John Colton's blog

Time to update my book reviews. Here's what I've been reading since last October: (listed from most to least recently read)

The Meri, by Kaathryn Bohnhoff Maya - 9/10. After a disappointing experience with Watchtower (see below), it was good to read a well-written interesting book, where I cared about the characters. I suspect that it would have only rated an 8/10 if not for the immediate contrast. The Meri is about a girl who is undergoing magical training in order to undergo a spiritual magical transformation. The beginning is about life in her school of magic; the ending is about her journey to where the transformation is to occur. The weakest part of the book probably is that a lot of the plot is predictable. But entertaining, and well-written. I just found out while writing this review that this book, although it seemed stand-alone to me, is continued in a trilogy with Taminy and The Crystal Rose. Those two only seem to be available used, but I'll probably be ordering them. I also found out that they apparently involve aspects of the Bahá'í Faith -- see this wikipedia article. Interesting.

Watchtower, by Elizabeth Lynn - 6/10. Frankly, the book makes the cardinal writing sin of being not very interesting. It's well written and shows potential at times, but in the end didn't grip me and didn't leave me wanting to read the other two books of the trilogy. I expected more of a winner of a World Fantasy Award. I guess it's pretty early fantasy, as far as the modern fantasy genre goes, being written in 1980. That could have something to do with it. All of the fantasy ideas were very vanilla, with the possible exception of a lesbian fighting couple--and I could have done without that.

Wintersmith - 10/10. This made up for Only You Can Save Mankind (see below). A truly fantastic book, every bit as good as A Hat Full of Sky and The Wee Free Men, and that's saying a lot. Like those two books, the main character is Tiffany Aching, a teen-aged gifted witch-in-training. In this book, she is forced to confront the Wintersmith, basically a personification of winter (a cold elemental). She of course comes out on top with grace, style, and sweetness. Not sappy or sickly sweet though, just sweet.

Only You Can Save Mankind, by Terry Pratchett - 4/10. Wow. Finally a Pratchett book I didn't like! Leslie liked it though, so maybe it wasn't all bad, but otherwise it probably would have rated a 3/10. Anyway, it was 224 pages, and that struck me as being about 124 pages too long. It was in my opinion a short story expanded into novel length without any additional plot details added. And it wasn't even that imaginative of a story, either--way too similar to Ender's Game, but more juvenile and not nearly as good. Basically a kid has to save Earth by playing a video game, but then realizes the aliens aren't as bad as they seemed at first.

A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle - 7/10. Read with Leslie and Emily for bedtime stories. The second book about Meg and her brother Charles Wallace, sequel to A Wrinkle In Time. In this book Meg & friends have to rescue Charles Wallace by fixing his mitochondria with the help of a cherubim. They actually visit one of the mitochrondria and interact with creatures there (good and evil). Not sure if it's true, but Emily kept claiming she wasn't understanding what was going on.

The Empty Chair, by Jeffery Deaver - 8/10. Probably the third best Deaver book I've read, and I've read quite a few. Not quite as good as The Blue Nowhere, or The Coffin Dancer (which were incidentally the first two Deaver books I read), but still quite good. It's a mystery/thriller with Lincoln Rhyme as the main detective. Rhyme, who is the detective in Coffin Dancer as well, is a quadriplegic forensic scientist. In this book he gets involved with a case while awaiting an operation, and his assistant (Amelia Sachs) gets deeply involved with the suspect. In classic Deaver style, he keeps the reader guessing what is truth and what is fiction.

Dzur by Steven Brust - 8/10. Another very good Vlad Taltos book by Brust. An interesting literary twist, is that the book opens with Vlad eating a fabulous multicourse dinner. The first course is described--and then a flashback for the first chapter. Then the second course is described--and a flashback for the second chapter. And so forth--each chapter is a flashback. By the end we find out why he is at the restaurant eating this fabulous meal. Highly recommended for fans of the Vlad books. If you haven't read any of the Vlad books, I'd recommend starting at the beginning (Jhereg) and reading them in order before tackling this one.

Guards, Guards, by Terry Pratchett - 10/10. Excellent! I love Terry Pratchett's Discworld books in general, but this was one of his best. It's (I believe) the first of the books involving the City Watch of Ankh Morpork. Corporal Carrot is one of my favorite characters--a large, strong, man, who is a habitual do-gooder and who thinks of himself as a dwarf. (He was adopted and raised by dwarfs.) In this book Carrot and the other Night Watch characters (led by Captain Vimes) must save the city from a dragon.

Eragon and Eldest, by Christopher Paolini - 9/10 for each of them. Eragon really suprised me. In a book hyped as much as it was (written by a prodigy writer while still in high school, having been recently been made into a movie), I was prepared for a huge let-down. But instead, it was entertaining, well-written, with warmth and good humor. The amateur writing was evident in Eragon, where a number of very predictable and overused fantasy plot elements are present, but despite that the book was still enjoyable. I found Eldest to avoid most of those, and if anything I liked it more than Eragon. Anyway, the books are about a boy and his dragon fighting the forces of evil. Yep, that about sums it up.

Song of Sorcery by Elizabeth Scarborough - 5.5/10. Unfortunately it's been too long, and this book just wasn't very memorable, so I can't describe it very well. It got nice reviews at amazon, so I'm sure a lot of people will like it. But it didn't make me want to go out and read the sequels.

A Roil of Stars, by Don Wismer - 6.5/10. Like Song of Sorcery, it's been a while since I read this, and it wasn't too memorable. I think I liked it, though. Here's what the author says about it: "I rewrote about half of it in order to get away from the Han Solo type of hero; my guy is more a blundering, sniveling coward. The story takes place in the far future and involves a clash between a long lost human civilization in the globular cluster, the Polar Cloud, and the Outer Archipelago, a 40,000 world extension of the main Milky Way galaxy. The Whole is a matriarcal civilization whose women have psi powers, and the Cloud wants nothing to do with them."

To Reign in Hell, by Steven Brust - 4/10. To paraphrase what I wrote above for Only You Can Save Mankind: Wow. Finally a Brust book I didn't like! Who expected that? This book was probably the longest tenured book on my "books to read" list--I had been looking for it for about 10 years, but I believe it was out of print and I couldn't find it in used book stores. It came back into print, so I ordered a copy. The book is basically about the war in heaven prior to the creation of the earth. Satan comes off as a good guy, who was misunderstood by God due to the conniving of one of God's helpers. Anyway, some interesting ideas, but as with some others on this review list it makes the cardinal sin of just not being interesting enough.

The Death Gate Cycle, by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman - overall series: 10/10. Weak spots here and there but overall a true "must read" for any fantasy reader. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the setting: instead of being on a pseudo-Earth, it's set in multiple artificial worlds, that were basically created in a war between two ancient races (Sartans vs Patryns, Sartans won). None of the worlds have what we'd consider a sun or stars, and most (all?) of them are in fact completely enclosed/self-contained. And oddly enough, they pipe over one of the characters from the Dragonlance books (Fizban, now called Zifnab). Series consists of the following books, which need to be read in order:
Dragon Wing - 10/10. Set in the air world of Arianus, where continents float in the sky, more or less one on top of another.
Elven Star - 9/10. Set on the vast world of Pryan, which perhaps bears the most (superficial) similarities to a typical fantasy world. There are forests, at least. Pryan is the inward surface of a giant sphere, though, with a "sun" in the middle of the sphere.
Fire Sea - 9/10. Set in the cave world of Aberrach. The creepiest of the books, with dead beings coming back to life and things like that.
Serpent Mage 9/10. Set in the water world of Chelestra.
The Hand of Chaos - 9/10. Back to Arianus
Into the Labyrinth - 8/10. Into, well, the labyrinth--the place where the Sartans stuck the Patryns after the Patryns lost the ancient war. I thought aspects of the ending were unfortunately a little anticlimactic, so this gets a lower rating than the rest of the books.

The Deed of Paksenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon. This is a three volume series written in the late '80s.
Sheepfarmer's Daughter - 7/10. This was a fairly typical mercenary fantasy book. A girl, Paksenarrion, goes off and joins the army, basically. Some interesting aspects of mercenary life, but nothing to really distinguish it from others of the sub-genre.
Divided Allegience - 9/10. I liked this book quite a bit, although it reminded me a little too much of Dungeons & Dragons adventures. Very different in feel/style from the first book of the trilogy. In this book Paksenarrion leaves her company, travels a bit, and has various adventures, including exploring a dungeon, finding treasure, etc.
Oath of Gold - 8/10. This kind of combined the style of the first two books--there's a fair amount of mercenary company stuff, and a fair amount of D&D adventure stuff. However, Paksennarion becomes too powerful by the end of the book, which takes some of the fun out of the stories--she's obviously going to win her conflicts, so where's the suspense? But still was enjoyable.

By my count, that was 22 books in about 5 1/2 months. Not too bad, I suppose--about one a week.