Review: Throne of Bones

                On his blog Vox Day has a very black and white combative style. He’s very logical and interested in facts, but there is no graciously presenting his opponents’ argument in the best light or giving the benefit of the doubt when someone says something incoherent. If you make a misstep in an argument with Day he’ll nail for it mercilessly. I don’t always agree with him but I enjoy reading the blog. It has the same sort of high energy, no holds barred, feel that watching WWF does.

                I wasn’t sure I would enjoy the same style translated to a novel so I didn’t pick up Summa Elvectica until it went on sale. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that in fiction Day is one of
the best authors I’ve ever read at showing different sides of a question. I was also very amused to find that while most authors, many theoretically enamored of a pacifistic ideal, need an epic battle to create an epic fantasy novel, here was an author who embraced confrontation and managed to magnificently pull off an epic fantasy where there was no battle but instead the plot revolved around scholarly debate of philosophical issues. And he managed to make that thrilling, intriguing and believable.
            Throne ofBones if set in the same world and includes some of the same characters. But the story also widens its scope to include many more characters and countries. The basic plot is more the standard Epic fantasy dark-forces-threaten-the-world. One of the things that first struck me was how standardized and predictable most fantasy is as this book shattered expectation after expectation. Throne of Bones has the grand sweep, the magical feel, and the sense of walking with legends that I look for in fantasy novels. It is also intricately and complexly three dimensional in a way that I didn’t realize I was missing in other works.
            Instead of just a “this is the way this world works” world building, each culture, and sometimes each character has a slightly different vision of how the world of Selenoth works. You can see them interlocking is areas of shared experience and sometimes conflicting in areas where one or both cultures lack concrete experiences. There are intriguing nooks that invite speculation on which way the world will actually work in practice. We get to share in the adrenaline as characters get their mental world expanded as they learn new bits of lore.

            Throne of Bones uses clearly identifiable historical patterns. But there isn’t the sense that a chunk of plot has been lifted out and is playing on autopilot against a different background. The historical presidents set the stage and then the interactions with different challenges are allowed to play out to their own end. For example Amorr is clearly inspired by ancient Rome, however it isn’t the Rome of and particular sequence of events. The impulses of later Christian Rome and the impulses of earlier republican Rome are allowed to blend and integrate with each other. The questions of whether citizenship should be expanded and whether preserving the republic and the real power of the senate is worth any cost, are one again lie issues and there isn’t a clear answer because the history hasn’t been written yet.
            The exact threat to Selenoth and its root cause are also complex and continue to surprise. Exactly how the protagonists should respond to the various subsidiary threats is presented as grounds for legitimate differences of opinion. My own evaluations of some of the characters often when through several revisions (even as the characters stayed consistent) as I saw them against the backgrounds of different issues and problems. I changed my mind several times on the goal the characters should be pursuing as they dug more deeply and discovered more of the problem they were facing. There were conflicting goals among the characters that changed and compromised so that which characters were truly irreconcilable and which allies was not set in stone.
            But what I most admired was that with all the things that were shone as relative and changeable the book still maintained a sense of right and wrong. None of the characters was perfect. All of them had at least some fault, not just of skill and knowledge but of moral fiber. I had to think about the moral dilemmas that came up, not just automatically agree with the “good” characters. The characters struggled with questions of the right thing to do very realistically but the book still managed to project very strongly that there was a morally right thing to do. It showed that choosing that was satisfying and good in itself, even as there were times when the results of doing the right thing didn’t seem fully satisfactory.
            This wasn’t a quick, easy read for me. There were passages where I felt a little battered by the reverse and alarms the characters were going through. I was challenged to think beyond what I’m used to in a fantasy novel. But I feel I’ve been stimulated to new understanding and new ideas. The story arch didn’t reach a complete conclusion in this book, and I’m not entirely certain where it will end up going. I’m looking forward, with trepidation as well as excitement, to reading the next book when it comes out.

mini-Review Princess of Wands & Queen of Wands

        Princess of Wands and Queen of Wands by John Ringo are the story of an Episcopalian soccer mom who fights demons by the power of her faith. This is a two book (so far) series about the secret Special Circumstance department that keeps modern America safe from and demons that manifest them selves here. It has the smooth writing and good fun of a standard urban fantasy but with more of a sense of realism and with a more original set-up and plot.

        The novels unfold in a way that feels natural but at the same time leads to all sorts of places you couldn’t predict. The premise is presented very convincingly, so it’s to imagine that this could be happening all around us without most people ever noticing. In some ways there were some parts of the fantasy seemed too realistic, and I had a hard time not letting the aspect I didn’t agree with knock me out of the story. The heroin, Barbara Everett, is not very theologically sophisticated but that helps the story move along quickly without getting involved in issues irrelevant to the plot.

        The books certainly go places that something published as Christian Fiction wouldn’t. But the fact that this book is instead sf/fantasy fiction gives it a different writing style, and one that I personally prefer. And while I wouldn’t necessarily endorse many of the answers these books give, they do ask some important questions in an interesting way. I would recommend these book to anyone interested in reading urbane fantasy. 

*this review was based of the final version of Princess of Wands but the e-ARC version of Queen of Wands

mini-Review Temporary Duty

Yesterday was the day I finished Temporary Duty. It also happened to be the day I found out that the author, Ric Locke recently died. It was weird to be discovering a fascinating new author at the same time I found out that the story of his life here had been completed. I suspect that in science fiction Locke’s impact will be even greater after his death than before.

When an alien trading shipp makes a stop at Earth the US manages to wangle sending a detachment along on their trading loop. Temporary Duty is the story of a Navy enlisted man who lucks into temporary duty with aboard the spacecraft. It’s about competitions and cooperation, about difference between cultures and about similarities, it’s about enforcing rules and about breaking them.

The book doesn't have a stereotypical plot, so the beginning can feel a little slow, because you don’t see what is coming up. But it does pay off in the second half of the book in surprising, if unexpected, ways. If you already like sci-fi I would recommend this as something new and fresh. If you don’t like sci-fi you might try it anyway as it is different enough you might find it more to your tastes.

mini-REVIEW Guardian of the Night

Guardian of the Night by Tony Daniels, 5 out of 5 stars. 

   This book is a Science Fiction Space Opera about some key players on both sides of a human alien war. The action is thrilling, the science is fascinating and the characters make you want to spend more time with them.
    One of the things that caught my attention was the internal debate the aliens were having about how to organize their society. These aliens were much more communal than we are today because of several basic facts of their biology as well as their history. Given that deemphasis on individualism, it was interesting to see how the different philosophies concerning distribution of power and control were phrased. One character saw the basic issue as whether or not the total amount of wealth available was fixed or not. That got me thinking: How do you answer that question without pre-determining your answer in the definition of wealth you choose?