Tag Archives: Tia’s Reviews

Debut Review – The Manual of Detection

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The Manual of Detection
by Jedediah Berry (blog)
Penguin
Hardcover and Trade Paperback

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berrywill probably end up in my year end “Best Of” list. It was just about perfectly conceived, perfectly executed, perfectly written, and perfectly charming. I’m hard pressed to think of any critiques. It’s that good.

With that said, it’s not for everyone. This review copy originally went to Raven, who thought it was good but perhaps she wasn’t the right reviewer for it. So she sent it to me. And by sheer luck, I read it just shy of a month after the paperback release date.

The Manual of Detection is a very quirky, well-mannered steampunk fantasy mystery. It is somewhat literary, but never boring. It’s the story of Charles Unwin, clerk of a huge detective agency, who is unexpectedly promoted to Detective shortly after the disappearance of the most famous Agency detective, Travis Sivart.

Mr. Unwin is a man who knows his limitations. He knows that he has no business being a detective. After all, he wears a green trilby hat rather than a fedora, and his shoes always squeak. So his goal is to find Detective Sivart so he can get his old job back.

Permit me to rave about the presentation of the hardcover edition. It’s designed to look like a manual. It has a government-issue green cover, with black embellishments, within which alarm clocks, fingerprints, keys and footprints can be found. It also has a prominent eye. The eye is on the back as well, along with the motto, “Never Sleeping”. It’s a treat, mostly because everything on the cover becomes significant as the story unfolds.

The chapters are each accompanied by a quote from the fictional Manual of Detection. Each quote applies to something that’s going to happen in that chapter. One of these chapters becomes part of the story, and when I read that chapter number, I had to laugh out loud.

The Manual of Detection is a novel of typewriters, if immense filing cabinets, of umbrellas, of alarm clocks, of dumbwaiters, of bicycles, of telephones and of record players. It’s also a novel of steam trucks, of dream recording engines, of ever-winding watches, of traveling carnivals that travel no more, and of unofficial trips for unofficial reasons. No year is given, but I’d guess it takes place in the thirties or forties. There are telephones, electricity, radios, and cars, but no hint of anything like computers, which might have existed in a huge detective agency by the fifties.

Although the novel is told strictly from Charles Unwin’s point-of-view, you never know exactly what he is thinking until he speaks, or what he’s going to do until he’s already doing it. He’s both fussy and bold. When he sneaks into the archives, he gets caught, but then manages to get the archivists to trust him. All three of them. And he’s completely sincere when he is doing it–he takes advantage of no one. He’s an expert clerk, bicyclist, and umbrella wielder. And, he’s a meticulous dreamer.

The only thing I would have wished for was more of the detective agency in its “before” state. Because once it goes “after”, there’s no going back. However, I understand that to include any more might have bogged down the story.

If you read this novel, my advice is to pay attention. Try to read it over a short timespan and pay particular attention to characters who seem to talk about irrelevant things. All is relevant. This will be a wonderful book to reread.

Mr. Barry has achieved critical acclaim with The Manual of Detection, and it is well-deserved. I can’t wait to read his next book.

Review – Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep

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Spider’s Bite
by Jennifer Estep
Pocket Books – $7.99
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Jennifer Estep was one of the first authors I reviewed, and she has been a longterm reader of this blog ever since. This is quite flattering, but it makes me a less-than-partial reviewer. However, I do have my usual mix of things to say about Spider’s Bite.

Ms. Estep knows that I’m not a big fan of Urban Fantasy. She also knows — and has discussed on her blog often — that fans of her previous novels might not appreciate going from campy and silly to dark and gritty. I have mixed feelings about Spider’s Bite. It was certainly an easier read than many of the urban fantasies I’ve tried to read over the past year (a lot arrive in the mail), but I also probably gave it more of a chance than the authors I don’t know. And I think that’s not a bad thing. After all, I never read a cyberpunk novel before I read Otherland, and the only reason I picked it up was because the author was Tad Williams.

However, this novel is just about one of the darkest and grittiest that I ever managed to finish. The pages are laced with foul language (especially the f-bomb) and every battle is drenched in blood. Most of the villains are the worst kind of scum. Gin gets away with being the heroine of the novel only because she isn’t as bad as everyone else. She lost her family in a fire and survived on the streets by being tough until Fletcher, who would become her handler, took her in. Now she’s Ashland’s top assassin.

Ashland is a fictional southern metropolis in the Appalachian mountains. It makes Gotham City looks like a paradise. The cops are so corrupt that assassins like Gin have a thriving business taking care of some illegal justice. Gin is usually careful about the clients she takes on. She wants to be sure the would-be victim really deserves to die. However, she gets greedy and doesn’t check out this next (and highly profitable) job quite as thoroughly as she should have. As added incentive, if she takes this job, she can retire. When she’s double-crossed, she ends up leaving her victim alive and barely escaping from an honest cop named Donavan Caine. Who has good — and personal — reasons to want to put Gin in jail.

Some dings. I felt that Ms. Estep could have done a bit more research in several areas. Erasing files on a desktop computer is rarely good enough, especially a networked computer where files are backed up nightly. Also most charitable missions do not demand repentance in exchange for charity. They’re looking to touch hearts and minds, not to forcibly convert.  Other details were glossed over, such as tricky escapes. Some of this I expect — let’s not get bogged down in detail — but we also don’t want to make things too easy on the character.

For the most part, Gin’s foul-mouthed bark is worse than her bite. She talks tough about torturing those who cross her, but clever plotting spares the reader. Gin grows as a character, ending up with a softer heart than when she started. She allows Caine to believe terrible things about her because she doesn’t want to disillusion him. She is willing to throw herself into harm’s way to spare her friends.

The nonhuman races in Spider’s Bite includes vampires, but don’t expect your usual vampire mythologies. They don’t seem to be undead at all, and can go out day and night. They are no more difficult to kill than humans. They often seem rather weak. There are also giants, dwarves, and elementals, who can command the elements of earth, fire, air and ice. Ms. Estep once explained on her blog that she chose these because they are opposites — fire and ice, earth and air.

Like Ms. Estep’s previous comic-book novels, Spider’s Bite is meant to be pure entertainment. For me, it was more readable than Maria Lima’s Blood Lines, but not quite at the level of Kelly Gay’s The Better Part of Darkness. For it to achieve that level, I’d want to see more interpersonal relationships, which I understand are coming in future volumes. It also stayed away from my red flags. The plot devices she used in Bigtime are gone completely: no more will you be able to guess secret identities (yes, there are a few) the first time you hear a character’s name. Fans of Ms. Estep’s previous novels should know to expect something completely different by the cover alone. Fans of urban fantasy should enjoy the dark tone, the tough heroine and the inventive mythologies.

Mystery Review – An Incomplete Revenge

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An Incomplete Revenge
by Jacqueline Winspear
Picador – Trade Paperback – $14
Historical Mystery

An Incomplete Revenge is Ms. Winspear’s fifth installment in her excellent Maisie Dobbs series. I read this novel because the sixth novel, Among the Mad, came out in paperback in November, and I intended to review it during that timeframe. That plan went awry — I read it in plenty of time, but I’ve needed to write this review for a month now.

This is one of the more interesting installments. In it, Ms. Winspear resolves a long-term stymied love affair and takes the reader on a fascinating journey into Rom subculture.

I’m afraid I can’t write this review without referring to events in previous novels. So I have some mild spoilers, which I will confine to this paragraph. The long-stymied love affair is, of course, Simon. Ms. Winspear finally puts this storyline to an end, in a way that I really didn’t think was necessary, but turned out to be welcome. A tragic love-affair that can’t go anywhere can only be played out for so long. It was high time — in fact, it was beyond time — that the author moved on. The Ever Romance plot device that plagues the mystery genre is probably worth a post in itself, and Ms. Winspear is as guilty of this as any author I read. It works like this: two people are interested in each other, but certain things keep them eternally apart. Therefore, the romance progresses at an absolute crawl. In book one, they touch. In book two, they must enter each other’s social distance for some reason or another. In book six, they kiss, but both pretend it never happens. In this book, Maisie and Simon do everything but the Deed in book one (which is called Maisie Dobbs), but then, tragedy strikes. Maisie Dobbs (the novel) really is excellent and it rightfully won Ms. Winspear a laundry list of mystery awards. It was subsequent novels that occasionally got annoying.

I understand that it is hard to keep a romance interesting once they’ve had their happily ever after. But this is a mystery series, not a romance. The romance is like icing. Tasty, but not necessary. If you’re going to have one, resolve SOMETHING in every book, please.

Rant over.

This really was a very good book. I loved the glimpse into Rom life.  Maisie softens up a bit in this novel, even if she expects Billy to work through his vacation (don’t worry–he gets paid for it, and he still gets to go on vacation).  It had a very twisty plot. Maisie must investigate a land sale transaction, and she mainly needs to find out if there is anything undesirable about the property that her patron, James Compton, is to purchase.

What she finds is a long-unsolved mystery. During the Great War, a zepplin fired upon this sleepy England town and a family perished. Except things didn’t quite work out according to how they ended up in the history books.

One critique — Ms. Dobbs resolved a potentially troublesome plotline by having most of the people in the town do a sort of mass confession. It felt a trifle convenient to the plot. At the risk of another spoiler, the entire lot of them should have been hauled off to jail. With prejudice.

Overall, An Inconvenient Revenge comes close to the height that Ms. Winspear never quite achieved again after Maisie Dobbs. In my opinion, the other books have not been as good because they are more plot-oriented than character-oriented. And I do love character development novels. Maisie Dobbs was equal plot and character development. None of the other novels since has had this ratio, and although I enjoy them, I do end up wishing there had been more character development.

If you’re a historical mystery fan, then this is a series you ought to be reading. Back in November, in anticipation of writing this review, I wrote an overview of the Maisie Dobbs series that might help you decide if it’s your cup of tea.

Debut Review: Dreamdark: Blackbringer by Laini Taylor

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Dreamdark: Blackbringer
by Laini Taylor
Firebird Books
Paperback – 9.99
Genre: YA Fantasy

Blackbringer is a Young Adult fantasy that both takes place in our world . . . and in a hidden land within it. It is about a young fairy and a band of crows who fight devils. Cool, huh? It seems that the stupid humans keep coming across the devils in the bottle prisons, and they keep opening the bottles and setting them free. Kind of as if they were genies. The heroine, Magpie, has an idol who she is trying to live up to: the legendary Bellatrix, who vanished without dying thousands of years before.

It took me a while to get into the story, mostly because of the dialog. Ms. Taylor makes uses of idiosyncracies and invented slang that took me a while to get the rhythm of. Also, I had a hard time connecting to the crows. I kept wanting other fairies to come into the story, which took a while. Eventually I did grow to like the crows, but mostly they blended together.

But once Magpie decides to go to Dreamdark, the faerie forest, things really pick up. The plot absolutely had me guessing from one scene to the next. I never expected most of the events, which is a quality that I love in a book, especially when they all make sense in a sort of “aah!” moment.

Several other faeries become important to the story. Talon is a faerie with stunted wings. He’s also a prince of one of the only warrior-like clans in all of Dreamdark. His inability to fly makes him frustrated, especially when his clan’s territory turns out to be the center of the Blackbringer’s operations. This is definitely a handicap in a society that takes flying for granted. Talon kicks ass. The next book features him on the cover, which makes me think he will have a much larger role. He is a fierce warrior with an interesting talent for a male — knitting. Except, he doesn’t just knit any old sock.

Oh, I haven’t mentioned the Blackbringer. He was one of those pesky devils released by a witless human early in the story. Except he isn’t a devil. Most devils are only slightly more malevolent than a rat, and are called snags. The Blackbringer is a djinn who had a hand in all of creation. Which, of course, makes him able to uncreate as well.

Poppy is another important faery, and she has a unique power as well. She also has unusually wide and beautiful faery wings.

Poppy and Talon are both illustrated, as is Magpie and a few other characters. As with many young adult stories, correspondence is depicted in handwriting. Each chapter heading has a pen-and-ink design.

This was a fun and different read. Other than my difficulty adjusting to the pacing and the dialog in the beginning, I can’t think of any critiques! I definitely recommend it. In upcoming books, I would love to see more interaction between human and faery. I’d also like to see Magpie leave Dreamdark again, especially if she brings her faery friends along with her. The publisher sent along the second book in the series as well as the first, so I expect to be reading it soon. Both are now available.

Review: Year of the Horse by Justin Allen

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Year of the Horse
Amazon USA – UK – Canada
by Justin Allen
Overlook Press
Hardcover – 18.95 (12.82 at Amazon)

First, a disclaimer. The author, Justin Allen, got in touch with me during the summer, and we have been in contact off-and-on ever since. He recently participated in an exceptionally lively Writer Wednesday. After I read and reviewed Slaves of the Shinar, his publisher sent me his second novel, Year of the Horse. Therefore, I have had more contact than usual with this author, and I can’t claim a completely impartial review. However, I can claim that I will be honest.

The Year of the Horse begins as Tzu-lu is procrastinating over a homework assignment. Right away, you know this is something different, eh? How many epic fantasies have you read where the character has homework? A visitor arrives at his parent’s shop, providing even more incentive for goofing off — especially when Tzu-lu realizes that the visitor is the famed gunfighter Jack Straw, who has come to visit Tzu-lu’s grandfather.

Naturally, Tzu-Lu must spy. A convenient keyhole makes this possible. There, he discovers that Jack has quite a history with both Tzu-lu’s grandfather and his dead father, plus he has some abilities that can only be described as magical.

The next day, Tzu-lu’s grandfather sends him off with Jack and a gang of men to help John MacLemore recover his stolen gold. With them are Henry, a black marksman, Chino, a Californio refugee, and Sadie, John’s teenage daughter.

In many ways, The Year of the Horse follows the same formula as The Hobbit. Like Bilbo, Tzu-Lu goes off on an adventure as an “expert” in something with which he only has limited experience. A Gandalf-like character goes with them. Their mission is to recover stolen gold. Tzu-lu becomes separated from his companions. The Gandalf-like character leaves them on their own after a time, and so on.

However, the story takes its own distinct direction while all of this is played out against an Old West backdrop. Vast tracts of unexplored territory. Indians. Mormons. Prejudice against everyone who doesn’t look or believe as you do.

And best of all, magic bullets!

All of the named places are fictional, but roughly coincide with an actual place. St. Francis is probably a fictional St. Louis. Hell Mouth might be the Grand Canyon, except it runs north and south. There’s something like the salt flats of New Mexico between Hell Mouth and the Mormon lands beyond — or it could be Death Valley. I looked up one county name and discovered that it was a fictional county invented by Faulkner.

Also, there’s an Easter Egg from Slaves of the Shinar that made me smile.

There is good and evil evenly distributed among all the groups that the gang encounters — kind of like in real life. The central characters all get along very well — almost too well. There is no troublemaker among the group to stir things up, unless it’s Sadie. The lack of conflict among the characters might have bogged down the plot if they all weren’t in conflict with the land itself. Unexpected things happen at every turn, such as a bolt of lightning sending their entire baggage train plunging over a cliff, separating Tzu-lu from the rest of his group. And who would ever have expected a pool of acid?

It’s hard to think of an “if you enjoyed” comparison, except if I were to compare it to Mark Twain. Tzu-lu is more like Huck than Tom, minus the abusive dad. Like Huck, he’s almost passive, and is seen as harmless to his enemies — an assumption they later regret.

You can probably tell that I really enjoyed Year of the Horse. I’d recommend it for any age, although very young children might find the typeface a bit small, and it’s not really packaged for Middle Grade readers, which the age of the protagonist would normally be perfect for. Oh, and since there is no legal drinking and smoking age when this takes place, the underage characters do both. However, I certainly don’t think they glorify such activities.

Year of the House is a delightfully different novel, as familiar as an epic fantasy, but with a distinctly American twist. I hope Mr. Allen finds a way to return us to these characters one day. I recommend it highly.

Maisie Dobbs Mystery Series

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I can’t believe I’ve never reviewed any of these novels.

The Maisie Dobbs novels are one of my favorite mystery series. The author is Jacqueline Winspear, and her first novel was Maisie Dobbs. It introduced us to Maisie Dobbs, Psychologist and Investigator. It begins in 1929, when Maisie opens her investigation office after serving an apprenticeship of sorts with a legal scholar who also worked as an investigator and scholar. Maisie was a nurse who served in a casualty clearing station in France during the Great War. Maisie Dobbs is a wonderful book, with frequent flashbacks to young Maisie, when she had to go work for the Comptons, a noble family, at the age of thirteen after the death of her mother. Through the Comptons, she meets her mentor, who is a family friend of the Comptons. Lady Rowan Compton eventually sponsors Maisie’s education.

Although it was a mystery, it was also a tragic romance and a historical novel, and it really didn’t fit into the framework of a traditional mystery. The remaining novels do settle into that framework, which is why Maisie Dobbs remains my favorite book of the series.

Although these are considered mainstream mysteries, they have light but unmistakable fantasy elements, mostly in the power of Maisie’s mind, which borders on psychic. The fantasy elements are very subtle, and exist mostly in premonitions that always come true, brief flashes of the future, and feeling a wrongness about certain areas.

These novels are sometimes more plot-driven than I like. I’m not really reading this mystery series for the mysteries. Maybe because of that, I’m not a true mystery fan. I read novels for the characters, and when I come back to novels again and again, it’s because of my love of the characters. Alexander McCall Smith understands this, which might be why his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series is more about the characters than about the very light mysteries (and where the main character even got married and not only managed to continue her career, but whose career sucked in her husband).

Because of the plot-driven nature of each novel in the Maisie Dobbs series, events in her personal live progress at an arctic pace, even while the novels themselves are quick reads. She has a romance that lasts several novels before you as a reader realize that the romance is going nowhere. It takes Maisie a whole other novel to come to the same conclusion. And then you have an entire novel without any hint of romance whatsoever, except to drive the final knife in the love story of the first novel.

I think the reason I love this series so much is because it immerses the reader so well in another time and place. I rarely read contemporary novels because I love to be swept away to elsewhen when I read. There are little touches everywhere throughout the books, from the way Maisie answers the phone, to having to type out lengthy manuscripts more than one time because there is no document duplication, to the necessary proliferation of public telephone kiosks. London is called “The Smoke” because of the horrible pollution of coal-smoke, and people literally flee it at least once a year for some fresh air. The worldwide depression is more and more evident with each novel, and in the later novels (1931 and 1932), you see people beginning to worry about what’s going on in Germany. Widows and spinsters (like Maisie) abound because so many y0ung men were killed.

Maisie has her faults, and one of them is that she tends to hold on to a grudge. She doesn’t always do the right thing. But she always repents, which is why we always forgive her. The most intriguing thing about Maisie — and the most compelling — is that she really doesn’t belong anywhere. Because of her education, she no longer fits in among the humble people of her birth. Even her manner of speaking sets her apart. However, her birth will always separate her from those who are born higher. Her aging father is the only person she has left in the world.

Here are all the books in the series so far:

  • Maisie Dobbs (2003)
  • Birds of a Feather (2004)
  • Pardonable Lies (2005)
  • Messenger of Truth (2006)
  • An Incomplete Revenge (2008) (which I just read)
  • Among The Mad (2009) (which just came out in paperback, and which I will read very soon!)

I high recommend this series. Not a single novel has disappointed me so far.

Sorry about the lack of links. I just wanted to introduce you to the series before I posted my review. If you want more information, Jacqueline Winspear‘s website is the best place to look. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Debut Review – The Better Part of Darkness

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BetterPartOfDarkness
The Better Part of Darkness
by Kelly Gay
Amazon USA – UK – Canada
Pocket Books – 7.99

First, some caveats. This isn’t my usual genre.The author knows this. I also have come to know the author over the past year of hosting her guests posts at my previous blog, Fantasy Debut, and swapping emails. So, I’m not entirely impartial. It’s difficult to write a review from this position, so I just thought I’d let you know up front. Hopefully, the one will balance the other.

Oh, and one more thing. I just finished the novel. Just now. I usually like to let things percolate for a day or so before attempting to write a review, but as I write this, release day is tomorrow so I’ll just do the best I can. So here it goes.


The Better Part of Darkness proves to me that I should read outside my genre more often.

I admit to having some trepidation when I started reading it, mostly because of this blurb:

Atlanta: it’s the promised city for the off-worlders, foreigners from the alternate dimensions of heaven-like Elysia and hell-like Charbydon. Some bring good works and miracles. And some bring unimaginable evil….

Charlie Madigan is a divorced mother of one, and a kick-ass cop trained to take down the toughest human and off-world criminals. She’s recently returned from the dead after a brutal attack, an unexplained revival that has left her plagued by ruthless nightmares and random outbursts of strength that make doing her job for Atlanta P.D.’s Integration Task Force even harder. Since the Revelation, the criminal element in Underground Atlanta has grown, leaving Charlie and her partner Hank to keep the chaos to a dull roar. But now an insidious new danger is descending on her city with terrifying speed, threatening innocent lives: a deadly, off-world narcotic known as ash. Charlie is determined to uncover the source of ash before it targets another victim — but can she protect those she loves from a force more powerful than heaven and hell combined?

I try not to let blurbs influence me too much when I review a book, but this one had me nervous. The Revelation? A force more powerful than heaven and hell combined? Is this one of those books that will wreak havoc on my Christian faith?

But it also had some things going for it. I didn’t see any evidence of vampires. The heroine-mom concept really appealed to me. And I was very curious about what Ms. Gay did with Atlanta Underground, which I’d love to see one day.

So in the end, I decided to trust Ms. Gay more than the blurb writer, and hope it really wasn’t all that accurate. And it wasn’t. I won’t give it all away, but the Revelation in The Better Part of Darkness does not refer to that Revelation, and the force more powerful than heaven and hell combined — well, maybe the blurb writer was just trying to be provocative.

Unless that part of the blurb referred to Charlie, herself.

What I enjoyed the most about this book was the way Ms. Gay blended humor with grittiness. I would not call this a humorous novel by any means, but has some much-needed light moments. And they are perfectly woven in. Even in the darkest of moments, some bit of levity manages to creep in, and often, it made me laugh out loud. Bravo for this. I hate novels that are nothing but angst from cover to cover.

Another thing I really enjoyed is that it felt more like a science fiction novel than a fantasy. The entrance to Charbydon and Elysia were discovered through scientific means. The drug, ash, is made in a lab. There is genetic manipulation between the beings of Charbydon, Elysia and Earth. And the beings of Charbydon and Elysia are neither demonic nor angelic. This near-perfect blend of science fiction and fantasy leads me to one of my few critiques — there is some ritual magic that must take place on “unconsecrated ground” toward the end that didn’t really fit in with the mood of the rest of the book. Science and magic are blended so well together that the whole idea of consecrated and unconsecrated ground didn’t feel relevant to me as a reader. Whose power was the ritual invoking? There didn’t seem to be any way to tap into powers by means of a ritual, because those doing the ritual pretty much had all the power. Other concepts are unexplained, such as a dying moon. How does a moon die? Losing its orbit? Disintegrating? It was never made clear.

Charlie, while capable of a wry wit, was not one of those annoying snarky heroines. She is very tough and kicks ass and uses foul language. But she loves fiercely and is protective to the point of smothering — except she won’t allow herself that. She has great relationships with those she loves, her sister Bryn, her daughter Emma and even her ex-husband, Will. Her partner, Hank, and her have some of the best dialog in the novel.

The pages just flew by. It’s almost 400 pages but I managed to finish most of it over the weekend. It segues nicely into a sequel, where I hope some of these questions get answered. I think urban fantasy fans will love The Better Part of Darkness, and fence-sitters who are tired of snark and vampires will find Ms. Gay’s concepts and twists unique and refreshing.

Debut Review – Slaves of the Shinar

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SlavesOfTheShinar
Slaves of the Shinar (Amazon USA – UK – Canada)
by Justin Allen
Overlook Press
Hardcover – 25.95

Review copy provided by the author

Justin Allen’s second novel, Year of the Horse, just came out in October.

I remember hearing about Slaves of the Shinar back when I first started Fantasy Debut, and although I saw fine reviews for it everywhere, I did not read it at the time. Over the summer, the Justin Allen contacted me with a question and after an email conversation, he offered to send me a copy.

Slaves of the Shinar is billed as an epic fantasy of the ancient world. It’s hard to find a better blend of ingredients that are sure to hook me. It takes place in an unspecified location somewhere in Africa. There are two main characters, a black man named Urik  and a white man named Ander. Urik is trying to escape his destiny — literally. He is on the run from a prophesy, one that makes him a tragic and engaging character right from the start. And no, no, no, this is not the sort of prophesy you are thinking about. It’s a very personal prophesy — not one in which Urik fights a dark god or saves the world.

Ander is a slave of the Niphilim who is determined not only to escape, but to get revenge on his cruel captors. And he’s willing to use anyone to achieve this goal.

Both Ander and Urik are grown men. Stick a pin in me, why don’t you? A fantasy novel about grown men! It’s almost eek-worthy! (For those of you who are new here, I have long lamented about the over-abundance of young boys in fantasy novels.)

Anyway.

On his flight from destiny, Urik encounters a dog, which becomes his most faithful companion. He pulls off a daring theft early on in the story that reminded me me of Conan the Barbarian. The jewel he steals enables him to trade for a special sword — one made of iron rather than bronze.

For the Bronze Age is rapidly coming to an end. The Niphilim have the secret of steel (again, a Conan moment, but I want to be clear, it was for me, not Mr. Allen. He NEVER referred to it that way, and it was actually  iron, not steel) and they are using it to conquer the  Shinar. They are white, but are also referred to as giant-like. One of the reasons Urik stands out is because is is as big as a Niphilim. Those of you who are conversant in The Bible will recognize the term niphilim. The Nephilim were descendants of fallen angels. There is no indication in Slaves of the Shinar of any angelic origin. The resemble the Biblical Nephilim in their name, their stature and their superhuman strength. The religion in this novel are gods and goddesses — some of them with recognizable names, like Baal — and they don’t have any direct influence on the characters’ lives.

The Niphilim and another tribe simply referred to as the savages are the only outright fantasy elements in this novel. I’m not really sure what the savages are, but it is clear that they aren’t entirely human. Perhaps they are Australopithecines, but Mr. Allen doesn’t say. Whatever they are, they are terrifying and pity-inspiring all at once because the Niphilim use them as shock troops, driving them into battle with whips.

A great deal of this novel is about battles. Ander proves to be a charasmatic leader, and after helping a town unsuccessfully fight the Niphilim, he recruits a couple of priests to help him form an army. Ander and Urik never actually meet, and if they did, they probably wouldn’t like each other. But they are both ultimately after the same goal.

I just have a few critiques. For Ander’s scenes, the point-of-view was almost someone other than himself. This allowed the reader to see him from the viewpoint of other people, but it did mean that the point-of-view switched often. When there is one point-of-view per scene, this is fine, and for the most part, Mr. Allen kept us high and tight inside one person’s head. But there were several scenes where the point-of-view roved about confusingly, and in one scene between Urik and a woman he rescued, Adah, the point-of-view switches from sentence to sentence. However, this didn’t happen very often.

This is a brutal novel, but I was not overwhelmed by blood and gore. There is no sex and only a hint of romance. I found the quality of writing literary, yet the pacing equal to more commercial fiction. Most of the major characters are men, but Mr. Allen makes up for this by making the major villain an absolutely kick-ass Niphilim woman, and we even get to spend some time in her head. Adah comes into the mix rather late in the novel, but I liked her a great deal. My favorite character was Urik and the scene where he meets his destiny was especially heart-wrenching.

In an epilogue, Mr. Allen attempts to tie some of the characters to The Bible and a Babylonian epic poem, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, which I am certainly now going to reread. I’m not sure if Mr. Allen was entirely successful, for it made me think that there is a sequel to come, and perhaps, one day, there will be.

Slaves of the Shinar is a keeper for the reread shelf. If you like blends of ancient history and fantasy, this is something you are going to enjoy. I can recommend it highly.

Debut Series Review – The Youngest Templar

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5

KeeperOfTheGrail
Keeper of the Grail (Amazon USA – UK - Canada)
by Michael P Spradlin
G. P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin)
Paperback

Wow; this is an exciting series.

Penguin sent me these books over the summer. The second book in The Youngest Templar series, Trail of Fate, was coming out this week, so they thoughtfully sent me the first book, Keeper of the Grail, as well as the second.

I devoured both!

Keep in mind that this series hit a bunch of my loves all at once. It was historical fantasy, which I love. It was placed during the Third Crusade. I was once a fairly serious Crusade scholar. My area of expertise is the first Crusade, but it’s hard to study the First Crusade without learning about the other Crusades as well. (To be specific, I own five books on the Crusades. Three are about the First Crusade in particular, the other two are about all the Crusades. One of them is The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, so don’t think I just got one side of the story. I also own Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ, which is to blame for getting me interested in the Crusades in the first place.)

Anyway, the story is about a boy who was abandoned at an monastery. The monks decide to call him Tristan. When he is about fourteen years old, a group of Templars come to quarter at the monastery. One of them, Sir Thomas, is impressed by Tristan’s ability with animals, and he asks Tristan to become his squire. At the same time, Tristan runs afoul of the powerful Sir Hugh. Eventually, they end up in the Holy Land.

The plot moves very fast because in no time at all, they are in the thick of the battle for Acre, an important port city. During this battle, Tristan’s actions save the life of Richard III, King of England. As soon as they conquer Acre, Saladin besieges the city. They hold out for a while, but then Saladin’s forces close in, and Sir Thomas knows the city is going to fall.

And that’s when he entrusts Tristan with a precious treasure, and sends him on en epic quest across Europe.

One thing I would have liked to seen here is more development of Sir Thomas and Tristan’s relationship. Thomas tells him at one point that Tristan is the only person he trusts. Since there are other good knights among their company–excellent knights, to all appearances–this came across as false.

Two additional people show up in the latter half of the book. I don’t want to give away their identity, but one of them is a Muslim, and is therefore the enemy. Except this person switches sides and helps Tristan for reasons that I wish the other two characters would have explored more. But it is a very short novel, and I guess there wasn’t room to explore all the character’s motivations to the extent I would have wished.

This novel followed the Mythic Journey template, which I learned about on Kimber An’s site. Think the basic plot of Star Wars, of The Lord of the Ring, of many coming-of-age, or bildungsroman novels. It’s a perfect template for YA or middle grade, but it makes it a bit predictable for the adult market. Still, it was highly enjoyable and I just tore through it. It did end on a cliffhanger, but fear not! The publisher provided the first chapter of the second book, so you don’t come away unsatisfied.

TrailOfFate
Trail of Fate (Amazon USA – UK – Canada)
by Michael P. Spradlin
G. P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin)
Hardcover

Trail of Fate picks up in the next breath after the end of Keeper of the Grail. Literally. Tristan and his two companions, which I will keep unnamed for the purpose of this review, is on the run across Europe with Sir Hugh hot on their trail. They end up on the east coast of France after surviving a shipwreck. Oh, Tristan also has a fourth companion, a small female dog, which, at the beginning of Trail of Fate, is unnamed. In this novel, the dog becomes an important character.

After Tristan collapses on the shore, he is found by a sword-bearing group of young men and women. They take him for a spy, but eventually accept his story that he is a Templar on his way home. Except they have no love for Templars. They are Cathars, which is a group that preaches tolerance toward other religions, except Templars, apparently. Their leader is the beautiful Celia, daughter of a leader of the Cathar movement.

Tristan gets more and more involved with Celia’s struggles, and his male friend (who is pictured on the cover) must remind him that he is on a quest. At this point, Tristan’s companions know nothing of Tristan’s true quest, since Thomas swore him to absolute secrecy. By the end of the novel, Tristan decides that his friends has earned his trust, and he takes them into his confidence, completely.

Although I enjoyed this novel, I didn’t feel that the story propelled the overarching story of the series along very far. Toward the end, there are some secrets revealed–especially about Tristan’s parentage–but much of it is one long side quest. It makes me wonder how many books are going to be in the series altogether. It ends at another cliffhanger, and since my copy is an advance reader copy, I didn’t get the perk of having the first chapter of book 3 included at the end. I guess that’s the price I must pay for being able to read it early.

I especially liked the cover of this novel because I know exactly what shot that the character is trying to take here. And it’s a very important shot, indeed!

I thoroughly enjoyed these novels. The characters are unabashedly Christan, except when they are Muslim. The Muslim character’s Muslim-ness could have been explored a bit more. I could not classify this as a Christian novel, because the theme is not Christian-centric. Yes, the subjects are Christian, but you don’t get the impression that the author has an agenda here. There are evil Christians and there are good Christians. The character spends such a short amount of time in the Holy Land that you don’t really have the opportunity to explore any evil Muslims. Mr. Spradlin toes a delicate line here, but eliminated much of the difficulty for himself by keeping the characters mostly in Europe.

This is a rousing adventure, which I heartily recommend for the young and old(er) alike!