Book Review: Wothwood by Natania Barron
A mysterious ruin in a dangerous wood. A fateful expedition. A strained relationship, ancient secrets & tensions. Wothwood by Natania Barron, part of the Broken Cities series of stories, brings a lean and mean novella sensibility to a secondary world quest fantasy with a lot of character and worldbuilding on offer. The story of Wothwood centers, really, around two characters, and their old encounter, which comes back in unexpected guise to challenge them, those around them, and the entirely of the land around. Braig Vann was seemingly destined to be the heir to Clan Bannercliffe, the next leader, Moramer of the Clan. Glannon Bel, however, his cousin, wrests the position away from him, leaving him to die at the edge of the Wothwood. Saved from certain death, Braig’s new life with the wandering, disenfranchised Tyckners is distant from his cousin’s eye for years, until an expedition from a nearby Empire comes to investigate the mysterious Wothwood for themselves. Caught up in that expedition, Braig’s return to Bannercliffe territory, and facing the Moramer Glannon Bel, is the driving force for old secrets, both between the two of them, and what truly lurks in the Wothwood.
Guest Post by Aliette de Bodard: Beyond the Cliché Shelf: Making Characters Vibrant and Unexpected
Today instead of a review from me, we have a guest post by Aliette de Bodard. Her second Dominion of the Fallen novel, The House of Binding Thorns, is now out, and you will see a review of it from me here soon. In the meantime, Aliette has some words to say about Characters: I used to struggle a lot with characters. My natural strength is worldbuilding: I can quite happily spend weeks and months reading non-fiction books on anything from the history of food in Vietnam to the role of servants in 19th-Century Paris, and slowly and painstakingly creating a universe from these inspirations. With characters… my earliest ones were correctly created as part of the setting, but I struggled with giving them individuality and personality beyond that. When I created memorable characters they almost always were by accident rather than by design — while the discovery process was wonderful, it was rather annoying to not be able to repeat that when I needed this!
Book Review: The Weight of the World by Tom Toner
The second novel in Tom Toner’s Amaranthine Spectrum sequence, The Weight of the World continues the story of the descendants of humanity across local space 125 centuries into the future with a continued exploration of its range of characters set across an era of change and uncertainty for the immortal masters of the Firmament and their would-be supplanters alike. What The Weight of the World brings for a reader of the original book, The Promise of the Child, is the continued development of the plotlines whose tapestry began in that first book. There is Lycaste, of course, now far from the simple home, the Eden, really, that he had been driven from in the events of the first novel. Here, he continues his perambulating journey, a pawn of forces that seem determined to use him as he simply, still, like Odysseus wants to return home. But duties, promises, responsibilities and the vicissitudes of conflict drive Lycaste forward. Too, other characters met in the first novel show up here. The knight Ghaldezuel, for instance, continues his lonely, rambling quest across the worlds. Sotriis and Jatropha, two of the immortal Amaranthines whose lives seem as fragile as their own world, and others, continue to make their way in this time of tumult.
Book Review: Brother’s Ruin by Emma Newman
In an alternate 1850s era, the British Empire is flourishing as vitally as it did in our timeline, but from different base causes. Instead of the power of the Industrial Revolution providing the motive power for Monarch and country, the Royal Society of Esoteric Arts provides the competitive advantage for Great Britain to stand astride the world. But this society of magicians is a merciless one, taking every person with magical talent, whether they like it or not. Charlotte Gunn seeks to aid her family from financial disaster that her father is in by making sure that her brother’s talents are seen and compensated for. Oh, and in so doing, hiding her own deep, dark secret from the Royal Society: Charlotte, you see, is a mage too. Charlotte, and her world, come to life in the Tor.com novella Brother’s Ruin by Emma Newman.
Book Review: The Mountain of Kept Memory by Rachel Neumeier
A Princess seeking to escape the circumscribed nature of her life and the path set out for her. A Prince who strives to protect his land against an invasion and threat his small country has no capacity to stop. A tyrannical King whose plots and plans overwhelm them all. And a mysterious mountain of knowledge and power that is the key to all of them. It sounds on the face to be a standard fantasy setup with characters out of stock central fantasy casting that could be listed in Diana Wynne Jones’ THE TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND. You can probably even predict how this sort of set up will go, on the old straight track. Prince saves the day, Princess is plucky, Father dies heroically and repents and recants on his deathbed, paving way for Prince to be the better successor. Simple and straightforward character beats and maybe if one is lucky, some character growth for Prince and Princess too. However, The Mountain of Kept Memory by Rachel Neumeier avoids those well trod paths that might go with that sort of fantasy setup, and has a focus, tone and through line that is rather different and rather special.
Book Review: Hunger Makes the Wolf by Alex Wells
Disclosure: Alex Wells is a pseudonym of Alex Acks, co-host here at Skiffy and Fanty. I consider them a friend. Hob Ravani is a member of a biker outfit on Tanegawa’s World. Tanegawa’s World is a hardscrabble place, a dry and desolate world that wouldn’t draw any interest, even from the Transrift corporation, save for its considerable mineral resources. Those resources, and those resources alone, make the desert planet valuable. It’s not Arrakis, but Tanegawa’s World is still a prize to the only corporation with the capacity to travel to the stars. Not even the Federal Union that ostensibly is the government of humanity and all of its worlds has the secret to their Rift drive. And then there is the fact that some people who live on Tanegawa’s World are affected by the strange contaminants on the planet. It IS an alien world, after all, and humans and their works and creations are intruders upon it. Humans who live away from the filtered, protected city of Newcastle are exposed to the world. They can develop unusual, exotic powers, powers that are feared by the corporation, and everyone else on the planet for that matter. People with this contamination gone feral, called witchiness by the locals, are a breed apart. People like Hob. Hunger Makes the Wolf, the debut novel from Alex Wells, tells Hob’s story.
