Fantasy Archives - Page 15 of 21

Dreadfully Ever After by Steve Hockensmith: Guest Book Review

I must admit that I have not read any literary mash-ups. I own Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Dawn of the Dreadfuls, thanks to Misty at Book Rat, but I haven't gotten to them yet. Not for lack of interest, it's just a matter of too many books and not enough time. My younger sister, however, has read both books. She was visiting when I got a pitch for the last in the trilogy, Dreadfully Ever After, and she was dying for me to accept. So I did--with a catch. I told her I would ask for a review copy if she would read the book and write the review. Our taste in books is remarkably similar, so it would practically be like reading my own opinion of the book. She agreed, Eric at Quirk Books agreed (Thanks, Eric!), and here, without further ado, is Rachel's review of Dreadfully Ever After. In 2009, Seth Grahame-Smith became a co-author of the beloved Jane Austen when he created Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a unique blend that has worked so well that many others have broadened this strange genre. Whether you’re a fan or think literary mash-ups are a travesty of the English language, the saga continues. Steve Hockensmith wrote PP&Z: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, his own imagining of the prequel to PP&Z, in 2010. Now he has finished the trilogy with PP&Z: Dreadfully Ever After. You didn’t expect it to be happily ever after now, did you? I must admit, I am a fan. Like the rest of the world, I thought the idea was quirky, unique, and--let’s face it--I loved the idea of an armed Lizzy. In this latest installment, we find out what happens after “Til death, or undeath, do us part.” I do love Jane Austen (she…

A World Without Heroes by Brandon Mull: Book Review

Jason Walker is going about his job at the local zoo when he hears music. Following the music, he is led to the hippo tank. It sounds like the music is coming from inside the hippo--but that's not possible, is it? Leaning over to figure out what he's hearing, Jason falls straight into the hippo's mouth and comes out in another world. He finds out that he is a "Beyonder" in this other world, and he eventually meets Rachel, another Beyonder. Jason accidentally stumbles on a quest to set right all that is wrong. To do that, he must defeat the evil wizard Maldor. I haven't read Fablehaven yet, so I can't compare this book to that series. I can say that I enjoyed this high fantasy novel written for middle graders. Jason is pretty much just an average guy. He's got a crush on one of the girls in his class; he loves animals; he wants to be a vet when he grows up, but his family is pressuring him to be a dentist; and he's an amazing baseball player. He's also the youngest in the family by a lot of years. No one really has a lot of time for him. He proves that there doesn't necessarily have to be anything special about heroes. A hero is someone who does his or her best in the face of danger or against impossible odds. Rachel is the smart girl who keeps Jason straight and helps him out on his quest. I liked her a lot too. This world is a lot of fun. I want to know more about what's going on with The Blind King. I'm curious about the Displacers. (Displacers were created by wizards and can pop body parts off at will but still control the parts…

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss: Book Review

Kvothe is an innkeeper in a little out-of-the-way village. Or is he? One day a story-gatherer finds him and guesses that there is more to the innkeeper than meets the eye. He asks Kvothe to share his story. Kvothe agrees, but tells Chronicler that it will take three days to tell the story. This book is the first in a--can you guess?--trilogy telling Kvothe's story. This one tells of Kvothe's childhood and how he eventually made his way to the University to learn magic. Kvothe was a likeable character and the story was pretty original and entertaining. It moved at a good pace and I really found myself almost devouring it. I really lost myself in it a couple of times. In one scene when Kvothe was auditioning, I found myself with a pit in my stomach and sweaty hands. I just had to laugh at myself when I caught it! For all that, there were a couple of things that bugged me. First of all, Kvothe's name. I don't mind authors inventing names, but make it something pronounceable, please! It doesn't help to explain "It sounds like quothe." I stumbled over those consonants every time I read the name and it broke the flow of the book. Luckily the book is told in first person, so I didn't really have to read it that often. Second, the pacing was great--until one part right at the end when the author got distracted by a giant lizard. This part dragged on and on and on. There was a point to the scene, but it wasn't such a huge payoff that it demanded over fifty pages of text. I read somewhere (I think here on Goodreads) that this is like Harry Potter for grownups. Not so much. On a very superficial level,…

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore: Book Review

Charlie Asher is your average Beta Male. He owns a second-hand shop in San Francisco and rents out the apartments in the rest of the building to some kooky tenants. He has somehow managed to win the heart of beautiful Rachel and she has just given birth to their daughter Sophie when the book begins. Charlie can't believe his luck, and, with typical Beta Male imagination, believes that Sophie has eleven toes or a tail or something--good things just don't happen for Beta Males. After Sophie's birth, weird things start to happen to Charlie. People drop dead in front of him, objects glow with an eerie red light, and he hears evil voices coming from the sewer drains. Enter Mr. Minty Fresh. He explains what is going on to Charlie. Basically, they are Death Merchants. They collect objects from the dead and dying that are imbued with the dead person's soul. Then they hold onto the object until the soul's next owner comes along and buys it. If they screw up, or if they have contact with other Death Merchants, the Forces of Darkness will rise and the World As We Know It will end. No pressure. I think I had laughed out loud four times in the first four pages of this book. Moore's sense of humor is a perfect match for mine. I've been trying to think of the word to describe it. Not exactly crass or crude, it's more like the not-exactly-for-polite-company jokes that you make with your best friends and maybe even your family, but you probably wouldn't say in front of your in-laws or your boss. I had a few "I can't believe he had the nerve to write that!" moments in some of the funnier parts. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes:…

M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman: Book Review

I'm trying out audio (again), this time during my commute to work. My commute isn't bad, about 30 minutes, so a collection of short stories, written and read by Neil Gaiman no less, seemed like a good place to start. I was right! I'll say first of all that I love Gaiman's voice. I could listen to the man all day. I don't really have any other narrators to compare him to, but just the fact that I actually finished this audio book should be a testament to his greatness! I've read a lot of these stories in print, but I have to say that hearing Gaiman read them himself added a little something to the story. For example, I would never have "heard" the troll speaking in such a gray, tired voice if I had read it on my own. Hearing Gaiman's take on that really paved the way for the ending of that one. There were more examples, but that's the most striking. "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" reminded me a lot of Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime series. It's a very tangled, nursery rhyme noir PI story, which sounds like a big mess but was actually a lot of fun. "Troll Bridge" was a little eerie. I did not see the ending coming, but it made sense. It reminded me a little of another story of Gaiman's that I read in Fragile Things. I like this take on the theme better. "Don't Ask Jack" was probably my least favorite, just because there wasn't much story. It's a goose-bump-inducing little vignette though. "How to Sell the Ponti Bridge" was another I wasn't that crazy about. It was sort of a fantasy version of a ballsy scam. Not exactly my thing. "October in the Chair" is a story that I really…

The Lost Days by Rob Reger: Book Review

A very dark, very brilliant girl, probably about twelve- or thirteen-years-old, comes to on a park bench one day. She doesn't know who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Being resourceful, she sets out to find the answers to these questions and stumbles onto a huge mystery. Strange isn't the word. It's more like weird. I liked Emily a lot, and I liked all the other characters she met. Talk about an eccentric group of people. But this was just a little...too much. It's so very, completely, utterly random that there was no telling what was going on. This is written in a world that seems to have no rules, so anything went. Stuff just happened out of nowhere, but that was the way it was supposed to work. Emily has no idea what's going on throughout most of the book, and neither do we. I like the idea, I just didn't necessarily like the book all that much. I'll pick up the graphic novel and give it a try, but I don't know if my mind is flexible enough for Emily the Strange. Younger readers might love her and her unpredictability. Read an excerpt. Find Emily the Strange on her website, her blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Buy Emily the Strange: The Lost Days on IndieBound | Book Depository | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with IndieBound, Book Depository, and Better World Books and will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Fortune’s Fool by Mercedes Lackey: Book Review

Katya is the Sea King's youngest daughter--and his eyes and ears in trouble spots. Sasha is the seventh son of the King of Led Belarus, which makes him a Fortunate Fool. But his foolery is only an act to gently steer the Tradition in ways that lead to peace and prosperity for his kingdom. The Tradition is made up of all the tropes that are always found in fairy tales. A seventh son meets an old beggar woman on the road? If he's nice to her, she'll help him with his task. If not, she'll curse him in some way. You get the idea. Anyway, something evil has popped up just outside the border of Led Belarus. The Sea King is worried and sends Katya to investigate. Sasha is worried about Katya and this darkness this close to his happy kingdom's borders. Will they defeat whatever's there with the help of some very unlikely allies? First of all, this book starts off with a plot that has very little to do with where the novel is actually going. It sets up an element of the overall story, but it still felt like a hundred pages could have been trimmed off by just quickly explaining where Katya got this magic object. That aside, I did like the book. Sasha and Katya have such big hearts that you can't help but like them and root for them. Katya is very feisty and intelligent, and you know I love those kinds of female characters. Other females in the book might not start off very promising, but even they start to gain some self-confidence by the time everything ends. Sasha is a handsome, unassuming charmer. He loves to tease people, but he's always quietly looking out for everyone's best interest. He's very smart as…

Alice at Heart by Deborah Smith: Book Review

Alice has always been the odd one in her small Appalachian community. She loves water, her hair grows incredibly fast, her feet are slightly webbed, and somehow her personality has just never "fit in." She's done her best all her life to blend into the background, but she gets quite a bit of publicity when she rescues someone. She hates being in the public eye, but ultimately it brings her to the attention of some women who can give her answers about her past and why she's so different. Let me say right up front that I won this book in a GR giveaway. I don't think that's affected my rating and review, but in the interest of full disclosure, there it is. The book started off a little disjointed for me because I wasn't very clear about what to expect. But by the time I was 20-30 pages in, it was all coming together and I was starting to enjoy the book. It only got better all the way through. I liked the characters and the mystery of what happened the night a boat sank, 40 years ago. I liked the family histories and legends of the characters. I particularly liked the way that the fantasy element was woven in like it was no big deal. Just make this one little leap of faith and all of a sudden you've got the real world with a little more magic in it. That's always fun. The book had a feel (but not a plot) a little like the movie Practical Magic and the book Garden Spells, with maybe just a little of the drama and mystery of The Pilot's Wife thrown in. Fans of these books would certainly enjoy this one. Reviewed October 24, 2008 Read an excerpt. Find author…

Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin: Book Review

I don't even know where to start with a synopsis for this book, so I'll just skip that. I have a feeling that the reason I'm not giving this book 5 stars shows more about what I'm lacking than about what the book is lacking. I felt myself on the verge of a huge epiphany throughout the book, but I just never got there. That has left me incredibly frustrated. Maybe reading through other reviews will help me see what I'm missing. The language is absolutely gorgeous. It's just one of those books that is so dense and beautiful that you feel like you could eat it. This was partly a love letter to New York. The author doesn't blindly love his city, he loves it warts and all and sees its potential to be something so much more than it is. Mostly this was a book full of beautiful symbolism that I think was trying to tell me something about life, love, justice, time, immortality, and faith in mankind. Maybe. I was tempted to put this on my "mythology" shelf, because it felt like Helprin was creating something of a modern, American mythology. I have notes scribbled here about what I think this means or that means, but something would always happen to show me that I was wrong in my interpretation of something. I finally just gave up and read the book without trying so hard to figure everything out. I hoped that everything would come clear to me in the end, but it didn't. Readers who enjoy lush language, people who love New York, and people who want a book to chew on for a while will probably love this. I truly hate to admit it, but this one defeated me. Reviewed March 30, 2009 Read an…

One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey: Book Review

Princess Andromeda feels like she can't do anything right. Her mother, Queen Cassiopeia, always seems to be disappointed in Andie's appearance and her tendency to have her nose in a book. Finally, Andie finds a way to prove her value as a researcher to her mother--just in time to help try to discover a way to keep a marauding dragon happy. Unfortunately, the method she discovers involves sacrificing a virgin weekly. When Andie's name is drawn, can she find a way to save herself, or will this be a job for a Champion? And what exactly attracted the dragon to the kingdom in the first place? This was the second in Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series. I didn't enjoy the overall plot as much as I enjoyed the first in the series, The Fairy Godmother, but the story was still fun and there were a few little things that I did like more in this book. First of all, there were no silly sex scenes. It wasn't bad in the first book, but they felt sort of pointless, so I definitely didn't miss them here. Second, they used a good copyeditor for this book. Most of the distracting italics are gone (a very good thing!). The story was still unpredictable and interesting, I just didn't care about the characters as much. Speaking of characters, Elena and Alexander make a few cameos in this book. I liked them so much from the first book that I was thrilled to have them show up here. Overall, still fun fluff, but start with The Fairy Godmother and don't expect quite as much from this one. Reviewed August 21, 2008 My review of the first in the series, The Fairy Godmother. Read an excerpt. Find author Mercedes Lackey on her website, her blog,…