James Mordechai
I picked this novelette up because I wanted to read a short SF story, but once I finished it I wished it had been much longer! It's difficult to review this short story without spoiling much of it, but what I can say is that in this future Asian metropolis nothing is what it seems and there are several plot-twists that will give you that “aha!” moment. It's all about memories and how in a dystopia future these can be traded and uploaded in other people's minds. I'd recommend this to anyone that would like to read an original and action-packed SF story without investing too much time in thick trilogies that nowadays have become the norm. I'm looking forward to reading more from Frasier Armitage.
As someone interested in Greek/Roman mythology I did quite enjoy this different take on it. How can we classify it? It is definitely focused on deities from the past, like a mythological story, but it is without a doubt a fantasy set in an unspecified time in the future. There are two pantheons of gods, the classical Greek/Roman one and the Viking one, all victims or perpetrators of machinations in order to survive a cataclysmic event that is endangering their universe. The story feels like an oniric journey of the main character through an alien world and... alien body, given that we start the novel when she wakes up in someone else's body. It is told through her point of view, so we readers have to discover all the things that are happening at her pace.
I have to say that I'm not a great fan of first person present tense stories so it took me a while to get used to it. What helped me was the fact that there were shifts between first person present tense and third person past tense. The latter quite important in order to understand what is going on, given that the main character is clueless for most of the novel, until the very end. If you find yourself a bit lost among the many characters, like it happened to myself, just keep going because it will all be revealed at the very end.
The only issue I had was about the too many characters. Sometimes it was difficult to follow dialogues and relationships between them and given that I'm not that familiar with Norse mythology as I'm sure many others are, it would probably have helped to have a short glossary at the end with the list of the deities.
Apart from this I highly recommend this debut novel to all the mythology enthusiasts that wants to enjoy a different take on it. I'm looking forward for the next one!
Very interesting inter-woven collection of short stories. I picked this up because I was a bit tired of 800 pages-long fantasy tomes part of never ending 10 books series and I was told this could have been up my street. And it definitely was what I was looking for. I was so pleased that after years I could finally read fantasy without the 800 pages commitment. I don't want to spoil much in this review but if you like action, magic, some monsters here and there and a bucolic setting this is for you. What I liked about these stories is that they keep the reader in the dark about many aspects of the world, the magic system, races etc. There is no need to explain everything, even in a complex world like the one in The Shield Road. For example, I loved the Bladekins figures, their skills and ethics and although I would have loved to read more about them I think knowing this little is enough.
The structure of The shield road reminds of what fantasy used to be before Tolkien set the modern standards: short stories sharing a world and few characters showing up here and there. Think about Jack Vance and his Dying Earth's first book where there is a common theme, common world and some characters but they can be read independently.
I got lost a couple of times here and there in some stories, but overall it was a well written collection and I highly recommend it to people like me that love fantasy but are tired of Bible-like books. I'm looking forward to reading a sequel!
Where should I start with this review of The Cradle and the Sword by Ben Thomas? Shall I start with the fact that this is not a novel but a collection of novellas and yet they feel like they are all part of the same story arc? Or shall I start with the most obvious cliche, that it's a story about the two most famous rivers that feels like a river? A river made of people, or should I say peoples, that flows through time.
This book is unlike anything that I/you read before. It's about thousands of years of history, tens of different civilizations, tens of stories, told in reverse. Exactly, you heard it. Instead of starting from the beginning, Eden, and move our way forward following the Big Arrow of Time, we start from the end, Persia and Greece, and we crawl backwards. This gives a strange feeling, like a tale of darwinian evolution that starts from the most complex animals and finishes with the most basic unicellular organism, the very first. I've never looked at history this way, and I'm certainly not going to look at it in the traditional way again. The more I read it the more I thought it resembled the Curious case of Benjamin Button, not because of the plot similarities but because of the way the story is told backwards. I can't explain why but I also saw some of the Fountain (2006 movie) in it. Perhaps the fact that there are several plots set in different times of history and yet they are all connected somehow.
Ben Thomas has managed to put history into prose and this is never an easy task. He has also managed to show off his deep knowledge of the subject without sounding didactic.
I'm well versed in Mesopotamian history and I consider myself a connoisseur of the Land of the Two Rivers, and yet Ben Thomas taught me what no other history book has ever taught me: we always think about a new civilization conquering another as a clean cut moment, like neat geological strata that can tell us the beginning and the end of a geological era. Instead there are many years, generations even, of mixing up, intertwining of the conquered and the conquerors. Sometimes in the case of Mesopotamia there are three or four civilizations living together side by side (although often the conquered lose all privileges and become lower casts, or worse slaves), speaking different languages, worshiping different gods.
What I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed this journey through time and I strongly recommend it not only to the lovers of Mesopotamian history but to anyone that is curious about this magical land that suffered and still suffers countless of invasions and devastation.
The Jet Jewel is a fast paced fantasy novel set in Nottingham, or better if I say set in two different Nottinghams. It's a tale of two cities, one in our reality and present time and another one set in a Victorian parallel world. These two realities are connected via magical portals and our main protagonists discovered one just around a street corner. To get back to their world they will need to find a magical jewel made of jet stone and most importantly they will need to find the true themselves first. Their past is mysteriously linked to this alternate reality and the main scope of their journey switches from returning back home to getting the keys to know their past. Great pace and incredibly well written for what I believe is her debut novel. If you like magic, a historical setting with multifaceted protagonists then this is the novel for you.
What if we were able to have lucid dreams and bend reality in the process? Two people's lives that are linked by the existence of a third - a brother and a husband - connected thanks to the dreamworld recreated up in a mansion where a dream cult keeps its adepts from completely waking up. Although the story is relatively simple, its progression is not linear and it will surprises the reader with mind-bending changes and psychedelic introspections. Brad Kelly's prose is exceptional, his choice of words so exquisite and unique that in some chapters the story is just a tool in the background to show his skills as a writer. I'm looking forward to reading his next novel.
The Jet Jewel is a fast pace fantasy novel set in Nottingham, or better if I say set in two different Nottinghams. It's a tale of two cities, one in our reality and present time and another one set in a Victorian parallel world. These two realities are connected via magical portals and our main protagonists discovered one just around a street corner. To get back to their world they will need to find a magical jewel made of jet stone and most importantly they will need to find the true themselves first. Their past is mysteriously linked to this alternate reality and the main scope of their journey switches from returning back home to getting the keys to know their past. Great pace and incredibly well written for what I believe is her debut novel. If you like magic, a historical setting with multifaceted protagonists then this is the novel for you.