More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

The Scarab’s Curse (The Savage and Sorcerer, Book 1) by Craig Halloran

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The Scarab’s Curse (The Savage and Sorcerer, Book 1) by Craig Halloran is not deep.  It is light entertainment.  The first scene has the sorcerer Finster sitting in his office, the balcony over a small town bar, giving love (lust) tokens to a client – along with the bad news that the man’s wife has been unfaithful.  This scene is richly detailed, the setting is carefully drawn so we feel the fire’s warmth and see the steep stairs to the balcony.  Soldiers rudely interrupt, arrest Finster and drag him off to the Wizard Haven.

This first scene got me hooked.  I appreciate an author’s skill who is able to create a mood and setting without lots of boring telling, who keeps the narrative alive and moving while filling us in on the back story.  It is not easy to do.  Halloran did a good job on about the first third of the novel, carefully illuminating setting, mood and character.

The last two thirds or so feel rushed, all plot, minimal background or setting or mood and little character development.  Halloran’s writing style is good and he still tells a good story; he kept me reading.  Halloran says in the afterward that he wrote the story in 8 days, two of which were Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so he drafted and finished a reasonably entertaining read in 6 days.  Impressive.

It would have been more impressive had he taking his time and made the last part as good and as enticing as the first third; he would have had a very good novel.  Instead it’s a decent story, but not as good as it could have been.

There is a sequel, The Scarab’s Power, but it’s $2.99 on Amazon, a little pricey if it’s the same overall decent-but-not-great quality as this first novel.   I may look for other books by this author since he is able to tell a good story.

3 Stars

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Hunting in Bruges – Flat Fantasy

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Hunting in Bruges by E. J. Stevens is set in the old Belgium city of Bruges and features Jenna, a young lady who takes herself and her job very seriously.  She is a Hunter, one of a guild that protects us normal folks from nasty predators like vampires, ghouls, grindylow.

Lots of authors use the fantasy niche of protectors protecting humanity from supernatural predators; some, like Jim Butcher, successfully merge fantasy with human emotions and characters, fast plots, compelling narratives, funny and on-tune dialogue to create excellent novels.  Others leave me flat.

I wanted to like this book.  The author was a finalist for a fantasy award and the book had flashes of a real story with interesting characters, enough that I kept reading, hoping the story would improve.  Main character Jenna was obnoxious, arrogant and bossy, dedicated to getting rid of supernatural creepy crawlies, unlikeable.  Dialogue, plot and secondary characters also left me glad to finish and put the book aside.

The author did a nice job describing Bruges and the 1299 wars between Guy of Dampierre, count of Flanders and  Phillip Capet of France that were caused the problems Jenna faces in the story.  E. J. Stevens got me interested enough to look up the history, which makes me wonder why the story and characters in Hunting in Bruges are so dull.

Overall 2 Stars

Well That Was Fun… We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1)

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We are Legion (We are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) is a lot of fun but read the caveats before you buy.

Plot and World Building

Bob sells his software company and signs up to be frozen for eventual resuscitation just before he dies in a traffic accident.  He wakes up about 100 years later, this time as a “replicant”, a personality and mind uploaded into a computer program.  He learns he has zero rights and has the opportunity to become an interstellar probe pilot – or be turned off.  To add challenge, there are 5 other replicants who have the same opportunity.

Bob’s a competitive guy and decides to win.

Bob’s new world is grimmer than ours.  The US no longer exists and is now a theocracy centered in the Pacific Northwest.  Brazil among other countries is also building probes using artificially recreated personalities and the world is in an arms race.  Bob manages to get off the planet and launch towards Epsilon Eridanni just ahead of Brazil’s attack.

Here’s where Bob’s software background gets handy.  Bob is able to weed through his programming and remove several backdoor control points and rebuild himself as autonomous.  He decides to go ahead with the mission anyway.

Bob gets to his target system and explores a bit, encounters the murderous Brazilian probe, fights the Brazilian off.  Bob clones himself and puts his copies – who are also autonomous individuals – into their own spaceships.  Howard and Will return to Earth.  Good thing too, because one of the Brazilian software clones is slinging asteroids – big ones, planet killer types – at Earth.  Over 95% of humanity has died off from the prior wars and now the Brazilian’s asteroid attack will kill everyone left.

Much of the plot after this point turns on how to rescue the remaining people on Earth:  Where to move them to, how to get them there, who first, so on.

Parallel plots center around Bob and the main clone characters.

Characters

Bob is the main character in this novel of course, but he also clones himself and makes Bill and Homer, then many more generations.  Each has slightly different interests but all are quirky, nerdy types, the ones you figure will keep their teen senses of humor forever.

Bob discovers the Deltans, a race of primitive folks just beginning their stone age and is fascinated with the culture.

Will aka Riker (one of too many Star Trek jokes) and Howard  go back to Earth and spend their time helping the folks left, and eventually to evacuate them.

Bill is actually a more interesting character than Bob.  Bill tinkers and explores and develops faster-than-light communication in this first book and later develops other neat whiz-bang things.  Bill also acts as the hub for the Bobiverse as it grows to include about 100 Bobs.

Dennis Taylor does a decent job showing us the different Bob variants although he also does a fair amount of telling.  It seemed like he created so many variants mostly to have a lot of names around; we have 3 or 4 main Bobs in this first book and a few more in each of the sequels that play noticeable roles.

I suspect it’s kind of hard to have a lot of character development when your character is a computer program.  The basic premise is that the program is scanned from Bob’s brain and contains his personality along with generic computer capabilities and this personality can adapt and change.  Still, character development is somewhat thin in this and successive books in the series.

Caveat

As I said in the title of this post, We are Legion (We are Bob) and its sequels are a lot of fun.  The Bobs explore our tiny neighborhood in the galaxy; they meet new civilizations and peoples; they rescue humanity from death.  The book is fast-paced and overall most enjoyable.

However.  The author apparently believes that religious belief is ridiculous and that there are enough Christian nutcases to go create a theocracy.  It reminded me of some of the more fervid nightmares people foamed about during Bush’s presidency. Taylor inserts Trump into the story a bit too.

I don’t know whether the author is an atheist; to me this attitude was just a backdrop for the story.

There is also a lot of gee-whiz going on.  Bob tells us that the basic prerequisites for interstellar work are the 3-D printer and intelligent software.

The 3-D printer is souped up version, able to layer individual atoms to build anything from elaborate computer cores sufficient to hold a Bob clone, to new spacecraft, to bombs.  About the only thing it can’t print is something alive or food.  (I think its problem with food may be more because it would be grossly inefficient rather than technically impossible.)  Now years ago I was a research chemist.  Just because you stick two atoms next to each other, even if aligned just exactly right, Mother Nature is stubborn and you might not get the chemical reaction you want.  I don’t see how a 3-D printer could assemble atoms into plastic, for example.  (Today’s printers today use plastic as raw material.)

Even if you believe the 3-D printer could assemble mining robots, etc., etc., to go build a new spacecraft with computer core, I think the timescale is off.  In the book Bob/Bill/Howard are independent within a few years.   That brings me to the final point, the idea of copying someone into a computer.  Frankly I don’t believe it.  Perhaps it might be possible to load memories into non-brain storage, but I don’t see how copying memories will create a personality, one that is inherently a person, not a program.

If you can ignore the gosh-darn technological wonder doings and don’t take the idiotic anti-Christian backdrop personally then it’s a blast.  Don’t look for outstanding writing or subtle character building; this isn’t literature.  Instead enjoy for what this novel is, entertainment.

5 Stars for entertainment.

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Legends of the First Empire: Age of Myth by Michael J. Sullivan Sequel Doldrums

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Michael J. Sullivan, best known for his Riyria novels, started a new series The Legends of the First Empire with book 1, Age of Myth.  I enjoyed this first novel (reviewed here) and had high hopes for the sequel, Age of Swords.  Unfortunately this second book was hard to read, glum, boring for the first two thirds before speeding into high gear for the last third.  Had I not gotten it through NetGalley I’d have tossed it aside well before the half-way mark.  (I had the same problem with the Riyria Revelations, thoroughly enjoyed book 1, then floundered about half way through book 2.)

Why is the first half of the book hard to read?

Little Character Development and Action

The characters are the same but we don’t see anything new with them.  Persephone is still leading her people despite feeling like a fraud; Raithe is still hanging around but doesn’t quite know why.  We don’t see these people doing anything except packing up to evacuate their old home.  Sullivan doesn’t show us anything new about any of these people, no character development, no witty dialogue.

Mawyndule has a small role that is interesting at first.  A Miralyith young lady plays with his ego and hormones to get Mawyndule to flirt a bit with a Miralyith-supremacy group that manipulates events for a coup attempt.  Any reader can see what the young lady is doing but Mawyndule falls for it.  This episode is important because it frames the reason why Lothian will decide to war against the Rhune.

Women Power

I’m all for strong female leads in fantasy novels and Persephone is a great character.  But Sullivan really went all out in The Age of Swords with smart ladies inventing clever solutions while the men stayed home and boasted and got drunk.  It got a little tedious.

Technological Advancement, Or How to Invent Wheels, Writing and Archery in a Week

Rhune lacked the wheel, knew nothing of iron or even bronze, were unaware of writing and no one had bows and arrows.

Brin developed writing for her own use, a beautiful accomplishment.  Somehow, a week later she was able to decipher tablets worth of texts that she didn’t write.  Moreover, the author of these tablets was an ancient being, alien, not a Fhrey or a dwarf or a Rhune.  I’m sorry.  Literacy is magic, but not that magic.  Look at how we still cannot decipher Linear B which ordinary humans wrote within the last 3500 years.

Roan developed wheels and bows and arrows the same month Brin developed writing.  The real problem is that archery is tricky; you can learn the rudiments of sticking an arrow on a bow and shooting in some general direction but it is difficult to do well.  I doubt anyone could first figure out the bow, then realize arrows need fletching to stabilize, then give to a friend who can master shooting in a few days.  Not going to happen.

Rhune Society and the Fhrey Tribes

We learned a lot about the Rhune society in Age of Myth.  It’s a typical tribal/family system with a chieftan (male) supported by his wife and his trusted lieutenant First Sword.  Each tribal group has a mystic and a Keeper of the Ways, likely female, who keep the tribe centered on its heritage and past knowledge.  The individual tribes vary in terms of how civilized they are, whether they use agriculture or rely on hunting, trade, wealth, so on.

We don’t learn anything more about the Rhunes in Age of Swords that we didn’t know from Age of Myth.

The Fhrey tribes are mostly based on family except for the Miralyith who use magic.  Knowing how societies work when one group has special powers that others lack, we can expect infighting between the Miralyith and the rest, and some does show its ugly head in Age of Myth and now in Age of Swords.  I think Sullivan can do much more with this although he will need a careful hand to keep it interesting and not polemic.

Mystery Character

Trilos, an older Fhrey (at least looks like a Fhrey) sits in front of the Door every day.  Trilos has a suggestion for Imaly, the Fhrey Curator, to avoid tearing the Fhrey apart in a Miralyith vs. everyone else civil war:  Blame the Rhunes.  This could work despite having so many holes and such leaky logic that no one could seriously believe it.  At best it gives Lothian an excuse to avoid a bloodbath at home and instead go kill some negligible folks.

The interesting question is why this mystery person does this.  Does he simply want to avoid Fhrey vs. Fhrey war?  Or does he want the Rhune to war against the Fhrey?  Or something else?

Overall

The Age of Myth set up a detailed fantasy world using characters and its action-filled plot to tell a story and build the world.  Age of Swords spent about 60% of itself re-setting up the same world, characters and plot.  Sullivan could have avoided all this set up, edited out much of the first half, and had a tight, moving novel.

One star for the first two thirds and four stars for the finale.  Let’s say 3 stars.

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Wow! Humor at Its Best – P. G. Wodehouse on Hoopla

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There is no one like P. G. Wodehouse.  No one has his combination of humor, plot, characters and language.  Not to mention the fun of reading about house parties in old castles, valets and butlers, ocean trips across the Atlantic, girls on the make, dressing for dinner, mad coincidences, traveling on the train (leaving just ahead of a wrathful aunt).

Our old library had about 50 Wodehouse novels and I read every one and bought more and read those too.  For years it seemed as if Barnes & Noble or Amazon stocked the same 50 or 60 novels that everyone has – Jeeves and Wooster stories, a few trips to Blandings Castle, Galahad Threepwood and his buddy Uncle Fred – but neglected many of his less well-known stories.

I’m so glad to see Hoopla offers many of these novels that weren’t readily available.  I’m borrowing one a month for now, such a treat.  Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have many more Wodehouse masterpieces now.

The Gem Collector

Jimmy Pitt, once a distinguished safe cracker and jewel thief, now a distinguished rich baronet, is dining alone at the Savoy Hotel when he notices a young man at a nearby table who shows all the signs of not having his wallet.  Jimmy helps the fellow out.  This is how Jimmy meets Spencer Blunt, who just happens to be the son of Lady Jane Blunt, now married to Mr. McEachern, formerly a New York policeman.

Of course Lady Jane and her society don’t know that Mr. McEarchern was a policeman and believe his money came from Wall Street, which is only partially true, as he certainly got some bribes while on that exciting street.  McEarchern and Jimmy know each other (of course) and both know the other had been as crooked as could be, and both want to present reformed faces to the world.

Jimmy goes with Spencer to his mom’s and McEarchern’s home for an extended house party where he again meets Molly, McEarchern’s daughter.  As usual with Wodehouse we have assorted nasty characters, love interests and naturally, Spencer’s obnoxious aunt who owns a pearl collar supposedly worth 40,000 pounds, or $200,000 at the exchange rate of those days.  (This is roughly several million in today’s money.)

If you can see the plot thicken from here, then congratulations, you are a Wodehouse reader.

I thought The Gem Collector was a little more serious than some Wodehouse.  For example, Lady Jane is “drawn to Mr. McEarchern.  Whatever his faults, he had strength; and after her experience of married life with a weak man, Lady Jane had come to the conclusion that strength was the only male quality worth consideration.”  “She suspected no one.  She liked and trusted everybody, which was the reason why she was so popular, and so often taken in.”  McEarchern “had an excellent effect upon him (Spencer) but it had not been pleasant.”

Another character is a card shark who lives from house party to house party and preys on young men.

Both Jimmy and McEearchen are interesting people, as is Spike, Jimmy’s former sidekick now masquerading as his valet.  Will Jimmy restrain his love of fine jewels or will he once more give in and steal the pearls?  Will McEarchern manage to act the gentleman or will he get the horsewhip out for Jimmy?  Will Spike lose his accent?  (I wish.  Spike’s accent was the one negative in the story.)

5 Stars

A Damsel in Distress or No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

This is another romantic comedy with plenty of mistaken identities, meddlesome aunts and love triangles.  Our leading man, George Bevan, is an American playwright currently in London for his hit musical.  He meets Maud when she jumps in his taxi and things go sideways from there.

A Damsel in Distress is also a little bit more serious than most of Wodehouse’s books with all three romances a bit out of the ordinary.  Wodehouse shows real feelings with these characters.  People don’t spend the entire novel ducking aunts or getting clever or hiding behind the sofa; instead we see self-sacrifice and men risking social opprobrium to marry the ladies they love.

The story is still Wodehouse funny, but a bit less fluffy than the Jeeves stories.

Amazon offers A Damsel in Distress; currently the Kindle version is free.

4 Stars

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman Retell Ancient Myths and Stories

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Neil Gaimon wrote Norse Mythology using the ancient stories of the Aesir and Vanir gods, giants, huge wolves, world trees.  His characters include our familar Thor, Odin, Frey and Loki, and the less-familiar Kvasir and Aenir and still more.  Gaiman does an excellent job merging his own style into the narrative flow of the legends and is faithful to the overall feeling that these stories are oral tales.

If you’ve read any of the old myths you know that Thor and Odin and the rest are nothing like the brave and clever heroes in the movies.  Instead they are rather stupid, gullible and greedy, easy pickings for someone like Loki or the dwarf craftsmen.  Gaiman shows us these folk as they were in the legends.

The book includes 15 stories spanning from the creation of the world to Ragnarok and the world that comes after.  It includes some of my favorites featuring Loki and his genius for manipulating and deceiving the other gods.

Relationship Between Loki and Thor

All the movies and books stress the love/distrust between Thor and Loki.  Loki can’t help scheme; it is what he does and Thor can’t help getting mixed up in Loki’s maneuvers.  Gaiman keeps their relationship central to the stories.

My favorite was Freya’s Unusual Wedding.  One of the best passages is “There were things Thor did when something went wrong.  The first thing…was ask himself if what had happened was Loki’s fault.  … So he did the next thing he did when something went wrong, and he went to ask Loki for advice.  Loki was crafty.  Loki would tell him what to do.”

Loki discovers the ogre Thrym stole Thor’s hammer and wants Freya to marry him in exchange.   After several lively discussions Thor dresses up like Freya and goes with Loki to marry Thrym.  Of course Loki and Thor trick Thrym and manage to kill the ogres and escape with virtue intact and hammer in hand.

Finally Loki goes too far.  He causes Hod to kill his brother Balder; he refuses to go along with Hermod when she requests Balder back from Hel; he murders Fimafeng at one feast and gets drunk and insults every god at the next.  Thor captures him in the form of a salmon and takes him back to be punished.  The other gods imprison him with a giant serpent to drip venom onto his face unless faithful Sigyn catches the venom as it drips.  Gaiman added detail and color to this tale, including Loki congratulating himself on hiding so well.

Overall

Norse Mythology is easy to read because the individual tales are all short, making it easy to pick up for a few minutes before dinner or read before bed.  The stories themselves are true to the original which makes them a little hard to read.  We can see the train wreck coming and watch the gods’ cupidity destroy their world.

4 Stars

 

Once Upon a Dream by Liz Braswell – Sleeping Beauty What If? Fairy Tale Retelling

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I wasn’t expecting much from Once Upon A Dream by Liz Braswell.   I didn’t care for her take off on Aladdin in A Whole New World, and Disney published both books, and they are marked YA.  Still I had a 5th borrow available from Hoopla, was sick and Dream sounded OK, so why not?

Let’s be clear.  Once Upon A Dream is not stellar fiction for adults and it’s not going to go on teachers’ lists of books their students must read.  Once Upon A Dream is basically a fast, easy read that is pretty entertaining.  Don’t pick it up if you are hungry for deep thoughts but do read it if you are in the mood for a light story with some engaging characters and interesting plot lines about reality and dreaming.

Once Upon A Dream retells the original Sleeping Beauty story and Disney movie with a twist.  The princess does not wake up and the prince falls asleep.  In Dream, Maleficent tells Aurora that her parents destroyed the country and everything surrounding it, and that Maleficent protected the people and castle behind the rose briars.  Of course this is not true.

Aurora must struggle to wake up; each time she thinks she is awake she realizes that in fact she is not.  In this book she meets Prince Phillip in the woods who travels with her and works to confound the enchantment.

Characters

Don’t look for depth and you’ll be fine.  Braswell portrays Aurora and Phillip as basically what teens think happens when you fall in love, with plenty of drama and not much common sense.  Both have more screen time in this retelling than in the movie but are still rather flat, 2-dimensional.  Aurora does get one good lick in when she tells off Maleficent for cursing a baby just because she felt slighted.  Note that Aurora complains about what Maleficent did to her, not what she did to the kingdom.

Braawell changes the three good fairies the most.  In her retelling we don’t see much to admire:  They are weak, foolish, manipulative.  I thought the sections with the three fairies were the weakest.

Overall

Once Upon A Dream was a pleasant way to spend a couple days while I recovered from an illness.  I wouldn’t seek out more of Braswell’s books, but if I have a free borrow available again and don’t feel good enough to think, well, why not?

3 Stars

The First Global Collapse: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline

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1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) by Eric Cline is both readable and scholarly, a difficult combination for any author.  Cline looks at the 300-500 years before 1177 BC and shows how ancient peoples interacted before several kingdoms mysteriously faded or collapsed around 1177 BC.

For example, he has an interesting chart showing the different individuals that Pharaohs and ancient rulers communicated with – based on actual letters kept in royal archives.  It is eye-opening to see Egyptians talking to Mitanni (northern Mesopotamia) and Cretans and Mycenaean (Greece) and Hittites (Turkey) and Canaanites (Israel, Syrian).  The different rulers addressed each other as “brother” if they were about the same rank, or as “father” or “son” if unequal.  It is fascinating to see who equated themselves with whom!

Rulers were not the only ones who communicated.  Traders sent vessels from the Ageaen to Egypt with luxury goods and even food and prosaic items, and used land routes to get tin from the Afghan mountains for bronze, the essential metal in these cultures.  Archaeology shows Egyptian walls painted with Cretan frescoes; finds Mycenaean beakers in the Near East; unearths Cypriot trading goods across the arc stretching from eastern Italy to the Babylonian cities.

I especially enjoyed Cline’s coverage of this Late Bronze Age culture that occurred about 1500 to 1200 BC.  He used this to show the backdrop for the collapse that occurred sometime around 1177 BC, the year the Egyptian pharaoh writes of the Sea People incursion.  Cline offers several theories for the fall of this interconnected civilization – after first showing that it was indeed a fall – and suggests that the barbarians were not the only cause.  He doesn’t land on any one reason and stresses that it is unreasonable to think Sea People invaders would be responsible equally for wrecking civilizations far inland such as the Kassite empire in Babylonia as for ruining Mycenaea and Ugarit (Syrian coast).

Climate change, drought, famine occurred around this time, but kingdoms had recovered from those before.  Invaders came before, but people had recovered.  Earthquakes happened before but people had recovered.  Yet something happened that caused about a dozen civilizations to contract and some even to collapse over a 10-30 year period.  Cline examines each possible reason for the collapse and rules each of them out as the sole cause.

Instead he posits that the sheer interconnectedness – the early globalization – of the late Bronze Age was part of its downfall.  Once one or two states fell into disarray then trade routes were hurt, possibly even cut completely, and the occasional drought and famine were exacerbated.  It is an interesting idea and one that implies we today need to be careful as we are even more globalized.

I highly recommend that you read the physical book and not the E version so you can flip between text and maps.

5 Stars

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The Invisible Library – A Fantasy for Us Book Lovers

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I wanted to be a librarian until I learned that they had to work, not read the books.  Ugh.  Surrounded by books and not one to read, like a castaway with salt water everywhere and not a drop to drink.  The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman solves the problem of working vs. reading.  Librarians work until they get too old or die or are too badly injured, then retire to read as much as they want as long as they want.  Their library is The Library, the library that connects all the worlds by holding books from every world on its shelves.

The catch is the “work” that Librarians do.  Stealing, buying, stealing, copying, stealing, absconding with, stealing, trading, acquiring books, however it takes to get those elusive copies into the Library.  Think of Shakespeare’s Agamemnon, yes, that type of book, books that are rare even in their home worlds.  Which is why stealing is such a handy skill.  I can’t think of too many other libraries that hire Librarians for their martial arts skills and none where death in the line of duty is common.

If this sounds fascinating, well, it is.  Cogman hit the trifecta on this novel:  Intriguing back story, solid writing, interesting characters.  And it’s all tied up in a nifty plot.

Backstory

There are many worlds that span from extreme reality with order and logic, to extreme chaos with magic and unusual creature.  Dragons rule the reality worlds and Fae own the chaos worlds.  Humans exist in all but are basically powerless in the worlds at either end.  Fae are completely engrossed in their own, individual stories and humans play bit roles controlled by glamour and the Fae will.  Dragons enforce Reality with a capital R; I’m not sure what that would look like other than probably not a lot of fun.

Cogman contains the action in the Library (briefly) and in the London of a single world, one with roughly 19th century technology and considerable magic, also lots of dirt and smoke.  Women wear long skirts and aren’t supposed to be in charge.

Cogman uses the characters to show the world and the magic that underpins this London and the Library.  It takes skill to show a complicated world and backstory without pages of tedious explanation and she does so.

Characters

Heroine Irene is a young Librarian, sent to acquire a version of Grimm’s fairy tales that is unique to one world.  This world is on the normal/chaos boundary, where humans have self will, Fae abound and rule certain countries and London is full of vampires and werewolves.  Irene has a new apprentice, Kai, a very young dragon, which is helpful in this London as otherwise no one would take her seriously.  Irene loves Sherlock Holmes and is excited to meet Vane, a Sherlock look-alike who wants to solve the mystery of the book’s location after it is stolen (although not by Irene).  Irene, Kai and Vane are helped and thwarted by Silver, the Fae ambassador from Lichtenstein (a major power in this world).

As you can see from the characters The Invisible Library is complicated.  And it is delightful.

4+ Stars

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Excalibur Rising – Book 4 – Denouement for King Arthur’s Heirs

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Eileen Enwright Hodges developed a unique twist on the Arthurian legend with her 4-volume Excalibur Rising fantasy.  We see modern Americans and British, thugs and historians, chase after Excalibur, chase all the way into Albion where two of them, Marcus Ryan and Violet, are present when Arthur reclaims Camelot.  Of course it is not to last as Mordred’s descendants have maintained their antipathy and violent ambition and are determined to rule Albion.

The first book was excellent, introducing us to the characters and the fascinating back story Hodges develops that explains the enduring legend despite little historical evidence.   Book 2 was weaker although still enjoyable.  We find Arthur has a legitimate heir, in fact an heir who has a better claim to the throne than Arthur himself.  Given this is a fantasy the claimant is a kid so we have the usual teen angst and drama.  Book 3 disappointed me because all we did was rush from Albion to England, then seek to rush back to Albion, this time with a few more people also fleeing mob retribution.

I wanted to like Book 4.  The writing style is sound and Hodges does a good job building the characters.  Unfortunately the novel has plot holes, situations where stuff just happens and the story problems detract from what should be a solid 4 star story.  Instead of focusing on the people I get annoyed with the situations and that’s not what the author intends.

Book 4 has several “oh brother” moments, with improbable coincidences.  (For example, do we really believe Captain Hannon would just happen to land his runaway ballon next to Marcus?)  Plus we still have a few fundamental problems that paint Hodges into a corner.

  • Is it really likely that Mordred’s family would maintain their obsession for 800 years?  That is 40 generations!  Few families have father-to-son direct lineage for 40 generations, not to mention that the obsession doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Modern Mordred can live here, in modern England, complete with running water, indoor plumbing, comfortable clothing, and he’s educated and familiar with our world.  If I were Mordred I’d have stayed here.  Forget about Albion and make a life here.
  • As Book 4 opens Mordred has been king for 6 years.  He’s rebuilt part of Camelot and levied taxes, a lot of taxes.  But he’s done nothing to modernize his new kingdom, built no roads, established no trade, no patronage of skilled artisans, encouraged no learning.  Granted Mordred is nasty, but why leave a kingdom in ruins when you know how to improve things.
  • Dristan is still 16 on the inside although he looks 22.  Some medieval monarchs succeeded at 16 but they usually had benefits such as training, wise counselors, familiarity with the world.  Dristan is the blacksmith’s son, intelligent but uneducated.  Do we think he’s up to ruling a land torn by dissension and facing invasion from far more modern (and ruthless) neighbors?
  • Merlin tells Dristan to toss away Excalibur, which he does.  We don’t get much explanation.

On the plus side Hodges wraps up the story rather neatly.  Everyone ends up more or less where they should and the good guys mostly win.

Hodges reintroduces Meleanore, the noble woman Mordred intends to marry.  In Book 2 Meleanore sailed away through the mists to claim her family’s birthright, the Far Isles.  She’s back in Book 4 with romantic entanglements; in fact Hodges asked her ARC readers to comment which of two possible suitors Meleanore should choose.  I didn’t like Meleanore in Book 2 and like her even less in Book 4.

Hodges states Book 4 is the last in this series but that leaves us with a kingdom in Dristan’s inexperienced and ignorant hands, an implacable enemy-to-be on the European continent, people and trade and religion in disarray.  Merlin hides Albion once again but it will last only 4 generations, enough that Albion could prepare if it dedicated itself.  How will Dristan prepare the land for the coming conflicts?  Hodges has many more stories to tell should she wish to do so.

3 Stars