Book Review: COLD IRON by Stina Leicht
High, epic fantasy is perhaps my favorite genre. Yet, its books can easily turn tired and formulaic. Epic fantasy also tends to reach high page counts, both in a given novel and within a giant series, filled with a rich tapestry of characters and world building. But in so doing they can also become bogged-down with superfluous detours and asides. They can balloon into the unmanageable. What I adore about Stina Leicht’s Cold Iron, the first entry in a series entitled The Malorum Gates, is that that she effectively tinkers with many of the genre conventions, merging them with elements more typically stressed in other fiction, while keeping the joy of epic fantasy intact in a hefty read. Nels and his twin sister Suvi are Kainen royalty in the nation of Eledore, and heirs to the throne. The Kainen are an ancient line of magical humanoids capable of compelling other people and animals. But while Suvi is capably ready to lead, Nels remains unassured, hiding his secret weakness in the Kainen magic expected from his genes. At a moment of crisis, Nels’ inability in traditional strengths leads him to breaking taboo, and thereafter following a path developing other talents in the Eledorean military, shunned from royal court.
Book Review: The Middle Ages Unlocked: A Guide to Life in Medieval England, 1050-1300, by Gillian Polack and Katrin Kania
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” — L.P. Hartley The conceptions and misconceptions of what medieval life was really like influence our perceptions of who we are as people, and the fiction and worlds that we create. There is a real struggle within certain sectors of the SFF genresphere about the fiction based on the world within what I call the “Great Wall of Europe”, fantasy with the viewpoint and a setting firmly grounded in conceptions of what Medieval Europe was like. Be it George R.R. Martin’s Westeros, or Kate Elliott’s Wendar and Varre, or a hundred others, Medieval Europe is, for a lot of writers and readers, THE setting to base their fantasy upon. However, many other writers get basic facts about Medieval Europe unintentionally wrong, further accentuating and perpetuating stereotypes and misconceptions about the Medieval world and mindset when they plug those misconceptions into their fiction, and those misconception are reinforced as misinformation about the real Medieval Europe.
Book Review: Cities and Thrones by Carrie Patel
Revolt and revolution are only the beginning of the troubles facing Malone, Jane and the other characters in CITIES AND THRONES, the follow-up to THE BURIED LIFE by Carrie Patel. Taking place on the heels of the prior book, while the first novel is a New Weird murder mystery with a large side of political revolution and unrest, Cities and Thrones explores the consequences, causes and calamities when political revolution happens. Malone has prospered, in a way, in the wake of the political changes occurring in the prior volume, having risen to a position of power and authority over the Inspectors that she didn’t quite want, but is the only person trusted for the job, anyway. Jane Lin and her companion Anders, on the other hand, having gone on the run, give the reader a view into a completely different city — Medina. While Medina is another underground city in the same vein as Recoletta, its culture and setup are very different. Lin’s talents for espionage and getting wrapped up in the councils of power do not fail her in Medina, and Lin soon finds herself caught in them in her new city in short order.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
In our world, the duchy of Burgundy, the Middle Kingdom, has had a fascinating, and often strange history. Wedged in the middle of Europe, from the Mediterranean and up toward the North Sea, parts of which are now France, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium, the Dukes of Burgundy have often been as powerful or more powerful than some of the full blown kingdoms they have dealt with. Burgundy is a hell of a lot of fun to play in the computer game Crusader Kingdoms 2. By accidents and turns of fortune, Burgundy disappeared from our history in a rather sudden fashion. That sudden disappearance of Burgundy from history is the historical seed for Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle. Gentle uses secret history, alternate history, and the moldability of history to explore a 15th century that wasn’t … but perhaps once was.
Book Review: One Good Dragon Deserves Another by Rachel Aaron
After foiling one plot by a foreseeing Dragon, Julius Heartstriker, the nicest Dragon in the world, gets dropped into the maw of his family’s machinations by way of a reward in ONE GOOD DRAGON DESERVES ANOTHER, the second Heartstriker novel by Rachel Aaron. One Good Dragon is the sequel to Nice Dragons Finish Last [review here at S&F] and picks up the action a few months after the end of that novel. Julius and Marci have started their business of dealing with spirit infestations, living a financially precarious but independent life in the DFZ, the Detroit Free Zone, the independent state carved from the United States by the actions of Algonquin, the Lady of the Lakes. Julius and Marci’s defeat of Estella’s plans in the previous novel, however, means that Julius’ grasping, ambitious mother Bethseda might have a use for her most useless and undragonlike son, whether he likes it or not. And as the prologue makes clear, Estella, the dragon who Julius thwarted in Nice Dragons, is far from defeated, and like the Cylons, She Has a Plan. And poor Julius is at the center of that plan. As he is at the center of many other people’s plans as well.
Book Review: Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold
A fallen interstellar empire, a curious, adventurous archaeologist, and a lost pleasure planet whose inhabitants live in the midst of the secrets of that fallen empire are the setting for Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold. Lindskold is an author whose work I read early in her career, in her collaborations with and her Zelazny-inspired early work. Griffin is a scholar whose researches on his rebuilding-to-space-travel home planet have led him to take a solo mission to search for and find Artemis. Back in the days when the old Empire reached across this part of the galaxy, Artemis was designed and built as a high-class resort for the creme de la creme of the Empire. A place such as this, Griffin reasons, would be full of wonders and technology of the old Empire. Crash landing his shuttle on Artemis, however, and having to be rescued by Adara, one of the relatively primitive inhabitants, changes his mission entirely. Now Griffin needs to find the technology of the ancients to try to find a way back up to orbit.
