( M ) Books - Page 12

The Rowan

Anne McCaffrey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

What happened? 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

When we are first introduced to the Rowan, we know she's destined for great things. We travel along as she grows up, becoming an intelligent, articulate, and self-sufficient young woman. She's poised to become a heroine who kicks butt and takes names.

Then, she meets Jeff, turns into a pile of brain dead mush, and is content to forevermore squeeze out lots of babies.

It's sad when things start out looking good and fizzle to a lame end. The Rowan could have been a contender.

Not Free SF Reader 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is set in a universe where psionic abilities are utilised in a commercial sense, and have guilds and organisations set up around them.

People use teleportation for space travel, and telepathy for communication, all that sort of thing.

They are graded on ability, and the most talented can do the move the spaceship trick. The book follows a young girl of this variety, of course.

Editorial Review:

The Rowan was one of the strongest Talents ever born, but she was also lonely and without family, friends --or love. Then a telepathic message came from a distant world facing an alien threat, a message sent by an unknown Talent named Jeff Raven, and be it power, danger, or love--the Rowan is about to meet her match.

Colors of Chaos (Saga of Recluce)

L. E. Modesitt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The biggest fantasy from L. E. Modesitt, Jr. to date, Colors of Chaos is the story of the White Chaos wizard Cerryl: his education in life and love, and his rise to power in the magicians guild of Fairhaven. This is the direct sequel to The White Order, which told of Cerryl's boyhood and youth, and takes place at the same time as the events in Modesitt's earlier novel, The Magic Engineer. Yet it stands alone, the longest Recluce novel, a portrayal of the growth and change of character and of the strengths and weaknesses of an age-old civilization held together by the power of magic. Ceryl, now a full mage in The White Order, must prove himself indispensible to Jeslek, the High Wizard. Whether through assassination, effective gorvernance of occupied territory or the fearless and clever direction of troops in battle, Ceryl faces many harrowing obstacles, not the least of which is Anya, the plotting seductress who's the real power behind the scenes of the white wizards. With his wits, his integrity, and the support of his love, the Black healer Leyladin, he must survive long enough to claim his rightful spot within the ruling heirarchy of the White Order. This is a must-read for followers of the Saga of Recluce, offering a unique, sympathetic point of view of the White Chaos wizards-the forces that throughout history have opposed the magicians of Recluce.Colors of Chaos is the ninth book in the saga of Recluce.

Fall of Angels

L. E. Modesitt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great read :) 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I want to first mention that I'm not a big fan of sci-fi in books. I love fantasy (dungeons and dragons) books, but (generally) dislike fantasy TV/Movies because they don't do it well. My feelings on Sci-fi are usually the opposite. When I first started reading Fall of Angels I thought I'd made a huge mistake because it starts off as a straight sci-fi book, and yes, maybe those ray guns on the cover should have been a warning, but the covers on the previous Recluse books have been completely unrelated to the story inside, so I basically stopped looking at the covers.

This book has the usual extremely slow, hard to get into introduction that I've found in all the Recluse books I've read so far. This one was slightly less boring than usual, but I still found it took me a week to past the first quarter of the book.

Once you get into the book, describing it to you would make it seem really repetitive. Nylan builds a weapon, Ryba and the Guards use it to decimate the attackers, Nylan gets sad because of the use of force, repeat. ;) Sprinkle that with Nylan's comments about how stories ignore the boring building of societies and infrastructure, and pay attention to the big battles etc.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the twist of an advanced civilization getting used to the backwards word of Westwind. I liked getting the full story/background of the beginnings of Recluse. I think this was one of the better books from this series.

Editorial Review:

Nylan, the engineer and builder, races against time to raise a great tower on the plateau known as the Roof of the World, a place in which the exiled women warriors will create new lives, before the rulers of lowland nations come to obliterate them all.

The Tower and the Hive (Rowan)

Anne McCaffrey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The long-awaited final volume in the New York Times bestselling Rowan saga.

For generations, the descendents of the powerful telepath known as the Rowan have used their various Talents to help mankind--some are powerful telepaths, others can teleport through space, others are empathic healers. The clan has grown powerful. They have led Earth to ally itself with the alien Mrdini, and together the two races have held back the predatory Hivers, a deadly insectoid species that kills all life it finds.

Like all powerful families, the Rowan clan has also made enemies. There are those who say the treaties with the Mrdini gave away too much--especially, that the Mrdini get more than their fair share of new living space as habitable planets are discovered--that the Hivers should have been exterminated by now, and that far too much power is concentrated in one family.

The clan has two goals to keep the peace: to help the Mrdini control population growth, so that newly discovered planets are distributed more evenly, and to put a final halt to Hiver advances. They are confident of success--if they can survive sabotage and assassination attempts aimed at destroying all they have worked for.

"McCaffrey continues to hone and extend this universe, which has become more convincing with each novel." -Booklist

The White Order (Saga of Recluce)

L.E. Modesitt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Finally a stroy from the other side of the coin 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

While this wasn't really the most exciting book of the series, it was still one of the best. Mainly because of the alternative perspective that it gives the reader about Whites. This book chronicles the rise of Cerryl, who one day becomes the leader of the Whites in their fight against Recluce. This book makes it clear that all Whites aren't evil and that the school of white mages actually teaches and believes that it does more good for Candar than bad, and even the bad is only a necessary action for the future good of the people.
This book is very well written (as are all of Modesitt's books) and the characters are great. The story line is cool, with plenty of action as well as lots of intrigue within the order of the Whites (mainly counter play between Sterol and Jeslek). This book is definitely a valuable addition to the saga of Recluce. Modesitt continues to fill in the missing blanks of his multi-generational story.

Editorial Review:

L.E.Modesitt's bestselling fantasy novels set in the magical world of Recluce are among the most popular in contemporary fantasy. THE WHITE ORDER is the story of Cerryl, a boy orphaned when the powerful white mages killed his amateur-magician father. Cerryl, raised by his aunt and uncle, is a curious boy, attracted to mirrors and books. The miller's daughter teaches Cerryl to read his father's books, and it seems that the talent for magic has been passed from father to son. When Cerryl and the miller witness a white mage destroy a renegade magician, the miller realises that he can no longer keep the boy safe. So Cerryl is sent to the city of Fairhaven to finds his destiny: To become one of the great magicians of his age.

Wild Cards VI: Ace in the Hole

George R. R. Martin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Superb Start to the Series 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is the first book in the long-running Wild Cards series, edited by George R. R. Martin. Several authors contribute stories, which taken together form a "mosaic" novel.

This works better than you might think. The quality of these stories is very high, and while there are one or two rough spots, Martin's editing, ably assisted by Melinda Snodgrass, keeps the continuity smooth.

The premise is simple enough: In 1946, an alien virus is detonated over New York City. The Takisians decide to use Earth as a guinea pig to test this new weapon, and although one of their princes comes to Earth to prevent this, he fails.

90% of those exposed to the virus "draw the Black Queen" --- they die a horrible and painful death. 9% suffer horrific disfigurement --- these are the Jokers. And 1% develop supernormal abilities, and these are the aces.

Yes, this is superhero fiction, but it's much more sophisticated than the X-Men or the Heroes TV series. It's occasionally tongue in cheek, but it's much darker than you'd expect from a superhero story. It's graphically violent and sexually explicit, and a lot of the action is extremely grim. It's a strangely compelling world, a kind of funhouse mirror held up to our own world, dealing with serious drama while maintaining a light, breezy tone on the surface.

This first volume begins with a story by the eccentric genius Howard Waldrop, which contains some of the finest writing I've come across in 50 years of reading. The following stories develop the Wild Card universe from the late 40s until the late 80s, setting the stage for the later volumes, which are contemporary in setting.

You'll find some of the best science fiction ever published in this book, with everything good fiction offers: drama, suspense, tragedy, comedy, hope, fear, disappointment, love, sex, death and rebirth --- all in a world where people can fly and read minds and have super strength ... and so on.

George R. R. Martin contributes most of the connecting material that links the stories together, plus an excellent story of his own, but this is nothing like Song of Ice and Fire. As Martin's name is now being used to sell the books, some people may be surprised.

If you like superhero fiction, or fast paced adventure SF, this is for you. If you're reading it for the first time, I envy you.

Editorial Review:

Continuing the best-sage alternate universe series edited by George R.R. Martin, the sixth volume in the Wild Cards saga is set in Atlanta of 1988. Terror stalks the halls of the Omni convention center. For a fanatical religious leader has vowed to crush the rights of all Wild Cards, and a hidden Ace wields a terrifying power to determine the outcome of the convention. Against this backdrop of passion and intrigue, a handful of Aces and Jokers struggle for control of a nation.

Features stories by Walton Simons, Victor Milan, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Stephen Leigh, and Walter Jon Williams.

The Magic Engineer

L. E. Modesitt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Slow, unbelievable and poorly written 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Somehow, I enjoy reading this book. Somehow, I want to keep reading. But at least once a page, I wonder why.

The book is broken down into nearly two hundred chapters, most of which are brief character sketches (of the same few characters!) or "a day in the life of..." static stories. Some of the chapters touch on world events in a very loose sort of way. Most, though, are full of details about what the main character has for lunch and in what order he eats it, which unimportant side-characters he speaks to about unimportant matters, and the steps involved in forging this or that object out of iron. I'd estimate that fully a quarter of the book is a list of steps in iron-smithing, and the steps aren't even given in a way that helps me visualize it. I really don't need to know.

You'd think that, with scores and scores of character sketches, the reader would at least become attached to the characters. Nope. The characters are inconsistent and uninteresting, with unbelievable dialogue. Even Dorrin, the main and most interesting (or only interesting) character in the book, so frequently breaks character that I have trouble believing he's a real person.

The prose bothers me even more than the uninteresting characters and slow-paced story. The author is incredibly repetitive, predicting an event, mentioning it several times (often in the exact same words from different characters' mouths), and then reiterating it. Contradictions abound. Characters or narrative will say one thing, and then a few chapters, pages, paragraphs, sentences or even words later, the opposite will be said. Many times while reading this book, I found myself looking up at the sky and shouting, "Why! You just said X two sentences ago!"

I feel like I'm reading a story written by a high-school student. Mistakes I'd think any author would know to avoid are made every page -- repeating the same word many times in the same sentence, narrating an observation and immediately having a character make the same observation, having characters "begin to do" things instead of actually do them, saying things "look as if" or "are almost as if" instead of just straight out saying how they are. Ellipses are used profusely, for no apparent reason. Am I really to believe that the character heard every word of a dialogue except for "I" and "and?" Characters are called "young" without any real indication of their age. The main character's physical description is limited to "a wiry, red-headed youth." I've met many people, including writers, who make these kinds of mistakes their whole lives. They're usually people who don't seek out criticism and can't take it when it's given.

And finally, there's the central love story. Two characters barely speak to each other. Every six months or so, they have a page or so of dialog before the woman has to ride across the country again, and we're given no reason to believe they have more contact than that. Then, suddenly, they're in love and have their hands all over each other. No explanation. No transition.

So why do I enjoy reading this book? Maybe I just like torturing myself. Maybe I'm attracted by the loose but somewhat interesting plot, and hope from chapter to chapter that I might get just _one_ more detail that has any relevance to the story. The main character, despite his inconsistencies, makes use of an interesting set of abilities, and gets headaches when he lies, which I find amusing. Those few things are enough to merit two stars instead of one.

Editorial Review:

The chronicles of the magical island of Recluce continue as young Dorrin, fascinated by forbidden science, goes into exile in the lands of Chaos, where he unwillingly invents devices of war to save his land from the evil Chaos wizards. By the author of The Towers of the Sunset.

A Robin McKinley Collection

Robin McKinley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good collection 4 out of 5 stars.
35 of 37 people found this review helpful.

Robin McKinley is best known for her tales about the mythical land of Damar, and the occasional retelling of time-honored fairy tales. This collection includes both -- the stories about Damar, "The Hero and the Crown" and "The Blue Sword," and Sleeping Beauty with a twist in "Spindle's End."

"The Blue Sword" introduces us to Harry (Angharad) Crewe, a bored, rather plain young woman in the remote colony of Daria. That changes when she encounters Corlath, the golden-eyed Hill-King of Damar, and the powerful young man realizes that she is a part of his future. So he kidnaps her, and Hary soon begins experiencing visions of the hero queen of Damar, Aerin -- and those visions will lead her to her destiny.

"The Hero and the Crown" is the story of Aerin, the daughter of a king and a witch -- allowed to remain, but never accepted. Despite this, she yearns to be a hero, and her discovery of a fireproofing agent gives her the chance to be one. After slaying the Black Dragon, an ancient monster, Aerin pays a price and must go to the mysterious wizard Luthe for help -- only to find herself embroiled in a battle against a dangerous foe.

"Spindle's End" takes readers to a lighter place. Princess Rosie is under a curse put on her by an evil fairy: on her 21st birthday, she will prick her finger on a spindle and die. In an effort to save her, Rosie is given to matter-of-fact good fairy Katriona, and grows up as a strong, independent girl who can speak to animals (a remarkably well-done touch) and assists a blacksmith. Needless to say, things get complex as the deadline for the curse approaches...

The range of McKinley's writing is shown in this collection. "Hero" and "Sword" are grittier, more complex, more mature and more nuanced. Damar is a lot like India, and McKinley clearly worked on making the cultures and conflicts believable, while dashing in some interesting magic. "Spindle's End" is frothier and lighter. The kingdom is more generic, and the magic more cutesy. But all the books have quirky, unconventional heroines, realistic animals (especially horses), and detailed writing.

Robin McKinley's works usually hit the mark, whether they are light and sweet or darker and grittier. This collection will entertain and amuse fantasy fans who appreciate a sword, a strong hero (of either gender), and plenty of unusual twists.

The Door in the Hedge

Robin McKinley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Door in the Hedge 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Well written and fun to read if you like imaginative books.

Bedtime Stories -- They put you to sleep 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book has been sitting on my shelves for six years, hidden behind the other works of McKinley I actually like. By my old bookmark, I was on page 44 of the "Stolen Princess" the third time I tried reading it, but I dropped the book out of genuine boredom and fell asleep.

I remember skipping ahead to the "Princess and the Frog," a tale of nonsense. The princess somehow saves the day with pondwater-ex-machina (no clue is given to the reader that this will work) after two fighters pause in the middle of heated mortal combat for ten minutes while she fetches it.

At this point I put the book down for six years. I didn't get rid of it because two stories were left unread, and I do like McKinley. I found it yesterday while cleaning. So I finished the book at last.

"The Hunting of the Hind" is another Princess fairytale. In this story nothing is shown, everything is told, and the descriptions are florid. I managed to stay awake.

Finally "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" disappointed me. In some ways it is the best of the stories, as it's from a non-princess perspective. But no gripping action and little dialogue.

According to the author's notes at the end, this was McKinley's second novel, which explains why it was so bad. She was still finding her voice. Anyway, this book isn't for adults. I think it would be perfect to read these stories to a young girl at bedtime. They'd help her sleep, guaranteed.

Editorial Review:

Master storyteller Robin McKinley here spins two new fairy tales and retells two cherished classics. All feature princesses touched with or by magic. There is Linadel, who lives in a kingdom next to Faerieland, where princesses are stolen away on their seventeenth birthdays-and Linadel's seventeenth birthday is tomorrow. And Korah, whose brother is bewitched by the magical Golden Hind; now it is up to her to break the spell. Rana must turn to a talking frog to help save her kingdom from the evil Aliyander. And then there are the twelve princesses, enspelled to dance through the soles of their shoes every night. . . . These are tales to read with delight!

Scion of Cyador: The New Novel in the Saga of Recluce

L. E. Modesitt

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Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. is one of the standard setters in fantasy today and his most famous series is the Saga of Recluce. Each novel fills in pieces of the history of this land where Chaos and Order strive to maintain a magical balance.

Scion of Cyador continues the story begun in Magi'i of Cyador. Exploring the rich depths of the history of Recluce, Magi'i of Cyador introduced Lorn, a talented boy born into a family of Magi'i. A diligent student mage who lacked blind devotion, Lorn was made a lancer officer and shipped off to the frontier--a career that comes with a 50% mortality rate.

Having survived his extended stint fighting both barbarian raiders and the giant beasts of the Accursed Forest, Lorn has proven himself to be a fine officer . . . perhaps too fine an officer. As his prowess has grown, so has his number of enemies and rivals. Too much success has made him a marked man. When he returns to his home, both he and his young family become targets while all of Cyad is in upheaval over deadly political infighting. But Lorn is now hardened, a deadly fighter himself, especially when the Empire is at stake.

Scion of Cyador is the completion of another grand story in the Recluce saga.

Scion of Cyador is the eleventh book in the saga of Recluce.