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Mark Rigney Reviews Ivy and the Meanstalk

Mark Rigney Reviews Ivy and the Meanstalk

ivy-and-the-meanstalkIvy and the Meanstalk
Dawn Lairamore
Holiday House (227 pages, Hardcover, $16.95)
Reviewed by Mark Rigney

Franchises in young adult and children’s fiction are nothing new. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are only the tip of the iceberg. Among others, E. Nesbitt, Enid Blyton and Edward Eager clearly understood the value of bringing favorite characters back for sloppy seconds (and more), as did authors as diverse as Arthur Ransome (Swallows and Amazons), Gertrude Chandler Warner (The Boxcar Children) and L. Frank Baum (the Oz books). More recent examples come from Susan Cooper, J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins and now, Dawn Lairamore, who revives plucky heroine Princess Ivy for another swift tween adventure in Ivy and the Meanstalk.

Lairamore’s first outing was Ivy’s Ever After, in which Ivy made life-long friends with Elridge, the sensitive, almost effete dragon assigned to guard Ivy’s tower prison. In this latest outing, Ivy’s loopy fairy godmother, Drusilla, nearly destroys Ivy’s entire kingdom through the thoughtlessness of having once given Jack (yes, that Jack) a handful of magic beans. The beans grew a beanstalk (yes, that beanstalk) and Jack stole all that great loot from the giant, including the singing harp, which (as luck would have it) was the only thing that could put the giant’s widow (here named Largessa) to sleep. Ivy and the Meanstalk opens over a thousand years later and Largessa is suffering from a mean case of sleep deprivation. Unless Ivy can get Jack’s harp back and use it to lull Largessa into dreamland, the giantess will pepper Ivy’s peaceful kingdom of Ardendale with giant boulders until every farm and castle is smashed flat.

Riding on Elridge’s back, Ivy and trusty stable-boy Owen set off for Jackopia, where Jack’s descendants live in pomp, circumstance and unbelievable wealth thanks to an endless supply of golden eggs. Surprise, surprise, Jackopia’s king is predictably unwilling to give up his honey-tongued harp.

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Andrea Grennan Reviews The Burning Soul

Andrea Grennan Reviews The Burning Soul

the-burning-soulThe Burning Soul
John Connolly
Atria Books (404 pp, $25.00, 1st Hardcover Edition, September 2011)
Reviewed by Andrea Grennan

This is a rather odd review, in that The Burning Soul is the tenth book in a series by John Connolly, and I have not read the previous nine. I hadn’t planned on reading it at all, as reading the tenth book in a series seemed a bit like trying to watch Breaking Bad starting with season three, so I set it aside in favor of other books. I’d asked for it to review because I had read The Gates by Connolly and liked it a lot, so I thought I might like this.

Then one day I found myself with nothing in the house to read (in personal terms rather a disastrous situation) and thought, “Well, I won’t know what’s going on or who anyone is, but The Burning Soul is a book, so it’ll do until tomorrow.”

I was captured from the first page. The use of language, the mood so quickly and beautifully created, the building of a creepy and atmospheric setting, all wove a spell. I settled in with that lovely feeling of being in very good hands, and finished it two days later.

So this is the review of a book in a series that this reviewer has not yet read.

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Chris Braak Reviews The Winds of Khalakovo

Chris Braak Reviews The Winds of Khalakovo

windsofkhalakovoThe Winds of Khalakovo
Bradley P. Beaulieu
Nightshade Books (Trade Paperback $14.99, 312pp)
Reivewed by Chris Braak

It’s a little daunting, when you pick up Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo. Before the story even starts there are three pages of maps, and a list of characters that’s extensive, and full of names that enjoy that horrifically Chekhovian similarity – the kind that makes you wonder how you’re ever going to tell any of these people apart. The setting of this fantasy novel diverges from the traditional, Medieval-Central-European analog, and instead is something more like a 17th-century Russia, filled with costumes and vocabulary that are likely to be quite alien to a regular fantasy reader.

But the allure of fantasy is the appeal of the strange, and once the apprehension has passed, The Winds of Khalakovo reveals itself to be something quite extraordinary.

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Alana Joli Abbott Reviews Grave Dance

Alana Joli Abbott Reviews Grave Dance

gravedanceGrave Dance
Kalayna Price
Roc (pages 372, $7.99, mass market first edition July 2011)
Reviewed by Alana Joli Abbott

It is infrequent that I find myself reading a second novel in a series that utterly outstrips the first, especially when the first volume is highly enjoyable in its own right. So it was with delight that I flew through the pages of Grave Dance, Kalayna Price’s second Alex Craft adventure. Set a month after the conclusion of Grave Witch, this mystery-come-urban fantasy starts in the middle of the action, with Alex, a magic-wielding private eye, investigating the mysterious appearance of a pile of dismembered left feet. Although a foot is not enough to allow her to raise the shades – the memories stored in dead bodies – that usually make her valuable as a consultant, she soon finds herself embroiled in a case being fought over by her city’s mostly-human police force and the Fae Investigation Bureau.

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Rich Horton Reviews Fox and Phoenix by Beth Bernobich

Rich Horton Reviews Fox and Phoenix by Beth Bernobich

fox-and-phoenixFox and Phoenix
Beth Bernobich
Viking ( $17.99, hc, 368 pages, October 2011)
Reviewed by Rich Horton

A few years ago Beth Bernobich published a delightful YA novelette called “Pig, Crane, Fox: Three Hearts Unfolding” in Steve Berman’s anthology Magic in the Mirrorstone. Now her first YA novel has appeared, a sequel to the earlier story. It’s also very nice, another benchmark in an evolving career that may become something quite special if Bernobich keeps doing work as interesting as she has done to date.

In “Pig, Crane, Fox” the main protagonist, Kai, is a boy working in his Mother’s magic shop. He (as with most people in his milieu) has a spirit companion, the pig Chen. He and his friends regard themselves as pretty streetwise – and maybe they are, to some extent. Then they get involved with the Princess Lian, as her father, ruler of their city-state, establishes a contest for her hand. Kai is mature enough to ask instead for Lian to be granted her real wish – to study at the major university in the Phoenix Empire.

The setting is explicitly Chinese-derived, though not in any recognizable China. It’s quite fantastical in nature – magic is everywhere – but with a distinctly Science-Fictional attitude informing things, such as the way magic is used. That setting, that mix of SF and Fantasy (a characteristic of much of Bernobich’s work, in different ways) was a big part of the attraction of the story, but so were the well-realized characters.

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Michaele Jordan Reviews The Dead of Winter

Michaele Jordan Reviews The Dead of Winter

dead-of-winterThe Dead of Winter

Chris Priestley

Bloomsbury USA Childrens (215 pp, $16.99 hardcover, January 31, 2012)

Reviewed by Michaele Jordan

First and foremost, the reader needs to know that The Dead of Winter is a traditional ghost story. If you are looking for a modern view point or a cross-genre twist, this is not the book for you. It cleaves to Gothic imagery and draws on many classic antecedents.

It is set in the Victorian era; the year is not specified, but the setting makes it plain. Like many earlier works, it is presented as the journal of a first person narrator, told from a distant future, and opening with a solemn assertion that the contents of the book are entirely true, little as the reader may be inclined to believe them. Preface aside, Priestley draws on a Dickensian model to provide the young protagonist so necessary to a children’s book.

The story opens with Michael Vyner at his mother’s funeral. He is now an orphan, as his father has been dead for years. In fact, the father—an army man—died heroically, saving the life of his superior officer, Sir Stephen Clarendon. Sir Stephen has always been grateful, but Michael’s mother was too proud to accept much assistance, so Michael has never met the man his father died to save or even been encouraged to take pride in his father’s courageous sacrifice.

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Charlene Brusso Reviews The Alloy of Law

Charlene Brusso Reviews The Alloy of Law

the-alloy-of-lawThe Alloy of Law
Brandon Sanderson
Tor ( $24.99, 329p)
Reviewed by Charlene Brusso

Sanderson burst onto the fantasy landscape with his creative Mistborn series, about a world where allomancers and feruchemists use different metals to feed their magical powers. With its solid world-building, believable characters, and twisty intrigues, the Mistborn series turned what could have been an adequate medievaloid good guys vs the Dark Overlord into a thoroughly memorable read.

Sanderson could have gone ahead and continued to mine that same setting for plenty more stories. And those hypothetical books would’ve been fun–but not half as much fun as what he actually chose to do with The Alloy of Law.

The new book begins some 300 years after the core events of the original Mistborn trilogy. The old characters are now hazy figures of legend. Rising technology, both Allomancy-based and non-magical, means railroads, barges and boats, steel skyscrapers, and, in wealthier enclaves like capital city Elendel, even electric lighting.

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Alana Joli Abbott Reviews Chicks Kick Butt

Alana Joli Abbott Reviews Chicks Kick Butt

chicks-kick-butt-anthologyChicks Kick Butt
Rachel Caine and Kerrie L. Hughes (eds.)
Tor (pages 349, $14.99, trade July 2011)
Reviewed by Alana Joli Abbott

Anthologies should accomplish two things. Readers unfamiliar with the authors should have their interest piqued and should want to read more by those authors. Readers familiar with the works of the writers should feel that the story is a reward – an extra – that enhances their reading experience of the other works. In the case of Chicks Kick Butt, several – but not all – of the stories engaged me and left me wanting more by the writers.

Overall, it is a strong collection, filled with writers who have had novels on bestseller lists, many at The New York Times. Perhaps most pleasantly, the stories tend to be about women who are not too awesome to be interesting. While a few of the heroines are amazing fighters who literally kick butt, most are vulnerable or unsure of their own abilities; it is their determination, perseverance, and wits that sees them through. Given frequent complaints about how “strong woman” has had a single definition in the media, this anthology bucks the trend by featuring women with a variety of strengths.

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Chris Braak Reviews Shadow’s Lure

Chris Braak Reviews Shadow’s Lure

sprunk-shadows-lureShadow’s Lure
Jon Sprunk
Pyr (387 pp, $17.00, Paperback, June 2011)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

Shadow’s Lure, by Jon Sprunk, is the continuing story of Caim the Knife, formerly an assassin, then briefly a supernaturally-empowered assassin, now a supernaturally-empowered vagabond. After helping Empress Josphine (“Josey” to her friends) secure the throne of Nimea away from that empire’s totalitarian church, Caim has gone north into barbarous Eregoth, to find out more about his long-lost family, and discover the secret origin of his heritage. While in Eregoth, Caim runs afoul of a duke under the sway of an evil sorceress, and finds himself embroiled in a rebellion against them. Meanwhile, the newly-crowned Empress has to fight off an assassination attempt and a conspiracy to snatch that hard-won throne away.

As with his first book, Shadow’s Son, Sprunk reveals a strong command of the sort of scene-by-scene, action pacing necessary for good, tense battle scenes, and Shadow’s Lure definitely delivers those. The fights are fast and dramatic, primarily because Sprunk doesn’t short-change the stakes; people are in danger, and people die, and there is no sense of Sprunk “coddling” anyone, or letting the reader get off easy by keeping your favorites alive. War is a dirty business, and Shadow’s Lure, for the most part, meets it head on.

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Charlene Brusso Reviews Magic on the Line

Charlene Brusso Reviews Magic on the Line

magiconthelineMagic on the Line
Devon Monk
Roc ($7.99, 356p)
Reviewed by Charlene Brusso

When most folks think of settings for urban fantasy, chances are Portland, Oregon doesn’t appear very high on the list–but a dip into this gritty paranormal series will definitely change your opinion. Monk’s Portland is rife with rain and muddled with magic–magic that comes at a painful price. Cast a spell, get a headache–or worse.

There’s also an organization called the Authority, highly secret, incredibly powerful, which has set itself up to police the use of magic. Unfortunately the Authority branch in Portland is currently run by Bartholomew Wray, an ambitious power monger who wants to clean up what he sees as a city of mages out of control.

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