Kay Kenyon is in a hurry, and it shows. Her first book, Bright the Sky, was like reading a thousand-year-old Persian rug. She created an amazing artificial world, the Entire, crafted by the mysterious alien Tarig and kept habitable only through the profligate expenditure of colossal amounts of energy. All her characters are richly developed, [...]
Fantasy Books
City Without End by Kay Kenyon
March 18th, 2009 · No Comments
The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow (novel 1), Sea of Wind (novel 2), by Fuyumi Ono
July 15th, 2008 · No Comments
The Twelve Kingdoms is rather unique - while most anime is based on Japanese comics or graphic novels, the Twelve Kingdoms anime series was based on full-fledged fantasy novels. The Twelve Kingdoms are considered “light novels,” more akin to our own Young Adult genre, and feature Japanese teenagers spirited away to a parallel world resembling [...]
Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon
April 28th, 2008 · No Comments
Kay Kenyon’s first book in the Entire and the Rose series has something of an identity crisis. No one seems to know how to market this: sci-fi or fantasy? Bright of the Sky neatly strides both worlds - literally - to create a universe rich with culture, sympathetic characters that are truly flawed, and a [...]
The Forbidden Kingdom
April 24th, 2008 · 1 Comment
If you’re not a 13 year-old boy, Forbidden Kingdom was not really made for you. I understand the appeal of Jet Li and Jackie Chan, together at last, and everyone’s hopes for a harmonious combination like peanut butter and chocolate. I shared this hope, but was served something more like canned cheese with crackers. It’s [...]
Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews
March 27th, 2008 · No Comments
Lions and mermaids and shaman, oh my! Magic Burns is the second book in the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. Kate is a mercenary in magic-torn Atlanta, eliminating the magical anomalies that surface each time a wave of magic hits. In Magic Bites, she investigates the murder of her guardian and ruffles a few [...]
Making Money by Terry Pratchett
December 11th, 2007 · 2 Comments
There’s a sort of trance that a person can go into when they’re doing something they’re extremely practiced at. After a sufficient number of repetitions, the body will sometimes take over control while the brain wanders off to get a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, the body sometimes gets it wrong, and thus many a prospective [...]
The Bartimeaus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
November 11th, 2007 · No Comments
The Bartimeaus trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud, opens with a small, frightened boy summoning a demon into his attic bedroom, in a pseudo-Victorian London. I immediately enjoyed the little details of imagery:
“Ice formed on the curtain and crusted thickly around the lights in the ceiling. Glowing filaments in each bulb shrank and dimmed, while the [...]
The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien
November 9th, 2007 · No Comments
The Children of Húrin, also known as Narn i Chîn Húrin, is the latest J.R.R. Tolkien book. The stories of Túrin (son of Húrin) appear in earlier works like The Silmarillion, and are now released in full novel form thanks to tireless editing by his son, Christopher Tolkien. The tale takes place in the First [...]
Orphans of Chaos by John Charles Wright
October 27th, 2007 · No Comments
Orphans of Chaos was described to me as Harry Potter for adults. Students have magical powers, but as a slant, the teachers are actually their enemies. I don’t think this comparison does an accurate job of portraying the mood of the book, but it comes close.
Orphans of Chaos - the first of a trilogy of [...]
