Fantasy sequels and sequel-types
Jim Butcher, Dead Beat: I met Butcher when the first three Harry Dresden novels came out in a bunch and I bought autographed copies on a lark. He is a hard-working guy, and I’m glad for him that he’s graduated to hardcovers - though it means I’ll be buying used instead of new. He’s branched out, but this book is another Wizard Harry adventure, featuring zombies who are controlled by drums (dead beat, get it?), a growing dog, and a new sidekick who works at the morgue and plays a mean polka. If the whimsy is a bit by-the-numbers, the story moves briskly - 400 pages of action in well under 48 hours, by my count - and Harry does not gain new powers just in time to beat the stronger bad guys. Instead, he uses (sometimes unsuccessfully) guile, planning, rules of magic, and allies. Because he’s sort of possessed by a demon, he’s undergoing a slide towards moral gray that is certainly of interest but reminds me uneasily of Anita Blake, minus the sexual acrobatics. Harry’s too beat up to do more than kiss, and repeatedly insists that he won’t hit women or even creatures that look like women, which together says a lot about the sexual mores of the intended/imagined audience.
Sean Stewart, Galveston: Stewart has written a number of books set in an America in which magic returned somewhere around the year 2000 (I can’t remember just when). The return was disastrous, killing millions as “minotaurs” made of bad experiences came to life and wreaked havoc. Society has collapsed; there is no more nationwide or even statewide communication. Wishes and dreams easily become real; previously untainted humans may suddenly begin changing any time. This book is about Galveston, the first generation after the change. The male protagonist is half-trained as a pharmacist, a resentful member of the lower class after his father’s gambling lost their house. The female is the heir apparent to Galveston’s rulers, both rational and witchy; the full humans have maintained control only by exiling everyone who shows signs of change into the eternal Carnival that runs through the very same streets, only on a slightly different plane, but every year they lose more people and, though it’s not mentioned very often in the story, you have to wonder how long they can survive. When one of the rulers dies, the whole town is thrown into convulsions. Stewart’s strength is writing recognizably human characters; magic is bad and good for them - mostly bad - in accordance with their personalities. He’s a gifted writer, but this book left me cold, maybe because the struggles were all ultimately so small-scale. The protagonists, wrapped up in their own suffering, acted for the community’s benefit reluctantly, when they did so at all. While they were plausible characters, understandable if not sympathetic, I’d rather read about better angels.
Patricia Briggs, Raven’s Strike: A sequel to Briggs’s earlier Raven book, this adventure is set in a land where oppressed itenerant clans retain pieces of magical knowledge, including talismans that can constitute the ghost cities of their ancestors, who knew all that is now lost. Seraph, a Raven of the clans, has settled down with the bard Tier and raised a family full of talented children - surprisingly talented, given how rare magical gifts are generally. The king, who owes his life to Tier, joins them in a quest to extirpate a continuing threat against the land. Decent work, but Briggs has yet to equal her first Ward Hurog book, Dragon Bones.
Sean Stewart, Galveston: Stewart has written a number of books set in an America in which magic returned somewhere around the year 2000 (I can’t remember just when). The return was disastrous, killing millions as “minotaurs” made of bad experiences came to life and wreaked havoc. Society has collapsed; there is no more nationwide or even statewide communication. Wishes and dreams easily become real; previously untainted humans may suddenly begin changing any time. This book is about Galveston, the first generation after the change. The male protagonist is half-trained as a pharmacist, a resentful member of the lower class after his father’s gambling lost their house. The female is the heir apparent to Galveston’s rulers, both rational and witchy; the full humans have maintained control only by exiling everyone who shows signs of change into the eternal Carnival that runs through the very same streets, only on a slightly different plane, but every year they lose more people and, though it’s not mentioned very often in the story, you have to wonder how long they can survive. When one of the rulers dies, the whole town is thrown into convulsions. Stewart’s strength is writing recognizably human characters; magic is bad and good for them - mostly bad - in accordance with their personalities. He’s a gifted writer, but this book left me cold, maybe because the struggles were all ultimately so small-scale. The protagonists, wrapped up in their own suffering, acted for the community’s benefit reluctantly, when they did so at all. While they were plausible characters, understandable if not sympathetic, I’d rather read about better angels.
Patricia Briggs, Raven’s Strike: A sequel to Briggs’s earlier Raven book, this adventure is set in a land where oppressed itenerant clans retain pieces of magical knowledge, including talismans that can constitute the ghost cities of their ancestors, who knew all that is now lost. Seraph, a Raven of the clans, has settled down with the bard Tier and raised a family full of talented children - surprisingly talented, given how rare magical gifts are generally. The king, who owes his life to Tier, joins them in a quest to extirpate a continuing threat against the land. Decent work, but Briggs has yet to equal her first Ward Hurog book, Dragon Bones.