Saturday, December 30, 2017

Three books in and we finally hit the titled continent.

It's snowing, and lying in bed finishing book 3 of The Mallorean sounded like a great idea this morning. Mind you, I should be shoveling the front walk instead of dealing with Demon Lord of Karanda, but...

Any rate, we pick up right where we left off, with the current party being captured by the Mallorean Army and being taken to Zakath.

Who turns out not to be a bad sort, if you like mildly tyrannical rulers with a human side.

Seems his entire motivation for being in Cthol Murgos is to wipe the line of Taur Urgas from the face of the planet. Given Urgit, the current king, is only half Murgo, and Urgas was not the father, this complicates Zakath's plans a bit. However, the Mallorean Gromlims are in revolt and raising demons in the middle eastern part of the continent, Zakath is forced to return to Mal Zeth to try to retain control of the Empire. Which is composed of the Mallorean Agnaraks, the Melcene Empire, the Dals, and the Karands. The Melcenes are bureaucrats, the Karands are converted demon worshipers, the Dals are mystics, and the Agnaraks are Agnaraks.

Anyway.

Zandramas tries to possess Ce'Nedra, and that doesn't end well. Someone tries to poison Zakath, and they save him. Zakath won't let the party leave until his army returns, prompting an escape amidst a plague that overtakes Mal Zeth.

From there, it's off to Ashaba with the jester Feldegast joining the procession. We find out the identity of the demon lord Mengha, who's actually an old friend of the party. We find out what role Margravine Liselle (aka Velvet) is to play in the proceedings.

We also find out more about who Nahaz is, why he's protecting Urvon, and why he wants the Sardion. And then the voyage East, where we leave off with the discovery of an underwater grotto where the Sardion once rested.

As silly and drawn out as the first two books were, this one gets the plot rolling quickly and gets us headed faster to The Place That Is No More.

What we know at the end:

-Nahaz the Demon Lord is driving the Disciple Urvon insane so he can be the bearer of the Sardion and Master of the Universe.

-Velvet hasn't been quite honest in why she joined up with the party, regardless of the role of prophecy.

-Beldin the dwarf likes resurrecting antique dialects just to annoy Belgarath.

-Cyradis the seer now travels in the flesh with the party.

-Poledra is evidently a bigger part of this.

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

The Once and Future King

It seems fitting that as 2017 sputters out its last days, I finally finished the Battle of Existence versus The Void contained within Destroyer of Worlds, the last book of Kingdom of the Serpent and finale of the 9 book cycle that started back in The Age of Misrule.

Which means we're back with Jack Church and his 5 Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, as well as what remains of the 5 from The Dark Age trilogy. The Void is starting to fill its essence into The Burning Man in the Far Lands. The Army of 10 Billion Spiders gathers around it. The Tuatha de Dannon and gods of several pantheons gather to appose, joined with The Army of Dragons.

In the meantime, Church is dealing with the revelation that at some point, he will become The Libertarian and everyone is dealing with Niamh's betrayal.

At the outset, Mallory and Caitlin undergo a ritual to enter the Grim Lands to find the Extinction Shears (with Hal in the Pathfinder Lantern), while Virginia Dare leads Church's group to the enemy's fortress along with the two keys, Jack (not Church, the one with the Wish Hex in his chest from Queen of Sinister) and Miller (Mallory's friend from the Knights Templar)

There's a heck of a lot of betrayal, angst and redemption leading up to the final battle, including a trip through the Winterlands where the remains of the Drakusa once existed before the human pantheons came about. Callow, from The Age of Misrule, makes an appearance again.

We find out what the caraprix actually are.

And we get several answers to questions from throughout the entire sequence.

But as for the Ragnarok itself, we do get chapters of the Gods fighting against the Void's army in their own colorful Charge of the Light Brigade.

And in the end, the question of whether or not this very long form fairy tale has a happy ending is really in the eyes of the reader.

While I have enjoyed this series immensely, I must say that the epilogue seems to suggest that the finale we've just read doesn't matter in the end.

I will also say the I understand probably more than I want to some of the conversations about the call of the void  and the lure of the mundane spell, wherein contentment replaces joy and the desire to become more.

Honestly, when I set out to read these last year, I was expecting something else. What I got was something different but well worth the time investment.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Two books in and we're still on the same continent

So, I managed to finish David Eddings's King of the Murgos before taking mom to see Star Wars this evening.

Now as I mentioned in the review of book 1, this series has a darker tone than the original, as well as a few moments wherein Ce'Nedra, the girl who raised an army and invaded Mishrak ac Thull, turns into a bigger ninny than Laurana in Dragons of the Spring Dawning. Which is to say, grief excuses so much. Letting her become a shrinking violet is not among them.

We jump in not long after the end of the first book, with Garion, Belgarath, Polgara, Ce'Nedra, Errand, and Silk heading south towards Nyssia on the trail of Zandramas, with a stop in Proglu to meet with UL. UL reveals Errand's real name is Eriond. Literally, this is the only reason they stopped in Ulgoland.

A stop in Tolnedra reveals Bethra, a mercenary spy currently working for Drasnian intelligence is found murdered. This sends Silk a little over the edge and gets Velvet into the party.

In Nyssia, they gain Sadi, the former Chief Eunuch of Salmissra, who;s currently on the outs with the serpent queen. Sadi disguises everyone as slavers to cross into Cthol Murgos. They get hired by the Dagashi to escort an assassin to kill off Kal Zakath. And wine up in palace intrigue with the current king of the Murgos, Urgit, as well as Asharak, the head of the western church of Torak.

Any rate, by the end of the book, we're still not to Mallorea.

What we know by the end:
-Eriond is a lot more than he seems, although we still don't know the extent of it.
-Zandramas's next stop is Torak's house in Ashaba.
-The Dals end up betraying the party to the Malloreans.
-It would seem Silk's father had kids no one knew about.

Gah. I know the last 3 books are more fun, but I'd forgotten how badly the first two drag.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Death be not proud

I forget what drew me to check out Seanan McGuire's Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day, but it wound up being pretty good for being a particularly slim volume.

So, the story concerns Jenna, who died in the 70's, not long after her sister Patty died. As a ghost, Jenna ran off to New York City from Mill Hollow, Kentucky, to try to find her sister. Now in the modern age, Jenna works as both a barista and a suicide prevention councilor on a phone line. She has a rent controlled apartment owned by a long dead Jewish landlady and a collection of elderly cats.

Ghosts in this setting have the ability to give and take time. The terminology gets a bit confusing, but essentially amounts to say, taking a few years off of one person making them younger then giving them to another person, making them older. When a ghost starts approaching the age they should have died at, a red flag appears to them and they have the choice of stealing time or going on to what awaits. (Ghosts are just as clueless about the afterlife as the living.)

Jenna tends to give youth in increments of how much time she gave to people on the suicide line. (Like a waitress whom she takes 47 minutes from after keeping a caller on the line for 47 minutes.)

Jenna tends to hang out at a cafeteria after work, which is how she knows Brenda, a Corn Witch; and Sophie, a Rat Witch.

Eventually this leads to the realization that Jenna and her landlady are the only two ghosts left in New York City, and her one ghost friend Danny (who like me if I were a ghost in New York City, works at Midtown comics) has fled.

This leads to a road trip to find out what's going on, and an exploration of some of the other ghost myths floating around. (Mainly one about covering mirrors to keep the dead from getting trapped when they die.)

It's really a bittersweet read, with the theme being one of homecoming. It may be short, but it packs a mean left hook.

Friday, December 15, 2017

To there and back again

I hadn't intended on starting David Eddings's The Mallorean quite so soon, but at the end of the last book, I grabbed Guardians of the West off the shelf as insurance of having something to read at work.

Any rate, it's done begun now, and I'll have to work in the subsequent volumes around the stuff I have from the library.

So, we begin not long after the ending of Enchanter's End Game with Belgarath, Polgara, Durnik, and Errand returning to Aldur's Vale to begin life anew after the death of Torak. We find that Errand is a bit more than he appears, although we really don't get clues beyond his seeming omniscience about some things. Much like Garion as a child, he gets to meet projections of people who will later on become important in the story. In this case, Cyradis, the Seeress of Kell; and Zandramas, the new Child of Dark.

Then we return to Garion, adjusting to life as King of Riva. Which is really dull for a while, even with the Deus ex machina plot hook tucked in here, wherein Errand and Garion wake in the night and walk in to th ethrone room to see the Orb of Aldur turn red and a voice cry out "Beware Zandramas!"

Followed by another hundred pages of nothing happening beyond an overly long epilogue  to the first series.

Finally, though, C'Nedra gets knocked up, has an heir, and then the plot actually starts moving. Let's see, we have someone trying to get Ce'Nedra to kill Prince Geran while she's asleep. Which brings Poledra back in the picture, even if she's not really there. Then we have the killing of the Rivan Warder, which almost starts a war between Cherek and Riva. While they mop up that, Geran gets kidnapped, leading to another cleaning up of the Alorn Bear Cult, this time in North Eastern Drasnia. Garion finds out how to read a hidden passage in the Mrin Codex, and hey, we're questing again.

By far, the fact that nothing of major interest happening for a few hundred pages is the biggest problem with this introduction. Once it gets going, it takes on a much darker tone than the Belgariad, which hopefully bodes well for the rest of the series. (It does, although we'll return to issues present in The Mallorean as we get through the next volumes eventually.)

So, What we know so far:

-Garion is now a man, and so are his old compatriots.
-Dryads have strange reproductive practices.
-One of Torak's old Acolytes is still alive and living in Mallorea somewhere.
-One of the companions in this series will die by the end.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Imhotep!

So, it seems I missed a book in Simon R. Green's Ishmael Jones series, but given these are stand alones much like Agatha Christie, not a big deal.

Any rate, Death Shall Come involves Ishmael and Penny joining the Colonel (also known as Stuart) at his in-laws estate where George Cardavan is unveiling his latest acquisition, the mummy of Cleopatra the First. The entire family will be there, from George's mother and in dementia father, his trophy wife, his kids and their spouses. And his resident Egyptologist, Dr. Rose. 

The mummy, of course, comes with a curse.

So when George shows up dead in a locked room with a missing mummy, you can bet everyone is thinking Boris Karloff walks among them.

And indeed, there are more than a few bodies that show up along the way, but, as is common for this series, The curse of the mummy has nothing to do with a supernatural curse. But we do get a glimpse at who Ishmael may have been before he became Ishmael. Which is in and of itself interesting.

Good locked room mystery, with an unusual solution.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

If you're Gnostic and you know it, flare your Chi!

I've finally returned to Mark Chadbourn and his Kingdom of the Serpent trilogy with the middle volume The Burning Man. Or Book 8 in the 9 book cycle, depending on how you want to look at it.

There's quite a bit to unpack here, so bear with me.

We start with the rescue of the folks from the middle trilogy being saved from the grand illusion cast by the void by the heroes of the first trilogy. Which means we have Church, Ruth, Laura and Shavi jailbreaking Mallory, Caitlyn, Hunter, and Sophie. Hal, who is now part of the Blue Fire (or the Pendragon Spirit) is back giving cryptic clues to everyone. Ryan, who impaled himself on Church's magical sword at the end of the last book in this series, comes back to lead the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders, who's ranks include 4 former compatriots of Church during his sojourn in time. Representing the Void again is The Libertarian. And Puck is running around again as well in the background, being suitably inscrutable.

The problem being that since the human characters (other than Church) are slowly recovering memories lost to the illusion of the Void, more and more misunderstandings keep cropping up. This becomes more important as the group splits, with Mallory, Sophie, and Caitlyn going to Far Lands looking for Niamh and the Extinction Shears. Ruth, Church, Laura, and Shavi, in the mean time are off to Norway looking for one of the two keys that can stop the void. Hunter, who decided against joining up with the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, instead meets a really crotchety Tom the Riddler (to be fair, having reality rearranged to undo your death and rob you of the Odin like power to know every detail of what's coming might make anyone a little cranky), who ends up dragging him back to Church's party. In the Far Lands,  Mallory's group runs across Jerzy the minstrel.

Speaking of Odin like powers, early on, Shavi contacts the spirits for information and ends up taking a being's eye to replace his missing one.

Niamh is free from her spider companion when the one group finds her. (She's another who's dealing with the crankiness that comes with having reality rearranged to bring you back from the dead.) Rhiannon and the saved Brothers and Sisters of Dragons are missing.

In Norway, Church's party finds out that the presence of the Brothers and Sisters tends to disturb the Void's illusion, and therefore wakes up the local Great Dominion. In this case, we meet Tyr and Freyja, neither of whom are particularly happy to help or thrilled that Ragnarok is set to begin. Indeed, when Laura picks one of the golden apples, the blood of the Gods starts flowing and causing major issues. In the ensuing chaos, Ryan pops up and kidnaps Ruth as well as grabbing the personification of the first key.

Mallory and party find Rhiannon and free her, but her freedom puts her in a Sleep Like Death, forcing them to seek Math.

Church's party winds up in Egypt. Puck gives Ryan the Anubis Box. Laura nearly gets mummified. We find out the Egyptian Gods have sided with the Void. (Osiris and Anubis are both rather terrifying in this presentation.)  Hunter takes Laura to the Far Lands, seeking to heal her in the court of the final Word. Ruth winds up in Greece, where she and a group of abused women end up becoming Maenads  under the sights of Dionysus.

Church has a confrontation with the Libertarian, who reveals an interesting secret, if it's true.

Mallory's party meet Ogma, and eventually find the missing Tuatha de Dannan, although conflict arises between Sophie and Caitlyn. 

Church's group first winds up in China, then in New York. Along the way, the Blue Fire is awakened at the source again, and we find out what happens when a Wendigo gets loose in Manhattan.

As I stated at the outset, there's a lot to unpack in this, between the Gnostic thought that guides much of the philosophy along with the different faces of syncretic deities. There's also several Burning Men in here, from visions in the Far Lands, to a title Church ends up wearing, and a literal Burning Man in Nevada with Ryan and Ruth at the festival. We also have the whole concept of the serpent equating with wisdom, and therefore the Garden of Eden creation story taking on a whole new slant.

In the end, we have a set up for the final book in the sequence, which will get read eventually, although the amount of foreshadowing in this volume suggests not everyone is going to have a happy ending. On the other hand, I'm curious as to whether or not my current working theory that we're going to wind up in Transcendentalism with everyone belong to the same oversoul holds true. I'm likely wrong, but one of the reveals in here suggests it.

Good read. Was interesting seeing presentations of Pantheons outside of the Celtic.

Friday, December 1, 2017

He's the man, the man with the spider's touch

So, Moonbreaker by Simon R. Green is pretty much exactly what I expect out of a paranormal James Bond novel, particularly one in his Secret Histories series.

Which is to say, over the top, cheeky, and really entertaining.

OK.

So, at the end of the last one, we found Eddie Drood poisoned by Dr. DOA, who was actually an alternate reality version of Eddie from a reality where the Drood were exterminated. Eddie wound up trapped with Molly Metcalf in said alternate reality while his alternate self went to Eddie's normal reality.

Several things happen here. We find out the alternate Droods worshiped Kali, in the sense that the Thugees in Temple of Doom worshiped Kali. We also find the alternate hall has an alien Grey who's actually a robot from the future trapped in that version of the Old Library.

They eventually get back to Eddie's original relaity, and the chase is on for Bad Eddie. Well, after dealing with the Hall releasing parts that have been cut off from reality for a while. Like the parts with the alchemically married to demons Droods. And the alchemically married to angels Droods.

Then it's off to Scotland and the Museum of Unattached Oddities, Siberia, and THE MOON!

There's quite a bit going on here, and the fur keeps on flying from start to finish, with occasional meditations on family obligations and how much one should acknowledge bad things done in the past. As an added bonus, the teaser for the next book reveals that it will be narrated by both Eddie and John Taylor (narrator of the Nightside series). That should be interesting.

So yeah. One of the better entries in the Histories.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Jamie Lee Curtis, she's not.

So, before we start unpacking Riley Sager's Final Girls, let me define the term for those not versed in such esoterica. In slasher horror films, the heroine who survives the movie and takes out the killer as part of the process. Case in point, Jamie Lee Curtis, who survived three Halloween movies. (We won't mention the fourth one she was in, since it was horrible. I guess she's coming back for a fifth that will ignore most everything that's come before. But that's beside the point, since this is a book blog. You want horror movie discussion, go read Candy-Coated Razor Blades or listen to Bob's podcast.)

Anyway.

Final Girls centers on Quincy, a real life Final Girl who survived a massacre at Pine Cottage, somewhere in Pennsylvania, where she'd been camping with friends. In her rare company (although she's never met either in real life) are Sam, who survived a motel massacre in Idaho, and Lisa, who survived a sorority bloodbath in Illinois. Quincy used settlement money from the lawsuit surrounding Pine Cottage to buy an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where she writes a baking blog and hides from the world. Sam dropped off the face of the planet following her encounter with fame, and Lisa helps at risk children as well as supporting girls who survive.

Quincy has a vanilla boyfriend, Jeff, who works as a public defender. Quincy drinks lots of wine and takes Xanax with grape soda. She occasionally steals from random strangers. The cop who ended up shooting her maniac is a friend who visits on occasion named Cooper.

And then Lisa commits suicide. Which sets Quincy into an anxiety tailspin. Particularly when she finds an e-mail Lisa had sent a few hours prior to her death that she'd missed. Followed quickly by the appearance of the long hidden Sam on her doorstep. Sam ends up staying with Quincy, which puts a few more rifts into her relationship with Jeff. Sam is a bad girl, smoking, drinking Wild Turkey, and shoplifting from Bloomingdale's. She also continually challenges Quincy on her big memory gap about the night of the Pine Cottage Massacre. (Quincy has repressed about an hour of time froim memory. From the time the first victim walked back to the cabin bleeding out until she ran into Cooper running out of the woods, with Cooper shooting the killer.)

It turns out Lisa was murdered, but since no one realized this until after the toxicology report came in, the crime scene can't be processed properly, and therefore they doubt they'll ever know who killed her. Sam's appearance, on the other hand, gets Quincy back in the papers, something she'd been trying to avoid.

A whole lot of baking and vigilantism later, we wind up back at Pine Cottage in both the past and present to reveal that the book indeed had a plot buried somewhere within.

Ah yes, the plot. The pacing was a real issue here. Much like, say, Pet Semetary by Stephen King, nothing really happens until about 75 pages from the end. Indeed, I kept expecting recipes for the blog to start littering the prose while waiting for something to happen.

Another major issue centers around the two major plot twists dealing with motives and identity. They come about 3 pages apart, not really letting the first one grow fertile. Because really, had the first one been revealed a few chapters before, it could have been a much better red herring. Instead, it promptly gets buried under the weight of the second reveal. That the second reveal happens in the final chapter also robs us of the chance to see the Final Girl of the trope in action. It really should have let us see Quincy blossom again as a survivor, but it really doesn't exactly. We find out what's going on, she resolves the problem a page later.

Now, I originally picked this up after seeing it on Goodreads picks for Horror Novel of the Year, with a bit of trepidation after seeing Stephen King's blurb on the front cover. After The Troop, I'm a little leery of reading books with his plug on the cover of a book written by another author under a pseudonym. This one is ok. I mean, yes, the book needed a bit more editing, but it's readable enough and entertaining after a while.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Cthulhu-ulhu-Doo!

I picked up Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids with some trepidation; despite being one of the semi-finalists for goodreads.com's Horror Novel of the year, the Scooby-Doo set up never mixes well with the real supernatural. (Except maybe The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. Despite what others will tell you, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island was terrible. I never figured out why.) While the original shows flirted with the supernatural as thematic elements, it was almost always a person in a rubber mask with nothing better to do that bother teenagers.

Case in point: Milissa Wilcox here is a gal in a rubber mask, but her grave marker bears the alchemical symbol of Leviathan.


Any rate, this isn't exactly Scooby-Doo. The characters aren't complete cyphers, although some overlap is obviously there. So, shell we meet Blyton Summer Detective Club, who some 13 years before the start of the story solved the Sleepy Lake Monster Mystery at the old Deboën mansion, using a trap that sent a man in a rubber mask flying down a flight of stairs on a rolling cart into a fishing net. Mind you, the kids are all 11 and 12 years old and have a Weimaraner. We have the ostensible leader of the gang, Peter, who went on to be an actor, but who killed himself in Hollywood with pills and vodka. Except his ghost (or a delusion of one) hangs out with Nate, a geek who self committed himself to Arkham Asylum in Massachusetts. Nate's cousin, Kerri had reddish orange curls and was on her way to becoming a biologist, but now she's a drunk working in various bar waitressing positions. Kerri is raising Tim , the great grandson of of the original Weimaraner. Rounding out the group, we have Andy, the tomboy who's both a criminal and military drop out.

At the start, Andy confronts the man in the rubber mask after his parole hearing. After getting answers she doesn't like, she sets off to reunite the gang to go back to Blyton, Oregon, and confront what they missed as tweenagers. This of course means breaking Nate out of Arkham using a straitjacket, an office chair, and a dog... and the budding one sided lesbian desires of Andy towards Kerri.

Any rate, after a bunch of argument, they wind up back in Blyton, a town on the Zoinx river. We find that the town bully is now a waiter at the diner as well as a deputy sheriff. The deputy they hated as kids is now Sheriff and a member of the Walla Walla tribe who knows the legends of the god beneath the mountain with an 18gazillion consonant name. 

What follows is a mix of zany adventure, with the supernatural being proven real, but the force behind it being someone with a mask of sorts on.

It works much better than I would have expected. I think the real reason it works better than Scooby's adventures in real supernatural stuff is that it allows the characters to actually grow up, not become adult cyphers of their teenage selves. Mind you, it's quite a bit like reading Scooby-Doo vs Pennywise the Dancing Clown in places, but I couldn't help but laugh at the idea of Shaggy reading aloud from the Necronomicon.

Really, it's a damn good read for those who don't mind childhood growing up and facing down the real monsters.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Makes me miss the 80's

A while back, I picked up a friend of mine some Dean R. Koontz at one of the book sales. She read Breathless, handed it back to me, and told me to read it so we can Book Club it.

Here's the problem. As I believe I mentioned, I quit reading Koontz not long after Servants of Twilight since the plots went beyond my suspension of disbelief. Breathless is kind of like that, except it's at least semi readable.

What plot there is is tied up in several sub plots, a few of which never connect to the larger narrative, and all of which end in a big ol's Deus ex Machina, emphasis on the Deus.

Let's see. We have Grady Adams and his Irish Wolfhound Merlin. Then we have Dr. Camilla Rivers, a vet. Then we have Henry Rouvroy and his soon to be dead brother Jimmy and Jimmy's soon to be dead wife Nora. Dr. Lamar Woolsey, a mathematician and chaos theorist who can also beat Vegas odds at the card tables. Tom Bigger, the homeless guy. Then the might as well be nameless serial killer and the lawyer who hires him who show up in about 6 total pages spread in the second half of the book and do next to nothing.

So anyway.

Grady walks the dog, sees visions of white animals frolicking in the glade. Camilla is a vet, who has animals suddenly going into trances and coming out of them content. Henry shows up at his brother's remote farm, kill the brother and his wife, then assumes Jim's identity. Tom has a vision on the beach and walks the California coast.

The white animals break into Grady's house and steal his baked chicken. He invites Camilla over to meet them. Camilla names them Puzzle and Riddle, since they don't fit into any known taxonomy. Claire takes pictures and sends them on to colleagues, who pass it up the food chain, thinking they're lab experiments. This gets Homland security involved, who bring in Woolsey as a consult.That Woolsey is also Grady's best friend's father is just a coincidence.

Henry is convinced his brother and sister-in-law aren't really dead and stalking him.

Tom ends up in a motel where an elderly Jewish couple gets him home.

And somewhere in this, we delve off of plausibility into Intelligent Design, since as the mathematician explains, math doesn't support the theory of evolution.

I mean, it's readable, but it's not anything I'd be inclined to reread ever. It made me long for the days when his plots involved time travelling Nazis, rich old men ripping off H G Wells, or even policemen fighting voodoo.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Hail, Hail, the gang's all here

So, I had originally intended to read something else before starting Enchanter's End Game by David Eddings, which finishes up The Belgariad (mainly because I dislike having back to back posts out of the same series), but I also knew it would be a quicker read than the next volume up before we start the library books.

Anyway, as I stated above, this is the last book of the first quintet. Likely sometime after New Year's, I'll dig up the second quintet and the follow up volumes, but for now, I'm satisfied having read the original stories.

Like the previous volumes, this opens with holy writ from one of the world's religious texts. In this case, we get a passage from The Book of Torak, who frames his narrative with him as the hero. Mind you, the idea is that if his prophecy wins out, this will be the literal truth of the world.

Then we meet up with Silk, Belgarath, and Garion as they cross from Drasnia into Gar Og Nadrak on their way to boundless Mallorea. Which is made more entertaining by the occupying Mallorean Agnaraks conscripting everyone into their army. Eventually, they make it to the land of the Morindim, another godless race. Instead of seeking UL with the Ulgos, these decided to raise demons. Eventually though, they make it to Mallorea and head to Cthol Mishrak where dead Torak lies sleeping.

Then we return to the armies of the west, as they plan a diversionary war to draw the Agnaraks to Mishrak ac Thull. Which works well until the Malloreans and the Murgos arrive at the same time. Polgara, Ce'Nedra, Errand, and Durnik become guests of 'Zakath the Mallorean Emperor who gives them over to the Gromlims for transport to Cthol Mishrak.

Once there, everything comes to a head, and the necessities meet in what's billed as the final battle (well, you know, other than the next quintet...) and we get our happy fantasy ending as just about everyone ends up happily married and healed.

As I complete this, I understand that the overall story is better than the individual books. Becauses, frankly, each book has its own problems, but the story itself is engaging. We'll return to the Bels and Pols soon, I assume, but for now...

Friday, November 10, 2017

Ladies and gentlemen, The Riven Queen!

Again, proving that they're quick reads, I finished Castle of Wizardry by Davis Eddings on lunch today. (And if anyone is missing this particular volume, I seem to have an extra.)

So, we pick up with the escape from Cthol Murgos, as the party rides hard from the soon to be ruins of Cthol Mishrack. As Belgarath is exhausted from his battle, the party rests in Algaria at the only permanent settlement, The Stronghold. (The Algars tend to follow the herds and tend to be nomadic. They basically built the Stronghold to give visiting Murgos a place to attack.)

In Algaria, Belgarion meets his cousin Adara, who's in love with Hetter, the party member who can talk to horses. She ends up accompanying them back to and through Ulgoland to Sendaria, where Polgara and Garion and Ce'Nedra make a field trip back to Faldor's Farm for Garion to see once and for all his hoime is not the farfm. Which is good, since as soon as the reach the Island of the Winds and Riva, Garion is revealled to be Belgarion, the Bearer of the Orb of Aldur, and the Prophecied Child of Light in the upcoming battle against the Child of Dark, Torak.

Almost all of the royalty in the West is there, excluding Porenn of Drasnia (who just had King Rhodar's baby) and Ran Borune of Toledra.

Garion finally gets more information on the prophecies and what's expected of him. To try to save lives, he Silk, and Belgarath leave secretly in the night for Mallorea in hopes of causing the confrontation with Torak before total war breaks out for generations.

As such, Polgara is essentially left in charge of those left behind. And she's unhappy. Ce'Nedra, who as part of the betrothal with Garion (again, a condition of the prophecy), has joint ruling powers in Riva, and uses her charm and wits to join the war party. Mostly, she becomes a figure to gather together the disparate non Alorn races to join the fight against the Agnaraks.

And she does this quite well, learning and having to deal with the fact she's likely leading the armies to their deaths.

By far, it's in this book where the plot actually gets interesting. The secrets are revealed, and it's all heading to a showdown.

The one outstanding problem is one of Fate verses Free Will. As Taiba, the Marag woman and Relg, the Ulgo get closer, the prophecy itself states this is necessary and they have no real choice in the matter. Which is really kind of horrible. There's a line in Mercedes Lackey's Mage Storms trilogy that I find myself reflecting on when reading about Relg and Taiba; the idea that lifebonding (or destined love) is almost like enslavement, and love given freely without that kind of bond isn't a bad thing at all, since you have choices with it.

What we know at the end:
Garion is Belgarion, whom prophecy foretold.
Belgarion must face Torak, the Dragon God of Agnarak.
The child Errand is the only other one who can touch thr Orb of Aldur currently.
Ce'Nedra is fulfilling prophecy on her end by raising an army to keep the three headed East safe.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Smiling faces beautiful places...oh wait, wrong side.

I finished Michael G. Williams's Attempted Immortality this afternoon as I was trying to plot out my next few books, thanks to a combination of the goodreads awards and the library. I say this mainly since I've been reading The Withrow Chronicles interspersed with The Belgariad, and this book is currently the last one published.

Anyway, we open on Roderick and Withrow in a beach town on an island on the North Carolina/South Carolina border searching for the ancients who made a deal with a demon back in the day. They seem to have gathered to raise an ancient the cousins dub The Rhinemaiden, after the singing trollops that start Valhalla in Wagner's Ring Cycle. (For those unfamiliar with it, it's four operas about drunken Norse Gods. Google or YouTube Anna Russell and get the short version.)

Anyway, since it's winter, nobody seems to really be in town other than the ancients, their thralls, the technopagans, and Withrow and Roderick. Well, there is one realtor, but she generally just shows up twice and makes nasty commentary.

Anyway, most of the Asheville vampires end up in Sunset beach to help draw out the elders to stomp them out. We also find out the techopagans have utilized magic to do one of the tricks that was ever popular in Mage: The Ascension, wherein flashlights and car headlights now cast sunlight.

Much is gleaned here, such as an understanding that the Last Gasp isn't the last power a vampire is going to get, and indeed, vampires evolve as they age.  We also keep getting hints that Roderick is more than he appears to be, although what he is has yet to be defined.

There's a lot of cross and double cross, and Ross, last seen making out with Withrow in the back room of a big box store is back negotiating on behalf of the ancients. One should also mention that regardless of whether he's a tulpa or a demon, thanks to Dungeons & Dragons, he's vulnerable to silver.

Overall, the theme here is that the ancients are just as divided as the ancillae are in terms of who's doing what to whom. Because, as it turns out, almost no one really wanted the Rhinemaiden to wake up. (In OWoD terms, it's a bit like reading about Sabbat Tzimisce trying to take out the Voivodate. Only with less Vicissitude.)

Honestly, I look forward to volume five, the presumed end of this, since I'm curious as to what horrors await our anti heroes in Charlotte, where no one wants to go.

Saturday, November 4, 2017

Not quite like Remy LeBeau

I technically finished David Eddings's Magician's Gambit yesterday, but a very long day at work crossed with a lack of sleep meant not updating until now.

So, We pick up with out party leaving Nyssia and heading to Aldur's Vale. (Aldur being the god of Sorcerers.) Unfortunately, due to a bunch of Murgo interference, the party instead rides through the remains of Maragor, where the God Mara eternally weeps over his slain people. (Seems a few millennia ago, the Tolnedrans invaded and slaughtered the Marags wholesale. Whether it was due to an odd quirk of religious cannibalism or the amount of gold that that Marags weren't using lining the streams remains open to debate.) A visit with Mara yields no real results, other than another discussion on prophecy and the dry voice in Garion's head informing Mara that his sorrow is not far from ending.

The trail to the Vale is treacherous out of Maragor and they end up finding the cave where the Gods met to talk during the creation. Garion pulls a new colt back from death in the cave.

More than a few conversations happen in the Vale, most of which involve getting Garion to understand his Sorcery. We find that Polgara talks to the birds, and Ce'Nedra, who is half Dryad, talks to trees. Alder again refers to Garion as Belgarion, and much is made of finding people to fulfill roles as foretold in prophecy. We also get to meet the other Sorcerers who serve Aldur, Beltira and Belkira (twins) and Beldin, the dwarf. Beldin is one who shows affection through insults, which Polgara and Belgarath understand, but most of the rest of the party doesn't at first.

From The Vale, The party enters Ulgoland, Home of the Ulgos. It seems after the creation, the Gods chose their people, leaving at least one group godless. (We meet a few more of these groups later on, although the Dryads technically count.) This particular group petitioned the gods to take them in, but they told them to seek their father UL. Whom a man named Gorim finally found, and persuaded to take his people and the animals unclaimed as his. Since the time when Torak took the orb and cracked the world, they've lived in caves under the ruined city of Proglu. All leaders of the Ulgo have taken the name Gorim after their founder. I should mention that one the way to Proglu, the party encounters a monster whom Belgarath met many eons ago. During the fight, Polgara and Garion manage to bring the spirit of her mother into battle, which makes Belgarath mildly upset.

Anyway, the upshot of the visit to Ulgoland and Proglu winds up being that Ce'Nedra stays with Gorim and a diviner (one who can sense caves and traverse through rock) joins them for the journey into Cthol Murgos. This would be Relg, who's a fundamentalist of the worst sort, who spends much of him time after being told by UL to get his ass out of the cave and help praying and abasing himself. He does however start loosening up after seeing Murgos (particularly their King, Taur Urgos) in action. After silk gets captured, Relg actually drags Silk out of the pit through solid rock to free him. Later, his unique ability becomes both weapon and body disposal.

Any rate, the entire thing comes down to Rak Cthol, where Ctuchick  waits along with the child who bears the orb.

While that particular confrontations comes out predictably, they do discover what may well be one of the last of the Marags in the dungeons. We close on Relg, who seems to think her nakedness is a sin against UL, leading the party back to her for rescue.

What we know by the end:

Garion is actually Belgarion.
All the members of the party have titles as defined by the prophecies.
There are two proecies out heroes are using, while the Agnaraks have one of their own.
This also is the first real mention of the Mrin Codex and the Darine Codex.
The only one vulnerable in Rak Cthol was The Queen of the World (Ce'Nedra), thus why she stayed in Ulgoland.

We'll return for book for in a little while. 

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Big problems

A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne is a real departure from his soon to finish Iron Druid series. Among other things, at over 600 pages, it's his longest published work. It's also high fantasy, coming closer to George R. R. Martin world building than say, Mercedes Lackey.

The known world here has six countries, of which five have kennings from their patron deity at the outset. Five are at peace, with one, Hathrir mostly at detente with the other five. (The Hathrir have the kenning of fire, and are generally larger than the other peoples in the world. Thus one part of the title plague.) 

Since it's part of the series title, a word on the Kennings. Kennings are magics granted by the gods based on a particular element. The elements in question differ a bit from both Western and Eastern elements, as we have Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Plants, and about midway through, Animals. Rumors abound about a Seventh Kenning, but it as of yet remains undefined. Kennings are granted in a fashion where you either get blessed or join the gods. The first we witness, in Forn, involves tree roots sucking seekers into the ground, where they either become blessed or become fertilizer. The others aren't particularly easier sounding, as Air involves throwing one's self off a cliff and Water involves drowning in a tidal pool. Blessings occur in different degrees (as discussed in the book, it seems like most of them have 3 levels), and overusing the power causes the body to age. (This is all more than what the reader is given at the outset, since we more or less jump right in to the book without explanation . We meet our narrator in Brynlon, and he starts relating tales told on Survivor's Field by the bard from Rael.)

See, in Platonic fashion, what we're reading in the journal of Dervan, a recently unemployed historian at the university in Pelemyn. He's good friends with the Pelenaut (leader of the country), who gets him to follow around Fintan and record his stories as well as occasional spycraft.

Finatn's tales give us a view of one of the Hathrir clans sending an invading force into Ghurana Nent to establish a new settlement after a volcano erupts on the old one. This upsets both the Nentians and the Fornians to their south. (Forn is home of the Kenning of Plants. Therefore, the Hathrir burning trees is abominable to them.) In the meantime, what come to be known as Bone Giants start showing up in the East. a single giant winds up in Kauria, where a linguistics expert is brought in to communicate with him.

North of Kauria, invading hordes of Bone Giants arrive on the shores of Brynlon and Rael. The problem being that no one knows really where the giants came from, since the seas are filled with krakens that eat boats since something called The Rift.

And on the Plains of Nent, a young boy discovers the sixth Kenning after being mauled by giants cats.

Fintan tells these stories using his Kenning, which includes a special stone that allows him to take on the appearance of each individual narrating character. And there are a lot of them. Which is good, since it gives us just about everybody's perspective on the simultaneous invasion.

As an added note, two of the narrators are gay men, which was not something I expected in this volume.

It's a good start to however long this series is supposed to go. I'll be interested to see how this progresses, particularly since most of the map remains unexplored.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Be careful what you wish for

Been a busy weekend, but I still managed to finish Michael G. Williams's third book in The Withrow Chronicles, Deal With The Devil. 

Unlike the previous two volumes, this one seems to be setting up a larger metaplot that ties together some of the random events of the previous two volumes in the series, which is a good thing.

 We start by getting introduced to a new real life superhero in Durham, NC, who gets dubbed The Bull's Eye after she gags a burglar with a bag from a particular box store. Then we end up finding Withrow meeting a new supervillain while trying to track down a foreign vampire in Durham. Said villain is in the Duke library breaking open a case containing an antique Blue Devil outfit.

After watching the newly christened El Diablo put on the outfit, Withrow meets Ross, who seems to be a demon. (Whether or not he actually is becomes a topic of debate after the climax of the story, since for Ross to be an actual demon would suggest that hell and by extension heaven is a real place. Withrow's cousin Roderick thinks it's likely demons are actually Tibeten Tulpas summoned into the Western world.)

Ross apparently has a crush on Withrow, as undead passions rise along with demonic one, which culminates in a protracted makeout session ath the local Uberbargains box store.

Along side the hero/villain story, we also have the foreign vampire who's farming two twins who evidently have delicious blood due to some kind of "vitamin" a lab at Duke was using on a few of the athletes. There's a fairly interesting discussion with that, since one of the twins seems to fetishize the blood drinking, although whether or not it started off as consensual is a topic that gets addressed as Withrow prepares to confront Dmitri.

Jennifer is back, and in a larger role this time, as she's working with Duke technopagans to figure out what all is going bump in the night.

As I said, he seems to be building a metaplot for the series, since we finally find out more of the roots of the Transylvanian from Book Two as well as what caused the zombies back in Book One.We're also left questioning how much Withrow can trust Roderick, since Roderick seems to be acting on his own agenda in things.

I'll be curious as to what surprises Book Four holds within its bound pages.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

I Hate That Queen!

So, today we're focusing on David Eddings's second book in The Belgariad, Queen of Sorcery.

When we left our Fellowship, they were leaving Cherek for Arendia. We open on the norther border of Arendia, near the ruins of Vo Wacune, former home of the Wacite Arends, who were exterminated some 2.5 millennia ago. As of now, there are only two factions of Arends left, the Asturians, who speak modern English, and the Mimbrates, who speak like rejects from a Ren Fest. The two sides were united under a king of the Mimbrates and a queen of the Asturians following the war that brought Torak to the West looking for the Orb of Aldur. (Aldur being one of the gods of the series. Aldur has no real people of his own, other than a small grouping of Sorcerers who serve him.)

In the great forests of Asturian influence, we meet Lelldorin, an archer of some renown, who joins the party. Lelldorin is very Arendish, he's part of a larger plot to take out the King and make it look like the southern Tolnedrans did it. He's brave, and prone to getting swept up into things like regicide. However, he's not nearly as bad as the Mimbrate Mandorallen, whom we meet next, who's part of an epic love triangle that's the gossip of the entire kingdom. Seems he and his liege's wife are of similar age and in love, although neither will act on it, since the wife equally loves her husband, as does Mandorallen.

Lelldorin gets poisoned going through Arendia, and is left in the care of Mimbrates. Mandorallen comes along to court, wherein the whole regiscide plot comes apart and the Gromlim priest behind it is exposed. (A word on Torak's people, the Agnaraks. The Nadraks are merchants on the North Eastern side of the continent. The Thulls are considered chattel and live in the middle Eastern section of the continent. The Murgos live in the Southeast, and are a warrior caste. The Gromlims are priests of Torak and also sorcerers of Torak and look quite a bit like Murgos. Then there's the Mallorians, but we really don't meet them until book 5. They live on the other continent.)

Anyway, from Arendia, the fellowship travels further south into Tolnedra, currently undergoing a rather expensive and poisonous attempt at regime change. Seems the current emperor, Ran Borune, is not far from death and has no male heir. Therefore, the other great families are trying to get their own candidates in position to take the throne by bribery and poison. We hear of Maragor to the East, where the Tolnedrans massacred the Marags over the sin of cannibalism and the large amount of unused gold in the rivers of Maragor. A monastery sits on the border to try to calm the ghosts who haunt any who venture into Maragor.

The party gets waylaid early on by a Nyssian, seeking to bring Garion, Polgara, and Belgarath before his queen, Eternal Salmissra.

While visiting Ran Borune, we meet Ce'Nedra, his daughter, who's unhappy about being confined to the palace, as well as a clause in the Accords of Vo Mimbre that states she must go to the hall of the Rivan King on her 16th birthday. Since there hasn't been a Rivan King in several centuries, she finds it humiliating.

After leaving on not so great terms, the party continues south, joined by the disguised princess. The ruse is revealed in short order, and Ce'Nedra joins the party, mainly existing here to argue with Garion.

One of the current front runners for the throne catches up with the party, and the Gromlim running him turns out to be the one who killed Garion's parents. This opens Garion to becoming a sorcerer in his own right, who promptly kills the Gromlim.

Anyway, as the enter the Dryad territory, they get waylaid again by mudmen that happen to be animated by snakes serving Salmissra. Once dispatched, they visit the Dryads, who tell Ce'Nedra she can't stay with them.

And so, we wind up in Nyssia, with Belgarath and Silk taking the journey south through the jungle and the rest going by boat to Ssith Tor. It's here we see the wretched hive of scum and villany that is Nyssia. Due to the nature of the jungle, most of the Nyssians have addictions to any number of psychotropic herbs and berries. Slavers run in and out of port. The Nyssians were evidently behind the long ago assassination of the Rivan King, so the Alorns aren't happy to be there. Eventually, Salmissra manages to kidnap Garion, not long after he and Polgara have a really bad fight. Salmissra is surrounded by her eunuchs and her snakes. She essentially drugs Garion into submission, although the nondissociative voice in his brain keeps him rational.

Eventually, everything works out, as Salmissra's plot is revealed and Polgara fulfills a long ago promise to another incarnation of the Queen.

Silk and Belgarath make it soon after, and the party book ends with the party headed to the Vale of Aldur.

What we know by the end of this book:

The Orb of Aldur was stolen by a former disciple of Aldur named Belzedar, and no one is sure how he did it.

Garion's full name is Belgarion, although he's not happy about it, since it means his life is changing.

The Gromlims seem to be bound and determined to stir up trouble in the west since the time of prophecy is upon them.

This is the book where the adverbs start becoming problematic.

Still, other than the overreaching plot becoming more obvious to readers, it remains a solid entry in the series.

Monday, October 16, 2017

No bread pudding this time

So, I finished Michael G. Williams's second book in The Withrow Chronicles today, and found it to be a nice change from the first.

Tooth & Claw picks up some time after Perishables, as Withrow is investigating the murder of the last person who knew him in life. (Ok, we actually pick up in 195* as Clyde, the friend, is investigating the murder of a couple of locals by what everyone assumes was a Songcatcher.) The murder goes unsolved, and Clyde goes up the murder site every year on the anniversary to ponder his failure. Withrow usually joins him.

Except this year, when Withrow finds Clyde exsanguinated in the same spot the old body had been found.

Withrow's biological cousin, who also got turned into a vampire is visiting from Seattle and helps Withrow track down the murderer. That Rodrick has his own agenda is a story in and of itself.

Much of the book delves into the world of vampires in this setting, and the concept of "The Last Gasp", wherein after the last person who knew you in life dies, and you murder someone, you gain a power of some kind. Like flight or making mushrooms dance.

Jennifer from the last book is in here, briefly, as a Paranormal investigator. And a new character, a lesbian detective named H'Diane (and her girlfriend LaVonde) is introduced, as Withrow tries to cultivate her as a police contact. The thing is that there's a touch of Hoodoo up in the hills, and an old witchwoman gives LaVonde a talisman for H'Diane that protects her from vampires.

Unlike Perishables, the book is one complete story, and there are no post apocalytic recipes to be found, which was a lot less distracting. Really, about the only real issue I had was with the printer formatting, wherein there's a line break at the end of every paragraph, which works well on a blog, but drives me nuts in print.

Good read.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Here we go again

Part 2 of the twofer.

I thought another series might keep me from posting about the same series for multiple entries. On the way out the door, I grabbed Pawn of Prophecy, Book 1 of David Eddings's The Belgariad. Which I promptly finished sitting out back with the dog.

Ok. Long time readers have probably heard me kvetch about how badly the author needs a thesaurus. I still think he does, although his choice of adverbs is not quite as bad early on.

Anyway, we start on Faldor's Farm, in the rather remote kingdom of Sendaria. We meet Garion, who's been raised at the feet of the head cook, his Aunt Pol. Garion grows into a teenager over 50 pages, and we hear a few of the stories of this world. Anmes the God Kal Torak, who took Aldur's orb and cracked the world.

Eventually, the people of Torak make their way to the farm, and that starts the adventure rolling, as Pol and Mister Wolf, the itinerant storyteller grab Garion and join the Alorns (Silk and Barak. Silk is a Drasnian, Barak is a Cherek. The kingdom of Belor's people were split in 4 years before this begins.) They're also joined by the smith Durnik, who lived on the farm with Pol and Garion.

Long story short, we, by the end of the volume, know that Mister Wolf is actually Belgarath, a sorcerer of legend; making aunt Pol Polgara, his also Sorceress daughter. Garion is now known to be a relative of the pair. We also know that there are Gromlins, priests of Kal Torak seeking them out. We know something of value has been stolen. The Alorns are mobilizing for war, and the party is headed to Gondor Arendia, where the folks are high on nobility and low on intelligence.

Re-reading reminded me how much I love the character Silk, who's part of the major occupation of Drasnia, the secret service. AKA he spies. He also gets some of the best lines throughout both series.

Honestly, the writing is about like reading some of the interactions in the old Sega CD game Lunar: the Silver Star, where the characters honestly care about each other, but also have no issues smart talking to each other. It's kind of charming, really.

A fun read, even if it's not the most original series out there. Also, you can get a thesaurus and replace repeated adverbs in your own edition.

Bread Pudding made with Twinkies?

This is part one of a twofer, since I managed to not only finish one book today, but then managed to finish the other book I had on me.

Anyway, I recently won an auction and got the 4 books that currently make up The Withrow Chronicles by Michael G. Williams. The first book, Perishables, spends two of three sections narrated by Withrow, a fairly young vampire in North Carolina, who in the third act meets the narrator of the second act, Jennifer.

Withrow lives in a HOA supervised community. He's at the HOA Spring meeting actually, when the zombie attacks happen. While it's implied the zombies only break out in the Research Triangle, it still doesn't change that there's no room in hell and the dead are walking the Earth and causing traffic backups in the community.

Then we meet Jennifer, who's a computer supervisor at a Baptist college up in the mountains. Where there are several cemeteries. This leads to the entire student body pulling a Lord of the Flies style maneuver, with the baseball team raiding the food supply.

In the third act, Jennifer is working at a new dead end job in retail on Black Friday, at the store where Withrow is standing in line for a Blu-Ray player. A particular customer, who's preaching at her phone that Jesus better help her get a TV for her son, gets trampled, releases a Soviet era nerve agent that manages to turn her and the guy trying to help her up into zombies. These zombies also happen to be the variety that move fast and can transmit the zombie plague via bite. Also, they share a hive mind.

At the end of each chapter, we get recipes for some strange concoction that was mentioned in the preceding prose. Ambrosia salad, snack cake bread pudding, and icebox cake. Thankfully not included is the recipe for jellied beef.

It's a wonderfully silly read, and his commentary about people's actions on Black Friday were too true to be truly funny.

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Acts of contrition

So, I recently found a book I last read back in high school that I remembered really liking. What I found out is that what I enjoyed as a child kind of terrifies me as an adult.

The book, Penance, by Rick R. Reed, concerns teenage hustlers living on the streets of Chicago, and how one, Jimmy, winds up setting off a pedophile serial killer. Jimmy is hustling, when he gets picked up by Dwight, who thinks that only through pain can street trash be redeemed. That the pain he's giving helps him get his jollies is another matter entirely. Jimmy manages to make a break from it when Dwight's wife comes home a few days early. This inspires the wife to take thier daughter and leave Dwight.

This of course sets Dwight over the edge, who in turn builds a torture dungeon in his basement. Said basement is soon filled with Jimmy's friends, while Dwight stalks Jimmy.

Jimmy, in the meantime is aided and also antagonistic with Father Richard, a priest who's also a pedophile. Difference being Richard is is SAA and doing his best to fight the urges, and unlike Dwight, isn't blaming the hustlers for his issues.

While the book still remains entertaining, things I found titillating at 15 when I last read this are now a heck of a lot more terrifying at 41.

Which is another discussion, since it makes me wonder which other books I read at that age range would inspire a different reaction in me now. Stephen King's IT comes directly to mind, since I was around the age of the boys at the beginning when I first read it, and spent much of my time thinking how cool it would be to be attacked by Universal Monsters.

Also, Penance was one of the Dell Abyss imprint book, of which not that many were published. However, as I was reading through the titles at the back of the paperback, I was amused at how many books released in the line still line my shelves from authors like Poppy Z. Bright and Kathe Koja. I think Nancy A. Collins may have had a title or two under the heading. As I recall, the line was based on Nietzsche's line about the Abyss staring back into you, and was supposed to feature stories less about supernatural monsters and more the horrors of humanity. Quite frankly their success with taht was hit or miss, but most of the books in the line I did wind up enjoying.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

For Puck's sake...

So, evidently back in 2010, I started and never finished Chris Adrian's The Great Night, and bothered to mention it on Facebook. So, I requested it again and finally finished it on lunch today. And remembered why I never finished it 7 years ago.

It's an interesting concept but a really terrible execution of the premise.

Let me explain. It's billed as a retelling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and insofar as Titania and Puck being characters, it does have that in common with the original. There is a troupe of actors in the park on Midsummer Night, although they're rehearsing a musical version of Soylent Green to guilt the mayor of San Francisco into quitting his program of killing the homeless for food. And instead of 4 young lovers, we have 3 people with some commonalities trapped within Buena Vista Park as the fairies run free.

As the set up, it's Midsummer. Titania is missing Oberon, who vanished following a rather bad fight years prior. She decides to free Puck from his bondage, and he goes all beastly and starts trying to kill everyone, saving the Queen for last.

In the meantime, we have the actors (as mentioned above) running around, and three people who got lost on their way to a party in the neighborhood. Henry, the gay pediatrician who's lover just delivered a Taylor Swift breakup to him; Will, who's ex is supposed to be at the party he was trying to get to; and Molly, who dropped out of Chaplain training to become a clerk.

We spend much time in their heads, reliving their pasts and eventually find the connection between the three of them. We also learn slowly about why Titania got so mad with Oberon, dealing with a mortal boy who died of leukemia during his time as a changeling Underhill.

Oh yes, mortality is one of the biggest underlying themes in a book about mostly immortal beings. And not very subtly handled either. From Molly's ex's suicide to Henry's missing youth, to Will's inability to relate to women... To Titania eventually accepting that even the immortal can die and Puck realizing his own role in the shenanigans.

Honestly, save yourself the trouble of suffering through reading this and go read Shakespeare in the original Klingon instead.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Somewhere, over the rainbow

This book is over 30 years old, so I feel minorly confident I won't be spoiling much with this particular graphic, particularly since there are a few movies and stories that follow similar paths to a conclusion.






Anyway, we don't actually get into this until the last third of the book, and they honestly matter less than the humans reacting to them.

We really start with Dom, a novelist who's first novel is getting published. Dom's started sleepwalking, and building shelters while doing so. We also meet Ginger, a Jewish surgical resident in Boston, who starts having fugues at the sight of random objects. And Brendon, a priest who suffers a catastrophic loss of faith right in the middle of Communion.

These three form the center of about eight others who wind up back in Elko, Nevada, where everyone had stayed about 2 years prior. From there, we find that almost everyone in the group suffers from odd dreams and strange triggers. Through Ginger, we find out everyone had been brainwashed. Through Brendon's Rector, we find out the strange gifts of healing and telekinesis that Dom and Brendon share can be passed on to others.

In the mean time, we have Col. Falkirk at Thunder Mountain, who believes that the people involved in the landing are somehow possessed or no longer human and wants to exterminate those who regained their memories.

It's one of Koontz's longest books to come out of the 80's, but it's also one of his best. All the things that became hallmarks of his work, like technophobia the innate evil of mankind are not particularly present here. We only get one mention of infinity transmitters. It's also not nearly as nihilistic as other stuff from the era, as ultimately faith and hope come from the resolution. Worth the investment.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Tying up loose ends by unravelling others

So, Since I guess there's been some local chatter about the drop in posts since the last one, I've had bronchitis, which put me on antibiotics and cough syrup. Neither of which makes me all that excited to focus on anything other than my eyelids. Also, bronchitis fills me with the urge to read Steven King's The Stand, although the only copy I have at the house in the original, not the later complete edition. And believe me there is a difference, although one could only wish that the original had cut some of the journey back to boulder. No, it's just as long and overdone in both version.

None of which has to do with the novel and novella I'm actually reviewing here.

Seanan McGuire wrote another October Daye Novel, The Brightest Fell, which also contains "Of Things Unknown", which concerns April O'Leary of Tamed Lightning.

The big section concerns Toby being sent on a quest not particularly willingly by her mother Amandine. Who wants Toby to find her sister August, who wondered off on the Babylon road about 100 years prior seeking to open the gates to Deeper Fairie and Oberon. In order to guarantee her cooperation, Amy forces Tybalt into Cat form and Jazz into Raven form and locks them in cages.

This requires waking one of her nemesis from elf shot to gain his assistance. That would be Simon, who turned her into a fish for several years at the beginning of the series. Simon is also August's father, and thus the best choice to assist in finding her.

Simon's twin brother, Sylvester does bind him prior to waking, ensuring his cooperation.

From here it gets ugly. The quest takes them from Amy's tower, through pixie land (where we find out Simon had helped relocate the pixies) , to Blind Michael's realm and to Anwyn, last seen being locked off to trap a psycho duchess. In the course of this journey, we catch up with characters still dwelling in these realms. Including a police officer who's been trapped in Anwyn since the realm was sealed again.

And back into San Franciso, where August is eventually found, another deal with the Luidaig is sealed, and some very ugly conclusions are reached.

And then we move into "Of Things Unknown", where in CyberDryad April figures out a way to release the souls trapped on servers to their bodies. What she succeeds at doing will likely have repercussions down the line.

Again, it's a well written a book in a well written series. I'm kind of curious which of the new threads she intends to start weaving with next.

Friday, September 8, 2017

The curious incident with the sapphire dog in the mountains

As I again went digging through the pile of used books I've managed to collect this year, I came across Game of Cages by Harry Connolly, book 2 in his Twenty Palaces series. Mind you, I never read book 1, but hey....

I feel like I missed something in the set up. We start with the narrator, Ray Lilly, working in a grocery store, wondering if vaguely defined events in the last book were a dream. Then Catherine walks in, and we're headed out of Seattle to a small town in Northern Oregon, wherein an auction is taking place. Not just any auction, one where the big prize is something referred to as a Predator, a being from outside normal reality.

Catherine and Ray both nominally belong to some organization known as the 20 Palaces. They kill predators and those who summon them. Ray is something called a Wooden Man for Annalise, who is a Peer in the organization. Catherine is an investigator. (Still not sure oin all the rankings, but near as I can tell, the Peers actually use the sigils that create magic. Catherine has no magic of her own. Ray has protective sigils tattooed on him by Annalise. He also has a ghost know, which is for him, a slip of paper that can cut through anything. It also cuts away aggression when it hits humans or animals. Usually.

So, anyway, in the pecking order, Ray is somewhere under janitor. However, he's street smart.

They arrive after the auction has already ended. However, the winner is dead and the Predator has escaped.

A character who's pretty much Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China summons a predator that's a big ball of lightning. And everyone winds up trapped in small town Oregon a few days before Christmas chasing a Sapphire Dog. (Its method of feeding is to enchant humans to want to possess it, then fight over it. Kind of like Needful Things.)

We find out no one can leave town or sound the alarm as the bodies keep piling up. What passes for the local constabulary calls the staties for backup, and instead wishes them a Merry Christmas.

A peer does show up to take care of the issue, but he dies.

Annalise shows up, and she's glorious.

In the end, I begin to understand that we, the readers are looking through Ray's eyes and his complete lack of information on what the Twenty Palaces are. We get a brief glimpse at how magic in this setting works. We find out about other organizations unaffiliated or opposed to the Twenty Palaces.

It was interesting, and I enjoyed reading it. But I think I need to find book one to get a deeper understanding of what's going on here.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Lane closures ahead.

So, I picked up Night Work by Steve Hamilton at one of the clearance sales I went to this year, mainly because the cover art made it look like a good chiller. Which it wound up becoming, other than one thing. We'll come back to that.

The story centers around Joe Trumbull ("JT" to his friends) who lives alone in Kingston, New York. His apartment is one of two above a boxing gym, in what was the Kingston Greyhound. When we meet Joe, he's headed out on a blind date, his first date since his fiance was murdered a little of 2 years ago.

Joe's date goes well, she even forgives him for being a Probation Officer. Or doesn't mind. She doesn't matter, because they find her strangled in a grave yard a few days later, much like JT's fiancee was. (To be fair, fiancee was strangled and left in her bed.)

However, almost every woman JT interacts with over the next few days winds up being strangled, and the State Police discover that JT's necktie and shoelaces were the garottes.

So, needless to say, JT is the prime suspect, particularly since the deaths all resemble that of his fiancee's.

It's a good set up, and the plot moves at a speedy pace. Problem is, when we find out what is actually going on, the entire things falls apart. And not in the way things normally fall apart. More like the answer is mildly understandable, BUT goes so far over the top that it almost completely ruins the build up.

I guess he has a series he wrote that people enjoyed. I may check it out sooner or later, since other than the resolution, this was a good book.

Saturday, August 26, 2017

Really?

I recently inherited about 10 books from my Training coordinator, who's former roommate left them at his house. Among them were a few John Saul novels, an author I haven't read since probably 1992.

Darkness was a reminder of why it's been a while.

The story centers around Villejeune, Florida, a village about 50 miles south of Orlando on the cusp of the Everglades. The town is divided into the working class (with a few rich folks who's lives improved by the number of retirees moving in) and the Swamp Rats, living in shacks in the swamps.

With me so far? In Villejeune, we have the local lawyer, who's adoptive son seems to have a preternatural understanding of the swamp, and a complete lack of emotion.

Moving back into town, we have the Anderson family, who's adopted daughter seems to have very few emotions, although she's a bit looney, trying to cut a baby out of herself that doesn't exist.

Both teens have vision of ancient looking men reaching out of mirrors for them.

And the daughter's grandfather, Carl, is getting vitamin shots from the local doctor that keep him hale and healthy.

While out in the Swamp, the Dark Man is sacrificing their children.

It's really kind of silly, since I had most of the major plot twists figured out LONG before any of the characters did. Also, much like Dean R. Koontz, he does his best to make extreme science the culprit, even if there is a touch of supernatural floating around the swamp.

I mean, I guess I get that we're in the old horror trope of sacrificing the young to keep the old alive and healthy, but it's doesn't particularly excuse the resolution of this silliness involving the children eating their elders.

It's easy reading, and it hold attention, and it doesn't delve quite as deeply into the silly levels Richard Laymon did, but it still reads like a contract novel, designed to pull money out of people's pockets for a cardboard display.

Monday, August 21, 2017

Not bad for an advertisement....

So I picked up Urban Enemies (edited by Joseph Nassise) mainly because Kevin Hearne advertised that it contained "The Naughtiest Cherub", which tells the story of Loki meeting Lucifer. (I should mention: the gimmick here is that all the stories in here are told from the point of view of the antagonists of their various series.)

There are other authors and other series in here that I read, so they were a sort of bonus.

We start off strong with Jim Butcher's "Even Hand", told from Marcone's perspective, as he's forced to enforce his part of the Accords. I suppose Marcone is a villain, but the Dresden files is filled with other complex antagonists who would be more qualified as villains. Not that it matters, it mostly has to do with Marcone mediating a rather violent dispute between some Formori and the local White Court of vampires. Using bombs.

"Sixty Six Seconds" by Craig Schaffer (I'm skipping a few here, since a few of the stories weren't particularly of interest to me, so I'm doing highlights) Crosses his Daniel Faust series with his Harmony Black series. It mainly concerns demons collecting bounties on souls. It reads a bit like Simon R. Green, without the cheekiness.

"The Naughtiest Cherub" by Kevin Hearne continues my love/hate of the Iron Druid. I mean, while giving Lucifer quirks of liking Prince and David Bowie, his portrayal of Loki continues to disappoint.

"Down Where the Darkness Dwells" by Joseph Nassise is ok, dealing with a necromancer who manages to form a symbiotic relationship with Asheral, a fallen angel.

"Bellum Romanum" by Carrie Vaughn deals with the origins of the vampire Gauis Albinus who is somehow responsible for Pompeii.

"Make It Snappy" by Faith Hunter concerns the Master Vampire of New Orleans and his brother.

"The Difference Between Deceit and Delusion" by Domino Finn follows Tunji Malu, some kind of African demon who eats people. He also has a very charming tarantula the size of a small car named Ananasi.

"Balance" by Seanan McGuire explains much of the history of the Jhorlac (aka Cuckoos) and how they operate.

There are other stories and authors in here, but these were the ones that actually stuck out to me and made me want to see if the library has their series. Mind you, what it really served to do was make me wish Jim Butcher would write another Dresden File....

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Meanwhile, off the coast of Zanzibar....

I'm actually a few days late updating, since I finished the book Friday, but I spent my weekend camping and watching the Perseid, which has nothing to do with Devil's Due, Taylor Anderson's latest in the Destroyermen series.

Now you'll pardon me for saying this, but I'm finding the more recent installments are a color commentator away from being WWE RAW or Smackdown. Because we get a lot of set up, one lesser battle about the midpoint (in south America), followed by the last 1/4 of the book, where th etitle fight happens in Zanzibar as Matthew Ready leads the raid to rescue his wife from Kurokawa and the Jaa-ph clan.

This is not to say it's a bad book, since it's not, it's just that it's becoming a bit formulaic. On the bright side, there's a fairly major development at the end of the book, which should make the next phase a bit more interesting, assuming we don't spend the next book in South America.

So really, here's a breakdown.

The Marines chasing the Dominion through the jungle figure out that they've been chasing a ghost force, leading Shinya to reevaluate how to proceed.

General Esshk and the Chooser of the Grik are busy in deepest Africa readying the Final Swarm to drive the Allies back off of Madagascar.

All the fleet not currently involved in the Eastern Theater or circumnavigating the globe to try to catch up with the New United States, get involved on the raid of Zanzibar, in the hopes of saving the prisoners there as well as well as stopping supplies coming from Zanzibar assisting the Final Swarm.

And our boat headed to Cuba via Africa does arrive after taking out both a Dominion Boat and a League Ship.

We're getting more on the League in this book that previous installments, finding that their arrival in this world was during a Spanish/French/Italian Fascist armada aimed at taking out their world's British Navy.

We briefly get to meet a member of the NUSA.

We see the Republic of Real People (down in South Africa) get their various colonial armies together to march on the Celestial City of the Grik.

By far, though, the biggest surprise comes at the end, and I imagine that those consequences will stretch over a few books.

Not bad for a series that was originally supposed to be a trilogy.

Thursday, July 27, 2017

I said medium well, not half baked....

So, at one of the used books sales I've been frequenting, I stumbled across Richard Laymon's The Stake. Having read a few of his other novels, I thought, "Hey, I know they're the literary equivalent of a bag of chips, why not?", and then firmly got the regrets upon reading it.

Laymon, back in the days I was still reading Fangoria magazine every month was famous/notorious in their pages for writing stuff that was a step above the Zebra imprint supermarket horror, but not quite good enough to be considered a classic writer. (Let me add here, that while most of the horror available at Krogers was indeed forgettable and pulpy, there were a few that I still own and occasionally re-read. Lisa W. Cantrell being one of them.) Indeed, the first book I read by him, Out Are the Lights, held my attention fairly well until the horrendously silly ending, that revolved around a deaf character being able to read lips perfectly on a movie screen. But, we're not discussing that one at the moment, even as much as I want to get another copy of that travesty.

The Stake's cover claims it to be "A novel of the supernatural" and even has a Stephen King blurb on it. The former is a misnomer, and the latter is proof that King was willing to blurb for anyone in the 80's.A reviewer on goodreads refers to this one as the novel where Laymon learned to pad out the length. This is also pretty true, particularly given the subplot that gets introduced in the last third and gets wrapped up with a Deus ex machina at the very end.

Anyway.

The book starts with our hero, a midlist splatterpunk author named Lawrence Dunbar and his wife Jean, out exploring ghost towns on the California/Nevada border with friends and neighbors Peter and Barbara. They wind up in a real one, Sagebrush Flat, which dried up in the late 1960's. The town is in disrepair, although the hotel has a new padlocked hasp on the front door. Being drunk and needing to advance the plot, the couples break in to the hotel to explore. Climbing the stairs, Barbara falls through, and Peter, getting under them in the basement, finds a coffin with a teenage girl. Said Girl has a stake through her heart, is surrounded by garlic cloves, and has a crucifix standing watch over her rest.

The couples leave in a hurry. Pete and Larry, though, later on decide to go back and get the body.

That comes later. First, we meet Larry and Jean's daughter, Lane. Lane, who's in High School, has what passed for typical teen issues in the era. Her boyfriend is interested in one thing, and she has a crush on her English teacher, Hal Kramer.

Before Larry and Pete return to Sagebrush Flats, we get a brief glimpse of Mr. Kramer, and his "friend", who happens to be Lane's classmate Jessica. That he's made her his friend through the use of razors and threats of murder isn't important until later.

The boys go get the body while the wives are out of town. While exploring the desert around the town, they find a skinned coyote that someone was obviously eating for dinner.

The corpse winds up in Larry's garage attic, as Larry and Pete decide to make a Amityville Horror style true story book out of the vampire in the desert. Larry starts dreaming about the corpse, seeing her as if she was alive. She keeps making him promises if he'll take the stake out.

Oh yeah, in case I forgot to mention it, Larry spends most of the book obsessing about the women in his life who aren't his wife.

Eventually, Larry finds out the girl's name was Bonnie, and she'd been Homecoming Spirit Queen in 1968. Kramer, in the meantime kills Jessica and her parents, sets their house on fire, and then prepares to make Lane his next "friend". Lane, oblivious to most of this, is doing things to intentionally draw his attention to herself.

And finally, late in the book, we meet Uriah, the one who staked Bonnie and her friends in 1968 and buried most of them under the hotel basement floor. He feels he's on a mission from God to eliminate Satan's vampiric spawn, although we're mostly left to wonder is he's insane or not.

All of this comes to a head in the literary equivalent of Prom in a teen movie. Everyone winds up coming over for dinner.

It's not a particularly badly written book, it just feels as if there's a better book just waiting to be chiseled out of the slab of words as presented. It would have also helped on my end, as a reader in 2017, if any of the characters had been better developed. I mean, we get to know Larry, and we get to know Lane, but everyone else seems like a paper doll, standing there waiting to be interacted with. And, much like Stephen King's early work, the plot doesn't actually do much until the last 50 pages or so.

If you're wanting something that will hold your attention but not really require much thought, give Laymon a try.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

The End is the Beginning is the End

So, I picked up Kevin Hearne's Besieged, with the understanding it was a collection of short stories, but I was hoping it was some of the previously published stories that seem to only be available in digital format, particularly since those seem to hold a few crucial plot points that get glossed over in the actual main series.

Sadly, they aren't in here. Instead, we get 9 stories, roughly 4 of which take place after book 4 and 5 that take place after book 8, with one of the missing stories being used as reference around when they're set.

Which is fine, since the last story in the book sets up the events we're supposedly getting in the series finale in April, but...

Anyway, the early stories mostly fill in stories from Atticus's past, including questing to the Library of Alexandra to find some scrolls sacred to Seshat. After a bit of a scuffle with Horus, he finds out Bast cursed hers with the noise of mating cats should one who is not her priest try to read them.

We get stories of a few demon hunts, one of which happens in 1850 San Francisco, another in Kansas.

All of which are presented as campfire tales.

In the present, We get Owen's tale of how he met Atticus, Granuail's talkes of trying to id Poland of vampire after the pact takes effect, Perun and Flidais in a "cuddle dungeon", and trying to rid the Tasmanian Devils of some sort of facial cancer.

The last story, the set up for supposedly the last book, centers mainly on Atticus having to leave Oberon in Oregon having been informed by the Morrigan that Loki has visited Lucifer and is now ready to begin Ragnarok. 

While all the stories are good and readable, and a strong reminder of why I enjoy the series so much, I still feel like this book is mostly filler, a morsel thrown to keep the wolves at bay who anxiously await the next installment. That it also doesn't include some of the other stories is almost criminal, since not everyone is thrilled with e-publishing.

I just can't help wishing for more.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

I miss the rains down in Bridgetown

So, I went in to R. S. Belcher's latest return to Golgotha, Nevada, with as much of an open mind as I could muster, since, unlike previous entries in the series, this one is focused predominantly on only one character. Given the last two books in the series have been ensemble pieces with all the lunatics playing their own roles in the proceedings, I wasn't sure if following Maude Stapleton away from Golgotha would retain the magic that made the first two books so entertaining.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried much, since it seems Golgotha's weirdness isn't the only pocket of surrealness in the post Civil War world. Indeed, while Maude's narrative is set in 1870, we also follow her "Grandmother", Pirate Queen Anne Bonney across the oceans of 1721 on a quest of her own to find Carcosa deep in the heart of Africa. And in one really strange passage, the two timelines converge, making for one heck of a passage.

So, basically, we catch up with Maude not long after the end of The Shotgun Arcana, returning to her roots in Charleston, South Carolina, where her father has taken her daughter Constance. Leaving behind her new love, Mutt, she seeks full custody of her daughter and control of her inheritance from her Grandmother. Not to say there aren't complications of both the normal legal, but that comes in later.

In the mean time, we join Anne escaping the hangman's noose in Port Royal, Jamaica. She's gravid with child, and ends up delivering a son on the beach as part of her escape. Giving her son up to a friend to deliver to her family in South Carolina until she can return, she sets off on a quest for a city she's dreamed of paved with the bones of monsters.

Anne's story eventually chronicles her voyage to becoming the first Westerner to become a Daughter of Lilith. Maude, already being one, and in the process of teaching Constance to be one, must deal with her sisters within the rather small company, who seem to think that Constance needs to be sacrificed to refill the Grail that Maude emptied towards the end of book 1. We learn of the origins of Lilith mythology in this setting, and we learn of Lilith's husband, Typhon, who has a sect of his own, the aptly named Sons of Typhon, who's blood is much like the slick oil that was causing people to go nuts back in book 1.

As with just about every book in the Golgotha series, there's much to unpack in terms of mythology represented. Anne's tale takes us through the Oya and Orishas, while Maude's contemporaries represent Aztec and Oriental cultural mythologies as well.

It's also fair to say that Golgotha gets a little of its own placement in the narrative, as letters between Maude and Mutt travel a few times in the narrative. Mind you, this is where the odder bits of humor float up, as the local golem maker is reported to have hooked up with Shelley Wollstone, and a new brand of snake oil is drawing in customers from places like far off Night Vale.

And Maude even gets a bit of non-Mutt romance with a reporter who trails her doggedly through the book, even joining in her desperate flight to Carcosa on Anne's old ship, the Hecate.

My only regret on finishing this volume is realizing it's likely be a few years before we get another Golgotha volume, since I assume we'll be dealing with his other two series again before we return to Nevada.

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Shamantery

So, as I believe I mentioned previously, I've been reading through some books I've picked up at various book sales of late while waiting on reserves to show up at the library. I'm happy to report one of them came in and was picked up today, so I'll be reviewing new fiction pretty soon. In the mean time, let me tell you of the kind of adrift in the overall timeline of Lois McMaster Bujold's World of Five Gods series, The Hallowed Hunt.  (I say adrift because goodreads lists it as book 1 in the series, even though it was written long after the first 2.)


While the two books written before this take place in and around Chalion, This one takes place in what seems to be south of Darcatha in an area once known as the Weald. (They got conquered by Darcatha before this book starts, but it appears they've regained some autonomy since Aurak destroyed the old king. The retain the Quintarian Orthodoxy that Darcatha instilled, meaning that those with Weald era issues like having an animal spirit grafted onto their souls are considered as bad as Demon ridden sorcerers.)

Thankfully, Ingrey kin Wolfcliff has a dispensation from the temple that keeps him from being burned at the stake to rid him of his affliction, namely having a wolf soul grafted on to his by his father. Which is good, since we meet him en route to a former prince's home in exile, where the Prince is dead and the murderer is a young Chalionese woman the Prince was trying to kill in process of adding a leopard spirit to his soul. Somehow, Ijada got the leopard and managed to bludgeon her attacker to death.

Which, in the Weald's political climate makes her more apt to be burned at the stake or hanged for murder than vindicated with a finding of self defense. However, since everyone must ride back to the capital with the prince's body, this gives us time to get a better view of what it means to be a shaman. Particularly when Ingrey's wolf starts coming to the fore and trying to kill Ijada. Thankfully, Learned Hallana (a divine of both the Mother and a Sorcerer in the Bastard's Order thanks to a quirk of fate), arrives at one of the stops on the procession and finds that a geas has been placed on Ingrey. She manages to remove it, but in the process, it brings the Wolf out of the containment Ingrey had built for it. The Divine sends a letter with Ingrey to take with him to another Divine in the Capital to see what can be done.

While this meeting does eventually happen, it's not before we meet another exceptionally memorable minor character in the book, Prince Jokol Skullsplitter, who got his surname from the skullspilitting headaches his poetry gives his crew. Jokol is from islands away from the Weald, and in town to drop off an Ice Bear named Fafa to the Bastard's Order in exchange for a Divine for his island.

While Hallana and Jokol provide some much needed comic relief throughout the book, much of the actual plot centers on Wencel kin Horseriver, Ingrey's cousin. Wencel, it seems, has a horse of his own. And quite a bit more besides.

It's actually quite breathtaking in its plot, once it gets going. We have a conflict between what a man wants and what the Gods want, although the Gods are limited by what their vessels can be inspired and willing to do on their behalf.

When I read this the last time, it was right after I managed to sprain/break by elbow, so my perceptions were likely off with the presence of painkillers. However, a new reread does suggest that while the book takes some time getting going (it's roughly one third of the book before some of the bigger plot points start coming in to play), the overall book remains a fantastic read.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades

While I've read Ernest Klein's Ready Player One on a previous occasion, I recently found a copy at one of the books sales I've been hitting this past year. Since I'm between holds at the library (most of my reserve list is either not published as of yet or I was late getting a reserve in so I have a bit of a wait), I figured I'd pass some time by re-reading it. I just wasn't expecting to finish it again in two days.

For those of you who haven't read it....

Ready Player One concerns one Wade Watts in the year 2044, as humanity is in decline from a lack of natural resources. When we meet Wade (AKA Parzival), both of his parents are dead and he's living in a stack cluster in Oklahoma City with his drug addled aunt. He's enrolled in an on-line High School in the OASIS, a free-ish online world that most of the Earth is in. (basically, with a set of gloves and a visor that scan the world on to your retinas, it's virtual reality on a universal scale.) And he's a gunter, one of the many seeking the OASIS creator Halliday's Easter Egg, which gives the first one to find it ownership of OASIS and all of his sizable fortune.

Wade's best friend online is Aich, who competes in tournaments for money and thus is more well off than Wade. (Seems virtual currency is worth more than "real" currency.) Later on, they add Art3mis to their cabal, a female gunter and blogger.

Halliday's will left everyone with a riddle to find the first key, which in turn would lead to the first Gate. While in Latin Class, Wade solves the riddle and uses a school provided transport chit to travel across the virtual world to get to a small forest that opens on to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Having access to the module, he's able to get into the throne room, where the Lich (who's supposed to be elsewhere) greets him and challenges him to a game of the 80's classic "Joust". (The one where you press the flap button a lot and try to make the NPCs drop eggs.) Art3mis, who had solved the riddle a month prior but had yet to beat the Lich meets him and points out that his name now tops the scoreboard, which had been blank prior to someone getting the first key. Wade figures out where the first gate is and ends up playing through challenge wherein he's Matthew Broderick in Wargames.

While this does lead to plenty of money and endorsement deals, it also puts a giant target on his back courtesy of IOI and the Sixers. IOI being a company that wants to control OASIS (so they can charge people to use it and make ad revenue off of it) and the Sixers being a group within IOI named Oologists who work for the company trying to find the Egg. The leaders of the Sixers, Sorrento, approaches Wade about becoming a Sixer. When Wade denies him, Sorrento and IOI set off a bomb in Wade's stack. Thankfully, Wade's in his hiding space, buried in a pile of cars.

And on and on it goes, filled to the brim with 80's cultural references, until the very last climactic battle in front of the third gate that features Ultraman taking on MechaGodzilla. And a race to the finish in the gate as Sorrento runs about 18 minutes behind Wade.

Given how quickly I finished it this time, I'll again say it's a very engaging read, filled with memories of my childhood, even if a few of the references got on my nerve. (Like the Second Gate, which involves RUSH's "Temple of Syrinax".) I also found myself laughing when a discussion about The Goonies revealed where I knew the mother on The Real O'Neals from.

If you haven't read it, and, like me, remember the 80's, pick up a copy. Or if you like Audiobooks, the version of this one is read by none other than Wil Wheaton.