Category Archives: fantasy

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

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After enjoying Larry Correia’s Hard Magic (my review), I decided to give his Monster Hunter series a chance. Even though I’m not a fan of the recent slate of supernatural books, Correia did a great job with Monster Hunter International, the first book in the series. The one thing that I should mention is that if you don’t like guns or weapons, then this isn’t the book for you. Everyone is packing weapons and loves weapons and occasionally goes into great detail about the weapons they have or are making, repairing, cleaning or shooting. If you thought that REAMDE had a lot of detail about guns, then you’re not going to enjoy this one. So, let’s go hunt some monsters.

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The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

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I’ve previously reviewed the movie The Night Watch (my review), and while I enjoyed the movie, I was curious about the book it was based on. So, I read it and enjoyed it a lot. The Night Watch is the first of a trilogy (tetralogy is four books). While the movie only centered on a few characters, the book has a much bigger cast and the story is a lot more subtle. Narrated almost exclusively by Anton, the book does a great job exploring Anton while the plot revolves around him. So let’s see what’s going on.

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The Falling Machine by Andrew Mayer

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The subtitle of Andrew Mayer’s book The Falling Machine is: The Society of Steam book 1, so there is every reason to believe that this is the prelude to an ongoing series. Where I had compared Hard Magic (my review) to the X-Men, The Falling Machine tries to be more like the Justice League and it doesn’t succeed. The characters are bland and the plot is silly. It’s yet another book that I gave 100 pages to and then gave up. It’s a poorly conceived story and I have no plans to read additional books. So, let’s see what happened.

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Hard Magic by Larry Correia

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The subtitle of Larry Correia’s new book Hard Magic is Book 1 of the Grimnoir Chronicles, so I expect that he will be writing others in this series. If you asked me to describe the book in one sentence, it would be “Steampunk X-Men with magic instead of mutations”. Set in an alternate Earth, it’s a nice mashup of steampunk, fantasy and superheroes with some great characters. So, let’s see what’s so hard about magic.

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The Magician King by Lev Grossman

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While I felt the Lev Grossman’s first book, The Magicians (my review), was overrated by many people, I still found it interesting. So, when the sequel, The Magician King,  came out, I decided to give it a chance. The book follow many of the same characters in the land of Fillory and also spends much time on Earth where we get to learn about the original book’s lost character Julia (which was one of my big complaints about that book). So, let’s see what our Magician King holds for us.

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A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

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And I’m all caught up with the series. I started the first book earlier this year when I was getting ready for the HBO series and finally got A Dance with Dragons last week and set about reading it. As with all the other books in the series, it was exciting, well written and leaves you hungry for more. However there were some chapters written for this book that were pushed into the next one and it does show. The book doesn’t seem like a coherent whole, but more like 1/3 of a book (with the book before and book after needed to finish up the arc). Having said that I still enjoyed the book. Let’s take a look at it (needless to say, spoilers ahoy).

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The Alchemist by Paolo Bacigalupi

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The Alchemist is a novella by Paolo Bacigalupi that was paired with Tobias Buckell’s The Executioness as they are different stories set in the same shared world. I have shared my love of Bacigalupi’s writing previously and feel that The Windup Girl(my review) was one of the best books of 2009. And this book is no disappointment. The writing and the ideas from Bacigalupi are amazing and I only wish the book were longer. I did not read the Buckell story, so I can’t comment on how the two work together. Let’s see what my this book so good.

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Wizard’s Tale by Kurt Busiek and David Wenzel

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David Wenzel had finished his illustrated adaptation of The Hobbit and was looking for something to do until everyone was ready for him to the the same for the Lord of the Rings (which never happened). The editor matched him up with Kurt Busiek, who had a wonderful fantasy story. And so, Wizard’s Tale was born. Busiek has a wonderful mind for taking well-work stories and turning them on their head so they are fresh and exciting. This is exactly what he has done here. So, let’s go visit the wizard.

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A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin

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In preparation for the Game of Thrones TV show and the summer release of A Dance with Dragons, I’ve been making my way through the series so far. And I’ve finally caught up by finishing A Feast for Crows. This book was originally going to be set 5 years in the future, but GRRM realized that it wasn’t working out, so he went back to pick up right after A Storm of Swords. And then when that book started looking like it was going to be double the size of the previous volumes, it was split into two. So, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons are really one big book split in half. And rather than split it in to time wise, GRRM decided to split it by geography. The first half of the book follows the characters in the Southern half of Westeros. So, let’s see what the Feast is about.
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A Storm of Swords by George R R Martin

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And the war continues. Following on from the events of A Clash of Kings, Martin once more takes us to Westeros and the continuing battle for the kingdom. One concern I do have with the book is with ongoing deaths. We saw numerous characters die in the first two books and more die in book three. There is going to be a point where all (or most) of the characters I care about have died. And that makes me wonder if I’m going to want to finish the series. But, Martin hasn’t disappointed yet. Let’s go and see what’s going on with the four remaining kings.

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