by Judy Goodwin

I enjoyed the author's full-length fantasy 'Heart of the Witch', an unusual story with great characters and plenty of depth, so I thought this novella was worth a try. Main character Iona is a college student, studying social psychology. During the day, she attends lectures and tries to fend off the unwanted attentions of a persistent suitor. Each night, she is plagued by unusually vivid dreams of herself as a Mayan priestess. Not surprisingly, I found the Mayan dreams far more interesting than Iona's humdrum daily life, and this part of the story is beautifully realised. The interweaving of Iona's present-day and dream lives is very neat, too, if not overwhelmingly original. The romance element wasn't quite as romantic as I would have liked, and perhaps this part of the story could have been filled out a bit more.

I don't normally like short form fantasy, and this was a bit too short for my taste and the ending crept up on me rather suddenly. However, it makes a light, pleasantly enjoyable read, with a nicely ambiguous twist at the end. The Mayan element was intriguing enough that I'd be happy to read more about it. Three stars.

Fantasy Review: 'The Girl With No Name' by Iscah

This short book is a delight from start to finish. It’s written in traditional fairytale style, beginning with ‘Once upon a time...’, with a charming simplicity which hides a great deal under the surface. The heroine of the story, who never has a name throughout the book, is a shapeshifter and magic-user, in a land which doesn’t understand or respect magic. Orphaned and raised by a kindly old man, she is forced to leave her home village when he dies, and sets off to find her place in the world. Her travels, the people she meets and the answers she finds to her questions about her missing father and her own magic, form the body of the story.

This is not your conventional fairytale. At every turn, the author neatly sidesteps the traps and tropes of the genre, so there are plenty of wonderful surprises in store, and a nice line in humour too. Every town or village or country the girl visits is a little different from the others, with its own customs and peculiarities, and exploring these differences is one of the highlights of the book, for me. There’s a prince, of course, and a witch, but they’re not at all as you’d expect. The prince is possibly my favourite character in the book, but even though it seems things are set fair for a little romance, things take a different turn. It’s so much fun when a book refuses to toe the boringly predictable line this way. I do like to have my expectations subverted.

If there's a grumble at all, it's that the girl seems a little mature for her age, given her rather sheltered upbringing. She accepts whatever comes her way with equanimity, judges people quite well and isn't really bothered at having to travel around on her own. But then I suppose that being able to turn into a bear or a bird or something small enough to hide behind a bush is rather a good self-defence mechanism, plenty good enough to deal with most of the little difficulties that a not entirely law-abiding country can throw at her. I liked the way she grows over the course of the book, finding out what works and what doesn't and using her talents not for power or glory, but as a low-key way to survive so that she can do what she really wants to do (mostly haunt the libraries and bookshops, which I can relate to).

This is the first of four novellas relating the beginnings of four characters to feature in a full-length fantasy novel later. [1] The book is intended for any age reader from 9 upwards, and it would work brilliantly with an adult reading it to a child, whether to draw out the subtleties and provoke discussion, or just to enjoy the subtext. It would be a great communal read for schools as well. Whether it works so well as an adult-only read is less certain. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as a refreshing change of pace from grittier adult fantasy, but despite the subtleties it felt very child-oriented at times. Not childish, but perhaps lacking some of the multi-layering of the best adult fantasy. This is not a criticism, just a comment and a matter of personal preference. An entertaining read, with deceptive simplicity and an unexpected degree of humour. Four stars.

[1] At the time of writing (June 2013) this is the only one of the four published, and the second novella, ‘Horse Feathers’, is currently being posted a chapter at a time on the website, which is at Amoeba Ink.

Fantasy DNF: 'The Universal Mirror' by Gwen Perkins

This book and I got off on the wrong foot right from the start. The first line is: “Asahel could feel the heat of the lantern perilously close to his face as he worked...” Two lines on, there’s a reference to ‘them’, although no one else has been mentioned. Another line, and suddenly we’re in Quentin’s point of view, with this gloriously muddled sentence: “The lantern rocked again as Quentin tried to match him, swaying on the branch on which they'd propped it as Quentin leaned into the dirt, his strength less than the other man's, borne as it was by a lean frame, tall though it was.”

So for me this was a difficult book to get into. Not because it was particularly complicated in terms of plot or ideas or characterisation, which I don’t mind at all. I do object, however, to having to reread sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs just to work out who is talking, which is the tall one or the stocky one and what either one of them is actually doing. And I couldn’t understand Quentin’s conversation with his wife at all. Undercurrents and mysteries are wonderful, but not when it leaves the reader in a total fog. Well, maybe it’s just me in a total fog, who knows.

What’s so distressing about all this is that there’s a great story buried under this tricky prose. Asahel and Quentin are two friends who are magicians in a land which constrains tightly what they can do with their powers. I wanted to know more about the magic, more about their history and why exactly they were trying to dig up a body. I was curious, too, about Quentin's wife, and what is going on with their relationship. There's an interesting setting behind the story, which seemed well thought out. I really wanted to like this book, it should have been just my cup of tea, and yet I was distracted on every page, in every paragraph by something jarring. The wrong word used. A badly constructed sentence. Over-dramatic description. The Punctuation Police had enough evidence to make an arrest within a few pages. And the tragedy is that this isn't a self-published work, it's been (presumably) vetted and edited and polished by the professionals at Hydra Publications. Frankly, they are doing their authors a grave disservice if they let through editing of this poor standard.

There are lots of positive reviews of this, so clearly most people really enjoyed it and I'll put my adverse reaction down to my overly nit-picky nature. I’m fairly tolerant of the odd typo here and there, but this wasn’t the usual run of misspellings. For me, there were just too many sentences where a character was clearly upset, but I couldn’t work out why. Or sometimes which character it was, even. Or who was doing what to whom. It may well be a failing in me, but I found it a constant struggle to read (and yes, entirely my fault for not checking that it suited me before I bought it - my bad). If this sort of thing doesn't bother you, you may well find the book an agreeable and entertaining read, as many others seem to. Sadly, I only got through 20% of it before I jumped ship. One star for a DNF.

Fantasy Review: 'Orlind' by Charlotte E English

This is the third and final part of the Draykon trilogy. I very much enjoyed the first two parts, ‘Draykon’ and ‘Lokant’, and this continues in the same vein, a wonderfully eccentric mixture of unique world-building, believable characters and an action-packed story. In the first book, I was very nervous that Llandry, one of the main characters, a diminutive person with wings, might actually be a fairy. In fact, I can safely say she is nothing at all like a fairy, and not in the least twee. During the course of the three books, Llandry transforms herself from a shy child-like girl who suffers from panic attacks into a self-reliant and formidable person. And by person, I mean draykon (more or less a dragon), of course.

The setting for the story is one of the most inventive I’ve ever encountered. I’m not going to attempt to describe it, but it’s a truly magical array of places, populated with some bizarre creatures and plants. Some of the animal life is, not unexpectedly, tending to the fearsome and toothy kind of monster, but there are also some charming little beasties. I love the way the upper and lower realms change dramatically in moments, so that the landscape is constantly roiling and flowing unpredictably. This book explains a great deal of why this happens. I love, too, that some parts are in constant daylight and some in constant night light, kept that way magically. That’s a really ingenious and (possibly) unique approach to world-building.

The plot continues without a pause from where book 2 left off. The draykoni are attacking Llandry's home in Glinnery, and villain Krays is cooking up some vague but evil scheme. There is high drama and action right from the start as everyone scrambles to find some way to protect themselves. The humans are trying mechanical weaponry. Llandry and her fellow friendly draykoni are exploring their new powers in the hope of finding alternative defences. And Eva and Tren are - well, this was the point for me where the plot lurched into implausibility. Eva dreams up a scheme so downright dangerous and with so little likelihood of success that, honestly, I don't know what she was thinking. It's not unusual in fantasy for characters to be set some impossible task, in order to accomplish some worthy outcome, but it's never very convincing, frankly, and in this case, it's not imposed on them, they decide to attempt it themselves. So I just had to switch off the logical part of my brain and go with the flow. This isn't so difficult, fortunately, since the story rattles along at unstoppable and unputdownable pace.

The second clunky moment is the transition from chasing around after villain Krays to haring off to investigate the mysterious seventh realm, Orlind. Since this is the title of the book, it’s not unexpected that this turns out to be the key to everything, but the way the characters are led there by the nose feels a bit contrived. But it really doesn’t matter. This is the book where everything boils to its dramatic conclusion, and there’s not a dull moment in it. The true nature of the Lokants is revealed in all its duplicitous glory, and the final confrontation is a wondrous explosion of creative magic and whimsy (believe it or not). I’ve never read a book before which so successfully blends together powerful magic, dragons, steampunk, sentient furry insects and multi-coloured mushrooms. It all makes sense, too. And there’s humour, even at the tensest moments. A thoroughly enjoyable, fast-paced read, with some memorable characters, absolutely fizzing with brilliant ideas. Only the slightly not-quite-believable plot contrivances let it down. A good four stars.

Mystery Review: 'The Blackhouse' by Peter May

This is a book which purports to be a murder mystery set in the Isle of Lewis, in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, but don't be fooled. The murder is, for most of the book, almost entirely peripheral to the story, no more than an excuse for the protagonist, an island native returning to his homeland, for a long series of flashbacks to his childhood and an unearthing of past secrets. Well, 'secrets' is probably too strong a word for the revelations here, none of which are terribly surprising. Or interesting, come to that. It’s only at the end that the murder again becomes the focus of events and the author ties things together quite tightly.

Fortunately, there's still plenty to enjoy here. The prose is nicely evocative, although occasionally a metaphor gets a bit above itself and falls flat on its face. The characters are well-drawn, although those who stayed on the island seem to have weathered the years less successfully than the returning one, which smacks a little of wish-fulfilment. Still, the author has a neat way of sketching characters with just a few brief phrases. I liked the descriptions of the island itself, although there was way too much locational information for casual readers (we really don’t need every last street or building name).

There is one affectation in the writing which I found rather jarring. The present day events are written in the third person, while the flashbacks to the events of the protagonist's childhood are written in the first person. This felt very odd to me, since first person writing gives the story an immediacy and urgency which is out of kilter with the distance of years. I suppose the author was trying to create a stronger differentiation between now and then, or perhaps to suggest the self-absorption and selectivity of the childish viewpoint, but to my mind it would have made far more sense to put the childhood and adolescent sections in third person, as events viewed from a distance and with some adult perspective. Looking back on one's childhood is like viewing any past event. It's a part of history, and the people involved are only loosely connected to their present day selves. The revelations at the end do make this narrative choice more understandable, but it still grated on me.

The ending is always the deciding factor for me, and this one failed on a number of levels. It's outrageously melodramatic, for one thing, while still being sadly predictable and resorting to a variety of cheap tricks to increase the tension or to hide revelations until the designated moment. I'm not a big fan of the hero-must-spring-to-the-rescue school of storytelling, which seems to be obligatory these days in this kind of novel. And the big reveal of the murderer's identity and motivation - meh. Not terribly believable.

This is in many ways a reasonable read. I liked the setting, the local colour and the snippets of island life, although a bit more Gaelic and a little less criticism of the religion would have been an improvement. The author clearly has talent, and the story is well thought out, even if elements of it failed to appeal to me. In particular, the whole local-returns-to-home-territory trope is well worn, and this version of it, although nicely done, adds nothing new. As a police procedural, it is fairly ho-hum (although with a surprisingly graphic post-mortem), but it's still a nicely evocative tale of the Outer Hebrides, and recommended for that alone. Three stars.

Fantasy Review: 'The Tyrant's Law' by Daniel Abraham

This is the third volume of the Dagger and Coin Quintet, the difficult middle book - the one that drags the weight of two books’ worth of previous history, that also has to begin arranging all the pieces for the endgame and still has to make sense by itself. It should be an impossible task, an experience as dense and heavy and glutinous as treacle. Yet it flows like cream, tastes like chocolate and slips down just as easily. Abraham’s prose is a joy to read, elegant and spare, every word in its proper place.

As before, the cast of point of view characters is limited - Clara is finding her feet amongst the nobodies of Camnipol after her noble husband was executed for treason; Cithrin is in another new city learning more about banking; Geder the unstable Regent of Antea is making war again, aided by his spider-goddess priest; and Marcus the former soldier is hiking through the southern jungles with escaped spider-goddess man Kit looking for a magic sword. And as before, the story jumps about from one to another, but the individual plotlines are not independent, so one chapter will show the events of that character is close-up, while also revealing something of events elsewhere, glimpsed from afar in rumour and hearsay. This is done very cleverly, so the overall plot flows beautifully from chapter to chapter.

This is industrial-strength fantasy, so Geder's war is spilling across the whole northern continent, and is seemingly unstoppable. This is the third campaign to feature in the story. The first book centred on the fall of the city of Vanai. In the second, Antea conquered neighbouring Asterilhold. This time, Geder (or rather, his spider-priest adviser) has his sights set on Sarakal. There is inevitably some sense of repetition in all this, but Abraham gives the events a new perspective to keep things fresh. This time, Geder's capabilities are well understood, and there are no illusions about the consequences.

The series is called The Dagger and the Coin, and is presumably intended to contrast the two powerful forces of conquest, by armed force, or by economics. Geder's military ambitions continue to roll onwards, but for the first time there are signs that the financial clout of the bank can have an impact. There are hints about the difficulties of maintaining long supply lines, and getting the staple crops planted and harvested when so many men are tied up in the war. There are hints, too, that the bank can help indirectly with the refugee and resettlement problem, and more directly, in supporting covert acts of rebellion. However, it’s still not obvious how economics will bring a real direct challenge to bear against military might. Perhaps this isn’t Abraham’s intention, but if not, the whole banking plot becomes marginalised.

Abraham has a nice way of subverting the tropes of the genre. Most fantasy is (in the broadest sense) about swords and sorcery, so that all problems are eventually disposed of by one or other of these elements (or occasionally both). The evil villain is bent on global domination for vague reasons, and the hero (or occasionally a heroine) tools up with a magic sword or else learns to use the magic powers they’ve mysteriously been endowed with. Here, the evil villain is sort of bent on global domination, but it’s a role he more or less reversed into accidentally, and all with the very best of intentions. What could be so malign about spreading the spider-goddess’s message of truth across the world? Meanwhile, Marcus and Kit go on a traditional fantasy quest to track down the magic sword which will kill the goddess, but (without giving too much away) that doesn’t go quite as they expected. As for magic, there’s very little around at all. Proponents are called ‘cunning men’ and have minor roles as showmen and healers.

One nice aspect is that we have two interesting female characters taking strong leadership roles in the fight against Geder the war-making Regent. Clara is now released from the stifling conformity of court rules and taking advantage of her freedom to plot and scheme in Camnipol, as well as enjoying a degree of personal freedom. I very much like Clara, her subtlety, her cleverness and her determination. It makes a nice counterpoint to her husband’s more ham-fisted efforts in the previous books. Even though things don’t always go quite as anticipated (what ever does in an Abraham book?), she always makes well-considered decisions.

In contrast, Cithrin... Look, I’m going to have a bit of a rant about Cithrin, so feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph if you want. Cithrin, you stupid, stupid woman. When will you ever learn? Your entire character arc has been defined by short-sightedness and downright bad decision-making. You find yourself stuck in the wrong city with the bank’s wealth? Why not forge a few papers to set yourself up as a pretend bank? After all, it would be too simple just to write to the bank’s head and await instructions, wouldn’t it? And if you find yourself trapped during an uprising with a powerful but totally unstable character who wants sex? Well, why not? This book is quite a good explanation of why not, actually. And then, given a one-time opportunity to get close to the Regent, to influence the events of history and do some good, could you actually, just once in your life, do something sensible? Course not. Gah. Stupid woman. I mean, what exactly does she think Geder is going to do now? Smile sweetly and forget all about her? He already burned one city because he felt slighted.

Geder himself is a fascinating character. Of course he makes dumb decisions as well, but in his case his motives are entirely understandable and believable, and it’s possible to feel very sympathetic towards him, and appalled at the same time. Being the focus of everyone’s amusement is dispiriting and annoying, and being the patsy for other people’s political games would get anyone riled. His response to the Vanai problem, although it was more a fit of petulance than a rational decision, was not an unusual way to deal with a recalcitrant conquest. Even when he’s behaving very badly, it’s easy to see exactly how and why it happened. He’s a social incompetent, who would be very much at home in the modern world, head buried in his iPad or harmlessly slaughtering orcs in World of Warcraft. It’s only in his fantasy setting that he is the tyrant of the title.

Marcus - meh. I like the banter, and the low-key cynicism which sometimes borders on suicidal fatalism, but it’s not an original character trait, and the whole tragic wife and child history is a bit over-used. I like Yardem a lot better, in fact, because although he has baggage (why did he leave the priesthood, exactly?) he doesn’t let it define him. Although that may simply be an artefact of not being a point of view character; because we never get inside Yardem’s head, we never see how tortured his soul is. Or it may just be the ears. Gotta love a character with such speaking ears.

This is not a high-action book. Even though there’s a war going on, and a new religion spreading like a stain from Camnipol, and the whole continent is in turmoil, it still feels like an intimate, close-up portrait of the characters before all else. A whole chapter may feature nothing but Clara walking about Camnipol, Clara taking tea with a friend, Clara going home again, but this gives the characters the space to breathe, to live, to think, to feel. Between paces, Clara can contemplate a great many subjects without it becoming heavy philosophising. Abraham doesn’t ever tell his readers what to think about anything (religion, war, slavery, inherited monarchies), and those who want can simply enjoy the story and the author’s exquisite prose, but the deeper themes are there to be explored by those who wish, usually by the contrast of one approach with another. For example, Kit and Basrahip are both spider-infested; one is using that to control people so that he can take over the world in the spider-goddess’s name, while the other goes to great lengths not to control people at all, and is trying to find a way to end the spider regime altogether. Is it evil to remove lies from the world and impose honesty? Good question.

The ending? Awesome. A great big bowl of awesomeness, with lashings of awesome sauce on top. The first two books I had some settling down reservations about, but this one, none at all. It’s a quieter book than the previous ones, but in my view it’s all the better for that. Perhaps the series is just getting into its stride, or the characters have grown into their roles (even Cithrin, maybe, possibly), or perhaps it’s just that, after a lot of circling round, we’re getting to know something about the dragons at last. Dragons make everything better. So unquestionably five stars. And now the long wait until the next book...

Steampunk Review: 'The Kaiser Affair' by Joseph Robert Lewis

I recently read ‘The Burning Sky’, the author’s debut book, and while I loved the original setting and found the story a fast-paced steampunk adventure, the characters never quite came alive for me. The author had a truly wonderful response to that; he made the whole Halcyon series (of which ‘The Burning Sky’ is the first part) very cheap, and encouraged readers to decide whether they agreed or not. And he added: ‘I want you to go read my latest steampunk thriller, ‘The Kaiser Affair’, and let me know if I have improved my characters in the time between the two publications’. I dutifully went off to check it out, started reading the sample and (you can probably guess the rest) yes, I got so engrossed I ended up buying the book and neglecting a long-awaited new arrival to finish it. So indeed I would agree that Mr Lewis’s writing (and not just the characters) has improved hugely.

Like the previous work, this is steampunk but this time with strong fantasy overtones. The story is part of a collaborative effort between a number of authors, who pooled their talents to create the background world, and then each set a stand-alone story in that world, under the collective title ‘The Drifting Isle Chronicles’. The Kaiser of the title is Ranulf Kaiser, imprisoned for complex and ingenious financial crimes, who has managed to escape from prison only a short time before his release date. Our heroes, Bettina Rothschild and her husband Arjuna Rana, are given the task of tracking down the missing Kaiser and putting a stop to whatever nefarious schemes he has in mind. And so begins an entertaining chase all round the city of Eisenstadt, and above it, too.

The two main characters are a delightful pair, with a charmingly bantering relationship and a liking for steamy sex in unlikely locations. While Bettina is clearly the senior (in professional terms), and is the one giving orders, she generally sits out the fights, while improbably athletic husband Arjuna does battle with the baddies. This makes her seem oddly passive. I appreciate that the author has put female characters in strong plot-driving roles, and obviously they don’t all have to be the kick-ass type, but the contrast between these two is extreme. However, when Bettina does get drawn into a fight, she’s quite capable of laying into her opponent without a problem, and I totally loved the imaginative ways she used her cane. Another nice contrast between the two - Bettina is smart and thinks things through carefully, while Arjuna is clever in a different way, knowledgeable and with what appears to be a photographic memory.

The other characters are relatively minor, but are neatly drawn, if a little one-dimensional at times (but then minor characters are allowed to be). The plot is hare-brained, of course, but it hardly matters and it all resolves itself very effectively and logically. And (the part I really liked) there are some wonderfully fantastical elements - the drifting isle itself, slowly circling above the city, mysterious and enticing; the talking birds; and the shadow people. I really love this kind of world - original, intriguing and wildly unpredictable.

I’ve found it fascinating to read these two samples of the author’s work back to back. The style is the same, of course, and both could do with a bit more polish on the editing front, but where one had a mish-mash of main characters and a complicated inter-weaving of plot threads, this one focuses tightly on just two characters and follows them throughout the book. There’s still a lot of chasing about and fighting and guns and improvised weapons and even a bow but the actual injuries are few, and they are more realistic, no more than a few scrapes here and there or the occasional arrow to the shoulder, so the whole story is more plausible and less cartoonish (although - an autogyro chase? Well, that's different!). There isn’t much introspection or philosophising going on, and I wouldn’t say the characters are exactly deep, although there are one or two moments when they do reach for something more meaningful (especially the discussion about Arjuna’s home), but they’re always likeable and behave believably. In addition, there’s loads of humour and a light touch that is (to me, anyway) way more enjoyable than ‘The Burning Sky’. Highly recommended for a light, entertaining read. Four stars.

Steampunk Review: 'The Burning Sky' by Joseph Robert Lewis

So there I was, struggling to get invested in a book with a fairly lack-lustre main character, a difficult alternate history setting and an opening stuffed with explosions and other dramas that I really don’t care about. And then along comes Qhora the Incan princess, with her pet sabre-toothed cat, and suddenly things are interesting. A sabre-toothed pet? Yes, count me in.

This has one of the most unusual settings I’ve encountered - a world where the ice age never ended, Europe is still in the grip of snow and glaciers and civilisation is clustered around a narrow strip of usable land. There are some locations with recognisable names - Marrakesh, Hellas, Italia, Persia, the Atlanteen Ocean - there’s an Incan empire across the sea, and there are some interesting beasties (the afore-mentioned sabre-toothed cat, plus a large bird used for riding). There’s a motley array of countries, all of them with their own belief systems, technologies and customs, trying to get along (or not). And there’s a nice steampunk feel - steam powered trains and airships, plus guns and electricity. It’s all very carefully thought out, and thank goodness, there are maps at the front and a vast, detailed glossary at the back.

There are half a dozen point of view characters, some with only an occasional chapter or two, which reveal all the various aspects of the complicated plot. Yes, this is one of those tales with a huge amount going on in several different places, and there’s a multitude of conspiracies and machinations to try to untangle. The problem is that most of these characters are not terribly interesting. Taziri, the airship engineer with the husband and baby at home, veers from feisty initiative to near-apathy. Syfax the soldier is a standard-issue macho type, solving all problems by bluster and fists. Qhora, the Incan with her Spanish lover and pet beasties, is more interesting, but even so she doesn’t exactly set the pages alight. There are hordes of sidekicks, as well, equally unenthralling. Frankly there are too few lulls between the action for any of these people to come alive, since they spend most of their time reacting to the mayhem all around them. There are some moments of introspection, which nicely illuminate the author’s strange and fascinating world despite feeling a little contrived (do people actually stop and discuss their beliefs while waiting for the bad guys to show up?), but otherwise it’s all explosions and fights and chases and narrow escapes.

I don’t read a lot of steampunk, so I’m not an expert, but I rather liked the imaginative way the technology is integrated into the plot. It’s not merely a backdrop for the action, and it’s more than a quick fix when our heroes (and heroines) get into trouble. I also liked that, without fuss or fanfare, Marrakesh society is matriarchal, although it’s disappointing that so many of the female characters are either villains or else very passive, being pushed around by others. Taziri, in particular, who ought to be an assertive female lead, spends way too much time drooping around and whining about her husband and baby. Still, it’s nice to find a fantasy society that’s a little outside the usual pseudo-medieval or Victorian box. The politics are a bit simplistic, but that’s a very common (and minor) flaw.

This is an intriguing piece of work, with an original and well-thought-out setting, but the constantly churning high-action plot doesn’t make up for the lack of deep characterisation. I confess that I got bored with the repetitive chasing about the countryside interspersed with yet more gun/knife fights, and skimmed a bit towards the end. I would have liked a little more sabre-toothed cat and giant bird, and a lot less fighting. Recommended for fans of high-octane steampunk, but for me it fell a little flat. I’m in a generous mood, so let’s say three stars.

Mystery Review: 'Gently To The Summit' by Alan Hunter

This is the ninth in the series about the genial but sharp-eyed detective, George Gently, and just in case anyone out there is paying attention, yes, I did miss out number eight. OK, so I got confused, alright? There are forty-something in the series, so this is a problem that's only likely to get worse. One thing that's interesting about reading the whole sequence in order (well, more or less) is the subtle but noticeable change in approach. In the early books, Gently sucked peppermint creams constantly, ate vast meals (described in some detail) and merely ambled through the landscape, populated with a variety of dialect-speaking hicks, as clues and suspects fell at his feet. Book by book, however, the eccentricities have fallen away and what remains is much more of a conventional police procedural, albeit still fossilised in post-war Britain.

A large part of the enjoyment of these stories is the period setting, and although there are fewer details than previously, this is still a world of diggings and cheery landladies, three course lunches and a well-delineated class system. I find it curious that anyone with pretensions to grandeur feels quite at liberty to be obstructive and downright rude to the police. There is still the uneasy air of rebuilding after the war, not simply of bombed out houses, but of people too. The loss of many records in council offices, churches and the like means that anyone who wants to can simply vanish and reinvent themselves, with no one able to check their history, and this makes an interesting plot point here.

This is perhaps the best of the series so far. The premise is that an unsuccessful pre-war attempt to climb Mount Everest, which resulted in the death of one climber, comes back to haunt the participants when the supposedly dead man turns up again, plaintively searching for his wife. There's an immediate outbreak of disbelief, a very public spat with another expedition member, followed by lawsuits, whereupon the other climber falls to his death (a slightly less dramatic death, on Snowdon). Gently potters about London and Wales, in his relaxed way, uncovering the details, and if the suspects line up rather too easily and the big reveal is blindingly obvious, the tale is none the worse for that. A mildly entertaining, if not particularly challenging, little mystery. Three stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Oath of Gold' by Elizabeth Moon

This is the third in the ‘Deed of Paksenarrion’ trilogy. The first described how Paks left her home to become a mercenary in Duke Phelan’s company, and was a very down-to-earth story of a soldier’s training and campaigns. The second book saw Paks take off on her own and be sucked into various disconnected enterprises. This book was very disjointed, and heavy on conventional fantasy elements, but the ending raised it above the ordinary. And then there’s this. How to describe something that feels like a different story altogether? I suppose it’s not too spoilerish to reveal that all Paks’s problems at the end of book 2 are airbrushed out of existence very early. There wouldn’t be much of a story if she couldn’t fight again. It’s all a matter of having the right kind of magical power to ‘heal’ her. So that’s all right then.

The rest of the book is Paks tearing about the countryside on a quest to find the lost heir to the kingdom, who can be identified by a magical sword, apparently. And there are elves and dukes and squires and royal courts and a great deal of high-flown semi-poetic Tolkienesque language, which the sheepfarmer’s daughter has an unexpected knack for, and everyone’s taking orders from her, it seems, as she transforms before our eyes into a Person of Great Importance. And there’s evil to be defeated, naturally, and the religious overtones are quite heavy and... I would say this is all very clichéd except that it was published in the eighties, so although it’s quite derivative, it was probably the norm for that era.

For me, it was a disappointment. I liked the first book very much, and the over-the-top elements of the second book were more than offset by a terrific ending. This has no such redeeming feature, because even a two-year-old could work out how things are going to end. I lost interest, frankly, and had to force myself to finish the last few chapters, not helped by some fairly graphic torture descriptions. I think for those who enjoy a certain type of fantasy, the traditional battle of good versus evil, the hero’s journey, the wordy slightly old-fashioned language of courtiers rather than the more down-to-earth speech of soldiers, this would be a terrific read. It’s difficult to do this well, and the author does a creditable job here. There are some quite lyrical passages, especially when the elves are around, and happily it never quite tips over into parody.

The story of how a humble sheepfarmer’s daughter went out into the world, plumbed the depths of despair and finally triumphed to become a paladin, a heroic champion, is well-written, well thought out and even profound, in parts. For those who wish to see such things, there's a fair amount of religious symbolism in Paks's suffering and its aftermath, and the whole business of believing in your god or gods and the power of that, but I found it all a bit heavy-handed. Ultimately it failed at the final hurdle for me, with a limp and contrived plot in the final book and a heroine who isn’t quite convincing in her paladin incarnation. A disappointing end to an otherwise very readable series. Three stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Divided Allegiance' by Elizabeth Moon

This is the second part of the ‘Deed of Paksenarrion’ trilogy. The first part told how Paks left her home to avoid a forced marriage, joining the local Duke’s private army and discovering they were mercenaries. There was a lot of detail about army life, with numerous skirmishes and battles, and Paks made many friends and attracted the attention even of the Duke himself with her fearless fighting and loyalty. I enjoyed it very much and looked forward to more of the same. And within a chapter, this book has veered sharply off in a different direction altogether.

Not liking the Duke’s support for the violent methods of a pirate-turned-nobleman, Paks leaves the army and sets off over the mountains for home, accompanied only by what must be the world’s most devious elf. No longer are we following the realistic lifestyle of the mercenary troop, we’re into full-on fantasy quest mode, with a succession of threats to be defeated and magic everywhere. Magic beasts, magic rings, spells conveniently summoned to get out of trouble. Here’s a mysterious underground place, obviously full of evil, but Paks has a ‘feeling’ that someone is calling for help. Which way to go? Another strange feeling tells them. How shall we get rid of the evil spirit? I know, let’s use this magic scroll - no idea at all what it does but - oh look, it worked. Now, I have no problem with the principle of magic (I read fantasy, after all, it comes with the territory), but it shouldn’t be a universal get-out-of-jail-free card for all occasions.

Fortunately, the whole book isn’t like this, and soon Paks is back on more prosaic turf. The real difference between this and the first book is that she is essentially alone, cut off from the familiarity and support of the company. Paks is in many ways the perfect soldier - tough and hard working, willing to follow orders but without losing her innate sense of right and wrong. Her weakness comes from inexperience with the world, which leads her to accept people at face value and follow along without questioning, or even thinking much about the consequences. This is fine within the structure of a military outfit, but isn’t so good when she is travelling about on her own.

This book made me uneasy. I like Paks as a character very much. She’s the complete antithesis of the typical fantasy hero - well, maybe being handy with a sword is quite typical, but still... She’s self-effacing, honest and straightforward, yet she constantly seems to bump up against people who are more complicated, people who lie to her, or trick her, or withhold information, or push her into things that perhaps she’s not suited to. She’s very easily persuaded, especially when there’s an attractive adventure in the offing. Sometimes Paks seems quite stupid in her simple-mindedness, but that’s as much her lack of education as anything else, plus the innocence of youth, perhaps. But still, I ached for her to cut through the web of other people’s schemes and see her way to something more than being pushed around.

This book feels much choppier than the first. Even though they both have episodes of action interspersed with slower passages, the first book had the uniformity of always being set within Duke Phelan’s company of mercenaries. This book hops about - the company, the journey with the elf, the village of Brewersbridge, dealing with the robbers, training with the Girdsmen, the journey west and so on, and none of them very well connected. They seemed like a more or less random collection of events. Each time, there are new characters to get to know, new circumstances to understand, new mistakes for Paks to make. And each time there are histories to recount and long philosophical discussions to be got through regarding the essence of good and evil. Paks floundered a bit with these, and I confess that I didn’t understand a lot of the points either. It might be thought-provoking, if it wasn't analysed in exhaustive details by a whole succession of characters. It begins to get repetitive after a while.

The action parts are terrific, though, even if they seem a bit dated now - all those underground passages, evil beasties and magical this-that-and-the-others. And it does seem a little too easy, sometimes, that Paks manages to survive all these trials. Somehow there's always a magical gizmo or a character with convenient powers to rescue her. And then the ending. Few books have moved me quite as much as this one. Poor, poor Paks! Her tragedy is heartwrenching, and it’s hard to see that she herself did anything wrong to invoke such a terrible fate. This is a very uneven book, but, as with the first one, the final chapters more than overcome the earlier flaws. Four stars.