Books

Kevin Hearne: Hexed, Hammered and Tricked

Following Hearne's Hounded, I went ahead and started to read the series.

Pretty much everything I said about Hounded in my review above holds; the events get more extreme, and we get a clear sense that the protagonist is messing around on the level of gods or demigods. Hexed and Hammered were all enjoyable reads. Tricked, however, isn't as good. The action is back to a more palatable level, but the plot felt disjointed, and in general the book seemed very half-hearted and lacking a good editor to tell Hearne what works and what doesn't. I'll likely pick up the next book to see how it goes — on paper, because the Kindle version costs more than a physical book shipped to me. Amazon blames this on the publisher.

Hexed and Hammered get three stars each, Tricked gets two.

Elizabeth Moon: Sheepfarmer's Daughter

Sheepfarmer's Daughter is the first book in the The Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy, apparently also published under the same name as an omnibus. It's won the Compton Crook award, and apparently was Moon's first fantasy novel.

I've read Elizabeth Moon's science fiction / space opera before; good entertainment, but once the plot got on the rails, a lot of model citizens persevered due to being smart and pretty and decent and hard-working. No huge painful events transpired to hurt the reader's feelings. This makes for less gravitas, but it works for light entertainment reading where you know the heroes will be victorious and the villains will meet justice.

Moon has a background as a marine, and the faith in military organizations doing the right thing, and rewarding talent and work shone through in her previous books, and does again in The Sheepfarmer's Daughter. The plot is a familiar trope — a headstrong young girl doesn't want to get married to a pig-farmer, so runs away and joins an army. It shouldn't really be a spoiler then to say that because she's smart and pretty and hard-working, she does well, and the organization rewards talent and bravery. I wouldn't call it a bad case of Mary Sue because the character really ends up working her way from the bottom up, and at least in the first installment doesn't get all that far.

The significant shortcomings of the book are the plot and characters, or rather lack thereof. The characters, including the protagonist, remain incredibly flat. The plot is nowhere to be seen. The novel is almost a diary of two years of military service in a fantasy realm, with a hint of "let's defeat the evil duke" in the background. The climax and ending come at the very end, and left me with a "wait, that's it?"

By all accounts, then, it shouldn't be very good. And it isn't, but it's a lot better than it has any right to be. For players of Dungeons and Dragons this is a pretty neat depiction of the progress of a fighter from first level, as the character starts off knowing next to nothing, and slowly hints at magic, dwarves, elves and the like are encountered. The validation of a meritocratic utopia sound good, evil is conquered, and her prose is good enough to keep you reading page after page of the protagonist's life, even though the expected (melo)drama of a good plot is absent.

In some ways it begs to be compared to Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles. There's a similarly exhaustive, long tale of the rise of a commoner to epic glory over the period of three books. Yet, where Rothfuss's prose is truly amazing, and his plot twists are colorful, Moon takes the most simple and direct route. Moon is a can of Budweiser to Rothfuss's forty-year old single-malt — there's no contest. But perhaps occasionally a can of cold Bud is what you want.

It'm really conflicted on this; I'll settle for two and a half stars.

Philippa Ballantine: Digital Magic

I hadn't read Chasing the Bard that precedes Digital Magic, but this only goes to show that Digital Magic stands perfectly well on its own. I've generally liked Ballantine's books, and she is a competent writer with a knack for interesting protagonists.

Squarely in the genre of urban fantasy, with a nod to Agatha Christie and cyperpunk, the tale starts in a sleepy, small English hamlet in the near future. As the book progresses, it turns out everyone has secrets, and a seemingly separate New Zealand plot thread gets woven in. There are a few major characters, but not a single distinct protagonist; we follow the view points of a few people.

Digital Magic is charming. It stuffs altogether too much into the pot, and doesn't cook it for nearly long enough. But there's magic in it nonetheless, a secret ingredient, a good pinch of love. The plot doesn't stay coherent, and crumbs fall everywhere, but in the end it was worth eating and brought a smile on my face.

If you like urban fantasy, I recommend it. If you're not too hot on the genre, there's a lot less in it for you.

Three stars.