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The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi "Time is what we make of it; relative, absolute, finite, infinite. I choose to let this moment last forever so that when I toil to clean your sewers and protect you from phoboi and carry your city on my back - I can remember what it is like to have such friends." --Christian Unruh at his carpe diem party. Hannu Rajaniemi and his debut novel The Quantum Thief are something I've heard about for a while, mainly through the agency of the Coode Street Podcast, the enthusiasm Jonathan Strahan and Gary Wolfe have for this novel infectious. I was extremely fortunate to get a chance at reading an ARC of the book. A welcome letter from editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden evokes Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge and Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber in trying to introduce the book. Given my high regard for all three gentlemen, you might imagine that this has colored my perceptions of the book, and you would be right. Mr. Rajaniemi has a day job running a think tank based on AI and advanced mathematics, and has a doctorate in String Theory. It should surprise no one, then, that the world of the Quantum Thief is a high concept, high jargon post-Singularity world. Jean Le Flambeur, an imprisoned thief undergoing an endless series of rounds of Prisoner's Dilemma, is rescued by Mieli, an agent of a mysterious post-Singularity being. From there, the pair travel to Mars to find one of Le Flambeur's most prized and valuable possessions: His lost memory. In the meantime, Isidore Beautrelet, citizen of the Oubilette, the moving city of Mars, has a tempestuous relationship with his girlfriend, and his efforts at playing detective have brought him to the attention of one of the most powerful men on Mars. Unruh is a man who is worried about the announced arrival of a master thief. A thief named Jean Le Flambeur. Mix in post-Singularity technology and a plot that barely pauses for breath, and blend on "high", and you will get The Quantum Thief. Rajaniemi is being touted as the Next Big Thing in science fiction (the back cover of this ARC calls it "The strongest SF debut in years") , and judging from this first book, he is making a very good, but not perfect, start. Post-Singularity worlds and books are very tricky things. Be it Charles Stross, Walter Jon Williams, Vernor Vinge, John C. Wright, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Greg Egan, Karl Schroeder or Hannu Rajaniemi, making a book that effectively captures the world that is beyond by definition an indescribable point in technology and history is difficult, at best. And worse, there is the death problem. When you have a world where death's sting strikes with far less strength, how do you generate stakes and conflicts that actually mean something? In a world where backups of people or other technologies make death far less fearsome, how do you deal with that lack of a final threat to a character's sovereignty and agency? In the book, Rajaniemi deals with the Post-Singularity problem by making no compromises, and precious little infodumping. He chucks the reader into the deep-end and expects them to sink or swim, trusting them to get it, or not. I think he is only partially successful in this approach. Lots of jargon and terms get tossed around, and it requires an attentive and active reader to really make good headway. And I would not dream that any reader who hasn't read at least one or two novels by the gentlemen I listed earlier should even try to tackle this book. Rajaniemi loves his technology and science, although I wonder if he realizes that not every reader who comes across references to, say, WIMPS in the text are going to realize he is talking about Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, in current day physics a proposed component in of dark matter. A glossary at the back of this book would have been extremely useful. As far as the death problem, Rajaniemi deals with this by simply allowing for a stratification of society and its individuals. In the Oubilette, there is no immortality, Time is a currency and when your time is up, if you are a citizen, you spend a period as a servant class. (Visitors merely are forced to leave). So, the threat of death, real death, still exists in the post-Singularity universe he has created. For all of the technology and jargon, there is an almost surprising amount of character focus in the book. The evolving interactions between Le Flambeur, Mieli, her ship and the characters they meet on Mars were touching, and real. And Perhonen, Mieli's ship, is a distinct character in her own right. With two strong female characters flanking Jean, Rajaniemi easily passes the Bechdel test. I have to admit, on a personal note, that perhaps Mr. Hayden's letter made me see the references, and perhaps they aren't even there, but I was vastly amused that Le Flambeur's outfit, once he has a chance to dress properly, are the black and silver colors of Prince Corwin of Amber. He, too, was a character who did not know all that he was, and was in a sense imprisoned, too...And that nine specific individuals play a large part in Le Flambeur's scheme. There are two sequels planned, and while the book's narrative does end at a closing point for the main characters, there is a coda of sorts that suggests the source and vector of conflict for the next book. As I have said above, this high octane post-singularity fiction is not 100% successful, but I suppose the ultimate question is: Do I want to read more of Flambeur, Mieli, and beyond? The answer to that is a resounding yes. Welcome, Mr. Rajaniemi, to the science fiction pool. I hope you will stay a while and write some more interesting books set in this world. But come next book, please give us poor pre-Singularity intelligences a glossary. Please?

“Bugs, Blood and Brutal Women. All the best things in life.” So was signed my copy of God’s War, by debut novelist Kameron Hurley. I entered an online contest to win a copy of the novel, now out, and was delighted that the author had taken the time to personalize it in this way. It was a good omen to start the book off. God’s War is set during a perpetual war on Umayma, a distant planet in an indistinctly far future where two polities, each dominated by a rival descendant sect of Islam (never mentioned directly as the ur-religion). God’s War is the story of Nyx. Once upon a time, she was a Bel Dame, a government agent used to stop deserters, lethally if necessary. She lost that position on a bad job, and now scrapes together a living as a bounty hunter, having cobbled together a team of misfits to help her with her work. Primary and most important amongst these is the other main viewpoint character, Rhys. Rhys is a refugee from Chenja, the nation on the other side of the eternal war with Nyx’s Nasheen. This hardscrabble existence for Nyx and her team gets a kick in the pants when the Queen of Nasheen makes an offer Nyx can’t refuse—find a missing person, and a rare one at that: a visitor from another planet who has slipped the custody of her Nasheen hosts. A person who might have the high technology that Nasheen or Chenja could use to end the perpetual conflict for good. And so starts a multi-sided scramble to find the missing offworlder… The strong points of God’s War are three: world building, the characters and descriptive, tight prose that invokes and evokes her wonderfully visualized world. World building: Interesting and real-feeling descendant forms of Islam, a dry and hostile planet, the strange and wondrous bugpunk technology and biotechnology. The lack of exposition may turn off some. There is plenty of world building, but a relative lack of anything resembling infodumping, and a lot of things are taken as is, with the bug-dominated “Bugpunk” technology being first and foremost. A lot of it is “handwavium” of the first order, and Hurley does not give us any real chance to get up to speed on it. It’s been a while since a novel truly has chucked me in the deep end. However, I found the experience invigorating and satisfying once I started to puzzle things out. Hurley has a strong and vivid imagination. Characters : Well drawn and interestingly contrasted characters ranging from Nyxnissa, Bel Dame turned bounty hunter, to Rhys the foreign magician, the rest of her crew, and her opposition. Nyx doesn’t seem to know what she wants in life beyond her next piece of bread, but rather than vacillating or doing nothing, she is an active character, brawling, brutal, and bloody as she carves her way through the world. The other characters, too, have lesser well defined but still concrete needs and agendas, some of which are only revealed in flashback after we have seen them in action for a while. This slight non linearity forces the reader to pay attention. Prose: Hurley writes to a well constructed third person viewpoint that mainly focuses on Nyx and her doings. The times where we break away from her or Rhys feel a little off to me, though, an almost unwelcome variation on the theme. Despite this, the alien natures of Umayama and the humans that inhabit it and their cultures are exceedingly well done. You can feel the heat, taste the sweat of the fighters in the gyms, smell the blood of vicious battle. The style of the book, combined with the technology, gave me a Vandermeer New Weirdesque feel to God’s War, with the proviso that this is science fiction, even if Rhys is called a magician and just how things like his talent and those of the shapeshifters are not really explained. This book is not for the squeamish. Right in the first chapter, Nyx talks about a hysterectomy, and the book does not soften from there. The protagonist gets tortured. People die. Fights and conflicts are messy, inconclusive, and exceedingly violent. Its all very vividly described but fortunately not to the level of “torture porn” Blood, Bugs and Brutal Women. It says it all. I, for one, am looking forward to the next Nyx novel, and what else Hurley is capable of beyond her vision of life on Umayama.

I've mentioned before in previous reviews of mine that Urban fantasy is a genre that I find hit or miss. Certainly its popular, authors are doing well cranking them up, but many urban fantasy novels feel like either romance novels with not well worked out paranormal elements, or feel like they are bandwagoners trying to get in on a hot sub-genre. And, I generally like my landscapes more fantastic and bigger. But I am willing to dip into the sub-genre now and again, if for no other reason than to keep abreast of how it is evolving. Laura Anne Gilman is an author whose work I have not read before, but she has popped up in mentions of blog posts and social media by authors I have varying levels of contact and friendship with. So, I was delighted to enter and win a contest for a copy (signed as it turns out) of one of her books: Hard Magic Hard Magic starts a new novel in her "Cosa Nostradamus" universe. Seven books in, there is not a lot of explanation of how the universe works, but clues in the book provided by good writing from Gilman allowed me to piece together that Hard Magic and its previous novels are set in a modern-day urban fantasy universe where magicians, and nonhuman races ("fatae") secretly live in a world ignorant of their presence. A major organized faction of practitioners (Talents), called the Council, try to organize the magical community. Opposing them are lonejacks, who are talents who try and make their own, anarchic way in keeping their powers secret and doing the business of making a living. Bonnie Torres, a character who had appeared as a minor character in previous Cosa Nostradamus books, gets center stage in Hard Magic. With a Council patron, and a lonejack sort of independence, she nicely encapsulates the dichotomy between these factions as she tries to make a living in NYC. When Bonnie gets a call to attend a job interview she never applied for, she is soon sucked into PUPI--Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigations. She joins a number of other misfit Talents similarly recruited, and together learn to harness their powers for magical forensics. Oh, and of course, they DO get a case, investigate the strange suicide of a prominent pair of Council members that may very well be something more than a suicide. And in the process, Bonnie and her new friends stir up a number of very dangerous hornets nests in the process... As an expatriate New Yorker, I felt like a slice of home reading this book, as, with the exception of a few teleports to Boston and Chicago, the entirety of the book takes place in New York City. From jokes about the GWB to pumpernickel bagels, Gilman brings forth the spirit of New York. Bonnie is clearly not a native, and we get a sense of her trying to understand the city, like a cat, has decided to adopt her. Unlike some urban fantasy that I have read, the setting is in harmony with the fantastic elements and they work together (much like, say, Elizabeth Bear's Blood and Iron). The central mystery is a fair one by the standards of the universe. More than the mystery, though, the writing and the text show that Gilman is even more interested in exploring the characters. While we only follow Bonnie's point of view and her mind, Gilman does allow us to slowly reveal aspects of her employers and fellow employees. By the end of the book, we have a good handle not only on Bonnie but also her evolving relationships with PUPI, and her mentor J as well. The advantage for Gilman to start a new series within her Cosa Nostradamus universe is that it provides a new entry point for people wanting to explore a new urban fantasy universe. If you are looking to try some urban fantasy, or more especially if you are a urban fantasy junkie, I recommend you give Bonnie Torres and the PUPI investigators a try.

William Shakespeare is free from Hell thanks to the love of their mutual lives, the now-Changeling Christopher Marlowe. Kit has lost much, including his name, and William's palsy is a slow death sentence, but both figures, in Faerie and on Earth, cannot rest on their laurels. Elizabeth is dying, and there are those who wish to use her death and the life of her successor to change not only the destiny of England, but the destiny of all realms. For William Shakespeare and, even more so, Kit Marlowe is more powerful than he knows, and his untapped power, if harnessed properly, could be used to topple more than James I and the Mebd. Much, much more. The Nature of God itself is up for grabs, if that power is used properly... The narrative of Hell and Earth is the second half of the "play" that begins in Ink and Steel and Elizabeth Bear wastes no time in plunging us back into her 16th century world. The shadowy plots and plans of the Prometheans who oppose Kit and Will slowly reveal themselves, and their plans are both monstrous and breathtaking indeed. Throw in an audacious and unapologetic attempt to coil in everything from the date of Elizabeth's death to the Guy Fawkes plot to the writing of the King James Bible, and I have found that Hell and Earth, along with Ink and Steel functions as much as a secret history as well as a historical fictional fantasy. In an afterword, Bear mentions that Shakespeare and Marlowe did this very same thing in their own plays, cutting history to suit a narrative end. She makes no apologies. And so shouldn't the reader. Even beyond Faerie and Hell, Hell and Earth shows an Elizabethan England that is in a fictionalized past, and in this second volume, I started to really grok that in a way that I didn't really internalize in the first volume, Ink and Steel. Treat the books in the same way one might treat Henry V, and The writing is crisp, vital, and has the ring of veracity. Well drawn characters that never feel like they are 21st century individuals wearing period garb, Bear populates her narrative with complex and conflicted people who are true to their life and times. Again, though, don't start here. Start with Ink and Steel and immerse yourself in Bear's vision of 16th century England seen through two of its greatest playwrights, plus the nature of God, secret conspiracies,two Queens, Hell, and the Faerie realms. Highly recommended.

How big is the universe and the things that are in it? You can throw around all sorts of numbers. 93 million miles is the distance to the Sun. Jupiter has a diameter of 142,800 kilometers. Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away. It is 2 million light years to the Andromeda Galaxy, the furthest object visible with the naked eye. But what does all that really mean? How do you wrap your way around those sizes and compare them to more familiar sizes and distances? J Richard Gott and Robert J Vanderbei, in National Geographic's Sizing Up the Universe, have set themselves this tall order--explain to the reader just how big things are, and tie it to the every day so that readers can get a handle around it. Also add in a gorgeous visual guide to the heavens, from star charts to pictures ranging from Neil Armstrong to the Cosmic Microwave Background, and you have Sizing Up the Universe. The book starts off with apparent sizes of objects in the sky, starting with the Moon and moving its way upward. While I have seen many books explain size in a more conventional manner (and the book later does delve into the real size of objects), the authors obvious interest in astronomy and backyard sky viewing give them a perspective as to the apparent size of stellar objects that was illuminating even to a astronomy enthusiast like myself. I had no idea, for example, that the apparent size of the small dim smudge of the Andromeda Galaxy is actually much, much larger than that. The book then launches itself into viewing the night skies, as a way to bridge the previous section with the subsequent ones, and again showing the astronomical interest of the authors. The charts in this book can be used to find objects in the sky in all four seasons. Next, the book concerns itself with the distances and sizes of objects, and goes through the routine and familiar (to me) story of Eratosthenes, who discovered (roughly) the size of the Earth, and the efforts throughout history to find the distance to and sizes of the Moon, and the Sun. The authors then use those as scales to map distances all the way to the edge of the Universe. A centerpiece of the book is a gate-fold four page logarithmic size chart of the distances from the Earth that you may have seen on the internet. Finally, in the tradition of the "Powers of Ten", the book uses a 1:1 size picture of Buzz Aldrin's footprint on the moon, and then proceeds to pictorially move up to larger and larger scales, until the entire universe is encompassed. Amazing pictures, comprehensive, intelligently written but not written down to the viewer, Sizing Up the Universe is eminently designed for those teenagers and adults who have ever looked at the sky and wondered just how big and how far away the stars and planets *really* are. Highly Recommended.

In Mortal Coils, the first book in sequence, we are introduced to the teenaged twins Eliot and Fiona Post. Children of scions of opposing factions, the Immortal Audrey Post(aka Atropos) and the Infernal Louis Piper (aka Lucifer), they have an uneventful, if odd, homeschooled and shut in life, until both factions notice their existence and try to lure the twins to one side or the other. The first novel ended with an Infernal attempt to suborn the children defeated on the one hand, and the twins passing a deadly test set by the Immortals on the other. Now, the twins have an even greater test: High School. All That Lives Must Die is the story of Fiona and Eliot, as they grow into their newly discovered, and still developing abilities, in the context of a magical High School, Paxington Institute, that makes Hogwarts seem tame by comparison. The twins discover that there are many of their age with magical abilities, and the reader gets a sense that the Immortal/Infernal split explicated in the first book is really only the beginning of the story. The twins also fracture, as the pressures of school, and their social relations pull at Eliot and Fiona from completely different directions. And, of course, both the Immortals and Infernals have their own ideas on the education and development of the children. In addition, both sides have become convinced that the children's existence herald that the long standing truce between the two camps is about to be over, and start to arm accordingly. While the book has teenaged protagonists and even has a reader's guide at the end, the book does not feel like dumbed down YA fiction. Rather, it is in the vein of the better Potter novels, and the newer crop of fantasy and science fiction novels with teenagers in mind. The prose is intelligent, never talks down, and has additional layers that adult readers will enjoy. For example, the hinted identities of Eliot's "band" in Hell are clearly "credit cookies" meant for readers beyond teenagers. In other words, the book feels very much like the best of Pixar movies in that respect. In addition, the novel continues Nylund's tradition of putting in footnotes as a way to expand the playground of the imagination. Careful reading of the footnotes, with their tone of having been written after the events in the books, provide hints and clues as to where this is all going, and at their best are as witty and urbane as the footnotes in the works of Jack Vance. He even manages to tie in his long-ago first novel in one particular entry. Nylund is one of those authors who is not stingy on the creativity. From all of the mythological personae given new life and identities, to the vistas of the Paxington Institute, Hell and beyond, and the swirling, complexity of the factions gearing up for the inevitable conflict, Nylund enjoys spooling out his imagination for the reader. As said before, the text is well written but not dumbed down. I devoured this book. Urban fantasy with a mythological bent. Who would ask for anything more? You won't want to start here--start with Mortal Coils. You'll thank me later.

In her diptych, Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water, Elizabeth Bear shows us the end of the story of the Promethean Age, when Faerie has been fighting a long war against technology, against Hell, and against those magicians, the Prometheans, who would still see it bound. In the second volume of that series, when Christopher Marlowe, part of Lucifer's household, appears, he blazes across the page in such a way that I knew, then, that Bear had to write more of his story, and how he had gotten to be in Lucifer's household in the first place. In Ink and Steel, the first of another diptych, Elizabeth Bear takes us back to the days when Christopher Marlowe is still alive (although not for long), and just as importantly, the early days of the career of one William Shakespeare, whose poetry and pose is as potent an armament as any Elf-knight's sword. For such poetry and pose are strong magic, magic that can be used for good, or for ill... Shakespeare and his world is a popular choice for fantasy and SF authors. Ruled Britannia has him writing plays for a Spanish-installed Monarch. Sarah Hoyt's trilogy has Shakeapeare tangle with the land of Faerie. Neil Gaiman had Shakespeare meet one of the Endless. Poul Anderson's Midsummer's Tempest is a fine novel where Shakespeare's plays are fact. Bear is in good company here. With chapters arranged like acts and scenes of a play, with florid, lush descriptions and prose, and the subject matter of Shakespeare and Elizabethan England and Elizabethan Faerie, the book, at least this half, reads and feels like a prose version of one of William Shakespeare's plays. Betrayals, forbidden and denied love, politics, unusual landscapes, engaging and multisided characters convince me that these are books that Bear not only enjoyed writing, but in a sense was born to write. This book (and I am sure, the second half, Hell and Earth) are the kind of books that an author has in mind when she decides to become a writer. I think, too, that Bear hits it out of the park. I personally know that Elizabethan England is something that Bear knows a fair amount about, and that knowledge flows out onto the page. From the minutae of the changes in the courtiers and servants to Queen Elizabeth, all the way down to what a trip through the streets of London feels like, that knowledge is not dumped on the page, but, rather, flows into that previously mentioned lush text. And then there is Faerie, and even a trip into Hell. Bear is not afraid to make things happen and deliver on the page, consistently, for the reader. This IS the first novel of two, and so the story does not end here, which may frustrate some readers. I suspect others may object to some characterizations of Shakespeare and Marlowe, but one might consider that Bear almost certainly knows more about the subject than me or you. I look forward to finishing the Statford Man sequence in Hell and Earth and see just how Bear finishes off the story.

The ring of swords. The clash of steel. Action. Adventure. Swashbuckling. Romance. Even in this modern age, there is a irresistible romance to swordplay, musketeers and the derring-do of a long lost age. Captured by Alexandre Dumas in his 19th century novels, the world of the musketeers has extended into many movie adaptations (and yet more to come). As a seminal influence, the Three Musketeers are one of the principal inspirations for both the sword and sorcery and sword and sandal genres in fantasy and historical fiction. Similarly, dragons are an extremely popular sub-genre in fantasy today. While dragons have been around in fantasy fiction since the time of Smaug, and the transformed Eustace, and McCaffrey’s Pern are replete with them, in the last few years dragons have commonly cropped up both in modern day tales as well as the alternate Napoleonic War novels of Naomi Novik. The Cardinal’s Blades, the English language debut of French author Pierre Pavel, might be thought of as the marriage of these two streams of culture. Grounded in an alternate-history 17th century France, the Cardinal’s Blades is the story of the titular characters, a disgraced secret force of Cardinal Richelieu brought back into service for one more mission against France’s major adversary—Spain and its Court of Dragons, and more to the point, its secret society trying to operate in France, the Black Claw. In Pavel’s alternate world, while history has mostly gone on as it has in our world (I did catch at least one major change that makes this alternate history, not just our-history-with-dragons), there are dragons of all sizes in society. Dragonets are pets for the rich and powerful (such as the good Cardinal himself). Wyverns, in perhaps a nod to Novik, are used by aviators as couriers. There are half-dragons (matings between transformed dragons and humans) and brutish dracs (humanoid dragon offspring) as well. Actual dragons are rare and devoted to their own inscrutable purposes. For the most part, they are offstage, manipulating the action rather than, say, taking to the skies and raking Paris with gouts of fire. This is also true of the other fantastic draconic elements I just mentioned. For the most part, the dragonets, and wyverns are only there for color, a splash of fantasy paint on the historical bones of the book. The Cardinal’s Blades’ focus is directed on the historical sword-and-sandal elements and milieu. Characterization development, is another disappointment in this novel. Pavel seems to have reserved most of his characterization for the captain of the Cardinal’s Blades, La Fargue, and has fallen to stereotypes and somewhat thinner character development for the rest of the cast . The Womanizing rogue, the Serious one, the Woman in a man’s world. Once these traits are set, they do not seem to change or grow. On the bright side, every one of the Cardinal’s Blades does get individual attention and screen time, especially when La Fargue gets the band back together, and when the members head out in a Diaspora to accomplish various pieces of the problem of opposing the Black Claw and its plans. The villains are somewhat more well drawn, and as in the case in many of these books, are as interesting as the characters. A fair criticism of this review might ask—given my criticisms thus far, well what DOES work in this book? Well, the Historical perspective. As I have said earlier, this is an alternate history. I am not so familiar with French history to be aware of other divergences, but there is one. It is not at all clear that the fantasy elements are responsible for the point of divergence, and it does seem to be again, mostly for color. The writing does effectively convey the backdrop of 17th century France, perhaps more so because I kept mentally filling in memories of various Musketeers movies. What I mean by this is, nothing in the book jarred with those visions, helping to establish an effective mise-en-scene for the events of the novel. The swashbuckling action and adventure, too, is one of the best reasons to read this book. Action and adventure this novel has in plenty and Pavel seems to be at his best and most effective as a writer when things get interesting. To the point, there are very effective “set-piece” encounters and battles that are exciting, well written, and helped draw me through the book. For all of the weaknesses mentioned above, Pavel knows how to write effective, engaging and exciting encounters between the protagonists and their foes. Another thing that works is the complexity of the plot. It’s not too convoluted, but things are not quite as they seem, and the motivations of the bigger players on the board are suitably complex and multisided. There is a lot going on in Pavel’s world, much more than meets the eye, and there plenty of material here that future volumes in this world could explore. So, while I don’t think that Pavel’s The Cardinal’s Blades is an heir to, say, Brust’s The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years Later, I think it is good enough that I would read a sequel, especially given the twist ending that begs for explanation in a future volume. I hope that forthcoming books will keep Pavel’s strengths and shore up some of the weaknesses and would love to see what he does, given an opportunity to grow into this universe.

The fate of an entire galaxy and the two universes that very uneasily co-exist within it comes to a head in the third and final volume of Peter F Hamilton's Void trilogy, the Evolutionary Void. In addition, this book serves as a capstone to the previous two books set in the universe, the Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained diptych, as some of the most important and memorable characters from those volumes influence matters as well. A summary of events in the book would not make much sense, and so I am forced to speak in generalities. In this final volume, many of the secrets and mysteries of the first two books are revealed, sometimes on a grand scale, such as the nature of the Void, and why it acts as it does, and sometimes on more intimate scales, such as the reason why Rah and the colonists were able to found the culture of Makkathran inside the Void in the first place. Hamilton, like in Judas Unchained, finishes up the current plotlines, resolves the major obstacle, and sets the stage for, if he wishes for future books set in the future. I don't think its a spoiler to tell you that the attempts to keep the Void from devouring the galaxy are successful. The rub is in the doing, and in the characters that he sets on the stage. There are numerous callbacks, references and appearances by characters from all four of the previous books in the universe, sometimes in the most unexpected places. This is a book that Hamilton has written, in some senses, for readers of the previous four books. I think this is a weakness in a way, people who do not intimately remember details from those books are going to at best miss some "cookies" for faithful readers, and at worst, be confused when conflicts and events resurrected from the past spill out and take over the narrative. The format changes too, breaking the pattern of the last two novels. We get much more of the space opera, and less of Eddard's backstory inside of the Void. Also, Eddard's story is not told completely and comprehensively, and more so than in the first two novels, we hear about events from Inigo and others, and then get to read what really happened. This complexity and experimentation, I think, don't always work, but they work well enough. In addition, there are touching and moving passages, such as the last dream that Inigo withheld for so long (and why he walked away from his religion). All of this shows Hamilton's depth and growth as a writer. This is heady space opera of the highest order. Let me correct that. This is heady science fiction of the highest order. Hamilton has only improved as an epic science fiction novelist. I think he is too enamoured of piling every character he can into his climaxes and final pages, but the ending of this one felt much less of a deus ex machina that some of his previous books seem to have suffered from. It's difficult not to imagine anyone who has read Temporal Void would not want to pick up this volume. For everyone else, start with Pandora's Star, and when you get to this volume, you will have experienced five volumes of space opera science fiction that only get better as the books progress.

Matthew Hughes is an under-appreciated writer. For years he has been toiling in a mainly Jack Vancean sort of vein, turning out stories and novels set in a world where science is just about to turn over to magic, but not quite yet. Old Earth, with a baroque and dizzying array of ancient cultures, is a rich field for Hughes to explore. On an even larger scale, Old Earth is itself but one planet in "The Spray", Hughes's answer to Jack Vance's Oikumene. A dizzying array of planets of even more diversity than Earth itself, Hughes' fiction allows the reader to experience a full and inexhaustible range of cultures, environments and characters. His prose brings these environments and characters to life, transporting the reader to areas both familiar and absolutely alien for all of their humanity. In Template, Matthew Hughes starts us far away from Old Earth, on a backward part of the Spray. Conn Labro has been raised from an orphaned birth to be a gaming duelist. Indentured to a Gaming House, his life is mostly duels and fighting for his employer. When his one link to a life outside Horder's Gaming Emporium, a mysterious old man who is his only friend, is murdered, events sweep up Labro into an intrigue of double-dealing and an even more unusual inheritance that Labro never expected to be heir to. Along with a showgirl tied to his murdered friend, Labro makes a journey toward Old Earth, and beyond, to uncover the mystery of something even greater than a inheritance or his old friend's death. His own origin. Unlike many of the other stories Hughes has written in the Archonate, Template starts us far away from Old Earth, and Old Earth is only a waypoint (albeit a major one) in the rambling journey of the protagonist. Template appears to be Hughes' interpretation and riff on the themes and ideas of Jack Vance's Demon King novels. Labro is a lens that allows us to see a wide variety of worlds and characters. Labro's own provincial attitudes are the barometer by which other (and there are many in this book!) cultures are judged. Admittedly, Jenore, the aforementioned showgirl, is more of a plot device than a completely fully formed character, and I didn't quite buy the romance between the characters.This is perhaps the weakest part of the book for me. Perhaps had the book been longer, this weakness might have been addressed. Still, even given these weaknesses, the writing is strong and bright, and dense. It might be among the strongest writing that I have read from Matthew Hughes, perhaps because we get to see corners of the Spray from the eyes of characters who are new to Hughes, and thus have the contrast of being something different for him. Labro and Mordene are not his usual type of characters to explore and use as focal points. The structure of the plot almost follows Van Vogt's maxim that plot twists and plot advancement should occur at a breakneck pace. Combine that with a dizzying array A slim and slight volume, I devoured Template rapidly. Fans of Jack Vance, or Matthew Hughes' prior work, will appreciate Template.

Matthew Hughes is an under-appreciated writer. For years he has been toiling in a mainly Jack Vancean sort of vein, turning out stories and novels set in a world where science is just about to turn over to magic, but not quite yet. Old Earth, with a baroque and dizzying array of ancient cultures, is a rich field for Hughes to explore. On an even larger scale, Old Earth is itself but one planet in "The Spray", Hughes's answer to Jack Vance's Oikumene. A dizzying array of planets of even more diversity than Earth itself, Hughes' fiction allows the reader to experience a full and inexhaustible range of cultures, environments and characters. His prose brings these environments and characters to life, transporting the reader to areas both familiar and absolutely alien for all of their humanity. In the Spiral Labyrinth, we continue the adventures of Henghis Hapthorn, previously seen in a couple of short stories as well as Majestrum. As a freelance discriminator (private investigator) he is a late-age-of-Earth Sherlock Holmes, with a number of twists. Thanks to the results of previous adventures, his integrator, a semi-sentient computer, has been transformed from a device to a fruit-craving unique creature. Also, his sense of intuition, an invaluable compliment to his finely honed sense of reason and logic, is in fact now a full fledged sub personality within his brain that he can converse with, named Osk Rievor. Even with these handicaps (although he would insist they are advantages), Henghis is the foremost discriminator on Old Earth. In the Spiral Labyrinth Henghis once again gets plunged into situations far beyond his ken, surviving by applications of luck, verve, reason and intuition. Hughes likes to put his characters through the wringer. The keystone event of Spiral Labyrinth, for example, has Henghis, thanks to the titular device, accidentally transported several centuries into the future--and past the point where the rules of the universe finally change from science and magic. Worse, he has been transported here without Osk Rievor (who knows a little theory of magic), and so he must survive on reason alone, in a land without reason.How does Henghis survive in a world of dragons and spells, and how he manages to get home are the meat and potatoes of the book. And, like previous novels and stories, Spiral Labyrinth stands alone, but continues to build the life, career and nature of its main character. You certainly can start here, Hughes does a good job enfolding previous events into the narrative in an organic way. However, this does not mean the stories are episodic. I have no doubt that the adventures of this book, and their impact on Hapthorn, will continue to resonate through the next If you are a Jack Vance fan, or simply enjoy picaresque adventures in a baroque series of settings with an engaging main character, the Henghis Hapthorn stories of Matthew Hughes, including the Spiral Labyrinth, are definitely for you.

Sex. Pain. Grotesqueries. Salvation. Escape. Palimpsest, especially as an audiobook, is a rich, sensual, baroque and lush descent into the lives of four otherwise ordinary individuals who discover a gateway into selected fragments of the eponymous city. A Hugo nominee, the audiobook version takes the prose and transforms it into an exquisite aural experience. I think that the audiobook is a natural form for a novel which is, to be frank, a little short on plot, and very long on style and imagery. The intimate encounters of Oleg, November, Ludvoico and Sei come across, read, as borderline erotica. But while the sexual, erotic elements of the book are probably the most famous to those who have not read the book, the book also delves into the darkness and the grotesque as the four protagonists, bound together across space, each seek permanent passport to the city. No, I think this novel fits much more in the New Weird than anything else. Palimpsest is very much like Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris, a city with echoes of our own, but plainly fantastic and impossible. The city is as much, or if I might be permitted to criticize, even more fully realized as a character than the four protagonists ever are. Valente's style and imagery brings that fifth character, the city of Palimpsest itself, to indelible and inescapable life. I have heard Valente described as a modern-day Scheherezade. Certainly, listening to this book, rather than reading this book, reinforces that perception. Aasne Vigesaa certainly does an excellent job with characters both male and female, bringing them and that baroque prose to your ears in excellent fashion. In fact, speaking of Scheherezade, I would love to have Vigesaa read the Arabian Nights... I don't recommend using this audiobook for a long drive across the country, the prose and the dulcet tones of the narrator are precisely the wrong things to try and listen to while concentrating on driving. On the other hand,listening to a portion of this book before sleeping is a ticket for your own esoteric and strange dream imagery. One might say that listening to this audiobook before sleeping is your own ticket, your own way into the mysterious and singular Palimpsest. It did for me.

In the Stepsister Scheme, Mr. Jim Hines came up with a clever fantasy conceit, reimagining Snow White and Sleeping Beauty as kick-butt action heroines that could stand toe to toe with the likes of Sarah Connor, River Tam, and Ripley. Princess Cinderella, Danielle Whiteshore, joins their duo in an effort to find her husband, the Prince, who has been kidnapped, with faerie magic aid, by her evil stepsisters. In the Mermaid's Madness, we turn to the sea. The relationship between the island kingdom of Lorindar and the merfolk of the sea have necessarily been amicable for a long time. When the annual meeting turns deadly, the three princesses have to uncover old secrets, discover the truth of the Mermaid's Madness, and even save the life of their Queen. In the aftermath of the attack, her life, and her soul hang by the slenderest of threads. And, as best they can, kick some butt. Although the Stepsister Scheme was never as light and frothy as it seemed to be, the Mermaid's Madness does strongly rejigger the balance between lightness and more serious matters. The threat to the Queen comes across on the page as far more serious than the threat to Armand in the first novel. In addition, the revelations of how and why the Princess' antagonists are acting are much more complex than the relatively straightforward motivations of the first book. Snow White's mirror magic extends and evolves, Danielle learns what it means to step up and be a Princess, and Talia's secret, unrequited love is revealed. This is all good character development. I appreciate a series where the author avoids the Scylla and Charybdis of no character development on the one hand, or radical and unrealistic development on the other. So one might say that the Mermaid's Madness is a more mature book than the previous one. The writing still is strong, and the episodes of humor and levity do not clash against that darker, mature tone that I mentioned. And its damned entertaining. The central concept of the first book, of Disney Princesses as heroines that take charge, still is in full flower. Oh, and I love how the story of Ariel is transmogrified into something as tragic as the original Hans Christian Andersen story, and yet has unique elements to Hines' universe as well. I look forward to reading the third and final book in the series.

Six books in, the Merchant Princes series has come to an end. For those of you just joining us, Miriam Beckstein, journalist from Boston, discovered that she really is the scion of a family with a secret--with the aid of special clockwork knots, they can transport themselves between our world, and the primitive feudal world of their birth. They have used this power to amass wealth and power by through the lucrative trade of drug smuggling, using the Gruinmarkt as a way to get around the DEA. Miriam has been married, widowed, discovered a *third* history where a autocratic British empire runs North America and is on the cusp of revolution, and has learned there are more worlds still out there. Now, things come to a head. The Clan sends a message to the United States by using their worldwalking powers to explode a few stolen backpack nuclear weapons. This, frankly, leads to no good end, as President Cheney (President Bush is killed by one of the bombs) decides on a murderous course of revenge which is perfected by HIS successor. Cheney's revelation of worldwalking to the world leads to tensions between nations, including...well, that would be telling. And in the middle of it all, Miriam is just trying to find a place, a world, for herself and her people to survive. The Trade of Queens indeed... I got the sense, reading this, that Stross felt he wanted to be done with this universe. There is a weariness to the text and to the plot that I didn't detect in earlier volumes. There is some lovely speculation on why the worlds have different amounts of technology, but this speculation is sadly stillborn. The novel also suffers by ending Miriam's plot long before the end of the book, and she does not appear afterwards. A few glitches and typos (the inconsistent use of code names in and out of public) mar the text a bit as well. It felt unprofessional and sloppy. I know that this is not fair to the writer, but I am responding to the text as much as the talented Mr. Stross. This is not to say that its all bad. Stross' strong points hold here. His worlds show harsh contrasts and he follows the implications of worldwalking technology and its revelation to its terrible, stark conclusions. Even though I winced at the actions of the U.S. and other nations, I cannot deny that they are anything but extremely plausible. I suspect that if these novels had been written before Sept 11,2001, the tone would have been different, but in the post 9/11 world, things really are different. Looking back, I am glad to have read the series, but this volume definitely ends it on a bit of a whimper. It doesn't quite fulfill the enormous promise of the first novel. I think Mr. Stross, as talented as he is, still has things to learn about writing a full blown series. I look forward to seeing him try.

It's an audacious idea that you might laugh at if I describe it in print. Here goes. On a parallel world, giant insects grew to enormous size, threatening mammals, reptiles, and primitive humans in the process. In order to adapt to this threat, tribes of humans form mystical alliances with these giant insects, taking on their traits and abilities even while remaining human. Thus is Shadows of the Apt, the start of a new series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This world is moving slowly into an age of science, as the apt (technologically able) varieties of the Kinden, the Beetle, Ant and Wasps have become ascendant over the magic and superstitious Mantis and Moth Kinden. So ascendant in fact, that the Wasp Empire has decided to conquer the world, with flying soldiers that can both fight well and use magical bursts of energy to attack (think Janet Van Dyne from the Marvel comics universe). The Wasps are intent on subjugating all of the Kinden, of every variety, to their yoke. Opposing the Wasps, recognizing the threat for what it is, is an old Beetle college teacher who doubles as a spymaster, who has gathered and trained a diverse set of Kinden with the goal of using them to build a resistance to the city-state gobbling Wasps. But the Wasps are onto Stenwold, and his young charges find themselves facing the might and danger that the Wasps represent far sooner than they expected... I probably would not have picked up this book, with this gonzo (but brilliant premise) if I didn't trust the publisher. Prometheus/Pyr books has a reputation for a strong hand on the tiller, and if he was willing to bring the novel over from Britain to America and publish it, that gave me hope it was worthwhile. I am glad I picked it up on that basis. Its hard to classify this novel. It's clearly fantasy, given the powers of the Kinden, but the burgeoning of rapidly developing technology (trains and even better, AIRSHIPS) give a steampunkish feel to this universe. And there is apparently fading but real magic in this world, too, as exemplified by the Moth Kinden. More than the background stuff. The characters really shine. Human with insect like traits and proclivities, they are in the end still human, with human failings, foibles, motivations and personalities. From Stenwold Maker, college teacher and spymaster, to his coterie of family and proteges, and those they interact with in trying to oppose the Wasps, each character is well developed, has a story arc, and develops over the course of the story. And, the sign of a very good writer, Tchaikovsky manages to humanize the evil Wasps as well, providing characters on their side of the conflict with recognizable motivations and personalities, rather than faceless adversaries. The novel simply works on a number of levels. Magic, technology, interesting characters and at the core--an original idea. We see a number of Kinden, and get mentions of several more. Characters embody, and transcend, those Kinden stereotypes. I will pick up Dragonfly Falling, and continue to read of the Kinden.

Land of the Burning Sands is the second book in Rachel Neumeier's new Griffin Mage Trilogy. Sophomore books are hard. You've written the first book, and now the freshness and newness of your stuff as a writer is gone. You have to come up with a second act, and have something new to say, and, worse improve on your previous book. If you are writing a series, especially a trilogy, and your sophomore book is the *middle* book in the trilogy, that is really putting yourself behind the eight ball. Even high class writers have trouble with middle books in trilogies. Still, given the promise of the first book (Lord of the Changing Winds), I picked up this book with the hope that Neumeier would be able to carry the story and world forward well enough, even given the disadvantages and problems outlined above. I need not have worried. Land of the Burning Sands takes place, temporally, not long after the battle at the end of Lord of the Changing Winds. The focus, however, is no longer on Feiebriand, but rather on Casmantium, the antagonists of the first novel. We are introduced to Gereint, whose crime has made him a magically bound servant, and who has the opportunity to take advantage of the triumph of the Griffins in book one to work his way toward freedom. Along the way, he meets allies, a romantic interest (who is far more than just an ornament for the hero), and surprisingly, not as many Griffins as the first book... But that last part is all right. This book is something different than the first. Rather than focusing on Kes and Kairaithin (the latter appears, but only in the climax of the book), this book focuses on Gereint, the Amnachurdan family, and Beguchren, the (now) last real cold mage left in the entire kingdom. We also see Lord Bertaud from Feiebriand, and the Arobern, but otherwise there is no overlap between the two books in terms of character scope. This second novel is a book that focuses tightly on these characters, as they react to the consequences of the battle of the first novel, and the Griffins desire to punish Casmantium by taking excessive advantage of their victory. Advantage enough to possibly destroy the kingdom entirely, or change it beyond recognition forever. Without the problems of logistics and battles that I had in the first novel, many of the weaknesses that I found in the first novel simply are not an issue in this second book. This novel plays to Neumeier's strengths in a stronger way than the first novel did, although I don't think that this novel is really readable without reading the first. We get to see more and new magic, and like the first book, learn that when people in Neumeier's fantasy world come to terms with burgeoning magical power, they can literally move mountains. And characterization, a strength of the first novel, here, helps humanize and personalize the antagonists of the first novel, and puts them front and center as real human beings with their own concerns and problems. We learn just why the relations with Griffins are so strained, providing a dose of complexity to the relationship between the earth aspected humans and the air and fire oriented griffins. I loved it. Neumeier has reduced and eroded my concerns about the first novel, broadened and filled in her world, and made me excited to see the conclusion to this unique trilogy. I will definitely buy and read the third novel in this series. As for you, I suspect that if you read and enjoyed the first novel, you have already picked this up for your to-read pile. If you have not, I recommend reading Lord of the Changing Winds, first, to provide better context and impact for the events in this second Griffin Mage novel.

Once upon a time, at College, I came across a theory that was to me novel, audacious, and helped reinforce the idea that what I was going to learn in college was not just going to be more high school, but was a whole new type of learning. That theory, as expounded by one of my professors, was simple. All fairy tales, she said, every single one, had at its bottom a sexual context. Some were cautionary tales, she said, tales meant to warn young women about the dangers of sex outside of marriage. Others were symbolic rites of passage, suggesting the transformation between girl and woman by means of various symbols. Others were meant to show the transfer of bonds between a girl and her father and a woman and her husband. This old theory was firmly in mind as I began to read Allison's Wonderland, an anthology of erotic fiction based on fable, fairy tale, myth and legend. Readers of my reviews know that I am well and familiar with Ms. Tyler's previous work--both as an indefatigable anthologist and a writer of her own right. That work, in the main, however, has been kinky, sexy, hot contemporary erotica. Characters that you could meet walking down the street in Los Angeles, or encounter in a sawdust-floor bar in deepest Texas. This anthology, on the other hand, is a little different. Some of the stories in this collection, such asJanine Ashbless' Gold on Snow and Georgia E Jones' The Walking Wheel, are explictly set in a fairy tale or historical fantasy world. Others take the idea and theme of various stories and transform them into contemporary contexts, sometimes very much a tale sprinkled with magic. Charlie, in Portia Da Costa's Unveiling his Muse meets a fairy queen of his own creation.Sometimes, though, the only magic needed are the interactions of the protagonists (such as Ms. Tyler's own Rings on her Fingers. All are most delicious and the quality of the tales are high--and hot Ms Tyler has many of her "Regulars" contribute stories--herself, of course, Kristina Lloyd, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Sommer Marsden, and others. Ms. Tyler has slaved away at getting a high quality of authors in the genre to contribute to the anthology. There is a wide variety of fairy tale subjects to be found here, too. If you were afraid of reading ten variations on Red Riding Hood, relax, Ms. Tyler has carefully crafted an anthology of a wide variety of stories based on original fairy tale inspiration. She also has provided a wide variety of sexual themes, combinations, and kinks. What other anthology are you going to find an imaginary (or IS she?) lesbian dominatrix mermaid? Or a Greek God in an online chat room? The stories and authors temper and tone are appealing, in general, to a wide variety of readers of this genre. Readers of Ms. Tyler's other anthologies, especially, are going to be quite taken with this set of tales. Readers of the A. N. Roquelaure Beauty novels will be quite satisfied as well. Really, there are few readers of erotic fiction who will not find something to their taste in Allison's Wonderland. So, why not take a trip down the rabbit hole, and find out where it leads you? You won't regret it.

I love Griffins. Sure, Dragons are awesome. Dragons are mighty. Dragons go with heroic fantasy as much as, say, treasure laden dungeons. But Griffins... Combine a lion, king of the beasts, with an eagle, king of the air. That's a potent combination. A combination that speaks to me in a way that the coldly reptilian eye of a dragon doesn't always manage. Too, Griffins are not as well developed as dragons. Everyone knows dragons breathe fire (except when they don't). Everyone knows they love riddles (except when they don't). Smaug is the classic, archetypal dragon. Griffins aren't anywhere near as common, and so their natures are more of a blank slate...and thus room for a writer (or a GM) to invent as they like. I like seeing that potential fulfilled...and this latest read of mine makes it happen. Lord of the Changing Winds is the first book in a new trilogy called "The Griffin Mage" by author Rachel Neumeier. Set mainly in the country of Feierabiand, Lord of the Changing Winds is the story of Kes. A young healer in the backwater village of Minas Ford, her life, and the life of her country, are turned upside down by the arrival of large migrating band of Griffins. Why the Griffins have left their desert, what they want with Kes, and the machinations of the Kings of Ferierabiand and neighboring Casmantium are the Matter of this first novel. This is Neumeier's first adult novel, and there are striking strengths, and, unfortunately, some glaring weaknesses that mar but do not completely spoil the reading experience. Best of all is Neumeier's imagining of what Griffins are, and what they do. Their terraforming of the land around them into a beloved (to them) desert is a wonderful conceit and concept, and a strong rationale for why Griffins are usually found in places far isolated from man. The characterizations and emotional palettes of the characters, both human and Griffin, on all sides of the conflicts are strong. I felt myself wanting to know more about the Griffins, their culture, and the cultures of the two very different nations caught in the claws of the Griffins life. The quality of the writing is very good. Neumeier describes the Griffins lovingly, with the words of someone who loves these creatures as much as I. Each of the Griffins we meet is an individual, in appearance as well as personality. Her writing description of environment goes best when she is describing the Griffins desert, and less so when the action takes us elsewhere. The magic use in the novel was not strong enough for me to judge it. I need more data before I can decide whether it makes sense or not. I can see the lines of how it works, but I'd like to know more before I decide if I like it or not. The weaknesses in the novel on the other hand have to do with the movement of people, and more especially armies. There is a phrase in military circles: "Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics." As bad as it seems that armies fly around the map of Neumeier's world (and they do, I couldn't get a decent sense of scale), the worse part is the logistical trains. Neumeier does not seem to really have considered the logistics and supply chains needed to make the movement of these armies, especially at speed, practical and possible. From a 30,000 foot level. what the two armies are trying to do makes sense. But without a decent sense of scale, it seemed as realistic as wargaming in the video game Civilization IV. Happily, this is not as crucial to the enjoyment of the book as one might fear, but this lack of thought So, would you, gentle reader, like this book? If your preference is for fantasy fiction with strong characterization and the use of a neglected mythological creature, the Lord of the Changing Winds might be your cup of tea. If you prefer the military aspects of your fantasy reading to be more rigorous. you are going to be frustrated with swaths of this novel. Personally, I think the strengths and inventiveness and quality of the writing outweigh the negatives, and I have already make plans to buy and read the second novel in the series.

Back in 2001, Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer teamed up to create a new fantasy alternate history, The Shadow of the Lion. In this Heirs of Alexandria series, the Library of Alexandria never was burned, Christianity split along "Pauline" and "Petrine" lines. Oh, and magic works, and there are entities far older than man...and inimical to humans. The first book had the Slavic demon god Chernobog as its main antagonist,threatening the city state of Venice.A sequel, a few years later, This Rough Magic, introduced a new antagonist, Countess Elizabeth Batholdy, better known in our universe as Countess Bathory, who bathed in the blood of young women in an attempt to stay young. In the Heirs Universe, with magic powers at her command, she is even more villainous and dangerous, most especially because she so carefully hides her villainy and plots within plots, and most dangerous magical connections. I had thought the series dead, but much to my delight, the third novel in the series, Much Fall of Blood, continues the adventures of Prince Manfred of the Holy Roman Empire, Erik of Iceland and new allies and companions. This time, Manfred and Erik need to escort some diplomats across dangerous Balkan territory... Batholdy is back and as treacherous as ever, Chernobog remains working behind the scenes, the Byzantines are feckless, King Emeric of Hungary is ambitious, and the complicated politics of this universe adds the Mongols and their successor states into the mix. And did I mention a certain "Drac" from Transylvania who turns up? It's a delightful stew, in a most interesting and alternate early 16th century. There is always something interesting happening to the cast of characters, and there is character growth and development to suit fans of the series. We get resolution on plotlines going back to the last two novels in a satisfying manner, and there is plenty of room for sequels set in this universe.(There is one giant dangling plot line which is explicitly not resolved that suggests at least one more novel in the offing) As always, though, you shouldn't start here. You should start with The Shadow of the Lion, and find for yourself why this is a rich fantasy alternate history that I am very glad that the three authors have decided to return their talents to exploring.

Stories is an anthology composed by the profilic anthology Al Sarrantonio, along with fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. Bringing together talents ranging from Mr Gaiman himself to Tim Powers, Joyce Carol Oates, and chuck Palahnuik, its an impressive stable of authors for an all new anthology. The mission of the anthology is to dissolve the artificial barrier between genre fiction and mainstream fiction. providing a suite of stories that straddle the borderland between the often walled kingdoms of fantasy, and the realms of contemporary literary fiction. With such an impressive pedigree of writers, I started the anthology with high expectations. While I didn't think that the anthology would be the holy grail of a book that could help tear down that wall, I hoped that I could find good value for money in the stories. Unfortunately, for me, this proved not to be the case. I think that, for the most part, the authors in the anthology kept the stories *too* contemporary, shying away too much from genre conventions and trappings, in an effort to be more literary. Many of these stories would not be out of place in one of the many high school and college short stories anthologies that I read in English class. That's precisely the problem, and its a bug, not a feature, of the anthology. Oh, a number of the stories do not fall under this broad brush that I am painting. But for the most part, the stories remain too literary for their own good. Let me not say that the quality of the stories is bad. They aren't--not even the ones which remain closest to the literary side of the no man's land between contemporary and genre fiction. But the stories, one after another, just felt like they didn't really fulfill the mission of the anthology to my expectations. The lineup of the anthology is as follows: Table of Contents * Blood - Roddy Doyle * Fossil-Figures - Joyce Carol Oates * Wildfire in Manhattan - Joanne Harris * The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains - Neil Gaiman * Unbelief - Michael Marshall Smith * The Stars are Falling - Joe R. Lansdale * Juvenal Nyx - Walter Mosley * The Knife - Richard Adams * Weights and Measures - Jodi Picoult * Goblin Lake - Michael Swanwick * Mallon and Guru - Peter Straub * Catch and Release - Lawrence Block * Polka Dots and Moonbeams - Jeffrey Ford * Loser - Chuck Palahniuk * Samantha's Diary - Diane Wynne Jones * Land of the Lost - Stewart O'Nan * Leif in the Wind - Gene Wolfe * Unwell - Carolyn Parkhurst * A Life in Fictions - Kat Howard * Let the Past Begin - Jonathan Carroll * The Therapist - Jeffery Deaver * Parallel Lines - Tim Powers * The Cult of the Nose - Al Sarrantonio * Human Intelligence - Kurt Anderson * Stories - Michael Moorcock * The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon - Elizabeth Hand * The Devil on the Staircase - Joe Hill

In Dragon Keeper, Robin Hobb started a duology of novels set in her "Farseer" universe. After the events which allowed the Traders to become independent (as chronicled in the Liveship novels), a group of dragon eggs, entrusted to the inhabitants of the dense and deadly Rain Wilds rainforest, have hatched into pale imitations of the dragon Tintaglia, who laid them. A misfit group of keepers, hunters and dracophiles banded together to take the young proto-dragons deep into the Wilds in search of an ancient dragon city. Dragon Haven completes and concludes the story of those keepers, their dragons, and those with them, as the physical challenges of the deadly Rain Wilds, dissension amongst the crew of the Tarman, and doubts about whether the mysterious dragon city of Kelsingra even exists anymore threaten the health and well being of not only the expedition, but all of those associated with it. Robin Hobb is one of the most acclaimed writers of "low fantasy" (fantasy without tremendous amounts of magic), and the conclusion to the Rain Wilds series, Dragon Haven, shows us why. First, its all about the characters, especially female characters. Well drawn, complex, conflicted and most importantly, capable of change and growing, Hobbs characters continue the development they started in the first volume, and grow to meet the challenges they meet. Not only the young adults, Thymara, Tats, Rapskal and the other keepers. Not only the adults, too, Alise, Captain Leftrin, Sedric and the other adults. No, Hobb's deft hand extends to the dragons, as well. While dragons with personalities is not new in fantasy fiction, Hobb's still-growing dragons evolve and change over the course of the two novels, and more especially this one. Second, the milieu of the Rain Wilds is vividly described and invoked in her writing. The Rain Wilds, with significant (and frightening) changes resembles the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest that Ms. Hobb makes her home in, and that mise en scene, that sense of place, is wonderfully set before the reader. The Rain Wilds are a character as much as the human or dragon characters are. Unintentionally, perhaps, but the book has only reinforced my desire to see the area of the country that inspired the Rain Wilds. Thirdly, the plot. Although the first book ended in medias res, and clearly as the first book of a duology, we receive a solid resolution to the plots of the first book. Even the keepers of the messenger birds, Erek and Detozi, whose messages have served as a window to the world beyond the Tarman, have a subtle and small plot of their own that resolves nicely. Although part of the resolution seems to come a bit out of the blue, I realized at the end that I had, indeed, missed a Chekhov's Gun Ms. Hobb had subtly placed earlier in the series. Lastly, the inventiveness of Ms. Hobb's writing. Let me give you one example, her Dragons. Dragons are not quite as common as werewolves and vampires in novels these days, but a glance in the local F/SF section of the bookstore shows that Dragons have always been a big part of the Duchy of Fantasy. Hobb does not tread new ground; her dragons are new, and different, given their weaknesses, deformities and deficiencies that the dragons have been cursed with, and must overcome in order to become true dragons. I can't help but wonder what the young life of other fantasy dragons were like, now that Hobb has so expertly thought out and shown us the birth and development of young dragons in her world. You couldn't and shouldn't read this book before reading Dragon Keeper. Fans of Hobb will have already bought this book, of course, and their loyalty to her writing is rewarded. Start with Dragon Keeper, and continue on with Dragon Haven, and I would bet good money that you will become a fan of Hobb's writing, too. Highly Recommended.

Hello Miranda. The Tempest is one the most potent of Shakespeare's plays. The idea of the singular genius, living apart from the rest of humanity despite, or perhaps because of his unique gifts. An innocent, sheltered daughter of that genius, kept from the world. Caliban, who believes he is heir to Prospero's holdings and powers. Dark secrets. Hidden abilities. The conflict between the private and the public. The meaning of humanity. Is it any wonder that it makes for strong meat for subsequent writers to use for their own fodder? Dexter Palmer takes the story of the Tempest, and brings it into an alternate, steampunk infused early 20th century in The Dream of Perpetual Motion, a novel that lives in the borderland between science fiction and the world of literary fiction. The world of The Dream of Perpetual Motion is a borderland too, as the gadgets and clockwork men of Prospero Taligent have transformed Xeroville into a wonderland of automation and automata. In this world, we follow the story of Harold Winslow. A chance encounter at a young age brings him forever into the orbit of the mysterious, reclusive Prospero Taligent, who never leaves his fortress and tower like skyscraper, and as importantly, into contact with his adopted daughter, Miranda. Twisted and sculpted by her father's idiosyncratic methods of raising her, the novel is also the story of how these two characters meet, part, grow, change and finally come to terms with each other. "One world from you is all I want. Just speak one word, and we will begin. Name, rank and serial number, perhaps the misquoted lyrics from a popular song: anything will do. From there we'll move with slow, cautious steps to gentle verbal sparring, twice-told tales, descriptions of the scarred and darkest places of our old and worn-out souls..." The novel is also the story of magic versus science and miracles versus technology. Again and again, the transformation of the world, through the agency of Prospero, into a world of gears and clockwork men is described as a fundamental change in the world itself. While the agent of Prospero in the Tempest is one of the magician in a world losing magic, In the Dream of Perpetual Motion, like the HBO series Carnivale, Prospero is hastening the end of wonder and the beginning of the age of reason and science. The novel's virtues and strengths lie in the literary field more than the science fiction (to be specific, steampunk). The novel works as a literary study of Harold Winslow and his relationship with Prospero,Miranda (and briefly, Caliban). The automata, the fantastic gadgets, the amazing Zeppelin upon which Harold is imprisoned are really backdrop, stage, and setting for his story to unfold. The Dream of Perpetual Motion does not take the virtues of science fiction so much as it cloaks, shapes and colors its literary virtues in the trappings of gears and metal. What this means is that the novel is designed for, and clearly works on the level of contemporary fiction with a steampunk cast to it. Readers not used to science fiction, but eager to read and enjoy literary fiction will have the opportunity to get a taste of the fantastic along with the character studies found in this book. Conversely, readers who prefer science fiction and fantasy who want to peek outside of the great kingdom of fantasy and science fiction literature into the republic of literary fiction might find a steampunk-dressed, Shakespeare-invoking novel such as this a passport to that foreign country. Palmer clearly had fun writing this book, his first novel. In a tradition more suited to SF than literary fiction, he even tuckerizes himself into the book, a character with his name and profession appearing briefly at a party for the art of Harold's sister Astrid. In summation, Palmer has created an interesting hybrid novel, one that will reward readers of both genres that it straddles. Perhaps not as a colossus, but certainly as a bridge between two realms of the written world that do not often talk to each other.

Sometimes I read too broadly for my own good. Years ago, I discovered a fantasy debut novel by the author John Marco, a novel by the name of the Jackal of Nar. Nice and gritty military fantasy that I liked enough to email the author about. My interests and reading drifted, and I didn't follow up with his later works, and in point of fact John Marco slipped from my mind until I rediscovered his work. An email contest for a copy of his latest novel led me to obtaining a copy and reading where the author I had enjoyed a decade ago had gone in his writing. Starfinder is very different than the military fantasy novels of his past. Starfinder, aimed at a YA audience (although perfectly enjoyable by adults) is the story of Moth and Fiona. He's an orphan, the ward of an old knight, and dreams of flying in the skies even as he hears Leroux's stories of the Skylords, Faerie beyond a misty reach that laps against their mountain city home. She's the granddaughter of Rendor, military mind and creator of newfangled steampunk-ish flying machines called Dragonflies, as as well as a brand new, armed to the teeth airship, the Avatar. When Leroux dies, willing and bidding Moth to enter the Reach and aid his avian companion, Lady Esme, to return to her true form in the process, Moth and Fiona find themselves on the run into the mists of Faerie, the Reach. As they flee, they are chased by Rendor, in his massive flying ship, and the Skylords themselves, seeking the unique magical gift that Moth now has in his possession, and only he can wield. The Starfinder. Part steampunk, Part YA, part borderland-of-Faerie novel, Starfinder is the sort of novel that adults will wish they had available to read when they were 12. Instead of the more conventional fantasy novel a la Harry Potter, the world of the Skylords is an amalgam of several fantasy and science fiction subgenres that provides a stew rich enough for adults such as myself to enjoy as well as children. Combine steampunk technology with a coming of age story, and a faerieland with dragons, centaurs, mermaids and more, and mix well. Very well, as it turns out. Certainly, the plot and characters are somewhat simplified for a YA sensibility, to be sure. One shouldn't expect Joycean style characterization or Gene Wolfe-esque complications in a turgid plot in a novel aimed at teenagers, to be sure. With that aside, however, Marco has done a remarkable high-wire act in balancing these various concerns, and still producing a book that is enjoyable for older readers as well. There are strains and motifs of deeper and more complex themes layered in here in a way that hearkens back to his first novel. It's clearly the first of a series as given it is subtitled "a skylords novel". I am looking forward to the subsequent volumes.

An impious mercenary witnesses, and avoids an attack in a bordertown between two fractious medieval fantasy kingdoms, Langmyr, the site of the attack, and their implacable enemy, Oakharn. Also surviving the attack are a young woman, and the heir to the Oakharn lord killed in the massacre. This sets the stage for a complex web of alliances, struggles and strivings, as forces not only on both sides move to investigate and take advantage of the attack, but powers from beyond Oakharn and Langmyr as well. Godtouched champions of good and light maneuver against each other, and those caught in the middle simply try to survive, and wait to see if this massacre will lead to yet another conflict on already blood-soaked ground. Such is the fodder for River Kings' Road, a fantasy novel debut by Liane Merciel. The broad lines of the world and conflict she creates is nothing new for experienced fantasy readers. Medieval fantasy, magic based on devotion to one of a pantheon of deities, the basic trappings of a typical fantasy world. Digging a little deeper, the novel features a variety of multidimensional characters on a decidedly complex chessboard of groups seeking to quell or enflame, the fires of war and conflict between the two kingdoms. Merciel does a good job at the shades of gray between the the two characters who really are black and white. She also has clearly read and grokked the Anderson essay "On Thud and Blunder". She gets underpinnings right that many authors completely and utterly forget. Horses in her universe, for example, are *not* treated as motorcycles. The medieval feel of the world is pervasive and palpable. Faith has a role in this world that feels authentic and nuanced rather than "Crystal Dragon Jesus" . My only major complaint is that it is not extremely original. I've read much fantasy like this before, of varying qualities, degrees and shadings. Its familiar territory. Kingdoms with ambitious vassals, sorceresses, paladins, and so forth. Oh, and the novel really could have used a map and a glossary or concordance. While these two features in a fantasy novel are practically cliche by this point, when you have a novel geography and world, it is often useful for really getting a handle on who is where, where they are going, and how people are related to each other. It's a decent debut, even if not groundshattering. Merciel has ideas here that I would like to have explored further, and I hope her novel does well enough that readers such as myself will have the opportunity to discover them.

Jim Hines' The Stepsister Scheme is the first in a series of two (and at least a third in the pipeline books) that reimagine Fairy Tale princesses as more proactive heroines that are in no need of rescuing. Or, to put it more flippantly, Disney Princesses meet Charlie's Angels. The Stepsister Scheme introduces us to Danielle Whiteshore, Cinderella herself, newly married to Prince Armand (aka Prince Charming). Her new happy life as a Princess (and expecting a baby, no less) is short-lived, as her stepsisters, with unexpected abilities, kidnap Prince Armand for reasons unknown. Fortunately for Danielle, that serving girl Talia is secretly working for the Queen, and is a Princess herself, better known in the stories as Sleeping Beauty. Even better, she is awfully good with weapons. And it turns out that the Queen has another Princess in her service, a certain dark haired Princess named Snow White. She has arcane powers, especially with mirrors. Although Danielle cannot seemingly compete with this duo, she manages to get herself into their company on their mission to rescue Armand and figure out who or what is backing Danielle's stepsisters in this powerplay. Danielle proves to have powers and talents of her own, and takes possession of a weapon blessed by her mother, unusable by any save her. And thus, these three Princesses, armed and ready, set off to save a Prince. The book is first and foremost a light, funny and fluffy take on the idea of Disney Princesses, turning them into action heroines. it is entertaining on that level alone, but the book does go further, giving interesting speculations on the nature of faeries, reinterpreting the fairy tales the Princesses spring from, and more. There is even a bit of unexpected and tragically unrequited love (that actually is important as a plot point). Hines has clearly learned from his previous writing to make a readable and entertaining novel, whose sequels I definitely will seek out.

Prince of Storms is the fourth and final book in Kay Kenyon's The Rose and the Entire Quintet. Starting with Bright of the Sky,progressing through A World Too Near, and City without End, the Series has followed the travails of Titus Quinn. Quinn, a pilot whose accidental visit to the alternate universe of the Entire is used by the Minerva Corporaton to send him again, has grown from searching for his lost wife and daughter, to toppling the Tarig overlords of the Entire itself, and setting himself against his daughter. Now, in the fourth volume of the series, the themes and stories of the Entire and the Rose quartet come to a head as the different visions of the future of the Entire, and the Rose (our universe) clash together. Quinn's desire to keep Earth and the Entire safe is set against his daughter Sen Ni (Sydney)'s desire to have the Entire survive at any and all costs. And then there is Geng De, the Navitar friend to Sydney who has a decidedly different view of what should happen to the Entire. And finally, there are the Jinda Ceb. Former eternal enemy of the Tarig, now that the Tarig are overthrown, and they are part of the Entire, what is THEIR vision of the future of the two universes? In Prince of Storms, these larger issues are resolved, as well, and as always, set against the personal stories of Quinn, his daughter Sen Ni, his (first) wife Johanna, his Entire wife, Ji Anzi, and many others. Kenyon's big canvas and big questions are grand and epic, but her characters inhabit this complex pair of worlds. I have to admit, the ending to this novel, and the fates of the characters are understandable, fitting, and logical, given the sequence of events. What they are decidedly not, however, are predictable given the start of the series. This is not a simple quartet where the hero simply journeys across the landscape, picks up companions, overthrows the dark lord, and rules happily ever after. Kenyon's writing, narrative and story are far more nuanced than that. As always, one should not start here with this book, and I don't even think its realistically possible to fully enjoy this book without having read its predecessors. If you want wide canvas science fiction that is very much in the mold of planetary romance and epic fantasy, and with more than a dash of characters that will propel you through this landscape, I cannot recommend Kay Kenyon's The Rose and the Entire Quartet enough. I have heard that Kenyon is going to turn from SF to more straightline fantasy for her next work. Thanks to the strength of writing and the enjoyment of reading the Rose and Entire Quartet, this reader will certainly follow her into those realms as well. Read the Rose and the Entire Quartet, and find out for yourself why.

Never let it be said that I don't give people second chances. After my unhappiness with the story buzz-killing politics found when I read his The Tuloriad, I decided to try John Ringo, straight up, to see if another novel of his might have more of the good stuff and less of the thud and blunder. And so I picked up Into the Looking Glass, a completely different series and world, and unlike the Tulorian, written without a co-author. The set up and the basic scenario are interesting and clever: A high energy particle accident opens up potential gates to other worlds. Through these gates come contacts of several different kinds, including a malevolent force intent on turning the Earth into more territory for itself by an endless churning out of units that reminded me of the Zerg in Starcraft. A ragtag group of soldiers, a "redneck physicist" and others fight to keep the aliens off of our turf, make contact with friendly aliens, and try to keep a situation spiraling out of control from going completely off of the rails. I liked the basic premise as far as it went. The strength of the basic premise allowed me enough forward momentum to continue the book. Although implausible, I liked the "battletech" prototype technology employed against the hostile aliens. However, the negative aspects of the book outweigh the positives. After a good opening, the second half of the movie drags and loses momentum. Ringo also leaves a lot of dangling plot threads that seem more sloppiness than setting up a sequel. And the out-of-nowhere epilogue with trying to build a star drive is one of the worst tacked on last portions of a book I've read since Ender's Game. It almost seems like to me that Ringo was writing the book to frantically get the plot and scenario to the situation where we get that star drive, but the book is too short to make it plausible. It's a leap too far. Character development is implausible. Our physicist hero goes from never firing a gun to being an expert in a shockingly short amount of time. Other characters are flat, wooden and without personality. Also, the government response to "tuffy", an extra-dimensional alien that may literally be a manifestation of God, is implausible, at best. Female characters are another problem in this book. Sure, the novel mainly focuses on soldiers and a military response to it, but the number of significant female characters is thin on the ground. I expect better in a modern SF novel. Now the politics. I dislike novels which turn into political tracts and grist for the mill to promote a political viewpoint rather than an actual story.Into the Looking Glass takes pot shots at liberals and the French. However, what he has to say about Arabs made my blood boil. The schadenfreude the author and the characters seem to have at the plight of those in the path of a Gate in the Middle East disgusted me. "Any word on what we we're going to do?" Bill asked. "Well, the Teams are sitting back, watching the tube and laughing in their beer." Miller answered. "The Ayrabs (sic) can't fight for shit. There's a lot of cultural reasons for it...Wait a year and there won't be enough mujaheddin left on earth to bury the bodies...The ragheads will also see,clearly, what the U.S. can do if it cares enough to send the very best. Nuclear weapons rising where the mullahs cannot ignore them." If I want to re-read an alien invasion novel, I will read Pournelle and Niven's Footfall. There are two authors, no liberals they, who understand how to write an alien invasion novel, make it believable, and not take every opportunity to score political points. Sorry, Mr. Ringo, I'm done trying to read your work. Good luck in your future endeavors.

Disclaimer: I received this book via the Library Thing Early Reviewers program. John Brown's Servant of a Dark God is a debut fantasy novel that spoils some of its very good elements with some frankly clumsy mistakes and misccues. The fantasy world Brown posits a hierarchy of magical beings of which mankind sits at the bottom (although there are Gnostic hints this was once not the case) Magical power and talent is tightly and strictly controlled, and those who dare to use such magic are accused of "Slethery", that is to say, witchcraft. And yet there are those who practice and cultivate such arts in secret, both human and inhuman. Servant of a Dark God focuses on a family in a land recently conquered by overseas invaders, and the dynamics of the rights of the overlord conquerors versus the native population adds to the complexity and depth of the world Brown has created. Characters have confused, divided and conflicting loyalties that shows a depth that many writers with far more experience than Brown never learn or bother to give to their characters and worlds. The magic and arcane aspects of the universe are a bit of a "jump in the deep end", but Brown's ideas are fresh and relatively unique and I liked learning more and more about how it actually worked. Also, unlike the usual epic fantasy, this novel stays within and provides detail for a relatively narrow geographic area. There was no 1000 mile walks across the countryside. This is a local story, which is a nice change of pace from the usual novels of this type. I would have highly enjoyed this novel, with all of these interesting elements, except for two major missteps. First of all, the main character, Talen, was not one drawn well enough to be engaging and interesting enough for my taste. Brown manages to characterize and develop the secondary characters in a much better fashion than Talen, but since this is Talen's story, he gets the lion's share of the action and story. Worse, his story takes far too long to develop. It was a rough slog in the first third of the book, when one of the major mysteries of the novel was who stole Talen's work pants. I stuck it out, and matters improved, but my taste for Talen as a character was permanently ruined by a very weak opening. Second, Brown is a little too complex and clever for his own good. The obfuscation in the novel can be thick and heavy, and while any writer must balance infodump with telling the reader nothing, I think Brown withheld too much information at certain points, to the determent of the narrative. While puzzling out some of this was a positive to reading the novel, in some cases, it only served as a millstone to the reader. This book very nearly failed the "100 page test." By contrast, the last 100 pages of the novel were very good. Overall, though, like some of the best from Sanderson, or Drake, the fantasy here is not of the cookie-cutter epic fantasy type that is eptiomized in the Tough Guide to Fantasyland. I am unsure if I want to continue with subsequent novels in the series, due to not warming up to Talen as a character, but I think I would be inclined to read other novels by this author otherwise in the future.

Cursor's Fury is third in the Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher and continues the story of Tavi, the fury-less young man whose skill, intelligence and bravery have saved the Empire falling apart around him, twice. In this third novel, noew that his school studies are behind him, Tavi is sent off to be an officer in the Legions, in specific a new Legion formed by the Gaius in a bid to try and create a force that will not be caught up in the tensions rising in his Empire. However, the rise of a rebellion causes the Gaius to send Tavi's Legion out of the way--and, unwittingly, straight into the path of something even worse: An invasion of the canine, wolf like Canim. Tavi's Legion has been moved out of the way of the frying pan of the rebellion, into the fire of being the only force in the area between the Canim and a large chunk of the Empire. In the meantime, as always, the story follows Tavi's Aunt Isana, Uncle Bernard and Bernard's lover (now wife) Amara as they are sent to try and counter the rebellion threat. And just where is Tavi's "barbarian" friend, lover and possible lifemate Kitai in all this? The Codex Alera universe grows and expands in this third novel, and a couple of characters actions, going back to the first novel, are reviewed and reinterpreted. And again, characters and the world change, develop and progress. Butcher has a real sense of moving events in this books--things do not merely happen only when characters are there to see it, and none of his characters are perfect. And the ending. Anyone can write a decent opening to a novel. Butcher, with the sting in the tail of this ending, proves he can end a book as forcefully as he begins one. I am definitely looking forward to getting to and reading the next novel in one of the most entertaining epic fantasy series out there. Butcher's novels may not be high literary fantasy in the sense of George R R Martin, but they provide "value for money" in terms of entertainment. And, in a mild digressive criticism of Mr. Martin, Butcher has shown little trouble in turning out novel after novel in this entertaining series. Again, though, don't start here with this novel if you are new to the Codex Alera universe. Start with Furies of Calderon, and see for yourself.

The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Anil Ananthaswamy is not quite what it seems. While the title promises a look at the bleeding edge of physics and cosmology, this book in actuality has a broader canvas. Anathaswamy, a journalist at the New Scientist, focuses on the places he goes and the people he meets on his journey to understand the experiments, equipment and the people associated with them. High energy physics requires special conditions to have their detectors work. If you want to detect WIMPs, look for primordial antimatter, and try and find Higgs Bosons, you need special equipment, which just can't be built anywhere. In this book, Ananthaswamy chronicles his journeys to these often remote locations and talks with the people there. In the midst of this, the book is filled out (some might say padded) with a large number of digressions. In detailing his trip to Antarctica, for example, Ananthaswamy feels compelled to discuss the race to reach the South Pole first by Shackleton and Scott. It really has little to do with the physics experiments going on at Antarctica, and while its a fascinating bit of history, it is out of place as far as the title of the book is concerned. This portion, and almost all of the other portions of the book read like travelogue, as Ananthaswamy details the effort he has to take in order to get to some of the more remote locations where the physics experiments are taking place, such as Lake Baikal, the Chilean Desert, South Africa, and the Soudan Underground Mine in Minnesota. Those far more interested in the physics are going to be annoyed by these portions of the book. For myself, I liked these digressions, and accepted them as part of the matrix of the book. I was fascinated by, for example, his journey to Lake Baikal. I didn't know much about the lake, and in reading this book I learned as much, if not more about the lake than about the neutrino detector submerged there. It's a relatively conversational tone of a book, with no equations and not a lot of hard science. It's well edited and a very easy read. I think that the target audience for this book are those who have taken physics in high school, maybe some general science in College, but do not generally have a strong science background. My mother is has no special science background. and no post-secondary education I think she would be able to understand and enjoy this book. Conversely, those who have physics degrees, and have a stake in the "cage match" that is going on between String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity should stay far away from this book.Ananthaswamy does not "discuss the controversy", to coin a phrase. While the information on the experiments might be interesting to physics experts, the non physics portions of the book will probably not be to their taste. If you are looking for a book on the level of Lee Smolin or Brian Greene, no matter which camp you support, then this book is definitely not your cup of tea and you probably will be frankly bored by large portions of this slim volume. If your interest is more broad, and your commitment to controversies in the field are not intense, then this relatively painless look at the field, and more especially, the people and places associated with high energy physics is entertaining and informative, even if (and for me especially because) it does contain a wide ranging view of the people and the places the physics takes place.

nspector Chen has been to Hell, dealt with a misguided invasion of Hell by Heaven, corporate takeovers in Hell, and even overseen the ascension of a new Emperor of Heaven. What does "Snake Agent" Inspector Chen, his demon wife, his demon senechal partner (and new fiance!) and other allies do next? Well, would you believe get caught in the machinations of demonesses and a demigod from a different Hell (a Hindu one!) as well as deal with an assassination attempt on the (new) Emperor of Heaven himself? Shadow Pavilion is the fourth novel in Liz Williams' Inspector Chen series. Set in the early 21st century in the Chinese city Singapore Three, where the divine, demonic and real life intersect in very real ways. Not very assessable to those new to the series, Shadow Pavilion continues to expand the playground. While we have had hints there are other heavens and hells in the previous novels, but in Shadow Pavilion we not only meet denizens from them, but we actually have the characters travel to them. Williams does an excellent job making these new realms distinctly different than the bureaucratic-mad Chinese Hell, and the change in venue makes for an interesting contrast. I enjoyed this volume in the series overall, as always. Inspector Chen and his world are clearly subjects that Ms. Williams has found a niche in writing in, and I look forward to subsequent novels. My only complaint with this novel is its length. While the other novels are approximately the same short length, in this case, it feels like Williams was writing a bit to that length, rather than to the end point of a story. The pacing felt just a little bit off to me. This is not a serious flaw, but it is a noticeable one. Recommended to fans of the series. For others, I suggest trying out Snake Agent to see if you like Williams brand of modern Chinese supernatural urban fantasy.

Life in the jungle filled Rain Wilds is tough. Whether you live in half-ruined Bingtown, recently rebuilding from a war with a long time adversary, or if you live deeper in the Rain Wilds, where buildings are built into the trees, and social position is based on how low to the ground you can manage to live, its a tough life. The fact that the river itself is somewhat acidic and inimical adds to the dangerous ground. To this dangerous environment, add Dragons, hatched from Sea Serpent eggs, and protected by a bargain the egg layer has made with the Rain Wilds folk to care for the creatures. Mix in the fact that these dragons are stunted, malformed and some of them are nearly feral. These are far from your typical fantasy dragons! Set in (as you might already have guessed) Hobb's Farseer world, Dragon Keeper is the story of these malformed dragons, offspring of the true dragon Tintaglia (who featured prominently in the Liveship Traders series). Malformed and stunted as they are, they are not the creatures anyone expects, and are a burden on the Rain Wilders. The Dragons seize a chance to get the Rain Wilders to get them out of each other's hair by sending them, with their keepers, upriver, in search of a legendary city from the prior Elderling civilization. Dragon Keeper is also the story of two young and very different women. Thymara has the mutations and markings that make her a semi-outcast even amongst her people, and it is no wonder that she leaps at the chance to escape her home environment and join that expedition to repatriate the dragons further upriver. By comparison, Alise is a sheltered young woman, bound in a marriage that is literally only in name, whose study of scrolls and documents makes her, improbably, the foremost theoretical expert on Dragons and their former world. She, too, with both hands, leaps at the chance to escape her home life and join the expedition. There are a small flock of secondary characters as well that mainly serve as relief and contrast to Alise and Thymara (although compared to many authors, they serve very well as defined characters).Sedric, secretary to Hest, and unwilling companion to Alise on her journey, is close as they come to being a third main character in the novel. I've read a few of Hobb's novels before (and under her pen name Megan Lindholm as well). Like those previous novels, she provides solid characters, a well fleshed out and thought out world, and has captured the magic of "one more page, one more chapter" in her writing style, leading the reader on to continue the journey. In addition to cutting between the two main characters, the chapters also have the text of messages sent between bird keepers, which provides a third, objective view of some events and helps flesh out the world as really extending beyond the words on the page. While I think reading some of the previous Farseer books (especially the Liveship Traders--there are Liveships in this novel, naturally) might be useful for understanding some events, since most of this book is set in the isolated backcountry, I think this book can serve as a gateway book to Hobb's work. The only weakness to the book, and its endemic to a lot of fantasy these days, is that this is an unfinished story.This is the first in a duology and even as such, this first novel does not stand alone. However, given the richness of the book, I will *definitely* be looking to getting and reading the second book when it comes out. I also need to fill in the backlog of books of Hobbs in the Farseer world I haven't read--Dragon Keeper helped remind me of the skill and craft in her worldbuilding and characters. If you are looking for a low magic fantasy world with a different take on dragons, or if you are a previous fan of Hobb's Farseer world, I recommend Dragon Keeper to you.

NB: I received a review copy of this book. Football (Soccer to us Americans). Romeo and Juliet (with a dash of Cyrano de Bergerac). Secret pasts of characters. Cooking. Such is the Matter of Unseen Academicals, the latest Discworld novel from Terry Pratchett. Centering on Unseen University, Pratchett takes us not only into the doings of the wizards there, but the "little people" who make the University work. We meet Glenda, head of the Night Kitchen and possibly one of the best cooks anywhere. We meet Trev Lively, son of the famous football player Dave Lively (who scored an unprecedented four goals in his career in the old and illegal version of football played on Discworld's streets). We meet Juliet, a fashion star waiting to be born from her humble beginnings in the kitchen. And we meet the mysterious Mr. Nutt, who is from Uberwald. He's a candle dribbler, but also amazingly educated for someone of his station. Oh, and he is a monster of unusual stripe... How is it? Well, while I was entertained, UA is frankly, not as good as some of Pratchett's best novels. There are a few things here which are not as well integrated as other plotlines in the novel. Stuff that felt like they should be more important, or were going to be, but never quite came to fruition. I was expecting more out of them than we actually got. Its possible, due to my scattershot reading of Pratchett's work that there are some characterization issues that I am missing. Lord Vetinari feels different than he does in the novels I have read, for example. On the other hand, a very good Pratchett as opposed to a first-rank Pratchett is still better than a lot of the dreck out there. And there are wonderful things in the novel that frankly made me laugh aloud while reading it. The footnote about the Explorer's Guild, for example. Or the offhand mentioned consequence of yet another strange addition to the Watch. The character growth of Ponder Stibbons, who is rapidly becoming a force within the University to rival Ridcully himself. Or the climatic game for that matter. (although there is an incident in the game involving how the Librarian is removed from goalkeeper that felt very wrong). I have a large gap in unread Pratchett novels that was little handicap in reading this novel, and so I can unreservedly recommend this latest Discworld novel to readers of all levels of familiarity with Pratchett's work. Is it up to his highest standards? No. On the other hand, only very good Pratchett is still much better than much of the competition.

In this third volume in the Inspector Chen series, Liz Williams continues the stories of the strangest and most interesting police partner duo in fantasy or straight fiction--Inspector Chen and Seneschal Zhu Irzh. The one is a devotee of the goddess Kuan Yin working as a "Snake Agent" for the Singapore Three police force. His partner is a liaison from the Chinese Hells, and is, in fact, yes, a demon. Together they fight crime! That may sound flippant, but by this third novel, Williams really starts making this pair work. Ostensibly, while the novel is about the titular character, who is a little boy who is far more than he appears, the novel positively sings and dances with delight when Chen and Zhu are back on screen. Be it Zhu's complicated relationship with his lover and his family, or Chen's attempts at trying to do the right thing in Earth AND in Hell, the buddy cop routine never fails to please. I recently read a story by Williams in the Songs of the Dying Earth anthology and now, based on that, I can see that Vance is an inspiration for these characters, and some of the descriptive motifs and styles in these novels. The amazing "hell-bound train" is an image that has been indelibly burned into my memory. Williams is also willing to avoid the reset button. Things have changed from the start of the first novel, and through the second, and the balance of things changes by the end of this one as well. Its an organic process of her world growing, developing and changing in a real way. You shouldn't start here, of course. And the start of this novel is a little slow. But when the novel gets on all cylinders, Williams shows that she is an entertaining, engaging, and most talented fantasy novelist. I am looking forward, eagerly, for the next novel in her Inspector Chen series. After reading this, I am pretty sure you will, too.

I mentioned in a review of The Dragon's Nine Sons that Roberson's marriage of AH science fiction with space opera in the off-planet stories of his Celestial Empire world is a tasty combination that pays dividends for the reason. Set at about the same time as The Dragon's Nine Sons, Three Unbroken is another novel of the Chinese-Aztec war around Mars. While the Dragon's Nine Sons took its inspiration from "The Dirty Dozen", the inspiration for Three Unbroken is "Band of Brothers". In an afterword, Roberson confirms my suspicions that Ambrose's work was a major influence on this novel. Three Unbroken tells the story of a trio of soldiers of the Chinese military forces: a female Indian bomber pilot, a Texan infantryman and a Manchu nobleman who becomes a commando. The novel follows their stories in the War against the Aztecs on Mars until the explosive (and given that this is based on WWII, very appropriate) finale. The novel also takes physical and thematic inspiration from the I Ching. The novel is divided into 64 chapters, one for every line of the divination device. The ideas and concepts from the I Ching are reflected in the events of each chapter. While I am not an expert on the I Ching, I did see the parallels. Roberson does a good job of lining up the events to the I Ching lines without making it seem forced. Overall, the novels show the development of the soldiers into masters of their arts. Sticking to the mostly low level viewpoint, instead of just the Grand Strategy, Roberson shows the individual soldier's point of view of war, and shows it well. We get some battle and action sequences for all three soldiers, too. Each of the soldiers is challenged, and learns that War is often a matter of not just grit and combat, but the Unexpected. Once again, as I have said in other reviews of Roberson's work, while his work might not be as literary as some other SF writers, Roberson knows how to write entertaining and interesting science fiction. Roberson writes precisely the kind of SF that I want to spend my recreational time reading. Fans of his work will be quite satisfied with Three Unbroken and I think its a good (although The Dragon Nine Sons might be slightly better) way to get introduced to his Chinese Empire AH stories and novels.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book through the kind offices of the Publicist of the publisher, Tachyon Publications. The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder, is an anthology of stories across the eponymous magazine's 60 year history. Although I am not a heavy reader of SF magazines (when I read SF stories, its usually in anthologies or collections), it is clear to me, immediately, that F&SF has had a wonderful history of publishing some of the best stories in SF history. And a swath of those stories are ably collected by Mr. Van Gelder in this collection. The stories range in publication date from 1951 (Alfred Bester's Time and Third Avenue) to 2007 (Ted Chiang's story The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate). Arranged in chronological order, the stories show the changes and evolution of the SF story with a high quality of selected stories throughout. Its not just a "most famous" story group either. While there are genre-famous stories like Flowers for Algernon, the Deathbird, and Harrison Bergeron, there are stories that are in that class, but much well less known. (Zelazny's This Moment of the Storm, for instance, or Peter Beagle's story sequel to the Last Unicorn, Two Hearts come to mind) With that in mind, I devoured this book quickly and gleefully. I enjoyed the touchstones to the classics and old favorites, and discovering new (to me) stories as well. Gelder has done an top notch job. Genres that forget their history are condemned to fail by that forgetting. Collections like this help the genre of SF keep in mind its roots and history. Any serious fan of science fiction would do well to dip their oars into this volume. The lineup: Of Time and Third Avenue, Alfred Bester All Summer in a Day, Ray Bradbury One Ordinary Day with Peanuts, Shirley Jackson A touch of Strange, Theodore Sturgeon Eastward, Ho!, William Tenn Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut This Moment of the Storm, Roger Zelazny The Electric Ant, Philip K Dick The Deathbird, Harlan Ellison The Women Men Don't See, James Tiptree Jr (Alice Sheldon) I see You, Damon Knight The Gunslinger, Stephen King The Dark, Karen Joy Fowler Buffalo, John Kessel Solitude, Ursula K Le Guin Mother Grasshopper, Michael Swanwick macs, Terry Bisson Creation, Jeffrey Ford Other People, Neil Gaiman Two Hearts, Peter S Beagle Journey into the Kingdom, M Rickert The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, Ted Chiang

Disclaimer: I received this book as an ARC from the Amazon Vine program. The Tuloriad is an ancillary novel in the Legacy of Aldenata (Posleen) universe of Eric Flint. The Tuloriad was written in collaboration between Flint and Tom Kratman. I only knew the basics of the Posleen universe and the premise before taking up this novel. In the Posleen series, alien races make first contact with man, in an effort to manipulate them as warriors against the galaxy-wide threat of the centauroid Posleen, an aggressive warrior species. The novels in the series, in its main lines and its side branches, explore the war between the Posleen and the humans, and other conflicts as well. The Tuloriad is set after the Posleen have been evicted, with enormous damage, from their occupation of portions of the Earth.The novel follows two strands--a group of humans sent by the Pope to try and give the Posleen a human faith in order to try and civilize them, and a group of the Posleen fleeing after the disaster of the invasion of Earth. While the military SF aspects of the book and some of the technological speculations and ideas are most interesting (high tech halberdiers for the win!), the rest of the novel is weak and underwritten. Although while I found the sentient embodied AI the most interesting single character, I didn't feel the human "mission" to the Posleen as interesting as the Posleen exodus thread. They were necessary to the finale, but otherwise could have been excised completely. There was a good novel in here, or bits of one, but its hard to find. The other problem with the novel is the afterword. Niven says that the technical term for someone who attributes the POV of a novel and its characters to its author is "idiot". However, the afterword makes it clear that the tone and themes of the novel is, indeed, a feature and not a bug. There are novels and authors who manage to use their faith and religious beliefs in a positive and constructive way. In this novel, and especially in its afterward, the authors instead use it like a bully club against anyone of divergent beliefs, Muslims and non-believers in particular. If I had read the afterword first, as I sometimes do, I would not have continued with the novel at all. Which is a shame because, despite the weaknesses I said above, there are a few things to find and enjoy in the novel and I would have missed them. I find I have no desire to return to Ringo's Posleen universe, although I suspect devotees of the universe will enjoy this volume far more than I did.

With Age of Misrule: World's End, Mark Chadbourn's oeuvre of Celtic gods and monsters returning, with catastrophic results, to the world, finally reaches U.S. Publication. Done in a handsome edition with great art by John Picacio, the book soon transports the reader into a world that starts off familiar. Only at first. We met a set of characters in-then contemporary Britain (the book was originally written in the 1990's). Jack, Ruth, Laura, Shavi, and Ryan slowly come together, under the mysterious guidance of Tom, as events slowly reveal that the old creatures and Gods of Celtic Mythology are not only real, but they are returning to the world to take their place in (mis)rule once again. Technology starts to fail, and magic starts to rise again. But the return of magic and magical beings, and magical items is no good thing. And worse. the five characters have been signaled out by the forces of darkness for reasons the characters themselves do not at first understand. Still, when a dragon firebombs a freeway in order to try and kill you, and the Wild Hunt comes after you to stop you from doing something that you yourself do not know, its time to, flaws and all, to try and be a hero. To try and make sense of a changing world, and better still, try and guide its change for the better. The characters are three dimensional and none are cookie cutter protagonists or sad-sacks. Chadbourn's writing is both poignant in the stories of the character as well as describing vividly and engagingly the encounters and conflicts these characters face as they deal with the too-rapidly changing world. Strong use and understanding of remixed mythology and Faerie (which reminded me, in a different vein, of Bear's Promethean Age novels). Excellent set pieces. Characters that grow, change and you learn to care about. Forget derivative pablum fantasy. This is some of the good stuff. In Silverlock terms, its clear that Chadbourn has made a pilgrimage to Hippocrene and isn't afraid to write like it. I've already bought the second book in the series. I think, after reading this one, you will too.

Cathy Wurzer is well known to Minnesotans as a host of Minnesota Public Radio's Morning Edition, and is one of Minnesota's best journalists. In this book, Tales of the Road, Highway 61, a companion to a PBS documentary of the same name (which I have not seen), Cathy Wurzer travels the quintessential highway in Minnesota, Highway 61. Memorialized by Minnesota native Bob Dylan, Highway 61 stretches from the Canadian Border at Grand Portage and goes all the way to the Iowa border (although its re-signed as Interstate 35 for a good portion of its route). Wurzer takes us along this entire route, north to south, stopping at the famous locales, as well as the less heralded locations. Even more poignantly, like her visit to the tragic tale of rollingstone colony, only the site and a few ruins remain of one-interesting venues, attractions and historical sites. This is where the power and strength of Wurzer's writing comes through best. Her stories about the famous Split Rock Lighthouse, Tobie's, and the Aerial Lift Bridge are strong writing, interesting and show good scholarship. Its her stories about the venues which are lost or are fading away, venues that, even though I have traveled much of Highway 61, I've never *heard* of, is where the strength of the book lies. The next time this amateur photographer and transplant into Minnesota travels Highway 61, I will be taking this book along, so that I can find the sites and places, and stories that Wurzer has so ably brought to life. Any Minnesotan, local or expat, would do well to have this book as part of their library.

Kevin J Anderson is well known in SF circles for his "Saga of Seven Suns" SF series, and more visibly, for his extensions of the Dune universe written by Frank Herbert's son Brian. Here, in The Edge of the World, Kevin J Anderson tries something new--a fantasy novel. As it so happens this is the first novel of Anderson's I have read, and so I came into reading this novel unaware of first-hand knowledge of his writing styles and choices. The Edge of the World is billed as the first of the "Terra Incognita" series, and is set in a very low magic (lower than even, say, George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones world) universe. The level of technology, aside from gunpowder, is pre-Renaissance, early Age of Exploration. And therein hangs the hook for his story. Two squabbling nations divided by different interpretations of a common origin myth find themselves, by bad luck and coincidence, drawn into a protracted religious-political conflict. In the meantime, both nations strive to explore the world beyond the continent that houses both Tierra and Uraba. There is a third, smaller, religious group that lives in both lands and tries to get along in the midst of the war. Although I am sure Anderson did not intend it, I got a Guy Gavriel Kay vibe from the parallels between his three factions and the Kindath, Asharites, and Jaddites. The book is divided into short chapters--over 110 in a 570 page volume. Plenty of POV characters in all three groups. Readers used to large casts and whiplash changes between POV characters will be familiar with the technique. Having weaned myself on Martin and Erikson, I didn't have a problem with the structure of the book. Too, many of the plot contrivances and coincidences seemed fine, if suitably tragic to continue to simmer and increase the conflict between the two nations. Characters show up and often die quickly, again, much like Martin and Erikson. However, I felt a couple of the twists and turns in the tale seemed like needless cruelty and not important to the overall plot. I didn't see their point and it was somewhat offputting. Also, while Anderson mostly does a good job to show that both sides in the religious-political conflict are capable of atrocity and evil, the finger does seem a bit on the scales to one side, at least to my perception. With those concerns aside, however, the Age of Exploration is an interesting time period in Earth's history, and Anderson captures it well in his fantasy universe. He's an accomplished writer, that comes across very well. And aside from some of the plot concerns, I was more than well satisfied with character development, growth and change. Anderson paints on a pretty big blank map (a metaphor used in the book) and I do want to see how the map fills in, especially given the discoveries made by characters from both nations in the novel. I am intrigued enough by the novel's strengths to want to continue to read the series, and perhaps eventually try his Saga of Seven Suns novels, too.

Imagine a balloon circling a distant star. Imagine this balloon is thousands of miles in diameter. Imagine that within this balloon there are societies clustered around fusion-powered miniature suns, all floating in the atmosphere within this balloon. Societies, polities, nations existing in low gravity who sail the skies on ships and bicycles of a mostly steampunk level of technology. A world of action, adventure, and swashbuckling goodness. Welcome to Virga! Sun of Suns introduces this audacious and awesome setting created by its author, Karl Schroeder (who I previously enjoyed his Lady of Mazes). Virga is sui generis as a setting, and Schroeder has carefully constructed his world to tell the kind of stories he wants. (There are good reasons why technology, aside from the fusion suns, technology is low, reasons that are revealed in the novel). Clearly influenced by Dumas-like fiction, Sun of Suns is the first in a series of novels set in Virga. Sun of Suns tells the story of Hayden Griffin. His family was killed in an attempt to free his nation of Aerie from dominance by the nation of Slipstream, and he has sworn revenge and to continue his parents work to free Aerie. Events cause him, however, to join to an attempt by a small fleet from Slipstream to follow a map that may lead to a treasure beyond price that will give a decisive advantage over its own deadly rivals.Rivals that are no friends of Aerie, either... Ships and bicycles that sail the skies. Nations and pirates. Sword duels and pistols. I am reminded of a lower tech milieu of the Disney movie Treasure Planet, except everything is contained within this balloon. We get hints of what the universe is like of this clearly artificial world, and are introduced to a character exiled from that outside world into Virga. From Hayden Griffin's desire for revenge, to Admiral Fanning's quest for a decisive edge for Slipstream, to his wife,Venera Fanning, who has an obsession with a bullet wound from years ago, to the mysterious armorer from beyond Virga, Aubri McMallan, not only is the novel a rollicking adventure with flying ships, it also has larger-than-life characters appropriate to the setting. My only complaint, perhaps is that Sun of Suns is a bit too short. Still, that only means that I will *definitely* be reading more of the three additional novels Schroeder has written in this amazing world. If you are the type of fantasy and SF reader who enjoys Dumas-style action and adventure in addition to your SF fix, hoist sail and get thee a copy of Sun of Suns. You won't regret it.

For years, the team of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller have been turning out character-oriented science fiction in what is termed the "Liaden Universe", a future space opera universe where alien species and several factions of humanity jostle against each other. In such a universe, there is limitless room for characters and stories, and the writing team has been filling in that universe eagerly. Fledgling is the latest effort in this vein and a bit different than some of their previous work. Fledgling takes the story of a character who shows up in I, Dare, Theo Waitley, and shows us her origins. While Delgado is not precisely an isolated world, its isolated from the culture of much of the rest of the galaxy by its restrictive, safety oriented society and local customs. The reader is plunged into this world, and some parts of this work better than others. Some changes in language and diction felt too artificial to me, as if Miller and Lee wanted to use neologisms for common words, ideas and phrases in modern English. While the intent was to make this an alien world, some of them felt like they were using a new word for the sake of a new world. Also, the character arcs of Theo's estranged parents does not work that well, either. While the revelation about the change in their relationship is written very well, what works less are other aspects of their personality. There are some flashbacks to their first meeting years ago, for example, but it doesn't feel as fully written as the main plot of the novel, and it seems to just end. I think I understand why they included it, but I think it might have been excised or truncated further without harming the novel. Also, in their individual arcs in the present time, Kamele and Kiladi don't come across quite as well as Theo does. They are not poorly drawn, just not as well developed. What works better, especially once she leaves her world, is the character arc of Theo Waitley herself. The title, Fledgling, is telling. Theo starts off as a clumsy girl, and learns to spread her wings, in a more than metaphorical fashion. Especially once she leaves the stifling, stuffy world of Delgado, Theo's personality, skills and talents come into full flower. The latter portions of the novel that focus on her are the strongest parts of the entire book and make the previous portions of the novel worthwhile to read through to get to. This is the story that any and all Liaden fans will relish and enjoy. I think the slowness and difficulties early in the novel are a bit offputting, but by the end of the novel, I was reasonably satisfied with the novel. Liaden fans will want to read this story to see Theo's backstory, of course. YA readers looking for a SF novel could do well here, too. I don't think that an adult reader of science fiction who wants an entry point into the Liaden novels are best served with this book, however. Overall I recommend the book wholeheartedly to Liaden fans (who will not need my blessing to do so), and to a lesser degree to YA SF readers.

Although I've read some of Brunner's SF, I had not heard of this book until I started playing the White Wolf RPG game Exalted. That book lists The Compleat Traveller in Black as an inspiration, and so, even though it is out of print, I was inspired to eventually find a copy of this book and read it. It feels very much like some of Moorcock's Melnibonean work. The world is young, and still in many ways in the grip of the elder era of Chaos. The laws of science, logic and reason are still not in full evidence, with the laws of magic and chaos still trying to hold their ground. Enter into this realm the Traveller in Black. The Compleat Traveller in Black collects a number of stories Brunner wrote about a mysterious figure who works for Order and reason. In Moorcock terms, he is a definite champion for Law. The traveler encounters forces of elemental chaos, and by actions both subtle and gross, by himself and through sometimes unwitting accomplices,works to impose reason on the world. He often does this by granting wishes. One to a customer, but the results are not often what the wisher expects. Sometimes, not even the Traveler himself is fully aware of the consequences of the wishes... The stories have a unity of voice and vision even though they were written over a period of twenty years. The traveler is a character difficult to get to know, but we get an interesting portrait of him and the world he is helping fashion. We see through the stories how his actions shape the world around him, diminishing its magic, increasing its stability. And indeed, in the end, he creates a world that not only does not need him, but is positively opposed to his further existence. I found this an interesting counterpoint to Vance's Dying Earth, set at the opposite end of time. I think the Dying Earth is a better realized milieu, overall, but certainly, many fantasy fans will enjoy this look at the morning of the world by Brunner.

Nominated for the 2005 Hugo Award for best novel (losing to Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell), River of Gods is an ambitious look at 2047 India by Ian McDonald. As India approaches its 100th birthday, it has balkanized into a number of semi independent nations. Technology runs high here, higher than in some parts of the world. Artificial Intelligences reach for above-human sentience even as "Krishna cops" try and prevent them from doing so. The lack of a monsoon for years has caused two of the nations to go to the brink of armed conflict. And in space, the Americans have discovered an asteroid is actually an alien artifact, seven billion years old, which inexplicably has a tie to several of the characters... As I said, its an ambitious novel, with a large cast and a large canvas upon which McDonald draws. In an almost Bollywood like fashion, all of the plotlines and characters, disparate at first, eventually have their stories draw together. McDonald pulls no punches and immerses the reader immediately in unfamiliar culture, terms, customs and societies. It takes a lot of work to keep up in this novel, but once the basics are down, the novel starts to sing. (This is definitely not a novel to give to a first time reader of science fiction). In point of fact, with its numerous characters at all sorts of social strata, its social commentary, and its vision of the future, the novel feels to me like McDonald's attempt to re-write Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (but without the New Wave experimental narrative and textual techniques). I don't think the novel quite lives up to its ambitions, and a few of the characters did not much appeal to me as much as the main plot did. However, the vision of India's future is wall-to-wall, engrossing and interesting. Throw in some snazzy technology, and even a bit of humor (I dare you not to laugh when you discover the fate of Bill Gates in this timeline) Mcdonald has a collection of stories set in this world (Cyberdad Days) which, on the strength of this, and my enjoyment of it, I fully intend to buy and read. Recommended.

The scene is World War II. Native American Bomber Pilot Roger Two Hawks, off course on a mission to bomb the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania, has a mid air collision with a German plane over enemy territory. Along with Pat O'Brien, turret gunner, he is the only person to successfully manage to get a parachute open and descend to the countryside. Hawks felt something odd just before the crash, however, and that oddness is reinforced when Hawks and O'Brien land. The people are all wrong, with technology distinctly primitive (~World War I era) by even backwater Rumanian standards. What's more, they speak a language that Hawks recognizes as a derivative of an Iroquois tongue. Hawks, as a reader of science fiction and comic books has figured out what has happened. Somehow he and the gunner have wound up in a parallel history. One where the Siberian tribes that would have gone to America (only a chain of islands here), instead rolled west and vastly changed subsequent history. But events quickly sweep up Hawks along, as this world has a World War on a scale similar to his own going on... Two Hawks from Earth is the story of Roger's quest to make his way through this world, and find a way to get back home. Along the way, his skills in this slightly technologically backward world are much in demand. And, of course, like any good adventure novel, there is always the love interest. Some of the science (especially the ethnography) is outdated and flat out wrong. Given that, though, Two Hawks from Earth does what Farmer wrote very well--action and adventure, with a protagonist making his way in an unfamiliar world. I read this book years ago in its bowdlerized and shortened edition (The Gate of Time) and I wondered if the re-read would hold up to my memories. I noticed the differences in the text, but the basic premise of the novel and the writing still held up for me. I enjoyed it heavily. Fans of Farmer should not miss this reprint of a long-out-of-print novel, and fans of Alternate History novels will appreciate this as well. Its not a door stopper that people such as Turtledove put out, Farmer keeps the pace crackling and the novel and story never get dull. Sometimes you can go back into your reading past and come away delighted again. I certainly was in this case.

Academ's Fury is the second novel in the Codex Alera sequence by Jim Butcher. Although he is far more well known for the Dresden Files novels, here in the second book of the Codex Alera series, he starts to really show he can do epic fantasy too. The novel takes place some time after the events of the first novel. Tavi, as promised in the conclusion of the first novel, is now a student at the Academy in the capital city, and serves Gaius Sextus, the ruler of Alera, as a page. The political threats that ring Gaius threaten to draw Tavi in, especially given his relocation to the heart of the Empire. And then there is a mysterious rising of strange creatures in the north that threaten his uncle Bernard and his lover, the cursor Amara, and the Marat as well. And then there are the savage Canim, who through their Embassy are clearly up to something... As ably as he showed the pastoral Calderon Valley, in this novel, the partial change of venue (although there are plenty of scenes in this novel too) to the city shows good worldbuilding, and a whole host of new characters, intrigues and venues. The old characters grow and develop, too. Tavi, Kitai, Amara, Bernard and even Gaius are not set in stone, but grow and change. Come for the world building, stay for the characters and their personal stories. The appetite that was whetted by listening to the first novel has only been fueled by this one. Readers of the first novel will definitely want to read this one. And, probably like me, will want to read the third one in short order.

Edited by George R.R. Martin (who contributes a story as well) and Gardner Dozois, this anthology is another journey to the Dying Earth world created by Jack Vance. Vance himself provides an introduction, and Dean Koontz provides an appreciation. But the heart and meat of the anthology are the stories. Many of the authors do a remarkable job in capturing the essence of the Dying Earth. The language, the picaresque characters, the strange rambling adventures. Some of the stories feature characters from Vance's stories as main protagonists, others rely on those characters as plot devices, or even just as background color. So how did they do? Given the truism that anthologies can vary in the quality and interest stories and authors bring, I thought the quality of the stories was uniformly high. I was gratified that my high expectations were met by the authors and their stories. And the range of subjects and stories is high. Therein you will find more doings of Cugel (contradictory stories, if you wanted to try and take all of these stories as canonical), an architect who uses his skills to defend a castle, magicians large and small scrambling for power as the sun dies, and more, much more. Dan Simmons has the only novella, the centerpiece of this anthology, The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz. It's one of the stronger stories in the volume. Like his digestion of Keats in the Hyperion novels, and the Iliad in Ilium, Simmons shows that he truly digests and does a good Dying Earth. Besides his story, I particularly liked Wright's Guyal the Creator (continuing the character's story from the Vance story), Matthew Hughes' Grolion of Almery. (Hughes' own novels show his prior affection for homage to Vance), Paula Volsky's The Traditions of Karzh (showing how a would be wizard really gets his power) and Walter Jon William's Abrizonde (the aforementioned story about a hero architect). But, really, few of the stories are poor, although I do wonder why Neil Gaiman felt the need to tie in the real world with the Dying Earth in his tale. I found that a bit atonal, even if its a decent story. In any event, fans of the Dying Earth should not miss this anthology, especially given the list of authors and the love and care they have given the world of Messr. Vance. The full list of stories: The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale --Robert Silverberg Grolion of Almery --Matthew Hughes The Copsy Door --Terry Dowling Caulk the Witch Doctor --Liz Williams Inescapable --Mike Resnick Abrizonde --Walter Jon Williams The Traditions of Karzh --Paula Volsky The Final Quest of the Wizard Sarnod --Jeff Vandermeer The Green Bird --Kage Baker The Last Golden Thread --Phyllis Eisenstein An Incident in Uskvesk --Elizabeth Moon Sylgarmo's Proclamation --Lucius Shepard The Lamentably Comical Tragedy (or The Laughably Tragic Comedy) of Lixal Laqavee --Tad Williams Guyal the Curator --John C Wright The Good Magician --Glen Cook The Return of the Fire Witch --Elizabeth Hand The Collegeum of Mauge --Byron Tetrick Evillo the Uncunning --Tanith Lee The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz --Dan Simmons Frogskin Cap --Howard Waldrop A Night at the Tarn House --George R R Martin An Invocation of Curiosity --Neil Gaiman

In addition to being an author herself, Rachel Kramer Bussel has been making a living editing a number of anthologies of erotic stories in the last few years. With subjects ranging from dominance and submission, to voyeurism, to even the delights (to those who are enthusiasts) of PVC. In Bottoms Up, Bussel returns for the fourth time to spanking. This anthology is one of the stronger anthologies in that genre, as well as being one of the stronger anthologies Bussel has edited. She has a good hand as an editor, and by now knows how to balance authors, themes, and story lengths. I especially appreciated the diversity of authors in this anthology. The writing of erotic stories for publications in these anthologies is something that women seem to have colonized as their own. Openly male authors (I have no doubts that some men write under female pen names) are uncommon, but this anthology sports a significant minority of male writers. So while you will find stories by stalwarts such as Alison Tyler and Sommer Marsden (two of the best stories in the anthology, in this reviewers opinion), you will also find stories here by Simon Sheppard, Craig J Sorensen and other male writers as well. The subthemes in spanked run the gamut. We get stories from both sides of the hand or paddle, and stories range from the mostly cerebral to the delightfully and painfully *sharp*. The stories never felt repetitious. About the only thing I can say about the book is that at 20 stories and 172 pages, its just a tiny bit short, for the price you pay. If you are a fan of erotic stories, and the theme of spanking is at all interesting to you, I think you will enjoy Bottoms up.

In this second volume of the Pandora's Star duology, Hamilton really comes of age as a writer. Don't get me wrong. Judas Unchained is in many respects the typical future space opera that Hamilton is known for. JU is set as a sequel to Pandora's Star, in a universe where wormhole technology and rejuvenation have led to a world where a commonwealth of planets are connected by trains and wormholes. And where an accidental release of an xenophobic alien species threatens to bring down the Commonwealth for good. Beyond that, though, Hamilton shows an improvement and maturity on his writing from his previous efforts. Some of Hamilton's previous series and novels have suffered from a bit of a deux ex machina ending, as if he was unable to come up with answers within context to the major tsunami of tsuris sent his characters and worlds. In JU, without giving too much away, the explicit chance that the readers might expect for that Deux ex machine ending actually turns out to be a red herring. The problems are resolved by humans and in a satisfactory manner. The characters continue to develop and grow from the first novel, and finding out the ultimate fates of Paula Myo, Mellanie Rescorai, Ozzie, Captain Kime, and the galaxy of characters is a major driver. The novel crackles of energy. I wouldn't start here, starting with Pandora's Star is a much better option. And once you devour that volume and come to this one, I promise you will be most satisfied, as I was.

Not all alternate history is of the classic mold. You know the drill. Lee wins at Gettysburg, and the world is different because of it. Varus' legions aren't slaughtered by the Germanic tribes, and Rome continues on and on. The Spanish armada conquers England, and Shakespeare turns out to be a hero to the oppressed English. The Roumania novels are definitely different. The first novel, a Princess of Roumania, started ordinarily enough, with Andromeda, Peter and Miranda slowly discovering that their modern day New England world was in fact, an illusion, an artiface. The real world is very different, where Roumania is a major power with magic at its command, and a vicious conflict between Germany and Roumania only part of the complicated politics. The second novel takes up from the first and continues the stories of Miranda, Andromeda and Peter as they start to learn their real identities, and their destinies, in Roumania. Throw in one of the most complex and multi-sided antagonists I've read in fantasy, the Baroness Ceaucescu, a slow reveal of more of what this alternate "real" world is like, and mix well. It's certainly not everyone's cup of tea. Its been a while since I read the first novel, and like when I read the first novel, it took me a while to get used to Park's dream-like style and characterizations. You really have to pay attention to the prose, and go with it, and even then, things aren't always crystal clear. And I am pretty sure its a feature, not a bug. I certainly would never start the series with this book. But those who liked the first novel should and will likely enjoy the second.

About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace--and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia. Yelena, you see, has been chosen to be the Commander's new food taster. And the Commander has so very many enemies. As does Yelena... Poison Study is the first in a trio of novels by Maria Snyder, telling the story of Yelena. Set in a fantasy kingdom which has recently been taken over in a puritanical military dictatorship which reminded me of Cromwell's England. Yelena's crime, the murder of one of the sons of the military officers, is not easily forgiven by the grieving father. In addition, that father has plans of his own for the future of Ixia. And what of the strange abilities that Yelena is slowly starting to manifest? Poison Study is definitely a character driven book, focusing on the motivations, character, and growth of Yelena. As such, Snyder creates a complex, three dimensional protagonists with strengths, flaws, hopes and dreams that grows and changes throughout the novel. There are hints of some interesting world building going on here, too. Its a solid, good novel, and I look forward to reading the remainder of the series.

The Merchant Prince series, about Miriam Beckstein, is the series that got me into the works of Charles Stross. The Revolution Business is the fifth in this series. It follows off of the explosive ending to the fourth novel, where the machinations of several parties, ranging from the Clan to the U.S. Government, to the political enemies of the Clan in the Gruinmarkt, all fall against each other, inadvertently messing up each other. Even more important is Miriam, our central character. In the novel, she quickly finds herself thrust into politics of the Family in a way that she could not imagine even in previous novels. Her previous efforts are nothing compared to the cut and thrust of politics now, in the wake of the deadly politics in the Gruinmarkt. And then there is the technological breakthrough of the US Government in terms of worldwalking, and the Clan's very personal approach to their feud with the US Government... About the only fault I have in the novel is that we don't get enough of the third world, the New Britain world. It suffers a bit in comparison to events in our world and the Gruinmarkt. With that aside, though, this novel continues to build on the previous four novels of the series. Stross has managed this series, its worlds and assumptions, with enviable and undeniable skill. His skill in developing believable and complex characters, having them grow and change (and in some instances, kill them off) is admirable. There is one more novel planned in the sequence, and Stross ends this book with an explosive cliffhanger that will make you want to read the sixth book all the more. I know that I certainly do!

Okay, you've heard that line before. "Based on a true story" All of the stories in Ms. Tyler's latest collection, Pleasure Bound, are based on actual events. Names have been changed, but as Ms. Tyler says in the introduction "there are no innocents here to protect". What you do get is nearly two dozen tasty BDSM stories. Most of them are of the man dominating woman variety, but not all of them. In any event, the primary audience for Ms. Tyler's books and stories IS women, and on those grounds, this collection serves its purpose admirably. The quality of the stories is uniformly high in terms of writing. In terms of kink, if BDSM is your kink, you will find more than one or two stories here that will sizzle for you. I could have wished for more woman dominating men (and others might wish for more man on man or woman on woman) stories, however, the anthology was more than satisfactory for me nevertheless. I especially liked Bella Dean's "King of the Road" and Jax Baynard's "Calling David Hasselhoff". I also liked Ms. Tyler's own entry in her anthology: "Stickler for Details", clearly based on her own life. She did not change her own name in the story, she is fully a character, a little meta-detail which adds a nice little frisson to it. Fans of Ms Tyler's previous anthologies should not miss this one.

The year is 1901. A strange zombie plague threatens the low class areas of London. Zeppelins fill the skies, piloted by mechanical men. Queen Victoria, with medical help, is still on the British Throne. A mysterious, glowing policeman has been strangling people. Welcome to the world of George Mann's The Affinity Bridge. In this Victorian AH Steampunk world, meet Sir Maurice Newbury and his assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes. Agents of the Crown, its their job to deal with enemies and threats to England. And do it proper British style, of course. Its clear that there are dark things afoot. A mysterious zeppelin crash impels our two agents into a world of conspiracy, adventure, intrigue and even a bit of the New Weird. The book is not as aggressively set in that genre as other novels I have read as of late; The Affinity Bridge is much more a pure AH "steampunk novel"--with some twists. The novel starts slowly as we start to get to know the characters. It's clear Newbury and Hobbes are relatively new to each other, as they are to us. However, the writing and characterization improve as we get to know Newbury, Hobbes, and the characters around them. When it does hit on all cylinders, the novel feels a lot like those old Victorian novels, with all of the plots tying together in a neat fashion (perhaps too neat), hair-breadth escapes, and even a couple of pitched battles, and always time for British sensibility. The characters are neither cardboard nor two dimensional--both have flaws and aspects of their characters that they keep under wraps. The tagline to this book is "A Newbury and Hobbes novel" which sounds to me that a sequel might be in the offing. Now that the characters and world are firmly established by the end of the Affinity Bridge, I'd read it.

In its third edition, Yellowstone Treasures is a comprehensive guide to Yellowstone National Park, written by Janet Chapple. Janet's father worked in Old Faithful Inn for four summers, giving his daughter a lifelong love of the park. That love has translated into this guidebook. I purchased the book in anticipation of a trip to Yellowstone, and on our recent trip to the west, my friends and I quickly discovered this book was illuminating, enlightening, and above all, essential to our travels. My friend's daughter needed a bathroom, and quickly? Janet's system of describing everything along the roads of the park, down to mileposts, allowed me to easily tell them exactly where we were, and exactly how far it was to the nearest toilet. What's the name of that mountain? A quick look at the mileposts, drawing and maps almost always told us the answer. In addition to the comprehensive and painstaking detail on the sights at each mile of the road, Janet provides opinions on the best things to see, cross references things by subjects, and provides a lot of the background on the park in asides in the book. I found myself, as we were traveling along, reading aloud on subjects that Janet mentions. Where did the Firehole River get its name? Just who was Norris that Norris Geyser Basin is named for? Which of the sights in Mammoth are worth stopping to take a look at? I had purchased an additional guide to Yellowstone, but everything my traveling companions and I could want to know or need to know about the area within Yellowstone was within the nearly 400 pages of this book. The next time my friends and I go back to the park, we certainly will be making use of Ms. Chapple's work. If you are planning to visit Yellowstone National Park, I strongly advise you to get a copy of this book beforehand yourself and keep it on hand as you traverse the park. You will be extremely glad that you did. This is the way to write a travel book on a National Park. Highly Recommended.

Brandon Sanderson has slowly been building a reputation in fantasy circles, including the plum assignment and task of finishing the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. He has written a number of other novels as well. Warbreaker, on the other hand, is the start of a new series for him, a new chance for his talents at secondary creation, of creating new mythologies and magic systems, "secondary world building", to get full rein. Warbreaker is the story of five viewpoint characters: Two sisters, Vivenna and Siri, princesses from the backcountry that have separately found themselves in the city of T'telir. the city their family once ruled. Next there is the God King of this city and kingdom, Susebron. An old contract mandates that he must marry one of the princesses and yet for all his power is a virtual prisoner in his own palace. Then there is the newly minted god Lightsong, who doesn’t like his job or even godhood much. Finally there is the mysterious Vasher who has obscure plans of his own. Even more prominent than the characters is the magic system. In his fiction, Sanderson likes to play with different magic systems and pantheons. Magic here is based on a color-themed and informed power called Bio-Chroma. The Gods, too, also partake of this magic and its power, although in a slightly different way than ordinary practitioners of the magic art. Indeed, the nature of the Gods Part of the joy of reading the novel is puzzling out the implications of the magic system, and how that influences characters and events. I thought the plot and characters took a little while to really get rolling. (Although some secondary characters, a group of mercenaries that Vivenna meets, were excellent comic relief from the start) However, the final third of the novel hits on all cylinders and the promise shown earlier in the novel pays off in spades. This novel was my first taste of Sanderson, and I think it will not be my last. I am sure that the growing ranks of his fans will be most pleased with Warbreaker.

With Naamah's Kiss, Jacqueline Carey, whose reputation has been largely based on the Kushiel world novels, returns to that world. This time, Carey decides to jump forward in time a few generations, so that she can create a new situation, a new protagonist, and explore new parts of the world. While the Phedre Trilogy and the Imriel Trilogy shared a lot of the same characters and geo-political situation, Naamah's Kiss jumps forward three generations, to a granddaughter of Alais living amongst the Maghuin Dhonn in Alba. Things have changed for Terre D'Ange. The top-of-the-world D'Angelines are being left in their self-important intrigues and idylls. A new continent has been discovered in the West, Terra Nova. There are emissaries from places as distant as Ch'in. And yet, the D'Angelines are leaving others to mostly reap the benefits of all of this. And into this decadent version of Terre D'Ange will come our heroine, Moirin. Half Alban and half D'Angeline, we follow her early life as it grows from a solitary existence with her mother in the wilderness, to the meeting with a member of the Dalraida's family. The circle of her existence and her experiences grows as Moirin develops. The tension between the two halves of her life is a constant undercurrent as she undertakes a journey to Terre D'Ange, and into the court of the Queen herself. And then beyond... And in all of this, she follows Elua's command as filtered through Naamah: Love as thou wilt. Unlike the previous two sets of novels, the sexual relationships here are not wrapped around tastes in dominance and submission. As a scion of Naamah, Moirin offers herself as she is. For all of that, even without the dominance and submission issues, Moirin's sexual nature draws her into a number of contradictory, and sometimes tragic relationships. Carey comes through with the tragic aspects of Moirin's path in life, as well as growing the sweet innocence of her life into mature adulthood. While the travelogue aspects of the novel are interesting as always, once again, Carey shows that the strongest part of her fiction is her characterization. We get to see Moirin grow as a character, with a fractally complex path of challenges, advances and retreats. Its not a smooth path of development, just like it isn't in life. Also, too, the secondary characters come alive, with agendas, dreams and thoughts of their own, which intersect with Moirin in complex ways. It seems to me that Carey has learned a lot from her previous novels and has definitely grown as a writer since Kushiel's Dart, in a good way. The novel does come up with an ending that could end Moirin's story, however I suspect there will be further volumes of her tale, and I would gladly read them. I also think that this novel might work for those readers who might be curious as to the world of Terre D'Ange and do not find the D/s sexual situations of the other trilogies to be to their liking. There is plenty of sex (and yes there is violence) in this novel, and there is f/f content as well, but as a whole, its not as drenched as the other novels sometimes were. In addition,with moving ahead three generations, this novel could work as an entry point to readers in the series. I still think that starting at the beginning is a good policy, but sort of like how Erikson's Midnight Tides, book five of the Malazan series, can serve as an alternate entree into that world, I think Naamah's Kiss can also serve in that manner. Overall, I am very well satisfied with the novel. One criticism sticks out. Ms. Carey, I love the maps in your novels. (My love of maps of all kinds gets a thrill from those). What I think you also need at this point is a timeline of events and people. It took some puzzling to figure out what happened when, but I think your history is complex enough to need one for easy reference.

Better known as co-author of the first volumes of the Fables comic series, Matthew Sturges has turned his talents to novel writing. Like his fellow Clockwork Storybook writer Chris Roberson, Sturges has produced a variation on the "Dirty Dozen" concept--prisoners given a chance at redemption by taking a one-way near-suicidal mission. Roberson set a Dirty Dozen in his "Chinese and Aztec" universe in The Dragon's Nine Sons. Midwinter, Sturges effort, is similarly located in a place very different than our Earth--in Faerieland. Midwinter is the story of Mauritaine. War hero, former Captain of the Royal Guard, he is in prison for a crime he didn't commit. He gets the chance at redemption at the low part of a 100 year cycle in the seasons--Midwinter. It seems that this occasion has cause for the Queen of the Seelie, Regina Titania, to offer a secret mission to him, and a few of his fellow prisoners. Survive, and their sentences will be commuted. Not everyone is happy about this mission of course, especially Queen Titania's rival, Queen Mab of the Unseelie. As well as rivals to Mauritaine within the realm of the Seelie, and possibly within his own party... The novel is both familiar and new in its treatment of Faerie and its inhabitants. The team has a variety of tropes, including a displaced human whose knowledge of technology and science seems useless in Faerie. At first. We also have a couple of POVs from outside of the team, in both the Courts of Titania as well as Mab. Some of these POVs and characters are more compelling and well drawn than others. I enjoyed the inventiveness of the premise (of winter coming to the land every century). I guessed the secret of the mission before it was revealed, but only just. And there are other delights in the world, like the strange Contested Lands, and the floating city that Mab calls her capital. Overall, while I enjoyed the novel and was entertained, I do not think the novel quite hits on all cylinders. I do want to see how Sturges grows as a writer in subsequent novels. There is clear potential here that I would love to see in full bloom. So, if you can forgive a few faults in the novel, then you, too, just might enjoy Midwinter.

Duncan takes a well worn formula, and adds a few twists and his own deft touch on characters in Children of Chaos, the first of the two Dodec fantasy novels. The medieval fantasy world Dodecians believe they live on a twelve sided world (a note in the novel suggests that the truth will be revealed in the sequel and is more complex than this). This twelve sided fantasy world is looked over by 12 very active Gods (and one Anti-God), and boasts a variety of societies, one on each of the faces of the world. As the action begins, the Florengian face has been overrun by the warriors from the neighboring Vigelian face, who have united their usually fractious society with the promise of conquest of another face of the world. To ensure the safety of the city of Celebre, four young hostages are taken from the family of the Doge, and brought to the Vigelian face and split apart. Fifteen years later, with varying degrees of knowledge of their origins and heritage, these hostages are coming of age, drawing close to one of the Gods, and slowly discovering each other. In the midst of this and their own predicaments, the tenuous political peace on the Vigelian face brought by the promise of outside conquest is breaking down. It seems that the Celebres are destined to live in interesting times. Thus is the story of Bernard, Orland, and Frena, mixed up with their relationships with their Gods, peers and each other unfolds. Duncan once again shows that he understands characters (and even female characters) very well. The characters are believable, sympathetic, and none of them are false one-note cardboard cutouts. There is an interesting theology and magic system (unique, although this sort of thing is common in Duncan's work), and I want to know more about the world beyond the two Faces that we see. There is a sequel, Mother of Lies, that I do plan on getting and reading. I do appreciate that Duncan keeps his fantasy series to two or three at a maximum, rather than making them impenetrably interminable. In the meantime, I commend this volume to you.

Bursting with ideas, set in an undefined medium term science fiction future, in some ways, Infoquake, a first novel by David Louis Edelman, is very much in the classic mode of science fiction. It also has strong elements of the corporate thriller, post-cyberpunk and even post-failed-singularity science fiction. Oh, and it all takes in a hypercapitalist future. Some several hundred years after some very bad history for humanity, the world of Infoquake is at once very familiar, with its undeniably human characters, and at the same time, has that alien future feeling that allows a SF reader to dive in and explore a futuristic world. The action centers around Natch. He runs a corporation which develops bio/logics, programs that can hack the human body, ones perceptions, abilities, strengths. Flashbacks in the novel allow us to see how this ruthless and indefatigable competitor was molded into the character we see. Events bring Natch into contact with Margaret Surina, whose family and ancestors are very much responsible for the re-welding together of society after that bad history several centuries back. Margaret has some more and new revolutionary technology, but in this hypercapitalist cutthroat world, she turns to Natch as one of the few people she can trust to deploy and use this technology: Multireal. And thus hangs a tale. This world of human-altering software infuses and changes the nature of society, with Edelman following through the implications of how this sort of technology would alter society. We get to see several different types of technology at play here, as well, including a method of virtual porting to other places which makes Second Life look like a primitive toy. There is a lot going on in this world, and its clear that Edelman had a lot of fun writing this book. There are the titular Infoquakes themselves, for example, the ultimate and deadly crash of the world's equivalent of the Internet, which complicate the plans Natch has set in motion. The novel leaves for sequels what these Infoquakes might actually be and what they mean. The corporate and economic politics in this world are timely. Like the best science fiction, it holds up a mirror to the present by showing an extreme version in the future. It's difficult to sum up this complex world, but perhaps if I describe it as "Wall Street (the movie) meets Vernor Vinge", I can come close to capturing what the characters and the world is like. I am surprised that this is Edelman's first novel. It's clear to me that he's been thinking about and working out this universe for quite some time (there are extensive appendices in the back of the novel). This is definitely not a first novel for those who have never read SF before. Like an old tagline for a collection of Greg Egan's stories, Infoquake is "science fiction for science fiction fans." In a climate where fantasy seems ascendant over SF, and every other book in the F/SF section of the bookstore is yet another new first novel about werewolves / vampires / faeries / demons / ghosts / wendigos in the modern world, Infoquake is unabashedly straight up 200 proof science fiction. I look forward to reading the second and third volumes of the trilogy. If anything, like when I read Charles Stross' Singularity Sky, I suspect that this first volume is really a novel that Edelman wrote so that he could get himself, and the reader, ready to read the *real* story that he wants to tell.

Empire of Ivory is the fourth novel in Novik's series, after His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade and Black Powder War. Like all of the books in this series, the action follows fairly closely on the heels of the previous novel. And like all of the previous novels save the first, reading the novels that come before it is essential to understanding what is going on. In a nutshell, this is an alternate world/alternate history set in a 19th century where men are learning to breed and tame dragons for use in the military. Napoleon is still threatening to conquer Europe and his machinations have, ironically, brought the egg of, and later the hatched egg of a powerful Chinese dragon, Temeraire, to the hands of the English, and the bonding of Temeraire to Captain Will Laurence. Formerly a naval officer, the novels, at their best, have explored his "culture shock" in the dragon corps. In this fourth novel, after reverses on the continent against Napoleon's army, the English are licking their wounds and dreading a cross-Channel invasion when a new wrinkle and complication occurs--a strange, debilitating illness which is devastating the entire dragon corps of England. The loss of the dragons would leave England at the mercy of Napoleon's forces. The only clue is that Temeraire had a brief illness of his own on his journey to China (in Throne of Jade), and recovered while in South Africa. And so, in the search for a cure to save England's dragons leads Temeraire and Laurence into the dark of Africa... I think I mentioned in previous reviews that I felt that Throne of Jade and Black Powder War did not recapture the magic and deft touch that His Majesty's Dragon did. Novik seemed to take the wrong lessons from the success of that first novel, and so the second and third novels, while not bad novels, just didn't hit on all the cylinders the first one did. This fourth novel, while still not quite capturing the magic of His Majesty's Dragon, seems to be more more in the vein of the first novel, and less of the problems of the second and third novels. The characters develop, we do get some travelogue, we get development of the history and politics of the world, and things occur. Pacing is good, and at 400 pages, the novel is of a goodly and not-padded length to tell the story it wants to tell. And it ends with an obvious cliffhanger. The actions Laurence and Temeraire take at the end of the novel are shocking and surprising on face value, but they grow naturally from the events starting in the first novel. Novik does not break the character. Indeed, if the characters did not take their actions, that would have been a betrayal of their characters. I enjoyed it, and look forward to the MMPB version of the fifth novel, Victory of Eagles.

Elizabeth Bear is an audacious, difficult, and ultimately rewarding author. There are good reasons why she won a Campbell award, and a Hugo award. She's ambitious, writes characters who are all-too-human, and is very willing to take standard pieces of the F/SF genre, and rework them, remix myth and Story into it, and come out with books and stories that bite. All the Windwracked Stars is the latest in that tradition. Informed and infused by Norse mythology, the novel begins with, paradoxically, a Ragnarok. We meet Muire, last of the Valkyrie, and Kasimir, the Valraven steed that bonds to her in the denouement of that final battle. Muire the Historian, to her shame, does not die as the rest of the Children of the Light do, and so lives on and on to see civilization, this time a human one, arise again on Valdyrgard. As you might expect, with a novel based so heavily on Norse stories, and given Bear's writing proclivities and style, the novel carries us headlong toward the inevitable fall of this human civilization. It is between these two falls of civilizations that the meat of the novel and the Story take place. Muire still has her Valkyrie obligations, and it is in the unfolding of those obligations that Muire encounters an old enemy, and discovers the real reason why Eiledon, the last city, has managed to survive until the end under its implacable, mysterious ruler, the Technomancer. Norse Myth and Mythology. Strange technology and a Last City set in blasted landscape. Complex characters muddling along as best they can. Muire seeks a chance at redemption, a strong and potent theme in the novel, reflected across the range of characters. And while it might not be a crackerjack straightforward plot, Bear hauntingly and memorably creates Valdyrgard and Eiledon and its denizens. I've said in other reviews that Bear's work is probably not for everyone, or every SF reader. However, given that she is at the cutting edge of the newest generation of SF writers, if you want to see why the "young turks" of SF are doing with the genre, Bear is a strong choice for you to find that out. In an publishing age where Fantasy is ascendant over its technologically inclined brother, its refreshing, encouraging, and joyful to find a writer who does write fantasy (e.g. The Promethean age novels), but who is also willing to write darned good science fiction, with no apologies. And more importantly than just being willing to write science fiction, but to be very good at it. Barq's Root Beer has a tagline: "Barq's Got Bite!". I would say, however, having read a number of her novels, and especially after reading this one, that "Bear's Got Bite!".

City Without End is the third in the "Entire and the Rose" quartet by Kay Kenyon. City Without End picks up where the (to me) disappointing second novel,A World Too Near leaves off. Titus Quinn has lost his wife, but did not destroy all of the Entire with the nanotech given to him for that very purpose. Helice Maki is free to scheme and seek her own goals. Sydney, Titus' estranged daughter, is now known as Sen Ni, continues her secret insurgency against the Tarig overlords. And then there is Ji Anzi, Chalin native of the Entire, who has given her heart to the man from Earth, Titus Quinn. Her journey is the most expansive, and surprised me as to where it led... And speaking of Earth, things on Earth for Titus' extended family grow ever dicier as the stakes continue to raise, as the brightest star in Earth's sky is extinguished in the Tarig's quest to keep the Entire alive... New readers to the city, like in most series, should definitely not start here. If the quartet can be thought of as a chess game, the first novel introduced (most of) the major participants, the board and the milieu and the opening moves. The second novel expanded on this, but in a way that I felt recapitulated some of the weaknesses in second, middle novels in series. It is in this third novel, though, that things really start to accelerate. Plans, gambits, plots and secrets all move in a well orchestrated and naturally-flowing order. There are surprises, reverses and reveals that bring back the strength of the first novel, and just possibly, exceed them. The environment and the science fantasy environment, which I do not lightly compare to the late Philip J Farmer's World of Tiers is, for me the highlight of these novels. Kenyon adds a couple of wrinkles to this environment which I only lament that she could have shown *more* of. The Entire is a fully envisioned artificial world that is simultaneously a BDO (Big Dumb Object), a universe of its own, and an expansive canvas to set her story. However, for those of you who rely on well drawn characters for your reading satisfaction, rest assured, the characters are well formed and human, with all of the contradictions and confused natures that humans have. There are precious few one-note or one-dimensional characters here The end of the novel is not a cliffhanger, but it sets up the factions in both the Entire and the Rose (Earth) for what I hope will be a finale and capstone worthy of the remainder of the series. I highly enjoyed City Without End and will without reservation, buy the fourth and final volume, in hardcover, when it comes out. As I have said elsewhere, do start with the first book. BRIGHT OF THE SKY, and immerse yourself into the Entire yourself.

K is for kinky is one of the later volumes in Alison Tyler's Erotic Alphabet series. Previous volumes have dealt with love (A is for Amour) with mild bondage (B is for Bondage), with clothing (D is for Dressup), amongst other themes. With K is for Kinky, Tyler takes the gloves off. This selection of stories is perhaps one of the strongest in the entire series, since the authors have been unleashed to indulge in their favorite kinks. So, this collection of stories has a number of out there stories. Nothing that really will make you squick, but kinks that will definitely surprise, and almost definitely arouse. Who knew that a halloween costume could be so sexy? Or how erotic a man turned into a coin-operated toy for pleasure might be? While the kinks in any particular story might not appeal, this collection is diverse, and almost guaranteed to find a button to push within you. Or more than one, as in my case.

Another of the Alphabet Erotica Collection by Alison Tyler, E is for Exotic has a strongly delineated theme--Sex in exotic locations, either mental or actual. With stalwart authors that Tyler turns to again and again like Shanna Germain, Mathilde Madden and Teresa Noelle Roberts, the collection "is what it says on the tin." From Mexico City, to a sogged camping trip, to a hot three way encounter on the isle of Crete, the collection delivers on its promise of the exotic in its collection of erotic stories. With that as its framing theme, there are a variety of story types in the mix. The aforementioned threesome. Throw in a little bit of bondage. a little bit of dominance and submission, a little bit of very hot affairs, and mix well. Serve hot.

Alison Tyler, well known for her "Erotic Alphabet" anthologies of erotica, as well as other anthologies and collections, returns to erotic anthologies here with Playing with Fire The subtitle of the anthology "Taboo erotica", brings one to mind the "I is for Indecent" anthology from the Erotic Alphabet, but the truth is, the erotica here isn't taboo in that sense. I think the title might have been called "Incendiary Erotica." Fire and smoke are strong themes in this collection. Stories revolve around fire and the ignition that fire can bring to a sexual encounter. From a female firefighter being turned on by watching practice fires, to the heat of a hot summer day sparking passions in several of the stories, this is a collection wreathed in fire and heat. Even in stories where fire is not an explicit participant, its a metaphor and a symbol for the passion of the story's characters.As Ms. Tyler puts it in the introduction: "emotional kerosene" The collection succeeds on all of these fronts. Aside from the matter of the title of the collection, I find little fault in the collection. Tyler has come up with a very good collection of writers working at the top of their game. In Minnesota in a more than chilly March, this collection was *very* welcome to read to take ones mind off of the weather outside.

Alison Tyler, an author herself, has a pretty strong hand as an editor in this collection of erotic stories. Part of her thematic Alphabet of Erotica, B is for Bondage takes on, well, bondage. Fantasies of control, of tying people up... It's a decent collection of stories, although I don't think its quite as strong as other volumes in this series. The sexual content in the stories didn't quite register as hot for me as some of the other stories I've read in volumes that Ms. Tyler has published. Was it the mix of authors? Was it that the authors didn't take as many chances as in other volumes? I don't know. The sexual content can be described as playful. This is no bad thing, but I think its a bit *too* playful, at the detriment of the story collection as a collection of erotica. I did find a couple of stories hot (Shanna Germain's story, in particular), but for me the collection did not have that high of a percentage of hits as other volumes in the series, or other volumes that she has edited. Sorry, Alison.

Alison Tyler, an author herself, has a pretty strong hand as an editor in this collection of erotic stories. Part of her thematic Alphabet of Erotica, A is for Amour takes on, broadly the subject of amour. That is to say, love. Love has many forms and this is a more diffuse topic and theme than in many of Ms. Tyler's collections. As a result, to its credit, and to its slight detriment, the range of stories in this volume are extremely diverse. That said, in the twelve stories, we have themes ranging from three-ways to lust, to lovers with secrets from each other and the reader (and how!). Uniformly, the stories are sexy and hot, and if you have read a previous collection under Ms. Tyler's hand as editor, you have a pretty good idea what to expect. And if you haven't tried any of her collections, A is for Amour works as a pretty good introduction to her style of story selection, with its broad theme allowing for a variety of tastes and pleasures of the erotic word. I enjoyed the collection.

(NB: I received an advance reader's copy of this novel) Santa Olivia is the latest book by Jacqueline Carey, who is better known for, and much better known for the Sundering Duology, and much much better known for two Kushiel trilogies. While the former is a take on classic fantasy and the latter are milestone in dark, sensual fantasy, Santa Olivia is a completely different kettle of fish. The press information provided to me describes Santa Olivia as Jacqueline Carey's take on comic book superheroes and the classic werewolf myth. However, what this novel is, I think, is far more nuanced and complex than that simple formulation. The novel centers around Loup. Born in a future where a conflict and a disease has created such tensions between Mexico and the United States that a no man's land has sprung up between the two nations, Loup lives in the abject poverty and virtual prison that makes up the titular piece of land controlled by the U.S. Military. Born of a genetically engineered father, and a local for a mother, we follow Loup's life, from living with her mother and older half-brother, to her life as an orphan in the local church when she loses both of them. Loup has a hard life in a hardscrabble world, but she does have her secret--the genetic heritage of her father. Her father's special gifts of strength, fearlessness, paranormal senses, and speed have been fully inherited in Loup. What first starts as a secret to be held tightly for fear of discovery by the military turns into a opportunity to exact justice, and later still, an opportunity to escape... While Loup does take up the mantle of a disguised superhero, and hints and nuances (including the very name given to her) suggest werewolves as an inspiration for the genetic manipulations which inadvertently created Loup, this novel is much more than a novel about a werewolf-powered comic book superhero. Carey's interest in Christian saints and iconography get play here in the identity that Loup takes in her retributive acts, the titular saint of the compound, Santa Olivia. The novel runs from before her birth to her ultimate escape and freedom, and so we follow her as she grows up, grows into her abilities and learns to use them as a symbol of hope and strength for herself, and for the people around her that she touches. There is a love story in the novel as well, and while the love story itself follows a relatively familiar pattern, the identities of the participants, and the development of the characters give it its own unique stamp. I don't think that the novel quite works as well as I had hoped. There are an awful lot of loose ends left unanswered by the denouement (not ones that really would be answered in a sequel, either). It's difficult to do "near future" worldbuilding well, as any of the top lights in science fiction can tell you; Carey's worldbuilding is much more assured in her other novels than here. I never really bought the Macguffin that the head of the camp holds as a potential means of escape, although I recognize its dramatic necessity as a device to propel the characters, Loup included, a chimerical banner to chase after. I was also surprised at first at the coarseness of language of the characters of all ages. It took a shift of perception on my part to go from the beauty of courtly language in Terre D'Ange to the salty, expletive filled language of the residents of Santa Olivia. Overall, though, on the balance, I am happy that Carey wrote the novel. Not only on its merits, which, upon reflection do outweigh its drawbacks, but because I am a firm believer in author diversification. I don't want Carey to write *only* endless Kushiel novels, just like I don't want Stross to only write Merchant Prince novels. I want authors that I like (and Carey certainly has her place in there) to do well--but I'd rather not have them turn into one-series wonders, with each successive volume in the series groaning under the weight of the previous ones. Writing different things, I think, is a good way for an author to remain fresh, inventive, and keep me coming back for more. So, if you come to this novel hoping for a rocking comic book superhero who changes into a werewolf at night, you are going to be very, very disappointed. This is really a novel about a little girl, born in a cage, who grows, learns to love, and learns to be free. And in the process, she learns to be an inspiration for all of those around her.

Drood is the latest novel by Hugo Award winning author Dan Simmons. Simmons is an extremely literate author whose literacy has influenced more than a few of his works. The Hyperion novels owe a lot to the Romantic Poets of the 19th century. His novella Muse of Fire puts a bright light on the best of what makes Shakespeare unforgetting. Ilium and Olympos take their inspiration from Homer. The Crook Factory takes on Hemingway. And now with Drood, Simmons delves into Dickens. A word of disclaimer here. As it so happens, a fact that I don't bandy about too much these days, I am related (although not a direct descendant) of Charles Dickens. I wouldn't say that I am obsessed with his work, but I made it my duty, as a relative, to read a good chunk of his oeuvre. So, a novel about the last years of the life of Charles Dickens and how his uncompleted mystery novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood came to be was a natural for me to want to read. The novel is narrated and entirely from the viewpoint of Wilkie Collins, a minor Victorian novelist who was a sometime collaborator, friend, and rival to Charles Dickens. At the time, he might have been a medium light, he is not well remembered today except by scholars. (His novel The Moonstone is actually probably one of the first detective novels, and is a clear inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's work). Drood starts with Dickens relating to Collins the details of a horrible train accident, and an encounter with a mysterious, mystical figure called Drood. Collins interest in Drood, and his interest in Dickens' own interest in Drood forms the backbone of the novel. Interest turns to obsession, and finally to horror and madness. Its a big work, nearly 800 pages, and Dickens' conceit in having Collins tell us the story leads to a number of effects. First of all, the novel reads like sprawling and turgid Victorian fiction. This book probably could have been half its size--but it would have been a very different book. Sprawling as it is, the book is not slow. We get a deep and abiding look into Collins mind and his world and tangled relationship with Dickens. Aside from the opening event, the novel does take its time in getting to the real meat of the Matter. An impatient reader might decide to give up before that happens. Another thing to consider as a result of its size is that the novel impinges on the senses. Simmons does best and handles the passages when Collins descends into Undertown, or the opening set-piece of the train disaster, or any of the other ones when Simmons' ability to write horror and madness are in full effect. When Simmons deals with the more mundane aspects of Collins life, his effectiveness is knocked down just a tad. Another thing to consider is that Collins is an extremely unreliable narrator. Given to opium addiction, and the aspects of mesmerism present in the book, the novel acts a bit like a puzzle in the same way that Gene Wolfe's novels often do. It is left to the reader to make judgments and decipher if what Collins is thinking, relating and observing are truly accurate. Simmons seems to give a definitive answer late in the novel--but its possible that revelation is, in itself, a ruse. I have heard that Guillermo Del Toro (director of Pan's Labyrinth) is very interested in filming this novel. Given its garish and striking visuals, and set pieces that cry out for a director of Del Toro's abilities, I can see why the novel appeals to him. As for me, in the end, I think the novel was a bit *too* turgid, but it certainly and admirably entertained this relation of Charles Dickens. If you are a fan of victorian fiction, or a fan of the darker novels of Dan Simmons, then Drood is definitely worth your time. This novel may not appeal if you only like Simmons' SF novels, or if the purple prose, pacing and stylistic conventions of Victorian novels are not to your liking.

The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two Dimensional World by AK Dewdney The setting is a graduate program in the early 1980's. Computers are mainframes, time and resources are precious, and programs are primitive at best. A group of students led by their professor decide to model a two dimensional world--with the deptyh and horizontal axis rather than the horizontal and vertical axes of Flatland. It starts as an exercise in pure physics, mathematics and computer science, until their model somehow connects to a real two-dimensional world, and an inhabitant, YNDRD, who can hear them in his mind. And with YNDRD as our guide, we begin to learn about himself and the two dimensional Planiverse that makes his home... Its a classic for good and many reasons. Dewdney's characters, with the exception of a little unnecessary and half-baked melodrama, are easily recognized academic types, jealous of their prize, and eager to learn more and more about the world they have inadvertently contacted. The Planiverse is a marvel of a gedankenexperiment--how could an inhabitable two-dimensional world exist and what would it be like? YNDRD goes on what is ultimately a spiritual quest (the novel can be thought of, really as a sufi story)--so there is a fair dollop of philosophy mixed in with the science.So we get to see a wide swath of his world, his beliefs and his life,and learn about it all as he makes his journey. Although the technology has changed over time, the novel can comfortably be thought of as taking place in the early 1980's rather than as a contemporary novel. Once upon a time, computers really were this primitive. There are lots of asides and text boxes exploring some of the concepts touched upon, as well as appendices that give the Planiverse even more depth. It's an amazing book and definitely suited to those who would want to think about the implications and puzzle of a two-dimensional world. The narrative itself is pretty basic and straightforward--but the universe, man, is where this novel shines. Dewdney's conceit in making the novel at first seem like a first hand account of a real event gives it verisimilitude, and the level of detail, as said above, sells it. Highly Recommended.

The Accidental Time Machine, by Joe Haldeman. Coincidentally, I was recently talking about a Poul Anderson short story, "Flight to Forever", which has some resemblance to this novel. The basic premise is similar with some twists. Matt, a grad student at MIT, accidental invents the eponymous time machine. Its only a one way device, and the "jumps" are logarithmically longer and longer, and so his journey quickly becomes a one way trip to the future, looking for a way to reverse the process and return to his own time. Along the way, he discovers strange cultures, picks up a passenger, and finally manages to return to the past, but not in the way or manner that he expects. So on the basics, its pretty similar to the story mentioned above. The concept as Haldeman executes it, though is a little more polished in the physics. Anderson's story was really a device for sending his protagonist through time. Haldeman takes some things into consideration that Anderson doesn't--for example the idea that the time machine's "landing location" might change through time thanks to the motion of celestial bodies. Like Anderson's story, we wind up with some strange future societies that Matt and his inadvertent fellow passenger whom he picks up encounter. A religious theocracy, a society which seems to be Ebay writ large, and a post-Singularity beings are among the challenges that Matt faces as he jumps through time. The novel is short, and aside from the religious theocracy and Matt's present (in the mid 21st century), we never really spend a lot of time getting to the nuts and bolts of the worlds. Haldeman could have spent endless pages on each of these stops, and in some cases, I would have liked to learn a little more about Matt's stops. Also, the ending is, frankly, a deus ex machina in an almost literal sense. There are also aspects to the narrative (the idea that there are multiple timelines, or multiple versions of Matt being sent back) that are mentioned in a few sentences and never really explored fully. Also, the explanation of just how the accidental time machine really worked is very much glossed over. So I have to say that I was disappointed in the novel overall, which unfortunately (after Forever Peace) means that I've now read two novels by Haldeman that I don't like in comparison to one (Forever War). I suppose that he is going to now drop off on the list of authors that I will read, sad to say. The Accidental Time Machine is not a *bad* novel, but its, to use culinary terminology, definitely a little undercooked and the flavors didn't meld well. It was a disappointment.

I enjoy well written erotica. Alison Tyler, editor (and writer!) of a number of collections of erotica, once again returns to the fray with this volume. Despite its title, this collection is really about stories and vignettes that span all hours of the day with various characters. The sex is almost resolutely heterosexual partnerships. Even if that seems like a limitation, the wide variety of stories provided by the authors explore the theme throughout an entire day. Like sonnets which restrict the length and style of a poem, the authors have risen to the challenges and bounds set by the collection's nature. Nothing really gets hardcore, its definitely a "light" anthology of erotica. Like any anthology, some of the stories were more interesting than others, and some stories were more arousing than others. I read all of the stories, but some of the stories, personally, I would definitely and have read again and again. The wide variety of authors vary from authors who seem to be in many of Ms. Tyler's collections (e.g. Rachel Kramer Bussel, Sommer Marsden, Kristina Wright...(no bad thing, they are talented)) to brand new authors. Unlike some collections of this nature which seem to completely freeze out male writers, this collection has a reasonable minority of its writers as male. Those who seek much more "hardcore" erotica, with taboo and boundary pushing limits, are going to be awfully disappointed in this anthology. Even with mild bondage and roleplay and gentle D/s themes in these stories, they will find it all too tame for their taste. On the other hand, I think that a reader who has always wanted to try erotic fiction but has been embarrassed by what she might find should try Afternoon Delight. With this set of stories in a limited and constricted theme and range of stories, it works very well as a "first timers" anthology of erotic fiction, and a good indication of the writing ability of the authors, and the editorial hand of the anthology's creator. They certainly will find the stories in this book much better written than a furtively purchased "Penthouse Variations" anthology found in the dusty corner of a used book store. Fans of Ms. Tyler's anthologies, or of the authors will of course want to pick up this volume and enjoy the stories therein, as I have done.

Fables: Legends in Exile #1 collects the first five issues of Bill Willingham's Vertigo comic. The high concept is a wonderful conceit--what if fairy tale characters, ranging from Snow White to Bluebeard, all lived, in secret, in New York City (and upstate New York in the case of the animals). Trying to avoid revealing their nature to the populace, they are a small community unto their own, and yet, unmistakably, expatriates in the Greatest City on Earth. And what happens when one of these (implied) immortal characters is brutally killed, and the evidence points not to an ordinary New Yorker, but one of Fabletown's own denizens? With this idea, great drawing and writing,and plenty of visual eye candy, Fables is an example of a good graphic novel which uses the full strengths of the form. Certainly one could have told this story in a straight novel format, but this is a case where seeing is believing. Snow White as a deputy Mayor. The Big Bad Wolf as a detective. Prince Charming as a schemer using his looks and charm to make his way in the world. These characters have pasts rooted in their fairy tales as well as previous relations between them in the expat community. We get the feeling that the characters have always been there, hidden, in New York. There is a continuity to their existence. And much more awaits the reader. It all works so very well, and the murder puzzle is a fair one. I look forward to at some point getting additional graphic novels of the series (something I need to do with a couple of others, like Sandman...). In the meantime, if you have any interest in fairy tale characters and in graphic novels (or love the former and want to try the latter), this is a graphic novel which is a painless way to try and enjoy the form. If you love Urban Fantasy, this volume is a must. The only downside is that only 5 issues of the comic were collected in the volume. I read this almost *too* quickly. Highly Recommended.

A book I received under the auspices of Amazon Vine, The Domino Men is a fantasy/horror novel by Jonathan Barnes. There have been a spate of what some have labeled "The New Weird" in fantasy and horror in the last few years. Authors like Jeff Vandermeer, China Mieville, and M John Harrison are the major figures in this movement, but this movement has influenced new authors, too. Jonathan Barnes' work seems to fall into this bracket. The Domino Men is a novel set in the same world of his previous novel, The Somnambulist. The story ostensibly is the story of Henry Lamb, hapless file clerk (and former child TV star) in London who slowly is wrapped in the tendrils of an ancient conflict that involves his grandfather, the House of Windsor, and the fate of Earth. The world is not quite the one we know, since the Crown Prince is named Arthur, and only has had one wife, without a single child. And then there is the titular Domino Men, Hawker and Boon. They cut a swath of sadism and darkness in the novel that really is at an angle to the rest of the action. While they are important, they aren't central to the narrative. And what a narrative? A Dark faustian bargain which "The Directorate" has been fighting for a century. Over the top hilarity is cheek and jowl with darkness and denigration. This jarring tone is carried throughout the novel and it gave me as a reader continual emotional whiplash. The novel started off well enough, but as the novel progressed, I became dissatisfied with it. Lamb, like his name, is far, far too passive for a protagonist. He doesn't question his orders and is pushed around the chessboard like a hapless pawn. I couldn't identify with him, and only could pity him. In addition, midway through the novel, the first person past narrative was punctuated by a different first person narrator who shows us Arthur's perspective. While it becomes clear in the end why we should be privy to this narrative, I didn't feel it fit all that well with Lamb's story. Finally, the ending ended my chances of walking away from the novel satisfied. Characters are brutally tortured and go through hell while London suffers cataclysmic upheaval. Even for fans of the New Weird, there are far better and more rewarding novels than this one in that vein. It's not a terrible novel, but it could have been much better than it was executed.

Chariot, From Chariot to Tank, The Astounding Rise and Fall of the World's First War Machine, by Arthur Cotterell is a history of the chariot. Between the domestication of the horse, and the use of stirrups and other techniques to make horse-riding warfare more practical, the primary uses of horses in warfare was by means of the chariot. Cotterell begins with the description of one of the major battles in the ancient world, the Egyptian-Hatti Battle of Kadesh in which 5000 chariots on both sides participated. From this basis, Cotterell describes the history of the use of the chariot in time and space from Rome all the way to China. There is an enormous amount of detail in the book, but its marred by digressions, poor organization and badly formed repetitions. Cotterell mentions battles and places, only to return to them again and again. That would not be a problem, but there is no sense of building on what was already written, or an awareness that there is something new to be said in the narrative. He mentions battles, and then comes back to them again, talking about them as if we had not already read about it earlier in the novel. It was extremely frustrating to this reader. I learned a lot from the novel, my conception of what good the chariot was and how it was used has expanded. I particularly appreciated that Cotterell did not restrict himself to the Middle East and Europe, as he extensively talks about the role of the chariot in India and China. Cotterell, in the typical haphazard fashion in this book, extends the mandate of the book beyond the war machine role of the chariot to discuss its use as symbol and mythological object ranging from Rome to China. It's all a pity, though. I really wanted to like and recommend this book, but the disorganized writing and jumbled information just made this book a chore to read, rather than a joy. The scholarship and information is all there, but its more work than its worth, in my opinion, to reach and get it out.

Mathematician and scientist Ian Stewart writes some popular books on the subject (I keep meaning to read his annotated Flatland). The Story of Mathematics is devoted to an overview and history of Mathematics, and what it was good for in the past and what its good for now. With lots of sidebar digressions on figures and topics, this volume reminded me, in some respects, of my beloved "The Math Book" textbook that I recently found for sale again, used and purchased. The Story of Mathematics takes on Mathematical topics of increasing complexity and difficulty. Each topic is placed in context with how and why it was invented and developed. So the volume begins with tallies and basic number systems, showing how tallies turned into Babylonian and Egyptian number systems. We progress through basic geometry, our own number system (with sidebars on things like the Mayan and Chinese systems), trigonometry, logarithms, algebraic geometry, number theory, calculus, differential equations, and all the way up to modern chaos theory. In less than 300 pages, this means that no topic really is done in depth, a strength and a weakness. Similarly, too, the book remains at a high level overview strictly for non-mathematicians. This is not a volume by Eli Maor! In fact, the Mathematically trained might feel this is a bit dumbed down. So, I believe that intelligent readers who are completely math-phobic and yet have an urge to know more about how it works and where it came from (without doing any math skull sweat) will be happiest with the book. Those fully trained in Mathematics might be frustrated at some of the lack of depth in topics (and probably would be happier with a volume on a more specific subject that they are interested in). As for myself, I learned some things about fields of mathematics of which I am not very conversant. Stewart has a relatively easy style to follow, but its nothing special. As a production value, I do mention that to keep the volume under 300 pages, the print in the book is relatively small. Still, despite all of this, I enjoyed reading Stewart's Mathematical overview.

Gladiatrix, by Russell Whitfield. Lysandra is, or was, a mission Priestess of Athena from the fallen city-state of Sparta, in the reign of Domitian in the Roman Empire. Now, after a shipwreck, she is not only a slave, but is being trained as a female gladiator. Thus, she embodies eponymous title of the novel, along with a group of other women also condemned to the same fate. Gladiatrix shows us her story, starting in medias res, revealing how she was captured, and follows her story as she rises in the stable, develops relationships with her fellow gladiatrices, and finally has a knock down, drag out final combat with her greatest rival, after the love of her life dies. On the surface, the novel is well paced, exciting, the clash of blades, the savagery and power of life in the Roman world on display and seen through the eyes of an outsider who is now the lowest of the low. Casual readers will likely enjoy it for exactly those reasons. For me, however, I found it wanting. I know too much. I may not be a Classical scholar (and the author doesn't profess to be one either, just an interested amateur), but I found the novel and the heroine's actions and life highly improbable and worse, "written to cinema". Some of the pattern of the story follows, to an extent, part of the arc of the movie Gladiator, and not to its credit. I just couldn't buy, even with the fig leaf of an Athene priest hired and brought in to convince Lysandra, that a female spartan would ever, in the end, accept her fate enough to actually embrace her role as a gladiatrix. It broke the character that had been building--even if, I recognize, it was the only way to get the story forward. I think that the author simply wanted a female Spartan gladiator, even if large implausibilities were the only way to get there. An additional cinematic and not-very-realistic addition in the plot is the love affair between Lysandra and Eirinawen. I never really bought it as more than the author wishing for Lysandra to have a homoerotic relationship with one of her fellow gladiatrices. It never felt natural to me to her character, or Eirinawen's, for that matter. Now, the consequences of the pursuit of that relationship, as it ties into Lysandra's rival Sorina, that I admit was handled much better. But I never really bought the creation of the relationship in the first place. I almost wish that Whitfield had decided to write this novel in an invented world of his own. Perhaps with the freedom to make a Roman-like, rather than a strictly Roman Empire world, I would have been far more forgiving of the implausibilities of the characters and simply went along for the ride. As it was, I was in the end, underwhelmed.

In this case, the subtitle of the book says it all. Frenzy, 60 stories of sudden sex is one of the many anthologies put out by Cleis Press, and under the editorial graces of the irrepressible Alison Tyler. A noted writer of erotic fiction short and long herself, she has put out numerous anthologies over the last few years. All are often of a theme or a defining characteristic, and all have a variety of authors, styles, viewpoints, and subjects. Frenzy takes on the idea of "sudden sex" in short (1-6 page) stories. Sudden sex from people meeting the first time, for the last time, and for sex play ranging from relatively vanilla heterosexual, to the homoerotic, to the kinky. "Wham, bam, thank you sir." is a theme that gets sixty variations. The advantage and weaknesses of anthologies like this is the sheer variety. Given that variety, its almost guaranteed that you will not like a percentage of the stories. Conversely, there is something here for everyone. A majority of the stories are told from the woman's point of view, however that is understandable given the majority of the authors are indeed female.Sure, many of the stories are in the first person, but hardly all of them. I did enjoy many of the offerings, and what is more, a fair number of them moved me and charged me. Its hard to ask for anything more in an anthology of erotica.

Now well known for his Pulitzer Prize winning history, Washington's Crossing, in Champlain's Dream, David Hackett Fischer tackles the father of New France, explorer and colonizer Samuel de Champlain. Although the volume veers slightly toward hagiography (despite the author's protestations to the contrary), Champlain's Dream is an exhaustive and detailed look at Champlain and his world. Starting with the sociopolitical and religious milieu of southwestern France in the 16th century, and continuing through the book, Fischer gives us an education on the environment in which Champlain grew up. I learned more about 16th and 17th century in this one volume than I have in an entire college course on European history. The detail on Champlain the man and his actions and history is also similarly comprehensive. Although his admiration for Champlain comes through on every page, Fischer does try to give a balanced look at Champlain and his works. Fischer's thesis is that Champlain, raised in the cosmopolitan town of Brouage, carried a philosophy of tolerance and propensity to America in his relations with the Native American tribes. This multiculturalism and ethos is presented in stark contrast to the experiences of English and especially Spanish America. Even given the author's obvious admiration for the subject, the biography is very well written, with a command of the language I could only wish was in modern high school and college textbooks. You won't be bored to tears reading about Champlain's adventures as a spy in Spanish colonies, or his explorations of the St. Lawrence Valley, or his attempts to continue to secure funding against competing interests in the Court of the French Kings. Appendixes to the main text include copious footnotes, a discussion of the true age of Champlain (not clear cut, given the lack of records in the time period), and a discussion of how the biographies and view of Champlain have changed over time. I enjoyed the volume quite a bit, and strongly recommend this book to all history buffs.

The Universe Twister is an omnibus of three Lafeyette O' Leary novels by the late Keith Laumer. Lafayette O' Leary is somewhat different than the typical Laumer protagonist. A draftsman living hand-to-mouth, he has dreams and thoughts of other worlds, even as his mundane reality is rather drab and uninspiring. A book on self hypnosis, however, proves to shake up Lafayette's world, catapulting him to a quasi-fantasy world called Artesia. Our protagonist isn't even sure that any of this is real, and even if it is, the power of common sense and explanations will get him out of his jams. Or so he thinks. And when he saves the kingdom and gets himself a wife, and gets the situation straightened out, he still finds himself falling into further adventures in other continua, with the same sort of results... If you take The Incompleat Enchanter, with a dollop of Don Quixote, and set the lines to a strictly pulp formula, level and pacing, you will wind up with something like the three novels that comprise the Universe Twister. The book was entertaining in its way, certainly, but the more I read it, the more I missed the better writing and stories of Harold Shea. Don't get me wrong, I love some of Laumer's other work (Retief, for example). Here, though, he is cribbing a lot from Pratt and De Camp, and even though he has his own spins on the idea of someone traveling to other universes by mental means, the end product never rises above the level and quality of pulp potboiler. I had higher hopes, which were not fulfilled. The novels in the Universe Twister weren't bad, but not as good as I hoped they would be.

City at the End of Time is an attempt to meld Borgean and Stapledonian themes by Greg Bear. Set in two time frames, present day Seattle, and the far, far, far future, City at the End of Time is an ambitious novel by a novelist who in the past has reached for ambitious large works (Eon, Forge of God, Blood Music) but more recently has been writing technothrillers like Quantico. In City at the End of Time, Bear tries to reach for those heights of ambition again, while not quite getting there. The action follows several young protagonists in both time frames, who are linked in some fashion that only slowly becomes clear throughout the novel (and even then, things are left ambiguous). Add in strange enemies reaching across time, both on a personal level, an archetype level ("The Chalk Princess"), and an amorphous all encompassing enemy called Chaos, and you can begin to see the scope and panorama of Bear's brush. The nature of Chaos, both in the far future of its assault on the epynomous city (and as it bleeds into the present, its relationship with books and reality) reminded me strongly of Bear's writing in a fantasy novel, Songs of Earth and Power. The Borgean themes of the power of books and story (in both time frames) mix in with the time scales of the novel a la Olaf Stapledon; however we never really feel the gulf of time between here and then as we do in his work. One might also cite Zelazny as an inspiration for some of these With that weakness aside, the writing is vivid and haunting (especially the scenes set in the strange far future.) While the far future protagonists might be *too* human, the modern characters are sympathetic and interesting, especially given their odd "abilities". I think perhaps Bear has been away from the deeper realms of SF too long, and that is a reason why the novel doesn't work on all cylinders. Nevertheless, I welcome Bear's return to the realms of SF, even if its decidedly imperfect.

(Note: I received an ARC in exchange for a review) The Sharing Knife series comes to a stopping point, if not a conclusion, in this fourth volume in the story of Dag, a Lakewalker whose powers are maturing as he is growing older, and his young Farmer bride Fawn. The first two novels introduced us to the two of them, their romance, and the very different lives that comprise the two halves of their world. The third novel brought us on a grand river adventure south in the company of a motley set of companions ranging from Fawn's brother to a pair of runaway Lakewalker patrollers. This fourth and final volume has the group start in the south, not long and not far where we left them by the sea, and takes us back to the north. Bujold shows a strong hand for story as Fawn and Dag meet the very different Lakewalkers in the south in New Moon, and then the characters that accompany them on the long road back north and east. Such a long overland adventure is bound to be full of adventure, and, reaching back to the second novel, Bujold places yet another menace, a unique and dangerous malice and its horrifying minions in the way of the party. The action and adventure are a little more front and center in this novel as opposed to the third. The romance angle of the first two novels is less in evidence here. There is some, but less humor than the previous novels. Bujold's strength,though, always has been strong characters, from the "top of the ticket" in Dag and Fawn, down to the minor characters, and even minor characters whom we meet only once. It's the characterizations and the interactions between the characters that Bujold homes in on. I remember listening to an interview of Bujold for the old SF Encyclopedia, where she talks about her desire to explore the psychology of characters (internal and external). Since then, I've looked for that in her novels and seen what she means by that. Sharing Knife: Horizon is an exemplar of her writing philosophy at work. The end of the book neatly wraps up the story of Dag and Fawn in the Sharing Knife world, and it seems to me that Bujold is looking to the future where she is going to write novels with different characters, or a different world entirely. Sharing Knife: Horizon is an excellent capstone to the series. Once again, while it would be plausible for a new reader to pick up this volume and be quickly immersed in the world, I think the volume works best having read the previous books in the series.

The Sharing Knife novels are set in a post-apocalypse low-tech fantasy world that strongly resembles the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys of what was called in the 19th century "The Northwest Territory". A high civilization of magic fell, leaving farmers, trying to get along in small communities, Lakewalkers, Ranger-like users of minor magics, and malices, leftovers of that high civilization which threaten farmer and Lakewalkers (who hunt them) alike. And despite their common foe, Lakewalkers and farmers trust each other not at all... The first two novels introduced us to Dag, a one-armed world-weary Lakewalker who falls for farmer girl Fawn Bluefield. In the first, the two meet and are introduced to Fawn's family, and the relationship slowly grows between them. The second novel reverses this and has Dag bring his now farmer bride to Lakewalker country, to meet Dag's Lakewalkers and also deal with an even more powerful malice than in the first novel, the way that they met. In this third novel, Fawn and Dag go south. Accompanied by Fawn's younger brother Whit, the three collect companions on what becomes a flat boat adventure down a river suspiciously similar to the Ohio. We meet new characters like Berry, who owns the boat and is seeking her lost fiance and father who took a boat down river and never returned. We meet a pair of runaway Lakewalkers who wind up under Dag's tutelage. And add to that a farmer that Dag's experiments with being a healer who gets beguiled by mistake, and you wind up with a crowded but interesting set of characters for the journey. As in the previous novels and in this series, we get subtle hints of worldbuilding, interesting character dynamics and psychology (a Bujold specialty!) and (a little less often) action and adventure. I won't give away just what Dag, Fawn and company find on the river, I leave that pleasure for the reader to discover. It's a journey of discovery, in several senses. This book is a little more down than the previous two novels, but only by a moderate degree. I wouldn't start the series here by any means. However, this is a worthy successor to the first two SK novels and if you have read those two, you will be satisfied with this third volume set in that world.

Brenda Rosen's Atlas of Lost Cities is not so much an atlas (although there are definitely maps and diagrams) as much as its a guidebook to lost cities. Cities are born, grow and die, and some are lost, to one degree or another. The Atlas of Lost Cities takes on a number of these lost cities. The entries are arranged thematically in a slightly idiosyncratic fashion. Rather than by geography or age, the cities are arranged by theme. Thus, for example, we have "Cities of the Sea", cities which were lost to the sea (or lost one way or another their sea connection) which includes Akrotiti, Dunwich and Mahabalipuram. "Cities hidden by mists and mountains" gives us entries on Petra, Machu Picchu and Pompeii. I was a bit annoyed by this layout, which makes it less than useful in trying to find an individual city. There is no index of just the cities, either. So, finding Technochtitlan, for example is a bit of a challenge. Is it under Cities of Hills and Mountains? Cities of Kings? No, its under Cities of the Hills and Plains. With these criticisms aside, the individual entries, ranging from one to two pages, are brief, but adorned with beautiful photography and diagrams of many of the cities. Each of the themes has a frontispiece section about the theme, sometimes briefly mentioning cities not given full entries, or about mythical cities on the theme. Even if the individual entries are a bit short IMO, and the layout could have been better, the collection together is an interesting and well thought out group of cities. It's an enjoyable book to flip through, and randomly learn a bit about places familiar and unfamiliar, like Pelaque, or Nineveh, or Vineta. My gaming friends might like this book for ideas for lost civilizations and other exotic locales for pulp games and the like.

Adventures in Unhistory is a collection of columns in Issac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine by the late Avram Davidson in the 1980's. In these columns, Davidson takes on a mythological/fantastic subject that has fascinated people for centuries, and unwinds its history and origins in popular culture, and tries to find the grain of truth in the mountain of myth and legend. Its a wonderful set of essays. The style of Davidson is conversational, jovial, joking, digressive but in the end illuminating and entertaining. As I read his analysis of mermaids, werewolves, dragons, Aleister Crowley and others, I could imagine myself in a deli in Manhattan, listening to Davidson over a bagel and coffee explain in a style that has to be read to be fully enjoyed. Here he is in an essay about Sindbad (Sinbad) with one of his side digressions... In a way, there really was a Sindbad, sort of;his name was Mohammed Ibn Battuta;and he was a Berber, a native of Northwest Africa;if anything, as far as time and territory are involved, he out Sindbaded Sindbad. I believe that he spent something like 34 years in travelling, from Morocco to China, and back again. The only troube is that he didn't draw the long bow near as much. Perhaps he had been influenced by Sindbad, perhaps he was a reincarnation. Even if you have never heard of him you have heard of anyway one of his stories, under the name of the Indian Rope Trick: evidently Ibn Battuta was the first to mention it in writing. I'm tempted to bring in Ibn Battuta right along here because of his Sindbadian parallels or whatever; or also because his life experiences are so exceedingly interesting. But I think I'll withstand the temptation and perhaps employ him or them some other time...perhaps in and adventure entitled The Man Who Was Sindbad the Sailor. Perhaps...and perhaps not. Anyway, the book is a real treasure, and I enjoyed it immensely. I can think of a few of my friends who will love this, if they haven't already beaten me to reading Davidson's work. My only regret is that it was too short. I don't know how many of these columns he actually wrote; if another volume of his columns were collected and published, I'd get it in a heartbeat.

The setting for Necropath (mostly) is Bengal Station, a starport in the Indian Ocean between Burma and India. The time frame is sometime in the future. Faster than Light travel is a fact of life, as are aliens, and human colonies on other worlds. Bengal Station is a contact point for voidships, the ships that travel between these other planets. It's a large, labyrinthine construct that reminds one a little bit of a planetbound Babylon 5. The rich, the poor, the desperate, the greedy all come to live and work here. Jeff Vaughn is a telepath. Augmentations have given him the ability, and the curse, to hear other people's thoughts. One can make a living scanning for a living, and Vaughn makes a living doing so. He is not so comfortable, though, that he isn't intimately familiar with the darker sides of Bengal Station. And when a crippled beggar girl turns up dead, Vaughn's life will not be the same, and his journey to unravel the mystery of her death puts him face to face with a sinister, stars-spanning cult... It's a great premise and setting, anyway. Telepaths, aliens, interstellar travel, Thai and Indian culture front and forward, a plot that plausibly could last several novels. The ingredients are all here for something really to enjoy. And yet, for me, it just didn't work. I wanted to like this novel, and I couldn't. First, I didn't like the main character that much. He's not a d*ck but I found it difficult to sympathize with him, even given his haunted,dark past. Worse, the characterizations of other characters, major and minor, didn't work for me either. I couldn't fathom the relationship between Osborne and Sukara. It felt false to me and seemed to be only a way to get the both of them to Bengal Station. And the novel completely broke for me when, giving evidence of the problem to the police, Vaughn is at first completely blown off by Commander Sinton as being unreliable and untrustworthy (and naturally not believed)...and then nearly in the same breath, the same officer tries to offer Vaughn a job! It made absolutely no sense and I nearly threw the book against the wall. I can understand for plot reasons (cliches) why the officer would not believe Vaughn, but the sudden whiplash of trying to hook Vaughn into a job in the same debriefing made absolutely no sense. I think that its more me than the novel and while others might enjoy the book more, I did not. I have no plans on continuing to read the author or of Vaughn's adventures.

After the Downfall, by Harry Turtledove feels somewhat familiar to an experienced reader of Turtledove's work. We have a fantasy world with unusual magic. We have a sympathetic Wehrmacht officer in the mold of Heinrich Jäger from the Worldwar series. We have some speculations on the nature of Gods (Goddesses actually) in a world where belief in them gives them power. We get medieval battle tactics. We get sex. In this case, however, Turtledove decides to mix them together, add some interesting characters and see what comes out of such alchemy. Hasso Pemsel is not having a good day. You wouldn't either if you were a German army officer in 1945, with the Russians knocking on the door of the Museum in Berlin you have been, improbably, been asked to guard. Joking around with his soldiers, he sits on an Omphalos stone...and finds himself in a different world entirely. With his gun, he saves a blond bombshell from a group of pursuers armed with primitive weapons. His reward from the woman for saving her from her pursuers is somewhat unexpected, but it puts him foursquare on the side of her people, the Lenelli, in their own pursuit of lebensraum in a new land. Hasso learns the language, learns how special Velona really is (a sometime avatar of the Goddess of the Lenelli) and joins their struggle against their even more primitive neighbors in a world of medieval weapons and magic. Fortunately, while Hasso's ammo is limited, his knowledge and ability to help his new found friends is not. Homage to L Sprague De Camp (a la Martin Padway or Harold Shea)? I think so. Wish fulfillment for Hasso? No. Unfortunately, for Hasso, he gets a dose of reality when he gets fully engaged in a war between the Lenelli and the Grenye... As I said above, the novel does have elements seen in Turtledove's earlier work. It would be a mistake to say this was a paint by numbers affair, since he does explore sociological questions in a new way, and some of the mid-rank characters are interesting and well developed (in addition to Hasso, who has the most character growth of course). Turtledove lets us learn more about Hasso's new world in bits and pieces and we get a real sense of what's going on, and the readers sympathies can gradually and naturally change along with the protagonist's. Its not really a spoiler to suggest that the Lenelli-Grenye struggle is very much analogous to the German-Russian portion of the conflict of World War II. The historical allegory is strong, but not overpowering. I wouldn't start here as a first Turtledove novel.It's not Turtledove's best novel, but fans of Turtledove (like me) who have read a decent spread of his work will certainly enjoy it.

The Golden Key is a fantasy novel set in a Iberian flavored fantasy world, written by Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson and Kate Elliott. The Golden Key's universe and magic revolves around the use of art as a tool for communication, political power, and it turns out, arcane power as well. The novel is episodic, starting with the rise to power and the discovery of real power by a brilliant artist, Sario Grijalva of Tira Verte. The Grijalvas, after a tragedy years ago, have fallen from grace, power and are pitied, if not feared, by the population at large. Despite their talents with art, being a Grijalva is not an easy or particularly desirable life. Sario, however, has ambition. This ambition leads him to the lair of a Tza'ab (stand in for Berbers or North Africans) living in the heart of the city. His secret power, combined with Sario's knowledge, leads Sario to discoveries to allow him to live in a serial fashion in other people's bodies...and to also imprison Saavendra, the cousin that he loves, in a portrait... The novel then leapfrogs over the next centuries, as Sario's machinations in his various lives lead to a rise to power for the Grijalvas, even as political and other developments slowly change Tira Virte in ways that even Sario cannot predict and control. Thus, in a 900 page novel, we really get a complete fantasy series, with a variety of characters strung out along the history of Tira Virte, with Sario and the portrait of Saavendra as the hooks that keep the story together. Add in the intriguing magic system (which any player in Amber would think of ideas for Trumps thereby), great characterization, and vivid writing, and mix well. This could have been envisioned as an interminable fantasy series, but as one volume, the writing is crisp and rarely if ever flags. The three writers collaborate and write together seamlesly. The novel was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, and after reading it, I have to wonder, just what novel managed to beat it for that prize. I recommend it to epic fantasy fans unreservedly.

Over the last couple of decades, Oxford University Press has been putting together a history of the United States from a variety of authors, slicing up the history of the Republic in numerous, detailed volumes. An exception to that pattern, George Herrings FROM COLONY TO SUPERPOWER takes on the entire history of the United States. However, it takes on just one piece of that history, albeit a large one: foreign policy. Herring's volume looks at the U.S.'s relations with other powers from the Revolution straight through to the George W. Bush administration. His thesis is that America has great ideals in the abstract which it has not always successfully brought in practice to its application of its foreign policy. Herring brings a comprehensive, considered and balanced approach to the material. While he does have opinions, and certain subjects are clearly more favored than others, Herring takes pains to minimize his point of view. When Herring does present a strong point of view, however, he infallibly provides in a footnote a source or volume that provides a different point of view. For example, Herring takes issue with the machinations that brought Panama independence from Colombia and gave the US the freedom to create the Panama Canal. And yet, even as he does this, he provides a competing source that exonerates Roosevelt. Even those Presidents whom Herring seems to disagree politically with are critically evaluated for their contributions, positive and negative, to the narrative of US Foreign Policy. And those Presidents and figures that Herring admires are called out when they failed to live up to their ideals. This careful balancing of viewpoints and pains to remain non partisan means that, given the breadth of the subject, the book is long. And if the reader is inclined to read more on one particular piece of American Foreign Policy history, there is a bibliographic essay (as opposed to a straight,dry, bibliography) where Herring discusses numerous other volumes for further reading. The book took me several weeks to savor and digest, however these weeks were worth it. I learned an enormous amount about US Foreign Policy, as if I had taken a college course on the subject. If you have the time and inclination to learn about US Foreign Policy, Herring has created the definitive volume on the subject.

Kushiel's Justice is the second in the Imriel Trilogy of Jacqueline Carey, and thus the fifth book overall set in her sumptuous alternate history set around Terre D'Ange, the land of angels. Not for those new to this series or the author, Kushiel's Justice continues to highlight Carey's strongest suit, world-building, as we continue to follow the story of Imriel. The son of the disgraced Melisande Shahrazai matures in this novel, and his refusal to follow the precept of Blessed Elua (with respect to his secret lover) has far reaching, and tragic consequences. Carey's worldbuilding and Imriel's adventures bring him a marriage, a trip to Alba (England), and the loss of his wife takes him to a completely new land in the series: Vralia (in our world, Russia). The details of her alternate world continue to be teased out, and kept me as a reader continuing to read.Carey has quickly catapulted herself to the level of the best writers of alternate history in this regard. I am not convinced that Imriel is quite as good a protagonist as Phedre was; I have a sneaking suspicion that in the reversal of the usual problem, Carey writes female characters in far better detail and motivation than her male characters. Indeed, I found the daughters of the Queen, Alais and Sidonie, somewhat more convincing than Imriel himself as a character. Still, Imriel does grow throughout the book and I look forward to seeing if this character growth is sustained in the third and final novel of the series. Anyone who has followed Carey's novels to this point will not be disappointed in Kushiel's Justice.

It's not often that you read a novel which creates a subgenre, sui generis. Implied Spaces, by Walter Jon Williams, manages that feat with the inauguration of the "Sword and Singularity" subgenre of SF. For those who don't know what a Singularity is, in brief, its the idea that when trans-human intelligences (be it computer, cyborg or what have you) come into existence, life and history as we know it will be utterly transformed, and life after it will be as alien to us as our modern technological existence is alien to our ancestors in the Paleolithic era. In Implied Spaces, Walter Jon Williams creates a "sword and singularity" novel. What this means is, pace S.M. Stirling, is that fantasy ideas, tropes and even settings are convincingly melded with the high technology of a post-Singularity environment. We start off the novel in a fantasy world environment that, if it were just a random tidbit found on the internet, would at first look like a well written but ordinary fantasy novel. Aristide has a talking cat, sure, but in a world of trolls and monsters, that's not unusual. When his sword comes out, and starts acting like Morgaine Chaya's Changeling, complete with a wormhole, the reader starts getting an inkling that there is much more to the universe than meets the eye. We soon get ever grander vistas and situations as, with Aristide as our guide, we meet A.I.'s, post-human characters, wormhole technology, mass drivers using wormholes as weapons, and technology capable of affecting the most fundamental elements of reality. As Keanu Reeves famously once said: "Whoa!" The book is philosophical, comic, action packed, thoughtful and stunningly well written. I've been a fan of Williams work for a long while, and he hits all cylinders here. This novel is precisely for people who can read good fat fantasy, and yet strongly appreciate the High-tech SF of, say, Charlie Stross. Highly Recommended.

Stop me if you have heard this story before. Moderately capable young man from humble beginnings in an agrarian society slowly grows into strange and unusual abilities. Circumstances force him away from his pastoral home, forcing him to grow up. His benevolent land is under threat from lands both greedy and outright evil, and our hero is instrumental in dealing with these large threats to his small society. Yeah, it sounds like, for those who have read it, a lot like Modesitt's Recluce novels. The magic system here is different, and this is a post-apocalypse world, where there are few people who can wield "Talent" for good or evil, and the technology is higher, but its very similar to Recluce. The writing is better than the early novels in that series, but the basic ur-text of the story is the same. That said, we get some strange creatures, decently interesting politics, and hints of what this world lost when its fell. The battle scenes are all right, there is a fair amount in this novel devoted to battle tactics, since the hero is first conscripted, and then turned into a janissary. Relationships...well, Modesitt still doesn't write romance. I guess he is better living a happy marriage and relationship than actually writing one. So Alucius, our hero, has a girl promising to wait for him, but the relationship's development really doesn't happen with any complexity. Still, if you have read him before, and are tempted to read him again, you know what you are reading for, virtue wise. Complex worlds, competent heroes who might have doubt--but don't spend half the book doing nothing or moping about it. They get on, they progress, they are catalysts and protagonists. If you wanted to try his fantasy for the first time, this is probably a good example of a book to do it, so you can get a feel for his writing style, his proclivities and peculiarities (Modesitt loves to write about food, for example...). I am of the opinion that his SF is much better than his fantasy, even if, especially given our economic times, he writes much more fantasy. So while I am not especially interested in continuing to read this series, it didn't offend me and I don't regret the time I took to do so. I mostly read it on my trip to and from The Black Road, and to kill time in an airport and an airplane, it served its purpose very well. I don't especially recommend it.

Whiskey and Water is the second book in Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age novels about a resurgence of Faerie and their conflicts with Mages in modern day NYC. I loved Blood and Iron, the first book in this series, which was set around a fateful Halloween Night when the power of Faerie was unleashed in a visible and risble way, as conflicts between Faerie and the Promethean Mages, as well as riven divisions within Faerie led to the inescapable revelation to the modern world that Faerie was real, after all. Of course this conflict has been at great cost for all of its participants, even the winners, and it is seven years later that we take up their stories again. Matthew Szczegielniak still teaches classes and has turned his back on his power. Jane Andraste, Maga, is about the only other Mage in NY of note that's left. Her half-fae daughter Elaine sits on the painful throne of the Seelie. Whiskey, the water elemental who holds Elaine's soul is still abroad... And a series of murders by a Fae introduce us to new characters. Don, the cop who finds a connection with these sorcerous characters. Jewels and Geoff, young kids who quickly get in over their head. Oh, and Kitten, aka Kit, aka Christopher Marlowe, ready to be released from Hell and walk abroad in Faerie and the world. Oh, and of course, the Devil. More than one, in fact. And so with the players named, the tale is told and told well. The consequences of conflicts from the first book play out, and in addition to Faerie and the mundane world, Bear introduces us to a third realm in this book--Hell. The book shouldn't be read by anyone who hasn't read B&I (and why haven't you read that,hmmm?). If anything, the writing of W&W is better, a more mature Bear's pen's words here flow like wine. Marlowe is one of Bear's favorite historical characters, and to see him brought to life in the modern world is a delight, but not the only one to be found in these pages. After all, having been born and raised there, I was tickled pink that part of the climax, a wizard's duel, takes place on Staten Island. I enjoyed Whiskey and Water highly. The 3rd novel in the Promethean Age, Ink and Steel, takes place 400 years earlier, during the rule of Elizabeth I. Will I read it? I already bought it, you betcha.

Axis is the second novel in a trilogy, the sequel to the Hugo award-winning novel Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. I loved the first novel in this series (although I thought at the time that it was a standalone), which sets one of Wilson's classic Big Ideas in motion and takes us through it with interesting characters. What if unknown aliens put a time bubble around the Earth, so as to slow its aging relative to the rest of the universe? At the end of that novel, the shield changes subtly, and a gateway to another world appears, a chance for a new world, a new life, and a new opportunity. Axis takes us to that world, and continues to develop the universe of the Hypotheticals, once again through the eyes of his characters. Honestly, though, this suffers from middle book syndrome. It's clear that Wilson hasn't written many series (any, I think) and the book's pacing suffers for not being a self-contained work. It relies heavily on the first book (reading this one without the second is futile) and the characters and events don't sing like the first novel. This one is much more reliant on the interesting ideas (a la Mysterium) than the actual writing and characters themselves. The characters (even one from Spin) aren't as well developed as the ones in Spin. In this respect, the book is a disappointing step backward for Wilson. Its predecessor won the Hugo award for best novel, I do not expect this one to be nominated, except perhaps in a weak field. It's not a terrible book, merely an average one.

Selling Out is the second book in Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series. Although the book does do some backfill to allow readers to start here, this is really intended for readers who enjoyed the first volume in Quantum Gravity, Keeping it Real. The world after the Quantum Bomb, with Earth (Otopia) rubbing up uneasily against realms of Faerie, Hell, Elementals and Death. Lila Black, cyborg, lover of a half elf, half demon rock star, now with a necromancer's soul inside of her, is back on the case. This time, she gets to go to hell. Here, she finds Demonia not to be exactly what she expects, even with the assassination attempts, marriage proposals, political dealings, and very strange customs. In the meantime, her boyfriend, Zal, has adventures of his own, including an inadvertent trip to the deadly Elemental realms. More crisp writing. Snazzy world building. Excellent characters who grow and change. And the continuing hintings of an building, big mystery that affects all of the realms in her fractural, fascinating landscape. What's not to like? But do try Keeping it Real first, and see if Robson's brand of near future science fiction/fantasy alchemy is for you.

To recap for those who haven't read The Sky People (and why haven't you?), the Lords of Creation series are set in an alternate world much like our own...at least Earth is. In the LOC universe, it seems that Venus and Mars have been terraformed by unknown aliens 200 million years ago, and for lack of a better world, have been managed since. Humans, or protohumans have been deposited on these worlds along with flora and fauna and allowed to develop. So, on Earth, both the East and the West went for Space exploration and travel in a big way. Who cares about fighting over Vietnam when there are two whole planets out there to explore... The Sky People was set on Venus, with dinosaurs, bronze age hominids, and "cavemen". In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, we get a Mars straight out of Burroughs, with caste-mad Martians with organic technology and a civilization that was flourishing long before the Trojan War on Earth... The opening chapter has a bunch science fiction writers watching the landing of a probe on Mars. Stirling makes this chapter a game by giving incomplete names or descriptions or allusions to novels they have wrote (or won't write), to let the reader for fun tease out the people gathered. It was an amusing way to get into the book, separate from the main story. That story revolves around Jeremy, an archaeologist who is going to excavate a city in the encroaching desert, and Teyud, a mercenary guard who, in the best tradition of John C. Wright, is actually, secretly, a "Space Princess". And when rivals to her dying father decide to eliminate her from the game board, it soon becomes clear that the best way for Teyud and Jeremy to survive these attacks is to boldly return to the Court of the Crimson King... I loved this book. Like the previous book, Stirling comes up with a rational reason and logic for why and how a Burroughs-like solar system (Venus and Mars with life) could come about. Every chapter has an imaginary excerpt from Encyclopedia Brittanica on this new Mars (just like he did in the previous volume with Venus). This Mars is clearly an homage to Barsoom, with a strange Martian chess game, castes, weird technology, unusual political and social forms, and a grand vision. And the ending of the book, without giving it away too much, is much like Stirling's novel Conquistador in that it has a fulmination of even more possibilities unfold... I loved my trip to Stirling's Mars. So will you. Go read the Sky People first, and then go read this. You won't regret it.

A mediocre Sci Fi channel offering that wastes the potential of its premise. That premise is that the set of Cecil De Mille's Ten Commandments--the silent movie version, not the Heston version, was deliberately buried in the Guadalupe Sand Dunes order to keep entrapped an evil as old as ancient Egypt. (In real life, his motivations are not clear--but this movie provides a "reason") And when a group of archaeologists led by soon-to-be divorced Adam and Jesse Carter (Adam Baldwin and Morena Baccarin, both from Firefly/Serenity) unearth the set, that evil is unleashed on them. The acting is okay and the special effects are as hokey as one might expect for a Sci Fi channel production. The motivation and ultimate goals of the evil, though are unclear--we never have an idea of what it wants to do, once its freed. And I laughed at literally paper thin antagonists at one point in the action. Its worth a rental, but definitely not a buy, even for Firefly and Serenity fans.