Tag: fantasy

Rain Dance by D.N. Erikson

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Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

The saying, “You only live twice,” is supposed to be a metaphor, but for Eden Hunter, it ends up being very much a statement of fact. She’s a former con-artist, dragged back from beyond the grave by vampire warlord, Aldric. He puts her to work on a hidden island as his personal soul-harvester, with a strict quota per week. It’s not great work, but it’s steady – at least until Eden’s beach-front house is attacked by a werewolf with murder on its furry mind. She then finds herself seen by the FBI as their prime suspect after an old partner in confidence tricks turns up dead on her doorstep. But, wait! There’s more! She has to deal with the rain goddess – presumably, the source of the title – to whom Eden is also in thrall, and whose rules she just broke. A gang involved in robbing her boss of millions in gold bullion. Her dead sister. A serial-killer politician. Oh, and a talking cat.

Overall, the main problem is that this feels like Book 2, rather than Book 1. Rather than starting off at what might be considered the more logical point of Eden’s first death, it joins her career as a reaper, already well in progress, opening with the werewolf attack. There is a fair amount of information – and quite important data, at that – which is not provided to the reader until some distance into the story. As the paragraph above suggests, there’s not exactly a shortage of plot threads either: as a result, some of them inevitably end up feeling under-developed. The goddess, for example, seems to show up at the end, purely to provide an adversary for the heroine’s boss, and I’m still not sure about the point of the politician. Conversely, some things feel under-explained. The island is supposedly hidden… yet the FBI know where it is? Who delivers – oh, I dunno – milk to it? It has an awkward sense of being something which looked a good idea at the time, only was never thought through properly.

It’s probably not the book’s fault, but there was a sense of deja vu too for me. Only a couple of months ago, I read Fugitive of Magic by Linsey Hall. It was also a story told in first-person perspective, about a paranormal heroine accused of a murder she didn’t commit, who has to find the real perpetrator in order to prove her innocence. Having recently read that story, I didn’t find a revised version of it especially interesting. The main positive is Eden herself, who made for a decent central character. There was a nice moral sense of grey about her choices, with her trying to do the right thing, even though those choices were frequently constrained by the unfortunate circumstances which she inhabited. If we’d been brought along with Eden on her resurrection, rather than being dumped into the middle of it, this would likely have been a more worthwhile story.

Author: D.N. Erikson
Publisher: Watchfire Press, available through Amazon as both a paperback and an e-book.
Book 1 of 3 (to date) in the Sunshine & Scythes series.

Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm by Garrett Robinson

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

One of the common problems I’ve found with fantasy novels is establishing the universe. It’s clearly going to be very different from the reader’s, and the author needs to get them up to speed on how things work in the book’s setting. If this isn’t done quickly and effectively, the reader can be left floundering in a world they know nothing about. Robinson uses a neat trick to get around this. His heroine, Loren, basically knows nothing about it either, because she has been brought up in a remote rural area. Virtually all she knows about life outside the woods comes from tales told to her by an itinerant tinker, and her dreams of becoming a heroic thief seem no more than fantasies.

That all changes when she encounters a fugitive, Xian the mage. Fed up with her life – and given the severely abusive parents, it’s hard to blame her – she throws her lot in with him. That’s how everything starts: as she discovers the world around her has a lot more to offer than household drudgery and arranged marriages, so do we. She has a couple of advantages over the usual runaway: she’s “country strong” having been brought up to hunt, providing her with a skill-set which will putt her in good stead to hold her own in a more urban environment. And on her departure, she takes a dagger, a family heirloom of sorts, which for some reason, strikes fear into the subset of those she encounters, who recognize it.

Loren is, perhaps, a little too well-prepared occasionally: while I can see how running and climbing trees would translate into parkour-like city skills, her adeptness at picking locks was a little eyebrow-raising. However, this ia a relatively minor issue, and more than outweighed by the strengths of Robinson’s writing. He draws a world which is easy to imagine in your mind’s eye, populated by a range of memorable characters. I appreciated the almost total lack of the near-compulsory romantic angles, and that Loren is far from the only strong woman to be found in these pages. Already, we have met Auntie, the shape-shifting mage who runs the underworld in the city of Cabrus, and Damaris, a scarily well-connected smuggler who helps Loren, yet appears to have her own agenda.

As the introductory book to a six-volume series, there is rather less than a complete story told here, though neither is there one of those oh-so annoying cliffhangers. There are instead questions, which will presumably be answered down the road. Where did Loren’s blade come from? What is its significance? What about the mysterious gems Damaris is smuggling? And who is Jordel, the man who is also after Xian, yet seems to keep encountering and assisting our heroine? I was left feeling fulfilled by what I had read, yet also wanting more, and that’s a combination which is not as frequently found as you’d expect.

Author: Garrett Robinson
Publisher: Legacy Books, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and a paperback
Book 1 of 6 in The Nightblade Epic series.

Fugitive of Magic by Linsey Hall

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Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

It’s probably worth noting that although this is Volume 1 in the somewhat clunkily-named “Dragon’s Gift: The Protector” series, it follows in the wake of two other Dragon’s Gift threads by the same author, The Huntress and The Seeker. While you don’t need to have read those to enjoy this, it does explain a structure, which could seem somewhat odd. For the volume sets up a trio of treasure-hunting magicians – Cass, Del and Nix – then all but discards the first two and concentrates heavily on Nix. Turns out Cass and Del were the subjects of the Huntress and Seeker sagas respectively, and the Protector gives Nix her turn in the spotlight. This is why some aspects, such as the shop run by the three women, seems more than a bit undeveloped: I presume they were featured in the ten or so previous volumes set in the same world.

With that out of the way… Nix is chasing down a shoplifting pack of demons, when she stumbles across a murder scene. The killer manages to frame her for the murder, which is unfortunate because the victim was a close ally of the vampire race. Their top enforcer, Ares, locks a nasty collar around Nix’s neck to ensure she doesn’t skip out before her date in court, three days hence. Worse still, their court contains mind-readers, who will undoubtedly discover her secret [shared by Cass and Del]. For as well as her relatively mundane conjuring skills, allowing her to pull things literally out of thin air, Nix is also a FireSoul. That’s a very, very forbidden talent, allowing her to absorb the abilities of others. In order to avoid exposure, she needs to locate the real killer, a quest that will bring her into an uneasy partnership with Ares, and take her to a long-forgotten castle in France, St. Pancras railway station in London, and other locations both magical and mundane.

“Find the real killer in X hours to prove your innocence, or else” is a fairly well-worn plot, but Hall manages to add enough novel elements to keep it fresh. The same is true of several other elements: the incredibly handsome, brooding vampire with whom the heroine has unresolved sexual tension, for example, manages to be be somewhat less irritating here than usual. I think the first-person narrative helps there: Nix’s inner monologue is nicely self-deprecating, and was more often than not in tune with what I was thinking as a reader. Ares is clearly there to do a large block of the heavy action work. But I was pleased to see that Nix does not hesitate to wade in there, right from the opening sequence, which sees her and her two friends engage in what is basically a pitched battle in the middle of the street against multiplying numbers of demonic entities.

I suspect you probably would be better off not leaping in to the universe like this, ten volumes down, and must confess to being slightly miffed something described as “Book 1” is far from being that. However, this was devoured at quite a rate, and offers a fast (if not particularly challenging or thought-provoking) and enjoyable read. Though the story clearly leads on to volume two, it doesn’t cliff-hanger the reader to death, and I’d certainly consider reading further – by which, I mean earlier – entries.

Author: Linsey Hall
Publisher: Bonnie Doon Press, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and paperback.

Petra by Cheri Lasota

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Petra is a teenage Roman slave at around the birth of Christ. She is completely under the thumb of her sadistic master, Clarius, until a strange conjunction of events and a poisonous herb with mystical qualities changes the power dynamic entirely. Both of them, together with her lover, Lucius, attain immortality. But it’s an immortality which requires the two men to drink from Petra annually, or they will degenerate into sub-human monsters. Neither is happy with the arrangement: Clarius is not used to being reliant on anyone, least of all his former property, and Lucius hates the fact Petra agreed to submit to their ex-master, in order to save him. As the centuries stretch into millennia, Petra begins, slowly, to put together a group people who will be capable of defeating Lucius and the immortals he has recruited, allowing her to live in eternal peace with Lucius.

If you’re getting a bit of an Interview With The Vampire vibe here, you are not far off the mark, with the story spanning multiple human lifetimes. Fortunately, it largely stays clear of the vampiric cliches, and what could have been little more than Twilight with delusions of historical significance becomes a little more. It’s recounted in flashback from the 18th century, though there are huge gaps in the narrative, where you’re left to wonder what Petra was doing during the 1,300+ intervening years. I’m still a little vague on the specific mechanism of the immortality, too: it is based on Petra’s blood, the herb, or is it the combination? But my major problem was the overpowering emphasis on the romantic angles. Look, we get it: Petra and Clarius are super in love. Now, can we move on to interesting anecdotes about life everlasting?

Proceedings take a sharp right turn in the 14th century, when Lucius has had enough of it all, and bails. This volume is, frankly, much more interesting with him not about. Petra goes in search of him, and the resulting adventure is easily the strongest section of the book. Hearing stories of an “immortal”, she heads out from Genoa, hoping that it’s her lover, and finds herself trapped in Kaffa, a port on the Crimean Peninsula, which is being besieged by the Mongol hordes. It’s a hellish landscape, made all the worse by the plague-infected corpses which the attackers lob over the walls (this actually happened – it was the first recorded case of biological warfare, and helped decimate Europe, as merchants who survived the siege brought bubonic plague with them when they returned home). This is a very well-handled meshing of historical events with fictional characters, working to good effect. I’d like to have seen more of this, and less sloppy romance.

Petra says that she’s an accomplished swordswoman – and given the hundreds of years she’s had to practice with weapons, that makes sense. There’s rather more talk than walk, in this volume, though I sense this may be a case of the author wanting to keep her powder dry for subsequent volumes and the battles against Clarius which seem destined to come. Would I read them? Hard to say. Lasota showed she has plenty of potential, but there’s still a risk this could end up collapsing into teenage mush. Probably a case where I’d borrow volume 2, or wait for a 99 cent sale on Amazon.

Author: Cheri Lasota
Publisher: CreateSpace, through Amazon – this was part of the Dominion Rising collection for Kindle.
Book 1 in the Immortal Codex series.

The Fire Beneath The Skin series, by Victor Gischler

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Ink Mage

Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

The small duchy of Klaar has been impervious to invasion, due to a secure location offering limited access. But when betrayal from within leads to its fall, to the vanguard of an invading Perranese army, heir apparent Rina Veraiin is forced on the run. She is fortunate to encounter one of a handful of people who know how to create mystic tattoos that will imbue the recipient with magical abilities. With her already significant combat skills radically enhanced, and her body now also blessed with a remarkable talent to heal, Rina can set about trying to recover her domain. It won’t be easy, since the king is not even aware the Perranese have landed. But she has help, albeit in the motley forms of a stable boy – sorry, head stable boy – a gypsy girl and a noble scion, whose charm is exceeded only by his ability to irritate.

Despite the young age of the protagonist, who is still a teenager, this isn’t the Young Adult novel it may seem. It’s rather more Game of Thrones in both style and content, with the point of view switching between a number of different characters. Some of these can be rather graphic, particularly the story of Tosh, an army deserter who ends up working as a cook in a Klaar brothel. But even this thread turns out more action-heroine oriented than you’d expect. For the madam gets Tosh to train the working girls in weaponcraft, so they can become an undercover (literally!) rebel force against the Perranese. Can’t say I saw that, ah, coming…

Gischler seems better known as a hard-boiled crime fiction author – though I must confess to being probably most intrigued by his satirical novel titled, Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse! The approach here does feel somewhat fragmented, yet is likely necessary, given the amount of time Rina spends galloping around the countryside. It may also be a result of the book’s original format as a serial. However, it translates well enough to a single volume, and I found it became quite a page-turner in the second half. There, Rina readies her forces to return to Klaar, and take on the occupying forces, which have settled in for the winter. 

The tattoo magic is a nice idea, effectively providing “superpowers” that can help balance out the obvious limitations of a young, largely untrained heroine. It is somewhat disappointing that, after significant build-up involving the Perranese’s own tattooed warrior, the actual battle between him and Rina seemed to be over in two minutes – and decided through an external gimmick, rather than by her own skill. In terms of thrills, it’s significantly less impressive than a previous battle, pitting her against a really large snake, or even the first use of Rina’s abilities, which takes place against a wintry wilderness backdrop – more GoT-ness, perhaps?

Such comparisons are unlikely to flatter many books, and this is at its best when finding its own voice, as in the tattooing, or the gypsies who become Rina’s allies. He does avoid inflicting any serial cliffhanger ending on us, instead tidying up the majority of loose ends, and giving us a general pointer toward the second in the three-volume series. Overall, I liked the heroine and enjoyed this, to the point where I might even be coaxed into spending the non-discounted price for that next book.

The Tattooed Duchess
A Painted Goddess

Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

It makes sense to treat the second and third volumes in the series as a single entity. Ink Mage worked on its own as a one-off, with a beginning, middle and reasonably well-defined end, and the eight-month pause between installments was not a problem. Duchess and Goddess, however, really need to be read back-to-back. Mage ended with Rina Veraiin having recovered her family’s territory of Klaar, thanks largely to the magical tattoos covering her skin. But the new duchess is discovering that fighting to get territory is one thing, ruling over it on an everyday basis, quite another. Especially since the Perranese invaders repelled in the first volume, are on their way back with a vengeance. For their Empress Mee Hra’Lito needs a big win to keep control of things on her side of the ocean.

Rumbling in the background, and coming to a head particularly in Goddess, is a changing of the guard in the Kingdom of Helva’s divine pantheon, with the current incumbent as top god being challenged for that position. Disturbingly, the likely replacement is the god of war: never a good thing, especially when he can raise an army of unstoppable dead soldiers and send them after Rina and her allies. Dealing with both those threats, requires Rina to ink up some more. Since she’s otherwise engaged, that means sending expeditions to the furthest corners of the lands and beyond, to retrieve the templates needed for Rina’s power-ups. [Though part of the problem is, these don’t come with instructions, explaining what a tattoo will do…] 

In particular, off to the Scattered Isles go stable-boy Alem, who carries a torch for Rina, and gypsy girl Maurizan, who is interested, both in Alem and getting some magic ink of her own. Meanwhile the noble Brasley and a new character, near-immortal female wizard Talbun, are exploring the depths – or, rather, heights – of the Great Library. This is a building so vast, it remains largely unexplored, with its origins and contents lost in the mists of time. Rina, meanwhile, is on a diplomatic mission, aimed at securing support for Klaar, only to be abducted by a group of Perran soldiers and their own mages, left behind when the army withdrew.

Especially in the second volume, poor Rina is largely relegated to a supporting role. The major threat to her is, not deities or monsters, but the arguably more insidious danger of an arranged marriage, necessary for the defense of Klaar. Maurizan becomes the action heroine focus, supported by members of the “Birds of Prey”, ex-prostitutes who have become the castle guard, as well as Talbun. It’s decent, yet almost inevitably, suffers from the bane of trilogies, “second volume syndrome”, lacking both a beginning an an end [I will say, for understandable reasons, explained by the author on his site]. It was originally published in serial format, so feels a bit episodic too, though I can’t say this impacted my enjoyment particularly much.

Rather than having to wait for the next part, as readers at the time had to do, I was able to head straight on into volume three. And Gischler redeems himself admirably for any flaws, with an excellent final volume. Rina has pretty much completed her set of tats, now possessing superhuman strength, speed and healing, as well as the ability to have anyone believe what she says, plus more. However, there’s a darker side to her talents, which becomes apparent to everyone when the Perranese lay siege to the port of Sherrik. With great power comes… scary responsibility, it appears: Rina has to make some unpleasant decisions about how far she is prepared to go, in order to repel the massive invading fleet. And they aren’t even her toughest adversary.

There are a lot of disparate elements across the series, yet Gischler melds them together into a coherent whole, rather than feeling like he’s simply plugging in fantasy tropes. I was particularly impressed by how even minor characters feel well-developed, such as Mee Hra’Lito. She didn’t need to be in the book at all, being simply the force behind the big bad (or more accurately, the secondary big bad). Yet seeing her motivations, adds depth to proceedings and enhances the epic scope. On the other hand, perhaps the series’s main weakness is lacking a truly central character. Is this Rina’s story? Alem’s? Maurizan’s? The answer is both all of the above, and none of them.

Still, this is the first true series I’ve completed since beginning book reviews on the site, and I’ve certainly enjoyed the experience. Gischler hinted at further volumes in February, saying of his universe, “I feel there’s more there to be mined,” and I wouldn’t mind in the slightest – even if Rina’s role would need… let’s say “serious revision”, based on how this ends, and leave it at that. Or a Peter Jackson trilogy of films based on these: that’d do, just as well.

Author: Victor Gischler
Publisher: 47North, available in both printed and e-book versions, as folllows:

A Demon Bound, by Debra Dunbar

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

While the cover image is certainly striking, I should mention that it is inaccurate in one significant point. At no point do I recall the heroine ever wielding a gun. While such false advertising would normally be a sore point, in this particular case, we’ll give them a pass – since the reason she doesn’t, is because she is simply too bad-ass to need one. For Samantha Martin is an imp: a demon who has chosen to spend a chunk of her substantial life-span (measured in centuries) among us mortals, rather than in the underworld. Why? Largely because it’s more fun up here.

Who needs guns, when like Sam, you possess a broad range of powers, including regeneration, transformation and the ability to manipulate energy? However, she has to be very, very careful about their use, because her kind is not supposed to be prowling the Earth at all. To prevent this, angels are continually monitoring for signs that indicate demonic abilities, and enforce the prohibition with extreme prejudice. A large, glowing sword may be involved. So, Samantha keeps her talents in check and manages her property business, or hangs out by the pool, generally keeping a low profile.

Things are rudely interrupted, however, when her hellhound returns home, much the worse for wear. Turns out he had got into a fight with a werewolf living on a nearby farm, whom Sam ends up having to kill. The local lycanthropes are not happy about this, and demand a service from her as reparation. Turns out a rogue angel, Althean, has been carrying out a one-man program of genocide against the werewolves, and they need someone to stop him. Unfortunately, Sam’s efforts bring her to the attention of Gregory, the angels’ chief enforcer on Earth, who is also on Althean’s trail – but is none too happy to discover Sam’s presence.

This was a tremendous amount of fun to read, mostly because of the heroine, who is unorthodox, to put it mildly. Foul-mouthed and unrepentantly immoral, Sam is a big fan of both sex and violence, largely bemused by human notions such as loyalty and affection, and treats our species as an amusing plaything, put on Earth for her enjoyment. Yet, over the course of the book, it appears there’s more to her than this. The fact she prefers Earth to Hell is just one of the various hidden depths which emerge, and we get to learn about the back-story of this struggle – not least that the angels and demons are not as far apart as either might prefer to think.

While Sam is clearly the book’s core, with it all being told from her first-person perspective, I also enjoyed Gregory and his conflicts. He has issues of his own, with some among his kind endorsing Althean’s murderous mission, as they believe werewolves to be Nephilim, the offspring of angels with humans, and deserving of extermination. It’s all surprisingly complicated, and I’m highly curious as to where the series goes. Credit Dunbar too, for telling a complete and well-rounded story here, albeit with an epilogue to leave the reader intrigued.

This is comfortably R-rated, since Sam has absolutely no problem with using violence, though most of it is against other supernatural entities. Not out of any moral scruples, however, just because we humans aren’t worth the effort! I’d love to see this made into a movie, though given her fondness for nudity – partly for practical reasons resulting from energy transmutation, partly to wind up the more prudish members of society – it would require a particularly broad-minded leading lady. In the meantime, I’ll certainly be investing in further installments of the Imp Series, of which this is the first volume.

Author: Debra Dunbar
Publisher: Inked Entertainment, available through Amazon in both printed and e-book versions.

Three Wishes For Cinderella

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★★★½
“#CinderellaForPresident2020”

While we’ve covered revisionist versions of fairy stories before, e.g. Maleficent, this is likely the closest to a “straight” retelling yet covered on the site. Cinderella (Šafránková) is condemned to a life of drudgery at the hands of her stepmother (Braunbock), until she gets a magical chance to attend a ball given by the local monarch. There, she meets the handsome prince (Trávníček) who falls for her, only for the couple to be separated at the end of the night. He seeks her out, with the help of a lost slipper, and they live happily ever after. All the standard elements of the well-beloved story are present in this 1973 co-production between East Germany and Czechoslovakia. So what is it doing here?

Well, as the picture above suggests, this Cinderella is quite the bad-ass. She initially has no interest at all in the Prince; while the rest of the town is getting in a tizzy over his passing through, she sneaks out to ride off on her horse. That’s where she first encounters him, since he has snuck off similarly – and it turns out, she’s a better rider than him. Their second encounter comes when he is out hunting with his pals. This time, Cinderella is dressed as a boy (above – raise your hand if you’re unconvinced!), and proves herself to have better aim than him as well, shooting into a crossbow bolt being held in his hand. She also demonstrates a talent for tree-climbing: this is all apparently a result of the upbringing through her late father, who can only be commended. When she shows u[p at the ball, she’s not exactly throwing herself at the prince, chiding him after he says he has chosen her as his bride, for not asking her opinion [To be honest, he seems a bit of a dim bulb. Like father, like son maybe, for the Queen is the smart one of the family as well.]

There isn’t even a fairy Godmother to be seen here, and one isn’t needed. For this Cinderella isn’t pining out a window, waiting for her prince to come. She gets things done herself, more or less. She does get help from the local fauna when stepmom inflicts particularly tedious chores on her, and there’s also the “three wishes” of the title – though they’re less wishes, than sets of clothes that appear out of hazelnuts, because fairy tale. But overall, this is a remarkably self-reliant, smart and confident young woman, who will likely make an excellent ruler. Indeed, it would have been perfectly fine if, at the end, she had politely listened to the prince, and said, “No, thanks – although, if you can get my stepmother off my back, I’d appreciate it.” I do understand, it would likely have been a step too far, even for a heroine several decades ahead of her time.

This has become something of a staple of Christmas viewing on the European continent, broadcast on TV across a number of countries. In Britain, it was one of the East European films imported by the BBC’s children’s department in the sixties and semi-translated (the original dialogue is retained; a voice-over translates the dialogue and narrates, as if by a storyteller). However, it has now largely been forgotten in the English-speaking world, overshadowed by the terrors of The Singing Ringing Tree. That’s a shame, since this is worth equally as much attention, and offers a considerably more robust heroine than anything Disney was producing at the time, or would produce this side of Mulan.

Dir: Václav Vorlíček
Star: Libuše Šafránková, Pavel Trávníček, Carola Braunbock, Rolf Hoppe
a.k.a. Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel, Tři oříšky pro Popelku, Three Gifts for Cinderella

Sorcery and Science, by Ella Summers

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

The blurb for this one reads, “Terra Cross is just your typical paranormal princess. She plays poker with goblins and leprechauns. She savors her morning muffin from the Pacific Sunrise Bakery in suburban California. She solves galactic crime cases. And on a particularly wild day, she can even see into the future.” It is somewhat inaccurate, at least as far as this novel goes. I don’t recall any poker at all, muffins appear once, and as for the crime-solving… Well, sorta but not really. There is, however, likely good reason, since the novel is a prequel to Summers’s “Sorcery and Science” series, in which I presume Terra does more of the above.

This is both a blessing and a curse. It allows this book to stand on its own: you reach the end, and there’s a fairly well-defined line drawn beneath the fates of most characters. On the other hand, it does require a clunky jump in the epilogue to tie into the body of the series. Not much more than, “we moved to the other end of the galaxy and started a private-eye business.” Wait, what? It almost works better if you skip that, and treat it as the first volume in its own, standalone series. The paranormal princess aspect makes more sense this way, in a universe where advanced technology and magic co-exist, and Earth is being carefully blocked from knowledge of both. Vampires, witches, elves, etc. all have their own realms, making varying use of the “sorcery and science” from the title.

Cross is the daughter of the mage’s king, but likes to sneak off on adventures with her best friend and mage enforcer, Jason. However, they bite off more than they can chew when chasing after a renegade scientist-wizard, Vib. He is creating an advanced breed of super-mages, with multiple, shared talents instead of the standard limit of one type of magic per person. Needless to say, this research – despite being way beyond the pale – is of great interest to the competing races. Terra and Jason find themselves not just fending off Vib’s creations; they also becomes pawns in the political battle for dominance between the various forces that seek to control the galaxy.

I generally enjoyed this, once I got past Summers’s fondness for prose which tends toward the over-descriptive, it seems especially when it comes to colours, for some reason. The world she crafts is quite an interesting one, and the techno-pagan blend of SF and fantasy is intriguing. While Jason is the more action-minded of the duo, Terra becomes more active later on, especially after taking one of Vib’s experimental concoctions, out of desperation. It allows her to use some of Jason’s talents, which are significant;y more combat-oriented than her precognitive ones. 

The sudden right turn at the end, to tie it into the main body of the series, leaves me uncertain whether I would want to continue, since it appears potentially rather different in tone. Not least, I get the horrible feeling there’s going to be one of “those” love triangles, putting the heroine between Jason and the dark, brooding vampire commander she encounters. Fortunately, that was only hinted at in the prequel, and what’s here was, overall, pleasant enough.

Author: Ella Summers
Publisher: Currently only available as part of the Dominion Rising collection for Kindle.

The Hundredth Queen, by Emily R. King

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

An interesting premise gets wasted, buried under a muddied writing style which sets up in one direction, then abandons it for another. Orphan Kalinda has been brought up by The Sisterhood in their remote temple in the mountains (kinda Indian, kinda Sumerian, annoyingly non-specific), training in the ways of a warrior – though others have far more talent in the era. Her life is upended when the local monarch, Tarek, visits the temple and selects Kalinda to be his next wife. Next, as in he already has 99, not to mention his additional courtesans. The problem for Kalinda is, this sets up a tournament in which she can be challenged by the other women, who seek to supplant her.

The journey to Tarek’s palace is barely under way before two issues rear their head, that drive the plot the rest of the way. One is Kalinda falling into a forbidden love for Deven, the guard who’s escorting her. The other is her encounter with a “bhuta”. These are half-human, half-demons, who exist in four kinds, each possessing power over the elements of fire, earth, air and water. Might this, perhaps, be connected to the mysterious fevers from which Kalinda has been suffering from a child, only kept in check by her daily consumption of a potion?

Of course it is. For the book rarely strays from the obvious, virtually from the start when Kalinda immediately falls head-over-heels in love, with literally the first man she has ever seen. There’s no sense of chemistry here at all, or of a romance growing naturally out of the characters. It seems shoehorned in there because, dammit, it was on a checklist of things fantasy books need to be successful, which King found online somewhere. The interactions between Kalinda and the other women weren’t much more convincing, sitting somewhere between Mean Girls and The Hunger Games.

I’m not even clear on the details of the tournament, which is supposed to be the main plot device of the book. Who challenges who? What are the mechanics here? What does Tarek get out of it? It’s the ultimate plot-device, since his motivation for setting up the event is entirely obscure. It’s not as if he can exactly stream the event on pay-per-view. There are a couple of plot twists later on, that did manage to engage my interest briefly – these did help explain why Tarek picked Kalinda, when we had repeatedly been assured earlier of her plainness and lack of talent.

However, the actual competition is largely glossed over with a disapproving frown, culminating in a big, damp squib of pacifistic grrl power. This is less drama than melodrama, with every character being exactly what they appear to be, and possessing few hidden depths. The last third of this proved to be a particular slog, and it’s not a universe to which I’ll be returning in future.

Author: Emily R. King
Publisher: Skyscape, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and in a printed edition.

Colossal

  By

★★★
“A giant conundrum.”

After breaking up with her boyfriend, Gloria (Hathaway) holes up in her middle-American hometown. She gets a job in a bar, run by her childhood pal, Oscar (Sudeikis) – not that this employment does much for Gloria’s burgeoning alcoholism. Meanwhile, over in Korea, the city of Seoul is being plagued by a giant monster, which will appear out of nowhere, behave oddly, and then vanish again. Gloria eventually figures out that when she goes through a particular spot – a local children’s playground – at a specific time, the creature appears in Korea, and its actions reflect hers. Turns out Oscar can do the same, manifesting in Seoul as a giant robot, and he may not be as benign with his new-found powers, as Gloria is attempting to be.

This is a severe mess in terms of genre, and very difficult to put into any particular bucket. It’s part comedy, part drama, part fantasy – yet not sufficiently any of them to the point where I can confidently say it would appeal to fans of that kind of film. It is the kind of quirky role for which Hathaway is well suited, and Sudeikis does well, in a “low-rent substitute for Ben Affleck” kinda way. I just wish Vigalondo (whose time-travel flick, Los cronocrímenes, is one of the best of its kind) had taken the concept here and really run with the possibilities. I guess budget may have limited him there, but I’d like to have seen  Gloria and Oscar do more than standing around, waving their limbs somewhat. The trailer suggested a bit more than that.

I think this might be intended to be a parable for abusive relationships, with Oscar using controlling tactics and threats to ensure that Gloria doesn’t go back to the big city and/or her boyfriend there. Or perhaps Oscar is intended to represent the alcohol which is Gloria’s bête noire? You can more or less make up whatever you want here. And you’ll probably have to, because if this film doesn’t credibly explain how two people can project into South Korean monsters (it’s something to do with a childhood trauma, a smashed show-and-tell project and lightning), you know you’re not going to be given much in the way of character motivation.

Re-reading the above, it comes over as negative to a greater extent than it should. Gloria is a likeably flawed lead, I was kept interested, generally amused and occasionally impressed. Yet, it feels like a seriously wasted opportunity, something which could have ended up occupying a deliciously excessive and demented spot between Pacific Rim and Monsters vs. Aliens. Instead, it’s far lower-key and takes place on a surprisingly small scale, than anything involving a monster, hundreds of foot high, terrorizing an Asian city should. If your expectations are similarly restrained, this is likely to work better. I can state with a fair degree of certainty, you won’t have seen anything like it before. And once you’ve seen it, you will probably understand why.

Dir: Nacho Vigalondo
Star: Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Stevens, Austin Stowell