Reviews: fiction about the fantastic
Query: anybody know if the Dreamwidth crossposter has fixed its cut-tag issues?
Rob Thurman, Nightlife: SPN fandom, why was I not informed? [Dean]Niko is a warrior whose only concern is the safety of his demon-blooded little brother, [Sam]Cal. In a world largely unaware of the supernatural, they fight [crime]monsters! There are differences (angry mom instead of protective dad, which I’m not thrilled by, because Sarah Connor should not be the only protective mom out there in sf/fantasy special kid land) and the prose is kinda purple, which is a-ok by me. I’m less thrilled with some of the characterization: Cal keeps saying how monstery he is, but he doesn’t earn his angst by showing himself capable of actual evil on his own initiative. Saying cutting things to cute girls and killing evil monsters doesn't rate. Also, though a fraction of this can be excused by idealizing-little-brother POV, Niko is an always-calm badass ninja who somehow learned his skills by his early twenties despite living in the middle of nowhere and having no money. Diagnosis: author slightly too in love with her characters to convince me to love them nearly as much.
Not spoilery because it’s from the prologue: “I tightened my hand over the one that held the knife handle. The blood covered both our hands, his and mine.… [T]he crazy part, the howling-at-the-moon madness bit was that he had tried so hard to avoid it….
“Curling up the side of my mouth, I gave him a half smile. ‘My mistake. I guess you have the balls after all. Good for you, big brother.’”
Now I really want to know Thurman’s fan ID. She’s got to have one. NB: Given publication dates, this seems a highly unlikely candidate to be a filed-off-serial-numbers version of SPN. She’s just using a lot of the same tasty elements, and she read fannish to me, a sense confirmed by visiting her LJ, which is fanfic-, slash- and fan-friendly except sadly she is unclear on the difference between copyright and trademark (caring about this is my cross to bear). And yeah, she watches SPN.
Jim Butcher, Turn Coat: I was in just the right mood for another touch of Harry in the night. When an old enemy of Harry’s shows up on the run from the White Council, our resident stand-up guy can’t help but protect a man he’s sure is innocent. A shapeshifter and trouble with the White Court of the vampires add the usual complications. The banter felt natural and Harry hasn’t been too powered-up for his plights to seem implausible. Warning: There’s a situation at the end that is sexually ickier than Harry and Butcher seem to think; it’s not explicit but it is disturbing.
Busted Flush (George R.R. Martin, ed.): A new Wild Cards volume, courtesy of LibraryThing early reviewer copies! Trouble is, I really should have reread a couple of volumes and didn’t. Now there’s a reality show for new aces, plus a UN-affiliated group of aces going around the world on “peacekeeping” missions, plus an oil crisis in the Mideast. The US government is experimenting on aces and the British government is using one in particular to destabilize other governments. So it’s a lot of commentary on current events. Melinda Snodgrass has a bad “as you know, Bob” habit, and she and some of the others have some sort of weird hate-on for Hillary Clinton (when your AU is that she's a bitter, unmarried, power-hungry bureaucrat who hasn't risen as far as she wants, I'm thinking you have Issues with her). But I ended up mostly entertained.
Michael Marshall, Bad Things: Free LibraryThing early reviewer copy! I’m a huge fan of Marshall, though more so in his Michael Marshall Smith incarnation when he writes fantastic (in both senses) sf. As Michael Marshall, he writes modern-day thrillers with a paranormal edge. This one leaves behind the world of his earlier thrillers and posits a different kind of lurking evil, which I liked better. It begins with the sudden, unexplained death of the protagonist’s four-year-old son; after that, his high-powered world collapses. Much later, he gets a message: I know what happened to your son. Very noir: dangerous man, mysterious women, sudden intense violence as a solution to problems. Not sure if it’s an answer I like to the problem of evil, but definitely entertaining.
Rob Thurman, Nightlife: SPN fandom, why was I not informed? [Dean]Niko is a warrior whose only concern is the safety of his demon-blooded little brother, [Sam]Cal. In a world largely unaware of the supernatural, they fight [crime]monsters! There are differences (angry mom instead of protective dad, which I’m not thrilled by, because Sarah Connor should not be the only protective mom out there in sf/fantasy special kid land) and the prose is kinda purple, which is a-ok by me. I’m less thrilled with some of the characterization: Cal keeps saying how monstery he is, but he doesn’t earn his angst by showing himself capable of actual evil on his own initiative. Saying cutting things to cute girls and killing evil monsters doesn't rate. Also, though a fraction of this can be excused by idealizing-little-brother POV, Niko is an always-calm badass ninja who somehow learned his skills by his early twenties despite living in the middle of nowhere and having no money. Diagnosis: author slightly too in love with her characters to convince me to love them nearly as much.
Not spoilery because it’s from the prologue: “I tightened my hand over the one that held the knife handle. The blood covered both our hands, his and mine.… [T]he crazy part, the howling-at-the-moon madness bit was that he had tried so hard to avoid it….
“Curling up the side of my mouth, I gave him a half smile. ‘My mistake. I guess you have the balls after all. Good for you, big brother.’”
Now I really want to know Thurman’s fan ID. She’s got to have one. NB: Given publication dates, this seems a highly unlikely candidate to be a filed-off-serial-numbers version of SPN. She’s just using a lot of the same tasty elements, and she read fannish to me, a sense confirmed by visiting her LJ, which is fanfic-, slash- and fan-friendly except sadly she is unclear on the difference between copyright and trademark (caring about this is my cross to bear). And yeah, she watches SPN.
Jim Butcher, Turn Coat: I was in just the right mood for another touch of Harry in the night. When an old enemy of Harry’s shows up on the run from the White Council, our resident stand-up guy can’t help but protect a man he’s sure is innocent. A shapeshifter and trouble with the White Court of the vampires add the usual complications. The banter felt natural and Harry hasn’t been too powered-up for his plights to seem implausible. Warning: There’s a situation at the end that is sexually ickier than Harry and Butcher seem to think; it’s not explicit but it is disturbing.
Busted Flush (George R.R. Martin, ed.): A new Wild Cards volume, courtesy of LibraryThing early reviewer copies! Trouble is, I really should have reread a couple of volumes and didn’t. Now there’s a reality show for new aces, plus a UN-affiliated group of aces going around the world on “peacekeeping” missions, plus an oil crisis in the Mideast. The US government is experimenting on aces and the British government is using one in particular to destabilize other governments. So it’s a lot of commentary on current events. Melinda Snodgrass has a bad “as you know, Bob” habit, and she and some of the others have some sort of weird hate-on for Hillary Clinton (when your AU is that she's a bitter, unmarried, power-hungry bureaucrat who hasn't risen as far as she wants, I'm thinking you have Issues with her). But I ended up mostly entertained.
Michael Marshall, Bad Things: Free LibraryThing early reviewer copy! I’m a huge fan of Marshall, though more so in his Michael Marshall Smith incarnation when he writes fantastic (in both senses) sf. As Michael Marshall, he writes modern-day thrillers with a paranormal edge. This one leaves behind the world of his earlier thrillers and posits a different kind of lurking evil, which I liked better. It begins with the sudden, unexplained death of the protagonist’s four-year-old son; after that, his high-powered world collapses. Much later, he gets a message: I know what happened to your son. Very noir: dangerous man, mysterious women, sudden intense violence as a solution to problems. Not sure if it’s an answer I like to the problem of evil, but definitely entertaining.