Browsed by
Category: Reviews

Mark Rigney Reviews Ivy and the Meanstalk

Mark Rigney Reviews Ivy and the Meanstalk

Comments 0 Comment

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.

…

Read More Read More

Andrea Grennan Reviews The Burning Soul

Andrea Grennan Reviews The Burning Soul

Comments 4 comments

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.

…

Read More Read More

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: The Avengers

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: The Avengers

Comments 17 comments

numbers_avengers2

So begins my long trip through the genre movies of the Summer of ’12 for Black Gate and benefit of several readers. I’m glad that things got off to a tremendous start.

As in a recording-shattering $207 million dollar take at the U.S. box-office, for a total of $640 million globally — so far. Oh, what a menacing term: “so far”!

The Avengers is not the end product of five movies and five years of preparation from Marvel Studios. It’s a beginning. While the two Iron Man films (2008 and 2010) were smash hits, the other three superhero films in the Avengers roster (The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger) were more standard successes, and they meant more to the comic book fan-base than to general audiences. Now, the general audience is pumped to get more from these characters. All the Avengers are now major public stars, and with this insane success, Marvel is poised to truly unleash their stable of heroes on a public than will be drooling and clawing to get more.

I have watched The Avengers twice in theaters on its opening weekend, something I haven’t done since The Lord of the Rings films. That’s a review in itself, but a since I am 1) a Marvel zombie and Avenger fan since childhood, and 2) inaugurating this series of movie reviews for the summer, I have an obligation to go in-depth on this stupendous piece of entertainment cinema. I will avoid big spoilers as much as I can, since this is technically still a “review,” but some tidbits about the massive set-pieces will leak out. But you’ve seen the film already at least once, right? Three times, anyone? (I know plenty who are “three times and counting.”)

Okay, let’s assemble and do this.

…

Read More Read More

Chris Braak Reviews The Winds of Khalakovo

Chris Braak Reviews The Winds of Khalakovo

Comments 1 comment

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.

…

Read More Read More

Sean T. M. Stiennon reviews Warhammer: Bloodforged

Sean T. M. Stiennon reviews Warhammer: Bloodforged

Comments 0 Comment

Bloodforged
Nathan Longbloodforged
Black Library (416 pages, mass market first edition May 2011)
Reviewed by Sean T. M. Stiennon

Apart from walk-ons, cameos, and bit-parts, every single character in Bloodforged is either a daemon worshiper or a vampire.  That’s really the most concise way I can summarize the novel, and your reaction to that ought to be a pretty good indication of how much you’d like Bloodforged.

Ulrika was the daughter of a family of noble warriors before her rising as a vampire, and she finds herself chafing under the restrictions that her loyalty to the Lahmian sisterhood of Nuln imposes on her.  She flees her vampiric mother and travels north, to the Kislevite city of Praag, hoping to make herself useful to humanity by aiding them in the battle against the Chaos horde besieging the city.  However, Ulrika arrives to find that, not only is the city enjoying relative peace (“peace” being a term fundamentally alien to the Warhammer world), but Praag offers her no true refuge from her undead life.  Her former companions have moved on to new horizons, and she can have no real friendship with humans.

Ulrika finds fresh meaning to her unlife only when she stumbles across a secretive Chaos cult which is kidnapping girls off the streets.  At the same time, the local branch of the Lahmian vampires offers her a choice: Either be bound to them, and returned to the same life of servitude she left in Nuln, or die by their hands.  Ulrika is forced to navigate a narrow line between Chaos sorcery and Lahmian vindictiveness.  Her only clear ally is a dashing young vamp named Stefan, who claims to be out for revenge against his master’s killer, but may be hiding a more sinister motive, even as he introduces her to love beyond the grave.

…

Read More Read More

What Writers Can Learn From Joss Whedon’s The Avengers

What Writers Can Learn From Joss Whedon’s The Avengers

Comments 6 comments

avengers-movie-poster-1Disclaimer: This article will reference some scenes from The Avengers film. While I’ve tried to avoid specific spoilers about major twists, there are some things that give away plot elements and twists from the other Marvel Comics movies, such as Thor.

If you are a writer, be sure that you get a receipt when you go to The Avengers, because you should be claiming it as a work-related research expense on your taxes this year. (This should not be considered tax advice. Please consult with your tax preparer before making financial decisions.)

There has been no shortage of digital ink spilled gushing over how great the movie is. I’ll provide a link to some of the highlights below if you want to delve into the film itself. However, I wanted to go beyond discussing The Avengers as purely a viewing experience, but to focus on a couple of elements that writers can best take away from it.

…

Read More Read More

Alana Joli Abbott Reviews Grave Dance

Alana Joli Abbott Reviews Grave Dance

Comments 0 Comment

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.

…

Read More Read More

Snarky Female Protagonists and Why I Read Them

Snarky Female Protagonists and Why I Read Them

Comments 22 comments

junoDear Black Gate readers,

I don’t even remember what my last post was. Mea culpa, mea culpa; I was moving across the country, I was getting a job with some Beluga whales, I was joining a writing group,  I was traveling to places I’d never been before, I was reading other people’s fledgling novels and trying to come up with some kind — any kind! — of useful crit for them, I was writing up a storm.

(Several storms. Big magical brouhahas*, with silver clouds and dark lightning and dead swans and such.)

Woe is me, these things are hard, man! But enough of this moaning and groaning. I’m back now, see?  And I’ve been reading.

You know that thing that happens when suddenly you realize how busy you’ve been because you haven’t picked up a book for the sheer pleasure of reading in a while? There are many joys in reading other people’s early drafts of things that are going to turn into magnificently faboosh final drafts, but one of the downers is that when I’m doing that, I feel guilty reading anything for fun. And I’m a fast reader; I’m just a slow dang beta-reader.

However! Last week, I found myself at the Westerly Public Library, a place of golden beauty and polished staircases, browsing. Browsing, I tell you! Do you know how that felt?

Novel.

…

Read More Read More

Pavis – Gateway to Adventure: The Classic RPG City is Back! (Part Two)

Pavis – Gateway to Adventure: The Classic RPG City is Back! (Part Two)

Comments 3 comments

pavis_coverLast week I began my review of Pavis – Gateway to Adventure, the new RPG supplement from Moon Design Publications for its HeroQuest roleplaying game in the fantasy world of Glorantha, with a bit of history of this greatest of RPG cities, and an overview of what this massive new book contains. This week, I’d like to look at the book’s content in far more detail, with a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of just what you get in its 416 pages.

Chapter by Chapter

To begin with, the book’s cover is a nice full colour painting depicting a priest of the cult of Pavis, the city god, atop the ziggurat-like temple of Pavis in the new city, facing east over assembled city-folk and worshippers as the sun rises. In contrast to the green and earth tones of the previous two Sartar books, the cover is predominantly pinks, purples, and greys, emphasizing the hazy, desert-like environment of the city. It gives a feel for the predominance of religion – and religious intrigue – in the city.

After credits, contents, and introduction sections, the book launches straight into “Making Your Character”. If you have Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, you’ll know what to expect here; except that in addition to the Sartarite settlers of Pavis County, there are also HeroQuest keywords and character creation guidelines for Old Pavisites, Sun Domers, Zola Fel Riverfolk, and even Lunar Settlers.

…

Read More Read More

When The Hero Comes Home: A Review

When The Hero Comes Home: A Review

Comments 1 comment

When the Hero Comes HomeWhen the Hero Comes Home is an anthology from Dragon Moon Press co-edited by Garbielle Harbowy and Ed Greenwood. It’s a surprisingly thin book, given that it holds nineten stories by twenty writers (including two Black Gate contributors, Peadar Ó Guilín and Jay Lake, in collaboration with Shannon Page). Its theme is exactly what it says: the homecoming. The point where the story usually ends. I have some reservations about how the book turned out, but the idea’s intriguing: what do you find when you make it back to where you began? Has the place changed, or have you?

One thinks of Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, or of Frodo’s discovery of what’s happened to the Shire. The conclusion of the story that sums up the themes of all that’s gone before. The last unexpected twist, the discovery that heightens emotion and gives the protagonist one final conflict. Arthur Miller said that every great play has to do with the question “how may a man make of the outside world a home?” But what, ultimately, is home? How do we recognise it?

Not all of the stories in When the Hero Comes Home have these kinds of questions on their minds. Overall, though, the tales do tend to examine the idea of ‘home,’ rather more than they do the idea of ‘hero.’ Then again, the existence of a hero, however defined, is inherent in the theme; it’s the nature of the home that implicitly has to be established. So: these are stories about fairly unambiguous heroes, finding that things at home are more complicated, and often more disappointing, than they’d thought.

…

Read More Read More