Target: Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive #2) Profile: Epic Fantasy After a seemingly interminable four years of waiting for Brandon Sanderson to wash his hands of the Wheel of Time, it is finally time to return to the series that got me hooked on Sanderson in the first place, The Stormlight Archive. The Way of Kings was a great novel that suffered most from being little more than a prologue to the rest of the series. But now the real story can begin. Words of Radiance returns […]
This review has been banned for distribution as injurious to the cause of Darkness -The Day Watch
Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Day Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield (The Watches pentalogy #2) Profile: Modern Fantasy, Suspense, Horror Day Watch is a strong successor to the gritty, twilight world that Sergei Lukyanenko introduced us to in Night Watch. After exploring the moral dilemmas facing a ‘good’ person trying to maintain a status quo that is anything but good, Lukyanenko shifts his focus to take a look at the bad guys. That being said, Day Watch isn’t as strong overall as its prequel, partly because the Dark Others aren’t faced with […]
You got some zombie in my superhero novel…
Target: Peter Clines’ EX-Heroes (EX-Heroes #1) Profile: Superhero Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Zombie Apocalypse EX-Heroes falls very clearly in my reading category of ‘book candy.’ It’s light, entertaining, but lacking many qualities of actual literary goodness. Well, actually the concept is executed rather well and Clines manages to tell a pretty compelling story within his somewhat limited framework, so maybe the novel isn’t all that lacking. But at the end of the day, there’s very little here that hasn’t been explored before. Points for novelty notwithstanding. The book bills […]
Ghost Stories on a Tatami Mat
Target: Miyabe Miyuki’s Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo. Translated by Daniel Huddleston Profile: Horror, Ghost Stories Japanese horror ranges pretty heavily from mild ghost stories to some incredibly creepy and dehumanizing body horror. Apparitions fortunately falls into the former citatory, chronicling a series of stories that walk a fine line between scary and sentimental. These tales capitalize on the cornerstone of Japanese spirituality: that every object and creature is imbued with a sprit. At their core, these stories are more cautionary tales, advising the listener to act with honor […]
This review has been approved for distribution as conducive to the cause of Light -The Night Watch
Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield Profile: Urban Fantasy, Suspense, Horror, The Watches Pentalogy (Read in stereotypical movie preview voiceover) In a world where epic battles between good and evil are a dime a dozen on the Teen Fantasy shelves, one Russian author struggles to bring a sense of subtly and realism to stories about vampires, werewolves and wizards. (End voiceover) And that’s to his credit. Lukyanenko’s vision of a supernatural world where nothing is as it seems sounds trite on paper, but […]
The Reader Who Fell In Love With Fairyland and Refused to Stop Writing Reviews About It
Target: Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There Profile: Children’s Literature, Fantasy, Fairyland Catherynne M. Valente is a sleeper nod for the title of my favorite author. She combines the vocabulary of China Meiville with the storytelling sensibilities of Neil Gaiman and Philip Pulman’s eye for children’s adventure. And in my previous review of her Fairyland series, I compared her favorably to L. Frank Baum, C. S. Lewis and Lewis Carol. But what I think most impresses me about […]