Urban Fantasy - Cat Adams - Blood Song (2010)

The short version of this review is that I really didn't like this.

You're staying for the long version? That's a lot of mettle.

Let us begin with the author. There is no person named Cat Adams that wrote this book. The name is an amalgamation of the two authors' names, C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. Now, I understand collaborations. I understand using pen names. I understand simplifying it to one name. What I don't understand is why you would have a pen name when you just use your real names and your separate identities in your acknowledgements and author's note? I'm not talking about the copyright page. That's fine. But making it extremely clear that two of you wrote it without putting it on the cover of your book? Go to jail.

Next up, let's discuss the main character. Her name is Celia Graves. Graves. As in, where your coffin goes. And this is an urban fantasy involving a person being turned into a half-vampire abomination (that's even the technical term they use). Also, and I've only ever seen Charles de Lint avoid this trap, why are all urban fantasy heroines gun-toting, sarcastic, and slutty? It's like if the girl isn't feisty and has an arsenal under her coat, she's not interesting. In this case, the main character is a bodyguard against paranormal beings like vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and demons. Big fucking surprise. And she's haunted, a fact she doesn't mention until between a third and a half way in. I'll get back to this bitch.

The reason I didn't like it had nothing to do with vampires, okay? It's no secret that I loathe Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series. But that doesn't mean that all vampires suck (see what I did there?). Fat White Vampire Blues was great. But far too often does it fall into this trap of vampires are evil, vampires are sexy, vampires are awesome. And this book is no exception.

My main problem with the book is that it felt like it was written by two people, and that new ideas were added in haphazardly without a thought to changing the prior writing. This process is otherwise known as rewriting. The whole thing read like a first draft. Every time a new character or setting was introduced, the story would come to a full stop so that the main character could describe it in excruciating detail. I don't have a problem with description. This was badly handled. Intersperse your details in the action, and broad brush your initial description sections. Don't say a character has blue eyes. Say that they narrowed their blue eyes.

During the first half of the book, Celia is supposed to be chasing down her vampire "sire", and destroy him before he comes back to finish the job with her. At halfway through, the problem just goes away deus ex machina style, when a background character produces the guy's head in a bag. Then, it became this thing with another vampire completely, and it's still not mentioned why anyone should care.

After the climax of the book, Celia's grandmother pulls her aside and tell her that she is one-fourth siren, a creature that, up until now, we had no idea existed in this world. During the resolution, they are having a funeral for Celia's best friend. Some bitch comes in during eulogies and interrupts the whole thing by singing. When Celia calls her on it, she proclaims that she's some kind of siren princess, and that Celia was the one being rude.

So much effort is put into making Celia some kind of victim too. Sure, she's a bodyguard and all, but her sister is dead! She was kidnapped when she was little! She was half-turned into a vampire! She can't eat solid food! She upset some supernatural royalty and now has to have a fight to the death with her! It sounds more like these two authors were trying to shoehorn every idea they ever had into one book, and it just looks schizophrenic.

This would have all been solved if they had just done a little world-building. Holy symbols, water, and ground are harmful to most of these predatory creatures, but somehow not a lot of people go to church? Why not? And if the existence of these creatures is well known, why aren't more precautions beyond "hire a guy" taken?

All in all, it was terrible. Would not suggest you buy it, let alone read it.

2.0/10

Franchise Fiction - James Wyatt - Dragon Forge (2009)

I did say that I had started reading the next book in this series already. I finished it yesterday, but since I've recently posted here about the book before this one, there isn't too much to be said. Much of what I said before is still true.

That being said, there was a few more parts I didn't like and a few more parts that I did. For one thing, it turns out that the changeling is a member of the Royal Eyes. That makes him a lot less interesting now, because the Royal Eyes commonly use changelings as spies. But the fact that he didn't spend as much time doing spy work made up for it. Instead, he befriended a bunch of misfit warriors and traveled into the Demon Wastes, which I though was cool. The Labyrinth stuff was awesome, and Vor was the greatest character they had in the stable. An orc paladin that used to guard the Wastes and who let a pregnant human go because she was carrying his child? More of that, please! And of course he had to kill him off. Because nobody can really be interesting.

Something I didn't like was the whole marital issues between Gaven and Rienne. I am not reading your parts about going to Argonnessen because I want to hear about how Rienne thinks Gaven is self-absorbed. I don't give two fucks. Get to the being slaughtered by dragons, please. And this book in particular tries to hard to make Gaven special. Sure, he's the Storm Dragon, but I don't see what that had to do with their abomination machine.

Though, to be fair, I didn't understand how their abomination machine was supposed to work. In attempts to keep the whole thing cloaked in mysticism, Wyatt leaves the reader in the dark about the thing the damn book was named after. I still couldn't tell you what it was supposed to do.

I do appreciate, for reals though, the budding romance between Cart and Ashara. A warforged and a member of the house that built the warforged? That's the kind of shit that I crave. But watch, the next book will start with Ashara contracting a fast-acting disease called spear-to-the-face, just like everyone else with any interesting qualities.

Finally, these people don't know what dragonborn and eladrin are? What? Have they never been to Q'barra? What about hearing about the feyspires? These are kind of a big deal. If you know what a tiefling is, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't recognize a dragonborn or eladrin when you see them, you guys. I thought you were all well-traveled and shit. :P

4.5/10

Franchise Fiction - James Wyatt - Storm Dragon (2007)

I mentioned in the last post that I was ass-deep in D&D stuff. While I did not purchase this book then, I did start reading it in that time period. We've just started playing last night, and I actually finished reading this a couple days ago. I started it a while ago. I wasn't keeping super on top of anything, let alone my reading regimen, so again, I apologize.

I honestly don't read a lot of franchise fiction. We do have a few though; that teen novel from the last post, the City of Heroes novels, and the first two books of this series. I don't usually read franchise fiction because I don't believe that a story should depend on an existing IP to sell. I bought this and the second book because of that little word in the top right corner of the cover: Eberron.

When I bought this book, I was still working on my first adventure and devouring lore for Eberron, our campaign setting of choice. I liked that it wasn't high fantasy, good-versus-evil gameplay, so I wanted to dig in. In particular, I wanted to figure out the feel of the world beyond steampunk, technology-runs-on-magic fantasy. And in the end, I'm still more inclined to point my own campaign towards my preconceptions than that of the story provided.

If it was standing alone as a story, I probably would be giving it a lower score than I am. The story itself is fairly basic: there is a prophecy detailing the events leading to the rise of the Storm Dragon, and there are a group of fugitives orchestrating these events. The main character is a member of the dragonmarked House of Storm, and knows all of the prophecy regarding the Storm Dragon. Is it any surprise, then, when (Spoiler!) he becomes the Storm Dragon in question?

The story itself is rather high fantasy. However, the only thing I can compare it to is the story of Final Fantasy 12. They go and collect people and artifacts to make certain things happen, even if the characters themselves are at odds with each other. In this book, those items are information and artifacts from various places in the world, and collecting them all to one spot to force an event to take place, one that was supposed to send one of the more unsavory characters to godhood.

Again, as a story, it was subpar. The main character quickly and easily forgives and changes his mind about people and events. He feels little to no remorse, taking an "ends justify the means" attitude. And since he does end up being the legendary Storm Dragon, he becoming even more of an unbelievable character. If he was too naive or kind to appreciate the destructive power he has been gifted with, or even if he descended even more into the delicious madness the beginning of the book hinted at, then I would have been enthralled. Instead, he just comes off as a douchebag.

The fact that his biggest conflict is that he wants to choose his own destiny also just makes me want to gag.

However, the fact of the matter is, for all of this book's flaws, it actually gave me ideas and techniques to use in my future adventures. I know now how I'm going to end the campaign. I know how to work with some of the more contradictory dragonmarked houses now. And I know how to use the Draconic Prophecy in my campaign, which was the primary reason I wanted to read these books in the first place. It had been so confusing to me before. Now I get it, and I may even employ some of it.

The best thing I got out of it though is the use of changelings. One of the side characters that grows into a main character is a changeling. At first I just though it was cool that Wyatt was including that side of Eberron in his story. But the use of the changeling was so polished. That character felt like a real guy with a stable of faces and personalities in his head. And the way he molded himself based on personality and name was just awesome. If I got nothing else out of this, I got that, and that was good enough for me to start reading the second book already.

4.0/10

Franchise Fiction - Laura O'Neill - No More "Little Miss Perfect" (1992)

I'm sorry I haven't posted much. I also haven't been reading much, so there you go. Honestly, I was really getting deeply into D&D stuff: I wrote my adventure, I recruited players, I helped them make characters, I was researching tips and tricks and lore... I was really into D&D for like, a month.

I even read this book the same day the last post was new, and didn't have the desire to write a post for it until I was able to surface from the D&D water I was submerged in. In other words, today. So I apologize again, this time for the fact that this may not be the most comprehensive review ever. I mean, I did read it a month ago.

An aside: I never watched this show. Ever. I barely remember it being on. But it ran from 1991 to 1993, according to Wikipedia. I was five to seven then. Why should I care about a teen drama, even if it was on the channel I watched the most? So I don't know anything about the characters and their relations to each other. I don't even really know what they look like.

The premise of this book is that Courtney has a diary that she hides in her school locker to keep it safe. What an idiot. And then, a bitch named Brooke finds it and discovers all these parts about Courtney's best friend Ashley being too nice and too studious. She then shows these parts to Ashley, who gets mad at Courtney, doesn't tell her why, and briefly becomes a biker chick.

Why should I care? I don't see the draw.

The whole thing reads like it should just be an episode of a teen drama, which may have been the goal, but it left zero room for any human reactions. Why didn't Ashley say something to Courtney about what she wrote, or about Brooke violating her privacy? The whole thing is just one misunderstanding after another, and then at the end, everything is status quo. Yuck.

2.0/10

Mystery - Hakan Nesser - Mind's Eye (1993)

Ah, Sweden. So many great things come out of you. Minecraft, Swedish Chef, Stieg Larsson (full disclosure: I've never read one of his books, but I hear they're popular?), Pirate Bay... uh, Minecraft... Listen, there's a lot about Sweden I don't know. But does that mean I can't read a mystery translated from Swedish?

Apparently.

Don't get me wrong. I get that this is supposed to be really good. But because my formative reading years were spent steeped in the lore of R.L. Stine, I can't help but prefer mysteries that I can try to figure out on my own, not waiting for the author to reveal it all with some information he withheld.

And listen, I know that maybe they do mysteries differently abroad. But for about seven-eighths of the book, I had no goddamn idea who the bad guy was supposed to be, and the last eighth was spent explaining how this guy was the bad guy.

Let me paint the picture for you: A guy wakes up super hungover and having blacked out a lot of what happened the night before. He discovers his wife dead in the bathtub. The trial follows and he is convicted of having killed her, primarily because it doesn't seem like anyone else could have. Then he winds up dead in his room at the mental institution, where he had been sent because he couldn't remember whether he had killed her or not.

There were a few things that could have made this better, and I'm taking it on faith that it wasn't just lost in translation. (For the record, this isn't the first translated novel I've ever read. That would be Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. So I do have an idea of what a good translation can do.)

The first thing that would have been nice is if the main character, Inspector Van Veeteren, had been sure all throughout the trial that Janek Mitter had killed his wife. Then, when he turns up dead later, we could have had some development in the form of questioning his resolution and being unsure of his ability to do his job. It would have been nice, at least.

The second thing? Some goddamn proper nouns. For fuck's sake. A lot of chapters, a lot of chapters, begin by talking about "he". Who the fuck is he? You have an almost exclusively male cast. Who the fuck is he?! I had to frequently skim ahead a couple paragraphs and even pages in order to get a single idea of who was being talked about here and there. If Nesser didn't specify in the original text, I would not have been grumpy if the translator had slipped a couple proper nouns at the beginning of those chapters so we as readers wouldn't be sitting there shouting "Huh?".

The third thing I mentioned already. I prefer mysteries that, if I really sat and thought about, I could maybe figure it out. And if I couldn't, it being clear enough that I can go "Ohhh" and complete understand where the author was going. In this case, the author divulges a bunch of unknown information at the end that made no sense in relation to the rest of the book. Incestual affairs? Since when? And it's some character we haven't even had mentioned yet in the story? Go to jail.

It's obviously not the worst book in the world, but I didn't find it super great. I was also irritated with how preoccupied with badminton Inspector Van Veeteren was while trying to do his job. Listen. I don't give a shit. Solve the mystery, dammit.

3.0/10

Fantasy - A. Lee Martinez - Divine Misfortune (2010)

I have a confession. You know that saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover"? I totally do. What do you expect from me? The cover is on the outside. Sure, I judge a book after it's in my hands on the synopsis on the back, or maybe even the first page, but it's the cover that gets it into my hand. I'm not proud of this. But it's worked well for me over the years. And with this one, a giant fist descending from heaven to crush a tiny man, I had to pick it up.

In case you can't tell from the title and cover, this book is not for the religious types. Not ones who can't laugh at the whole establishment, anyway. And certainly not ones who can't read science texts if they don't preach your church's version of the creation of everything, or consume any media if it doesn't reaffirm your particular sect of religion to be the right one.

However, this book is just right for me, an atheist. Hearts!

The premise of this tale is that society is driven by a partnership between humans and the immortal gods they worship. People pay tribute in various forms to their god: blood, sacrifice, money, services, lodgings, food; and then the gods work within their own realm to favor their follower. The main characters, Phil and Teri, are in the market for a god, so of course they turn to a god-follower matchmaking website on the internet. They sign up for the services of Luka, a raccoon luck god, who shows up on their doorstep with a suitcase. Hilarity ensues. Also, there is a primordial god of oblivion and chaos who hates him and a goddess of heartbreak torturing some hapless girl.

Did I mention that this book is fucking hilarious?

During the course of the book, there were several genuine LOL moments for me. In no particular order:

• Hades losing at a ninja video game to Phil
• Horrors of hell resigning themselves to watching a baseball game
• Chaos god referring to his followers as douchebags
• Zeus in a tracksuit

Did you catch that last one? Zeus. White flowing beard, big guy, lightning bolts, wearing a yellow tracksuit. Fucking awesome.

There were two books in particular that my mind kept calling back to: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. Good Omens was more set in modern times, like this book, so it matched up more for me. But it was Small Gods that gave me pause.

I've mentioned before the Black Jewels trilogy is my favorite series of books. What I didn't mention was that Small Gods, even being part of the Discworld series, is my favorite book. I won't get into it now, just in case there is a book drought for me and I have to go through and just reread the books I've already read, but it brought up questions of where the gods' powers come from, a question that is resolved in that book, and similarly answered in this book. It's a mechanic I love, and for that reason alone, you should get both of these books.

Divine Misfortune raises its own questions, which go mostly unsolved, but let for the reader to decide for themselves: in a world populated by humans and gods, who is responsible for what events? Oh man, it's just so delicious!

There is one, and exactly one, thing keeping this book from being a ten out of ten. The ending. Pfft. What utter bullshit. Have you ever heard the song by Lemon Demon, "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny"? Here's a link to a video if you need a reminder. The part right before Chuck Norris gets defeated by fucking everybody on the planet? That was essentially the ending. What a crap, cheap climax. It was shit.

Still, you should get it and read it. I mean, it's still getting a good score.

9.5/10

Fantasy - Gail Z. Martin - The Summoner (2007)

I got this book a while ago. I don't remember when. Within the past year, for certain. I know that I bought it primarily because my little brother Steve suggested I read it. That should have been my first hint as to how my experience with it would be. Guy loves high fantasy.

For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I occasionally stopped reading this book in order to play The Witcher. Not the new one, the old, buggy-as-fuck one. And this book inspired me to buy it. Why?

Because this book is a video game. Sure, it has pages and words and goes on a bookshelf with other books and was purchased from a bookstore, but it's a video game. A role-playing game, to be exact. There are monsters traveling the wilds, several groups of human baddies to justify being in the wilderness in the first place, and scenes of such high magic followed by a blackout that it may as well have been a cutscene.

"But Tabetha," I can hear you say, "a lot of high fantasy follows that formula. Isn't that why you don't like it?" That's true, faceless and nonexistent blog reader. I do tend to dislike high fantasy on the fact that it is formulaic. But the more I think about D&D and the campaign I'm building, the less I'm beginning to mind high fantasy. It has its place. Unfortunately, that place is more often in games. And this book doesn't even get to be a book. It's a game.

The gang's all here: the exiled prince-turned-mage, a roster of interchangeable fighters, a flamboyant bard, the grumpy female healer, the chosen-one princess-paladin, even a trickster thief in the form of Berry. And their travels and adventures are straight out of any game. If this had been written as a script instead, it would have been out on Steam for everyone's enjoyment with little changes.

But you people aren't here for video games. You're here for book reviews. And honestly, with that wall of text up there about how this book is high fantasy, you shouldn't be surprised when I say that I didn't really enjoy it. The cast was too big for this author, who often had characters fade into the background so much that, when three characters left the main cast to go do something else, I didn't even notice. I thought they were just being quiet.

Two couples are made in the course of the book, and they are so predictable I wanted to choke and die. Of course the two people who fight a lot will bone. Of course the female chosen-one and male chosen-one are going to do it. Also, how many Chosen Ones are you going to have in one book? It's ridiculous.

The thing I hated the most about this book is the fact that this lady doesn't seem to know how to end chapters properly. Surely you've read a book or two in your lifetime? You know that a chapter is a length of book to mark at least one change to the story, at whatever length the author wishes. You also know that they usually end on a cliffhanger, in attempts to tempt the reader into moving on to the next chapter without stopping. That is, of course, the gold standard for writers: a reader who would rather read the whole thing in one sitting then do something else.

This lady doesn't understand that.

Many of the chapters, especially the early ones, have the climax happen in the middle of the chapter, and the resolution finding its own conclusion before the end of the chapter. Then the chapters usually end when a person goes to sleep. As a result, the reader has no stake in what happens next. Nothing is driving them to the next page. That was another reason I kept putting this down. Because, why shouldn't I? Why should I care about these cardboard cutouts?

1.5/10