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By Sean Clark, on May 26th, 2011 Author: Brian Jaques
1994, Ace Books
Filed Under: Fantasy, Young Adult.
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
10 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
The Redwall books were among my favorites when I was actually a young adult reading YA books. Salamandastron stands out in my memory because it was the first I ever read. I remember first seeing the cover with the badger holding the spear, and just lighting up. I was a pudgy little dork who really liked Watership Down and the Final Fantasy games, so this book screamed awesomeness to me. I wasn’t let down, and I devoured the rest of Jacques’s books with ever-increasing voracity.
I still have all my Redwall books. The covers are worn, the pages yellow and tattered. They’ve survived moves from apartment to apartment, been lent out and miraculously returned more than once. I’ve always said I would revisit them at some point but never did. When Brian Jacques died in February, I finally decided to return to them. My initial thought was to hit the three core books (Redwall, Mossflower, Mattimeo), but then I saw that cover again and knew it had to be Salamandastron. Just look at that badger –he’s not some goofy Looney Toon. He stands there in armor, holding his pike and helmet and seeming, well, somber. …
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By Sean Clark, on May 19th, 2011 Author: Scott Westerfeld
2010, Simon Pulse
Filed Under: Young Adult, Historical, Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
| Illustrations... |
8 |
My biggest gripe with Westerfeld’s Leviathan was that it was too much a set-up for a trilogy and not as satisfying a standalone story as the lead entry in a series ought to be. Seeing as Behemoth is the second entry of said planned trilogy, that problem is no longer as glaring. Still, this too acts as a build up for a larger conflict, but rather than leaving us at the precipice, it–as a good middle segment should–aligns the plot’s working pieces then sets things in motions for a hefty conflict in book three. All that aside, this novel features all the aspects that made the first book intriguing, as well as an arguably tighter story arc.
Behemoth picks up with Deryn, the girl posing as a male in order to be British midshipman, and Alek, the Hapsburg prince on the lam, aboard the great flying whale dirigible following the escape at the end of Leviathan. They head for Istanbul, where the majority of the story unfolds.
(I gave a breakdown of the basic conceits of the series in my review of Leviathan, so if you haven’t read it go check out that first–but in brief, this is a steampunk retelling of World War One, where the machinist “Clanker” Eastern Europeans are in conflict with the “Darwinist” Western Europeans’ army, which is built around giant creatures created by manipulating evolution into complex living vehicles and biological weapons. So by whale dirigible, I mean it’s literally a huge, floating, armored whale.)  …
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By Nico Vreeland, on May 18th, 2011  Author: Justin Cronin
2010, Ballantine
Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-Fi (vampires)
Get The Passage, in paperback, at Powell’s
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
| Compared to Hype... |
2 |
[Minor spoiler alert: this book came out last year, and this review contains a few small details from relatively late in the book.]
I don’t know why I keep believing that a modern vampire book could be good. I believed it when The Strain came out, and I believed it about The Passage, too. Color me shamed, because that’s twice I’ve been fooled.
The Passage is not a good book. It’s a literary author’s attempt to write a genre novel without much experience or skill at writing plot. If plot holes or inconsistencies make you mad, avoid it. If however, you need a single book to get you through a weeklong vacation, it just came out in paperback and, at nearly 800 pages, it’ll give you some bang for your buck.
Let’s get into the details. …
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By Sean Clark, on May 12th, 2011 Author: Michael David Lukas
2011, Harper
Filed Under: Historical, Fantasy.
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
The Oracle of Stamboul is a competent and at times engrossing bit of historical fiction, but it’s also a case of magical realism that wants the magic to matter more than it ultimately does. For the majority of the book, the fantastical elements are not present; sadly, when they do crop up, they aren’t crucial to anything. That’s a shame, because Lukas spins a good yarn, balancing characters, plot, and tension nicely.
Almost right away, Oracle reveals itself as a somewhat picaresque late-19th century adventure story set in a particularly volatile part of the world. Eleonora Cohen is the precocious daughter of a Jewish carpet seller. When her father, Yakob, travels from their home near the Black Sea to the great city Stamboul (Istanbul) in order to sell off some textile stock, Eleonora stows away. Turns out to be a good idea, as their home town is sacked not long after the departure.
…
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By Eric Markowsky, on April 13th, 2011 Author: Téa Obreht
Random House, 2011
Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Fantasy.
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
With all the hype about the New Yorker’s 20 under 40, it’s nice to read a debut novel by one of their young authors that lives up to the marketing. The Tiger’s Wife is a captivating combination of history and fable. In her own life and in her grandfather’s stories, the narrator confronts questions of belief in the face of desire for understanding, for relief, and for release. Rather than resolving the world of the novel into one ruled by magic beyond human comprehension, the book’s fairytale elements only accentuate the challenges inherent in faith and doubt.
Natalia is on her way to a medical mission at an orphanage across the border when she receives news of the strange circumstances surrounding her grandfather’s death. Having lied to his wife about going to meet Natalia on her mission, he dies from an illness he’d long concealed, alone in the small town of Zdrevkov near the coast. Figuring out why he chose to slip away from his family to die among strangers drives his granddaughter out to the coast and into his past, into one story she knows and one she will learn. …
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By Sean Clark, on February 18th, 2011 [This clever YA fantasy is a C4 Great Read.]
Author: John Connolly
2009, Washington Square Press
Filed Under: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
I stumbled upon Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things a few years ago and really loved it. At some point I’ll go back and reread it for review, then probably crown it a Great Read too. That book was engrossing, surprisingly deep, and quite dark. Despite being about demons trying to incite Armageddon and annihilate the human race through a trans-dimensional wormhole, The Gates is not a dark book. It provides levity with cheeky humor and a colorful cast of characters (both demonic and not).
Samuel Johnson, who is 11, and his personable dachshund, Boswell, while staying out past their curfew, espy a weird Satanic ritual take place in a neighbor’s basement. The neighbors are possessed by demons and set about opening a gate to Hell in order to allow The Great Malfeasance to lead his army through and destroy the planet. How did the first demons get through? Because of a tiny particle that escaped the CERN hadron collider. …
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By Sean Clark, on January 5th, 2011  Editors: Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier
2010, Margaret K. McElderry
Filed Under: Short Stories, Fantasy, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
3 |
This collection isn’t quite what it sounds like: it’s not a bunch of stories about zombies and unicorns in battle. That would have been awesome. Instead it’s a collection of stories, some about zombies, some about unicorns. Each is preceded by a short dialogue between editors, each of which helms one of the two camps. The whole debate is pretty juvenile, even for a YA book, but that is, of course, to be expected to a degree considering the subjects at hand.
So does it work? Sort of. This collection is what it is. It boasts a number of recognizable young adult authors, and a few stories (such as “Inoculata” by Scott Westerfeld) are fairly good. The rest, not really so much. …
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By Eric Markowsky, on December 16th, 2010 
Author: Mark Helprin
1983, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Filed under: Fantasy
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
Since the cold weather has settled in for the winter, I’ve been thinking about good seasonal reads. You can’t do much better than Winter’s Tale. It’s an epic urban fantasy set largely in New York City, first at the end of the 19th century and later vaulting deep into the 20th. Filled with orphans, thieves, priests, police, machinists, wise old men, and powerful women of incomparable beauty, Winter’s Tale offers a classic adventure story in strangely modern dress.
The long and winding plot is a little difficult to summarize. The novel is divided into four sections, each one seeming to reset the story in a new place or time. Its nearly seven-hundred page bulk might turn away some potential readers, but I found its size made it an even better winter read. It’s a great book to lose yourself in when it’s cold outside. …
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By Sean Clark, on October 27th, 2010 [This novel is a C4 Great Read.]
 Author: Richard Adams
1972, Rex Collings
Filed Under: Young Adult, Fantasy, Literary
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Every so often we like to go back and do a quick mini-review/reminder of a great book. I’ve done it before with Frankenstein and Lolita, and I now I’m doing so with another of my all-time favorite books. I’ve read Watership Down close to as many times as Lolita, which is to say many. I know it backwards and forwards, and it holds up just as well as a book for adults as it does a story for children.
This book is about a bunny rabbits. Physically they and the world around them are realistic; in fact, all the locations of the books are real places in England. There is no sword-swinging or clothes-wearing, the rabbits are anthropomorphized only in that they are given language, reason, culture, and names. Fiver is the runt of the warren, bullied and ostracised. He often sees visions, but only his brother Hazel ever takes him seriously. When Fiver foresees the destruction of their colony (by real estate development), and the chief rabbit ignores the warning, Hazel organizes a ragtag group of exiles, made up of mostly weaker rabbits, but with a few tough guys, including the badass Bigwig. …
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By Arthur McCulloch, on October 13th, 2010 Author: Catherine Fisher
Dial Books, 2010
Filed Under: Young Adult, Fantasy, Sci-Fi.
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Incarceron is a wonderfully imaginative fantasy novel. Normally I don’t go for fantasy blended with science fiction, but Fisher’s novel incorporates the science fiction element seamlessly into the fantasy theme.
Incarceron is the name for a prison developed by a highly advanced society, a place for the criminals and unwanted that had survived an era vaguely referred to as the Years of Rage. The history and technology behind the creation of Incarceron remains a mystery that is slowly, and satisfyingly, unraveled over the course of the novel. Designed with benevolent intentions, the prisoners were to be transported to a place where they could live out normal lives in a near utopian world. Everyone on the Outside believes this to be true. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The world of Incarceron is a post-apocalyptic hell. The technology used to create the prison was so advanced that the prison itself became sentient. Once sentient, Incarceron became cruel and evil. The prison is like a God, both creator and destroyer of life, and ever-present and ever watchful. It is a vast fortress where the very structure and environment of the prison can be altered at will; and punishment is always looming. …
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