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Review: The Dark Earth, by Gordon Doherty

Review: The Dark Earth, by Gordon Doherty

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The Dark Earth (Book Six of Empires of Bronze) by Gordon Doherty

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

The Dark Earth is the sixth and final volume of Empires of Bronze, Gordon Doherty’s historical fiction series set in the ancient Hittite Empire. In the last volume (The Shadow of Troy) Mr. Doherty gave us his version of the Trojan War. This tale goes one better (or one worse): it’s set amid the Bronze Age Collapse itself.

The Dark Earth breaks with earlier books in the series, most obviously in that the central character is no longer King Hattu, but his son and heir, King Tudha of the Hittites. Climate change, civil war, and foreign invasion have whittled the once-mighty Hittite Empire down to a pale shadow of its former self. When Tudha rose to the throne, it was foretold that he would revive the kingdom’s fortunes. Unfortunately, darker prophecies dating back to his father’s youth are also in play. Tudha has very little left with which to face the challenges of his time: murder, betrayal, and a massive invasion of the so-called “Sea Peoples.”

If you know the history of this period, the end of the story will be a foregone conclusion: Tudha’s struggle will be in vain, and the Hittite Empire will fall at last. The Dark Earth works best as a story about fighting against impossible odds, and yet refusing to give up hope for the future.

Mr. Doherty continues to work well with the historical sources. This story uses a number of odd details from the final years of the Hittite kingdom – most notably, the one time that we hear of the inland-centered empire having a navy and campaigning at sea. Some elements of the story did strike me as being a little implausible, most notably the sheer size of the Sea People armies. I suspect Mr. Doherty is engaging in some exaggeration there, in order to tell a rousing blood-and-guts adventure story of almost mythical proportions.

The story has a genuinely surprising conclusion, one which escapes from the strict historical narrative to give the reader a sense of hope at the end of the journey.

Mechanically, the novel works reasonably well, although the formula of the earlier books begins to feel a little worn here. Unfortunately, Mr. Doherty got a bit careless with copy-editing in this final volume of the series. Flaws in the prose style weren’t quite enough to pull me out of the story, but after the good editorial work of the last few volumes they were a little disappointing. Workmanlike, but not remarkably so.

Readers should be aware, as always, that the story is set in a brutal and violent time. Descriptions of human cruelty and violence are common and very explicit.

I enjoyed The Dark Earth, and although there don’t appear to be any more stories planned for this series, I’m certainly likely to go looking for more of Mr. Doherty’s work. Recommended as a dark, but in the end hopeful, recounting of one of history’s worst disasters.

The Rings of Power: A Small Side Bet

The Rings of Power: A Small Side Bet

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I’ve been watching the roll-out of the upcoming series The Rings of Power with a great deal of interest. I’m generally skeptical about film adaptations of beloved literary properties – I often enjoy them, but I also often wish the developers would pay closer attention to the source material. In this case, it’s clear that Amazon is preparing to exercise a lot of freedom within the lore of Tolkien’s world.

On the other hand, as a writer myself, I’m always interested to see how cross-platform adaptation is done; especially how it can be done to work well as a cinematic presentation without doing too much violence to the source material. Whether Amazon is going to be able to manage the trick remains to be seen, but for now I want to jot down a few notes as to how I might have gone about it. Consider this a “side bet” of sorts – over the next few years, I’ll be patting myself on the back (or cursing under my breath) as I see how well or how poorly I’ve managed to anticipate how the story unfolds.

Tolkien geekery follows! If you’re not closely familiar with the source material, especially the appendices to The Lord of the Rings and the second half of The Silmarillion, feel free to skip the rest of this one.

What’s clear is that we’re going to see the story of the Second Age of Middle-Earth. This is the era after the defeat of Morgoth in the First Age; it’s the time during which Sauron – the great behind-the-scenes villain of The Lord of the Rings – first works his evil will on a massive scale in the world.

What’s also clear is that Amazon’s writers are compressing the timeline of the Second Age to a considerable degree. The major conflicts of the Second Age in Tolkien’s source material take place over several thousand years. It appears that many, if not all, of the same plot beats will be taking place in the Amazon series within a single human lifetime. Human characters such as Tar-Miriel, Elendil, and Isildur are going to be appearing in the series from the very beginning, whereas in the source material they don’t appear until the very end of the Second Age.

We know that the series is planned to have exactly five seasons. As it happens, I think the epic story of the Second Age breaks down neatly into five plot beats – so this is how I think they’re going to lay it out.

  • Season 1 (The Long Peace) – everything up to about 1500 SA in the source material. Middle-earth is at peace, so we’re going to get plenty of character and setting development. We’ll also see plenty of foreshadowing that the kingdoms aren’t as stable as they look, and some kind of dark power is on the rise behind the scenes. Look for a character who appears to be an Elf and goes around tempting people to reach for their secret ambitions, probably going by the name of “Annatar.”
  • Season 2 (The Rings of Power) – roughly 1500-1690 SA in the source material. Celebrimbor rebels against Gil-Galad, sets up his own kingdom in Eregion, welcomes Annatar, and creates the Rings of Power. Close to the end of the season we see Annatar revealed as Sauron, who creates the One Ring in Mordor. Celebrimbor and his allies reject Sauron and take off their rings, knowing that Sauron will respond with violence.
  • Season 3 (The War against Sauron) – roughly 1690-1701 SA in the source material, but also conflated with events of the late 3200s SA. Sauron attacks the Free Peoples and nearly destroys Middle-earth. Eregion is laid waste, the Dwarves are put under siege, and Elrond goes off to build Rivendell for the first time. Sauron seems to be on the point of victory when Númenor comes to the rescue, defeating Sauron’s armies and capturing Sauron himself. Sauron is taken to Númenor as a hostage in the final episode of the season.
  • Season 4 (The Downfall of Númenor) – roughly the late 3200s and early 3300s SA in the source material. Númenor, already suffering from social unrest and dissension, is corrupted under the influence of Sauron. If Pharazôn hasn’t already seized power before, he does it now and soon becomes Sauron’s puppet. He leads the Númenoreans against the Valar, triggering the Downfall. The sinking of Númenor takes place in the next-to-last episode of the season and is both cinematically gorgeous and horrible to watch. In the last episode we see Elendil and his sons leading a few survivors into exile in Middle-earth.
  • Season 5 (The Last Alliance) – the later 3300s SA in the source material. The survivors of the last two seasons try to pick up the pieces in Middle-earth, but they soon realize that Sauron is back and preparing to march once more. They form a Last Alliance and fight a final war against Sauron. We’ll get to see the siege of the Dark Tower, and the last battle on the slopes of Mount Doom where Isildur captures the One Ring. The last episode will probably show us Isildur’s fate and the disappearance of the Ring, setting up the story of the Third Age.

I’ve probably missed a bunch of details. We’ve seen at least one Balrog in the trailers – are they going to be pushing the fall of Moria all the way back into the Second Age? There appear to be proto-Hobbits wandering around, and I have no idea how those are going to fit in. We’ll just have to see.

Still, I’m betting I’ve got the broad outlines down. I think there’s the possibility that the show will be able to give us all the great dramatic beats of the Second Age, even if they compress the timeline immensely for the benefit of a TV audience. It makes sense – difficult to build dramatic tension or handle the logistics of film production if you try to stick to a timeline of thousands of years, and you therefore have to keep replacing most of your cast. We’ll see if they manage to pull it off!

Review: The Lazarus Taxa, by Lindsey Kinsella

Review: The Lazarus Taxa, by Lindsey Kinsella

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The Lazarus Taxa by Lindsey Kinsella

Overall Rating: *** (3 stars)

The Lazarus Taxa is a readable and entertaining, but rather predictable, story of time travel and dinosaurs.

Sidney “Sid” Starley is a daredevil, constantly in search of experiences that no one else has ever had, the riskier and more dangerous the better. When we first meet him, he is climbing a Himalayan peak that no human has ever conquered before – partly because the local government has forbidden mountaineers from making the attempt.

After his expedition fails, Sid is bailed out of prison and recruited by the British billionaire Richard Mansa for a new venture. Mansa’s firm has developed the world’s first working time machine. He now plans to prove the new technology with an expedition back to the late Cretaceous era, the time of the dinosaurs.

Sid jumps at the opportunity, and soon finds himself with three teammates in central North America, sixty-eight million years into the past. After six months on station, the time machine will have recharged sufficiently to bring them home to the present. The plan is for them to survey the countryside, examining the flora and fauna, gathering photos and scientific data. They are well-armed, they have plenty of supplies, and their transit vehicle is something of a fortress. They have every confidence that they will be able to survive their sojourn in the Cretaceous. At least at first.

Unfortunately, it soon becomes obvious that Mansa has misled Sid and his colleagues in several respects. They find evidence that their expedition was not the first to venture into the distant past . . . and there may be other humans already there, with an agenda of their own. It soon becomes a race to see if they can solve a few mysteries and still survive the experience.

As far as basic mechanics are concerned, The Lazarus Taxa is at least workmanlike. The copy-editing was a little rough in spots. Characters and plot are unfortunately rather flat and predictable – the story reads like a treatment for a film script, with all the anticipated beats and plot twists. I saw the solution to the mystery well in advance, with the remaining suspense coming almost entirely from wondering which of the characters was going to reach the denouement.

It’s clear that Mr. Kinsella is well-versed in paleontology, and it’s in the passages where he describes a long-ago and alien Earth that the book relaxes enough to shine. He makes a move which I found rather odd at first: every few chapters he breaks up the dramatic action with a short essay in authorial voice, giving the reader some paleontological detail. The technique grew on me after a few iterations. Many inexperienced genre novelists make the mistake of larding their narrative with exposition-dumping and telling-not-showing passages, pulling the reader out of the story every time they succumb to the temptation to show off all their research. By loading most of that into these well-marked interstitial chapters, Mr. Kinsella avoids crippling his dramatic narrative with it. The result reads a little like a “docu-drama,” and it works well once the reader is used to it.

Readers should be aware that the story ends up rather violent and gory in places. It’s a story about dinosaurs meeting humans – of course there will be some scary beats in the plot!

I found The Lazarus Taxa readable and entertaining. Recommended if you’re interested in stories about dinosaurs, or time travel into Earth’s distant past, with a dash of corporate intrigue.

Review: The Shadow of Troy, by Gordon Doherty

Review: The Shadow of Troy, by Gordon Doherty

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The Shadow of Troy (Book Five of Empires of Bronze) by Gordon Doherty

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Shadow of Troy is the fifth volume of Empires of Bronze, Gordon Doherty’s ongoing historical fiction series set in the ancient Hittite Empire. This volume is a watershed for the series. Everything that has gone before now collides with one of the world’s great narratives: the story of the Trojan War.

The Shadow of Troy continues to follow Hattu, now king of the Hittites. In the previous novel, The Crimson Throne, we learned how Hattu defeated his wicked nephew and seized the Hittite throne, as a divine prophecy had long predicted he would. Unfortunately, the struggle decimated the Hittite army, and the once-powerful kingdom is barely able to defend its own borders. Worse, climate change and the movements of barbarians beyond the edges of civilization are beginning to threaten every great kingdom in the Bronze Age world.

It is at this moment that King Hattu receives a desperate cry for aid from an ancient Hittite vassal, the city of Troy. A Trojan prince has offended the powerful kings of the Ahhiyawans across the sea, abducting one of their wives and bringing her back to Troy. Long greedy for Troy’s wealth, the Ahhiyawans have come across the sea with a thousand ships, and the Trojans have called for their Hittite overlords to defend them.

Hattu has no army to spare, but he is honor-bound to answer . . . so he comes alone, with no one to support him but his son and heir Tudha, along with a few of his veteran comrades-in-arms. He may not have an army, he may not have much hope left, but he has decades of experience as a warrior and captain in one bitter struggle after another. The Ahhiyawans will not be wise to take him lightly!

Throughout this series, Mr. Doherty has consistently done a good job of working with what few original sources are available to us. In this story, he has nothing less than the Iliad to work with, along with the other works of the so-called Trojan Cycle. In The Shadow of Troy he does masterful work, weaving together familiar bits of myth and heroic narrative while telling the story from a foreign (that is, Hittite) perspective. For example, if you’re familiar with the Iliad, you’ll recognize a lot of very specific bits of action in the battle scenes.

The novel does interesting things with the mysteries of the narrative. Why did the Achaeans come to attack Troy – was it truly over something as simple as an unfaithful wife? Troy was almost certainly a Hittite vassal state, and in this story the Hittite king comes to support Troy in the war . . . so why does the Iliad say absolutely nothing about the Hittites? What was really going on with the Trojan Horse, and the final fall of the city?

Most of all, Mr. Doherty does something remarkable with the preordained conclusion of the story. Throughout the series King Hattu has never lost a war, even if his victories have come at terrible cost. He is clearly the hero of this story . . . and yet it’s a foregone conclusion that Troy will fall in the end. How The Shadow of Troy ties up all these threads is a treat to watch, even (or especially) if you’re already familiar with the Greek sources.

Mechanically, the novel works on several levels. The plot is tight, even though it has a few more twists and reversals than usual. There’s more moral ambiguity in this story than in the previous volumes – there are brave heroes and foul villains, but for once it’s not always clear which is which. There’s a superb subplot involving Hattu and his son, in which both characters get plenty of development as sympathetic protagonists. The prose style is very clean, with no copy-editing or other errors to pull me out of the narrative. In all, a very workmanlike job.

Readers should be aware, as always, that the story is set in a brutal and violent time. Descriptions of human cruelty and violence are common and very explicit.

I very much enjoyed The Shadow of Troy. I understand there will be one more book in the series, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Mr. Doherty does to wrap this story up. Very strongly recommended – an action-packed and bloody retelling of the Trojan cycle and what comes afterward.

Review: Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

Review: Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

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Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Legends & Lattes is light fantasy, set in a tabletop-game-inspired fantasy universe that’s reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

Viv is an orc warrior who has been living as an adventurer: delving in dungeons, slaying monsters, wielding a named sword of legend, the whole package. Unfortunately, age and old wounds are starting to get the better of her, so after one final big score she’s looking to reinvent herself wholesale. She moves to the big city of Thune . . . where she plans to open the first coffee shop ever seen there.

That’s it. That’s pretty much the whole story. And it is delightful, a slice-of-life tale that pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go.

The subtitle of Legends & Lattes is “A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes,” and Mr. Baldree isn’t kidding there. There are a few tropes borrowed from more high-stakes stories: a mystery connected with Viv’s last great adventure, a conflict arising from her old dungeon-delving party, another conflict with local gangsters. Still, those elements of the plot are secondary. The real meat of the story is about Viv’s quest for a quiet, peaceful way to live out the rest of her life.

Viv has planned her move very carefully. She selects just the right location for her new venture, hires a contractor to renovate the building, sets up her gnome-designed coffee machine, and opens her doors. Of course, even with all her planning, she had no prior experience as a small-business owner or as a barista. Some things don’t work entirely as expected. As with all startup ventures, she soon suffers the “valley of death” in which all the money is going out rather than coming in. Still, some of the locals soon begin to discover the delights of well-made coffee.

Watching the mechanics of Viv’s startup is certainly fun. She encounters problems, places where her careful planning failed, and she must find ways to overcome them. Watching how Viv reinvents her social style is even more engaging. She quickly discovers that she can’t succeed on her own, any more than she could when she was slaying monsters for a living. Her encounters with potential customers, with business partners, and with new friends are worth the price of admission on their own.

Travis Baldree has a very clean prose style, and the editing here is top-notch. The story structure is very straightforward. Mr. Baldree sticks almost exclusively to third person close viewpoint and a single perspective, and the plot unrolls at a carefully measured pace. A very workmanlike debut novel here.

I fully enjoyed Legends & Lattes, and while I left with the sense that Viv’s story had come to a satisfying conclusion, I certainly wouldn’t object to discovering the existence of a sequel or three. Very highly recommended if you enjoy light Pratchettian fantasy.

Review: The Raven and the Dove, by K. M. Butler

Review: The Raven and the Dove, by K. M. Butler

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The Raven and the Dove by K. M. Butler

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Raven and the Dove is a historical romance, telling the story of an unlikely couple amid turbulent times in the early medieval period. The story covers a little less than two years in the late ninth century, in the northern lands of the Frankish empire, a region that will one day be called Normandy.

At the beginning of the story, the Norse chieftain Rollo has established himself as the jarl of Rouen, wealthy from years of raiding deep into Frankish territory. Rollo’s raids, and those of his fellow Norsemen, have driven many of the region’s Frankish nobles into exile. Rollo sees the resulting power vacuum as an opportunity, which might enable him to create a new kingdom of his own. For now, he is still working to establish and defend his power.

One of Rollo’s officers is a shield-maiden named Halla: a fiercely independent woman, who lives by the Norse code of courage and honor. When we first meet her, she has just taken part in a raid, and fights to defend her people against a Frankish counterattack. Rollo soon sets Halla to lead an expedition toward the Frankish town of Lillebonne, which he hopes to integrate into his growing demesne.

When she reaches her destination, Halla meets Taurin, a Frankish landowner who is one of the leaders of the community. Lillebonne has been abandoned by the Frankish nobility, and Taurin fears that the town is doomed if it doesn’t make an agreement with Rollo and his Norsemen. He therefore accepts an invitation to return to Rouen with Halla, to meet Rollo and negotiate for the town’s fate. When Halla is made a chieftain in her own right, and the jarl’s representative in Lillebonne, she makes the fateful decision to marry Taurin and work with him to govern the town.

Halla and Taurin marry for pragmatic reasons rather than for love. Although they have a frank and vigorous sexual relationship, it takes a lot of time and work for them to become true partners. The obstacles in their path are considerable. Halla is a pagan, a warrior whose fortune was built on raiding and violence. Taurin is a Christian who inherited his wealth and station, a man of peace. Halla takes a pragmatic view of the world, whereas Taurin is an idealist. Norse and Frankish customs are starkly different; the two peoples regard each other as heathens and barbarians, and there is little love or trust between them. Halla and Taurin have a difficult time learning to understand one another. Yet somehow, despite external threats and the constant risk of violent rebellion, they need to find a way for two peoples to live together.

If you know the history of this period, you know the result is a foregone conclusion. In the following generations, the blended folk of Normandy will become one of the most dynamic and powerful peoples of medieval Europe. Yet here we’re seeing the very beginning of that process, at a time when Halla and Taurin could not count on success. The two of them will have to think fast, take risks, and learn to trust each other despite all the obstacles they face. The story that follows is a deeply engrossing visit to a historical period few modern readers will find familiar.

K. M. Butler has a very clean prose style, and the editing here is superb; I noticed one or two copy- or line-editing problems, but they never posed any risk of fatally distracting me. The story alternates between two viewpoint characters, but each section is labeled, and viewpoint discipline is otherwise strict. The story sometimes risks falling too deep into expository passages, but these are usually placed in the voice of one of the viewpoint characters, avoiding pulling the reader out of the story. In all, a very workmanlike novel.

The historical elements of the story are well researched. Early medieval and Norse history are not my specialties, but I found the setting and the behavior of characters quite plausible. The only quibble I had was the prominent role of “shield-maidens” in the Norse forces. The archeological evidence for Norse women warriors is patchy at best. Still, shield-maidens are prominent in the Norse sagas, and they have captured the modern imagination in creations like the Vikings TV show. It’s a perfectly viable move to center this story around one of them, especially if the objective is to tell the tale of the foundation of Normandy through a love story. In the end, I had no quarrel with the result!

I thoroughly enjoyed The Raven and the Dove, and it left me wanting more. Very highly recommended if you enjoy well-done historical fiction with a strong dash of earthy romance.

Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert

Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert

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Lurkers at the Threshold: 100 Ghost Tales from German Folklore by Jürgen Hubert

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Lurkers at the Threshold is a compilation of ghost stories from German folklore, translated into English from German collections, many of which have never been translated before. It’s an interesting collection, covering a branch of European folk tales that will be both strange and hauntingly familiar to an American audience.

Full disclosure: The compiler and translator of these stories, Jürgen Hubert, is a long-time acquaintance, although he and I have no professional relationship and I have received no compensation for this review.

Dr. Hubert published his first collection of translated German folklore (Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles) in 2020. That effort was apparently so successful that he plans to release a series of similar books, each tied to a specific theme. Lurkers at the Threshold is the first of these, devoted to ghost stories. The book contains exactly 100 narratives, most of them rather short, each of them accompanied by translator’s notes and commentary. Just reading the stories themselves is likely the task of a single afternoon, but the supporting material is very rich and will reward closer study. Each entry is thoroughly footnoted, and the book also contains extensive contextual material on German geography and history.

Since this collection is centered on a theme, it calls some repeated tropes into sharp focus. German ghost stories are different than a modern American reader might expect. Ghosts are not translucent and immaterial; usually they are frighteningly tangible. Many ghosts are evil, others are simply unpleasant, a few are benevolent, but they’re all dangerous to encounter. They sometimes need the help of the living to escape their condition, but they’re often bad at making it clear what needs to be done to help them. You probably don’t want to attend church with a bunch of ghosts . . . and whatever you do, don’t shake a ghost’s hand!

I was surprised to find several headless ghosts, including a few Headless Horsemen. I suspect Washington Irving must have done his own reading in German folklore back in the day.

As with Dr. Hubert’s previous work, this collection has plenty of entertainment value, but it’s also valuable as a scholarly resource. Authors and game designers will find the series useful as inspiration for their own fantastic literature. Dr. Hubert continues to support such uses by placing his translations under a Creative Commons license.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lurkers at the Threshold, and I’m looking forward to further volumes in the series. Highly recommended for anyone interested in folklore and ghost stories.

Review: The Wild Court, by E. G. Radcliff

Review: The Wild Court, by E. G. Radcliff

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The Wild Court by E. G. Radcliff

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Wild Court is the most recent installment in a high-fantasy series, strongly flavored by elements of Irish mythology.

Áed is the young king of a human realm, struggling with physical disability, the responsibilities of rule, and the growing possibility of a relationship with one of his royal counselors. On the evening of a liminal festival – a time when Áed’s mundane realm and the Otherworld come into contact – his kingdom is savagely attacked by the fae. He soon learns that a war in the faerie realm is spilling over into his own kingdom, threatening widespread death and devastation. He resolves to visit the Otherworld in person, hoping to uncover the causes of the faerie war and end it before it can do any more harm. Several other characters go with him on this quest; he meets both foes and surprising allies along the way.

The greatest strength of this story is its characters. Áed reminds me a little of Maia from The Goblin Emperor; he’s very earnest but also surprisingly clever in a pinch, and he overcomes steep obstacles to be an effective ruler. His supporting cast – his heir Ronan, his advisor Éamon, a fae girl named Erin, and many of the people he meets in the Otherworld – are all interesting and sympathetic. Even the villain of the piece (a truly horrifying figure) is very well-drawn.

E. G. Radcliff has a very clean prose style, with either very good self-editing skills or a sharp editor; I don’t recall being pulled out of the story even once by a copy- or line-editing problem. Her style is always at least workmanlike, and occasionally lyrical. She has a clear eye for the details of character and place, and a gift for making the reader feel part of the story. I found The Wild Court engaging and a very clean read.

One observation I made was that the plot is very straightforward, even a little predictable at times. The story sets up one or two mysteries, but none of these are at all difficult for the reader to unravel before the characters resolve them. That’s not a weakness of this story – not all fantasy tales need to be convoluted and mysterious, after all! The reader’s motivation is to watch a team of brave and clever characters as they deal with personal issues and relationship drama, even as they face down villains and try to end a war. On that basis, The Wild Court succeeds admirably.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wild Court, and in my experience the story did a very good job of reaching its objectives – once I finished it, I immediately went to pick up the earlier books in the series. Very highly recommended if you enjoy honest high fantasy with a strong Celtic flavor.

Review: The Shivering Ground & Other Stories, by Sara Barkat

Review: The Shivering Ground & Other Stories, by Sara Barkat

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The Shivering Ground & Other Stories by Sara Barkat

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Shivering Ground & Other Stories is a collection of eleven short stories, combining science fiction with an almost Victorian sensibility and prose style.

A woman has her heart surgically removed to better survive the demands of her society. Ordinary people are caught up in irreversible climate change. A prison guard watches over the last prisoner from a war that ended long before. Two lovers living in alternate universes carry on a doomed affair through letters. These are some of the worlds explored in this unique collection.

The stories are independent, although they share some common features. Many of them seem to be set in steampunkish universes, with dreary industrial districts, airships in the skies, a sense that humanity struggles to thrive in the world it has built for itself. Several stories focus on the details of ordinary life in the shadow of massive disaster: war, ecological collapse, or the fall of civilization.

The prose style here is immaculate – I caught a couple of places where line formatting seemed to go awry, but copy- and line-editing were otherwise superb. Her style reminds me of some Victorian fiction: dense, with a broad vocabulary carefully deployed, often focused on fine descriptive detail. Sara Barkat is painting word-pictures, and she does it with considerable skill. Another reviewer likens the result to Emily Dickinson, and it’s not a bad comparison.

The reader will find most of these stories mysterious; each one contains a mystery, a puzzle that the reader may not be able to solve before the story closes. If you find yourself asking “what’s really going on here” right up to the last word, then the story is probably hitting its objective. Some of the pieces are barely stories at all, in the sense that they don’t seem to have much plot – they’re portraits, windows into universes that are not quite like our own.

I very much enjoyed The Shivering Ground, and I’m going to be looking for more from Sara Barkat. Very highly recommended if you enjoy evocative science-fiction stories in a distinctive style.

Review: Those Left Behind, by N. C. Scrimgeour

Review: Those Left Behind, by N. C. Scrimgeour

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Those Left Behind by N. C. Scrimgeour

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Those Left Behind is a space-opera novel, the first in a planned trilogy.

The human world of New Pallas is on the brink of destruction due to internal strife, overpopulation, and environmental collapse. Its only hope lies in the hands of Alvera Renata, a revolutionary turned starship captain. She intends to command a state-of-the-art ship, the Ranger, on a desperate mission to find a new home for her people.

When Ranger flies through a “waystation” on the edge of the New Pallas system, Alvera and her crew find themselves amid a galaxy-wide civilization called the Coalition, governed by a loose alliance of humans and several other species. In theory, the Coalition could provide new homes for all New Pallas’s billions. In practice, the alliance has troubles of its own. Aggressive outsiders, the Idran-Var, threaten the peace. Even worse, there are signs that some completely unknown entity is preparing to attack the Coalition – a force which may have eradicated whole civilizations in the past.

At first, the Coalition cautiously welcomes Alvera’s mission. Then a shocking betrayal scatters her crew and threatens to end her mission before it can even begin.

The story that follows is told from multiple points of view: Alvera herself, the son of her worst enemy, a colonist girl with unusual skills, a deadly young woman who refuses to be a warrior, and a soldier who comes to suspect he is fighting the wrong war. As we follow these five characters, we get a tour of Coalition space and the sense of a terrible conflict that is about to begin.

Those Left Behind is very clearly the first novel in a series. This book sets up a complex, multi-threaded story, and it resolves very few of the conflicts it starts. Even so, the characters are clearly drawn and engaging, and I found myself compulsively turning pages to see what would happen to them next. I usually dislike ensemble stories told from multiple viewpoints, but N. C. Scrimgeour has the skill to make it work. Her prose style is very clean, too – I had a hard time finding any copy-editing or line-editing problems in the text. This is a very professional job.

If I had a concern about Those Left Behind, it’s that the setting and plot felt a little derivative. The author’s ad copy mentions that “fans of Mass Effect . . . will love this,” and she is not kidding in the slightest. If you’re acquainted with the Mass Effect universe, then a lot of elements of the setting and plot are going to feel familiar here. It’s not a matter of copying – the most I would say is that this story is strongly inspired by the world of the video game series. N. C. Scrimgeour has done a superb job of remixing and reworking familiar tropes, building a compelling story atop them.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Those Left Behind, and I’m going to be watching for the next book in the series. Very highly recommended if you enjoy high-octane space opera in the vein of the Mass Effect games.