I hated this book.  For terrible writing, complete lack of plot and about as much character development as the average installment of Penthouse Forum, I give Laurell K. Hamilton's latest novel Blood Noir an "F."  I'd give it a lower grade if I could.  I'm operating off of more, here, than residual feelings of betrayal.  For a long time, Laurell K. Hamilton was one of my favorite authors.  She gave us a strong female protagonist who had interesting adventures.  Although vulnerable, she was never a slave to her emotions.  Part fantasy, part thriller, part murder mystery, these books were something different.  It discouraged me, when Hamilton started writing soft-core porn.  For awhile, she at least maintained some degree of integrity; her characters had adventures in between bouts of kinky sex.  Eventually, though, those adventures grew less and less frequent, until they finally disappeared.  I thought her last installment, The Harlequin, was bad--Hamilton wasted about 400 pages to describe Anita Blake and her boyfriends going to a Cirque du Soleil type of event.  Well, heck, in comparison, that was the best book ever.

Most readers of this of this blog probably haven't read too much Patricia Cornwell, but her earlier Kay Scarpetta novels are wonderful.  What separates them from the herd is the rare combination of good writing and meaningful plot.  While it may be "all about the characters," characters, by themselves, do not a novel make.  Likewise, all the plot in the world doesn't help much if the characters are nothing more than cardboard cutouts, the literary answer to "Buddy Jesus."  In case you're not sure what I mean, I refer to you to Terry Goodkind's entire body of work.  Unfortunately, even good writers tend to go bad after awhile; Patricia Cornwell's most recent books are complete drivel.  Now, many people have this--these days somewhat sacrilegious--complaint about the last few novels in the Wheel of Time Series, but trust me, in comparison to Predator, they're all action packed.

Which brings me to Simon R. Green.  He's an ambitious writer; his offerings span the gamut, from crime novels to satires to Laurell K. Hamilton rip-offs.  I know, because I've read most of his books, even though, well, to be honest, they aren't very good.  He's like that good for nothing boyfriend most of us remember from college: he's incapable of having a real conversation, you'd die of embarrassment if your family ever met him, but somehow you can't quite bring yourself to break up with him.  Green's books fill a similar void: I go back to them when I'm between series, because they're dependable.  I sort of care about the characters, I'm mildly interested in what happens to them, and I have no guilt about abandoning them if something better comes along.  Until recently, I'd meandered through about half his catalogue, and I was pretty confident I knew what he was about.  So, imagine my surprise when I picked up the first book in the Deathstalker series, read a few chapters...and discovered that it was actually good!

When I was in grammar school I was already an inveterate reader of Terry Brooks.  I remember running around my neighborhood with a staff and a brown cloak my grandmother had made for me, pretending to be a Druid of the Four Lands.  Often I would press my little brother and one or two of my friends into service, equip them with homemade fantasy regalia, and then begin the inevitable discussion of who was to be Allanon, who Bremen, who the ancient Galaphile.* 

The Shannara books were the first post-Tolkien fantasy novels I read, and I enjoyed them perhaps a bit too much at that age.  Later on, I even slogged through the Magic Kingdom of Landover Series.  After finishing The Talismans of Shannara, which effectively ended Mr. Brooks's work in the world of Shannara for quite a few years to come, I moved on.  I saw The Word and the Void series as it hit the shelves, but at that point I was too wrapped up in other reading to be interested in a non-Shannara Terry Brooks book, and the idea of fantasy set in the real world never held much fascination for me.

Aside from the a brief dalliance with The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara when that trilogy came out, I didn't read another Terry Brooks novel for a long time after that.  Then recently, after seeing CJ read and enjoy Word and Void, I decided that it was finally time to complete my reading of Terry Brooks.  I found that The Word and the Void trilogy, comprised of the novels Running with the Demon, A Knight of the Word, and Angel Fire East, is a heartfelt, if not revolutionary, work of early urban fantasy.

Character has almost always finished a distant second in epic fantasy: fantasy authors of the past have typically chosen to prioritize intricate, twisting plots and depth of setting over characterization.  Creating depth of character, therefore, often became a simple question of adapting existing archetypes and of attempting to conceal cliche. 

Joe Abercrombie, on the other hand, chooses character over plot.  The consequent effect is often a bit disconcerting: something in the back of the veteran epic fantasy reader's head is telling him stop, wait, there's something wrong here: things aren't proceeding as planned.  The cliches of epic fantasy are so ingrained in our heads that when an author strays from the formula, it immediately catches our attention.

Not that Joe Abercrombie is a stranger to formula or cliche; rather, he tends to take formulaic elements and give them his own cynical twist, especially when it comes to his characters.  The First Law trilogy has to this point been a veritable commentary on the state of the epic fantasy subgenre.  Combined with his own signature style of gritty realism, this makes reading a Joe Abercrombie book a singularly interesting experience, albeit one that sometimes makes you yearn for things to take a quicker, less examined pace.  That said, we decided it was finally time to review the second book in The First Law, Before They Are Hanged.

The story begins in media res: we first meet Logen Ninefingers, the infamous Bloody-Nine, in the middle of a fight.  As Logen tumbles through wet Northern forest, a group of insistent, stinking Shanka on his tail, we get our first taste of Joe Abercrombie's signature, nail-biting ability to make combat a truly visceral experience for the reader.  Logen buries his axe in one brute's skull as he slides off the edge of a cliff, finds that he has a hanger-on, and then promptly throws himself, the Shanka with him, into a gorge.  Thus begins The Blade Itself, Book One of Joe Abercrombie's new fantasy trilogy The First Law.  Say this for Joe Abercrombie: say he doesn't pull any punches.

Abercrombie's name seems to be on everyone's lips these days.  The Blade Itself, the author's first novel, is probably the most reader-acclaimed epic fantasy debut since A Game of Thrones first hit the shelves.  The recent release of Before They Are Hanged, Book Two of the trilogy, has only sealed Abercrombie's fate as the current poet laureate of a new school of heroic fantasists -- a school that began, perhaps, with Martin, and has come to define the best of the genre as a whole.   And it really is the readers who have made Abercrombie's work the success that it is: with both volumes, published only as trade paperbacks (albeit with attractively dark, blood-spattered covers wrapped around good paper), the critical praise on the back covers and opening pages of each book is a veritable Who's Who of the fantasy/sci-fi blogging world.  You won't find any New York Times quotes here. 

The praise includes a lot of words like "bloodthirsty," "violent," "fast," and "fight scenes."  It also includes words like "action," "intrigue," "exhilarating," and "accomplished."  The necessarily selective nature of cover blurbs notwithstanding, the early reviewers generally have it right: The Blade Itself is a bold, ambitious first novel that manages to encompass both complex character study and vicious, bloody action.  More than anything else, however, the book shows a greater potential as yet unreached.

"Volume I" refers to the first three novels in P.N. Elrod's "The Vampire Files" series, and it's a great beach read.  Ironically, on the strength of subject matter alone, it probably only appeals to those of us who don't like the beach.  Existential angst isn't usually a big hit with the surf and sun crowd--they're too busy having fun.  The usual beach activities hold no appeal for me, however; I burn easily and I'm always uncomfortably aware of the sand in my shorts.  I try hard, but the beach and I just aren't a good fit.  Likewise, Elrod tries hard, but none of the different elements of The Vampire Files, Volume I are a good fit.  It alternately reads like a rip off of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series, an ode to the old Dick Tracy comic strip, a romance novel, a campy film noir script and a rerun of the Dr. Phil Show.

Liz Rosenberg had it right when she wrote, in her 2003 review of Christopher Paolini's novel Eragon, that it's difficult to approach the book without certain preconceptions: the author's age is almost impossible to ignore.  The story is old hat to any modern fantasy fan: Paolini began writing Eragon, book one of the Inheritance cycle (of which Eldest is the most recent volume, with Brisingr set for a September 2008 release), when he was 15 years old.  Four years later, in 2003, the novel had been acquired by Knopf and Paolini became a New York Times bestselling author.   Needless to say, I was impressed before I cracked the spine -- thus the problem of preconceptions.

Eragon was published as a work of young adult fiction; as such, it's tempting to judge it by young adult standards.  Add to that the temptation to judge Paolini's abilities according to his age at the series' inception and one finds that the deck is heavily stacked in the author's favor before the reader even turns a page.  Trust me, I was tempted.  I was tempted to lead a proverbial parade in Paolini's favor, praising to the skies his nascent creativity and holding his story up as an example to America's troubled youth: Write!  Create!  Wallow no more in the television's equivocal glow!  But though the reading world may still view Mr. Paolini as a precocious teen, he is now 24 years old, an adult writing a teenager's story.  He still sees himself as a writer of young adult fiction, but his intelligence and the insightful manner in which he has been known to talk about his work demand a more mature critique.  With that in mind, I have chosen to give him no quarter.  I will review his work as an adult reader and as an artistic endeavor now continued by an adult writer, whatever his age may have been at the start.  Though I find Eragon itself to be above all a derivative work, so to speak, it is clear that Paolini's heart is in the right place.

In the spirit of the Bard's ongoing reviews of older works, let's take a look back at the book that gave Potter a run for its middle school money.

Jack Priest is one of the coolest writers writing today, and Night Witch, his latest, gets a rare straight A from me.  So how come you have no idea who he is?  I’m about to tell you…

Parts of this book were like watching my cat suck his toes: morbidly fascinating, but not very interesting.  Until the last 50 pages or so, I had difficulty putting it down—even as I wished it were better.  Before I get into the meat of the review, let me point out that The Outlaw Demon Wails was only disappointing in relation to the whole of the series.  Since Kim Harrison debuted the Rachel Morgan series in 2004 with Dead Witch Walking, she’s impressed me as one of the best new writers working today.  Her realistic characters and original plots stand out in a field full of clichés, murky plots and archetypal characters.  However, for the first time, in the sixth installment, KH falters.

I was so excited when TODW came out, doubly so because I had the flu and couldn’t wait to entertain myself with Rachel Morgan’s latest exploits.  Since I had to stay in bed and read, anyway, I could find out what happened between Rachel and Ivy, who killed Kisten and what, exactly, was going on with the weres.  I’d been waiting anxiously for the answers to these questions for almost 12 months—and, to my mind, the fact that I left my sickbed to find them was quite an endorsement.  I’m a big fan of two genres, which KH melds well: supernatural detective adventures and what Jim refers to as “vampire porn.”  The Rachel Morgan series is, and despite this negative review, remains, the best of both worlds.  Spoilers after the break.

I have to admit, I was skeptical about Robin Hobb.  CJ kept insisting that it was some of the best fantasy she'd read in a long time, but every time I read the blurb on the back cover I hesitated.  It was the character names that threw me off: Prince Chivalry, King Shrewd?  It sounded like an ironic fairy story for children.  That's what I get for judging a book by its cover.

Assassin's Apprentice is book one of The Farseer, the first of three trilogies set in Hobb's Six Duchies.  The Six Duchies is what it sounds like: six historically separate lands now united under one King.  As it turns out, it is the custom of the Six Duchies to give names to nobility based on each lord or lady's prospective character traits: if a mother wishes her son to grow up to be wise, she names him Shrewd; if she hopes her daughter to be patient, she names her Patience.  All in the hope that this will drive each person to live up to their name.  An interesting idea, and the first of many examples of Robin Hobb's tendency to realign her reader's perceptions.