The fantasy adventure series about the elven seeker Raine Benares consists of six books. These are:
Magic Lost, Trouble Found (2007)
Armed & Magical (2008)
The Trouble With Demons (2009)
Bewitched & Betrayed (2010)
Con & Conjure (2011)
All Spells Break Loose (2012)
Entertainment and adventure are the main focus of the books. There is action, some romance, more action and humor. Shearin writes well and manages to hold my interest through all six books. “Magic Lost” was a bit rusty, but the books have gotten better and better.
Raine is a fun adventure character. She is a finder of things lost and people missing. But what Raine finds best is trouble. Action and adventure begins right off the bat. Focus is mainly on the adventure and not so much on world building or character building. But as the plot unfolds, so does Raine (and her compatriots).
Her favorite companion in trouble is her cousin, Phelan, and her friend Tam (a goblin mage). As we move further into the series Mychael (Paladin) and Pieras (almost brother) assist more and more in getting Raine out of trouble. For the main part trouble is focused on a pendant called the Saghred (has its own mind). For some reason the Saghred attaches itself to Raine, and as Raine soon discovers the Saghred is not conducive to a peaceful life. From that point on, Raine becomes involved in an international crisis, internal goblin politics, an elven uprising and so on.
“The Spirit War” is book no. 4 in the story about Eli Monpress, the cleverest thief in the world. Eli lives in a world where magic is based upon the cooperation with spirits that live inside all things. Although full of action and deception, all four books are light-hearted. Aaron writes well and brings her characters spirit and verve.
About the book: All Eli Monpress wanted was the biggest bounty in the world. He never meant to have obligations, or friends, but master swordsman Josef Leichten and Nico, the daughter of the dead mountain, have saved Eli’s life too many times to be called anything else. And when a friend upsets your plans and ruins all your hard work, what’s a thief to do?
After years of running from his birthright, Josef is forced to return home and take up his title as prince. War is coming for humans and spirits between the Immortal Empress and the Council of Thrones, and Josef’s little island is right in the middle. But conquest isn’t the Empress’s only goal, she has a personal vendetta against a certain thief.
What started as a simple side trip to help a friend is rapidly turning into the most dangerous job of Eli’s career, but he can’t back out now, not when Josef needs him. But when you’re under attack from all sides, even the world’s greatest thief can find himself cornered, and it’s going to take all the fast talking Eli can muster to survive the next few days.
“Coastliners” is yet another book I’ve read in Norwegian. I prefer reading in English if the author writes in English, but when I receive books as gifts here in Norway, they’re going to be in Norwegian.
“Coastliners” was fun. Harris’ characters are flawed and delightful with all of their imperfections.
On the island of Le Devin, off the British coast, the population is ageing and dwindling. The wealthy live on the la Houssinière side, while the poor live on the les Salants side of the island. As usual, the wealthy hold the power and this has been a source of no little resentment from the poorer population.
Les Salants has a serious problem. Each year the ocean comes closer and closer to the houses that hug the cliffs and dunes. Something must be done to redress the problem, but no one knows quite what to do.
Once Madeleine Prasteu arrives at les Salants, things begin to change. She is trying to recover from the death of her mother and goes back to her childhood vacation spot. After a while Mado becomes involved in the attempt to save les Salants and with the help of mysterious Richard Flynn a secret engineering project is underhand.
Molly Moon is a delightful character. I started reading her adventures to my son, and he fell in love with the series. Molly Moon is for children, but as an adult reading to my child I had fun.
We read them in Norwegian, but Byng is an English writing author. Molly Moon is a young orphan who discovers her incredible ability with hypnosis. With this gift, she improves the living conditions at her orphanage, controls her bullies and makes her life a little better. As she moves along in the series, Molly discovers that she has an enemy who is out to best her. She gets to travel in time, both backwards and forwards. During these travels she has the assistance of her two faithful (for the most part) friends: the dog Petula and the boy Rocky.
Our translation was a good one. The various translators have done a good job in making the Molly Moon adventures exiting and funny. We laughed a lot and I was forced to finish the scary parts before I could put the book down. My son did not have to work hard to convince me.
I have to say that I was prejudiced against the Harry Potter books. They were so hyped up, I felt that I would only be disappointed if I read one of them (silly thing these emotions). Then I borrowed “Philosopher’s Stone” from a neighbor. Ha, ha was I ever surprised. I actually liked this little awkward boy trying to fit in and find friends along with mastering his strange ability.
My oldest son has no reading disorder, but by the time he was 10 his teacher was a bit worried. He read poorly, she felt. For some reason I wasn’t worried. I knew what to look for, and he displayed none of the symptoms of dyslexia, so I just figured he was a late reader.
We started reading “Philosopher’s Stone”. He loved it. Then we went on to “Chamber of Secrets” and “Prisoner of Azkaban”. When we got to “Goblet of Fire”, he felt I was too slow and irregular in my reading to him. He picked up the book himself, finished it and the first three in less than three months. After that he devoured books. I have plenty of them and buy and borrow new ones all the time.
All it took was his impatience and an excellent author to open up his reading door. So, thank you to Joanne Rowling as well.
Songs of The Earth is Elspeth Cooper’s debut novel and a pretty good one at that. There are some rough patches (text hiccups mainly), but all in all Songs of The Earth is solid. There is content that somewhat detailed sexually and there is some descriptive violence.
Songs of The Earth is book one of The Wild Hunt series. In it Cooper brings us into the world of Gair, a world where hearing music is considered of the devil. Historically, we know what happens to people who are considered devilish. They are burned. This is to be Gair’s fate, but against all odds he is saved and gets to live out his story.
Cooper’s novel is concentrated on Gair and his path into magic. It touches upon his main enemy, Elder Goran and one of the good guys, Masen, a gatekeeper.
These three are well-developed characters. I feel their fear, lust and worry. Fortunately Cooper manages to avoid black and white thinking. We see this in the personalities of her characters, except for Goran. He is pretty dark.
This is the image that I feels illustrates Moon Called best and it shows Mercy (Mercedes) as I had imagined her from the words Patricia Briggs has written about her in Moon Called.
I am a fan of Ms. Briggs’ writing. My adventure with her began with the Hurog saga. Then it sort of developed into a full-fledged love affair and here I am writing about yet another series of hers.
Poor little teen-ager Mac/Alan. Little had he thought about the possibility of werewolves being real. Then all of a sudden he was mauled and changed into one by nefarious people. The Marrok (Bran) calls this rape. To make matters worse, Mac was experimented on and kept in a cage. One day he manages to escape and turns up at Mercedes’ garage (auto-shop). She is a softie and takes him under her wings, eventually introducing him to the Alpha of the Tri-Cities area, Adam Hauptman.
Map created by Michael Enzweiler
Adam and Mercy will according to all the foreshadowing become a couple. Mercy and Adam are very alike, yet incredibly different. She is a shape-shifting coyote, he is the alpha werewolf of the Tri-Cities area. If the two of them decide to become mates, his pack will have to accept Mercy as his second. At least one of the members of the pack seems to have done so already, Warren.
Warren is a sweet-heart. He is a gay were-wolf with an open lifestyle. Meeting Mercy changed his life for the better. For once he met another predator who did not care what gender he loved. Then she introduced him to Adam and Adam accepted him as well. That did not mean that the rest of the pack managed to embrace him as one of their own, but that is the way of the world. We all have different prejudices. Some are more vocal and open about them than others. Sadly, getting to love the person you love is not something we all get to experience.
Just now it really struck me. What if I refused to accept a person because of who they loved? How would that change me and the person I met like that? It is a concept I find terribly confusing. It would be like me refusing to accept a person because of the color of their skin or hair or eyes. Being on the receiving end of such prejudice must hurt terribly.
Mercy is the kind of person that opens up her heart to a great variety of people. Vampire, werewolf, fae or human matters not. If the other person seems to be decent, then there is room for them in Mercy’s life. Her attitude does create problems when some of her friends meet others of her friends, but Mercy just expects them to be polite to each other no matter how much they might despise each other (vampires vs. werewolves comes to mind). And people often do what Mercy expects. For reasons they do not always understand themselves, Mercy is definitely a person they want to have in their lives. What a gift, and possibly, what a curse.
Her being a mechanic is a bonus for me. As a kid I wanted to be a lot of things and mechanic was one of them. There is something satisfying about being able to take things apart. Sadly, I stink at putting them back together again. Then there is the goo. Goo is the loveliest thing on earth. Mercy gets to fix cars and is a whole lot better at putting them back together again than I am. My “niece” is a mechanic. Even here in Norway it is still unusual for a girl to choose such a career. I absolutely love that my “niece” chose such a line of work. So the idea of a mechanic that happens to be a woman is an added attraction for me.
Just so you know. One of Patricia Briggs series also begins at the time of Moon Called. When Bran sends Charles off to deal with a problem in Chicago the series Alpha and Omega starts.
The Honor Harrington series by David Weber consists of 12 books:
“On Basilisk Station” (1992)
“The Honor of the Queen” (1993)
“The Short Victorious War” (1994)
“Field of Dishonor” (1994)
“Flag in Exile” (1995)
“Honor Among Enemies” (1996)
“In Enemy Hands” (1997)
“Echoes of Honor” (1998)
“Ashes of Victory” (2000)
“War of Honor” (2002)
“At All Costs” (2005)
“Mission of Honor” (2010)
The Honor series is military science fiction. Technical information is important. The series goes into detail about the various vessels Honor is on. It also explores the relationship between the kingdom of Manticore and the People’s Republic of Haven. Honor is a citizen of the Manticoran kingdom, originally from the planet Sphinx. Along with her is her bonded companion, the tree-cat Nimitz.
Honor and Nimitz end up being in the center of conflicts between the Peeps and the Manties. They survive impossible situations in space and on the ground and Honor really needs her brass ovaries to survive the gruelling conditions she often finds herself in. At the center of each book is the conflict between the Peeps and the Manties. There is always some kind of scheme by the Peeps to get the Manties to reveal their military strength or to get the Manties to join in war. Part of that is due to the instability of the Peep system. Governments come and go and in many ways it reminds me of Russia at the time of the revolution in 1917.
The Manties, on the other hand, have a monarchy with all of its attendant problems. There is a government pretty much like the government of the UK – Overhouse/Underhouse with the peers in the Overhouse and the commoners in the Underhouse. There is plenty of corruption and political scheming. Someone is always seeking more power, quite often at the expense of the Manticoran system.
Wikipedia gives an excellent summary of each book, but be warned of spoilers.
David Weber is a fun writer. There are political discussions, but they are placed in a context that make them interesting not preachy (mucho importante). Adventure, adventure, adventure and then some humor are important ingredients. There is some romance, but thankfully not much. My favorite book in the series is Echoes of Honor. It seemed the most different from the rest, and the action centered around a great deal of people, not just Honor.
When I read “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” I was once again reminded of the story of 732 Jewish boys and girls whose story Martin Gilbert tells in his “The Boys: Triumph Over Adversity“. One book is from the viewpoint of someone standing outside the suffering while the other one is about the kids who went through hell. I’m not a believer in the many after-life versions of hell, but I am certainly a believer in the human ability to create hell for their fellow humans. In fact, we’re really creative in the many ways we cause others pain, and that worries me.
The Boys: Triumph Over Adversity tells such a story. This is the story of children who (along with their siblings and parents) were uprooted from their homes and dragged into the horrors of the Holocaust. These children were originally from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Their lives were the lives of ordinary children with loving parents. As they just below and above ten years old for the most part, these children had no understanding of all of the abrupt changes in their lives. From living in regular homes, they were stuffed into ghettos and then dragged to even worse circumstances.
And then it all ended. No more parents or siblings, all alone in the world after having endured what only few people in the world have had to endure.
After their liberation from the camps, they had to begin rebuilding their lives in Britain. Despite being physically and emotionally drained by their nightmare past, they drew strength from their group. After leaving their hostels, they remained a close-knit and devoted band of siblings. Their families having been destroyed, they created a family among themselves.
So many people ask themselves how something as terrible as the Holocaust could have happened. I doubt there is any one answer to that question. After all, we let history repeat itself all over the world. What I do believe is that we are all capable of becoming something we had never thought was possible. Ervin Staub in his “Roots of Evil” and Max Weber in his “On Bureaucracy” – Iron Cage both try to look at why people are dehumanized and warn us of the consequences.
So! What do you think the various world-leaders would do if a Near Earth Object (NEO) appeared in the sky? Heaven’s Shadow is about that. Not surprisingly, the appearance sparks a contest between the US and the rest of the world to get to the object first. Two space ships are sent to investigate and they discover more than they had bargained for. The NEO turns out to be alien and not necessarily friendly.
Paranoia, curiosity and courage are all displayed along with pretty natural, yet often unwise reactions. Our perspective is from the NASA spaceship’s crews – their actions and reactions.
This novel is a fun read. The way people act in it seems pretty realistic. The whole alien NEO thing not so much. But that’s what SciFi is, likely and unlikely thoughts about the future. What is likely is that at some point in the future an NEO could come close enough for us to visit. That’s what makes it so fun to read. Knowing part of the story could possibly happen given a certain set of circumstances.
Principles of Angels is Jaine Fenn’s first novel. It’s supposed to be set 7000 years into the future on the uninhabitable world of Vellern. People live either Topside or Undertow, where Topside is the more attractive part of their world. Here the world is ruled by democracy by murder (you get to vote on whether to kill a representative). The assassins are called Angels.
Taro lives with his Angel aunt who is murdered. This throws him even deeper into the Undertow and we get to see his struggles to survive and his search for his aunt’s killer. I think “Principles” could probably be called a mystery. On Taro’s search, Taro is confronted with his own fears and prejudices.
I liked “Principles”. It is a well-written novel with prose that flows from one line to another. It is violent, but I’m guessing people who live in this world’s Undertows would recognise the fears and difficult choices you have to make. If Fenn continues like she has, then her authorship is going to a fun one to follow.
“Fated” is the first book in the Alex Versus universe. In many ways it is similar to “The Dresden Files” by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden is even mentioned by Alex Versus in one of the first chapters. Alex is a pre-cog. In his case, he is able to foresee the future with enough time to possibly do something about it. By seeing various outcomes, he gets to choose action or inaction in order to influence things. This is an ability that many people want to utilise.
As an urban fantasy, “Fated” is pretty average. I consider Butcher the better storyteller, but Jacka managed to hold my attention. Not every author manages to do that. But for me, it was missing that little something that makes entertainment extra entertaining.
Translations:
Swedish: Ödesbunden; Transl: Hanna Williamsson; Fenix, 2012
Wanted on 157 counts of grand larceny against a noble person,
3 counts of fraud,
1 charge of counterfeiting
and treason against the Rector Spiritualis
“The Legend of Eli Monpress” is an omnibus containing the books “The Spirit Thief“, “The Spirit Rebellion” and “The Spirit Eater“. They are, of course, about Eli Monpress, a charming thief whose only goal is to get his bounty as high as possible. The reason reveals itself. During his adventures he has his mates Nico (a demon carrier) and Joseph Liechten (the greatest swordsman ever).
In order to get his bounty higher and higher Eli steals stuff. Not necessarily things that will bring him a lot of money, but things that are “without price” – like King Heinrich.
Elis main opponent is Miranda, the spiritualist, who ends up helping him in order to serve the greater cause.
The magic used in these books is based on forcing or cooperating spirits (wind, water, earth, trees, etc.).
These are fun novels. Eli is a charming character and well-written. The interplay between and those he meets on his way is described in a manner that draws me as a reader in and makes me want to know more about the characters.
The Tristopolis series about Lieutenant Donal is an incredibly warm and tense mystery. In Bone Song, we see Laura (Donal’s boss and lover) ends up deader and Donal with her heart. “Dark Blood” sets out to discover the whereabouts of the magicians responsible and we follow Donal’s journey towards that end.
We get to see descriptions of loyalty, friendship, love, grief, betrayal and a whole lot of magic throughout the novel. John Meaney is a top-class author who manages to portray a world of complexity and three-dimensionality.
Some of the descriptions inside are quite vivid and that makes me recommend this for teen-aged and upwards. Death-sentences in Tristopolis just aren’t carried out as nicely as the ones on this earth.
“The Gathering of the Lost” is book no. 2 of “The Wall of Night” series. Helen Lowe has done an excellent job on the follow-up of the first book in the series “The Heir of Night“. She manages to draw the reader in and does not let go until the last page. As teen-lit this is really good. The story is fairly complex and surprising (perhaps) in its twists and turns.
Through various journeys, Lowe leads us to Malian and Kalan. We get to see where they stand in relationship to each other and to the quest they set out on 5 years previously. Saving the Derai (and perhaps the rest of the world) from the fierce Swarm will not be simple. Discovering where the lost clans are takes time, and time is precious.
As in The Heir of Night Malian’s choices will make the difference in the outcome of the coming battle.
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So! What do you think the various world-leaders would do if a Near Earth Object (NEO) appeared in the sky? 
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humanitysdarkerside 