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

Sad Times for Max – A Second Chance – Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book #3

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Have you ever shut someone out of your heart because you could not accept something they did?  They did something so heinous that you could not see them with loving eyes?  Max and Leon come to this point in A Second Chance, where both look at the other and see behavior that they cannot accept.

Max and the historical research unit at St. Mary’s are in for grim times in book #3, A Second Chance.  Max and Leon have their ups and downs, mostly because they don’t or can’t talk to each other and Max is an emotional midget, albeit a midget who takes the first steps to growing up.  Unfortunately she and Leon come to a point where neither can tolerate the other’s action and attitude.

The novel works on two levels:  plot and character.  The plot involves the usual mayhem punctuated with serious events, concussion by cheese and mass rape and murder in Troy.  The historians thread their way through the Trojan war, they observe Troy at peace before the Greeks, then observe Troy as it falls.  No one could see this and remain unmoved.

If we view the St. Mary’s stories purely as historical fiction they are outstanding as Taylor brings the conflicts and the historical people to life.  She adds details to the stories and verisimilitude by having a real observer right there to see and feel everything.  Max enjoys the peaceful year before the Greek war and walks the Trojan streets, watches the royal family and mingles with the inhabitants, and Max is a keen observer.  She sees it, records it and tells it so that we are there too.

The characters’ growth parallels the historical actions.  Max shuts Leon out, but too late realizes she still cares and that manic action doesn’t do much to heal heartbreak.  (Max’s go-to strategy for any emotional upset mixes work and booze.)  She very slowly comes to realize that just maybe she made a mistake when the question becomes moot.

Jodi Taylor does a fairly good job on the people, although I’ve noticed her female leads in this series and the Nothing Girl are emotionally stunted and/or not able to step up like adults and take responsibility for their own future.  Max hides behind “history” and her job and settles in to nurse a grudge.  Is her grudge justified?  Somewhat, yes.  But that’s what it means to be an adult and to love someone:  It’s an act of will, and no, you will not always like (or even tolerate) the one you love.

Max reveals a streak of cowardice that turned me off.  She didn’t even want to try to save a little boy, not even to make a short side trip in space and not in time to get him to a safer place.  It was only later that she realized she could have tried something, and in fact, should have done so.

The best part of this novel is the up close and personal view of Troy and Agincourt.  We are right there.  Taylor adds a lot of guesswork and embellishes the story from the bare facts we know, so the plain narrative comes alive and we see and feel the Trojans’ terror and the desperate clash of armies.  I suspect many of her readers are closet historians, or like me, interested but ignorant, and that’s one reason we love the books.

Why is it called A Second Chance?  Max gets a second chance – more than one actually – including the biggest chance of all at the end.

4 Stars

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Time Travel for Historians – Just One Damned Thing After Another – Jodi Taylor

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Just One Damned Thing After Another is a lot of fun wrapped around people and history, full of quirky humor and an incitement to delve into Wikipedia.  (I only thought I knew some of these events!)  It is the first of several books featuring Max, a historian working at St. Mary’s Institute for Historical Research which “investigate major historical events in contemporary time”, i.e., sends historians back in time to observe and record what really happened.

Max is a complex character who tries desperately to be one-dimensional, hard-drinking, loud, incorrigibly curious, uncaring, but her bursts of common sense and exposure to death and misery make her far more than the cardboard cutout she wants to be.  Max prides herself on her attitude and her “we can do this” approach, but gets sidetracked by the people around her and the human misery she views as part of her job.

Overall the book is reasonably well-written, although it jumps around a lot and we often lose the sense of time passing.  Everyone around Max is gung-ho dedicated to history (or to historically-inspired R&D) to the point where it seems almost a caricature.  Would you really be that thrilled to go witness a hospital blowing up after The Battle of the Somme?

These events take a toll on Max and the others.  She and a few others compartmentalize, separate their feelings from their experiences.  Some leave St. Mary’s.  Some act stupid.  To me the biggest weakness of this first novel and all the others is how poorly the characters face and deal with the emotional toll from seeing other people die, including all too often, their friends and colleagues.

I loved the plausible historical accuracy – of course the author is guessing for meat to add to history’s bones – and the novel inspired me to check references to learn more about the background and key players in these scenarios.

This first novel takes Max and colleagues back to Edward the Confessor’s coronation, World War 1 and the Cretaceous, back to the Cretaceous twice (one an unauthorized rescue), on to the burning Library of Alexandria to rescue scrolls. That’s quite a range although Max manages to get injured in two of the events and wet on by colleague and friend Peterson in the other.  History, you see, is jealous of herself and barely tolerates historians observing.  She does not tolerate even tiny interference, such as warning a mugging victim.

The plot is full and busy and moves at lightening speed.

There are plot holes.  For example, why does Thirsk University fund St. Mary’s?  How on earth can it justify the enormous expense for historical research?  (We learn in a later novella that St. Mary’s founder actually captures British government support and patronage which filters through Thrisk.)  Even so it is hard to imagine the funding nightmares.

There is one serious sex scene in this first novel that I did not see as necessary.  Just One Damned Thing After Another has the usual vulgarities and a couple blasphemies against the name of the Lord.  I didn’t like either the smutty scenes or the blasphemy, but I’ve learned to read past them.

The biggest flaw from a narrative / literature perspective is the constant harping on historians being disaster magnets.  They apparently have the attention span of a fly and can’t stop themselves from acting stupid.  Jodi Taylor uses this as a convenient catch-all to explain any inconsistencies or flights of fancy that creep in.  I understand someone not wanting to stop a good thing (like watching dinosaurs) to deal with housekeeping, but the characters do this all the time and it gets a little annoying.

Overall this is a very enjoyable start to a very enjoyable series.  I would not recommend reading all the books immediately after one another because some of the flaws become obnoxious with repititon.  I do recommend that you read the first three books close together, Just One Damned Thing After Another, A Symphony of Echoes, and A Second Chance because these flow one after the other.

4 Stars – Almost 5

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Friends at Thrush Green – Gentle English Country Town Novel by Miss Read

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If you get tired of novels about married angst, or alien invasions, or children misbehaving, then try Miss Read’s novels set in small English villages.  Her people enjoy life; they meet problems and forge through, always with neighbors and friends along to help (or gossip).

I enjoy Miss Read’s novels.  I like to read about people whom I would like to know in person, and people who embody the best of human nature, generally good but imperfect, with failings large and small.  I like that there is little or no profanity, no vulgarity, no smut, no blasphemy.  The characters attend church, grocery shop, help out a neighbor, clean the house, enjoy life as it comes.

The characters in Friends at Thrush Green confront serious problems.  Elderly Bertha Lovelocks is senile and has taken to thieving, driving her gentle sister nearly to tears.  Margaret Lester is an alcoholic.  Percy needs a wife and several young ladies need to get married suddenly.  Friends come together to help.

The setting is enjoyable.  We are in a tiny village where not everyone has a telephone.  No cell phones or internet mar the peace and the biggest hobby is gardening.  This is a peaceful novel about life in a quiet English village.

I think this novel may be easier to read in print format.  If you want to look up a given character (is he the minister or the retired doctor??) it is much easier to flip back in a print book.

4 Stars

Don’t Look at the Cover! Piercing the Veil: A Supernatural Occult Thriller by Guy Riessen

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Ignore the cover.  Please.  This book is pretty good, enjoyable with plenty of nutty characters, a wild plot and enough background to make it all work.  Just get by the cover, open it up and enjoy.

Guy Riessen creates a world where all the Lovecraft horrors are real, where the veil between our world and Evil is slim and frayed.  And researchers/monster-busters Derrick and Howard, with their team members Mary and Sara, are professors at Miskatonic U in the day and creepazoid slayers at night.  Derrick teaches astrophysics and is an electronics whiz with eidetic memory.  Howard, former military and NAS, is a peerless sharpshooter, teaches history and is a linguist.  Mary is a medical doctor and scientist.  Sara leads the team.

The chemistry among the team members is real and believable and makes the book.  We open with Derrick and Howard investigating a poltergeist report in national forest somewhere remote in California.  They enter a deserted house, find the meth operators cut up in the basement and barely manage to escape a giant bone monster.  In fact Derrick breaks his leg and the necromancer behind the trouble captures Derrick to learn as much as he can about security around artifacts that Miskatonic holds.

This small part and a few others were a bit confusing.  Howard gets away but Derrick doesn’t, yet Howard leaves and we don’t even see where the necromancer had been hiding.  With books like Piercing the Veil you usually find a few implausible leaps of plot, and if the author is good you don’t stop reading, you shrug and go on.  That’s what I did.

I’ve been reading several books in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series and found Piercing the Veil a notch above for readability and enjoyment.  (Correia spends way too much time describing his guns.)  It reminds me of Charles Stross’ Laundry series more than anything else, but with less moral ambiguity, less bureaucracy, and more interesting people and more fun.

Characters

Piercing the Veil  spends many pages showing the interplay between Howard and Derrick.  Both are – or can be – completely serious, adult, dedicated.  In the meantime they play games like Dungeons and Dragons, drink beer and watch bad movies.  They are friends.  Derrick is the prototypical clueless nerd, desperate to go past “colleagues and friends” into romance land with Sara, but he’s afraid and keeps waiting for the perfect moment.  Howard urges him to man up, stop waiting and take a chance but it doesn’t happen here.

Riessen describes Mary as the stereotype girl scientist, right down to glasses, lab coat and pocket protector, but it’s obvious that Mary is far more.  She and Sara risk their lives working with Howard and Derrick to stop the Shadow Men, then the necromancer.  All four have unique gifts and one of Mary’s is the ability to see real vs. fake artifacts, to see through magical deceptions.  The book ends with her discovering that the recovered artifacts are mostly fake…leading of course to a sequel!

We don’t get a good idea of the villainous necromancer.  He’s obviously short on ethics, but we don’t know much about his motivation.  You have to be pretty motivated to kill a bunch of people, suck an entire town into worshiping the elder pseudo-gods, kill even more people, sacrifice more people, and send Shadows against the Miskatonic team.  We know his wife and son were killed in a brutal attack, but not who killed them, why or how that connects to his nastiness now.  That’s probably in the sequel too.

Overall

Piercing the Veil is not great literature.  it is entertainment.  It’s reasonably well-written, with a fast plot that’s fun to read, with characters that I liked, with a villain that is not so villainous as to be unbelievable.  I will certainly look for the sequel.

I tend to rate books at face value; so a book that aims to entertain and does so, that only minor eye-rolling moments, that keeps my interest, that I look forward to reading, that I stayed up to finish, I rate based on the entertainment value, not for its literary quality.

4 Stars (entertainment)

Assassin’s Price by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Imager Series, Finally a Different Hero

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If you read any of L. E. Modesitt, Jr.’s novels you are familiar with the basic plot and characters in his books.  We have the quintessential hero, a man (or woman in the Soprano Sorceress series) who has unusual talents, sees deeper and farther than anyone else, is self-controlled and emotionally disciplined, struggles to right deep-seated wrongs despite some amount of suffering.  The hero is always the person with the talent, the person who grins and ruefully shakes his head at the unfairness and how other don’t understand.  The hero is never the actual political leader.

In fact, most of Modesitt’s rulers and leaders are obsessed with power and money and seem to care little for the health of their people.  It’s the talented hero who cares and who forces the leader/ruler into governing wisely.  The other books in the third Imager series, Madness in Solidar and Treachery’s Tools, fit this formula.  Alastar is the enormously powerful imager who leads the collegium to once again serve Solidar and who pushes ruler Rex Lorien to act.

Assassin’s Price is refreshingly different as to the hero.  Alastar and the imagers play supporting roles and the lead is young Charyn, heir to Lorien.  The novel opens with Charyn acting as do most of Modesitt’s young heirs, petulantly demanding better pistols to overcome his inability to hit targets when he shoots.  We don’t see what exactly causes it, but Charyn grows up, matures to take responsible interest in commerce, innovation, people, the country’s finances, legal matters.

Charyn’s father doesn’t want him involved in much, seemingly resents his son’s interest, so Charyn does some of his work quietly.  For example, he opens a trading account at the new exchange so he can learn about the factoring businesses that seem to be growing ever larger and richer.

Villains in the past novels play returning roles in Assassin’s Price and we see new, different threats and conspiracies.  We get hints at the end that Charyn may increase council involvement in governing Solidar, which may eventually cause the Rex to fade out.  (From the first Imager novels set several hundred years after Assassin’s Price we know the Rex institution does not last.)  It will be interesting to see how this plays out in sequels.

Pacing

I’ve complained about Modesitt’s glacial pacing in past novels, books that go on and on without telling us anything new about the people or that have odd scenes that do nothing to advance the plot.  People walk and armies march for pages and pages, never really doing much in several Recluce novels, notably Heritage of Cyador and The Mongrel Mage.  (The bird attack in Antiagon Fire is a good example of an odd scene that adds bulk without content.)

Assassin’s Price moves along well.  There are a few slow spots and a few scenes that move a little too quickly.  The confrontations with Ryel and with his wife just happen, blink, and you miss them.  But overall this novel has the quality I enjoyed so much with Imager and Scholar.  It is by far the best of this new series.

Overall

I enjoyed Assassin’s Price considerably more than most of Modesitt’s recent work.   He has a story to tell, an interesting and likable character, decent writing, his usual solid world building.

4 Stars

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Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge by John Ringo in Larry Correia MHI Universe

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I enjoyed Monster Hunter Files short stories (see review here) and requested several more in the series from our library.  First one up was Monster Hunter Memoirs:  Grunge, written by John Ringo using the backstory and characters that Larry Correia created for his Monster Hunter International series.

John Ringo writes well-crafted, fast-paced near future science fiction and fantasy novels, many excellent and a few (Ghost) that are unreadable if you aren’t into smutty violence.  He is generous to fault sharing his thoughts about society and politics.  The other thing Ringo novels have is bad language, lots and lots of cussing and vulgarities.  Grunge has cussing and violence and sociology and it also has a good story with interesting, likable characters.

Synopsis

Our lead character, Chad, has two professors for parents, mom an unrepentant hippy type and dad a womanizer who hunts coeds.  Chad dislikes his mother – it is mutual, in fact she hates him – and for spite decides to get a perfect C average, 2.00000, in high school.  That is harder than it sounds since you have to know the right answers in order to get half of them wrong.  He joins the Marines and dies in the Beirut barracks bombing.

The story picks up when St. Peter asks Chad to forego heaven in favor of a mission on Earth.  Chad agrees, wakes up into a shattered, agonizing body, heals in Bethseda and looks for the sign God promised him, 57.  The 57 eventually leads him to a zombie outbreak where he meets the Monster Control Bureau (FBI) and MHI (Monster Hunter International, a for-profit eradication company).  The story goes on from there, through his training and first many missions.

Grunge has some excellent, funny moments that highlight the dead serious situation that Chad is tasks to resolve.  The Old Ones are waking up and causing mischief – think vampires, werewolves, giant blood-sucking spiders, zombies, ghouls etc. and etc.  The Fae are not pretty Disney creatures but powerful creatures who do not like humans.  The vampires do not sparkle and do not seduce nice young ladies.  To quote Chad, if an Old One or Fae got into the world the whole world would scream for decades until there is no one left.

Characters

Thus Chad justifies his life.  He hunts monsters for a living, plays violin as a hobby, studies languages for two PhDs and is a lounge lizard the rest of the time.  He looks at cute coeds the way the rest of us look at spaghetti (or chocolate).  He becomes a Catholic but somehow doesn’t quite get the 6th commandment and thinks fornication is a Sunday-Saturday avocation.

Chad makes the novel work.  Ringo did a great job on him; he feels like a real person with virtues and failings, odd habits and quirks. Ringo doesn’t spend as much time on the other characters, enough that they too feel like real people, although with less detail.

Now for the less pleasant parts.  Chad talks about girls but we do not have sex scenes, more lust scenes.  There are a couple blasphemies, F bombs and other vulgarities, lots of violence.  Chad talks about his guns, but nowhere near as much or as annoyingly, as Larry Correia did in Monster Hunter International.  (I’ve not figured out why, but a lot of science fiction authors bore the heck out of me by describing space ships and lasers in overabundant detail, and it seems we can’t get away from it even with books like this with not a space ship in sight.  All I need to know is that 1., it’s a gun; 2., it’s big; and 3., it kills things.  I do not care what type and how big it is and what type of ammunition it uses, but apparently a lot of science fiction readers enjoy that stuff.  Me, I skim through those sections if the story is good and toss the book if it’s not.)

I recommend Monster Hunter Memoirs:  Grunge if you enjoy fast-paced science fiction-y fantasy or lots of action or a complex character.

4 Stars

The Monster Hunter Files Anthology of Fun Short Stories by 18 Fantasy Authors

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I had never heard of Larry Coreia or the Monster Hunter International novels before finding this anthology, The Monster Hunter Files, by chance in our library’s New Book section.  The cover is lurid, with a lady spiffed up in a typical ridiculous costume of bare midriff with cleavage and lots of black and red, slashing a nasty looking scaly creature with two long swords.  Anyone who reads fantasy knows the covers often feature midriffs and cleavage, so we overlook that and check out the author list and theme.  Hmm.  Two authors that I often like, Jim Butcher and John Ringo.  Why not give it a try?

Thistle, by Larry Correia (original Monster Hunter International author) is excellent, albeit with a twist ending.  The story has plenty of action and delivers a real sense of the desert Southwest, its dusty heat, beat up barely-making-ends-meet homes, the sun, the dry vegetation.  We meet Owen Pitt, main character in the first Monster Hunter novel, and see him risk his life to save a little girl.  Thistle is pretty good, enough that I requested a few more books in the series from our library.

Small Problems by Jim Butcher was one of my favorites.  We have the slightly askew character with unexpected depths of humanity and heroism, a unique set of challenges, plus plenty of danger.  In other words, classic Jim Butcher.  I hope we meet up with Sid again in other Monster Hunter books.

Darkness Under the Mountain by Mike Kupari felt a little uneven although enjoyable.  I felt it ended just when it needed to start.

A Knight of the Enchanted Forest is a real treat, picking up on the Monster Hunter universe’s version of “elves” and introducing Glad, a young girl who likes Twinkies and Ho Hos and wins at Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  Glad is also a hard-nosed realist who can’t help it that no one believes that her science teacher really is a werewolf.  That’s OK because she’s willing to tackle the gnomes infesting the Enchanted Forest trailer park.  The author, Jessica Day George, combines a light-hearted feeling with a true sense of mission – those gnomes really are repulsive – and brings Glad, her father Winston and Her Majesty to life.

The story was good enough that I looked for novels by George; however she writes mostly YA fantasy, one of which I tried and did not care for, and Silver In The Blood, a fantasy meant for adults and older teens, which is quite good.

Another author who is new to me is Quincy J. Allen, writer of Sons of the Father.  This particular story is intense plot with fast action, not a lot of characterization or setting, an enjoyable read.

John Ringo’s The Case of the Ghastly Spectre reminds me a bit of his Hot Gate series and The Last Centurion, a good story, well written, some pontificating, a main character who wins with his head, not just his fists or his gun.

Hunter Born by Sarah A Hoyt is another story with a young lady heroine, this time Julie Shackleford age 16 and going to her first prom.  Sadly her date is an incubus who has other things in mind than dancing.

The other stories are also pretty good.  Unlike many anthologies all the contributors deliver at least a decent tale, some good and a few very good to excellent.  All the authors kept to the feel of the Monster Hunter International universe; several picked up on characters that got tiny mentions in other novels and built full stories around them.  The Jessica Day George is a good example of this.

The editors are to be commended for delivering a consistent good quality product in an anthology where the unifying factor is the underlying theme and background story.  Overall excellent job.

4 Stars

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The Terran Consensus by Scott Washburn: With Friends Like This…

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Here’s a dilemma for you:

Some folks that you really don’t like, who manipulated and conned you for years, had a fight in your back yard.  Problem is, the guys they fought are nosing around, suspicious and convinced you are buddies with the first group, since after all, they were camped out in your yard and left their stuff all around your place.  In fact you are pretty sure group 2 believes in shooting first, questions later.  What do you do?

A.  Ally with group 1, the con men, and defend against group 2.
or
B.  Kick out group 1, dump everything they ever gave you – and hope you didn’t miss any of it – plead innocence with group 2 and hope they buy it.  If they don’t believe you, well, say good-bye to human civilization.

Bad choices, eh?  That’s the set up with The Terran Consensus.

Group 1, the Somerans, have been watching and manipulating us for the last 200 years.  In fact they insinuated their technology into ours, their beliefs into our popular entertainment and have even taken humans away to live on their planet.  Now it’s time for them to take a more active role in our governments.  They bring a new ship with several humans they have trained to become leaders in our world, all behind the scenes and in secret.

Their goal is to develop us as allies in their centuries long war with the Brak-Shar and they weren’t fussy how they do it or who they maneuver into power, i.e., Hitler was one of their little projects.  Several times the expedition leader observes that there is no morality or immorality associated with their human involvement since morality is exclusive to one’s own species.   (Not so and I don’t think too many humans would agree with this boundary.  We see morality dealing with animals.)

On the other hand, Group 2, the Brak-Shar, are not so good either.  They assumed the humans in the earth space station were with the Somerans, despite no evidence, and killed as many as they could.  When the Somerans tell us that the Brak-Shar are coming and that they will without a doubt disbelieve we are nothing more than trading partners, we are in deep trouble.

We take our best shot at protecting our planet and people and I’m not going to spoil by telling you what Earth chooses.

Summary

The plot is good, a little more believable and complex than many first contact stories and Washburn uses it to show us the characters.  I especially liked his portrayal of the Someran leader, Keeradoth.  We see him question his own people’s methods and goals and see him become more human over time, more aligned to us.  Keeradoth contemplates packing up and high tailing it for home, leaving Earth to work out what they can with the Brak-Shar.  But he decides that he owes us some help after manipulating us into the predicament.

The writing style is good too, with enjoyable dialogue and a reasonably fast pace.  Part of the ending is a bit over the top, but perfectly fine given the overall story.

I enjoyed The Terran Consensus and found it easy to follow, with interesting characters and conflicts.  Technology and gee-whiz space shenanigans are low key and only there to provide setting, not to detract from people

4 Stars

 

 

Review: Tricked Iron Druid Chronicles #4 Kevin Hearne Fantasy Magic

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I finally figured out what bothered me about the first three books in the Iron Druid Chronicles.  They all read like a series of vignettes, like short stories or a made-for-television series.  Yes, the plot moved from episode to episode, but you could easily parse the novels into smaller stories.

Tricked is the first book in the series that reads like a novel. Sure, you could probably turn this into television episodes too, but the individual plot elements and characters flow from one to the next.  Tricked takes place in the American Southwest with a plot as old as the ancient Greek tragedies.  Hubris is the downfall.

Tricked is a better book.  Better written, more carefully structured with characters that you cared about.  I’m still not enamored of the main character, Atticus O’Sullivan, but he’s interesting and some side characters like Frank are real people.  Atticus is starting to realize that he’s in a world of hurt.  He made some stupid mistakes, and as he says midway into the novel, he made them out of pride and the desire to think well of himself.  Now he’s paying, and he’ll pay again and again.

Worse from Atticus’ point of view, fixing his mistakes meant he asked help from Coyote, the Navaho Trickster god.  Bad, bad move.  Coyote may be good hearted – sometimes – but he’s not someone you trust.  Despite knowing this, Atticus agrees to a deal without knowing the full conditions, and sure enough, Coyote has a hidden agenda.  Or two.  Or three.   Hidden agendas are what trickster gods are all about after all.  Once more Atticus lets his pride get him in trouble.

This time others get hurt.  Coyote’s second (or third) agenda is getting rid of skinwalkers, evil brothers with powers, strength and speed augmented by Hell; of course Atticus gets stuck helping.  He rids the world of these two skinwalkers but at the price of several good people.

The end of the novel sets us up for volume 5 of the Iron Druid Chronicles, Trapped. I’ve not read Trapped yet, but it’s on my want list!

4 Stars

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Interesting, Fun and a Teaser – The Hawk and His Boy by Christopher Bunn

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I love good fantasy and this first book, The Hawk and His Boy by new author Christopher Bunn has the makings of a good story.  The story could have been contrived and formulaic using familiar characters – a young thief, a set of scholars in search of a long lost book, a guardian type girl – but Christopher Bunn added unusual twists and lovely settings.

My favorite character was Levoreth, the niece of a duke and far more than she appears. The scenes with Levoreth remind me of Patricia McKillip’s novels with the same attention to setting and character which make McKillip’s novels engrossing. Levoreth’s dialogue with the beasts who acknowledge her as Mistress of Mistresses and with her aunt are excellent.

The nominal hero is the young thief boy Jute, a mystery character who is only sketched in.  Jute tells us himself he doesn’t know who he is and we don’t learn much more about him.  The Knife is well drawn as are many of the lesser characters.

It was obvious reading The Hawk and His Boy that it was setting the stage for further novels. In fact the tagline at Amazon is that The Hawk and His Boy is volume one of the Tormay Trilogy.

The book is short at 210 pages in the paperback. I bought the sequel immediately which is longer. Look for future posts on the next two books and likely more by Christopher Bunn as he develops future fantasy worlds.

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