The impromptu holiday break we took here at The Accidental Bard was not entirely ill-spent; from late December through early January I made my way through the strange and interesting pages of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. Much has been made of Mr. Mieville and his once self-touted New Weird movement, and I was eager to discover what all the hype was about. I expected a taste of the weird, and was rewarded, despite a certain hesitation on my part.

Carrie Vaughn is like Laurell K. Hamilton, only better. I liked Hamilton's first five books, but her recent efforts have been redolent with existential angst, precious self-awareness, and bizarre sex acts. Her increasingly redundant story lines--will Richard come to terms with being a werewolf? Will Damien grow a spine? Will Anita overcome her guilt?--now come at the expense of a plot. While I continue to read her books out of a sense of loyalty, I miss the good old days when her books were tightly written, funny, and exciting.

Enter Carrie Vaughn: in Kitty Raises Hell, the latest installment in the "Kitty" series, Vaughn gives us just the right amount of political intrigue, frightening creatures, action, violence, and human foibles--with a kick-ass heroine to lead us through it all. In this classic urban fantasy theatre, Vampires and werewolves have been "outed", and now live among us in relative peace. Vaughn treats us to all the old standards we've come to know and love: a vampire "Master of the City", a contentious werewolf pack, and plenty of skeptical humans. There's an underlying tension between those who want to preserve the "old ways"--"might is right" and let the chips fall where they may--and those "new world order" Democrats, who want to lead by consensus. The question becomes, how can Kitty lead her pack effectively, influencing them toward the "right" choice without sacrificing her ideals?

In the eighth installment of the "Kitty" series, Kitty discovers--the hard way--that she's not quite done with the Band of Tiamat. Or, rather, the Band of Tiamat isn't quite done with her. After a series of inexplicable attacks, Kitty realizes she needs all the help she can find. Help comes in the form of a popular reality TV program, "Paradox PI", and its intrepid crew--a group of people who turn out to be more than they seem. Along with Rick, the Master Vampire of Denver, they race to understand the nature of this new evil before it's too late.

Kitty Raises Hell could be cliché, but it isn't. While to some authors these standards are a crutch, to Vaughn they're merely a starting point. She takes them in stride and uses them to craft an original work. Nothing about her universe feels stale or worked over; if I didn't know better, I could easily assume she was alone in her field. The Denver of the "Kitty" series is remarkably believable--as are the problems Kitty and her fellow citizens face. While their adventures are unquestionably epic--battling ancient Babylonian cults, demons, even law enforcement--they don't have that fake "watch me save the world before dinner" feel. They're blissfully free of the kind of posturing that characterizes Goodkind's books.

Vaughn's focus is right where it should be, on her characters. Kitty is highly convincing, realistic protagonist; she's a strong woman, but she's also a vulnerable woman. A radio host and independent business owner, Kitty's career struggles, to some extent, mirror her experiences as Alpha of her pack. She doesn't always know the right answer or make the wisest decision, but she's sincere in her expectations of herself. It's refreshing to find a protagonist who has, dare I say it, "normal" issues--who isn't consumed with anger over old hurts, who doesn't spend several hundred pages ruminating on how difficult it is to be emotionally shut down. Most of us want a heroine whose challenges, whether emotional or professional, make sense to us. Within the first few pages, Kitty comes through loud and clear as a real person.

Her cast of supporting characters is excellent, as well. Kitty's relationship with Ben, her husband, isn't perfect--but it's believable. If you're getting a little sick of the "will he or won't he" drama, perpetually broken hearts, and overly self-aware pity sex so common in other urban fantasy series, then you'll find the "Kitty" series really refreshing. Here, her relationship plays an important supporting--not a starring--role. Ben is not only a real person, but also a meaningful partner; he helps Kitty save the world with his skills as a lawyer, not his penis. It's refreshing to see a fictional couple that can connect outside of the bedroom.

Moreover, for a wonder, Kitty actually has friends and coworkers who are more than just cardboard cutouts! In Kitty Raises Hell, Kitty makes some new friends, and I really enjoyed following their growing relationship. She also deepens her connection with some old friends. In a field that's become overcrowded with clichés, stereotypes, and one trick ponies, Vaughn is a very refreshing change. Even her bit players stayed with me after I finished the book.

And there's just enough sex to keep your attention. Sex occupies the same exalted role here that it does in real life: it's an expression of passion, sometimes comfort, and usually love. Vaughn uses it to reveal Kitty's vulnerability, and let us understand a little more about her relationship with Ben. Like any good writer, Vaughn doesn't need paragraph after paragraph to get her point across; she conveys a world of complexity in just a few sentences.

If you're looking for paragraph after ponderous paragraph about thrusting, heaving, and releasing, this series isn't for you--but if you're longing for a book that's actually about something, this series will be one of your favorite discoveries this year. Kitty Raises Hell might not be the most original book I own, but it's a gripping read nevertheless. Revisiting this Hamilton-esque world is comforting, like pulling on a favorite sock--you know what to expect, and that's part of the thrill. The "Kitty" series is a familiar--and very welcome--thrill.

I bought Sergei Lukyanenko's Nightwatch because it had an employee recommendation tag stuck to it at Barnes and Noble. I don't know what whoever tagged it was thinking. Honestly, I really shouldn't even be writing this review, because I never managed to finish the book...but I don't think I will.

I mean, if I were kidnapped and left to rot in a gulag somewhere, and this was the only book available to me, then yes, I'd finish it. Otherwise, no. Am I being dramatic? Well, I tend to strong opinions about my reviews--and, honestly, why else would you need a review in the first place? I'm not trying to sell the books, I'm trying to steer you in the right direction, and, hopefully, keep you from wasting your time. Admittedly, most of my reviews are negative. Then again, admittedly, most modern fantasy is bad. Heck, a good book is a rare commodity in general and always has been. I'm of the opinion that--sorry Mr. Bloom--many so-called "classics" are only classics because they're old and we can't quite understand them.

Dickens, Bronte, even Hardy--these were sensationalist authors in their time, and most of their contemporaries thought they were writing crap. Most of Dickens' "novels" were originally published as magazine serials. He was the Stephen King of his time, except he had a political streak.

I almost didn't buy A Woman Worth Ten Coppers, because the cover looked so trashy. As a rule--and I know this is going to sound strange, coming from a Laurell K. Hamilton fan--I'm not a big fan of books with buxom, half naked girls on their covers. Generally, I like to preserve the illusion that I'm reading literature--not porn. That being said, when I read the back of the book, the plot sounded intriguing, so I overcame my embarrassment and bought it.

I'm glad I did. Morgan Howell is a relatively new writer, someone I've never heard of before. Within two days, I'd read Coppers, and returned to our favorite haunt, the bookstore, looking for more. I was delighted to discover, she's also written another series! King's Property, Clan Daughter, and Royal Destiny tell the story of a woman who rises from slavery to power, becoming queen of a misunderstood and often maligned race. I wish I'd read this trilogy first; it's set in the same universe as Coppers, and it provides some crucial back-story on the evil, which is well on its way to plaguing the world in that book. The stories aren't directly related; you don't need to read one, to understand or enjoy the other. Nevertheless, if you're a plot nerd like me, you'll appreciate this advice.

I'm one of those people who finds The Lord of the Rings a frustrating read, because it doesn't provide enough back-story on who those Numenorians were, and how they ended up in those barrows. I mean, were the barrow wights there before? Did the Numenorians become the barrow wights? Were the barrow wights attracted to the Numenorians' power somehow?

Seriously. That being said, what makes Coppers--and, so far, Howell's writing as a whole--a standout is the complexity of her characters, and the sensitivity with which she portrays their struggles. Coppers tells the story of a young woman who, through a random twist of fate, becomes a slave. She's neither wholly resigned to her fate, nor is she wholly rebellious. She's not one of those "spunky" heroines, spewing obnoxious one-liners even as she wrestles with trite inner demons. She's a real person. Her new owner is neither a terrible person, nor a saint. He believes in the institution of slavery; it's part of his culture. He's confused by his conflicting desires to treat his new property as a real person, and, at the same time, use her. Their relationship, such as it is, gives this book a powerful center.

For a wonder, the plot is good, too. Howell has a talent of writing concisely, peppering her plot with lots of action, while still adding depth and nuance. Her stories aren't simple or simplistic; I've been consistently surprised and delighted by the paths her characters take. I hate it when plot "twists" are obvious; I feel like I'm outwitting the author or, as Oscar Wilde wrote, going into battle with an unarmed man. Howell is a wonder, in that she's completely original.

Unlike some other favorite authors--Robert Jordan comes to mind, not to speak ill of the dead--Howell doesn't get bogged down in innumerable plot twists, or three page long descriptions of clothing, food, or surroundings. She clearly loves her characters, but she's not in love with them. If you like real people and meaningful conflicts, but you wish the "good" fantasy on your shelf had more action and less stertorous political intrigue, existential angst, and commentary on the tastiness of goat's milk, then Howell's the author for you.

I actually remembered the plot nuances of Coppers a week after I finished reading it. That's rare; most of the time, at least for me, all these "hero awakens to his destiny, slays the villain, saves the princess" stories run together. I remember what happened, but after awhile I sort of forget why--or why I cared. Even worse are those instances where the author is clearly trying too hard. I love urban fantasy, all our regular readers know that, but I seriously don't need another Hamilton or Butcher rip-off. Believe it or not, I'm actually not pining for yet another proto-Rice dialectic on the miseries of isolation being a vampire brings.

You can never see the sun again; life after death is your own private apocalypse. I get it. Rent "What's Eating Gilbert Grape."

In Coppers, Howell brings the gritty, "real world" flavor of urban fantasy to the more traditional landscape of high fantasy. She manages to avoid the clichés of both. Instead, she melds the genres seamlessly to create something that, to some extent, defies categorization. She gives us a strong female heroine without being preachy or turning her book into a platform for women's issues; she gives us a lush, believable, somewhat medieval fantasy world without drawing on Tolkien or the Camelot myth. And, this is what makes Howell so different. She's new, she's different, he work is fresh and original. It would be a real shame if she didn't become a massive best selling author, so buy her books!

Both Coppers and the King's Property trilogy get a straight A.

Awhile ago, I wrote a fairly glowing review of Lynn Flewelling's Nightstalker series.  Now, with Shadows Return, I retract it.  In its entirety.  This review is going to be fairly short, because I'm not good at talking about things that disgust me.  One of the great goals of the gay rights movement has been to increase awareness of the fact that, ultimately, there really is no such thing as "gay" rights.  There are "human being" rights, and your sexuality doesn't define you--or your experience in the world.  The designation "gay" doesn't give us any insight into a person's character, any more than the designation "straight" does.  To me, using "gay" as a plot device, in the sense that all gay people react to things a certain way, is offensive.

What's even more offensive is saying that, unlike a woman, a gay man can't be raped, if he experiences physical arousal.  What's even MORE offensive is saying that, unlike a woman, for whom rape is a cataclysmic, life altering event, a gay man doesn't experience even mild discomfort.  A gay man can, apparently, just keep right on going, because it's just sex--and, therefore, no big deal.  Well, gosh, where to begin with this one.  Do I really need to tell you this is all bullshit?  Apparently, I do--because, not only did Lynn Flewelling write a book about it, her editor was either so homophobic, or brain dead, that he let it go.

The Nightstalker series features two protagonists, partners Alec and Seregil.  The basic theme of Shadows Return is, Alec and Seregil go on a diplomatic mission, where they're both kidnapped, and, they think, taken to separate destinations.  What they don't realize, but you can see coming from the first chapter, is those "separate destinations" are actually in the same house!  While Alec languishes in slavery in the basement, Seregil languishes in torment in the tower.  Seregil is tied to a bed, drugged, and repeatedly raped.  Flewelling, disappointingly, makes no effort to contextualize her character's experience.  Instead, she treats us to the Happy Valley version of torture.  Her attitude, throughout the book, seems to be, "eh, no big deal."  There's never any sense of danger, or foreboding, because, quite frankly, Flewelling doesn't take her character's experience seriously.

Once Seregil escapes--of course he escapes--he returns to Alec, and all is well.  Alec, of course, having seen Seregil with his tormentor once or twice, is burning with jealousy.  The main issue of their reunion is, how can Alec ever overcome his jealousy?  I think what makes me angriest is, Flewelling plays right into the most destructive homophobic stereotype of all: that gay relationships aren't "real" relationships.  Seregil is a slut and Alec is a screaming queen.

I think Flewelling should be ashamed of herself.  She'd be better off spewing her bilious, homophobic nonsense out in the open, with Anne Coulter, than trying to pass herself off as a novelist.  The only "fantasy" here is the notion that gay people don't really feel things like the rest of us, because they're not really people.  Don't give your money to a homophobe.

Grade: F

Christopher Paolini has taken a lot of flak for being derivative. The comparisons of the Inheritance Cycle to popular classics like Star Wars are legion--and rightly so. But what his detractors miss is that the value of Paolini's work is not to be found in the nuances of his writing but, as the New York Times said in its original review of Eragon, "in the sweep of the story and the conviction of the storyteller." It is that conviction that drives these books, and with the second book of the trilogy-cum-tetralogy, Mr. Paolini brings his epic into the teeth of the high drama that the first volume only foreshadowed. In Eldest, the characters find that their toughest trials have only just begun, and the power and wisdom gained throughout the novel end in a clash of battle, betrayal, and brotherhood. 

The Star Wars comparisons, while apt, too often forget that Star Wars itself is merely a (very overt) modern re-telling of mythic themes that have been central to literature and the arts since Western civilization began. George Lucas hardly invented the thematic struggle of the outnumbered forces of good against the vastly superior forces of evil; nor did the symbolism inherent in the "dark father" archetype originate with him. Indeed, the story of the farmboy-become-white-knight is central to the majority of modern epic fantasy. The themes and ideas at play in Eldest are some of the most pervasive in Western culture, and the fact that it is this bedrock upon which Paolini has chosen to found his saga is a testament to the boldness of his story and the confidence of its author, not a necessarily a slight to his creativity. It takes a certain amount of nerve and a good amount of character to set about telling the oldest of stories in a new and personal way. While the story Paolini weaves in Eldest may seem familiar, the simple confidence with which he tells it raises it above the level of boring fantasy re-treads. Paolini manages to take a tried-and-true concept and still give it emotional impact, and in this sense he succeeds.

Eldest falls short, however, in its failure to introduce anything truly new. Reading it, ironically, feels a lot like watching Star Wars: it never fails to entertain, but you know the story too well to really be on the edge of your seat.

Joe Abercrombie's got balls. It's something about his attitude, the way he stares down cliche and then casually twists it to his own, brutal ends. It's something about the way he refuses to allow any of his characters a fairy-tale happy ending, or how he manages to build a world out of sarcasm, to turn cynicism into tone. I, along with everybody else, have been commenting on this compulsion to overturn the staid tropes of fantasy fiction since his First Law trilogy began. But it is only with Last Argument of Kings, Book Three of The First Law, that he brings his vicious story to a crashing finale. 

Mr. Abercrombie had a lot of ground left to cover, plotwise, at the end of Book Two; the main characters were essentially in position for the climax and conclusion of their respective adventures, but the final battles had yet to be played out. Before They Are Hanged represented a fruitless quest for a questionable goal, leaving the point-of-view characters somewhat purposeless at journey's end, literally back at square one. They had arrived home from a dreadful vacation, only to find that their problems were there waiting for them. 

In Hanged the author led the story into choppy seas; with Kings he delivers a brilliant maelstrom that none of his characters come out of in one piece. Loose ends are mercilessly chopped, conflicts resolved with bloody finality, and, often, grand hopes crushed in the jaws of brutal realism.
 
(A note to the wary: beyond here, there be spoilers.)

Terry Brooks had a very clear intention when, in an attempt to combat the boredom of law school, he began his now-famous Shannara series: to write a classical adventure story.  "An adventure story, something wonderfully dangerous, filled with hair-raising escapes, men and women of character and purpose, dangers that threatened from every quarter -- that was what I wanted to write and that was how I would escape the mind-numbing predictability of law life." ¹  Throughout his long career, in each of his Shannara books, his focus has been to entertain, to take the reader on a ride that they can see and hear and feel and to instill in them that heady sense of wonder and excitement that only good fantasy can provide.  While his characters always struggled internally with variations on classic heroic angst, the characters always seemed a vehicle for an exciting story, not the other way around. 

With the publication of Running with the Demon in 1997, however, Brooks's focus shifted inward.  Subtitled "A Novel of Good and Evil," Demon was the first book of the Word and the Void trilogy, essentially a pre-apocalyptic urban fantasy dealing with an ongoing and very existential struggle between the magically empowered Knights of the Word and the demons serving the Void.  Given the post-apocalyptic nature of the Shannara universe and the various hints given by Brooks that the epic fantasy series was actually set in a far future version of our own world, it wasn't too surprising when he decided to connect the two stories.  The release of Armageddon's Children (and subsequently, its sequel, The Elves of Cintra), first book in the Genesis of Shannara trilogy, canonized the struggle of the Knights of the Word as the ultimate precursor to the Shannara stories. 

The first two Genesis books set the stage for the apocalypse.  Set in a near future United States where the government and civilized life as we know it has already been wiped out, the characters, consisting of two Knights of the Word, a group of street children, and the reclusive Elves, are poised at the brink of a final, more devastating disaster.  The Gypsy Morph, Book Three of the trilogy, offers an anticlimactic conclusion to a promising story.  There is adventure to be found in the Genesis of Shannara, but it seems to be primarily located in the first two volumes.  While Armageddon's Children and The Elves of Cintra saw the motley band of good guys escaping the devastation of their homes and setting out on journeys both perilous and filled with adventure, The Gypsy Morph sees them struggling to journey's end in comparative exhaustion, with little but overwrought emotional drama to occupy them as they reach their destination.  Although we enjoyed the read and thought the book had a few great points to its name, ultimately, we were unsatisfied.

I hated this book.  For terrible writing, complete lack of plot and about as much character development as the average installment of Penthouse Forum, I give Laurell K. Hamilton's latest novel Blood Noir an "F."  I'd give it a lower grade if I could.  I'm operating off of more, here, than residual feelings of betrayal.  For a long time, Laurell K. Hamilton was one of my favorite authors.  She gave us a strong female protagonist who had interesting adventures.  Although vulnerable, she was never a slave to her emotions.  Part fantasy, part thriller, part murder mystery, these books were something different.  It discouraged me, when Hamilton started writing soft-core porn.  For awhile, she at least maintained some degree of integrity; her characters had adventures in between bouts of kinky sex.  Eventually, though, those adventures grew less and less frequent, until they finally disappeared.  I thought her last installment, The Harlequin, was bad--Hamilton wasted about 400 pages to describe Anita Blake and her boyfriends going to a Cirque du Soleil type of event.  Well, heck, in comparison, that was the best book ever.

Most readers of this of this blog probably haven't read too much Patricia Cornwell, but her earlier Kay Scarpetta novels are wonderful.  What separates them from the herd is the rare combination of good writing and meaningful plot.  While it may be "all about the characters," characters, by themselves, do not a novel make.  Likewise, all the plot in the world doesn't help much if the characters are nothing more than cardboard cutouts, the literary answer to "Buddy Jesus."  In case you're not sure what I mean, I refer to you to Terry Goodkind's entire body of work.  Unfortunately, even good writers tend to go bad after awhile; Patricia Cornwell's most recent books are complete drivel.  Now, many people have this--these days somewhat sacrilegious--complaint about the last few novels in the Wheel of Time Series, but trust me, in comparison to Predator, they're all action packed.

Which brings me to Simon R. Green.  He's an ambitious writer; his offerings span the gamut, from crime novels to satires to Laurell K. Hamilton rip-offs.  I know, because I've read most of his books, even though, well, to be honest, they aren't very good.  He's like that good for nothing boyfriend most of us remember from college: he's incapable of having a real conversation, you'd die of embarrassment if your family ever met him, but somehow you can't quite bring yourself to break up with him.  Green's books fill a similar void: I go back to them when I'm between series, because they're dependable.  I sort of care about the characters, I'm mildly interested in what happens to them, and I have no guilt about abandoning them if something better comes along.  Until recently, I'd meandered through about half his catalogue, and I was pretty confident I knew what he was about.  So, imagine my surprise when I picked up the first book in the Deathstalker series, read a few chapters...and discovered that it was actually good!

When I was in grammar school I was already an inveterate reader of Terry Brooks.  I remember running around my neighborhood with a staff and a brown cloak my grandmother had made for me, pretending to be a Druid of the Four Lands.  Often I would press my little brother and one or two of my friends into service, equip them with homemade fantasy regalia, and then begin the inevitable discussion of who was to be Allanon, who Bremen, who the ancient Galaphile.* 

The Shannara books were the first post-Tolkien fantasy novels I read, and I enjoyed them perhaps a bit too much at that age.  Later on, I even slogged through the Magic Kingdom of Landover Series.  After finishing The Talismans of Shannara, which effectively ended Mr. Brooks's work in the world of Shannara for quite a few years to come, I moved on.  I saw The Word and the Void series as it hit the shelves, but at that point I was too wrapped up in other reading to be interested in a non-Shannara Terry Brooks book, and the idea of fantasy set in the real world never held much fascination for me.

Aside from the a brief dalliance with The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara when that trilogy came out, I didn't read another Terry Brooks novel for a long time after that.  Then recently, after seeing CJ read and enjoy Word and Void, I decided that it was finally time to complete my reading of Terry Brooks.  I found that The Word and the Void trilogy, comprised of the novels Running with the Demon, A Knight of the Word, and Angel Fire East, is a heartfelt, if not revolutionary, work of early urban fantasy.

Character has almost always finished a distant second in epic fantasy: fantasy authors of the past have typically chosen to prioritize intricate, twisting plots and depth of setting over characterization.  Creating depth of character, therefore, often became a simple question of adapting existing archetypes and of attempting to conceal cliche. 

Joe Abercrombie, on the other hand, chooses character over plot.  The consequent effect is often a bit disconcerting: something in the back of the veteran epic fantasy reader's head is telling him stop, wait, there's something wrong here: things aren't proceeding as planned.  The cliches of epic fantasy are so ingrained in our heads that when an author strays from the formula, it immediately catches our attention.

Not that Joe Abercrombie is a stranger to formula or cliche; rather, he tends to take formulaic elements and give them his own cynical twist, especially when it comes to his characters.  The First Law trilogy has to this point been a veritable commentary on the state of the epic fantasy subgenre.  Combined with his own signature style of gritty realism, this makes reading a Joe Abercrombie book a singularly interesting experience, albeit one that sometimes makes you yearn for things to take a quicker, less examined pace.  That said, we decided it was finally time to review the second book in The First Law, Before They Are Hanged.

The story begins in media res: we first meet Logen Ninefingers, the infamous Bloody-Nine, in the middle of a fight.  As Logen tumbles through wet Northern forest, a group of insistent, stinking Shanka on his tail, we get our first taste of Joe Abercrombie's signature, nail-biting ability to make combat a truly visceral experience for the reader.  Logen buries his axe in one brute's skull as he slides off the edge of a cliff, finds that he has a hanger-on, and then promptly throws himself, the Shanka with him, into a gorge.  Thus begins The Blade Itself, Book One of Joe Abercrombie's new fantasy trilogy The First Law.  Say this for Joe Abercrombie: say he doesn't pull any punches.

Abercrombie's name seems to be on everyone's lips these days.  The Blade Itself, the author's first novel, is probably the most reader-acclaimed epic fantasy debut since A Game of Thrones first hit the shelves.  The recent release of Before They Are Hanged, Book Two of the trilogy, has only sealed Abercrombie's fate as the current poet laureate of a new school of heroic fantasists -- a school that began, perhaps, with Martin, and has come to define the best of the genre as a whole.   And it really is the readers who have made Abercrombie's work the success that it is: with both volumes, published only as trade paperbacks (albeit with attractively dark, blood-spattered covers wrapped around good paper), the critical praise on the back covers and opening pages of each book is a veritable Who's Who of the fantasy/sci-fi blogging world.  You won't find any New York Times quotes here. 

The praise includes a lot of words like "bloodthirsty," "violent," "fast," and "fight scenes."  It also includes words like "action," "intrigue," "exhilarating," and "accomplished."  The necessarily selective nature of cover blurbs notwithstanding, the early reviewers generally have it right: The Blade Itself is a bold, ambitious first novel that manages to encompass both complex character study and vicious, bloody action.  More than anything else, however, the book shows a greater potential as yet unreached.

"Volume I" refers to the first three novels in P.N. Elrod's "The Vampire Files" series, and it's a great beach read.  Ironically, on the strength of subject matter alone, it probably only appeals to those of us who don't like the beach.  Existential angst isn't usually a big hit with the surf and sun crowd--they're too busy having fun.  The usual beach activities hold no appeal for me, however; I burn easily and I'm always uncomfortably aware of the sand in my shorts.  I try hard, but the beach and I just aren't a good fit.  Likewise, Elrod tries hard, but none of the different elements of The Vampire Files, Volume I are a good fit.  It alternately reads like a rip off of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series, an ode to the old Dick Tracy comic strip, a romance novel, a campy film noir script and a rerun of the Dr. Phil Show.

Liz Rosenberg had it right when she wrote, in her 2003 review of Christopher Paolini's novel Eragon, that it's difficult to approach the book without certain preconceptions: the author's age is almost impossible to ignore.  The story is old hat to any modern fantasy fan: Paolini began writing Eragon, book one of the Inheritance cycle (of which Eldest is the most recent volume, with Brisingr set for a September 2008 release), when he was 15 years old.  Four years later, in 2003, the novel had been acquired by Knopf and Paolini became a New York Times bestselling author.   Needless to say, I was impressed before I cracked the spine -- thus the problem of preconceptions.

Eragon was published as a work of young adult fiction; as such, it's tempting to judge it by young adult standards.  Add to that the temptation to judge Paolini's abilities according to his age at the series' inception and one finds that the deck is heavily stacked in the author's favor before the reader even turns a page.  Trust me, I was tempted.  I was tempted to lead a proverbial parade in Paolini's favor, praising to the skies his nascent creativity and holding his story up as an example to America's troubled youth: Write!  Create!  Wallow no more in the television's equivocal glow!  But though the reading world may still view Mr. Paolini as a precocious teen, he is now 24 years old, an adult writing a teenager's story.  He still sees himself as a writer of young adult fiction, but his intelligence and the insightful manner in which he has been known to talk about his work demand a more mature critique.  With that in mind, I have chosen to give him no quarter.  I will review his work as an adult reader and as an artistic endeavor now continued by an adult writer, whatever his age may have been at the start.  Though I find Eragon itself to be above all a derivative work, so to speak, it is clear that Paolini's heart is in the right place.

In the spirit of the Bard's ongoing reviews of older works, let's take a look back at the book that gave Potter a run for its middle school money.

Jack Priest is one of the coolest writers writing today, and Night Witch, his latest, gets a rare straight A from me.  So how come you have no idea who he is?  I’m about to tell you…

Parts of this book were like watching my cat suck his toes: morbidly fascinating, but not very interesting.  Until the last 50 pages or so, I had difficulty putting it down—even as I wished it were better.  Before I get into the meat of the review, let me point out that The Outlaw Demon Wails was only disappointing in relation to the whole of the series.  Since Kim Harrison debuted the Rachel Morgan series in 2004 with Dead Witch Walking, she’s impressed me as one of the best new writers working today.  Her realistic characters and original plots stand out in a field full of clichés, murky plots and archetypal characters.  However, for the first time, in the sixth installment, KH falters.

I was so excited when TODW came out, doubly so because I had the flu and couldn’t wait to entertain myself with Rachel Morgan’s latest exploits.  Since I had to stay in bed and read, anyway, I could find out what happened between Rachel and Ivy, who killed Kisten and what, exactly, was going on with the weres.  I’d been waiting anxiously for the answers to these questions for almost 12 months—and, to my mind, the fact that I left my sickbed to find them was quite an endorsement.  I’m a big fan of two genres, which KH melds well: supernatural detective adventures and what Jim refers to as “vampire porn.”  The Rachel Morgan series is, and despite this negative review, remains, the best of both worlds.  Spoilers after the break.

I have to admit, I was skeptical about Robin Hobb.  CJ kept insisting that it was some of the best fantasy she'd read in a long time, but every time I read the blurb on the back cover I hesitated.  It was the character names that threw me off: Prince Chivalry, King Shrewd?  It sounded like an ironic fairy story for children.  That's what I get for judging a book by its cover.

Assassin's Apprentice is book one of The Farseer, the first of three trilogies set in Hobb's Six Duchies.  The Six Duchies is what it sounds like: six historically separate lands now united under one King.  As it turns out, it is the custom of the Six Duchies to give names to nobility based on each lord or lady's prospective character traits: if a mother wishes her son to grow up to be wise, she names him Shrewd; if she hopes her daughter to be patient, she names her Patience.  All in the hope that this will drive each person to live up to their name.  An interesting idea, and the first of many examples of Robin Hobb's tendency to realign her reader's perceptions.