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By Arthur McCulloch, on May 17th, 2012 Author: George R.R. Martin
2005, Bantam
Filed Under: Fantasy
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
“Disappointing” best summarizes the fourth installment in A Song of Ice and Fire. I was thrilled by the previous book and delighted to see that Martin was finally starting to tighten up the plot lines. He focused his story within the broad boundaries that he’d established and poised the reader for a strident and exciting resolution. The forces of fire and ice were drawn together in what promised to be the burgeoning climax.
Instead, A Feast for Crows is predominantly an unwelcome tangent. New characters are introduced in the prologue, which is Martin’s normal pattern. However, where previous prologues have served to heighten and focus the main story line, this one opens a doorway to a continuously expanding world and endless possibilities.
Martin’s style has never lent itself to a riveting pace. He usually advances his story incrementally and adjusts the pacing to heighten the drama in certain moments. However, this book is flat. Very little advancement occurs along the main plot. He ties up a few loose ends from previous installments, but generally he just plods along, focusing on characters that have been to-date mainly incidental. I assume some of these characters will play bigger roles in future installments, but that’s not enough to satisfy the readers anxious to follow their favorite characters. …
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By Sean Clark, on May 4th, 2012 Author: John Connolly
2011 Atria Books
Filed Under: Young Adult, Humor, Fantasy, Horror
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
10 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
A direct follow-up to Connolly’s wonderful 2009 book, The Gates, Infernals delivers everything you could want from a sequel. It’s another great adventure, and delivers all the wacky characters and narratorial humor that made the first book so exceptional.
After helping to save the world from an invasion from Hell, Samuel Johnson, with his trusty dog Boswell by his side, is trying to get back to a normal life. It doesn’t last long. The leader of the failed invasion, Mrs. Abernathy (formerly the demon Ba’al before he was trapped in the possessed body of Samuel’s elderly neighbor), seethes in Hell. The Great Malevolence–Satan–has fallen into a weepy melancholy following the defeat, leaving the underworld open to a tumultuous civil war.
Abernathy, in an attempt to restore her standing as Hell’s #2 demon, as well as save her own hide by preventing the traitorous demon Abignor from usurping rule, manages to open a small portal to Earth long enough to capture poor Samuel and Boswell. They will be an offering to restore the spirits of The Great Malevolence.
…
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By Nico Vreeland, on April 20th, 2012  Author: Kevin Barry
2012, Graywolf
Filed under: Literary, Fantasy
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
10 |
| Entertainment..... |
5 |
| Depth..... |
3 |
Kevin Barry is a wonderful stylist, a rare talent in the prose department. He writes City of Bohane in a gritty patois largely of his own making, halfway between Dashiell Hammett and A Clockwork Orange. Even so, it never gets too precious or contrived, and it never feels like Barry is reaching. That’s a very difficult feat, and the fact that Barry manages it for the entire novel without missing a beat, well, that’s nothing short of remarkable.
It’s a shame, then, that once you delve into the rich prose, there’s nothing inside worth getting to.
…
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By Arthur McCulloch, on March 28th, 2012 Author: George R.R. Martin
2003, Bantam Spectra
Filed Under: Fantasy
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Martin’s third installment in A Song of Ice and Fire is phenomenal. The set-up of the first two books finally begins to really deliver, and the reader, who’s already invested numerous hours in this story, is rewarded for his adherence. At around halfway through this installment, much of the tension that has been mounting swiftly comes to a head. Although the reader may not be too pleased with the fate of some characters, the excitement is undeniable.
Martin’s timing accounts for much of his success. He pushes the fastidious depiction of his world and vision to the tipping point of being wearisome, then reins in his characters and his plots deftly, drawing the unfurled plot lines of A Storm of Swords together like fingers in a gauntleted fist. In what has been heretofore an increasingly vast world of “endless” characters, the players start to gravitate toward the same locations–even if they don’t yet meet. …
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By Arthur McCulloch, on March 2nd, 2012 Author: George R.R. Martin
2000, Bantam Spectra
Filed Under: Fantasy
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
On March 6, HBO is going to release the first season of “A Game of Thrones” on disc. As Sean stated, the book was better. I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that there is so much more to be had from this author than a derivative film depiction. The books are a phenomenal series and in A Clash of Kings Martin does a terrific job of picking up where he left off in the original installment.
A Game of Thrones is in many ways an introduction to Martin’s world and a vehicle to set the plots in motion; A Clash of Kings is a continuation of introductions. This is by no means a negative criticism though, despite the two books together representing 1,600 pages of “introduction,” there is a broadening of our understanding of the characters and the world they inhabit. More resolution is afoot in this second book than the first, but by the end of A Clash of Kings, the stage is set for what promises to be some very exciting plot closures. …
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By Arthur McCulloch, on February 8th, 2012 Author: Scott Lynch
2006, Bantam Spectra
Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-Fi
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
10 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
In The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch has created an incredibly unique world, populated it with engaging characters, and orchestrated a driving, action-filled plot.
This book features one of the best, and most pertinent, prologues written in the fantasy genre. We get introduced to the protagonist from the eyes of two very different thieves—Chains and the Thiefmaker. Most prologues are written from incredible distance and only give a sense of pre-destiny, myth, and/or a generic world setting. Lynch delivers main character backstory while simultaneously introducing us to his world. After exiting the prologue, I was aching to know more about Locke Lamora and what thievery and mischief has got him into so much trouble. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on December 29th, 2011  Author: Maile Meloy
2011, Putnam Juvenile
Filed under: Thriller, Fantasy, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
It’s 1952. Janie is a regular 14-year-old American girl, living in Los Angeles… until she discovers that her parents are Communists, about to be arrested for un-American activities. The family flees to London.
Once there, Janie starts flirting with a boy in her class named Benjamin, and they embark on a mission to spy on a man that Benjamin thinks is a Russian agent. Only, the man he meets is Benjamin’s own father, the apothecary of the title.
From there, Benjamin and Janie begin a fairly typical young-adult-novel adventure: they follow clues, use newfound powers, and become embroiled in a massive conflict with no less than the world at stake.
It’s a familiar arc, and while Meloy writes it well, it’s a relatively forgettable novel. Except, that is, for one aspect, a facet of the mythos of The Apothecary that’s fairly original, but also quite uncomfortable. (Minor spoilers ahead. If you want to go in fresh, skip the rest of this. If you like Harry Potter and the Lemony Snicket books, you’ll probably like this one, as well.) …
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By Nico Vreeland, on November 11th, 2011  Author: Daniel Polansky
2011, Doubleday
Filed under: Mystery, Fantasy
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
Low Town is a genre mashup the likes of which I’m not sure I’ve ever read before. It combines the world of a gritty fantasy novel—and its attendant medieval melee and magic—with the plot of a mystery novel. The hero of the novel (though “hero” is a loose description of him) is the Warden. It’s unclear exactly what that title means, but it’s certain that the Warden is the primary drug dealer in Low Town, the nickname for the slums of a large city in Polansky’s fantastical Thirteen Lands.
When the Warden stumbles upon the gruesome murder of a child, he gets drawn into a mystery that involves cruel nobles, twisted magicians, and his own dark past as both a scarred army hero and a disgraced detective.
On paper, this looks like an easy home run, but the reality is not quite as successful. It’s a bit of a mystery itself as to why it doesn’t work as well as it should: my complaints are relatively small, and Polansky is quite skilled at the things he does well. For one thing, the fantasy side of this novel draws a lot more water than the mystery does. Low Town (the place) is well-detailed and intricately imagined, down to its smallest details, like the tidy tidbit that an incompetent branch of the city’s law enforcement is ruefully nicknamed “the hoax.”
The mystery side of things isn’t quite as enjoyable, mostly because it’s too simple for my taste. I prefer a nuanced, multilayered mystery; Low Town offers something closer to an adventure, the plot points coming in the form of logistical problems rather than secrets or lies to uncover. …
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By Sean Clark, on August 16th, 2011 Author: Lev Grossman
 2011, Viking Adult
Filed Under: Fantasy.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
This is the sequel to 2009′s The Magicians, a flawed but very enjoyable book that I awarded an Honorable Mention for our Best Books of 2009. The strength of The Magicians was its ability to flip convention on its head. The story began like a Harry Potter clone completely aware of its position in the fantasy genre and its similarities with C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. Then it took a good idea and ran with it: what if, instead of saving the world, the wizard students endowed with all sorts of power and advantage over normal humans merely graduated and had nothing to do? Quentin and friends fell into a black hole of hedonism, only managing to pull themselves out when they create a quest for themselves–one that almost harmed a world more than it helped it.
In The Magician King we get something much different, in part because it’s much of the same over again, just rearranged a bit. …
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By Sean Clark, on July 21st, 2011 [This time-travel-focused genre buster is a C4 Great Read. Find it and other C4 favorites on our Great Reads shelf at Powell's.]
 Author: Félix. J. Palma
2011, Atria Books
Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Romance.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
There’s very little I can say about this book without spoiling something. So I’m going to try something a little different to start. Let’s do word association. Take a look at this list and see how many things you think could help make for a good story:
Victorian romance. Parasols. Hoodwinks. Murder. Historical figures in fictional situations. Meticulous plotting. Vengeance. Paradoxes. Bawdiness. Secret societies. Blackmail. The Terminator. Drunk British whores. Jack the Ripper slaughtering drunk British whores. Minority Report. Tribal magic. The time machine in H.G. Wells’s attic. Street brawls. Apocalyptic robot battles. Dimensional rifts. Time travel. Henry James and Bram Stoker having a sleepover. Time Cop. Lava guns. Immortal dogs. Naive girls easily coerced into sex. Parallel universes. Steam powered automatons. Fourth dimensional dragon-like beasts. Sword fights.
Pretty good odds for an entertaining book right? Right. In any case, if that piqued your interest sufficiently, go ahead and skip the rest of the review, pick up this book, and enjoy. Read on and I’ll try and explain a little more substantively, but be aware that while I’ll try to limit them, there will be spoilers after the break. If you already think you want to read the book, do so, then return to my review in the future (oooooh).
Last chance to avoid SPOILERS. Okay, you’ve been warned. …
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