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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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