The Dark Elf Trilogy - oldie but goodie

I need to get back up to speed on our reviews, but I also dont want to bore our readers (and myself)  by giving a review of each book in a trilogy that im reading back to back. To help alleviate the problem I read through the entire trilogy and will do one review. The Dark Elf Trilogy was written by R. A. Salvatore. I'm not sure when I picked this series up, but it's one of my first Fantasy novels. You can purchase it as a singular book as the previous link will direct you to, or purchase them separately. I have them from years and years ago and ,while I would love to have a nice, new book, they'll do this way.

The Dark Elf Trilogy Gift Set (Homeland + Exile + Sojourn) - This is probably the best way to pick up the origins story for one of my first fantasy trilogies. The story follows a dark elf by the name of Drizzt. You learn that he is far from a normal dark elf. His race is a malicious group that is really about killing just about anything and everything that gets in their way, including other dark elves. Salvatore takes you from Drizzt's birth to his escape from the oppression of the dark elf life.


R.A. Salvatore writes a good piece of fantasy, but isn't what I would say as one of the great Epic writers. He certainly has a huge number of books based on Drizzt, but they don't have the same cohesiveness that you would expect from Glen Cook or Robert Jordan. That's not to say that they aren't worth reading, but they are the type that you can pick up, read in a couple days, and move on to the next group. I always liked that I could get through about 9 or 10 of his books before getting bored and having to move on to something else. I'm also inclined to wonder if a conclusion will ever be had. I've seen Cook's story end(although I think that he's releasing another Black Company novel) and we're two more novels away from the conclusion of the Wheel of Time. As readers, do we expect to have a real ending? maybe... maybe not....

Rating: 6 CBs... 300 pages is easy to read through.

I am Not a Serial Killer

Additionally (spoiler alert), this was not a good book. 

I should have been tipped off by two things: 1. The book is published by TOR, the publishing company known for publishing my husband's brand of fantasy novel (not that there is anything wrong with that) and 2. The acknowledgments inside thank first and foremost, Brandon Sanderson, author extraordinaire of my husband's brand of fantasy novels.   I discovered both of these things quickly after opening the box in which the book was shipped to me.  What inspired me to go on is a novel of a completely different brand, so boring, I was desperate to read anything else (see previous post on Vanity Fair). 

Thus, I have learned a life lesson.  Do not get desperate to read anything else.  Avoid this with all your being.  The results will not surprise you. 

To be fair, the book might be good for the fantasy loving, teen market (however, I do have strong objections to some of the content for teenagers).  In fact, the more I think about I am not a Serial Killer, the more I wonder if I somehow got suckered into reading the unthinkable...YA!  Ohh the horror that definitely overshadows any of the suspense in this novel.  It wouldn't have been all bad, but then...he whipped out the fantasy elements.  Oh well, not my taste. 

I would like to say that the novel was well written despite my aversion to the subject matter.  I would also like to say that I am glad I spent the time out of my comfort zone.  Too bad I can't say either of those with a straight face. 

Given the fact that this book is the first in a series, I would like to note to the readers of this blog, you will not find further reviews of future incarnations of this series.  I have had enough, thank you!

Rating: 1 out of 7

-L

Good Omens: Good Book

"Archbishop James Usher (1580-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 B.C. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B.C., at exactly 9:00 A.M, because God like to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.

This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour"

When Leah and I went to Phoenix for our anniversary we made a detour to a Border's to kill some time.... big surprise there. ( That reminds me that we need to post about the two small bookstores that we found on our trip - awesome stuff!) Leah picked up an auto-biography on the drummer from Guns'N'Roses and I went searching through the Sci-Fi/Fantasy for something that looked interesting. Now, rewind a couple months and at different Border's I noticed that the movie Coraline was also a book of the same name. Up to this point, I had never heard of Neil Gaiman and mentally added the book to my list of "read someday" books. Fast forward to September and I look past Coraline and notice Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Good Omens for short. After reading the book I was definitely interested. I added that to a small stack of novels - Sanderson, Good Omens, and some other book that was just meh - and went to sit on a step stool next to my wife that was sitting in a comfy chair.

As you can probably tell from the quote above, the book could be incredibly humorous in a slightly irreverent way. The book certainly delivers, but without much irreverence. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett come up with an apocalyptic story that doesn't leave you crying for the protagonist - like The Road (which I would highly recommend... one of the best books that I've read this year). The end of the world is coming and an angel and a demon aren't ready for what's about to happen. They've come to enjoy life among the humans and would prefer to forgo all the destruction and leave things just like they've been. Enter in a couple mistakes, a few wacky characters, and a very young anti-christ and you have Good Omens. They've done a great job at being fun with a serious subject. It does contain QUITE a bit of british humour that I don't always understand, but with a little Monty Python background you should be able to grab bits here and there. I also recommend reading the footnotes for pure enjoyment.

I don't want to spoil any of the book for you - it's just a great 300+ page read that you won't want to put down often. I know that we had a recommendation of Christopher Moore and, by my guess, this is probably as close as we might get.

"God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players*, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

Rating: 9 CBs - it'll make you want to read more from both authors. Gaiman seems to lean towards short stories, and Pratchett has a bunch of Fantasy Novels.

Shadows of DOOOOOOOOOOOM

Shadows of Doom must be a rare book as it's buried 5+ pages in on Amazon's Dennis McKiernan list and priced at a whole cent! I'm assuming that it must be at least a wheat penny in worth. It's the second book in the Iron Tower Trilogy and exactly 300 pages. I found the series at a used book shop(or something similar) on a family trip. I vaguely remember a barn sized room with tons of books. It's been a long time and I'm hoping that my review on finding the first book will sync up with this telling. It might be worth saying that the journey to find the books was probably more interesting than the story itself.

In the first review, I mentioned that Dennis McKiernan is more of a classical fantasy author. He's not really treading any new ground with this series. But after reading the second book, I think I've moved on to a new assumption. It feels like Dennis had The Lord of the Rings open on his desk and was using it as a sort of fantasy story concordance. <---LORD OF THE RINGS SPOILER ALERT---> I imagined it went much like....."I need something interesting to happen" ::searching through LOTR:: "Here we go.... find entrance to lost dwarven kingdom, use magical word to open door, and have a kraken attack and bust up the door". In case you haven't read or seen LOTR... THAT HAPPENS! He'll throw in some other random bits throughout the book, but this felt like it was taken right out of Tolkien's books and pasted in. =\ We have a Fellowship of Four in this book. <---END OF SPOILER--->

Just a few quick items to take with you:

1. If you are slightly interested in reading The Lord of the Rings, but don't want to read so many pages then go watch the movie. If you can't watch the movies(specifically, the extended versions) then read these books. You have about 900 pages between the three which should be a few less than LOTR.

2. I learned a new word and also learned that using old spellings should sometimes be curbed for proper definition. The new word was fulgently. It's such an awesome word that Blogger believes it's misspelled. It means dazzlingly bright. Next, secret and secrete don't mean the same thing. Don't use secrete to attempt to sound more like Olde English!

3. Leading up to the LOTR cave rip-off, I'm assaulted by the knowledge of some ghastly beast that ran tens of thousands of Dwarves from their favourite home. The beast was imprisoned during the great war and the prison was forgotten. The Dwarves dug into the prison and released the evil within. It proceeded to kill many a dwarf, some elves, and probably a few rodents. Even one of the great Dwarven heroes made it as far as the second corner before dying. The Gargon, ghastly beast, could only be contained by the long-dead wizards, and the group didn't have any of those. Wouldn't you think that this monster was something special? Nah, the moment comes and it ends up being an eight foot tall bipedal lizard. =\ At that point, the lizard ends up being taken out by one elf, one dwarf, one human and a hobbit... err, Warrow. The bane of all cave dwelling existence... slayer of all kind... gets killed by four "heroes". 

Meh.....

Rating: 3CBs - becoming more disappointed as the series goes on.

-D

Vanity of Vanities

I think it has been over a month since I have posted anything on this blog.  So what happened to a book a week? 

Do you ever put yourself on an unintended sabbatical from those things which you really enjoy?  You just slowly move away from that which brings you joy and then a little while later sense the distance by the small amount of empty space in your life.  Okay, maybe it's just me, but my unintended sabbatical (in the midst of a challenge to read a book a week for a year) has been from reading and then writing about it here.  Not that I haven't been reading at all, I just have not been reading everyday.   The thrill is gone. 

The culprit?  Vanity Fair! 

I just can't seem to propel myself through this one.  I know there must be some of you out there who will cry out (in horror), "It's such a good book."  Really?   I can't say I follow.  I have been reading this book for a month (A MONTH) and I am not even half way through it.  But, I insist on plodding through until the end, because I doubt I would pick it up again (and if I did, that I would remember ANY of the characters, because I only vaguely can point them out now).    At the moment it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I am pressing on. 

Have you read a book you thought would never end, but perservered?  Was it worth it?

Any encouragement would be appreciated.  There just may be a scathing review in it for you.

-L

The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson

If you're new to the website you might not know that my wife was able to get me an advance reading copy of Brandon Sanderson's new novel The Way of Kings. That's the first time that I've received a book that wasn't ready or out for publication - pretty cool stuff. It's also my first Brandon Sanderson written story. The last Wheel of Time novel was written and finished by Brandon, but the story and notes were all based off of Robert Jordan's work. I was still impressed, but it's nice to get a feel for the author inside his own works. In saying that, I do believe that Sanderson is going to fill the role of epic fantasy author for the next few years.

The Way of Kings is the first novel in what appears to be a project on scale with The Wheel of Time or George R.R. Martin's epic. A good friend of mine assures me that Sanderson completes his stories much faster than the last two authors, and I do hope that's true. I'm not sure two decades of waiting for the story to finish is always a worthy cause. This is a new world with new rules. In a lot of ways, it has that in common with Jordan's or Tolkien's work. The creatures, landscape, magic system, and capabilities of it's inhabitants are fresh. You won't see a Trolloc roaming around in TWoK, or find yourself wondering where Galadriel might pop up. The world itself has an aquatic nature to it. Most flora and fauna are based off of sea life - think crabs, barnacles, shrimp, and sea sponges. The magic is innovative and imaginative.

The book travels across a world that's being torn by war, but otherwise pretty quiet. You follow four main characters with the book focused mostly on two of those. They seem to all be heading towards a central point but this book doesn't quite get you there. The Way of Kings is almost a taste of what's to come... or better yet, a thousand page prologue. You learn a little bit about the world, a little bit about the characters, and a little bit about the danger that the protagonists will face in the next book. If there was something that would take away from the story, it would be the lack of a true conclusion or climax. The revelation in the last 40 or so pages wasn't as awe inspiring as in other books, but wasn't necessary. It's an engaging book that should whet the appetite for the rest of the series. Robert Jordan was the same way with WoT and it's worked out quite well for him.

If you're looking for a new fantasy author to pick up, then definitely try out Brandon Sanderson. I might recommend reading through one of his other series for the sake of finishing up the whole story. With The Way of Kings you'll be stuck waiting a while before coming to a conclusion.... that'll be a big problem for those that don't re-read books like I tend to do.

Rating: 8 CBs - he'll be a worthy successor to the fantasy epic, or at least give some of the establishment a run for their money(that's you Tad Williams, Martin, and Cook)

-D

Wholly unrelated to book reading - FOOD & DRINK!

Just a quick update - if you head by our other blogs(those little circular images on the right hand side) you can see where we ate and what I (L isn't drink adventurous) drank during our anniversary. We live in an area that doesn't have great food. =( In fact, we drove 30 miles yesterday just to get to a Chili's restaurant! That's how "meh" the Desert is when it comes to food.

Enjoy!

-D