Here's a signature I expect a few people to be interested in. Last week I had a chance to attend an informal signing with Brent Weeks. Having attended a fair share of author events, I have to say that Brent put on a great show, coming off as humorous, witty, and thoughtful. If you ever get a chance to visit with Brent, I recommend it wholeheartedly. Until then, here's a peek at Brent's authorial scrawl.
Collector's Corner - Brent Weeks
Monday, July 6, 2009
Collector's Corner - S.J. Day
Saturday, July 4, 2009
While the book Eve of Darkness wasn't for me, I know there are people out there who love the series. So for all you urban fantasy lovers out there, here's the signature of S.J. Day herself.
"Eve of Darkness" by S.J. Day (Tor)
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Eve of Darkness
S.J. Day
368 pp. Tor. $6.99
Pub. Date: 4/28/2009
ISBN-13: 978-0765360410
Reviewed by Paul Stotts
There must be an unwritten law that all urban fantasy heroines must be attractive. And not just the everyday kind of attractive, but the causing-men-to-lose-all-self-control-and-self-respect-set-your-phasers-on-stunner type of attractive. The better-than-Viagra type of woman. Forget the other non-genetically blessed ladies who already struggle with a negative body image, and don’t even mention women who fell out of the ugly tree, hitting every branch on the way down—they could never be heroines in the genre. Because they’re not hot. And chicks kicking butt have to be hot.
Do you find that offensive? Because it is.
Super-attractive urban fantasy heroines isn’t just a bad cliché, it’s a damaging one, a terrible message, a knife in the heart to the female empowerment vibe underlying these books. So much of the protagonist’s worth is related to her looks, to her ability to attract that dark, brooding—and very sexy—guy. That’s not empowering, that’s limiting, objectifying. Because what happens if you can’t attract the sexy guy? And why is attracting him such a crucial objective? Is saving the world not as important without the nookie on the side?
Which brings us to the latest in hot little fantasy packages, Eve, the perky protagonist in S.J. Day’s Eve of Darkness. She’s smart, sexy and personable; spunky like a hyperactive barista with a triple espresso IV. Entirely normal. Until some illicit sex changes her life. No, it’s not the kind of life change that requires going to a clinic for some ointment to treat a bothersome itch. Her happy carnal congress has left a different mark on her: the mark of Cain, turning her into a supernatural Dog the Bounty Hunter. Got a gargoyle urinating on you outside your local church? Better call Eve.
Suddenly, she transforms from the Kryptonian Kal-El into Superman, manifesting a slew of handy-dandy super-abilities. Like super-hearing. Super-sight. Super-agility. And—oh yeah—being super-horny. (I exaggerate often; this is not one of those times, though. Who knew superpowers could be so encouraging to one’s love life.) Talk about your teenage boy wish fulfillment; Day just became their favorite writer. With such an overactive libido, it is amazing Eve has time to fight the baddies and unravel mysteries. But she does; she’s a trooper like that, a team player. Luckily, she has some help, an ex-boyfriend serving as her Obi-Wan, teaching her about her new super-abilities, even helping with that being super-horny problem. What a guy!
The sex is gratuitous in Eve of Darkness, entirely unnecessary in furthering the plot. Like an urban fantasy got mated with a late night Cinemax flick, killing creatures of the night fills the time between bedroom excursions. Even worse, it’s boring. The narrative is consistently interrupted by incongruous and dull soft porn moments, distracting the reader from an otherwise well-executed storyline. If Day had removed all the sex scenes from the book, she would have been left with a pretty good yarn. It’s a shame, and a missed opportunity.
Maybe the sex scenes wouldn’t have been so frivolous if there was emotion and love behind them. But the chemistry between Eve and her ex-boyfriend is also lacking. Day tries to convince us of this great connection, this deep bond, a romantic intensity between the two, but I never saw it, never believed it. Both act as if the other is the love of their life, but I couldn’t figure out why that was the case aside from pure animal lust. I didn’t believe they had respect for each other. Even worse, I didn’t think they had any self-respect. There is no connection, no emotion. Like watching animals mate on the Discovery Channel, or two self-absorbed twenty-something attempt a relationship. Uninteresting and depressing.
Eve of Darkness isn’t a bad book. With more focus on the fantasy narrative and less on the romance aspects, it might’ve even been a good book. It’s just not the book for me. Those who love their urban fantasy with truckloads of sex should love it, though.
Final Grade: 60 out of 100
Author Appearances - Brent Weeks
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
This is a special treat for Southern California fans. Just found out that Brent Weeks will be visiting informally with fans at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego on Friday, July 3. Should be a fun time.
Friday, July 3 2009
5:00pm
Mysterious Galaxy
7051 Claremont Mesa Blvd. Suite 302
San Diego, CA 92111
Map it on Google
The First 100 - A.W. Hill's "Nowhere-Land" (Counterpoint)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
A streetwise shaman searching for a missing girl. Sounds like your typical mystery. Maybe even a bad mystery.
But 100 pages in you realize that A.W. Hill's Nowhere-Land is anything but typical. And no where near bad. It's incredibly well-written, scholarly, philosophical, and about as far out there as you can get in its subject matter. Hill's pioneering new ground here, and it's fascinating to watch.
One of the few mysteries that really attempts to engage the reader on an intellectual level.
The First 100 - Brandon Sanderson's "Warbreaker" (Tor)
Monday, June 29, 2009
100 pages into Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, color me very impressed. An extremely imaginative magic system and some great world building has this one already shaping up to be one of this year's fantasy highlights. And the humor is great throughout, which is a pleasant surprise.
This is my introduction to Sanderson's work, and I'm cursing myself for not having taken the plunge earlier.
Live and learn.
"Lamentation" by Ken Scholes (Tor)
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Lamentation
Ken Scholes
368 pp. Tor. $24.95
Pub. Date: 2/17/2009
ISBN-13: 978-0765321275
Reviewed by Paul Stotts
A cataclysmic event. A city vaporized—instantaneously. One moment a city filled with bustling, teeming life: people strolling down wide cobbled avenues; vendors hawking their wares, shouting; children laughing; scholars poring over vast tomes in the Great Library, pensive, scribbling notes in the margins; then: nothing. A city gone. Destroyed. Eradicated. Replaced by a cloud of ash, dark as death’s panties, polluting the air, like a crematorium burping out an entire city. Only a dirty smudge left, as if a child suddenly dragged their eraser across the map, destroying everything.
As the ash settles—a glowering sun browbeating it to the ground, regaining its aerial supremacy—the aftermath is revealed. Once there was a vibrant city, the seat of the Androfrancine religion, the home of the Great Library that collected and housed most of the world’s knowledge. Now: dust. Buildings razed, blackened, shimmers of heat roiling across the ground; random fires dotting the landscape, crackling and hissing, orange embers swirling in the air like fireflies. Charred bodies are everywhere. In the streets, near the town squares, under the buildings. Everywhere. There are no survivors; no one to care for the dead, no one to say a prayer, no one to bury the bodies.
But there are two witnesses to this atrocity. This Desolation. One is a teenage boy, and one a mechanical man. Both are instrumental in the war that comes next.
Some stories end with a bang, some start with one. Literally. Wars are often the same way, starting with a pivotal event, a defining moment, a casus belli.
That’s not to suggest that Lamentation is a novel-length description of a massive war campaign. Because it’s not. It’s better. More intelligent, more insightful, more intriguing than a typical sword-thrust-by-axe-blow description of a battle. Scholes’s novel concentrates, instead, on the politics of warfare, on the real power, the puppetmasters behind the scenes, controlling the players, guiding events and people. And their mysterious motivations for doing this. It’s court intrigue, amplified to a Spinal Tap-approved eleven; it’s powerbrokers wheeling, dealing, and, most importantly, stealing, with a grin on their face and blackness in their hearts. It’s the Usual Suspects meets
The narrative is told mainly through the points-of-view of four central characters, with a few additional character perspectives tossed in along the way. It’s an effective way to document the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering without bogging the story down with too many characters doing too many things. Which makes the novel more personal than epic; more about a group of characters dealing with an extraordinary incident rather than the incident itself. More a view of the individual trees, and less of the forest.
The downside to such a tight focus on the characters is that there’s only moderate world building that can be accomplished. Still Scholes creates a full world, filled with religion, culture, and history, we just don’t get to see much pass the surface. It’s a shame because what is there is tremendous, and had me only wanting more. Hopefully future volumes in the series will give us a deeper plunge into this magnificent pool Scholes has envisioned.
This year has already seen some memorable debuts. Lamentation is definitely near the top of that pile. If not for Peter Brett’s The Warded Man, it would be in the conversation for best debut of 2009. An auspicious start for Scholes.
Final Grade: 85 out of 100
Winner of Eve of Darkness Giveaway
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
I've finally gotten around to selecting a winner for the signed copy of S.J. Day's Eve of Darkness. For those interested, I will be posting a review of the book shortly.
The winner is: Dottie Taylor from Illinois. Congratulations Dottie!
Thanks to everyone who entered!
"Labor Day" by Joyce Maynard (William Morrow)
Monday, June 22, 2009
Labor Day
Joyce Maynard
240 pp. William Morrow. $25.99
Pub. Date: 7/28/2009
ISBN-13: 978-0061843402
Reviewed by Paul Stotts
Remember Labor Day as a child. The proverbial final weekend of summer, the dying breath of three months of summer vacation. The end of lazy summer days spent playing, laughing, living. As dusk darkens the sky, you’re down to your final hours, depressed, antsy, scared; the coffin nails being driven into summer’s casket, the owls outside hooting a requiem. Like a condemned prisoner waiting to make his last walk, savoring his last moments. Because tomorrow you start a new school year. Tomorrow is a beginning, a new stage in your life, a transition. You’re an eighth grader now—practically grown. You’ve come so far, learned so much.
Labor Day is a time for transition, for moving on, for growing up. Out of the death of summer vacation, you are reborn, changed. It’s a new year, and it feels like it. Feels like it more than New Year’s Day, or your birthday. Never have you felt the change more. It’s the feeling of coming-of-age as a yearly ritual.
But it’s not the day itself which affects this momentous change; it’s the people in your life, the ones there everyday, making an impression, helping you grow up. It’s parents, and friends, and family. The role models. The solid foundation your life is built upon. But sometimes there’s someone else, a person who enters your life for a short period of time, and stirs your soul, changing you tremendously. Their influence on you burning white-hot, a self-identity supernova; it’s there, pulsating, scalding, forging, and then—suddenly—it disappears. Gone like a memory. Gone like the summer days, vanishing in autumn’s cooling breath. Leaving you to a new future, having now made you a better person.
Some novels are personal; they ring true, stir memories. Because aspects of the story are something you recognize from your own past, something you intimately lived. Parts of the book feel like a biography, reminding you of emotions and experiences that have been buried and forgotten. Labor Day by Joyce Maynard is this type of book for me. It’s a special kind of magic, a personal magic, a magic for my soul. A happy nostalgia, filled with warm thoughts, and the feeling of being loved. It feels like home.
Maynard’s characterization of Henry, the novel’s thirteen-year old protagonist, is uncanny. Understanding the mind of a teenage boy is difficult enough, understanding the mind of a teenage boy living alone with his single mother—and lacking a guiding male role model—is even harder. I’ve been where Henry’s at, lived it, and was stunned how accurately Maynard captured the feelings and emotions of the situation. The displacement, the isolation, the hunger for guidance, the deep love. All true, and real. And brilliantly realized.
Henry’s relationship with his mother, Adele, is incredibly tender and powerful, a revelation about the human experience, about the special relationship a mother has with her only son. A relationship Maynard captures perfectly. A relationship that made me appreciate my own mother more, appreciate everything she did for me, every time she struggled for me. It made me want to call and say “Thank you, Mom.”
Joyce Maynard’s Labor Day is one of those rare novels that resonates deeply, emotionally and spiritually. It makes you feel. Feel what it means to be human, the laughter, the tears, the struggle. To comprehend the entire human experience, an epiphany about one’s purpose. Evocative and powerful, Maynard masterfully explores feelings of isolation, displacement, loneliness and love. It’s beautiful and awe-inspiring—like watching a child being born—and completely unforgettable. A stunning achievement.
Final Grade: 93 out of 100
Comic Break: Robot 13 #1 (Blacklist Studios)
Friday, June 19, 2009
Robot 13
Issue: #1
Writer: Thomas Hall
Artist: Daniel Bradford
Blacklist Studios. $3.00
Reviewed by Paul Stotts
Robots, humanity re-shaped, re-imagined, by science. Transistors and microchips replacing blood and brains; a steel chassis for a spinal column, a mechanical heart pumping motor oil. Science’s continual quest to one-up Mary Shelley, to build a better Frankenstein monster, to storm
And like humanity, robots can be good, or bad. Or more than meets the eye. It depends on their creator. Is it the kindly old scientist, benevolent and sweet, with crazy Einstein hair, and an eggshell-colored lab coat, wishing to help the world with his creation? Or the dark, brooding villain with evil infesting his heart, muttering crazily in a
Even a hero. A hero that kills monsters straight out of Greek mythology, living, breathing nightmares with big shiny teeth, the type of nasties that caused Homer to wet himself. So what if the robot has a human skull for a head, looking like Ghost Rider mated with Bender from Futurama. We all have our imperfections. What matters—what really matters—is that Robot 13 kicks ass. From cover to cover.
More accurately, Robot 13 kicks tentacles. Big, slimy tentacles with suckers the size of a horse’s head, dripping mucus like Paul Bunyan with allergies. At least in the debut issue where our robot protagonist gets his fight on with a well-endowed Kraken that gobbles ships like Goldfish crackers. And chases them with some sailors.
Writer Thomas Hall elevates the issue out of pure slugfest territory by injecting a mystery into the proceedings: Robot 13 has only a hazy recollection of his past. Like an alcoholic that blacks out, wakes up, and has no idea how he wound up in a grocery cart, naked, and missing a kidney. Like Jason Bourne in the Bourne Identity, if Jason Bourne was a robot. (And not just portrayed by one.) And fought mythological creatures. The search for answers about Robot 13’s past adds intrigue to the issue, and when they don’t come, you scream at the sky, shaking your fist, cursing the fates. Cursing them for making you have to wait for the next issue. Please, next issue, bring me answers. Oh, the cruelty.
Fans of Mike Mignola will love the visuals as artist Daniel Bradford channels his inner Mignola, offering an ode to the creator of Hellboy. Some will likely hate the similarity between the two, claiming this is style-jacking, but it’s a great artistic choice for this material, working beautifully with the epic and Gothic overtones of the story.
Taking chances is what the medium of comics is for; to be unique, different. Robot 13 is all these: risky, unique, and different. It’s what makes the issue feel fresh and new, even though many of its constituent elements are classical. The fact it succeeds is what makes it good. Really good. Can’t wait for the next issue.
Final Grade: 83 out of 100
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