I’ve had this one on my TBR pile for a while. It’s not that I didn’t want to read DEATHLESS or that I’m not a fan of Catherynne M. Valente …

I thoroughly enjoyed her THE HABITATION OF THE BLESSED, but her writing is dense and lyrical, a step away from verse. In other words, it’s not easy Sunday-afternoon reading. You don’t speed-read your way through it, because every line is another brush stroke on a very large canvas. Rush your way through her story and you’ll miss an important wash of color.

In DEATHLESS, Marya is a young child in Stalinist Russia who watches as birds transform into men and, one by one, take her sisters as their brides. When her groom-to-be comes for her, however, he is much more than that. He is Koschei the Deathless, the Tsar of Life, and he is locked in an eternal struggle with his brother, the Tsar of Death. And you thought your in-laws were trouble.
 
Valente has taken a bunch of old Russian fables and transplanted them into post-WWI Russia. It works … for the most part. Marya is the archetypical young girl transposed into a fairy-tale world of gnomes and witches, but the story ultimately becomes a love triangle that is reminiscent of (ugh) TWILIGHT (girl finds herself straddling a world of the supernatural and is torn between the love of two men that are diametrically opposed).

Although the author shows skill at taking old fairy tales and legends and showing them in a new, modern light — much like Neil Gaiman did in AMERICAN GODS — I still found the story to be lackluster.

But damn, she has a talent for prose:
• “Silence forked across the table like ice cracking.”
• “His pale lips sought hers, crushing her into a kiss like dying. She tasted sweetness there, as though he still kissed her with honey and sugar on his tongue.”
• “It was late spring when Marya Morevna slid her brass key into the lock of the house on Dzerzhinskaya Street, feeling it slide, too, between her own ribs, and open her like a reliquary full of old, nameless bones.”

I like the novel enough to recommend it, and the author’s talent for a turn of phrase was enough to keep me reading, but don’t delve too deeply into the originality of the story. It’s all been done before, of course — just not quite this beautifully. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

Wow. THE INHERITANCE & OTHER STORIES is exactly the kind of old-school short-story collection one would withdraw from the public library as an adolescent, sit down and read cover to cover, and become spellbound by the possibilities of the literary genre. Megan Lindholm, also writing under that name of Robin Hobb (they are one and the same), has made a perfect collection of 10 short and long pieces, doing it all the right way.

There’s a straightforward preface where she explains the personae of her two authorial selves, and each story opens with an introduction providing greater insight into the writer’s mind. These elements, which I feel are essential to such collections, make the reader feel like the book is really a distillation of the writer’s best work, as opposed to a hastily assembled grab bag of some stuff to which the publisher just happened to have the rights.

From the opening “A Touch of Lavender” (writing as Lindholm) to the closer “Cat’s Meat” (writing as Hobb), the author’s remarkably spare, but emotionally evocative style grabs you, holds you close, and tears you through the twists and turns of her impeccable plotting. That opener is a real stunner, first published in the November 1989 issue of ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION magazine. For collectors, the title story makes its U.S. debut, and there are three new stories: two from Lindholm, and one from Hobb (the final piece, which is also a great entry).

You won’t find tedious, purple descriptive prose here. Instead, Lindholm builds the house of her plot one sentence at a time, with each phrase serving as a nail to keep the structure steady — no wasted words, no flights of fancy. It’s solid writing, pared down to the bare essentials, and it makes her stories captivating.

The raw emotions of the opening and closing tales are deeply felt, and provide a clue to the personal and intimate style of this excellent fantasy writer. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, a collection like THE INHERITANCE would be an excellent place for you to start. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Devoted followers of Terry Pratchett’s wonderful Discworld series know that it contains several different narrative threads following various characters (human and otherwise) on this satirical fantasy world. These include novels devoted to witches, wizards and the foundation of various industries like banking, the postal service and the news media. One such thread follows the coppers who make up the City Watch, and it’s here that Pratchett gleefully skewers the numerous themes and techniques of crime fiction.
 
SNUFF, the latest Discworld novel (in a series now numbering more than 30 titles), is another in the City Watch thread. This time, the well-worn theme is the urban investigator who goes on vacation and becomes the proverbial fish out of water.

Sam Vimes, Commander of the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, the main metropolis of Discworld, is a devoted copper to the very marrow of his bones. It’s the life he loves and knows best. So when he agrees to take some time off to visit the stately country house and grounds owned by his wife, Lady Sybil, it’s with more than a little reluctance.
 
Sure enough, the moment he arrives, Vimes finds that the behavior and customs expected of him as Lord of the Manor are completely foreign and baffling. Fortunately, Vimes’ faithful manservant, Willikins, is there to assist him.
 
Then, just as Vimes is settling in, a dead body is discovered in a wooded area not far from the house. To complicate matters, it is the mutilated body of a goblin. But goblin or not, murder is murder, so Vimes sets out to find the killer with the aid of the less than experienced (and equally less competent) local constable. The trail leads him to a clandestine smuggling ring moving dangerous drugs and hordes of goblins forced into slavery.

The Discworld novels have never been distinguished for breakneck pacing. This latest, however, is probably the most deliberately paced of the bunch. Indeed, it is well over 75 pages (in a work just under 400) before the dead body and motivating crime is uncovered.

On the other hand, part of the enduring charm of Pratchett’s series is his relaxed but relentlessly satiric style. He often goes slightly off the narrative track for a bit of background detail or interior observation that usually concludes with hilarious zingers. Here, Pratchett seems to extend his tangents, sometimes taking as long as three or four paragraphs, before reaching his point. It’s challenging, but worth the effort as the author always manages to make us laugh out loud while reading.
 
Along the way, Pratchett imparts a great deal of information about goblins, much like he did with dwarfs and trolls in previous books. Here, the satire becomes particularly pointed as we see how these smelly, creepy little creatures are, in his world, an intelligent, skilled but painfully exploited minority.
 
Pratchett’s millions of fans will need no prompting to take up SNUFF. Occasional visitors to Discworld would do well to first read one of the earlier City Watch titles (like GUARDS! GUARDS! or MEN AT ARMS) when Vimes was still single … and noticeably less sober. Fortunately for all of us, these and most all of the franchise, as far back as THE COLOR OF MAGIC, are still in print. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

When we left our heroes at the end of Richard K. Morgan’s fantasy debut, THE STEEL REMAINS, there was a sense that something big was coming, something far more sinister than the tentative invasion that was repelled at the end of that book.

The sequel, THE COLD COMMANDS, picks up some time after its precursor, and while it improves on many of the faults of Morgan’s initial foray into fantasy, readers once again are left holding the bag, with the promise of epic conflict still looming in the future.

All the survivors are back: Ringil the antihero, Elric-with-PTSD warrior fighting a Quixotic battle against slavery; Archeth, a half-breed remnant of an advanced race that has long abandoned the world; and Egar, the hilltribe berserker who fills his free time with troublemaking and visions of his own death. Their stories eventually converge, but just as you get the sense that Something Really Awesome is going to happen, you realize that there aren’t that many pages left in the book — that this, like its predecessor are prequels to the Real Story that should come along any time now.
 
This flawed promise of epicness would be fatal if Morgan were a lesser writer, but his characters, prose and dialogue are as sharp as ever, funny, grim and dark. The violence is gory, the sex is super-sexy, and nobody’s actions come out of left field.

Morgan’s created a great world in THE STEEL REMAINS and THE COLD COMMANDS; my biggest wish is that an epic conflict emerges (hopefully by the next installment) that befits Morgan’s creations. —Ryun Patterson

Buy it at Amazon.

THE DARK AT THE END is F. Paul Wilson’s final entry in his Repairman Jack series, so a huge amount of loose ends is tied up. Fans of the character will be both pleased and frustrated by this novel.

Pleased in that Wilson has pulled out all the stops and just let Jack go to town — no regrets, just full-on attack mode when its needed. Frustrated in the sense that it needs to set up what’s to come in 1992′s NIGHTWORLD, which Wilson is revising to tie in Jack events), and the final 10 pages do that like a katana through butter.

Rasalom is hatching a plot to finally kill off the lady — one of his stumbling blocks that, once cleared, will set the path to the world’s destruction. If that makes no sense to you, you’re likely new to this series, in which case, don’t read any further.

Dawn Pickering finally tracks down her baby, but has no idea that it’s no ordinary child, but more of a monster-like figure filled with Otherness. This plays into what Jack feels will be the last assault on Rasalom, literally pulling out the big guns. As fun as this part is, it goes into over-the-top mode, to the point that Don Pendelton might say, “That’s a bit much.”

Without going into details that would spoil the book, I can say it is one giant action sequence from the outset. It will be interesting to see how much NIGHTWORLD will be changed to work in events from the Repairman Jack series, since there are portions that go completely opposite as to what we know.

Still, THE DARK AT THE END is a great caper to a fun series that has provided some great reading for nearly 30 years. For those who still want more Repairman Jack, Wilson promises three more books, but these will be prequels to take place before the first of the series, THE TOMB, and explain how Jack became the person he would be. That should be good, but I felt THE TOMB did a great job of that already with its flashbacks. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

Charles de Lint is one of the finest contemporary fantasists writing today. His deeply emotional and intimate tales almost always revolve around our collective human nature, our fascination with and desire for an afterlife, and they contain an immense respect for the undiscovered magic and mystery that inevitably surround us. Filled with life lessons but never moralistic, his core concern seems to be that each of his characters must find their own worth, what they are worth to themselves and to others.

PROMISES TO KEEP is a Jilly Coppercorn and Newford novel, and tells the story of how Jilly was able to turn herself from a heroin-addicted prostitute into an aspiring fine artist, and how she was helped along the way by innumerable people who are now her friends.

Along the way, she meets one of her old friends from the halfway house who, it turns out, is dead. This friend is able to transport between the living reality of Newford and a beautiful and peaceful afterlife of a quasi-Newford, where no one wants for anything and anyone can live out their lives (or occupy their afterlives) to achieve maximum fulfillment.

Jilly is torn between these two worlds, for the city of the dead is truly wonderful, a fulfillment of all her dreams. But everything is given to her, nothing earned. It is in the real city of Newford, where she has promises to keep, that she must toil, and learn, and strive to become the person she wants to be.

All of this seems a little too familiar from de Lint’s other work, and while there are no lapses in his normally smooth and polished style, it becomes a mite predictable halfway through. It makes me think I’ve read this story before but with slightly different wrappers and characters. It’s still de Lint, so if you’re collecting him (which you should be doing) it’s a must have as the beginning of the Jilly Coppercorn storyline but for casual fans, it might be better to start with something else. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

I dig Sandman Slim.

James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, is the tough-as-titanium antihero of Richard Kadrey’s urban/noir/horror series that began in SANDMAN SLIM, continued in KILL THE DEAD, and is now on its third installment, ALOHA FROM HELL.

Stark is the scarred half-angel, self-proclaimed “monster who kills monsters.” In other words, he’s the boogeyman to the things that go bump in the night. He’s feared and hated by the denizens of Hell, and considered an abomination by the forces of Heaven.

Stark was once a cocky, arrogant 19-year-old with a knack for magic and a penchant for trusting the wrong people. SANDMAN SLIM detailed his escape from Hell after being stuck there for 11 years, and his quest for revenge on the former friends that sent him “Downtown” and killed the love of his life. Stark returns with some new tricks: the ability to use Hellion magic, as well as travel through shadows; a Wolverine-style healing ability; some really cool weapons you can’t find at your local Army/Navy store; and a fighting ability honed in Hell’s gladiator arena.

KILL THE DEAD, while technically a sequel, moves the character into a new phase of life as a P.I./bodyguard for-hire. Stark is hired to protect Lucifer, who is in town to oversee a movie about his life (this time done right, he hopes). At the same time, there is the reappearance of Drifters (zombies) to deal with and a possible conspiracy to end the world. Stark also discovers more about his half-angel heritage, but much of what was set up in the first book remains unresolved.

The second book is an interlude of sorts, with the main focus on Stark’s new role in the world and his burgeoning love/hate friendship with Kasabian, the Alfred to Stark’s Batman … if Alfred were a talking head without a body who swills beer, watches cult movies, and can access Lucifer’s personal encyclopedia.

ALOHA FROM HELL continues with many of the plotlines left dangling from the first novel. It begins when Stark is asked to find a demon possessed teen, someone with a connection to his past. As usual in this world where every supernatural legend or fable apparently has a basis in reality, nothing is as it appears and there is much more going on behind the scenes.

Mason, Stark’s arch-nemesis from the first book, is back with a diabolical plan to use the forces of Hell to overthrow Heaven. Of course he knows Stark will do whatever he can to stop him, so Mason plots to force Stark to return to the one place he doesn’t want to go — Hell — and uses Stark’s dead lady love as incentive.

SANDMAN SLIM was all about revenge. It was part HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and part Richard Stark’s THE HUNTER (and yes, the fact that Stark shares the same last name as Donald E. Westlake’s pseudonym doesn’t escape my notice, nor the fact that James Stark was the name of James Dean’s character in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE). 

KILL THE DEAD was about fleshing out Stark’s history and refining his character from the self-loathing revenge-driven killing-machine who hates everyone else almost as much as he hates himself, to being the lone guardian that keeps Earth from being consumed between the warring factions of Heaven, Hell, and all the dimensions in between.

ALOHA FROM HELL is a culmination of everything that began in the first book. Stark is now the world-weary gunslinger that can’t escape his rep no matter how much he wants to, and must now face the mistakes of his past if he wants to protect those closest to him (as well as his favorite bar and local donut shop).

There’s an unlikely alliance with a former mortal enemy that frankly caught me by surprise (in a good way), as well as the development of a romance with Candy, a Jade (like a vampire, but worse, if you can imagine that). If, like me, you were disappointed that Candy was relegated to little more than a cameo in KILL THE DEAD, rest assured that the hints of her and Starks’s mutual attraction from the first novel are played out here most satisfyingly.

Kadrey is probably one of my favorite authors working today. He tosses fantasy and horror concepts out at the reader, sometimes on every page, and makes it seem effortless. The sad part is, his occasional throwaway line concepts are more imaginative than some complete novels by other writers.

His use of setting, too, is just as important as his characters. Kadrey treats Los Angeles with the same backhanded reverence that James Ellroy does, and he’s created a Hell that is more than Dante’s INFERNO: It’s a hybrid of a monster-populated ancient Rome and the prison NYC from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.

It’s more than characters, plot, and setting. The best part of this series is Stark’s internal monologue. Check this out:

“I’ve seen the creaky clockwork that turns the stars and planets. I’ve gotten drunk with the devil and body-slammed angels. I’ve seen the Room of Thirteen Doors at the center of the universe. I know the taste of my own blood as well as you know your favorite wine. I’ve seen so much more than you’ll ever see. I know so much more than you ever know.”

You won’t necessarily have to have read SANDMAN SLIM to enjoy ALOHA FROM HELL, but I recommend it. Once you read the first book, you’ll want to read books two and three. And if it sounds like I’m gushing, well … I am. As I said at the beginning, I dig Sandman Slim. You should, too. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

There is something remarkably beautiful, intimate and humane (not human, since one of the characters is a gigantic tusked female, and the other bleeds spiders) about the opening of Daniel Abraham’s THE DRAGON’S PATH. It features a young man escaping from some form of religious sanctuary into a land he has only heard of but never seen with his own eyes. He makes contact, begs to do chores for food, water and shelter, and engages in brief conversation with a formidable farmer’s wife.

This vignette, which begins and ends on a chilling note, lets the reader know they are in for an epic, thoughtful, believable, chewy fantasy tale — the beginning of the kind of fantasy series we all grew up on, those trilogies or tetralogies that convince you the author is someone special.

And Abraham delivers on that promise in this, the first book in a series called “The Dagger and the Coin.” The “Dagger” part is that of war, which is also the dragon’s path, a seemingly inevitable conflict caused by internal political factions that threatens the Kingdom of Antea. The “Coin” part concerns a young woman named Cithrin, the ward of a banker, who has learned the business and craft of finance. In the throes of the Antaean troubles, she is tasked by the banker to smuggle the bank’s wealth of jewels, gold, contracts and more out of the city and to a safe place.

She joins a caravan which is guarded by our rogue hero, one Marcus Wester and his sidekick, Yardem, a cynical wisecracking duo who are socially flip, but built out of steel. And thus, as Cithrin and the caravan leave the only city she has ever known, a city that is doomed, the epic storyline that Abraham has written slowly begins to play itself out.

There are a slew of characters, perhaps too many, and the reader will struggle at first keeping everyone in order. But this is deliberate on Abraham’s part, as he spends a considerable amount of time with each of his important characters, building them up from all angles so when they do something just a bit unexpected, it still comes off as believable and right. The dynamism of the characters in this first book is remarkable, and bodes well for events to follow.

Cithrin and her caravan guards end up in a different town attempting to run a bank branch based on the wealth they have brought from their now sacked city. The conflict in Antea goes through a number of ups and downs, and one of the temporary political casualties goes into voluntary exile to discover a lost cult. It is this individual, one Geder Palliako, who returns with a high priest in tow and flips Antea on its head, ending up as the only person the king is willing to trust with the protection of the prince, his own son.

But Palliako and the mysterious priest have some rather disturbing and dangerous secrets, secrets which we are sure to discover in upcoming installments. There is so much room for growth here, and the characters are so richly drawn, that fans of traditional fantasy will have much to look forward to in this new series. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Jo Walton is justly famous for her “Small Change” series (FARTHING, HA’PENNY, HALF A CROWN) set in an alternate universe where England took the appeasement route in the 1940s and Nazi Germany is the dominant country in the world. It’s a chilling and all too believable series, because she writes about human beings, their virtues and foibles, very well indeed. In short, as the main character in AMONG OTHERS might say, Walton is absolutely brill.

AMONG OTHERS is the perfect coming-of-age story for those readers who, like us, were brought up on a steady diet of fantasy and science fiction. It’s an homage (and could be used as a reading list) to some of the best sci-fi of the past century. But it’s much more than that, too.

The novel is written in the form of diary entries (though not too obtrusively) by our protagonist, Morwenna Markova, a 15-year-old girl who has run away from her mother, and been placed in the home of her biological father, who abandoned her as an infant years ago.

Morwenna can see and communicate with fairies, or at least beings that exist on an alternate plane. Her mother is not only insane, but an evil witch as well. Morwenna can work magic occasionally, but struggles greatly with the ethics behind being able to create what you want by magic. It has cost her dearly in the past, which we learn about only in dribs and drabs, as it turns out that her twin sister died in an effort to defeat their mom’s desire for dark power. The same accident that killed her sister has left Morwenna with a permanent limp, and she must use a cane for mobility.

This marks her out as slightly odd when she attends an all-girls boarding school. Here, of course, she is “among others,” people who are obviously human, but could almost be a different race; she feels so alienated from her surroundings. It’s classic teen angst, and the dynamic development of Morwenna as she goes through the school year, learns more about her father, and finally develops some semblance of a fulfilling relationship — all while beating herself up mercilessly for her gimp, her use of magic and her guilt over her sister — is an impressive authorial feat.

This isn’t one of your lame, young-adult titles with a firm moral system, all of which seem universally predictable (and at which Walton takes a smart shot in one of the later chapters, writing, “they’re all so relentlessly downbeat, and despite that you just know everyone will overcome all their problems in the end and start to Grow Up and Understand How the World Works. You can practically see the capitals”). This feels like how adolescence really was, and it crosses genders. This would be the perfect book to give a high school age boy or girl who loves the genre, but may have trouble fitting in.

But it’s also the perfect book for the SF/fantasy fan, because it’s also a love letter to the genre, filled with numerous strong critical insights into various works. AMONG OTHERS is an extraordinary work from an extraordinary writer, and I recommend it very highly. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Jesse James Dawson, the character introduced in K.A. Stewart’s A DEVIL IN THE DETAILS last year, returns in A SHOT IN THE DARK. Outside of a slight bit of moral conflict, it’s basically more of the same. But that’s not altogether bad news, especially for those who enjoyed meeting Dawson the first time around.

Dawson is a member of the select and very secret group of champions who fight for the lives of those unfortunate enough to have sold their souls to demons. He has no magical powers of his own, but instead uses his martial arts skills and his expert katana sword technique to battle various supernatural monsters when they come to collect the human souls that were foolishly bargained away for mostly material possessions.

It’s tough work, so Dawson is especially looking forward to his annual end-of-summer camping trip to the Colorado Mountains for some male bonding over friendly games of paintball with his brother, Cole, and a couple of his buddies. Things turn ominous when Dawson gets an unexpected visit from his personal demon, whom he calls Axel. This Axel has no apparent purpose for his surprise visit, other than to say “howdy” and remind Dawson that he’ll be back: “We always return,” Axel says in parting.
 
Dawson is ready to abandon his trip, but then goes ahead with his plans at the insistence of his wife. But along with his usual group, Dawson is asked to take along Cameron, the new boyfriend of his wife’s best friend. Cameron, an ex-seminary student with more fashion sense than common sense, is a poor fit among Dawson’s pack of macho, disheveled cohorts. But that is quickly forgotten when the group arrives at their cabin in the mountains and almost immediately come under attack by a group of demons, including one that has haunted Dawson’s nightmares for months.
 
With his life, and those of his friends and family at risk, Dawson finds an unlikely ally in Axel. Yet Dawson has dealt with demons long enough to know that they can never be fully trusted. So he must decide to either follow Axel’s advice or his own gut instincts to survive.
 
This second in the series, like the first, is presented through Dawson’s first-person narration. Stewart does a mostly convincing job with Dawson’s swaggering persona, but it can’t help but get tiring and a bit predictable after a while. At times, it’s downright irritating, such as Dawson’s constantly calling Cameron “Cam-short-for-Cameron,” as he was first introduced.
 
The real core of the novel, not surprisingly, is the fights with the demons of various shapes and powers. Here is where Stewart really shines with sequences and details that convey every swipe, stab and punch. In between these encounters Dawson contemplates his dilemma of trust and the doubts of his real-world abilities against these other-worldly foes. But the author doesn’t allow these introspective moments to run too long — or get too “chicky-flick,” as Dawson would call them.
 
For all its tattooed, ponytailed and scruff-bearded posturing, A SHOT IN THE DARK is actually an entertaining and often engrossing story — just the thing for summer reading. Especially for those who prefer their fantasy with more muscle than magic. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

When Richard Kadrey introduced the title character in 2009’s SANDMAN SLIM, he wanted to create a harder-than-hard-boiled, darker-than-dark work of urban fantasy, and succeeded on pretty much all accounts. Now in paperback, KILL THE DEAD continues the saga of James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, but here Kadrey demonstrates his undeniable — dare we say it? — maturity as a novelist as he presses his foot ever so gently on the brake pedal. Not to worry. It’s still strong stuff.

Stark — who previously managed to return from Hell to avenge the death of his girlfriend, send the evil conjurer responsible Downtown (that is, to Hell), and save all of Los Angeles from apocalyptic doom in the process — ekes out a living these days chasing down vampires and other wayward demons for the Golden Vigil, a sort of Heavenly Homeland Security Force working to maintain equilibrium on Earth.

As an independent contractor, he’s more than willing to take on outside work. Such an offer comes his way by none other than Lucifer himself. The Big Guy is in El Lay, working as a consultant for a movie biography of his life (wouldn’t you know it), and wants to hire Stark as his personal bodyguard whenever he has to leave his very exclusive suite at the Chateau Marmont. Stark needs the extra cash and takes the gig, but not for nothing, wonders why someone as powerful and influential as Lucifer needs protection.

He soon finds out. A party held by the producer of the movie is attacked, and Stark rushes Lucifer to safety. As he investigates who is responsible for the hit, he uncovers another threat lurking (literally) in the shadows. A couple of High Plains Drifters (Stark-speak for zombies) are discovered hanging out at his favorite bar. He disposes of them, with the help of the porn-star female lead in the Lucifer biopic. But before long, Stark discovers that a whole horde of Drifters has been set loose on the city. There are numerous suspects, including Lucifer and the conjurer Stark sent to Hell, who might be responsible for this deadly plague.
 
The debut novel almost lost itself in the mile-a-minute myriad of concepts and contraptions Kadrey introduced to acquaint readers with Stark and his world of dark magic. In this follow-up, the author seems less intent on including everything but the Hell’s Kitchen sink and actually allows Stark to be more reflective and introspective. It’s a welcome relief and inevitably results in us knowing much more about Stark and the personal conflicts that haunt his eerie existence.

There’s also more of the black humor that occasionally lightened up the first book. It’s supplied not only through Stark’s sarcastic first-person narration, but via the exchanges between our hero and his roommate: a decapitated head with a fondness for beer, horror movies starring the devil, and bootleg porn.
 
Yet, as KILL THE DEAD approaches its climax, Kadrey begins again to pile on the various back-legends and exposition. By comparison, though, they are kept in check. Additionally, they not only enhance the narrative, but ironically become the very elements that prevent the book from becoming Just Another Zombie Novel.

It must be noted, however, that as a sequel, KILL THE DEAD is dependent on its predecessor, so anyone interested in knowing about the life, death and times of Sandman Slim must first read the debut in order to fully understand and appreciate this adventure.
 
As obligations go, that’s not at all bad — Heaven knows. (Or Hell knows, more appropriately.) —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Sir Rupert Triumff, the title character of Dan Abnett’s fantasy farce TRIUMFF: HER MAJESTY’S HERO, is a bit of a bounder, an adventurer, master swordsman and a man with a tricky problem. He has returned to England after discovering the continent of Australia — although its inhabitants would insist they had already discovered themselves — but is reluctant to tell what he has found to Queen Elizabeth, the head of the Anglo-Hispanic Unity.

He’s worried that the Unity will go off and plunder Australia, which they are wont to do with any newly-discovered land, and he is hoping to somehow prevent that. The Unity is a joint venture between England and Spain founded in 1575. During the Renaissance, thinkers like Leonardo da Vinci and others resurrected the art of magick, and now, as we enter the year 2011, magick is really what powers European society.

The Industrial Revolution never occurred. But in Australia, they have forgone magick, and as a consequence, have computers and all the other trappings of our modern society. This dichotomy is interesting but Abnett doesn’t play with it very much; hopefully, he’ll get more into this in any future installments of the series.

In any event, as Triumff delays his report to the queen, conspirators have decided that there must be something really worthwhile in Australia. Their plan is to usurp the queen and take the Australian spoils for themselves. Triumff and his friends must stop this evil plan to overthrow the dynasty.

It’s a ripping tale, but what makes TRIUMFF really worth your while is that Abnett is a funny man. I’ve been reading a lot of genre farce recently, from the bludgeon-over-your head style of Simon Brett (BLOTTO, TWINKS AND THE EX-KING’S DAUGHTER) to the more story-driven comedic tale of Steve Hockensmith (THE CRACK IN THE LENS), but I think Abnett finds the perfect middle ground here. It’s remarkably silly in a Monty Python-esque way, but the inventiveness of the comic bits is strong (love the Swiss Army-style sword that can never quite produce a rapier when needed), the action bits are riveting, and the writing is smooth and polished.

I actually chuckled out loud and read out a few of the better passages to friends. It’s all very BLACK ADDER-ish and that is quite welcome to find in a very crowded field. TRIUMFF is highly recommended if you like laughs with your fantasy, and here’s to hoping that the sequel appears shortly. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A group of men and women here on Earth are all of a sudden shocked into the realization that their entire lives up to this point have been a lie. They are actually not the policemen or students they thought — instead their real, true existence was as a warrior, leader, councilor, adviser, prince or princess in an alternate universe that may or may not exist on a different planet.

Yes, the plot is rather trite, but it’s what Edward Lazellari does with the conceit in his debut novel, AWAKENINGS, that make the beginning of what promises to be a series so special.

In this case, our humans are policeman Cal McDonnell, slacker/loser/pornographer Seth Raincrest, and a 13-year-old boy named Daniel Hauer. Both Cal and Seth went through a traumatic incident 13 years ago and have absolutely no memories of what occurred before that time, post-traumatic amnesia.

Of course, what happened is that 13 years ago, they visited Earth from their real home of Aandor, an alternate universe that exists in conjunction with Earth, but is invisible to us poor mortals. They did so to protect an infant who would eventually be destined to be emperor, but who was in danger from court conspiracies of being killed before his maturation. But when they came to Earth, a messed-up magic spell wiped their previous memories clean. Since the boy, Hauer, was an infant at the time, he, too, suffered memory loss but has no recollection of the gap in his memory.

Aandor is in trouble, war is brewing, and the only thing that can be done is for the Aandorians to come to Earth and find this lost tribe of early visitors, reignite their memories of their true homeland, and hopefully return the infant-now-teen to his throne on Aandor. Of course, there is a rival faction intent on finding the same party and killing the boy, so there can be no regal line of succession running through his bloodlines.

But in 13 years’ time, things have changed. The policeman, though he is a mighty warrior at home and betrothed to one of the most beautiful princesses of the land, now has a wife and child in the present. That won’t fly well back at Aandor. And the boy …

While the whole alternate universe/alternate lives thing is fairly common in fantasy, Lazellari gives it a special kick with some startlingly well-done dramatic vignettes. The opening scene is especially riveting, as are all the chapters dealing with the heartbreaking story of Hauer, who is brutally abused by his alcoholic stepfather. Raincrest’s pitiable attitude is especially well-done in behavior and dialogue, and even the battle action scenes liberally peppered throughout the book have a raw rightness to them.

It’s the little side stories in between — like what happens to a centaur named Fronik, or the assault on one of Hauer’s friends — that elevate the overall tale from lame to intriguing. I’m definitely looking forward to the next book to find out what becomes of these characters. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

David Liss continues his historical novels with a sort of Regency-era romance adventure mixed with thrilling magic in his new work, THE TWELFTH ENCHANTMENT. Young Lucy Derrick has lost her sister and her father, and is forced to live with a domineering penny-pinching uncle. The other woman in the house, the hideous Mrs. Quince, hates Lucy with a passion and never misses a chance to denigrate her.

Lucy feels, and is, trapped with few prospects and she is about to be forced into a marriage with the dull mill owner Mr. Olson, whom she detests. She hopes for some deus ex machina that will deliver her from this impossible fate. This situation has all the motifs of your standard romance novel.

But in this instance, the thing that delivers Lucy from her fate is her openness to the world of magic all around her. And she discovers this in a most improbable way. Lord Byron (yes, that Lord Byron) insists he must speak with Lucy, delivers a practically incoherent message, and then falls insensate to the floor.

This is the beginning of Lucy’s remarkable journey from powerless naïf to powerful magician, as she begins to acquire mysterious friends who teach her the ways of magic, and from whom she learns that what she had thought of as her life has been nothing but an elaborate lie. For she is at the center of a period of world change, as the ways of the hand-crafted past morph into the industrial machine-crafted future; for a reason she does not yet know, Lucy Derrick must craft the future of England itself, and decide the path it will take in the years to come.

Liss is a strong writer with a real feel for historical research and how to impart that to the reader without boring them. He’s good with dialogue and has a nice touch with some rather intricate plot points, setting the scene and then whipping the carpet out from under our feet as we alternate between feeling frustration at how circumscribed Lucy is in her restrictive society and feeling elation as we realize her powers are even greater than she suspects.

This mishmash of romance, historical novel and magical fantasy reminds me of Anya Seton’s underrated GREEN DARKNESS, although of course, the magic is much more pronounced in Liss’ tale. For those who like their fantasy outside of the sword-and-sorcery genre, and for those who like their grand epics to have some historical trappings, Liss’ THE TWELFTH ENCHANTMENT should not disappoint. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Along with the unlikely paring of Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale as editors (which conjures an image of a sloppy-drunk cowboy riding a unicorn bare-back while hanging on to its horn for dear life), THE URBAN FANTASY ANTHOLOGY is notable for its earnest attempt to define its contents. The subgenre, as Beagle notes in his introduction, is a term at once easy to comprehend and highly misleading: It’s much more than just fantasy stories that take place in the city.

Our editors conclude that there are, in fact, three main strands of urban fantasy active today: mythic fiction, paranormal romance and noir fantasy. In turn, they divide their anthology into these sections, leading off with a brief, informative essay by one of the its contributors, highlighting each strand’s traits and influences.

Mythic fiction, defined as contemporary stories where myth and fairy tales intrude into everyday life, is the kind of urban fantasy most associated with Charles de Lint. So it’s no surprise that his “Make a Joyful Noise” is the most effective and impressive contribution to this section. It’s a touching story of a Native American spirit who can shape-shift into a bird, and the trouble it gets into when it promises to help a lonely ghost, demonstrates why he is a master of this form. This is especially true when compared to Emma Bull’s “A Bird That Whistles,” about a strange but talented folk musician who appears at a coffeehouse in the 1970s that, while forthright, comes off as pale shades of de Lint.

Paranormal romance, as Beagle notes, is probably best exemplified by the popularity of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER in its various forms. These are stories where the protagonists are the possessors of special powers — sometimes heroic, sometimes demonic — and fully aware of who and what they are. The heroes are often female, with plenty of “kick-assitude.”

But as Paula Guran notes in her section essay, the best of these stories are often novels. Still, highlights of the section include “Boobs,” Suzy McKee Charnas’ surprisingly touching story of a young girl dealing with the changes of her body brought about not only by puberty, but because she is also a werewolf. Less effective, but still intriguing is “She’s My Witch,” Norman Partridge’s story of two young lovers — one brought back from the dead — in a weird re-creation of the 1950s.
 
By far the most fascinating section is noir fantasy, with its heavier emphasis on the darker entrapments most often found in crime fiction. In his introductory essay, Lansdale invites readers to skip his contribution since he already took up their time with his essay. Don’t.

Otherwise, you’ll miss “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks,” Lansdale’s own violent, bawdy and typically over-the-top tale of a bounty hunter in a world of reanimated dead that foreshadows the ambience of THE WALKING DEAD and ZOMBIELAND. Also noteworthy is Tim Powers’ “The Bible Repairman,” an eerie story of a man who used to rescue ransomed ghosts, but now mostly earns his keep by altering Bibles on order, until he is hired to rescue a living girl.
 
Other contributors include Neil Gaiman, Kelly Armstrong, Carrie Vaughn, Al Sarrantonio and several others. Some contribute to more than one of the sections, because as the editors and essayists note, their dominant characteristics are not restrictive, often bleeding into one another.
 
THE URBAN FANTASY ANTHOLOGY is, therefore, a defining collection, if not entirely definitive. Still, it is an essential book not only for longtime followers of such intriguing stories, but those who thought fantasy only took place in the completely imagined worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and his type — or for anyone else looking for some of the most creative and enjoyable fiction available these days. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.
 

Recently, I was talking to someone about my love of Raymond Chandler and how he redefined the hard-boiled detective. While Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade was the quintessential tough as nails, stone-hearted knight-in-a-trenchcoat, Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was flawed and human.

Chandler’s hero, although always determined to do the right thing, struggled with his decisions and more than once was nearly tempted to the Dark Side. Hammett’s THE MALTESE FALCON was the epitome of the hard-boiled detective novels — to that point. Chandler made the hard-boiled detective story more well-rounded, more down-to-earth, more … literary.

In today’s literary marketplace, your hard-boiled detective is more likely to be a vampire, former vampire, sorcerer or ex-god of some sort. He/she is hired to fight some supernatural menace, or save someone from a supernatural menace. Instead of a femme fatale and a trusty sidekick/assistant, today’s P.I.s associate with shapeshifters and Greek gods. Trenchcoats and fedoras are now leather jackets and teleportation spells. And the majority seem to be women.

Which brings me to Sylvie, the heroine of Lyn Benedict’s “Shadows Inquiries” novels. In GODS & MONSTERS, Sylvie, the supernatural monster investigator P.I., is hired to find a missing woman. She finds her — or rather, her body — underwater in the Everglades along with four other women.  When the police attempt to retrieve the bodies, one of them explodes like a bomb and takes out the rescue helicopter and a few law enforcement officers as well.

Later, one of the injured cops wakes up in the hospital and relates the story that he remembers being attacked by a bear. It’s all due to some weird magic shit: an evil sorcerer, cursed by a god, is stealing the souls of shapeshifters. He needs five women (don’t we all?) in order to absorb their lifeforce and increase his power. Luckily, Sylvie is on the case and this is exactly her area of expertise: gods and monsters.

She is the “New Lillith” because she defeated “old” Lillith in a previous battle, although how she managed this feat is beyond me. Outside of some resistance to magical attacks, Sylvie appears to be your typical plucky heroine. Well, that and the fact that she has supernatural associates like a werewolf, a necromancer, various witches and a fury (no, not the Plymouth kind, although that would have been cool).

She also has a boyfriend who is currently inhabiting the body of a stranger and must live out the dead man’s life, including his marriage and being a father, or else risk the wrath of a dangerous enemy. Or something.

Honestly, it’s all rather vague, and the author doesn’t slow down to catch the reader up. If you’re new to the series, you can pick up bits and pieces, and put it together as best you can, but don’t expect a recap page — although several would be necessary — as the author is too busy juggling multiple subplots and storylines.

That’s really my only complaint with the novel: It’s not beginner-friendly. The supernatural P.I. series is becoming as prevalent as the legion of zombie novels and angst-ridden vampires. The author has an interesting story to tell, albeit sometimes a little too jam-packed with subplots for its own good, but newbies would be best advised to start with the first in the series. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

High school dropout Angel Crawford is on a downward spiral, living with her alcoholic father and following in the footsteps of her mother who died behind bars. Angel is an addict in the making, with several arrests under her belt and a loser boyfriend. Basically, she’s the type of girl you expect to see on one of those daytime talk shows that are thinly veiled slugfests, bragging about her misdeeds and drug use.

Fate intervenes, and one day, Angel wakes up in the hospital after barely surviving an overdose. She remembers bits and pieces of a car accident, but doesn’t have any apparent injuries and actually feels better than she has in a very long time … maybe ever. Angel, you see, has been zombified.

This is not readily apparent, of course. Instead, Angel receives a case of jars containing “medicine,” along with a note telling her to drink one every other day. Also, she is to report to work for her new job as a driver for the coroner’s office.

Blackmail is used on this stipulation: The anonymous writer threatens to tell Angel’s probation officer on her if she doesn’t comply. The mysterious jars contain something akin to chocolate mixed with an unknown substance that combines to form delicious goodness, and has Angel feeling like she’s downed a case of Red Bull. Problem is, eventually the jars run out and there’s only one thing Angel needs, or wants. If you guessed “brains,” then either you’ve read a zombie book before, seen a zombie movie, or have an IQ higher than single digits.

Author Diana Rowland made a mark on readers with her popular Kara Gillian series, and with MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE, she’s kicking off a new series with an interesting heroine and a twist on the genre. Like her other series, Rowland sets this book in southern Louisiana, and peppers it with interesting characters, sarcastic quips and small slices of deep-fried Southern living that immerses the readers fully into the scenery, but doesn’t hit them over the head with it.

As Angel begins her new life as a zombie, she learns what happens when you go too long without consuming brains: She starts to decompose. Her body odor becomes noticeably worse and no amount of showers will wash it away. Her fingernails fall off.

Oh, and she’s ravenous all the time. When she finally gives in to temptation and gobbles up an extra brain she finds at work, she realizes what she is and what the benefits are — i.e. she no longer ages, she’s stronger than before, she has faster healing, and her drug and alcohol addictions have gone the way of her former life. In short, it took dying for Angel to turn her life around.

I’ve said it before and most likely will be saying it for quite a while: Zombies are the new vampires. This story has the traditional setup of a post-modern vampire tale: The protagonist is “turned” and must learn what he/she really is and the unsavory dietary supplement that must be consumed in order to keep existing; the black-market dealing of said dietary supplement; that fact that there is a hidden subculture of the supernatural race, with good and evil sides to both; that someone is hunting the zombies and destroying them, even the peaceful ones who don’t dine on “fresh” food; and so forth.

In fact, I wondered if Rowland had originally envisioned Angel’s story as that of a vampire first.

Whatever the case, the author has come up with a cool twist on what easily could have fallen into a stale concept. It all works, however. Angel is funny and likable, as are many of the supporting cast, and the book moves along with a breezy feel like a summertime big-budget comedy, only with more brain eating.

As our heroine investigates who turned her into a zombie (and why) and fights to stop the person who is killing the zombies before she finds herself headless and dead-for-real-this-time, she manages to turn her life around and finds out that it’s better to be one of the undead than a white-trash loser. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

Neil Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS is such a significant and pervasive piece of contemporary fantasy fiction that’s hard to recall a time when it wasn’t around. But as this newly published edition reminds us, 10 years have passed since it was first published. From that moment on, it earned glowing critical notices, won every major award in its field, and confirmed Gaiman as a creative force to be reckoned with.

The heart of this new edition, and the reason why even longtime fans should invest in it, is the “Author’s Preferred Text.” Some 12,000 words have been restored. Thus, many scenes have been added, and familiar ones altered or expanded from the version that first swept us away.

In his “Note on the Text,” Gaiman recalls how this preferred version previously was published in a very limited, very expensive edition in Great Britain. Now all of us can experience it, for a hell of a lot less.

The story is about a man known only as Shadow. When we first meet him, he is serving time in prison, marking off the calendar days to his parole and return to the loving arms of his wife, not to mention a new job secured by his best friend. Then he’s told that his release date has been pushed up a few days. He’s confused, but cheered, until he learns that his accelerated release is because his wife and best friend were killed in a car crash.

Uncertain of his future, Shadow meets an odd little man named Mr. Wednesday on the flight home, who seems to know a lot about Shadow and his life. He offers the ex-con a job as his bodyguard for the cross-country trip he is making. Shadow eventually accepts certain that Wednesday is some sort of con man.

As they travel together and connect with some of Wednesday’s strange assortment of associates, Shadow discovers the incredible truth: Wednesday is actually the god Odin, the All-Father, and his associates are also deities of religion and myth. They were brought to America by immigrant believers from the Old World. Now, however, their existence is dimming as less people believe in them.

What’s worse, they are threatened by the new American gods of technology, commerce, transportation and other modern articles of faith. A war between the old and new gods is looming, and Wednesday is determined to gain alliance from as many elder deities as he can. But the new gods are protected by a paramilitary force that, at one point, kidnap Shadow and torture him for information about Wednesday and his battle plans. Shadow escapes, but the threat follows him as he tries to reconnect with Wednesday and the other Old World gods.
 
The passing years have done little to diminish Gaiman’s fascinating premise and inventive narrative. Almost every moment of the story is embellished with provoking observations about religion, myth, secrets and sex. Shadow and Wednesday avoid the characterless highways and travel mainly through back roads and small towns. This in turn highlights those oddities and traits that make America so unmistakably “American,” while revealing the value of coin tricks and the sacredness of roadside attractions.
 
Yet for all this, AMERICAN GODS can be a confusing and frustrating experience for readers devoted to an uninterrupted, straight-line plot structure. The main story is often broken up by long episodes illustrating how the older gods first came to America. As the plot resumes, Shadow is caught up in a cascading swirl of tangential adventures and the frequently conflicting maze of religious beliefs and convictions about Wednesday, the various gods and figures he meets, and even about his own identity.

This, we learn, is all purposeful and intended. “I wanted to write a book that was big and odd and meandering,” Gaiman notes in the new introduction, “and I did and it was.” Additionally, these moments contain some of Gaiman’s most memorable prose and reward the reader’s perseverance in ways few other novels can imagine.
 
Along with the preferred text and new introduction, the TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION also contains an interview with Gaiman; a reading group guide; an essay where the author addresses his role as immigrant observer; and an additional, “apocryphal” chapter that Gaiman couldn’t work into the narrative. Too bad the publishers couldn’t enlist someone to contribute an afterword addressing the wide influence of the novel and the various rumored and published additions to the AMERICAN GODS universe, like the sequel novella, MONARCH OF THE GLEN (premiering in the LEGENDS II anthology and later collected in Gaiman’s FRAGILE THINGS).

Insignificant annoyances aside, now is the perfect time for fans to donate their dog-eared copy and get this new edition. HBO recently announced its plan to produce a multiseason adapation of AMERICAN GODS, with Gaiman on board to guide it. Before this airs, new readers can have the enviable opportunity of experiencing the novel as the author intended, while the rest of us can, as a movie poster might say, read it again for the first time. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Anyone remember the recent TV show MOONLIGHT? No? Basically, it was like ANGEL, Joss Whedon’s BUFFY spin-off, only not quite as inventive or imaginative. Take the hero of that show, but instead of being a vampire, make him a former vampire, and now a Hell-trained mage, and you’ve got Peter Octavian, the protagonist of Christopher Golden’s urban fantasy series. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

WAKING NIGHTMARES is the fifth installment in said series, a seamless hybrid of the aforementioned series, but THE X-FILES, THE NIGHT STALKER and, uh … oh hell, throw in Jim Butcher’s Dresden series. It may sound as if I’m giving that short shrift by comparing it to defunct TV shows, but in a fantasy genre overrun with supernatural P.I.s and vampire heroes, you should have something in your bag of tricks that makes you stand out from the crowd.

WAKING NIGHTMARES begins promisingly enough with an interesting set-up: Former “shadow” (aka vampire) Octavian is contacted by an old acquaintance whose girlfriend’s brother is catatonic and has plants growing throughout his body, from the inside out. Octavian may not be a vamp anymore, but he’s got a whole lot of magic tricks he mastered during his thousand years in Hell. He investigates and finds that the brother’s housemates — and marijuana growers — have all been attacked and killed by a wood god.

It’s a cool premise and one that immediately drew my interest. Unfortunately, it’s just the preliminary action scene to introduce the hero and show what he does, like the first 10 minutes of a movie where you get to see the hero do something badass. Then the main plot gets underway, but at least now you know the hero does this kind of thing — fights monsters and gods — on a semi-regular basis (in case you weren’t familiar with the concept of the series).

As I said, cool set-up and cinematic in scope, but it’s wrapped up very quickly, and we move on to a series of events that are all interlinked: A college girl collapses and has a vision of a demon apocalyptic future; a man and his son fish a box out of the ocean whose contents throw the man into a terrified fit; a friend of Octavian’s with magical abilities herself receives a mystical warning … all of which leads to the fact that something very old, very powerful and very malevolent is attempting to come through into our dimension.

It’s a solid story idea, characters racing to avert Armageddon, but it all feels derivative and stiff. They never really came alive for me, not even the hero, and Golden only gives a barebones backstory. He probably figures since this is fifth in the series, he doesn’t really have to go into detail. But coming into this series fresh, I kept feeling as if I was walking into the middle of a movie and trying to catch up on everything by what little snippets I could glean.

The secondary characters are little more than cardboard cutouts. I didn’t bother with trying to remember their names, but instead labeled them with nicknames like “plucky college girl,” “wizened professor,” “guy who drools over plucky college girl” and so forth.

If this type of story is your go-to for reading pleasure, I recommend getting the first Octavian book, and possibly you’ll be rewarded with more character development and backstory. Personally, if I were you, I’d pick up Richard Kadrey’s SANDMAN SLIM. Or watch episodes of ANGEL on DVD. My fave is season five, when Spike joins the cast. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

Author and steampunk expert Jeff VanderMeer first introduced readers to world explorer and fringe-medical experimenter Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead in his 2003 work, THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD POCKET GUIDE TO ECCENTRIC & DISCREDITED DISEASES, edited with Mark Roberts. Now, Jeff’s wife, Ann VanderMeer, joins him in assembling numerous authors and artists for this amazingly creative and delightful follow-up, THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES.

According to the book’s introduction, the death of Dr. Lambshead in 2003 at his house in Wimpering-on-the-Brook, England, revealed a remarkable cabinet of objects, relics and other assorted curiosities. Each object contains its own story, either related to the doctor’s personal diaries or as “recalled” by his various friends.

The first entry by Minister Y. Faust, “Electrical Neurheographiton,” sets the tone for much that follows with its whimsical blend of fiction and fact in the detailing of a device designed by legendary inventor Nikola Tesla that produces brain-wave images. And one such image might have unintentionally been the cause of the First World War. Tesla appears again later in the entry by Michael Moorcock recalling a machine that created the small creatures known as “Shamalung (The Diminutions).”
 
Most of the entries follow the form of the above: an apparent scholarly essay (with references and often endnotes) recalling the origin or history of the object, and Dr. Lambshand’s involvement with it or how he came to acquire it. These include contributions by such notable authors as China Mieville, Alan Moore, Lev Grossman, Charles Yu and several others.
 
There is also a section, “Honoring Lambshead: Stories Inspired by the Cabinet,” of more traditionally structured short stories based upon other unique objects in the cabinet. One being “Lord Dunsany’s Teapot,” by Naomi Novik, about the ornate teapot that was once owned by the fantasist who inspired H.P. Lovecraft, among others. Dunsany, we learn, was one of numerous writers, artists and inventors who knew Dr. Lambhead during his extraordinary life.
 
The book is generously illustrated throughout with drawings, charts, photographs and document reproductions by artists including Mike Mignola, Greg Broadmore and Scott Eagle. All wonderfully enhance the fanciful, steampunk-ish ambiance of the essays and stories.
 
This is a book you keep on your nightstand or end table to pick up and dip into every now and then, rather than read from cover-to-cover in a few sittings. But you’re likely to find it hard to resist reading more than one entry in any of the various sections once you begin.
 
Leave it to the VanderMeers to produce one of the most unusual and inventive books of this or any other year. THE THACKER T. LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES is full of marvelous stories and images that will entertain even those unfamiliar with the characteristics of steampunk. It’s a catalog you’ll want to keep and revisit often. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

If you mashed together episodes of TV’s LOST, Stephen King and a healthy dose of Charles de Lint, you would end up with Trish J. MacGregor’s ESPERANZA. She travels the same ground as de Lint, contemporary fantasy built upon the traditions and folktales of a myriad of older cultures, and like him, she is not afraid to contemplate death and horror. She perhaps lacks his almost magical poetic touch, but her plotting has definite similarities.

ESPERANZA is the name of a town in the Ecuadorian highlands, and we meet Tess and Ian as they are on their way there. Neither of them wants to go, as they both have other plans: Ian is a tourist and wishes to visit the Galapagos, and Tess is an FBI agent tracking down a counterfeiter. And yet they end up on the same bus going to the same location, and suffering from some fairly severe memory lapses and gaps in their mental makeup.

Fairly quickly, we discover the reason why: Both of them are near death, living elsewhere in a comatose state, and their souls (which somehow have a physical presence) are living this weird alternate life. This is revealed to us by Dominica, an evil brujo or witch, who plans to destroy all the humans living in the Esperanza area and make a sanctuary for her brujo brethren.

The citizens of Esperanza know about the brujo, and their plan is to fight back and rid themselves of this scourge once and for all. Tess and Ian are marked as transitionals — walking, talking physical manifestations of humanity who are also somehow dead or near dead at the same time. They have an effect on the brujo, in that the witches cannot steal their bodies as they can with all the other inhabitants.

What does all of this mean? Well, unfortunately, it gets even more complicated, because Ian isn’t even in the same timeframe. He is lying in a coma in 1968, while Tess is living out her life (or near-death) in 2008. Then, there are added complications such as the brujos not being able to do certain things outside of the Esperanza area, but still can possess bodies and make those bodies do things.

Oh, and they can travel back and forth in time too, apparently. And there’s even a shapeshifter that goes from dog to man and … well, frankly, it seems like the author is making it up as they go along.

MacGregor quickly switches from her intriguing and fairly creepy opening into what ends up being an action-packed supernatural thriller. This is where she deviates from someone like de Lint, who would take the time to explore the concepts of death and afterlife, especially in the intimate connections between two people who live in different time periods. MacGregor is more content to go with the action-movie feel as Ian and Tess awake from their respective comas, and reunite in Esperanza to fight off the brujos in a climactic battle scene.

I must admit I was a little disappointed in that the book was too long, too complex in its behavioral systems around the brujos, and a little wearying for the reader. But, if one doesn’t mind an overtly supernatural tone to the thriller genre, then ESPERANZA certainly has its moments; she deals well with Ian who travels back forty years in time remembering some of the technological highlights he has seen — hopefully, he has informed his son to invest in Google.

A sequel is set up at the end, so this is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Fantasist Philippa Ballantine previously created a fearless heroine in her novel GEIST. Now she joins forces with fellow fantasy author Tee Morris in the creation of an equally fearless heroine, Eliza D. Braun, and the first steampunk novel in their “Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences” series, PHOENIX RISING.

The story opens with the lovely and daring Eliza D. Braun rescuing Wellington T. Books from the clutches of the evil House of Usher in the frozen Arctic. Wielding an assortment of guns and knives, a fetching bulletproof corset, and an ample supply of dynamite, Braun destroys the Usher compound and returns Books to the safety of the underground offices of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences in London, where she works as a field agent and Books serves as the Ministry’s main archivist. Don’t dare call him a “librarian.”

Mission accomplished, yes, but not in the manner the Ministry ordered. It’s another in a series of messy miscalculations Braun has pulled, so the director removes her from her field-agent status and reassigns her to assist Books in the Archives. He tries to convince Braun of the essential role the Archives serves, but Braun — needless to say — rebels at being chained to a desk.
 
While introducing her to the section where the records of unsolved cases are stored, Braun discovers the notes and other items of a former partner she thought was killed. When she visits the agent in the hospital/asylum, she finds him diminished, but still convinced that the villains he investigated are still a threat.

Sensing an adventure, Braun resumes her former partner’s investigation, with Books trailing behind. They soon uncover the brotherhood of the Phoenix and the reason why dead bodies are appearing on the banks of the Thames River drained of blood and bone. The danger seems imminent — not only to the two agents, but to all of England — yet the Ministry steadfastly refuses to get involved.
 
The forced cuteness of Ballantine and Morris’ style is the biggest obstacle to the novel’s appeal. You first have to get past the obvious Books and Braun joke: books and “brawn,” get it? At least they resisted naming the guy Branes. Then there are phases like “plucky Pepperpot,” “Jolly good!” and other groaners.
 
That’s all the more unfortunate, as the writing team has a fine sense of the steampunk ambience in PHOENIX’s setting. A wonderful example is Books’ “analytical engine,” a sort of mechanical computer with an array of baskets and cabinets that act like a steam-powered Internet. The action sequences, like the opening chapter, are well-constructed and convincing. In between, however, things get precious and annoying,
 
Steampunk enthusiasts undoubtedly will notice the similarities to the Quiet Council and dashing Milady de Winter of Lavie Tidhar’s CAMERA OBSCURA published earlier this year. Tidhar’s, however, is the darker, more menacing of the two.
 
There’s obviously room for both in the steampunk universe. Who knows? If Ballantine and Morris manage to reign in the stale jokes and stylistic clichés in future entries, genre fans may end up taking sides and debating the values of one versus the other, much like the Justice League versus The Avengers. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

I have loved Karen Miller’s writing and especially her characters in the “Kingmaker, Kingbreaker”duology and its follow-up series, “Fisherman’s Children.” But perhaps I have been too long away from the Kingdom of Lur as I read THE RELUCTANT MAGE, book two in the series after THE PRODIGAL MAGE. Here, we find Asher (the fisherman of the earlier series, and once a very likable character) deep in a coma, and his daughter, Deenie, attempting to take care of him.

Rafel, the Prodigal Mage of the first title, has gone off to cross the blighted lands to see if he can save his kingdom, but all that has happened to him is that he has been sucked up and … incorporated … by Morg, the evil sorcerer. Morg has taken over Rafel’s body, and he keeps his soul (for lack of a better word) imprisoned therein.

Rafel’s rival, the haughty Doranen mage Arlin Garrick, is also imprisoned to a degree by Morg, for Garrick serves Morg’s bidding on pain of death. Morg is intent not just on restoring the power of Dorana, but of forcing all the rest of the world to serve under him.

Vharne is the kingdom of one of the peoples he hopes to enslave. And after repeated attacks upon the kingdom, Prince Ewen of Vharne vows to kneel before Morg to gain time in order to find out a way to stop him. Along the way, he meets up with Deenie and her best friend, Charis, who have decided to find out what happened to Rafel. Residents of Lur know nothing of Vharne and vice versa, but they decide to team up in an effort to defeat the all-powerful Morg.

It takes quite a bit of time to get to this point, and it’s not necessarily time well-spent. In my review of THE PRODIGAL MAGE, I complained that the novel was almost exclusively about conflict, bitching back and forth while nothing ever happened. And it continues in this work, with Deenie and Charis, even though the best of friends, constantly wittering at each other over what is the best course of action.

Most readers will have Charis, for one, wished died brutally at the book’s beginning. It just all takes so long to get to the point of this, which is the final confrontation with Morg and the restoration of whatever can be saved of Asher’s family, Dorana and all the lands of the kingdom.

The ending of the series is quite satisfying and opens up nicely for a new chapter in the tale of these various kingdoms. But one can’t help but feel that the four books among the two series could have been condensed into a much more concise trilogy. Still, epic fantasies with wonderful characters aren’t really all that common on the bookshelves, so if you have the time, this might be worth a try. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

I wonder if every teenage boy dreams of having some superpower in order to impress girls, or at the very least, imagines that he can make himself invisible in order to spy on them in various forms of undress.

Perhaps many of them wonder what it would be like to be someone else, someone richer and more attractive to the opposite sex. What would happen if a horny teenager could be anyone? If he could take on the body of a rich, handsome rock star or the bodybuilder with the supermodel girlfriend whenever he wished?

The main character of William Ollie’s FIFTEEN MINUTES is 16-year-old Simon Druford, a self-acknowledged nerd who’s been sent to live with his grandmother in Seattle for the summer. On the bus ride, he meets Syl, the teenage girl of his dreams, who is on her way to the Speedball Stevie Walker concert. Simon introduces himself as “Drew,” the captain of the debate team back home, but once they reach their destination, his grandmother unwittingly blows his cover and the girl leaves.

Simon’s grandmother, whom he hasn’t seen in five years, has gone through some changes: She’s partial to skintight jeans, tank tops and stiletto heels, and wears enough make-up to “paint a barn.” She also drives a BMW and her house — dilapidated-looking on the outside — is filled with Ethan Allen furniture, new appliances, gold-plated fixtures, and a 52-inch plasma TV. “Granny” also offers Simon cigarettes, pot and cocaine, and openly discusses sex with him. In short, Simon’s grandmother is the greatest grandmother ever!      

How does she afford this stuff? More importantly, how does Granny come home one day with her mind in a different body? Answer: She has a cat’s eye ring that lets her switch bodies with others. The ring eventually comes into Simon’s possession (through a turn events that I won’t reveal), and what does nerdy Simon do? Does he adopt a secret identity and decide to use his newfound abilities to fight crime as a superhero? Well, no.  Simon, like most 16-year-old males, is more interested in getting laid.

And so author Ollie’s novel takes off as a series of misadventures as Simon decides to hunt for Syl, but hopefully find a beautiful girl along the way so he can trade bodies with her boyfriend and … well, you can probably figure out what he plans to do. But nothing ever goes as planned for Simon, who soon finds out that when he switches bodies with someone, not only does he gain their memories, but he also adopts their predilections for sex and any addictions they might have.

During one harrowing scene, he escapes being a victim of a serial killer by slipping into the killer’s body. Suddenly, Simon has the mind of the murderer and a taste for blood. What happens? I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say there are sections of this book where it becomes increasingly hard to sympathize with Simon’s plight.

The author is good at traversing the line of the reader either identifying and rooting for Simon, and being disgusted by him. He’s not always solipsistic, and there are moments when he is selfless and helps people. But like any teenager, there are times when he can act like the most self-centered, selfish dick, too. Ollie keeps the story moving, and even at its most unbelievable and too-convenient plot twists, you’re having too much fun to care or question it.

A minor quibble: Long sections are devoted to rock star Speedball Stevie Walker as he renegotiates recording contracts, does enormous amounts of illicit substances, and sexually gratifies himself with his groupies. There are also sections about crime leader Frank Dori, who is attempting to find out who the snitch is in his organization. Not that these two characters aren’t compelling in their own right, but I found myself speeding through these sections in order to see what situation Simon was going to get himself into next. Perhaps in the sequel we can get more Simon and less of the secondary characters.

Did I say sequel? That’s my take on it. With loose ends and unanswered questions, I’m assuming we’ll be seeing more of Simon and his magic ring. Hopefully, the next installment will be as breezy and entertaining as this one. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Dark Regions.

To borrow a line from George Costanza: He’s back, baby! 
         
Richard Matheson is back with a new novel, and although I panned his last collection due to the fact that it was comprised of unfinished works and stories that were better off lost in the now-defunct pulps that originally published them, I was excited to see a new, original work from an author who ranks up there with the best of Bradbury.

I was also hesitant about reading this new novel, worried he had lost his creative touch and writing voice, as so many of the older authors tend to do over time. But I was pleased with OTHER KINGDOMS … for the most part.
         

It begins with an introduction from the narrator, Arthur Black, a writer of schlocky suspense novels, as he reflects back on his life when he was 18 and a soldier in the Great War. Now an old man, he has a story to tell and has waited decades to tell it. He doesn’t take long to get to it, either.
         
Arthur Black used to be Alex White, a young man who enlisted in the Army in order to get away from his oppressive and domineering father. This part of the story is brief, but suffice it to say, Alex’s dad makes the Great Santini look warm and cuddly.

Alex goes off to war, and Matheson really shines through here. Although this section is also brief, his description of what life was like for the enlisted men during the World War I made me wish for a novel-length treatment of the subject. But this is all setup.
         
After Alex is wounded, rather than return to his tyrannical father, he decides to retire to the quaint English village of Gatford, a town steeped in strange traditions and curious superstitions. The forest, for example, is home to “the wee folk” — faeries — and not the giggling, flittering Walt Disney kind. These faeries have vast magical abilities and can shapeshift into any form. Some like to play pranks on the humans, while others are far less friendly.

Alex is warned to stay away from their land, lest he fall into the hands of one of the faeries who hate humans. But he finds himself drawn to one in particular: Ruthana, a beautiful, spritely faerie who claims to be in love with him. But can he trust that she’s telling the truth? The faerie race is known to be masters of deception, and someone or something appears to be out for Alex’s blood.

At the same time, Alex enters into a relationship with Magda, a striking older woman whom the townspeople claim to be a witch. Magda casts a spell on Alex, but with her sexuality rather than any hocus pocus. She helps him to heal from his war wounds (both the physical and mental kind), but is she really as benevolent as she appears? Here’s a hint: When William Congreve said, and I paraphrase, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” he should have added, “Also, never piss off a witch.”
         
Matheson works in lots of interesting tidbits about faeries and witches, and the plot takes several unexpected turns. Minor complaint: The narrative is entirely in the voice of the main character, now an 82-year-old man, and much like an 82-year-old man, it tends to ramble. Sometimes this is amusing, and sometimes it’s annoying.

At times, I felt like I was listening to a story from Grandpa Simpson and wanted to shout, “Just get on with it!” But those times were infrequent and shouldn’t dissuade anyone from enjoying the story Matheson tells. Also, the ending felt very similar to Matheson’s SOMEWHERE IN TIME, but maybe that was just my impression.

So where does this latest book rank within Matheson’s body of work? It’s a solid, entertaining story. Although it doesn’t reach the heights of I AM LEGEND, it’s more enjoyable than WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

The mark of a good series, in my humble opinion, is that a first-time reader can pick up a book anywhere along the way and not feel as if he/she is lost because they didn’t read the first two, three, 10, etc. The author should briefly catch the reader up to date as far as where the series’ protagonist is in his/her respective life, and then move on into the present storyline without boring the longtime fans, but not alienating the newbies by skipping over things.

Lawrence Block is particularly adept at this skill. Pick up any of the Matt Scudder novels and you are quickly filled in on where the character is in his life. Block doesn’t waste time with past history exposition, but neither does he ignore the fact that the reader might be experiencing Scudder for the first time. He gives you the facts, brevity being the operative word, and off he goes onto the present adventure at hand.

So what does this have to do with DEMON SONG by Cat Adams? Glad you asked.

Adams is actually the writing team of C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp, and DEMON SONG is the third book to feature their heroine, Celia Graves, part-vampire, part-siren. Celia is a private investigator and bodyguard-for-hire, which as most readers of this genre know, is the standard occupation for “good guy” vamps. If you’re part-vampire, you’re not working at Walmart or McDonalds; you’re hiring yourself out as a private eye and part-time muscle.

Celia is a weird mix. As part-vamp, she craves blood and drinks cooked animal blood mixed with her protein shakes. Her eyes can also turn red and sometimes her skin glows green. She’s also faster than a human … and that’s about it. Then there’s the half-siren part: Celia can make people do whatever she wants … except she doesn’t. Celia doesn’t use her supernatural gift because she wants people to like her for her.

The plot of the novel is all crisis: Celia has werewolf friends who need help; ghost friends who need help; paying clients who need help; nonpaying clients … etc. You get the idea: The heroine races from one crisis to the next while trying to run her P.I./bodyguard business, and all the while the reader attempts to keep up, but it’s like trying to keep up with someone who suffers from ADD and a simultaneous crack habit. There isn’t much downtime. Celia even has siren relatives who can teleport her all over the country, which besides being a convenient plot device, serves to keep the breakneck pace from ever slowing down.

Plot points are vague or simply forgotten, and backstory is practically nonexistent, so if you haven’t read the first two in this series, you’ll have a hell of a time catching up. But my biggest gripe? Although there are a multitude of story arcs going, none are seen to a satisfying conclusion. It’s as if the authors threw everything into the mix, then grew bored and let everything fade into the background. Here’s an example and a potential spoiler:

Celia receives a request for help from an 8-year-old girl who was forced to act as a drug mule. A vicious drug gang had threatened the girl and forced her to swallow balloons of drugs, then instructed her to go to a mall and, uh, relieve herself. Then she was to deliver the balloons to another party. But the girl doesn’t realize that the mall has automatic flush toilets, and the drugs are lost.

So why did the gang entrust valuable merchandise to an 8-year-old girl? Why was she not escorted to the meeting place, but simply trusted to go to the right destination? (And what 8-year-old girl, besides Lisa Simpson, can navigate the city streets and is allowed to visit the mall by herself?) And the girl, while swallowing the drugs, happens to overhear where a big drug deal is going to go down, but despite being terrified, is able to later recall these details with crystal clarity. How is that possible?

Well, dear reader, these things are known only to the authors. As I said, they throw a bunch of things in the mix, stick it in the oven, and we end up with crap cake.

How does our heroine assist the girl? Does she go to the site of the drug deal and beat everyone to within an inch of their lives with her handy vamp powers? Nope. Instead, she makes a phone call to an FBI friend and the matter is handled off-panel. The girl, along with the whole subplot, fades away into thin air while Celia races to the next crisis. And so it goes.

DEMON SONG is like a designer knock-off: The authors have incorporated all of the staples of the genre, but fail to deliver the all-important cohesive story arc. In other words, like a designer knock-off, although it may look like the real deal and the tags are similar, it’s just a cheap imitation. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

When you enter a story halfway through with no background, as I have done with L. Jagi Lamplighter’s , it would be completely unfair to offer a “yea” or “nay” assessment. This is the kind of series you need to read in toto, starting with PROSPERO LOST and ending with PROSPERO REGAINED (scheduled to come out in September).

The Prosperos are a large family of eccentric and immortal magicians who apparently have lost their beloved father in the depths of Hell. This middle novel concerns the family’s attempts to rescue the father, and at the same time, rebuild a familial bond that seems to have come apart.

The book is told largely through the view of Miranda Prospero, who runs the family firm, and is attempting to become a Sibyl, a sort of super-charmed pagan magician who worships the chaste. Through her own phenomenally misguided efforts and mental bumbling, she seems to more often than not put her family and herself in harm’s way.

Readers who love epic quests gorged with lengthy and awesome descriptions in the E.R. Eddison mold, —filled with nods of the head to historical legends and relics, and complete with a fantastical magical scheme that barely holds water — may like this book. It became a little too “here’s a big danger, here’s how it gets solved magically” for me. Not enough space is devoted to character development to make the Prosperos truly interesting, while too much space is devoted to describing yet another fantastical place where amazing things happen. The Shakespearean references seem to me just a distraction.

But the style is strong. While the book could be shorter, each individual sentence is well-written and dialogue is handled effectively. The story in PROSPERO IN HELL is a stopgap, a lengthening of the tale from the first to the second, where there seems to be only one truly dynamic thing that happens to the main character. If you tried the first book and liked the Prosperos, then by all means continue the series, because you’ll want to know what happens to them, all of which should be wrapped up in the final novel due this fall. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

The legend of Prester John began in the 12th century with a letter that told of a Christian king who ruled over a land reportedly containing many of the staples of mythology and realms of fantasy. This hidden Christian kingdom was reported to exist somewhere in the midst of what was then strictly Muslim and pagan territory, and sparked fortune and treasure hunters’ imaginations — and fruitless searches — for the next 500 years.

What was so special about this kingdom besides the wondrous creatures that supposedly coexisted among the Christian residents of this fabled land? It was rumored to contain the secret of immortality, which is enough for almost anyone to search high and low across the world.

The mythical lost city/kingdom whose residents enjoy longevity is nothing new in literature. The most popular modern interpretation of the legend is arguably James Hilton’s 1933 novel LOST HORIZON, which told of the hidden city Shangri-La (not to be confused with the Stone Temple Pilots’ album SHANGRI-LA DEE DA. The concept has been explored in everything from mythology and children’s stories to pulp-fiction potboilers and modern fantasy epics. So one would have to ask: Is there anything new to be added to this subgenre of fiction? Apparently, there is.

It’s 1699 in author Catherynne M. Valente’s THE HABITATION OF THE BLESSED, the first of a planned trilogy, and Brother Hiob of Luzerne is on a missionary excursion in the Himalayan wilderness. He discovers a tree that bears books rather than fruit. The old priest picks three books and finds that he must read them quickly as, much like actual fruit, they tend to spoil over time. He alternates chapters from each and learns the story of Prester John, as told by three different narratives.

One book is told from Prester John’s viewpoint, a former priest who has discovered Pentexore, an ancient land of strange creatures who resemble humans, but with extreme physical differences. The inhabitants of Pentexore haven’t heard of Jesus Christ, although John plans to fix that, and they practice the Abir: a lottery that reassigns them to new lives, jobs and mates every 300 years. Why? Because if you’re near-immortal, you have to find ways to keep life from becoming stagnant.

The second book is written by Hagia, Prester John’s wife. She’s a blemmye — a race of headless beings with faces in their chest — which is not the strangest thing seen in these pages. The third book is the narrative of Imtithal, nanny to the royal family, who is a panotii — a race of people with ears big enough to wrap around their bodies. (And if you think this is complicated, imagine having to take notes in order to keep these various spellings right). There are many more wondrous creatures, such as gryphons and pygmies, and many more that make Hagia and Imtithal seem relatively normal as far as appearances go.

The author explores the obsession of Prester John to convert these strange intelligent creatures to Christianity by making them recite prayers and conjugate Latin verbs. He comes off as a bit of a prig, but underneath, we see a man who believes with all his soul in what he’s doing, as well as the impossibility of the tasks he sets for himself. For what is eternal salvation to something that lives for almost eternity?

Valente is also skilled at showing age-old legends in a new light. Example: The fabled Fountain of Youth is not a sparkling spring of clear water; rather, it oozes a “thick and oily” substance with “algae and the eggs of improbable mayflies.” Yummy.

The intersecting, yet distinct, narratives explore the story from different angles and give the reader multiple viewpoints. In this way, it reminded me of Iain Pears’ AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST, a novel I loved (which in turn reminded me of the Japanese film RASHOMON), but trying to boil the story down that way doesn’t really do it justice. The author’s prose is lyrical and dream-like, like poetry conformed to a novel format.

Although I’m not generally a fan of fantasy unless it has one foot set firmly in reality, I enjoyed this one. It’s not an easy read and definitely not one you can fly through with the speed in which you might devour a John Grisham novel. Still, it’s worth the trek. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

Lavie Tidhar’s CAMERA OBSCURA is not so much a sequel to his generally impressive steampunk novel, THE BOOKMAN, as it is a continuation of events in the world presented in that debut. While the locale is different and no characters brought forward, this work retains all the nuances of the first novel and improves upon most of them.

In Paris, a few years following BOOKMAN’s conclusion, an Asian man is found murdered in a house on the Rue Morgue. Not long after the local law authorities arrive at the crime scene, the unmistakable figure of Milady de Winter appears. The police know that Milady is an agent for the Quiet Council, that shadowy organization that watches over and secretly influences the city, so the crime must be of particular note.

The victim’s stomach has been pulled open. Examining the body and the scene, Milady knows she is too late. The object the man was carrying inside his body has been stolen. Reporting this to the Quiet Council, Milady is immediately assigned to track down and return the object, although the organization gives her no clue as to what the object is or why it is of such tremendous importance.

As Milady’s search takes her through both known and unknown sites of Paris, as well as across the ocean, she learns that the stolen object is some kind of key with a long and troubled past. It might even be a portal between this world and another deep within outer space. Her investigation brings her close to death more than once, and eventually alters the course of her life.
 
Tidhar seems more comfortable in his alternate world here than in his earlier novel. The automatons, cyborgs and even the scary, giant lizards that made their way into the ruling family of England in the first book (and are still suspected as plotting to take over the planet) are presented with greater subtlety and regarded more as familiar elements of life. Several of the fictional and historical characters who drift in and out of the story are treated on a first-name basis, like Viktor (Frankenstein), Tom (Thumb) and Henri (Toulouse-Lautrec).

This allows the author to concentrate more on ambience and pacing. The novel flows more assuredly from one event to the next, and includes the history of the mysterious object in interlude flashbacks without losing track of the main story. Shortly after the opening chapters, when Milady descends deep within the fabled catacombs of Paris to meet with the Council, Tidhar’s prose adopts a nightmarish quality that succeeds in being both eerie and alluring at the same time.
 
Even with these assets, there comes a point in the last quarter when Tidhar falls into the same kind of sensory overload and myriad of plot tangents that marred THE BOOKMAN. That’s when the all the previously fascinating asides start to feel like distractions, and you wish he’s simply get on with Milady finding the key.
 
Familiarity with the first novel is not altogether essential for enjoying CAMERA OBSCURA. Indeed, major events are briefly recapped, and even the specter of The Bookman himself gets a few off-hand references. Readers who start here will no doubt find Tidhar’s inventiveness compelling enough to want to see where it all began.
 
You might as well, especially since there will be more such “Bookman Histories” in the near future. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.
 

At the front of my review copy of THE FALLEN BLADE is a letter from Orbit Books’ senior editor Devi Pillai. In it, Pillai says that this novel “promises to add commercial success to [Jon Courtenay Grimwood's] outstanding critical acclaim.” 

“Crap,” I said to myself when I read that sentence. 

Yes, mostly traditional plot structure isn’t the kind of high-level mindfuck that regular readers have come to expect of Grimwood’s novels. Yes, there’s a brooding vampire who struggles with his nature and a young girl with a heaving bosom who’s thrust into events she can’t imagine. But no, it isn’t the disaster I feared it to be. 

THE FALLEN BLADE is set amid Renaissance Venice, and there’s so much detail here about it that I have a feeling that Grimwood did a painfully painstaking amount of research on the subject. There are scheming rulers, vicious assassins and intrigues galore all within the author’s grasp. What’s more, he adds the aforementioned vampire, a witch of some flavor, and a gang of werewolves that prowls Venice’s nighttime streets.

The plot is basically like this: The head of Venice’s shadowy Assassini adopts a powerful, but pale young lad named Tycho. Tycho is perhaps a vampire, and his presence and self-discovery causes all sorts of Venetian drama.

That is a lot of stuff. So much stuff, in fact, that it takes THE FALLEN BLADE a while to get moving — the first 100 pages or so consist of lots of somewhat cryptic setup; there are some action sequences dropped in to liven things up, but the book you’re really looking for gets started after that triple-digit mark. From there, all the plot threads Grimwood gets started roar into high speed, and seductions, betrayals and intrigues take shape. As Tycho learns to spread his fangs and vamp out, things get plenty more exciting, and the plot’s twists and turns keep everything moving to the end. 

STAMPING BUTTERFLIES it isn’t, but Grimwood’s take on historical fantasy is anything but conventional. By creating a Venice that’s amazingly fleshed out, a plot that’s anything but cookie-cutter, and characters that are too nuanced for lesser writers, the author has struck out on a new literary journey. Hopefully, he gets the success he needs to finish it.  —Ryun Patterson

Buy it at Amazon.

Oh, I know what I was expecting from Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald’s LINCOLN’S SWORD: a half-baked, alternate-reality fantasy that would hold together about as well as a water-soaked budget paper towel. And I was right for some of that, but the more I think about this novel, the more and more I like what they’ve done.

Basically, the book is set in the years during, preceding and after the Civil War, and it resolves around — for no well-explained reason — a certain sword in the hand of an Army commander. It’s hard to write a review without giving too much of the plot away, but basically, this sword needs to be in certain people’s hands at certain times, in order to avert catastrophe.

The Civil War, America’s largest catastrophe ever, is looming. Can there be worse? Yes, there can. And certain individuals mean to make sure that the Civil War as we know it now occurs as we believe it to have occurred then.

These individuals are time travelers, people who are able to live in one or more time sequences, and it is they who must ensure that this sword is placed in the proper hands. As they do this, we encounter the worlds of President Abraham Lincoln; his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln; and the renegade Cole Younger of the infamous Jesse James-Younger gang.

Mary Todd is a sibyl, one who can foresee the future and she sees utter devastation ahead for humanity. Cole Younger is a “toucher,” one who can touch a person and foresee their future (think THE DEAD ZONE). They are all intimately involved to make sure the sword ends up with the right person — if you guessed Lincoln based on the title, well, one point for you.

There are some issues that may grate on certain readers. The book is structured as you would expect a time traveler to write it: short chapters that bounce around back and forth with hardly anything happening consecutively. Weird, but it works. The construct of time travel and how the weapon must get to a certain location is interesting, but the reason behind why this must be goes lacking. Still, and perhaps I’m just naïve, I did not expect the final outcome; for that alone, LINCOLN’S SWORD gets a positive recommendation.

If you like the hugely popular genre of alternative histories, the timeframe of the American Civil War, and the world of the Lincolns (finally, we have a good explanation as to why Mary Todd was so difficult), you may enjoy this surprising work. Go into it without expecting brilliance, and you shall find something very shiny indeed. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Maurice Broaddus takes on the audacious task of retelling the King Arthur myth in the contemporary urban setting of the Indianapolis inner city. KING MAKER: THE KNIGHTS OF BRETON COURT I, the first in a promised trilogy, presents itself as an urban fantasy. What fantasy there is, however, is fleeting and confusing.

King James White, the surviving son of gang leader Luther White, lives in a world of drug dealing, prostitution and seemingly random violence and death. The two ruling gangs in his Indianapolis neighborhood, the Breton Crew Folks and the Phoenix Apartment People, are constantly fighting each other for dominance of the drug and sex trade.

King tries to stay aloof, but something keeps pulling him into the lives of the gang leaders and their turf war. Spurred on by the occasional mentoring of Merle, a white homeless man who seems connected to a age-old world of magic and prophesy, he eventually takes steps to unite the dealers and gangbangers so that they can survive and face what might be a larger threat than any of them can imagine.

Broaddus impressively and effectively presents the depressing, dead-end world of inner-city gangs, their drug deals, drug use and their often desperate attempts to act heroic when they feel the need for something akin to retribution or justice. He paints a realistic and convincing world, with hip-hop dialogue that rings true and authentic.

Throughout the novel, however, Broaddus begins or connects scenes with observations and insights that attempt to place this gritty story in a broader, mythic context.Just when we think we will sense a thread that connects the Arthurian Legend to the urban gangs, the author immerses us in another scene of violence or sex, and the thread is dropped.
 
He demonstrates his affinity for horror fiction in several instances involving enforcers who delight in eating the bodies of those they have just killed, and other, similar scenes of violence. What fantasy trappings there are come mostly from Merle, but his intonations about “waking the dragon” and the long-told destiny that King must follow are wildly out of place in the midst of such unrelenting realism, and then are quickly dismissed. There is also what may or may not be a brief battle with a dragon deep within a basement of an abandoned building, but this, too, comes and goes in a matter of a few paragraphs whose significance is unexplained.
 
Those familiar with the Arthurian tales will no doubt groan at the similarity of names drizzled throughout the stor: Luther/Uther, Merle/Merlin, Baylon/Balin, Gwenivere/Lady G and so on. This intended cleverness comes off heavy-handed and dull. The tales of Arthur, his knights and their adventures remain one of the most influential sources of fantasy. Perhaps there are parallels to contemporary gangs — much like ROMEO AND JULIET found modern-day retellings in musicals and movies — but KING MAKER spends far too much time in the depressing mire of its setting to demonstrate what the Arthurian legend has to tell us today.
 
Perhaps the parallels will be more apparent in the coming volumes. For the moment, KING MAKER reads more like a collection of accidental similarities rather than a reinterpretation. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Ah, once again, we meet the inestimable sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse in DARK JENNY, Alex Bledsoe’s third installment of the LaCrosse fantasy noir saga. The series is tons of fun with the main character being a cynical, quick-of-wit swordsman who has a penchant for getting into very nasty scrapes, and then plays the detective to get out of them.

In DARK JENNY, LaCrosse is at a royal function, dogging a man unfaithful to his wife, when one of the queen’s guards dies from a poisoned apple. There are two suspects: LaCrosse and the queen herself. It’s easier to put manacles on LaCrosse, but while half the palace is calling for his head, the leader of the guards knows LaCrosse did not commit the crime. However, LaCrosse has a vested interest (keeping his head) in solving the murder.

Bledsoe plays all this out in his usual way: swift action scenes, droll asides, snappy dialogue. This time around, the plot seems unnecessarily convoluted and a few loose ends are left to dangle. But that’s not enough to dim the torchlight of a fast, furious and fun fantasy/mystery series that contains such an entertaining rascal as LaCrosse. I still think the second in the series (BURN ME DEADLY) is the best, but all three are worth reading. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Almost all the story elements of Robin McKinley’s PEGASUS will be familiar to any seasoned fantasy reader: the young princess coming of age who is wary of court protocol; the discovery that she has some remarkable capability of which others around her possess in only a small amount; the presence of a malevolent character who is envious of that capability and will somehow try to repress her.

The difference is that McKinley weaves together the world of the pegasus and that of the human, into an engaging fantasy that could have been very suitable for young adult (and regular adult) readers.

The author has given much thought to the culture of the pegasi and how they would live together and among humans. Their impossible bodies — small horses with wings and tiny little hands — causes McKinley to craft convoluted descriptions of living quarters, familial relations, their pastimes and their desires, but she does this all with such skill and sincerity that you believe a huge colony of pegasi could live in close conjunction with people.

The problem is, the humans are a little dull. On the royal children’s 12th birthday, they are blood-bound to a similar royal pegasus, as was decreed many years ago in the original treaty that allied the two species. But most humans find it very difficult to talk to their (or anyone else’s) pegasus, and they must use magician Speakers who translate, but perhaps not very well. This is the way it has been for many hundreds of years, and no one feels the need to change it much.

Until little princess Sylviianel is blood-bound to her pegasus, Ebon, and she finds that magic or no, she can speak perfectly well telepathically with the giant-winged horse. As she explores this relationship, she discovers that she can speak with other pegasi as well, something that no human has ever been able to accomplish. The pegasi see her as their great hope, someone who can break down the artificial-language barrier and the strangely stilted behavioral barriers between the two species, so that the alliance can be further cemented. Of course, the magician Fthoom wants none of this, none of Sylvi’s remarkable power, none of the loosening of tradition.

The story is simple, but McKinley’s depth of feeling toward her created world shines through in her text. Her descriptions tend to be long and quite dense, which can be a little wearing on the reader, but the interaction between young Sylvi and Ebon seems very spot-on and charming.

But the novel stumbles in the final third. Sylvi is the first person to visit and stay for any length of time in the land of the pegasi, and she finds out a considerable amount. For reasons that are explained, but certainly not adequately, she never tells her father (the king!) what she knows, and he apparently is too preoccupied to ask. This leads to a conclusion that is all too predictable.

McKinley is a good writer, a real world-builder, but the motivations she assigns to her characters are frustrating in the end. Perhaps it is all a parable for growing up and leaving behind fantasies of being able to talk to the animals, but if so, then it is even less of a novel. And I find way too much in her solid storytelling to believe that. I can say that I wanted a different and more logical outcome, but readers can say, “Review the book at hand, not what you think should have been written.” And if that is the case, then I must say the ending left me flat, defeated and unedified.

Of course, that’s intentional. The author deliberately ends the story in this way as a cliffhanger prelude to an imminent sequel. But she gets to this point in a contrived manner (with Sylvi remaining quiet) and if one has to wait too long for the coming book, one may lose interest. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

If society should collapse and the end times near, at least STORIES FOR THE END OF THE WORLD will let you go out happy. This Permuted Press collection of short fiction comes from Eric Shapiro, one of my favorite indie authors since starting this very website a little more than half a decade ago.

In fact, one of my quotes is included as a blurb: “Eric Shapiro is one of genre fiction’s best-kept secrets. This cannot stand.” That statement still rings true, and this anthology offers an even 10 entries of solid proof. That includes my first exposure to him in “Donovan’s Leg,” a zombie tale in the George A. Romero mold, from THE UNDEAD: ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY.

His “The Hill” was a real highlight in that collection’s sequel, THE UNDEAD, VOLUME 2: SKIN AND BONES. Here, he does a 180˚ from “Leg,” casting the undead not as the usual, standup guys, but as tortoise-like creatures on all fours. The image he conveys of five or six of them stacking up on one another in order to reach the doorknob of your home was by far BONES’ most disturbing.

“Days of Allison” explores what happens when a mother takes pity on her lonely, socially awkward son, Louis, buying him a woman for companionship — not a call girl, but a robot. Eager to play Dr. Frankenstein, Louis is allowed to pick and choose his partner’s elements of being. Her name, Allison; their future, icky.

From DAIKAIJU!: GIANT MONSTER TALES comes “Newborn,” the best of that book’s bunch. Played for laughs (and succeeding), it’s an account of a man discovering that his in-labor wife has been unfaithful, because the doctors tell him she’s giving birth to a giant bird.

True to this collection’s title, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and Ben Klein feels fine, but only because he’s all liquored up, in Shapiro’s terrific, taut and tense “Strawberry Man.” Stuck atop a skyscraper restaurant with a bartender and two waitresses after a massive tsunami, the former fruit salesman sees little hope with the rising water level and so openly shares a secret story from his past involving a stripper. So horrified are his fellow survivors, they lock him in the freezer to stew in his own insanity, leading to a shattering act.

It closes with the clever “3:21,″ from the highly underrated THE ELASTIC BOOK OF NUMBERS project. The story deals with a man who believes he can resurrect his dead wife by focusing on the same number over and over. Does he succeed?

You find out. You won’t regret it. Despite his comparatively low profile, Shapiro is a fantasist of the highest order. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

I was more than pleasantly surprised by the first two books of Rachel Aaron’s “The Legend of Eli Monpress” series, specifically THE SPIRIT THIEF and THE SPIRIT REBELLION (the third in the trilogy is THE SPIRIT EATER). It’s a remarkably refreshing tale with its own unique (and terribly flawed) magic system, a cast of irrepressible (in the best way) characters that are all immensely likable, and nonstop action.

It reminds me of the mass-market paperback fantasies we used to devour in the long-ago days of the ’80s, rip-roaring adventure that was fun and didn’t have to dwell too long on “meanings” and “messages” (though there is a subtle look at the difference between servitude and service in the way the spirits of the environment interact with the wizards of this world).

Basically, Eli Monpress is the self-styled greatest thief in the world, and we first meet him as he is busy literally charming the nails out of the slats in the wooden door that has been used to imprison him in his cell. For you see, in this world, every inanimate object has its own spirit, its own soul, and it is capable of communicating thoughts and desires to wizards who are open to this sort of thing.

That’s the big flaw. It would be a difficult world if every chair you sat on had its own opinion about your weight gain, or if every wineglass thought you drank too much. The author uses a variety of stratagems to get around this spirit conceit, but it’s best not to think about it and just roll with the flow.

Monpress has an entourage, the agile swordsman Josef Liechten, and a tiny waif of a girl named Nico who is a demonseed, half-human, half-monster. While Josef loves her with all his heart, he knows that at some point, the monster half of Nico will win out. This trio, in their thievery, has managed to upset the Spirit Council, which has sent one Miranda Lyonette to capture Monpress and bring him to justice.

That’s the setup; the joy is in the detail of how Aaron manages to have her main characters face tremendous odds, sometimes forced to help the other, as they battle evil throughout the land. The plots aren’t anything special, though the author does present a few nice puzzles on how some of the wizards can use the spirits to break out of prison cells and the like.

But what’s really special here are the beautifully and sympathetically drawn main characters, and the absolute fun of racing through these books in the company of Monpress, Liechten, Nico and Lyonette. In a genre dominated by “heavy” fantasy, these lighthearted novels are a joy to read. —Mark Rose

Buy them at Amazon.

There’s an old joke that goes, “Question: What do casino owners say to someone who comes to Vegas with a surefire system to beat the house and win a fortune? Answer: Welcome!” Meaning, of course, that it is impossible to really beat the house. The two protagonists of Matt Forbeck’s VEGAS KNIGHTS may or may not have heard that joke, but nonetheless, they are positive their system will make them rich in Sin City … because their system is magic.

Jackson, the novel’s narrator, and his friend, Bill, are two University of Michigan students who have secretly studied magic (or, the restructuring of reality, as it is more academically referred to) with one of their professors. Now they are intent on using their skills at the blackjack tables to win enough money to pay their tuition and generally the rest of their futures.

Things seem to work at first, as they alter the cards for winning hands. It isn’t long, however, before Jackson and Bill learn they are not the only ones using magic in Vegas. The truth is, they discover, the town is full of magicians (and not just your David Copperfield or Criss Angel types) who run the casinos, and they don’t take kindly to outsiders. With their scam uncovered, the pair runs for their lives from security officers.

Just as they are about to board a plane back to Michigan, the head of security captures them and returns them to meet with the Big Boss, once a legendary magician himself. Recognizing fresh talent in Jackson and Bill, he offers them jobs where they will continue to hone their magical skills while living a live of Vegas luxury. It’s tempting, of course, until they uncover the Big Boss’ dark secret and the real reason he recruits the talents of young magic practitioners.

Forbeck’s narrative structure is frustratingly uneven. After a strong opening and a very impressive chase sequence — chock-full of cinematic moments — things come to a grinding halt for what feels like the remainder of the novel so Jackson and Bill can discover how the entire history of world magic came to focus on Las Vegas. Forbeck goes so far as to have Jackson’s family hail from New Orleans, and a secondary character who comes to the friends’ rescue a Native American, just so he can include voodoo and shaman traditions to the exposition.

After meeting the Big Boss and learning his identity, there is the hint that a huge scheme might be in the works, sort of the “OCEAN’S ELEVEN meets HARRY POTTER” promised on the book’s cover. Even this is diminished to a fairly predictable confrontation between two groups of magicians battling for control of Vegas, and the Big Boss’ true mission. By the way, that mission — and without turning this into a spoiler — is something readers of dark fantasy and horror have experienced numerous times before.

There is no elaborate plan to knock over a casino, and the action and plot continue in fits and starts all the way to the conclusion. On the plus side, Forbeck has a fine ear for dialogue and is generally convincing in his characterizations. His portrayal of the glitz and excess of Vegas is equally strong, even when portraying fictional casinos and resorts. As noted earlier, the action sequences are imaginative and expertly presented, no doubt owing to Forbeck’s background in game design.

Ultimately, VEGAS KNIGHTS is different and, by comparison, less than what it promises. The irony is, most of its shortcomings are caused by too much magic and not enough scamming. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Kevin J. Anderson’s THE MAP OF ALL THINGS is the second in his “Terra Incognita” trilogy, following up his magisterial THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, with yet another hefty chunk of Tierran history and adventure. Readers of the first book will enjoy the continuation of the conflict between the Aidenists of the north and the Urabans of the south — two cultures steeped in their own interpretation of a religion that connects and divides the two entities.

This time, the Urabans seem to have the upper hand. They have actually managed to capture the holy city of Ishalem and have walled off the Aidenists, preventing their access. But this hasn’t stopped the warfare or atrocities, as both sides attempt to destroy the other. Caught in the middle of this are the Saedrans, a group of mapmakers who store knowledge and are attempting to create the Mappa Mundi, or the map of all things of the book’s title.

Also involved in the conflict are the Nunghal-su, whom we briefly met in the first novel, a tribe unaffected by the Aiden/Uraba melee, but who are brought into the mess because they know how to make gunpowder. Uh-oh.

Anderson weaves multiple personal stories throughout this vast tapestry, and connects readers closely to the individual characters. We bounce back and forth in short chapters from missions of exploration as each side attempts to find the holy land of Terravitae, to various hotspots in the conflict as individual commanders probe and thrust at the other side’s weaknesses. We understand Queen Anjine’s horror at the latest Uraban war crime, and we understand her grim commitment to retaliate, even while we realize (as does she) that this will only escalate the war.

In the end, it’s the religious war that becomes a bit tedious after almost 600 pages of each side hating the other. There is no hope for peace or diplomacy — that was wiped out in EDGE. The only real hope is in the missions of discovery and exploration, but even those dabble with disaster, as one side pisses off a holy witch who could very well have been in at the founding of their civilization, and the other side manages to piss off the remains of the long-lost Saedran civilization.

After a while, you hope the Nunghal-su decide to blow up both sides and be done with them. One can see Anderson’s point about fundamentalism in religion, and perhaps even the clumsy analogues between our own societies and that of Tierra, but it’s a point that’s been made countless times, and we hope that the next book, THE KEY TO CREATION, will offer a little more substance.

Still, it’s an exciting enough adventure with a world that seems very real and characters that are fairly realistic with natural dialogue and behaviors. If you’re looking for a sweeping tale of adventure writ large, the “Terra Incognita” trilogy will suffice.

Fans of progressive music may also be interested that, like the first novel, there is a companion CD. TERRA INCOGNITA: A LINE IN THE SAND by The Roswell Six features two songs co-written by the legendary Janis Ian, and contributions from Steve Walsh of Kansas and Sass Jordan. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

From prolific fantasist Mercedes Lackey comes TRIO OF SORCERY, which highlights her talent at urban fantasy in three novellas where troublesome entities from the supernatural collide with our everyday world. It is by no means new territory for her, as she has demonstrated in at least three earlier novels featuring the character of Diana Tregarde.
 
In fact, Tregarde is the star of the first of the three stories, “Arcanum 101.” It’s actually a prequel to the Tregarde novels, set in the early 1970s as the young woman begins life as a college student and wonders how she will balance this new role with her revealed skills and calling as a practicing witch and Guardian of the Earth.

Just as she settles into her new apartment, she is enlisted by a young cop who has had previous encounters with unexplainable occurrences. The officer asks for her help in a kidnapping case where the victim’s mother is relaying on the advice of a local psychic. Tregarde sets out to prove the psychic a fake, but suddenly discovers how wrong she is.

“Drums” involves another Lackey character, Jennifer Talldeer, the detective and Osage shaman from SACRED GROUND. A new client’s girlfriend, a Chickasaw woman, has disappeared after several weeks of odd and alienating behavior. Talldeer investigates and discovers that the Chickasaw girl is under the spell of an Osage ghost who claims the girl as his bride and is slowly draining away her life spirit.

A similar ghost is the problem in the third story, “Ghost in the Machine,” the only one of the three set in the present day. Here, the programmer of a popular computer video game finds its the main villain, designed after a Native American Wendigo, is becoming irritatingly invincible and killing off every other player with its “god-like powers,” including the programmer’s own avatar. Desperate to find the cause of this potentially company-ruining glitch, the programmer consults Ellen McBride, a programmer herself and, more importantly, a techno-shaman. McBride finds that the Wendigo has developed its own consciousness and soon will try to leave the digital world to invade the one outside of computer screens.

All three stories are inventive, convincing and fun to read. The one problem common to the trio, however, is the integration of often huge amounts of exposition vital to understanding the conflict. Lackey often resorts to secondary characters — like the college students living in Tregardes apartment, or Talldeer’s grandfather, or McBride’s robotic pet — whose function is to provide or listen to the details of how each problem came to be. This often drags the pacing to a crawl. In “Arcanum 101,” in particular, Lackey takes an inordinately long time establishing Tregarde’s earlier life and how she came to understand and control her witch powers.

Still, Lackey’s research and knowledge is impressive, and she is as easily conversant in the customs of witchcraft and Native American mythology as she is in contemporary video gaming techniques and slang. Once past the exposition detour, each story finds its main road and drives confidently and satisfyingly to its destination.

Fans of the author’s many solo and collaborative fantasy works need only see her name on the cover, and the announcement of Diana Tregarde’s return, to draw them to this new collection. But TRIO OF SORCERY is also a fine introduction for readers who have yet to discover Lackey’s worlds.
 
Finally, those who avoid fantasy fiction because they get queasy being around dwarfs, elves, fairies and their ilk, should make note of how here, Lackey seamlessly unites the traditions of the fantasy world with modern life and all its technologies. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

The alternate history subgenre has a lot of fluff to it, and frankly, I find most of it pretty dull, especially when it’s in the frame of “What if Gen. So-and-So turned left at Gettysburg and ended up at Second Manassas?”

BITTER SEEDS is indeed an alternate history, and it’s set amid World War II, but like how Kim Newman’s THE BLOODY RED BARON made World War I exciting by putting vampires into the mix, Ian Tregillis mashes up the bloody English magic of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL with Nazi X-Men to assemble a seriously fantastic “what if.”

So the WWII of BITTER SEEDS is going rather badly for the Brits. Everything that can go wrong seems to go exactly that way, and they’ve got no idea that a big reason for this is a team of super-soldiers that a crazed Nazi scientist has assembled from various children he’s experimented on — one is a pyrokinetic, one can turn intangible, one can turn invisible, one can see the future.

They’ve got the whole set of cool powers activated by battery-powered electronics that have been surgically implanted into their heads. Once the Brits get an idea of what they’re facing, especially after these mutant solders flatten forests of the Ardennes, the Limeys turn to something that the hardy British Empire has always had in spades (other than unfortunate food): dark, black magic.

Young British intelligence agent Reybould Marsh brings in an old friend who happens to be reluctantly acquainted with the dark arts, and he assembles a team of spooky English sorcerers that is able to bargain with supernatural beings willing to assist the British against the Blitz … but every negotiation requires a price.

As the magic users delve into things they have no hope of controlling, Marsh’s continued contact with one of the Nazi super soldiers — a woman named Gretl who seems to know exactly how the future will play out — gets him believing that he and everyone else in the world are being played for a fool by this girl with wires sticking out of her head. As magic corrupts the British side and the uncontrollable supermen veer away from their handlers, the war rages on, with devastating consequences.

Destiny and self-determination are also recurring themes — the young magician who gets the ball rolling on the British side knows the corrupting influence that black magic has, but as its hold on him grows, he’s drawn deeper and deeper into the darkness, while the Nazi übermensch know that they’re just tools for a war effort that despises them as much as it pretends to admire them, but their vast personality differences put them on opposing paths.

Fantastic, both in theme and execution. BITTER SEEDS explores not only the personalities and historical differences brought on by supernatural and mad-scientific tinkering with the course of human history, but also the genie effect: You might get three wishes, but sometimes wishes have a way of backfiring in the most unpredictable ways. —Ryun Patterson

Buy it at Amazon.

SAPPHIQUE is Catherine Fisher’s follow-up to her innovative and sinister fantasy INCARCERON. That title refers to a magical prison housing hundreds of thousands of the worst sorts of persons — criminals yes, but also the children of criminals who have been born into the prison and know no other life. The prison itself seems alive, happy to torment its inmates by shutting down life support systems or closing off entire wings without notice. Escape is impossible. But it is rumored that one Sapphique managed to find a way.

In that first book, a young and confused man named Finn who is inside Incarceron managed to find a way to communicate to the outside world, which is of an equally confused nature. In it, technology is used to pretend that time has stopped, that humanity is forever trapped into a medieval time of Era.

While elites occasionally use technology to their advantage, to admit to do so is to break Protocol, and invite trouble. In this world of Protocol, young Claudia is to ascend to the office of queen, but she must marry first. Her first choice, Giles, died in a hunting accident and so she is doomed to marry the brother Caspar.

But when Claudia, through the machinations of her technologically inclined mentor, Jared, discovers the imprisoned Finn, she believes that in reality, he is the long-lost Giles. And when Finn/Giles escapes, there is new hope for all in both the worlds of Protocol and the friends he has left behind in Incarceron.

Whew, okay, that’s the first novel.

SAPPHIQUE details what happens to Finn/Giles after he has left the prison, and entered a world with which he is completely unfamiliar, with the restrictions of Protocol. Of course, it is as much a prison as the hated place he left. But Claudia has come to expect him to be the king, even while he laments the friends he has left trapped behind. While Jared works at repairing the link between Protocol and Incarceron, Finn/Giles and Claudia are left to face an even more insidious threat to their existence, the presence of a pretender to the throne.

While this recap promises more of a young romance style of fantasy with a troubled princess and a handsome man who can save her, Fisher is much more talented than that. She is a dab hand at description, always knowing when to edit, and smooth with dialogue. The parallels of Incarceron and Protocol are perhaps a bit too heavily drawn, and the dreamlike implausibilities of the inhabitants of the prison a touch too bizarre, but the thrust and parry of the action — of schemes laid out, and then thwarted — carry the reader swiftly to the end.

This is an inventive fantasy series, charming, occasionally frustrating, but quite worthwhile, and seemingly nicely wrapped up in a duology. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

One of the things that makes Charles de Lint different from other fantasy writers is exemplified by his own introduction to the new collection of stories, THE VERY BEST OF CHARLES DE LINT. In it, he explains how impossible it would be for him to choose from among the hundreds of stories he has written to be placed in such an imposingly-titled book, and so he decided to respect and trust his readers to choose the stories for him. Through Facebook and Twitter, they complied and chose 29.

He was wise to respect and trust those readers, for they have put together a remarkable collection that showcases de Lint’s truly awesome talent. He is a master storyteller, with differing styles, approaches and voices that he uses in a number of his different fantasy worlds.

While he is best known for his characters that inhabit the world of Newford (featured in a previous short story collection, MUSE AND REVERIE) he can also whip out Native American myth (MEDICINE ROAD) or one-off tales of purgatorial afterlife (THE MYSTERY OF GRACE). But in every story — and I do mean every — he manages to pack an emotional wallop, and a sense that the fantastical could be very, very possible if only we choose to believe it so.

His approach and belief in stories can be summed up in two separate quotes from the same short story, “The Conjure Man”:
• “There’s stories and then there’s stories … The ones with any worth change your life forever, perhaps only in a small way, but once you’ve heard them, they are forever a part of you. You nurture them and pass them on and the giving only makes you feel better.”
• “The stories are just stories — they entertain, they make one laugh or cry — but if they have any worth, they carry within them a deeper resonance that remains long after the final page is turned, or the storyteller has come to the end of her tale. Both aspects of the story are necessary for it to have any worth.”

These are fine sentiments indeed, and it is to de Lint’s credit that he generally pulls off that worth, in gut-punch stories like “In the House of My Enemy” or “Sisters,” or in amusing and delightful pieces such as “The Badger in the Bag” and “Pixel Pixies.” This is a rich and full collection, bringing together many of the stories the author writes and publishes as personal chapbooks, which he then distributes to readers on his Christmas card list (lucky them).

De Lint is prolific, and if you’ve resisted picking him up because you’re not sure where to start, this is an excellent way to get a feel for his polished prose, his deep empathy for his own characters, and a wondrous world that may be filled with danger but is no less beautiful because of that. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Years ago, when I was a serious comic book collector instead of the occasional comic book reader that I am today, my nephew used to read much of what I bought each week: SANDMAN, GRIMJACK, the BATMAN titles, anything by Grant Morrison or Alan Moore.

My young niece was interested in reading comic books, too, but there was a lack of appropriate titles for her. Sure, she enjoyed Batman because, well, Batman is cool. But a title starring a female character was in short supply. There was WONDER WOMAN. There was … actually, that was it. Just Wonder Woman.

Not that a young girl can’t read and enjoy a comic book series starring a male superhero, but wouldn’t it have been nice if there had been a large selection of titles featuring female lead characters? Well, it’s still a male-dominated field, but there are more comics featuring female leads these days, one of which is called GIRL GENIUS by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Girl Genius started off as a print comic book series and developed into a webcomic. Now, it’s making the transition into prose novels with AGATHA H. AND THE AIRSHIP CITY.

Set in a steampunk — or “gaslamp fantasy,” as co-creator Kaja Foglio calls it — universe of Victorian times mixed with super-science technology, Agatha Clay is a cute, but bumbling student at the Transylvania Polygnostic University who toils as a lowly lab assistant. If she isn’t being ignored because of her age and gender, she’s being ridiculed because of her inventions that have a tendency to explode. Poor Agatha can’t build anything right, and whenever she has the inkling of an insight into a super-scientific contraption, she’s struck down by a blinding migraine.

What Agatha doesn’t know, and the reader quickly deduces, is that she is a “Spark.” Sparks are the mad scientists who build contraptions like Death Rays, Disintegration Beams and Slaver Wasps — parasitic organisms that burrow into your flesh and turn you into a mindless fighter for the enemy. Some Sparks are content to build contraptions and toil away in their labs, but some become tyrants and use their mad-scientist skills to keep the populace in line.

One such tyrant is Baron Klaus Wulfenbach. Through a series of misunderstandings and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Baron Wulfenbach takes Agatha as a prisoner aboard his Airship City (hence the title). There, our harried heroine begins a flirtation with the Baron’s son, makes friends with a talking cat, and learns that although she’s unable to construct an invention during her waking hours, she builds “clanks” (robots) in her sleep.

This world is filled with many oddities, like giant robots, sentient buildings and mutated humans called Jägermonsters, who look like monsters in military uniform, but talk with bad German accents like Inspector Kemp in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. There’s a rich history here, and a backstory that is hinted at from time to time, but the book suffers from throwing too much at the reader and not stopping long enough to give details. Once I finished reading, I checked out the webcomic and found that most of the mental images I took from the book did not match their illustrations. I don’t believe I’m lacking in the imagination department; I think the authors’ strength lie in comic books rather than novels.

Therein lies the problem: If you’re a fan of the comics, you’ve probably read the early issues from which this novel’s story is taken. If you’re not a fan of the comics, I’m not sure this book would convert you. Although I’ve never read a HARRY POTTER novel (nor do I intend to, unless held at gunpoint by a raving J.K. Rowling fan or Rowling herself), I’ve been told that they appeal to kids and adults, much as the TWILIGHT series appeals to tweens and middle-aged housewives. AGATHA H. has interesting concepts and a richly layered plot, but the writing is too basic for an adult fan of the fantasy genre.

If this kind of thing interests you, I recommend you check out the comic and give the book a pass. —Slade Grayson

Buy it at Amazon.

WINGS OF FIRE is a gigantic anthology of short fiction (and one poem) from well-known fantasy writers all relating to the world of dragons. You have every kind of dragon here, from the majestic and haughty war beasts of Naomi Novik to the tiny scared sewer monster of Holly Black, to dragons both metaphorical and dangerously real.

Editors Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon have pulled out all the stops with 26 pieces (not 27, as mentioned in the intro) from some of the absolute best working in fantasy, both in years past and today. There are two pieces, short stories from Black and Margo Lanagan, which have been specially commissioned for this volume and have not appeared elsewhere.

But even though you may have seen most of these stories before (in fact, we reviewed George R.R. Martin’s THE ICE DRAGON as a standalone book way back in 2006), it’s still a powerful collection of top-notch tales from writers including Ursula K. LeGuin, Orson Scott Card, Elizabeth Bear, Anne McCaffrey, Gordon R. Dickson, Charles de Lint, Tanith Lee, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, C.J. Cherryh, Roger Zelazny and more. That’s quite a lineup.

And some of the best stories come from outside that pantheon with stellar efforts from Michael Swanwick, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Pat Murphy and Robert Reed. Even the stories that are subpar, or only get a “meh” from me — including Peter S. Beagle’s poem, and slight pieces from Barry N. Malzberg and Jane Yolen — aren’t enough to downgrade the whole book.

The anthology includes potted bios of each writer, and very rudimentary bibliographical information about when and where the story first appeared, which is always disappointing to me. It would be good to get anthologists to provide full publication information, including at least a hint of reception study, for every piece they anthologize. If you can’t tell us why the literary world thinks this piece is important, at least tell us why you think so. But that’s not done here.

Still, that’s unnecessary whining. The overall quality of the collection is much better than one usually has reason to expect. If you like dragons but haven’t been exposed to the vastness of their mythology, or to the effect these creatures have had on some of our country’s best writers, then you may want to pick up WINGS OF FIRE. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

S.G. Browne’s debut novel, BREATHERS, was a welcome send-up of zombie stories — a subgenre taking itself way too seriously these days — and introduced the author as a potential top-drawer satirist. Now, FATED is equally clever for the most part, but seriously hampered by an overworked premise and plot conflict.

Fabio has been at his job for a long time — a few thousand years, in fact. He is Fate, and thus in charge of assigning the various fortunes and misfortunes of most of the human race. After all this time, the gig is getting boring and altogether frustrating. Still, with the population continuing to grow, there is little chance of a vacation and even less a likelihood of being reassigned.

So Fabio drifts through his days, occasionally hanging out in his flesh suit among the mortals with his friends, Sloth and Gluttony. Then he notices Sara Griffen. He’s not alone — everyone seems to notice her. Not only is she attractive, but her presence, even for a few seconds, never fails to brighten up everyone’s day. Fabio keeps bumping into Sarah — accidentally at first, but then by his own actions. And before long, he discovers that he’s falling in love.
 
This opens a whole mess of problems. For one thing, Sara is on Destiny’s path. While Fabio and Destiny often follow similar directions — and sometimes engage in noncontact sex — their goals are ultimately different. More importantly, Fabio’s feelings for Sara break Rule #1: Don’t get Involved. Before long, he finds his job and even his immortality in serious trouble.

Bottom line: it’s yet another story of unearthly deities and entities who govern the lives of us lowly humans, while acting all-too-human themselves. Be they angels, Greek gods or any of the various minions of Satan, the situation is pretty much the same: They get bored with their routine, start mingling with the clients (aka humans) and end up in trouble.

A pity, because when Browne flexes his satiric muscles, the prose is often hilarious. Take, for example, Fabio’s early meeting with his boss, God: He’s known as Jehovah (among other names), but Fabio and the other immortals call him Jerry. His office is made entirely of glass, affording him a constant, panoramic view of the world below and the universe beyond, even though it also requires all visitors to remove their shoes before entering. Then there are the numerous and various observations and reflections Fabio presents on humanity, which cover everything from the major wars to the futility of THE MATRIX sequels.
 
For well over the first 50 pages of the novel, that seems to be all there is: a series of funny, insightful but near-redundant quips about mortals, their weaknesses and their history. It isn’t until chapter 10 that the story of Sara kicks in. By that time, however, FATED becomes the last thing any satiric novel should be: predictable.
 
We really don’t need another story — regardless of cleverness — about how fallible the objects of our faith are, so let’s hope Browne has extinguished the desire to take on The Big Story and rediscovers the value of shining his satiric lights on smaller, but inarguably more universal topics. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

When Richard Kadrey introduced the title character in last year’s SANDMAN SLIM, he wanted to create a harder-than-hard-boiled, darker-than-dark work of urban fantasy, and succeeded on pretty much all accounts. KILL THE DEAD continues the saga of James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, but here Kadrey demonstrates his undeniable — dare we say it? — maturity as a novelist as he presses his foot ever so gently on the brake pedal. Not to worry. It’s still strong stuff.

Stark — who previously managed to return from Hell to avenge the death of his girlfriend, send the evil conjurer responsible Downtown (that is, to Hell), and save all of Los Angeles from apocalyptic doom in the process — ekes out a living these days chasing down vampires and other wayward demons for the Golden Vigil, a sort of Heavenly Homeland Security Force working to maintain equilibrium on Earth.

As an independent contractor, he’s more than willing to take on outside work. Such an offer comes his way by none other than Lucifer himself. The Big Guy is in El Lay, working as a consultant for a movie biography of his life (wouldn’t you know it), and wants to hire Stark as his personal bodyguard whenever he has to leave his very exclusive suite at the Chateau Marmont. Stark needs the extra cash and takes the gig, but not for nothing, wonders why someone as powerful and influential as Lucifer needs protection.

He soon finds out. A party held by the producer of the movie is attacked, and Stark rushes Lucifer to safety. As he investigates who is responsible for the hit, he uncovers another threat lurking (literally) in the shadows. A couple of High Plains Drifters (Stark-speak for zombies) are discovered hanging out at his favorite bar. He disposes of them, with the help of the porn-star female lead in the Lucifer biopic. But before long, Stark discovers that a whole horde of Drifters has been set loose on the city. There are numerous suspects, including Lucifer and the conjurer Stark sent to Hell, who might be responsible for this deadly plague.
 
The debut novel almost lost itself in the mile-a-minute myriad of concepts and contraptions Kadrey introduced to acquaint readers with Stark and his world of dark magic. In this follow-up, the author seems less intent on including everything but the Hell’s Kitchen sink and actually allows Stark to be more reflective and introspective. It’s a welcome relief and inevitably results in us knowing much more about Stark and the personal conflicts that haunt his eerie existence.

There’s also more of the black humor that occasionally lightened up the first book. It’s supplied not only through Stark’s sarcastic first-person narration, but via the exchanges between our hero and his roommate: a decapitated head with a fondness for beer, horror movies starring the devil, and bootleg porn.
 
Yet, as KILL THE DEAD approaches its climax, Kadrey begins again to pile on the various back-legends and exposition. By comparison, though, they are kept in check. Additionally, they not only enhance the narrative, but ironically become the very elements that prevent the book from becoming Just Another Zombie Novel.

It must be noted, however, that as a sequel, KILL THE DEAD is dependent on its predecessor, so anyone interested in knowing about the life, death and times of Sandman Slim must first read the debut in order to fully understand and appreciate this adventure.
 
As obligations go, that’s not at all bad — Heaven knows. (Or Hell knows, more appropriately.) —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Fantasy and sci-fi connoisseurs know Jeff VanderMeer either from his novels and stories about the fungi-laden city of Ambergris (the setting of his genre mash-up novel, FINCH), or from the many anthologies he has edited. But as THE THIRD BEAR, his latest collection of short fiction, aptly proves, there is a whole lot more to this extraordinary author.

It’s tempting to call these stories “surreal” or “bizarre,” yet such terms are misleading and a bit too harsh. Certainly images like the office of a company that produces beetles (“The Situation”), or an editor/author banished in Siberia with a vodka-swilling penguin as his sole companion (“Errata”) are far removed from ordinary. But there is a subtle, almost seductive quality to all of VanderMeer’s tales that invites us into the settings and situations. Not long afterward, we find ourselves willingly believing everything going on, as though we had experienced it ourselves.

Such is the case in “The Quickening,” where the narrator recalls her pet rabbit, Sensio. When she and her Aunt Etta discover that Sensio can talk, Etta immediately tries to make money off of the novelty. But her schemes are frustrated because Sensio doesn’t have a lot to say. (When he does talk, he’s a bit curt and confusing.)
 
Then there’s “Finding Sonoria,” in which a private investigator is hired to find a country, based on a mysterious stamp discovered by the client. The P.I. goes through the obligatory motions to quickly collect his money and dismiss the case. Before long, however, the elusive country of Sonoria becomes an obsession that almost dominates his life.
 
A few piece have an almost folklore or mythic quality to their telling. Like the title tale, where villagers hunt a monstrous bear that uses the bodies of its victims to build a strange work of art in its cave. Or the fittingly titled “Shark God Versus Octopus God,” which presents the brief history of each of the two ocean dieties and their battle to rule the island of Kadavu.
 
VanderMeer is known to many readers through his defining anthology of those wonderfully odd and archaic stories known as “steampunk.” His own skill at this subgenre is found in “Fixing Hanover,” where a salvager in some far-off country pulls an oblong box from the sea and sets out to repair whatever it might be. Turns out the box is part of a mechanical man who warns the citizens of their impending doom.
 
In his afterword, the author recalls that a previous collection of his stories contained extensive story notes. He decided not to include such insights here because, as he says, “the stories in THE THIRD BEAR are so often about the search for, or encounter with, the inexplicable.”
 
Not surprisingly, that is the best description of what to expect in this unique collection. If you have yet to discover the creatively off-kilter world of VanderMeer, this is also a perfect place to begin. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

THE FOLDING KNIFE by K.J. Parker is, if anything, a political fantasy with an economic sub-theme, a well-written piece of a-historical fiction that features no magic nor monsters, but ruthless government machinations and an emotional level of love, betrayal and hatred. This is the life tale of Bassianus Severus (while the names and some settings parallel the Classical world, the book is really of its own time and place), a consummate and ambitious businessman who claws his way to the top of society by becoming its leader, the First Citizen.

Severus is haunted by his own demons. He killed both his wife and her secret lover when he caught them in flagrante delicto. His sister was married to the man who seduced Severus’ wife and now the sister cannot forgive the brother. She forbids him from seeing his much-loved nephew, Bassano, but soon Bassano and Severus become almost like son and father, and the sister plots her revenge. Meanwhile, Severus is busy creating an empire.

The plots and tangles the author weaves serve as the great interest of the novel. It’s hard to believe that the policies of currency debasement can be interesting, but Parker makes it so. We read of great siege tricks, commodity manipulation in order to start and prevent wars, and big-picture money moves that would have made J. Pierpont Morgan proud. But where Parker’s genius truly lies is in how the book’s concerns are tied to our own present-day political issues.

There is the difficulty of an overcommitted and underfunded war dominated by insurgents (Afghanistan and Iraq), the possibility of granting citizenship to a huge minority in order to guarantee electoral votes (amnesty for illegal aliens), and much more along those lines. Parker is careful not to make the comparisons too overt, but one is struck by the arguments, both pro and con, made in the book and how we’ve read the same in the political press.

If you’re a political wonk, you’ll love this book. If you like a good piece of thrilling biography, even though it’s fiction, you’ll find it hard not to be intrigued by the ruthless Bassianus Severus. Parker aficionados should note that this book is not a part of her “Fencer,” “Scavenger” or “Engineer” trilogies. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Let’s get this straight: In Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s THE ANGEL’S GAME, we find young writer David Martín — who works his way up from a runner at a newspaper to a successful pulp novelist — has a ghostly sexual encounter in a bordello that he later finds to have been burned and destroyed for almost 15 years; finds the love of his life who does not reciprocate; ghostwrites a book for a gentleman who does not even realize that his novel is being ghostwritten, and which goes on to become a literary success; writes his own novel, which the critics universally pan because he is not of the elite class; and discovers the cavernous and legendary Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

That’s all in just a little more than 120 pages in a 500-plus-page bookchunk set in minuscule type. Whew!

From here, it gets strange. This mystical fantasy elaborately explores the madness (?) of Martín as he enters into a consumptive contract with one Andreas Corelli, who asks the writer to create a religious text that can be used to ensnare the masses. But it seems to be Martín who is ensnared as he moves into a seemingly cursed home, tries to discover what happened to the previous owner, and falls into a complicated whirlwind of multiple deaths and a police investigation that threatens to place the blame on Martín.

And just who is this Corelli? Is he even human, or real?

Zafón doesn’t really answer these questions, leaving the interpretation up to the reader. It’s a thick and chewy novel, but is also unfortunately bloated, being at least 100 pages too long, and doesn’t really delve any deeper into the mysteries that confront Martín, so we, too, are left a little confused and frustrated at just what has occurred.

This confusion is certainly deliberate, but not necessarily successful, as there just isn’t enough serious exploration of the questions that are suggested about Martín’s sanity, Corelli’s existence or the supernatural episodes. It’s almost too much invention and not enough thought behind the words. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

The press materials for Sarah Jane Stratford’s THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN peg the debut novel as a mix between TRUE BLOOD and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Who am I to argue with that? After all, this history-rewriter plops vampires smack in the middle of Hitler’s Germany, and if there’s one thing der Fuehrer wants to rid Europe more than Jews and homosexuals, it’s those who feast on blood.

So, yes, this is another novel in which the vamps are the good guys — up against Hitler, who isn’t? The protagonists are two fanged lovers: the young (for a vampire) and beautiful Brigit and her bald, musically inclined beau, Eamon. A de facto family is formed when she sneaks two Jewish kids out of the country for the safety of England.

Although I love a lot of genres — and even mash-ups of genres — I often find myself overwhelmed by historicals and bored by paranormal romance. GUARDIAN contains elements of both, but luckily keeps them in check so that its fantasy/thriller core remains upfront.

Stratford mines the richness in her writing to give the proceedings a coat of class. While I think the end hits just the right note — and before the story wears out its welcome — the book is threatened to be the first of a series … of course. Ah, well. Now in paperback, THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN may not be a must-read effort of vampire fiction, but it’s arguably the most notable since Elizabeth Kostova’s THE HISTORIAN. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.