Tag: fantasy

Queen of the Sylphs

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

L.J. McDonald’s Queen of the Sylphs is her latest book set in the same world that she began in The Battle Sylph.

As the story begins, Solie has settled in as Queen of Sylph Valley. She has also grown into her new duties and responsibilities. She may sometimes mourn the days when she was a carefree girl who could afford to have simple friendships, but she is confident in the role that she has taken on, and she has every right to be.

The surrounding kingdoms are threatened by Sylph Valley. Their unorthodox treatment of their sylphs, allowing them to talk, to assume human form, to be educated and to  have an equal say in the way the Valley is governed, threatened the belief systems of every country that surrounds them. The battle sylphs protect all the woman in the Valley from every perceived threat, making Sylph Valley women the equals of men as they are nowhere else. Their more conservative neighbors are appalled. Sylph Valley women are called trash, whores, and sluts, but not within the confines of the Valley.

But Solie is Queen because all the Sylphs in the Valley are bound directly to her, and they will all protect her. Which means that she is the target of repeated assassination attempts by neighboring kingdoms. Especially from the Kingdom of Eferem, the land she escaped from in The Battle Sylph.

In Queen of the Sylphs, it is not just external threats that Solie has to fear. There is an internal threat as well, but one that is deeply entrenched within the Valley. Battlers can sense the emotions of those around them, but only when there actually are emotions to sense. A person who feels nothing, but commits terrible crimes anyway, in other words, a sociopath, is undetectable. A female sociopath presents a tremendous threat, because battlers are conditioned to protect females at all costs.

I didn’t enjoy Queen of the Sylphs as much as I did The Battle Sylph. The newness of the world has worn off, so I was expecting more growth from more of the characters, or a story with new twists and turns, preferably both. Solie is the one character who keeps moving forward, but the other characters are increasingly stock characters, particularly the villains. King Alcor is the distant big, bad, sending assassins to do his dirty work for him. The closer evil was the standard beautiful and manipulative witch. And, as a bonus added attraction, since she had no emotions, there wasn’t any way to get into her head to understand why she was committing her evil acts. I didn’t want to sympathize, but I did need to get the point, or at least, her point. I know she wanted to take over the Valley and get power. But why?

There is a secondary story, that of a healer sylph on the other side of the portal. This sylph is on her way to morphing into a sylph queen, but wants to remain a healer. She has a battler who has been exiled from the hive who wants her to become a queen and form her own hive, in the hopes that he will be her consort. It was an interesting idea for the author to try to show the other side from the sylph’s point of view before they cross over, but it is difficult to tell a story with characters who don’t have names.

Overall, this was an okay read. But I stayed up late to finish The Battle Sylph. I didn’t stay up to finish Queen. I went to sleep and waited until the next afternoon.  Escape Rating C.

Hobbit Day

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

September 22 is Hobbit Day. Remember? The beginning of The Lord of the Rings, the very first part of The Fellowship of the Ring, starts out in Hobbiton. It starts with Bilbo and Gandalf discussing Bilbo’s upcoming eleventy-first birthday. A birthday he shares with his nephew Frodo. Frodo will be thirty-three on that day, his “coming-of-age”. In hobbit legal terms, Frodo will be an adult.

J.R.R. Tolkien named that birthday as September 22. Then he backtracked and said that the Shire Calendar might not be quite the same as the other Western Lands, and maybe the date was off a little. But the American Tolkien Society went with the text as written, and declared that September 22 was THE day in 1978.

Hobbit Day made me look back at the books and what they mean to me. I read The Hobbit for the first time when I was 9, give or take. And read The Lord of the Rings in the next year or so after. A friend’s older brother loaned them to me. Eddie, wherever you are, I still remember you fondly for that.

I sometimes wonder how many other kids read Narnia after LOTR? It’s supposed to be the other way around. Narnia was way more age appropriate when I was 10 or 11. I know I didn’t get everything that was going on in LOTR the first time I read it. Didn’t matter. I kept re-reading it. All the way through the rest of grade school. And high school. And college. I lost count somewhere after the 25th re-read. I kept re-reading because I got more out of it each time. I understood more as I grew up.

I got more annoyed too. I loved the story. Still do. But there was no one for me to identify with. There are no strong female characters except Galadriel. I wanted to write a new version with at least one girl added to the fellowship. Fantasy has changed since Tolkien, and now women are heroes. But before Tolkien, fantasy wasn’t even considered literature. As always, today’s writers stand on the shoulders of giants. Tolkien was one, even if he didn’t intend to be.

There are recommended ways to celebrate Hobbit Day. Hobbits regularly eat 7 meals per day. They also walk barefoot–all the time–even outdoors.

A movie marathon would be good, too. Peter Jackson’s vision of Tolkien’s world was pretty close. When I saw the opening scene of Fellowship, Hobbiton came to life, and I teared up. My fantasy was suddenly in front of me. But movies are always compromises. Please never judge a book by its movie.

The best celebration of Hobbit Day would be to visit Tolkien’s world as he wrote it. If you have read them before, maybe it’s time to read The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit again. If you have never had the pleasure, I envy you the journey of discovery that awaits you. Me, I plan to dip into some of my favorite scenes again.

Tolkien was right. The road does goes ever on and on. I still love to travel a bit of it with him.

Happy Hobbit Day!

Knight’s Curse

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

At age 13, Chalice was ripped from the only home she had ever known by an evil sorcerer and bonded to a gargoyle. The monks who raised her in the Lebanese countryside were murdered before her eyes so that no witnesses would be left behind. Except Chalice.

What makes Chalice such a prize? She was born with incredible skills, extremely acute hearing, sight, and smell, that require her to wear special contact lenses and filters just to interact with the world. Those extraordinary senses allow her to see into the unseen, to sense not just technical alarm systems, but magical ones. The sorcerer, and those he represents, train her to be a thief. Chalice learns to steal magical, especially cursed, artifacts.

And she can never run. That bonding to the gargoyle…every three days, she must return to the gargoyle, and the bond must be renewed…or she will become a gargoyle herself. Chalice has tested the bond, and the potential transformation. She’s come much too close to want to test that boundary again.

But Chalice is more than just a thief with some boosted abilities. In Knight’s Curse, by Karen Duvall, Chalice discovers that she is the modern-day descendant of an order of female knights that have existed since the Middle Ages. And that she has a destiny–to gather all of her sister knights together to fight the order of sorcerers that has both cursed her and trained her. But first, she has to free herself.

I enjoyed reading this book. I kept wanting to see what happened next. On the other hand, there were a lot of things about Chalice’s story that bothered me. For someone who has been emotionally abused and isolated as much as Chalice has, she trusts much too easily. For one thing, she falls in love with the first man she meets, in spite of the fact that she discovers he is 1) a double agent for the bad guys, 2) 900 years old, and 3) in love with her great-great-great-grandmother.

There are a lot of very neat ideas in this book, including, but not limited to; an order of female knights from the Crusades existing into the 21st century, an order of evil sorcerers, previously mentioned, guardian angels, fallen angels, gargoyles, fae folk, hellhounds, angel speakers, and saints who are still alive in spite of having been drawn and quartered nearly 1,000 years previously.

This story read like the set-up for a series. Possibly in the vein of see how the kick-butt heroine becomes the kick-butt heroine. Because she isn’t there yet. And there are too many ideas in the soup right now. None of them are cooking terribly badly, but the recipe would probably be better with a few less ingredients and more attention paid to the parts that remain.

The Battle Sylph

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

There are a lot of myths where a virgin sacrifice (always female) is necessary to tame some monster or other. Occasionally, the sacrifice is bait for the monster, so that the intrepid hero can slay the “dreadful beast”. If the sacrifice survives, she’s either a pariah or forced to wed the beast-slayer, whether she wants to or not. She’s his reward.

The Battle Sylph from L.J. McDonald turns the entire trope on its head, and in this story, throws the entire female-subjugating society that produces it for a loop as well.

Solie runs away from home. Her merchant father is going to marry her off to one of his friends, a fat old man three times her own age who has been leering at her ever since she grew breasts. Solie’s plan is to run to her aunt in the next village, five miles away. Instead, she is captured by the king’s men.

The kingdom of Eferem, and all the lands around it, use creatures called sylphs to perform all kinds of magic. Elemental sylphs control wind, water, fire and earth. Healer sylphs cure diseases and injuries that would otherwise be untreatable. These sylphs are lured from their world to Solie’s by priestly incantations that open a portal between the worlds, and presenting the sylph with something that they like, such as music for air sylphs, or a really interesting injury for a healer. Once the sylph crosses the portal, the they are summoned for gives them a name, and then they are bound to each other for the life of the summoner.

Battle sylphs are different. To summon a battler requires a human sacrifice: the aforementioned female virgin. Then they can be bound, but only by a strong warrior. And the battler will spend his time on this side of the portal projecting hate at everyone who is near him. But one battler is the equivalent of whole armies in combat.

Solie is supposed to be the sacrifice for the son of King Alcor. But the prince was a weakling, and Solie had a surprise up her sleeve. Or rather, in her hair. Her barrette contained a tiny knife, and with that knife she cut the ropes binding her. When the battle sylph was summoned, she stabbed the prince in the arm. She didn’t kill him, but she proved herself stronger, and the battler bonded himself to her. She named him “Heyou” because she stuttered “Hey You” when he faced her, but it was enough. Heyou killed everyone in the summoning chamber to protect her.

In their escape, Solie and Heyou gathered a motley group of followers. The first was Devon Chole, the master of an air sylph, who refused to watch as the king’s men attempted to cut Solie down in cold blood while Heyou fought another battler. Then Garrett, an older man who rescued the wounded Heyou after the fight. And finally an entire valley of desperately poor refugees just trying to carve out a life separate from any of the surrounding kingdoms.

Solie’s escape from her father challenged his authority. Her bonding to Heyou challenged the King’s authority. Even worse, Solie’s position as the master of a battler, for that matter, her position as the master of any sylph, challenges the entire male-dominated structure of her society. And every move that she and Heyou make, every ally they secure, continues to chip away at the authoritarian structures everyone around her believes are solid. But nothing is solid, because it is all built on the loyalty of the sylphs to their masters. Solie’s story represents change, and an awful lot of people don’t like change.

On the other hand, conflicts and change make for great storytelling. There were parts of this story that I liked a lot. Solie is a very interesting character, because she has to both grow up, and also grow as a result of the role she is thrust into. Her journey from merchant’s mostly ignored daughter to valley leader is well done. She’s someone I’d like to meet. The battlers are more difficult, because of their nature. They are strong warriors, but they have a built-in compulsion to obey their masters, even if they hate them. It makes for a lot of perfect warriors with Stockholm Syndrome. Also, Heyou doesn’t grow up, but that may be because his lifespan is longer than Solie’s. He looks like an adult, but he isn’t. The true villain of the piece is King Alcor, and he was a little too one-dimensional, as were his underlings.

But on the whole, this was a good read. More than good enough that I picked up the second (The Shattered Sylph) and third (Queen of the Sylphs) books in the series.

Isles of the Forsaken

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

Isles of the Forsaken by Carolyn Ives Gilman was one of those books that I picked to review because I thought I was going to like it. Then I nearly didn’t. Then I read it all in a big clump, because I had to find out what happened. And about two-thirds of the way through, I realized that the author couldn’t possibly loop all the holes in the pages remaining. And she didn’t. Dammit, there’s a sequel.

The story starts out in very familiar territory. A young man, Nathaway Talley, is the youngest son of the most prominent family in the kingdom. The Talleys run everything, and they excel at everything. At least, all of them do except Nathaway. Nat can’t find any profession to put his heart into, until he joins the expedition to the Forsaken Islands as a junior Justice. He discovers that enlightening the “heathens” about the impartial beauties of law and civilization are the calling that he has been waiting for.

Harg Ismol is a captain in the Native Navy. But that is not quite enough of a description. Harg is the one, the only Adaina captain in the Native Navy. His people are the “heathens” that Nat’s expedition is coming to civilize. Harg’s people in the South Chain islands have remained isolated, and kept to their old ways. They still believe in the balance of nature and the spirits of their islands. Harg’s people are not just subjugated by Nat’s empire, which has until now been far away fighting another war, but they have been under the much closer thumb of the people of the North Chain Islands, under the rule of the Tiarch, who have been collaborating with Nat’s people, the Innings.

At the opening of Isles, Harg Ismol resigns his Naval commission and returns to his tiny home island of Yora. He thinks he is returning to the paradise he remembers from his youth. But nothing is as he remembers it, because he is not the same.

On Yora, the final subject of the story resides. Spaeth Dobrin is a ritual healer  She is one of the people that Nat is planning to save. Ritual healers don’t cure with herbs, or even with spells, although that is what the Innings believe. Ritual healers, Lashnura, are a different race altogether. They are compelled by their nature to heal. They cure by binding themselves to the people they heal by giving up their blood, and their life essence, as part of the healing. But Spaeth does not want to be bound. She rebels against her nature.

Everyone in this story is in rebellion. Nat’s is a quiet rebellion against his family’s expectations. Harg was a youthful rebel against the Adaina spirit of compromise, so he joined the Navy. Returning, he becomes the voice of the Adaina rebellion against Inning imperialism. Spaeth rebels against her nature, her own body’s need to become a healer.

Even the secondary characters are in revolt. The last spiritual leader of the Islands hides on a tiny outpost and refuses to name a successor. The Tiarch, the Satrap-like governor of the Islands, finally rebels against the Inning empire. Even the Admiral of the Inning Fleet revolts against the rule of Law and Order he is sent to bring to the Islands.

The Inning imperials’ civilization is itself a rebellion against the very nature and naturalism of the Forsaken Islands. And the living spirits of the Islands rise up in rebellion to overthrow that civilization, taking the confused son of the empire as one of their representatives.

Does the plot of the story confuse? Yes, it does at points. A little backstory on how the Talleys and the Inning Empire got to where they are, and who they fought in that previous war, would have helped this reader.  But once all the players in this drama are gathered together it is impossible to turn the pages fast enough to find out what happens next.

The Magician King

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

There are two kings and two queens in Narnia…no wait, I meant Fillory.

Lev Grossman’s The Magician King is a return to the universe that Grossman constructed in his breakout hit, The Magicians, just a different section of it.

In The Magicians, Grossman introduced us to Brakebills, a Hogwarts for college students, but in upstate New York instead of the wilds of Scotland.

If The Magicians was Harry Potter for grown-ups, then The Magician King is definitely Narnia.

The end of Magicians leaves Quentin Coldwater one the kings of Fillory, the imaginary world he loved as a child that turned out not to be imaginary after all. A very real version of Narnia, except the original access was through a clock instead of a wardrobe, and there were only five books instead of seven. Minor details.

Magician King opens with Quentin and two other Brakebills graduates, plus Julia, as the four kings and queens of Fillory. Julia’s lack of credentials from Brakebills is a a critical part of the story.

Quentin is bored. Being a king of a magical kingdom is unfulfilling. There is nothing that needs doing. There are no quests. Fillory takes care of itself. So when it is discovered that the Outer Islands have not paid their taxes in several years, Quentin decides that handling the problem is something he needs to do to show himself to some of his people.

Julia comes along, as does a Talking Sloth, a champion, and an apprentice mapmaker. And in the Outer Islands, on the island of After (thus named because the island was found After the border of the kingdom of Fillory) Quentin finds a golden key that opens the door to his quest. Which leads him through Julia’s discovery of her magic outside of Brakebills, and saves Fillory.

But Quentin learns that heroes always pay a high price to save the day. Especially when they save all the days yet to come. And the hero sometimes doesn’t even get the girl to comfort him.

Reading The Magicians, it is impossible to miss the parallels to Harry Potter. With Magician King, it’s just as easy to see Narnia everywhere you look. But what makes Magician King different is that so much of the story is told from the “Magician Queen’s” perspective–it is Julia’s non-Brakebills hedge witch education that is needed to solve the puzzle. And it is Julia’s story and Julia’s broken psyche that the reader identifies with and feels for through much of the book, right up until the very end.

The story of The Magicians is that of the privileged group who finds out that magic is real and that they can wield it. They grab on with both hands and hang on for the ride. In Magician King, we discover that Julia found out that magic was real, but that it was denied her–she failed the test–and it broke her. We all hope we would be Quentin and his friends, and fear we would be Julia.

Escape Rating A: The Magician King is a terrific fantasy. It does stand on the shoulders of Narnia.  When Eliot, the High King of Fillory, refers to some of the quests he conducted while Quentin and Julia were off on their own journey, the echoes of Voyage of the Dawn Treader were extremely close.  But Julia’s journey is much harder and longer than any that Aslan inflicted on any of the Pevenseys, or even Edmund.  It’s worth your time to the journey with them.

And once a King in Fillory, always a King in Fillory. I hope.

NPR wants your vote

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | reading

NPR is back with their continuing search for the top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books of all time. Or, at least the list as NPR listeners see it from the vantage point of the summer of 2011.

NPR provided listeners the opportunity to nominate titles and complete series for the top 100 earlier this summer. Yours truly provided the results of her agonized selection in this post.

After what appears to have been much deliberation, and the considered input of the expert panel of John Clute (coauthor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy), Farah Mendlesohn (coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction) and Gary K. Wolfe (science fiction critic and longtime reviewer for the science fiction and fantasy magazine Locus), NPR collated several thousand inputs into a list of approximately 200 titles.

Now, NPR wants your vote. Really, they want 10 of your votes. Each time you input, you can vote for your 10 favorites that have made the list. (I almost said it was a Chicago election, but you can’t vote for the same book 10 times on the same pass. You’d have to come back 10 times for that. But you could…)

The list is eclectic. And it shows that we science fiction and fantasy readers are a diverse bunch of folks. But one thing it does not show is that we have forgotten that the current writers stand on the shoulders of giants. The classics are there, and in amazing variety and number. Conan the Barbarian and Frankenstein coexist with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. There is a certain irony to seeing Lev Grossman’s The Magicians on the list, when the work it is derived from, C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, was ruled ineligible as children’s literature.

I recognize everything, and I’ve read almost half. I’m not sure whether to be proud or appalled. Whether I agree with things being on the list is an entirely different question. And some, well, I think they’re marvelous books, I’m just not sure they fit the definition of either science fiction or fantasy. What is Outlander doing on this list? I loved it, but there was way more romance than there was time-travel.

So I had to vote on which 10 were my absolute favorites. That was a lot harder than one might think. For one thing, the creators of the list did not include Terry Pratchett’s Discworld as a single entity. Whose idea was that, anyway? The series as a whole is fantastic, but trying to decide which one of the few nominated is one of the 10 best, I couldn’t do it. AAARRRGGGHHH!

All my other favorites made the list, so that was easy. And voting for The Lord of the Rings was probably a no-brainer for a lot of people. Me, I lost count of how many times I re-read it after the first 25.

The list is in alphabetical order, so American Gods was in the first screen. So was its sequel, Anansi Boys, but I didn’t take the two-fer. Anansi Boys was fun, but didn’t tie me up in knots the way Gods did.

I am proud to say that I now have a friend hooked on the Old Man’s War series, proving to me that this one is as good as I remember. Meeting John Scalzi at the American Library Conference in June and getting a signed copy of Zoe’s War was just a bonus.

Recently, I thumbed my copy of Tigana again. The ending still wrings me out. But I love Kay’s writing so much that I not only voted for Tigana, when I saw the Fionavar Tapestry on the list, I voted for it, too. That was when I first discovered his writing, and that I have re-read, at least three times. There are parts that are almost as gut-wrenching, but not quite.

Seeing the entire list of titles makes things both easier, and more difficult. On the one hand, it’s a tremendous nostalgia trip. I wanted to read, or re-read, every single book I saw. Let’s just say there were a lot of old friends on that list. Of all the ones I knew, it was incredibly difficult to pick just 10.

NPR needs your vote, too.  So now it’s your turn. Try it and see how hard it is to pick just 10. I dare you.

Den of Thieves

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Den of Thieves by David Chandler is the first title in The Ancient Blades trilogy. It is also a thoroughly delicious tale in the old school known as sword and sorcery.

As in all the best sword and sorcery stories, our hero is not exactly a hero. To be specific, Malden is a thief. He’s the bastard son of a whore, and thieving was the only profession open to him that allowed him to make a living. But Malden is good at it. And, important for any sword and sorcery hero, or should I say anti-hero, Malden is a survivor.

Malden finds himself on the wrong side of the head of the Thieves’ Guild of Ness. How does he do that? By being a little too good at being a thief, and burgling a house under the Guild’s protection…successfully. But entry into the Guild’s membership costs more than Malden will earn in a lifetime. So, he looks for a way to earn a lifetime’s worth of gold, fast.

In the best, or is that worst, sword and sorcery tradition, Malden gets in over his head. He gets involved in a scheme to steal the crown of the head of state, the Burgrave. His commission comes from a sorceress and a knight carrying an “Ancient Blade” that is called Acidtongue for very good reasons.

But the crown is not just a crown. And the knight is no longer truly a knight. And the sorceress, well she really is a witch, but witches aren’t exactly witches as we know them.

But there is a sorcerer involved, and he wants to bring down the city. And there is another knight involved, an idealistic knight who still believes in his vows, and he wants to rescue the witch. And Malden, he discovers that the hard part isn’t stealing the crown. The really hard part is stealing it back–while playing “keep away” from demons.

Escape Rating A: Sword and sorcery is fun if you like your laughter with a side of gallows humor. Den of Thieves is no exception. Malden is always one step ahead of his doom. Sometimes only a half step, but still ahead. His best hope is win another day. To survive. And he does. Or, at least so far.

Malden’s story continues in A Thief in the Night, which is due out in September. Malden is so good at getting himself into trouble, I can’t wait to see what he does next!

Life after Harry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

When I say “Harry”, I mean Harry Potter, of course.  Who else could I possibly mean?

The movie poster for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

Harry Potter fans have been in a curious kind of limbo since July 21, 2007, when the last book was released. We’ve all known how the story ends. But as long as the movies were still being released, the “illustrated” edition was, in effect, still putting out supplements. There were still some unknowns, just not very many. Now that saga, too, is complete.

There are generations yet unborn who will discover Harry for the first time, but there will never be another who will grow up exactly as he does, while he does. Even for those of us who read the series as adults, the experience of waiting for the next book, and speculating on what might happen will never be the same. All has been revealed.

The magic of Harry Potter was not in Diagon Alley, or even at Hogwarts Castle. It was in the overwhelming desire it created in both children and adults to pick up a book and READ! What comes next? Or who?

The inevitable lists have come out, suggesting books that people can turn to as alternatives. For example, Kirkus Reviews published a list of books called “For those suffering from Harry Potter withdrawal“. It’s a great idea, but I’d love to have seen more suggestions for adults suffering from Potter Withdrawal Syndrome (PWS, anyone?) and not just books for kids. And, of course, some of my favs are missing. Tamora Pierce belongs on any list for the magically inclined, either starting with Song of the Lioness or the Circle of Magic. And so does Diane Duane’s series starting with So you want to be a wizard.

Of course, Hollywood is looking for the next big blockbuster. Deathly Hallows 2 had the biggest opening weekend of any movie in history. It’s too bad they didn’t split it into three parts. Just think of all the money they could have made!

Or, if George R.R. Martin had held out for a series of movies instead of an HBO series for The Song of Ice and Fire. On second thought, that’s one saga that is better as a mini-series. Those books are huge. Condensing them to a mini-series was probably difficult enough.

However, io9‘s Facebook users have leapt into the breach and suggested a list of 10 fantasy book series that could replace Harry Potter at the movies. People were supposed to suggest series for their movie-worthiness; whether the books in question were “good” books or not is, as always, a matter of personal opinion. What was interesting about the list was that the books were not necessarily new, not necessarily popular, and not necessarily good. Having read 7 out of the 10 books listed, I’m can definitely testify to any of the above.

The number 1 listed series was Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. From 1936! These are classics. I mean, really classic. As in, Leiber not only coined the term “sword and sorcery” but Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are arguably among the foundation stories in the genre. If you’ve never had the pleasure the first book is Swords and Deviltry. Or, for a real treat, try the graphic novel version.

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series was also listed. This is not a big surprise. The series is not just long, but it has a huge number of fans. Artemis Fowl was also mentioned, as he is frequently listed as a successor to Mr. Potter. I haven’t read him, but I have the first three books in the vast TBR pile.

The surprise of the list was Dragonlance. I had to groan. And I did read them, so I am entitled to my groan. I read the Dragonlance Chronicles on a Trans-Atlantic flight, when those were the only three books I had. I can’t sleep on airplanes. If I could have slept, believe me, I would have. Essentially, someone took a Dungeons and Dragons campaign and wrote it up into three books. The trilogy sold well enough that they managed to sell a second trilogy. That first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, was almost painful. But as I read it, I could see the writers learning their craft as the book progressed. By the end, it wasn’t too bad. But filming it?

I’d rather see anything else on the list. But then again, the first time I saw the trailer for Cowboys & Aliens, I thought it was either a joke or a video game. Whatever it is, it’s not a substitute for Harry Potter. Or John Wayne either, come to think of it.

 

Naamah’s Blessing

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

In Jacqueline Carey’s alternate world, Terre d’Ange is the center of the civilized universe. Or, at least it certainly thinks it is. And it is not so much different from the 15th century France that it most resembles. Use that information to give yourself a time and place reference for technology/industry/civilization and otherwise, let everything else slip away. The world of Terre d’Ange is not our world, except, perhaps as it might have been, if it had been founded by fallen angels. The theology of the world created by those fallen Angels, Elua and his Companions, is a story for another another time.

The gods use their chosen hard in Carey’s world. That was certainly the lesson in her first trilogy, the emotionally shattering trilogy introduced by Kushiel’s Dart. Our own philosophy also contains this concept. The comment that “Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad,” is an ancient proverb, originally attributed to Euripides. The ones the gods choose in Terre d’Ange, at least in Carey’s works, are never quite driven mad, but to despair, sometimes very nearly.

And it could also be said that in the world of Elua and his Companions, the gods use the ones their chosen love equally hard.

Naamah’s Blessing is the final book in Carey’s latest trilogy set in this world. This trilogy is set centuries after the events that take place in Kushiel’s Dart and its sequels. The events that occurred have great bearing on the present, but are no longer within living memory. Naamah’s Kiss, Naamah’s Curse, and finally, Naamah’s Blessing, follow the trials and triumphs of Moirin mac Fainche, the unlikely descendant of both House Courcel of Terre D’Ange and the Maghuin Dhonn of Alba. Moirin is descended from royalty on both sides, but the Maghuin Dhonn do not care for such things, and the D’Angelines believe that the Maghuin Dhonn are little better than savages. They called her a “bear-witch” while she was in Terre D’Ange, and they were not wrong. The name was just incomplete.

But Moirin is touched by destiny. Maghuin Dhonn is not just the name of a tribe or a totem. She is the living Bear herself and she has given Moirin a task to complete. One that carries her first from her home in Alba, to Terre D’Ange to finally meet her father. And there she stirs up spirits that should have been left alone. Moirin’s task then compels her to take ship from Terre D’Ange to the far side of the world, to Ch’in, to free a dragon. And fall in love.

But love is never easy for one who is chosen by her gods. At the end of Naamah’s Kiss, her lover dies, their teacher gives his life to save him and uses part of her soul spirit tie to the Great Bear to keep him alive. Uncertain whether he loves her because he feels it, or because of the sacrifice that was made to restore his life, he runs from her. And she chases him across the Tatar steppes and into Vralia, our Russia. They face separate trials from anti-magic fanatics (hers) and lust-inducing magic-gem wielding sorceresses (him) before they find each other again in Bhodistani.   Returning to Terre D’Ange at the end of Naamah’s Curse to set the stage for the final book holds both triumph and tragedy.

Naamah’s Blessing doesn’t start out with many blessings.  Queen Jehanne died in childbirth, leaving her husband King Daniel de la Courcel in a deep depression, and her daughter Desiree physically cared for but emotionally bereft. She is the spitting image of her mother, and her father cannot bear to be around her, even more than three years after her mother’s death. The crown prince, Thierry, is off on an expedition to Terra Nova to stake a claim on the New World for Terre D’Ange. Moirin sweeps in to provide emotional sustenance for the little girl, and the King officially appoints her as the child’s sword protector. Then tragedy strikes, and Thierry’s expedition returns without him, reporting his presumed death. The King commits suicide, leaving the kingdom in the small hands of his 4-year old daughter and an overambitious regent who plans to marry his son to the little girl. Moirin, ever the servant of her destiny, is compelled to go to the New World, having received a vision that Thierry is alive. She has also seen the future that Desiree faces without her brother, and it is bleak.

Moirin, with her husband Bao at her side, raises an expedition to Terra Nova to follow the prince. The New World is more dangerous than she imagined, more beautiful and more deadly. The Nahuatl practice human sacrifice. The Aragonians fear the loss of their trading hegemony. There are no maps. Everyone they meet is certain they will not survive. And her first and greatest mistake is waiting for her at the end of her journey.

I read Naamah’s Curse and Naamah’s Blessing back to back, having waited until the final book was out before I started the second book. I just didn’t want to have to wait to find out how it all ended. Not again.

Carey has created an incredibly rich, complex world, and the background detail pulls you in deeper and deeper every time. Did I love Naamah’s Blessing? Yes, absolutely. Is it a stand-alone book? No, it’s not. The richness is in the multiple layers of the weaving. If you have not read Kushiel’s Dart, read the whole thing from the beginning, you are in for something special. The series is not for the faint of heart. Every character, and the reader, is put through an incredibly amount of pain, anguish, and pleasure-in-pain, in order to get to the ending. But the story is so worth it.