Chronicles of the Black Company

Chronicles of the Black Company is the first omnibus collection in the Black Company Series by Glen Cook, comprising the books The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose.

The cover art is by Raymond Swanland, who is perhaps my favorite fantasy-themed artist working these days. It's kinda hard for me to attach an adjective for his work... except for ferocious. He does all of the cover art for these Black Company omnibus collections, and all of them make you feel like there is going to be some badass things going on in the book. And there are.

The Black Company is the first book in the series, and in this collection, and makes a pretty good impression for the series as a whole. The story follows the first-person point-of-view of one Croaker, the annalist of the eponymous Black Company, as they are working in a coastal city called Beryl, and are then hired into service to an empire across the sea to the north, ruled by the dreaded "Lady". The empire has been fighting rebel forces (creatively named "The Rebel"), and it becomes the Black Company's job to assist in defeating these forces. 

This first installment is definitely my favorite in the omnibus. The characters are interesting, the dialogue is snappy, realistic, and often funny, and the prose is not burdened with overlong, flowery descriptions. The tale is written like a journal of a man in the military, and is thus very straightforward. Fighting and battles are not drawn-out, instead being realistically portrayed as short engagements spread out over time with periods of lull in between. Despite the long chapter lengths, the book is fast-paced, and there are plenty of breaks that allow you to take a break from reading for the moment without being caught in the middle of a scene.

Second is Shadows Linger, which is just as good as the first installment. It takes place a few years after the events in The Black Company, the events mostly taking place in the city of Juniper, based around the mysterious growth of an ominous black castle located there.

All of the details behind the writing as were in The Black Company are true here as well, except for a couple of differences. Firstly, the chapters are much shorter, and secondly, while most is still told in Croaker's first-person point-of-view, a good deal of it is in third-person as well. It might seem strange at first, but it will make a lot of sense once you get to a certain point in the book.

Last in the omnibus is The White Rose, which takes place almost a decade after Shadows Linger, and whose story I can reveal nothing of due to extremely spoileriffic reasons. I will tell you that The White Rose falls a little flat compared to the first two books, not really coming into its own as a page turner until the last 120 pages or so. It continues the shorter-chapter pattern of the second book as well as the alternating first- and third-person points-of-view, and just like Shadows Linger makes sense even if even stranger than it was before.

Chronicles of the Black Company is a great buy, even if The White Rose doesn't live up to the first two books. It's hard to beat three books for fifteen dollars or less, in a trade paperback format, so that for me ends up pushing this up into "Books That Are Awesome" territory. I highly recommend this gritty, dark, humorous series with its realistic portrayal of military lifestyle. In the end, you will not be disappointed.

Rating: Awesome

Top Five Fantasy Novels

Can't go more than three days without a blog update. It makes me feel terrible inside. Unfortunately, my reading has slowed down somewhat because my writing output has increased, and I've been doing some other important things besides, so I won't be able to do rapid-fire reviews like I did for my first three.

So, content. My current favorite five fantasy novels, limited to one novel per series. I'm not going to go into why these are my favorites; that's what reviews are for. And trust me, I will get around to reviewing all of these.

List is likely to change as I read more. Let's begin!

1) Memories of Ice, by Steven Erikson

2) The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (My review for this can be found here.)

3) A Storm of Swords, by George R. R. Martin

4) American Gods, by Neil Gaiman (My review for this can be found here.)

5) The Black Company, by Glen Cook (My review for this can be found here.)

American Gods

  

Neil Gaiman is a pretty well-respected, renowned dude. He started out in journalism, then started writing comic books, and then went on to write novels. Good novels. Novels that win awards. American Gods is one of these award-winning novels, earning Neil the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards in 2002. That right there should give you an idea as to how awesome this book is.

American Gods follows the story of Shadow, a man who has just spent the last three years in prison and is due to be released, and he just wants to live the rest of his life in peace, staying out of trouble, with his wife. When he meets with the warden to discuss his release, he learns that his wife has recently died in a car accident, and things aren't looking so optimistic anymore. As he's heading home, he meets a peculiar man named Mr. Wednesday who knows far more than he should about Shadow. Mr. Wednesday offers Shadow a job, and his life starts taking some very strange turns.

This book borrows heavily from the mythology and folklore of many cultures throughout the world, with such characters such as Mr. Wednesday (Odin), Mr. Nancy (Anansi), Czernobog, and others showing up and playing semi-important roles. It also introduces newer gods, such as the Internet, Media, and other elements of modern American/Global Culture. These gods make for extremely interesting characters, especially in the cases of Mr. Wednesday and Mr. Nancy, who will make you laugh and sympathize and everything in between.

When you have a title like American Gods, you expect the novel to feel... well, American. And Neil Gaiman, an English author, manages to pull it off flawlessly. The words used and the way they are spelled are American English; the prose is very snappy, utilitarian, functional; and the dialogue reads like an American would speak. Down-to-earth, with occasional vulgarity, occasional slang, occasional imperfect grammar. All of that, without being difficult to read on paper.

Another interesting thing about American Gods are the short stories embedded at the ends of a few chapters. They manage to indirectly relate to the events in the book, little folklorish tales that provide a break from the main story without taking away from the novel as a whole. In fact, I believe they add to the whole feel of the book, in both its Americana and mythological mystique.

Get this book. Read this book. Love this book. It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece. I think I needn't say more.

Rating: Awesome

Writing Excuses Podcast

Of late, I've been avidly listening to a podcast called "Writing Excuses". It's run by authors Brandon Sanderson of Mistborn fame and Dan Wells of I Am Not A Serial Killer fame, as well as the creator of the popular webcomic Schlock Mercenary, Howard Tayler.

This podcast has been extremely helpful to me, being full of not only tips to help polish one's writing skills, but also information on the business of writing, such as how to market books and how to get published. I am even going to go so far as to say it should be considered an essential resource for aspiring writers.

You can find the podcast here: http://www.writingexcuses.com/

Enjoy!

Night of Knives

Night of Knives is the first novel by Ian Cameron Esslemont, and the first installment in his epic fantasy series Novels of the Malazan Empire, set in the same world as Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen.

The cover art, by Steve Stone, is pretty cool. In the same style as the newer covers of the Malazan Book of the Fallen novels, with black around the edges blending into dark, melancholy colors, the artwork really captures the atmosphere of Night of Knives and the Malazan world in general.

This book was a treat for me. I absolutely love the Malazan Book of the Fallen. It is, bar none, my favorite fantasy series of all time. That being said, I am going to take a few steps back and try not to let my bias get in the way of analyzing this book.

Taking place within the course of a single night, Night of Knives details the events leading up to Emperor Kellanved's and Dancer's disappearance and Surly's subsequent rise to Empress. This means that the book takes place before any of the books in Malazan Book of the Fallen, making it a prequel of sorts. I would not, however, recommend this book to newcomers to the Malazan world. The two main point-of-view characters in Night of Knives, Kiska and Temper, play very little role in the main series of novels, while extremely important characters in the main series, such as Kellanved, Dancer, and Tayschrenn, have very little revealed about them in Night of Knives. This might confuse new readers, making them ask, "Why are these people important?" or "Who is this guy coming out of nowhere?" You need to get a few books into the main series to truly understand the importance of the events in this book.

At its heart, Night of Knives is all about atmosphere. Esslemont captures the tense, brooding air of the book masterfully. The very first sentence of the first chapter (not the prologue) reads: Out amid the chopping waves of the strait of winds, the sails of an approaching message cutter burned bloody carmine in the day's last light. Another sentence, this time taken from the second part of the prologue, reads: Across the plain, all directions stretching to a featureless horizon, identical, monotonous, a figure hitched a cripple's slow limp. In my opinion, this is the kind of prose that allows for true escapism.

There is action aplenty in Night of Knives, with enough sword-fights, knife-fights, and sorcerous duels to whet any Malazan fan's appetite. Most of it comes from Temper, a grizzled veteran who once fought side-by-side with Dassem Ultor, in both his flashbacks and throughout the night itself. Kiska on the other hand, a young street-thief and spy, spends most of her time following people around, watching them fight, running away, getting captured, tripping, and getting hit in the head so often professional boxers would feel sorry for her.

Honestly, the girl should be brain damaged by now.

Now for the flaws. In the introduction, Steven Erikson tells us that Night of Knives is written in Esslemont's own style, his own voice. The fact is, it feels like Esslemont is trying too hard to be Erikson in his writing. He is still trying to find his own voice; in that way, it feels much like the first half of Gardens of the Moon. There will be parts throughout the novel where the prose doesn't quite live up to the rest, with some sentences and descriptions falling flat. They are relatively few and far between, fortunately.

Another very Erikson-like trait is the enormously long chapters. It is bearable in the Malazan Book of the Fallen due to the high page count, but in a book that has only 298 pages of story, fifty-plus page chapters end up making the pace feel a lot slower than it should.

All-in-all, the book is worth a read. Fans of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series will find it utterly delightful. New readers, skip over this, read Gardens of the Moon through The Bonehunters (even if the latter was published later than this book), and then pick up Night of Knives. You will appreciate the advice, and appreciate the book a whole lot more.

Rating: Good

The Well of Ascension

 

It's a quarter after midnight, my sleep cycles are are impossible to regulate, and I just finished the second book in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, The Well of Ascension, not twenty minutes ago. What better time to write a review?

I'm going to start off the same way I did last time: the cover art. The same artists worked on these ones (Jon Foster for the hardback, Christian McGrath for the mass market paperback) as the first book, and both are of great quality. As before, I prefer the hardback cover art, despite having the paperback version of the book. However, I don't find either cover as enticing as the ones for Mistborn: The Final Empire. I miss the bold lines of the hardback and vibrant color of the paperback in the original book.

Plot twists make The Well of Ascension. They are huge. You will go into reading the second book expecting the unexpected, because of the events in the first, and will still end up being completely surprised. Mr. Sanderson pulls no punches when he intends to throw you off-balance, and he subverts expected outcomes in some very brutal ways. Brutal is not a bad thing in storytelling though—just ask fans (myself among them) of A Song of Ice and Fire. And this is not nearly so brutal as that.

And perhaps that is what makes it so much more emotional when such things occur. In A Song of Ice and Fire, one is wary of getting too attached to the characters (though it happens anyway) because more than likely, some very bad things are going to happen; that isn't the case in Mistborn. Bad things aren't guaranteed to happen. Until they do.

I was just starting to get attached to... when he....

I'm not crying. I just got some dust in my eye. That's all.

The action was a bit more spread out in this book compared with the first, but when it happened, it happened big. You even have an epic battle between armies at the end, as if to make up for the decrease in frequency. There is a very long buildup before it happens, but Mr. Sanderson delivers in great fashion. Did I ever tell you that Sazed is badass? No? Well, you'll find that out once you get to this part.

Oh, and there's an exploding head somewhere in the middle of the book.

The Well of Ascension does not falter in the wake of the first book of the trilogy. It's full of mystery, political maneuvering, action, love (perhaps I should have gone on in more detail about this, but let's just say that Stephenie Meyer could take a lesson from Brandon Sanderson in this department), and great characters. It will not disappoint; to not read this book would be a great loss on your part.

Rating: Awesome

Mistborn: The Final Empire

First post, here we go!

The Mists rule the night.

The Lord Ruler owns the world.

I just finished reading Mistborn: The Final Empire, by Brandon Sanderson. I loved it. Every single word of praise given to this book and author is well-deserved. Before I get into the story, however, lets rewind a bit.

What is the first thing you see when you pick a book up off the shelves? That's right, the cover. A badass cover is going to entice you, while a narmy cover is likely going to make you put that book right back where you got it. Well, no worries here. Pictured at the top is the hardback cover of Mistborn by Jon Foster. Pretty cool, right? Unfortunately, that's not the version I have. I bought the mass-market paperback version—cover art by Christian McGrath—as part of the Mistborn Trilogy Boxed Set. Not nearly as cool, but certainly not ugly.

When you open the book and start reading, you will consider the quality of the cover art to be wholly appropriate. From the very beginning, the story nets you. You are introduced to a bleak, but unique and well-built world, where the sun is red, ash falls from the sky regularly, and slavery is institutionalized. Nobles are callous and cruel, the downtrodden skaa are beaten or even killed without so much as a second thought, and the godlike Lord Ruler of the Final Empire likes things this way. Then you are introduced to Kelsier, an oddly cheerful man who causes no small amount of chaos at the very start, and Vin, a timid skaa thief-girl with a very peculiar power. When they meet, the story takes off and doesn't relent until the very end.

As many will tell you, the magic system in Mistborn is absolutely fascinating. Allomancy, which uses metals as fuel, is well-structured and even fun to learn about. Where magic is vague in many other fantasy worlds, the rules and limitations of Allomancy are clearly defined, and Brandon Sanderson does not stray from those rules, completely extinguishing any possibility of you shaking your head in disbelief.

Also notable is the characterization and character development. Mr. Sanderson creates characters you can actually care about, making you wish them success in the most fantastic manner possible. Of course, things don't always work out the way we want them to, and the unexpected twists and turns in the story only make the characters that much more worth rooting for.

I gladly recommend this book to anyone. The writing is straightforward, the characters believeable, the world intriguing, and although this is the first book in a trilogy, the ending is extremely satisfying.


Rating: Awesome