Posts Categorized: Review

Review

Review | The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

By Aidan Moher August 19th, 2009
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

The Final Empire

Author – Brandon Sanderson

Paperback
Pages: 672 pages
Publisher: Tor
Release Date: July 31, 2007
ISBN-10: 0765350386
ISBN-13: 978-0765350381

Back in December of 2007, Brandon Sanderson was just like every other new-to-the-scene author, just trying to make his way as a young author of Fantasy novels. He had a few published novels under his belt (and a whole slew more hidden in the deep corners of his house), had been getting good critical acclaim and decent sales, but was far from a household name. Things were looking up for Sanderson, but no one had any idea of just how high he would climb. Then came the announcement: Brandon Sanderson was chosen to complete the late Robert Jordan’s legendary Wheel of Time series.

Since then, Sanderson’s stock has risen to meteoric heights. His own novels have been released to strong critical acclaim and he’s landed himself on the New York Times Bestseller list. Wheel of Time fans wait with bated breath for the fall release of The Gathering Storm, eager and/or reluctant to see whether Sanderson is able to do justice to their favourite work. As someone who will not be reading The Gathering Storm when it arrives, I was nonetheless curious to see what all the fuss was about. I had dipped my toe in his work before (a half-finished copy of Elantris still sits on my bookshelf), and being on the hunt for some meaty Fantasy, I picked up The Final Empire, the first volume of his Mistborn trilogy.
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Review

Review | The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

By Aidan Moher August 6th, 2009
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Angel’s Game

Author – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Hardcover
Pages: 544 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: June 16th, 2009
ISBN-10: 0385528701

Certainly the best novel I’ve read this year, The Shadow of the Wind may very well be my favourite novel I’ve ever read. Zafon’s haunting tale of love, lust, revenge and friendship has everything I could want from a novel and more. It’s not often that a novel can actually live up to the hype surrounding it; it’s even less often when a novel can surpass that hype, but that is exactly what The Shadow of the Wind accomplished. I eagerly await the English translation of El Juego del Angel.

So ended my review of The Shadow of the Wind by Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Strong words, but sounding no less true from where I sit now, months removed from writing them. In fact, my opinion of the novel has only grown, as I look back on it and reminisce – there’s no quibbling about it anymore, The Shadow of the Wind is my favourite novel, by a fair margin.

So where does that put me now, having finished that novel I was so eagerly referring to in the first review? I’ve read The Angel’s Game (the English title of El Juego del Angel), and have had to sit for weeks, letting my thoughts coalesce into something that I can define coherently enough to call it a review.
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Review

Review | Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi

By Aidan Moher July 14th, 2009
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi

Zoe’s Tale

Author – John Scalzi

Paperback
Pages: 416 pages
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Release Date: August 19th, 2008
ISBN-10: 0765356198
ISBN-13: 978-0765356192

John Scalzi’s been a favourite of mine since I discovered him last summer. Full of quick wit and larger-than-life characters, his novels never failed to entertain and reinvigorate my love for reading. His novels never let me down.

Until now, if only just a little bit.

Though Scalzi’s already a big name in the Science Fiction genre (thanks in no little part to his blog, the Whatever), he made some waves earlier this year when Zöe’s Tale was nominated for a Hugo. It’s hard enough to get nominated for a Hugo (just ask this list of authors), but to get nominated for a Best Novel Hugo with a novel that is geared towards a Young Adult (YA) audience is doubly hard. The problem, though, is that I don’t really think Zöe’s Tale deserves it. Put up against the other YA novel nominated in the category, Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, Scalzi’s effort just doesn’t hold up.
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Review

Review | Blood of Ambrose by James Enge

By Aidan Moher June 24th, 2009
Blood of Ambrose by James Enge

Blood of Ambrose

Author – James Enge

Paperback
Pages: 401
Publisher: Pyr
Release Date: April 21, 2009
ISBN-10: 1591027365
ISBN-13: 978-1591027362

You know when you’re reading a novel, and you can pick out the author’s favourite word? Well, James Enge, the author of Blood of Ambrose, loves the word ‘crooked’ – it shows up on every second page, describes a good chunk of the characters in the novel and also happens to be the most accurate descriptor of the novel itself.

Blood of Ambrose is, if nothing else, a crooked novel and a crooked read.

Enge’s prose is nice – easily readable, lots of charm and irreverent wit – but it’s his storytelling and uneven characterization that fails. Enge made a name for himself as a writer of short fiction, and it shows big time in the episodic nature of Blood of Ambrose. Whereas a short story can successfully be written without much of a road plan, it’s much harder to accomplish with a full on novel, and the result here is a mess of plot points and characters that fail to coalesce into a story with any kind of satisfying flow. It never once felt like Enge had any sort of control over the plot, instead he just stumbles along, trying to find it as he goes.
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Review

Review | The Baker’s Boy by J.V. Jones

By Aidan Moher May 21st, 2009
The Baker's Boy by J.V. Jones

The Baker’s Boy

Author – J.V. Jones

Paperback
Pages: 560
Publisher: Aspect
Release Date: June 1st, 1995
ISBN-10: 0446602825
ISBN-13: 978-0446602822

For the past few years my brother has constantly debated over starting George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. He’s thrown the idea at me a few times, but I’ve always had a few words of caution to go along with the praise:

‘Don’t be in a rush to read it,’ I say.

‘But I hear it’s so good!’ he replies.

‘Oh it is! None better.’

‘Then why shouldn’t I read it?’

‘Don’t rush into it,’ I say, ‘because Fantasy won’t be the same for you afterwards.’

Never has this been truer than with J.V. Jones’ The Baker’s Boy, the first volume of her The Book of Words trilogy.

Published at roughly the same time (mid-nineties), Jones’ The Book of Words and Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire tread a lot of similar ground – multiple viewpoint characters, politics, warring countries, light on magic, a world inhabited mostly by humans, eschewing the typical ‘Quest’ archetype – and yet they diverge at the most crucial point: quality.
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