Author Archives: Keith West

Echo City Reverberates Through the Mind Long After It’s Finished

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A slightly different version of this review appeared on at David Gemmell Awards.  Since this novel didn’t make the final ballot, and my review at the DGA has been up for about two months, I’m going to post a modified version of it here.
Spectra, mmpb, ebook, $7.99
Tim Lebbon’s Echo City is a dark, dense novel full of wonders and terrors and many things made up of both.  The novel starts out, not really slow, but at a more restrained pace.  Lebbon has a number of characters in different locations he needs to bring together, and once they start to join up, the pace is relentless and the suspense nerve-wracking.
One of the main characters is the city itself.
Echo City is ancient city.  No one is sure of its age, but the city is thousands of years old.  Over time the city has been built up atop the previous cities, and the lower levels are called echoes, giving the city its name.  Whole buildings still exist in the echoes, along with ghosts and other more unpleasant denizens. 
Echo City is quite large, with walls separating the different districts of the city known as Cantons.  I seem to remember Lebbon mentioning the city was either thirty square miles or thirty miles across.  I don’t recall which and can’t find the reference.  Anyway, the city is large enough that portions of it have been parceled off as parks and others as farmland to feed the population. 
This is important because Echo City sits in the middle of a vast, toxic desert.  No one has ever crossed the desert, although many have died trying, their bones littering the landscape.  That changes when the book opens. 

 Peer is a former Watcher, a political and religious dissident who was tortured and exiled to Skulk Canton, a disreputable part of the city used as a penal colony, a few years earlier for the belief that something could exist on the other side of the desert.  One day while looking out over the desert she sees a figure stumbling across the sands towards the city wall.  Descending to the base of the wall (there are holes), she helps the man in and takes him home to nurse him back to health.  She soon discovers he’s not a traveler who left the city and turned back.  Instead, he’s a traveler who just arrived, as evidenced by the weapons and other devices he carries with him.  And he has no memory of where he came from. 
The stranger’s arrival sets in motion a series of events will change Echo City forever.  One Canton, the Dragerians, believe he’s their god, returned in the flesh to lead them out of the city to the northern darkness.  The ruling Canton, the Marcellans, see him as a threat to their power and an affront to their god, Hanharan.  And one woman, the Baker, who may be as old as the city itself, sees him as the only hope of saving Echo City from the doom that is rising through the echoes. 
Soon everyone is trying to gain control of the stranger.  Peer, her former lover and betrayer Gorham, and the Baker, along with some of the Baker’s twisted creations, find themselves in the middle of a brutal war, where violence is swift and betrayal is always a possibility. 
The Baker is one of the most interesting and at times disturbing characters in the book.  She practices a type of genetic engineering called chopping.  She’s not the only practitioner, but she’s by far the best.  The things that come out of her vats lend the story a sense of wonder, terror, and menace.  It’s here that Lebbon’s background as a horror writer makes the story rise above the typical dark fantasy. 
In addition to mastering plot and setting, Lebbon is also skilled at characterization.  There are a number of viewpoint characters, and we see them through their own eyes as well as the eyes of others.  We spend time with each of them, knowing their innermost thoughts and sharing their regrets and secret fears.  And when they die, as some of them will, we feel their loss.  The end result is fully realized individuals, ones the reader can care about, even if at times the things they do may be repulsive.  And they are individuals, each with an agenda.  While that agenda includes saving Echo City, they aren’t always in agreement on how to go about saving it. 
Echo City is a breathtaking novel, well worth the time investment.  I’ll be reading more of Lebbon’s work in the future.  
Here’s where I add to the review I posted on the Gemmell Awards.  I’ve found from time to time that my mind keeps going back to this book.  It’s that well written.  I’ve read a few short pieces set in Lebbon’s world of Noreela.  He’s written several epic fantasy novels.  They’re going in my TBR stack, either in dead tree format or electronic format.  Although his work is darker than I usually review, I think he would appeal to some of you who check in here on a regular basis.   Check him out.  
I’d like to thank the Gemmell Awards for sending me a review copy.

More Wit, More Charm, More Snark, More Theft, and a Lot More Fun

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False Covenant
Ari Marmell
Pyr Books
Hardcover, $16.95, release date June 2012

I think I’m a little in love with Widdershins.  It’s perfectly understandable really.  She’s beautiful and clever, with a sharp blade and a sharper tongue.  And I’m not the only one in love with her.  There’s…come to think of it, much of my competition is significantly better with a blade than I am.  Perhaps I should forget about her.

Besides, she’s a fictional character.

Why are you people looking at me that way?

False Covenant is the sequel to Thief’s Covenant, the inaugural volume in Ari Marmell’s new YA series.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  I detail my reasons here.  Don’t let the fact that these books are marketed as YA deter you from reading them.  They’re better than the bulk of what’s published as “adult” fantasy these days.

False Covenant opens about six months after the close of Thief’s Covenant, and things are not going well in the city of Davillon.  The Church blames the city for the death of Archbishop de Laurent and is actively doing what it can to punish the city by openly using its influence to redirect trade away from the city.  This isn’t exactly popular with the populace, and relations between parishioners and Church are continuing to deteriorate.

Everyone is feeling the pinch, including the aristocracy, the Finder’s Guild, and Widdershins, who is trying her best to honestly run a tavern.  Enter the new Bishop, who sympathizes with his adopted city and hatches a plot to try to improve relations between the Church and the citizens by scaring them back into the pews.

I read a quote recently (don’t ask me where) that basically said if you want to commit great evil, attempt to do great good.  That’s certainly the case here, and the other, more familiar quote about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions applies as well.

If you’ll forgive a small spoiler, what the Bishop does is enlist some men to impersonate a character out of fairy tales named Iruoch to create an atmosphere of fear in Davillon.  Initially the plan works, no one is seriously hurt, and worshipers return to services.

Until the real Iruoch shows up.  He’s a nasty piece of work and really creepy.  His fingers are unnaturally long, and he can walk on them like a spider.  He can also walk up walks and across ceilings.  He drains bodies of their blood and life essence, leaving dry husks.  The fact that much of the time he tends to talk in a sing-song nursery rhyme cadence and is accompanied by a chorus of giggling children’s voices only adds to the creepiness factor.

Meanwhile, Widdershins has a new man in her life.  And not in a good way.  He comes out of nowhere, knows far more about her than he should, and makes it clear that his intention is to cause her serious problems.

How Marmell weaves these two plots together is an example of a writer at the top of his game.  I wasn’t expecting the approach he took, but I have to admit it made perfect sense.  And the epilogue was unexpected, although again perfectly logical, setting the stage for many more adventures.

The voice Marmell uses is wonderfully snarky and at times downright hilarious.  I’ve said a time or two before in these reviews that it’s hard to get me to laugh out loud.  This book did it twice.  I’m not sure, but that might be a record.

And the humor is needed.  This is in many respects a very dark book.  It could easily have sunk to a level of bleakness that would make A Song of Fire and Ice look like Pollyanna.  And yet it doesn’t.  Marmell doesn’t shy away from the emotional effects of what happens, but he doesn’t revel in them, either.  Another quote I’ve seen recently is that good sword and sorcery has a strong infusion of horror.  Marmell writes that type of sword and sorcery, and he writes it well.  The humor helps to alleviate the horrors.  Striking this type of balance is tough trick to pull off, but the author makes it look easy.

All of the major supporting characters from Thief’s Covenant, including Widdershins’ personal deity Olgun, are back.  At least all the ones that survived to the end of that book.  Their relationships will continue to grow, although not all of them will survive to the end of this book.  If you read it, you’ll understand what I mean when I say I have a bone to pick with Marmell over the permanent change in Widdershins’ relationship with one of these characters in particular.  (No, I won’t tell you which one.  Read the  book yourself.)  But the characters are fully realized, three dimensional people, not archetypes or stock characters.  Even most of the “villains” are sympathetic and act with understandable motives, Iruoch being the exception.  They don’t all get along, they don’t all like each other, and those interactions raise this book above your standard, generic fantasy.

I haven’t read all the fantasy series Pyr has published or is in the process of publishing (but I’m working on it, Lou).  Of the ones I’ve read, my two favorites until now have been Jasper Kent’s Danilov Chronicles and Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy.  Add to that list Ari Marmell’s Widdershins’ Adventures or whatever the formal title is. I’ll continue to read about her adventures as long as Marmell continues to write them.  There’s not another title scheduled that I know of, but I hope that will change soon.  In the meantime, I’m going to read the rest of Marmell’s work, starting with The Goblin Corps.

As I said at the beginning of this review, don’t let the YA label deter you from reading this series.  It’s one of the freshest, darkest, funniest, and best sword and sorcery series being written today and should appeal to readers of all ages.  It’s great fun and reminded me of why I like fantasy, and sword and sorcery in particular, in the first place.  I hated to reach the end of it.

 

In the Merry Month of May

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Finals are now over, and with a handful of exceptions, I’ve got my grades in.  That means I can get back to doing what’s important, as opposed to what’s necessary. I’ll be posting more updates, starting later tonight, with a review of Ari Marmell’s YA novel False Covenant, one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Some of those updates will be over at Futures Past and Present.  It’s been about six weeks since I posted anything there, and I’d like to make the site more active. I’ve got novels by Trent Jamieson, Mary Sisson, and a space opera by Eric Brown I’ve had on  the shelf for over a year that should be reviewed within the next three or four weeks.

I’m needing to take a break from several things for a few weeks, work being one of them and fantasy being another.  There are novels by David A. Hardy, Anthea Sharp, and Keith Baker that are in the queue.  I’m going to bump those back a bit.  I’ll be reading mostly the above mentioned science fiction for the rest of the month.  The fantasy I’ll read will be a couple of nominees for the Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best debut Fantasy.

I’ll also be reading short fiction across a variety of genres and posting reviews where and when appropriate.  I haven’t abandoned the Conan series and will try to post at least once in that series.  I’ve got a number of commitments to review books, and I want to finish most of them up by the end of June.  I’m thankful for all the review requests I’ve gotten, and I’ll continue to accept them.  Probably just not many over the summer.  They’re starting to feel like work, and reading fantasy, science fiction, historical adventure, horror, and detective/crime novels should be fun.

Summer should be a lighter schedule than spring was, for one because I’m not teaching, and two because soccer will be over after this week. There are some things I’ve not gotten to that I want to fit in, both in the fantasy and historical adventure fields.

Anyway, those are my plans for the next few months as far as reading and blogging are concerned.  Thanks to everyone who follows either of my blogs or just checks in from time to time.  April had the most traffic ever, and I appreciate all the page views and comments.

Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole Defies Expectations

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Shadow Ops:  Control Point
Myke Cole
Ace, 389 p. mmp $7.99 US, $8.99 Can
ebook $7.99  Kindle Nook

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a publicist at Ace Books asking me to review Myke Cole’s debut novel, Shadow Ops:  Control Point.  I’d seen the book on the shelf in the bookstore and thought it looked interesting, so I agreed.

I’m glad I did.  It’s a military fantasy, but it’s not your typical military fantasy.  It’s got a good blend of superheroes thrown into the mix.

The story takes place in a world slightly different from ours.  At sometime in the recent past (Cole is vague on the chronology), during an event called the Great Reawakening, people began to develop magical powers.  Or at least some people did.

This, of course, upsets the government, and the government does what governments tend to do:  they try to legislate and control the magic.  Only certain types of magic are allowed, and if you practice in one of those schools, you’re allowed to live.  You just have to work for the government in a military type outfit called the Supernatural Operations Corps.  It’s either that or be executed.  If you manifest in a prohibited school of magic, well, you’re just out of luck.

Of course there are rumors of a secret program involving the prohibited schools and of covert operations involving practitioners of those schools.  The government denies this, but of course the rumors turn out to be true.

Oscar Britton is an army officer who manifests in one of the prohibited schools, portamancy, or the ability to open a portal to anywhere he’s ever seen.  Initially he goes on the run, but when he’s captured, he’s given the chance to join one of the cover covens.  To use his powers for good.  Or be killed.

When put that way, how can he refuse?

Only it’s not that simple.  The government defines what is good.  And it doesn’t exactly meet Oscar’s definition.  This is one of the books greatest strengths and where it departs from your typical military fantasy.  A great deal of the central portion of the novel involves the training Britton undergoes.  While some of this follows the predictable pattern of recruit grows and learns and becomes a better person with a more balanced outlook through his training, the growth and learning aren’t necessarily in favor of the establishment.  Britton is a conflicted character.  He wants to do good, but so much of what he sees around him and what he’s forced to do clearly isn’t good.  He has some real struggles over what is the right decision in some situations.

As a result, he’s very much a flawed hero, one who makes mistakes.  Costly mistakes, that result in people dying.  He’s also one I could sympathize with, even when I wouldn’t have made the same choice. 

There are plenty of fight scenes, especially as Britton completes his training and he and his team begin to be sent on missions.  Good, fun superhero style action.

But Cole doesn’t just leave us with another superhero novel.  He surprised me several times with the direction he took things, including the ending.  Especially the ending.  This is the first book in a new series, and I’m not sure where he’s going to go from here.  I can make some guesses, but I’d probably be wrong.  He’s recruited me for the next book.

Cole is former military, and it shows in the detail.  There were times when I felt I was right there.  This was not always a pleasant sensation.  The writing is smooth and powerful and propels you along.  Join the ride.

RIP, Maurice Sendak

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I just learned that Maurice Sendak, best known as the author/illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, has died of complications from a stroke.  That was my son’s favorite book when he was four, and we read it together so often that I could quote almost the whole thing.  I’ll not write a lengthy obituary because I never met the man, and anything I say will pale besides the tributes that will be written over the next few days.  I always enjoyed his work.  He will be missed, but that work will live on.  And really, isn’t that what any artist in any field would want?

The Avengers

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I just saw The Avengers with my son as part of his birthday present.  It was fantastic!  I’m not going to do a full review because of time and I wouldn’t know where to start.  This one pretty much got it right.  It’s clever, fun, contains no major gaping plot holes that I could see, has characters that aren’t interchangeable, and respects the source material.  That last part is key and what separates this movie from, say, last year’s fiasco named after a certain famous Cimmerian.  It’s worth going to see, even if you have to wait a few days to get tickets.

Rise and Fall Heralds the Rise of a Great New Fantasy Trilogy

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Rise and Fall:  Book One of the Blood and Tears Trilogy
Joshua P. Simon
Paperback $14.95
various ebook formats $2.99: Amazon  B&N Smashwords

Seeing as how he’s only published one novel and a few pieces of short fiction, it would be understandable if the name “Joshua P. Simon” were unfamiliar to you.  But if you’re smart, you’ll make note of it and remember it.  If you’re smarter, you’ll buy and read Rise and Fall.

In his author bio, Mr. Simon includes among his influences Robert E. Howard and Glen Cook’s Black Company.  Howard is one of my favorite authors, and the Black Company one of my favorite series.  By divulging this information, Mr. Simon set the bar of my expectations high.  Very high.  The question is, did he meet them?

The answer is “Yes, yes he did.”  While the influences of Howard and Cook are clearly seen by anyone familiar with the work of these gentlemen, Simon hasn’t simply imitated.  He’s taken their influence and made something his own.

The story opens with a mage wigging out and killing vast numbers of people.  Actually, this precedes the opening, which is when a group of mages arrive to deal with him.  The evil mage, Nareash, has acquired a lost artifact, Sacrymon’s Sceptor.  The sceptor increases his power, but it also seems to have made him more evil than he already was.  During the course of the battle, all of the mages are killed along with the king, who had been under Nareash’s control.

There are three principle characters in this novel.   Elyse is the princess who ascends to the throne after the death of her father.  Barely more than a girl herself, she is ill prepared for ruling, to say the least.  Yet she has no choice.  It’s time to grow up, and growing up won’t be easy, especially when several nobles decide to make a play for the kingdom.

Her older brother Jonrell ran away from home twelve years before to escape his father and joined the Hell Patrol, a notorious band of mercenaries.  Now he’s their commander.  After learning of the death of his father, he’s coming home.  And he’s bringing his mercenaries with him.

Tobin is the second son of the chieftain of the Blue Island Clan.  Hated by his brother Kaz, who was appointed Warleader by their father, Tobin is the laughing stock of the elite warriors, the Kifzo.  All he wants is to be accepted by his father.  (Most of the main characters in this novel have father issues.)  His fortunes begin to change when he rescues the shaman Nachun during a raid on a village.

The strength and power of this novel come from the way Simon handles the characters.  In addition to Jonrell, Elyse, Tobin, and Kaz, there are a number of secondary character whose viewpoints the reader gets to see.  Each of them is a real character, with good and bad traits.  The four characters I named in the previous sentence get most of the character development, and develop they do.  They all grow and change.  None of them are remotely the people they started out to be.

While Simon puts his characters through the fire, he doesn’t do it just to see how much pain he can cause them.  They experience joy as well as sorrow.  While pretty dark at times, this isn’t a novel of nihilism.  Instead I found it pretty balanced.

Much of the way Simon develops his characters is through their words.  There’s a difference between writing dialogue that reads like dialogue in a book and writing dialogue that reads like real people talking.  Joshua P. Simon writes the latter.  It’s what brings the characters to life and fleshes them out in this story.

But don’t think that all this book deals with is talking and relationships.  There’s plenty of action, from one-on-one conflicts to epic battles, with sieges and assassination attempts scattered about for good measure along with more than a dash of intrigue.  The supporting cast of the Hell Patrol get their moments, and each of them also changes and grows, most in good ways but some in not so good.  The pace of the battles, particularly as the book progresses is where the Howard influence shows the strongest. I’m glad one night I put the book down before one of the major battle scenes and forced myself to go to bed.  If I hadn’t, I would have been up way to late and then probably been too excited to sleep.

Not all of the characters come together before the end.  There are ultimately two main story arcs that will converge later in the trilogy, although one intersects the other in a way that completely surprised me.  Both arcs end with a twist.  And the twist contained in the final two sentences of the book?  Nicely done, Mr. Simon, nicely done.

A couple of other things I’d like to mention.  First, while I doubt this book was written with the intention of being a YA novel, I would have no problem giving it to someone in the YA or middle grade range, at least not on the grounds of content.  It might be a bit long for some younger readers.  The graphic sex and profanity that make some novels and series unsuitable for younger readers is missing, something I found refreshing after the previous book I read.  If you know a young reader whom you’d like to introduce to epic fantasy, this would be a great place to start.

The second thing that favorably impressed me was the role religion played in the book.  It was an integral part of the lives of many characters, especially Elyse.  The role of religion in pseudomedieval fantasy cultures was mentioned in a post by Theo over on Black Gate the other day as part of a discussion of historical authenticity in fantasy.  Theo has mentioned (more times than I’m willing to look up the links tonight) that one area that tends to get short shrift in modern fantasy is the role religion played in medieval times, objecting to the way it tends to be ignored.  I think he would approve of the way it’s portrayed here.

The only complaint I have was that there was no map.  I would have liked to have seen where Tobin’s home was in relation to Elyse’s.  I’m not sure the  lack of a map wasn’t intentional.  There are strong hints in places that Tobin and Elyse are separated in time as well as in space.  If that’s the case, it has some interesting implications.  I could be wrong.  Nachun says, in the scene in which he – no, I can’t go there.  It would spoil one of the major surprises.

Anyway, I expected I would enjoy this book when Mr. Simon asked if I would like a review copy, otherwise I would have declined to review it.  I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did.  This has been one of the better books I’ve read over the last couple of months.  It’s another indie published book with fine production values: good cover art and copy, well formatted, interesting story.

Oh, and I lied.  There is one other complaint I have.  The second volume won’t be out for a few more months.  Check this one out.  You’ll be glad you did.

Long Looks at Short Fiction: The Last Rune by David A. Hardy

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“The Last Rune”
David A. Hardy
Sorcerous Signals

Sorcerous Signals and its sister publication The Lorelei Signal are a pair of online publications I’d not encountered before.  I’m going to check them out after reading “The Last Rune” by David A. Hardy.

This one was a little different than the short fiction I’ve looked at in the last month or so.  Most of the stories this series has focused on lately have been fairly straightforward with relatively few named characters.  “The Last Rune” is by far the most complex.  While having a central viewpoint character, there are a number of named secondary characters and a multi-layered plot.  This is not a bad thing.  Quite the contrary, although it means you shouldn’t read it if you’re tired or sleepy; you need to pay attention.  But do read it.  It’s a good blend of fantasy and vikings.

The story starts out with an attack by vikings on the feast hall of King Hugleik of Upsalla.  Among those defending the hall is Ulf Bloodeye, the protagonist.  Set against him among the attackers is Starkad Stovikson.  These two have a history which is recounted in another story, “Vikar’s Doom” not available online. It is available in Mystic Signals 9, but I don’t have a copy yet or I would have reviewed it as well.

Where the story really picks up is in the aftermath of the battle.  It seems King Hugliek possesses a powerful rune.  Starkad takes off with it, and Ulf (who barely manages to survive the battle) tracks him down.  That’s a vast simplification, of course.  I’m not sure I can summarize everything without giving some stuff away.  Hardy kept me on my toes with this one, and I was never certain where he would go next.  There are some figures (human and animal) I presume to be from Norse myths, although I’m not certain.  My knowledge of Norse mythology isn’t as extensive as my knowledge of Greek and Roman. 

There’s plenty of combat and action in this one, and the pace is relentless.  One of the things I liked most about this story was the attention Hardy paid to detail.  The storyline was a well-woven tapestry where small things that didn’t seem to be such a big deal at the time, such as when one of the warriors has a private word with teh skald before the battle.  Turns out this little exchange, which the reader isn’t privy to, is a major plot point. 

“The Last Rune” was fun, and I’m looking forward to more adventures of Ulf Bloodeye. 

Update on Life

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We went back to the doctor yesterday to go over test results.  Whatever this mass/cyst/something is, it doesn’t appear to be anything to panic about according to the doctor.  It could be anything from a benign cyst to the start of something serious, but at this point there’s no way to be sure without doing something invasive. There’s currently nothing to indicate the whateveritis is serious.  Kathy is still thinking about it, but she’s leaning heavily on waiting and doing another MRI in six months and see how things look then.  She’ll have to have the MRI anyway.  It’s possible that this thing is the result of the hormones she’s been on since her hysterectomy a year ago.  If that’s the case, then it could shrink or (hopefully) go away altogether.  The doctor has taken her off hormones, and if it shrinks, that will be a good indication the hormones caused this thing in the first place.

Anyway, we’re much more relaxed than we’ve been for the last few weeks.  I want to thank everyone for their prayers and support.  We’ve really appreciated them.

Life Happens…

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…and sometimes “life” is spelled with an “S” if you get my meaning.  Fortunately, that’s not the case (yet), although I was preparing myself for it to be.

A few weeks ago, my wife Kathy went in for her annual mammogram, although she later told me she was thinking about skipping it this year.  Well, the mammogram, done at our PCP’s office, or rather the large clinic he works at, showed something that wasn’t there last year.  He referred her to a breast health specialist in town, an wonderful woman who is a breast cancer survivor herself.  This doctor did a followup mammogram on the breast in question (the right), saw the same thing, and ordered an MRI and a biopsy. 

We got the results back today.  The biopsy showed the new growth (something called calcification) to be benign.  But the MRI showed a small mass (about the size of the tip of my little finger) in the left breast which didn’t show up on the PCP’s mammogram.  It didn’t show up on the followup mammogram we did with the specialist this afternoon.  And let me tell you something.  The difference in quality of the two mammograms was amazing.  The specialist’s showed much more detail than the PCP’s.  Lesson: not all mammograms are created equal.  Make sure you’re getting the best quality you can.

Anyway, we go in for a followup visit on Thursday morning to discuss options after the doctor has had a chance to examine the sonogram we also did late this afternoon.  We’ll probably do another biopsy.  The doctor is fairly certain this is benign, but she doesn’t want to take chances.  Neither do we.  If they do find something, I may start blogging erratically until we get things cleared up.  I’ll post a notice if that happens.