Tag: fantasy

Miranda and Caliban (2017): Jacqueline Carey

4 Comments

★★★★

In Act 1, Scene 2 of The Tempest, Prospero launches a virulent verbal attack on his servant Caliban: he is ‘filth’, a ‘poisonous slave’, ‘hag-seed’. He has greeted all Prospero’s efforts to civilise him with brutish indifference and, worst of all, he has repaid the magician’s kindnesses by trying to debauch Prospero’s young daughter Miranda. The play, like the island, is dominated by Prospero’s will and superficially we see nothing to counteract this stinging denunciation. But, if we look more closely, there are hints that all may not be so simple. Jacqueline’s Carey elegant novel draws out some of these allusions and offers a subtle retelling of the story, in which a childhood friendship between two motherless children develops into a heartbreaking study of the loss of innocence.

Continue reading →

Blood Upon the Sand (2017): Bradley Beaulieu

Leave a comment

★★★½

The Song of the Shattered Sands: Book II

With barely a pause for breath, I headed on to the next book in Bradley Beaulieu’s towering desert fantasy. Like its predecessor, it’s packed with adventure as our protagonist Çeda works her way deeper into the community of Blade Maidens on the royal mount of Tauriyat, while her childhood friend Emre knits himself closer to the rebel army of the Moonless Host. I don’t know how many books Beaulieu intends to write in this series, but this volume has the feel of a typical ‘middle’ book: threads are taken up from the first book, the scope widens, and an increasingly complex weave of intrigue and skulduggery leaves us with several unanswered questions at the end. Yet it remains compellingly rich and detailed: the wealth of Beaulieu’s imagination is never in doubt.

Continue reading →

Eric (1990): Terry Pratchett

2 Comments

★★

The Discworld Reread: Book IX

Technically speaking, Eric isn’t part of the Discworld series. Guards! Guards! calls itself the eighth book and Moving Pictures the ninth, but Eric is always listed in between them. It’s more of a novella than a novel and seems to be aimed at more of a young adult audience, as an inept teenage demonology hacker finds his summoning rite answered by the worst possible ‘demon’ in the world: the eternally inept wizard Rincewind.

Continue reading →

Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (2015): Bradley Beaulieu

1 Comment

★★★★

The Song of the Shattered Sands: Book I

You hear a lot of fantasy novels being described as ‘epic’, but the opening novel in Bradley Beaulieu’s new series deserves that epithet better than most. It isn’t just huge – 580 pages in the hardback version – but it features a monumental concept, rich with history, legends and backstory, which is all the more memorable for stepping outside the usual traditions of Western European-inspired fantasy. Beaulieu’s Sharakhai is a desert city of mud-brick and stone, a compelling blend of Marrakesh and ancient Baghdad, full of intrigues, secrets and half-truths. For one young woman, seeking vengeance for her mother’s murder, these secrets will offer a road out of the fighting pits, and a future more dazzling and more lethal than anything she could have dreamed.

Continue reading →

Guards! Guards! (1989): Terry Pratchett

3 Comments

★★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book VIII

In the series so far, we haven’t seen much of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard. One or two guardsmen have had speaking roles, but essentially they’ve occupied the place that such figures occupy in traditional fantasy: bland figures, so expendable that they don’t even have names, whose function is to fight, pursue or be killed by the maverick hero. This novel goes a long way towards rectifying that, as the estimable men of the Night Watch have their moment in the sun (so to speak) at last – introducing some of my favourite characters along the way.

Continue reading →

Pyramids (1989): Terry Pratchett

5 Comments

★★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book VII

The Old Kingdom of the Djel river valley has endured for millennia, governed by ancient rituals and overshadowed by its pyramids, the mighty tombs of former monarchs, which flare their power up into the night. It isn’t a place that accepts change easily. And yet, in a small act of defiance, King Teppicymon XXVII decides to send his son away to school. He’s heard that the Assassins’ Guild in Ankh-Morpork offers a fine modern education, and so young Teppic is bundled off for an improving course of etiquette, history, foreign languages and rudimentary chemistry. Oh, and learning how to ‘inhume’ people as well, of course, but it’s considered a bit vulgar to talk about that. The problem comes, however, when the King shuffles off this mortal coil mere hours after his son’s graduation exam, and Teppic is suddenly forced to confront a burning question: how on earth does one reconcile being a thoroughly modern assassin and a living god?

Continue reading →

A Companion to Wolves (2007): Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear

5 Comments

 

★★★

The Iskryne Saga: Book I

Ever since our joint reading of King Hereafter, Heloise and I have been keen to read another book together. We settled on this for several reasons, none of which had anything to do with the cover, I hasten to add. First, Heloise is a great admirer of both authors. Second, I loved The Goblin Emperor, cautiously enjoyed the Doctrine of Labyrinths sequence, and was keen to explore more of Monette’s fantasy worlds. Third, but by no means least, The Iskryne Saga focuses on a fantasy culture rich with Viking and Anglo-Saxon influences, and I was intrigued.

Continue reading →

Wyrd Sisters (1988): Terry Pratchett

4 Comments

★★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book VI

All Magrat Garlick ever wanted was to be part of a proper coven. She’s new to witchcraft and takes it all very seriously, from the garlands of flowers to the moon-worship and the amulets, and it would have been nice to have fellow witches who appreciated the value of a proper sabbat. But instead she has steely Granny Weatherwax, who can’t be having with all this modern nonsense, and riotous Nanny Ogg, who’s usually to be found singing that classic Discworld drinking song, The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All. And Magrat has to prove to them that she’s a proper witch! And that isn’t all, because there is something dark afoot, something that the three of them must tackle. Something is rotten in the state of Lancre, and the witches may be the only ones who can save the day…

Continue reading →

In Calabria (2017): Peter S. Beagle

2 Comments

★★★½

This charming little fable is a tale of what can happen when the miraculous imposes on the ordinary. It tells the story of the cantankerous Calabrian farmer Claudio Bianchi, who lives alone on a remote farm with his half-wild cats, his dog Garibaldi, his cows and his goat Cherubino. He shuns company and can go weeks at a time without seeing anyone but the cheery young postman Romano. All he wants is peace and quiet, to till his earth and write his poetry. But then, one day, he sees a unicorn in his vineyard.

Continue reading →

Sourcery (1988): Terry Pratchett

2 Comments

★★½

The Discworld Reread: Book V

Sourcery was never one of my favourite Discworld novels but, on rereading it, I was struck even more strongly by the sense that it’s a step backwards. Mort pioneered the formula that would make the series so successful: a close focus, a concept borrowed or inspired by those of our own world (for me, Mort has always been akin to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and limited, wise deployment of fantasy tropes. Sourcery, by contrast, feels more like The Light Fantastic, linked not only by the presence of Rincewind and the Luggage, but also by barbarians, a wide-ranging quest, magical wars, ambitious wizards and, of course, the End of the World being Nigh once again.

Continue reading →