Elemental: Destiny's Embers
In my last review I drew a distinction between fun bad and facepalm bad. Fun bad books may have terrible plots or characters but there’s a baseline level of competency that keeps the book readable. Sentences may be simple, but they are still constructed in a way that generally makes sense and the writing itself fades to the background, leaving you focused on what the actual story is trying to tell you. Elemental is not one of those books.
Read the rest of this entry »
Magic's Pawn
Now normally I would consider a Mercedes Lackey novel to be low-hanging fruit. She knows her audience and she can tell them the same basic stories in slightly different settings as many time as she wants and know that they will be satisfied. And I know I will be amused and occasionally mildly disgusted. But hey, my husband brought this one home so I figured “Why not?” And when I realized that it was Mercedes Lackey trying to write a gay romance I knew it would be worth it.
Shadow's Daughter
I experienced a lot of flux in my enthusiasm level for this book. It starts out hitting hard on one of my pet peeves: made-up words. So many made-up words that the glossary at the end of the book is 8 pages long. So at first I hated it. Then I kinda started to dig the book when the parents of the protagonist didn’t immediately die and I made it past the halfway mark without her ever being sexually assaulted. By the end, I was back to really, really not enjoying it and I was annoyed that my expectations based on the first half of the book were dashed on the rocks of predictable plotting and a rushed ending.
Flight to Thlassa Mey
I hate this book. That statement is too simple to really contain the depth of irritation I felt while ever so slowly slogging through the mockery that passes for dialog in Flight to Thlassa Mey. I read a lot of bad books but rarely do I feel this level of contempt for one of them. Even the most phoned-in me-too version of Rand Al’don’tsueme’s epic adventures at least has something that feels like the author took pride in it. Maybe it’s a secondary character, or some interesting detail in the setting, or just some clever wordplay. Flight to Thlassa Mey has nothing endearing. It’s a book so bad that I couldn’t bring myself to stop my 11 month old daughter from gleefully tearing off the covers.
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor. I’ve taken much delight in just saying the title of the book. Not so much saying it as announcing it. “Oh hey, what have you been up to? I’ve been reading Vazkor, Son of Vazkor!” with an appropriately grand gesture. It’s unfortunate that I haven’t been taking nearly as much pleasure in actually reading it. Luckily it was a short read. A short, very purple read. With a whole lot of rape.
The Unicorn Dancer
Usually books about unicorns require that the female characters be virgins. They also decide that the best way to bring about tension about the female/unicorn relationship is to threaten her with rape constantly. Except there was this one book I read many years ago about a teenage boy virgin who was a post-apocalyptic samurai with a unicorn best friend and he chooses banging his girlfriend over his unicorn pal who walks away sadly into the sunset, but I digress. This book is refreshing in that while the unicorn prefers the company of women, he looks for traits other than an intact hymen when selecting who he will allow to ride him.
Dragon's Tongue
I finished reading this book two days ago. I’ve been procrastinating when it comes to writing about it because there’s not a whole lot I can do to make it funny. It’s a pretty standard fantasy romp that has been executed well. I found little about the story itself objectionable. The writing occasionally tries to be more clever than the author is capable of but it never gets painfully self indulgent. But just when I think there’s nothing to say about Dragon’s Tongue, I remember the introduction.
Wolfblade
Sometimes all you want to do is curl up with a cherished book that you’ve read a couple of times before, filled with characters that have become so familiar to you that turning the pages is like saying “Hello, old friend, I’ve missed you.” But instead you pick a random fantasy novel at the library and quickly realize that you are reading the works of someone who read a book that you cherished and thought “I CAN DO THAT!” and now your old friends are slightly off and seem to be slowly turning into Deep Ones. I’d lay down good money that Jennifer Fallon read the Song of Ice and Fire series and was just so inspired she had to make her own version of Martin’s tale. It’s an amusing and frustrating blend of “I can make this a little cleaner and easier to understand and get rid of all that nasty incest,” and “I can be just as savage to my characters has he can!” But that’s not to say that the whole story is a retelling of ASOIAF.
The Serpent Bride
The back cover of this book called it the beginning of an epic trilogy similar to Goodkind and Jordan. So when I cracked open this book I settled in for a history-and-setting dominated, meandering tale where little would happen since it was only the first book. Overwrought descriptions of minor details, each character being loaded down with physical quirks or habits that have to be mentioned every time they appear, perhaps a couple of obnoxious accents. Boy, was I surprised.
Daughter of the Blood
Daughter of the Blood is the first book of a trilogy, and I have no intention of running out to find the next two any time soon. It is a member of my least favorite genre: Fantasy As Fetish. It postulates a world where men are submissive to women by nature, where the villains are those who defy the natural order or women who abuse their position over men.
