Sullivan's Covers

Do not know how I did not see these when they first came out, but the covers to the new editions of the Orbit editions of the Riyria Revelations. While I am eagerly awaiting the last book in the series (it may be published individually in order to complete collections), the new books will combine two books into one making it a trilogy. If you have not had a chance to read the series, now is a great time to check them out. They will be released in November, December, and January. Not all that excited about the new covers but the books are a lot of fun to read.

Book 1

Book 2

Book 3

REVIEW: Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton

Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton
Publishing Information: Paperback; 832 pages
Publisher: Orbit; 14 Dec 2009
ISBN 10: 0-316-02183-0
ISBN 13: 978-0-316-02183-8
Standalone
Copy: Out of Pocket
Reviewer: Tyson

Back of the Book: "As a child, Lawrence Newton wanted nothing more than to fly starships and explore the galaxy, like his fictional heroes. But on the colony world of Amethi in the twenty-fourth century, Lawrence is living in the wrong era: the age of human starflight is drawing to a close. So, like many another teenage hothead, he rebels and runs away.
Twenty years later, he's the seargent of a washed-out platoon taking part in the bungled invasion of another world. The giant corporations who own the remaining starships euphemistically call such campaigns 'asset realization'. In practice it's simple piracy.

But while he's on the ground, being shot at and firebombed by disturbingly effective resistance forces, Lawrence hears stories about the Temple of the Fallen Dragon - the holy place of a sect devoted to the worship of a mythical creature that fell from the sky millenia before the arrival of humans. More importantly, its priests are said to guard a hoard of treasure large enough to buy lifelong happiness for any man, and that information alone is enough to prompt him to mount a small private-enterprise."

When you set your sights on reading a Peter F. Hamilton novel you have to ask yourself, "Where do I start?" Nearly every novel is a door stop and will require a little bit of time to complete. But nearly everyone I posed this question to said the same thing. If you want to try reading Hamilton then you can start nearly anywhere, but your best bet is Fallen Dragon as it is a standalone and does a fairly good job of representing Hamilton's talent as a writer.

Fallen Dragon is massive but not nearly as large as his 3,000+ page Night's Dawn Trilogy. Fallen Dragon follows a young visionary named Lawrence Newton. Lawrence dreams of traveling the distant stars and expanding mankind's knowledge of the universe. When things go bad at home he drops everything and sets off to make his dream a reality. While Lawrence makes his living as a mercenary, we are given his entire life's story through a series of flashbacks that tell us of how he ended up working as a hired gun for one of the universes largest companies. Most mercenaries are not considered very honorable and when you first meet Lawrence you get the feeling that he is your typical mercenary. But as time moves forward and you learn of his past he becomes very enduring. Along the way we meet a lot of Lawrence's squad mates and former loves. His father which plays a pivotal role in his choices and upbringing is not very well drawn out considering he is the catalyst for a lot of what happens in his early life.

The universe that Hamilton has created is interesting in that space travel is expensive and profit margins need to be maintained in order to continue exploring the vast reaches of space and all the planets. With Earth at its capacity and mankind wanting to live lives going many different paths, corporations have funded the colonization of habitable planets.The catch is that the colonists are indebted to the companies and from time to time they are required to send their riches to the corporations to lower their debts. As the colonists become less and less dependent on Earth they no longer feel the need to be beholden to their debts. This is were the mercenary comes in. They are required to land on the planet, secure the cities and then with an iron grip on the populace retrieve anything the corporation deems profitable. In effect, they are pirates. In a way it must have been the way Americans felt towards the end before they shouted for independence from the British.

With the corporations realizing that this method of colonization followed by plunder is no longer a viable option the time of exploration is coming to a close. Lawrence also realizes that his dream of visiting new worlds is coming to an end and has a plan of his own. In the opening sequence of the book we find him conspiring with another officer to enact his plan and have to wait until nearly the end of the book before it picks up again. As I read Fallen Dragon, I kept wondering when we would return to the plot the book starts out with and when we finally did it really did not have all the intrigue that was built up in the opening chapter. I was hoping for something bigger and more intense but it just never happened. Admittedly, the ending was very satisfying and interesting. Plus the treasure that is found on the planet was not what I was expecting. It was a nice change of pace.

Fallen Dragon is a great introduction to Peter F. Hamilton. It has just what I was looking for: adventure, action, a little romance, and some political sidestepping. While it is a very large book it reads well. Well developed characters and universe make for an adventure that is hard to put down. Highly recommended.

Plot 9
Characters 9
Style 9

Overall 9/10

REVIEW: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
Publishing Information: 2006 (first publishing) 2007 (current edition)
Publisher: First Anchor, Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-4000-9653-4
Series: Standalone
Reviewer: Andy
Copy: Out of Pocket

Synopsis: (from back cover): The double story of Henry Day begins in 1949, when he is kidnapped at age seven by a band of wild childlike beings who live in an ancient, secret community in the forest. The changelings rename their captive Aniday and he becomes, like them, untagging and stuck in time. They leave one of their own to take his place, an imposter who must try -- with varying success -- to hide his true identity from the Day family. As the changeling Henry grows up, he is haunted by glimpses of his lost double and by vague memories of his own childhood a century earlier. Narrated in turns by Henry and Aniday, The Stolen Child follows them as their lives intersect, driven by their obsessive search for who they were before they changed places in the world.

Changelings, for those who aren't up to scratch on their medieval folklore, are mythical creatures that discreetly trade places with human children, usually unbeknownst to the child's family. The genuine child is stolen and the fairy child lives in place of the infant. The really frightening part of this myth, is not the worry that that these fairy tales might be true, but rather that historically human beings used the stories to deny that their genuine mentally handicapped or autistic children were actually their own. This psychological component was what really fascinated me about the changeling myth, and I was hoping that The Stolen Child by Keith Donahoe would not be afraid to touch on such sensitive subjects.

The book does mention a few cases early on of adults noticing their children were actually changelings by noticing some deficiency or shortcoming in the child, usually due to some forgetfulness or mental error on the changeling's part. The changelings in the book however, are not handicapped replacements for stolen children, but rather blurry shapeshifters who were once stolen as human children themselves. How an ordinary child becomes a shapeshifter remains a mystery but since this is often described as a "modern fairy tale", I am content to let some mysterious magical forces remain mysterious.

By avoiding the issue of handicapped children, Donohue kept what could have been a very very dark tale a merely moderately dark tale, and escaped writing what may have been a mildly offensive novel otherwise. Instead what is interesting about The Stolen Child is its setting - it takes place in the U.S. in the 50's and 60's - based around a Cold War era nuclear family, a setting that is popularized through television as far ranging as Mad Men and the Wonder Years. However, The Stolen Child is more of the Wonder Years than anything else, as its primarily a coming-of-age story, told through dual protagonists. One protagonist is a changeling who replaces a seven-year-old boy and must hide his secret identity, while the other is the original boy, cast away to live in the woods amongst the other changelings. These dual protagonists complement each other nicely, as one becomes an imposter with the nagging concern that his secret may be revealed, while the other remains an outsider looking into a society in which he can no longer take part.

The irony of the story lies in the fact that Henry Day's biggest challenges are not due to his secret fairy identity, but rather that he must suffer growing pains common to every teenage boy. This is when The Stolen Child really shines - when it uses the themes of identity and metamorphosis to its advantage by exhibiting that these are not concerns unique to changelings, but anyone who is subjected to the human condition. But sadly, The Stolen Child fails at times too - in its resolution it lacks the substance to explain the purpose of these cruel kidnappings of children. In its reluctance to reveal its own mysteries, The Stolen Child ends up coming off shallow and I was left wondering why the characters play this cruel game at all. Don't get me wrong though - the book has style - its nostalgic memoir-shaped first-person narrative was initially exciting and promising. Early on, it often read like it was written for a Tim Burton film adaptation. However, in the end it just feels a bit empty and the product of an author whose only inspiration was to write a book about changelings. Still, I can imagine a lot of other people I know enjoying this book more than I did, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to fans of Neil Gaiman or Clive Barker, or those simply intrigued by the changeling myth.



Plot……….6/ 10

Characters………5/10

Style………..7/10

Overall……….6/10

Now Your Thinking With Portals

GoT T-shirt

If you a fan of the Game of Thrones TV series you may just want to add HBO's new GoT t-shirt to your list of must haves.

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Manybooks.net a Great eBook Resource

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Manybooks.net features approximately 29,000 titles and you can search by looking up the author, language, or genre. Lots of great short stories and hard to find titles from ages past are available.

REVIEW: The Darkness that Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker

The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker
Publishing Information: 2003 (first publishing) 2005 (current edition)
Publisher: Overlook, Trade Paperback
ISBN-10: 1-58567-677-2
Series: Prince of Nothing (The Second Apocalypse), Book 1
Reviewer: Andy
Copy: Out of Pocket

Synopsis: (from back cover): Strikingly original in its conception, ambitious in scope, with characters engrossingly and vividly drawn, the first book in R.Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series creates a remarkable world from whole cloth -- its language and classes of people, its cities, religions, mysteries, taboos, and rituals-- the kind of all-embracing universe that has thrilled readers of Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin.

It's a world scarred by an apocalyptic past, evoking a time both two thousand years past and two thousand years in the future, as untold thousands gather for a crusade. Traveling among them, two men and two women are ensnared by a mysterious traveler, Anasurimbor Kellhus --part warrior, part philosopher, part sorcerous, charismatic presence -- from lands long thought dead. The Darkness that Comes Before is a history of this great holy war, and like all histories, the survivors write its conclusion.

With this stunning debut, R. Scott Bakker is poised to become one of the next great fantasy writers of his generation. The Darkness that Comes Before proves again that epic fantasy can be intelligent, majestic, and terrifying.

Upon beginning this series, I wasn't sure what to expect. Some friends and critics whose opinions I trusted had showered Bakker with praise while others had advised me to steer clear for fear of wasting precious hours of my life. However, its a wonder that this sat on my shelf for as long as it dead. Bakker's academic background is philosophy, the same discipline that I study in graduate school. I have always thought that philosophy was a goldmine of ideas for a fantasy series, and Bakker certainly found some inspiration in the tradition. I was sure that this would be a cerebral series. My only worry was that Bakker would get carried away with the philosophy influence, and the series would suffer from some kind of third-rate esoteric convoluted philosophical-psycho-babble.

My fears were quickly put to rest. Bakker uses philosophical ideas sparingly and not in pedantic way either. For example, the Dunyain are a brotherhood of monks who study the the principles of cause and effect, and by desiring and willing the causes that affect their behavior, they are able to achieve free will while the rest of the world are relegated to deterministic puppets. This is very close to Harry Frankfurt's definition of free will, a direct reference to a prominent contemporary philosopher. Still, its not important whether this is some correct, consistent theory or even good theory of free will, but rather that the monkshood in novel believes in the theory and uses it as the basis for their discipline. These foundational ideas give Bakker a unique voice and really allows him to offer something different from the more dull fantasy fare.

Bakker is not afraid to blend the magical and the mystical either - the series is replete with religious factions and movements that are often tied tightly to the magic in the world. This element was reminiscent of Frank Herbert, and I mean that as a form of high praise. Learning about the factions and their beliefs is fascinating in the same way that learning of the Mentats and the Bene Gesserit was fascinating in the first Dune book. Meanwhile, the book not only resonates with an epic feel, full of political maneuvering and the promise of epic battles, but brings with it some of the most haunting and terrifying imagery I have an encountered in a fantasy novel. The appearance of a crow with a human head is just one example of the deeply disturbing nature of some of more dark magic in the series.

This is, however, a book that is full of promises. This is clearly written as a planned trilogy, as very little is resolved in the first book. Other writers, like Steven Erikson for example, have the ability write serialized novels that introduce story arcs that get resolved in each individual book . Bakker has not attempted this and instead merely set the table for the fantasy series to come. It has resulted in a very promising first novel. Regardless, I have read enough fantasy to know though how easily things can go sour. Therefore, I must be conservative in my rating, with the proviso that this is a series I am very excited about continuing to read.


Plot……….6/ 10

Characters………8.5/10

Style………..8/10

Overall……….7/10