fantasy – Page 15 – Wis[s]e Words

Naomi Novik — Temeraire

Published on October 16, 2011

Cover of Temeraire

Temeraire
Naomi Novik
327 pages
published in 2006

So that’s why the Temeraire series is so popular. I had heard of it of course, the first novel in the series (called Her Majesty’s Dragon in the original American edition) having been the subject of much hype and enthusiastic reviews when it first came out, but I had been skeptical. It had all sounded too high concept to me: Horatio Hornblower with dragons? Interesting, but it all seemed a bit too slight to hang a novel on. As I quickly found out when I flipped through Temeraire in the library, I was wrong. Naomi Novik knows how to tell a story, to keep you turing the page until it’s finished and leave you wanting more.

Frigate captain William Laurence manages to capture a French blockade runner but is puzzled why it resisted so fiercly when it was clear it could not win the fight. His puzzlement ends when he discovers it’s transporting a dragon, one near to hatching to boot. Dragons are rare and valuable, both as status symbol and instrument of war. Because it’s clear that the egg will hatch before his ship will be back at base, Laurence knows it’s his duty to get the dragon to imprint on one of his men, to get it into service for England, notoriously weak on dragons. Imagine his surprise — if not the reader’s — when it turns out the dragon imprints on him. It means the end of his career in the navy and the start of a life in the country’s most despicable arm of service, the Aerial Corps.

The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny — Simon R. Green

Published on September 18, 2011

Cover of The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny

The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny
Simon R. Green
275 pages
published in 2010

Simon R. Green is, in the best possible meaning of the word, a cheerful hack writer. He’s been writing professionally since the mid seventies and specialises in long series of easily digestable, fun adventure science fiction and fantasy, in commercially interesting subgenres. The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny is a good example of this, the tenth novel in the Nightside series of urban fantasy. Which I didn’t know when I got it from the library, or I probably would’ve left it on the shelves. In the event it turned out not to matter fortunately; you needn’t have read the previous novels to understand this one, even if there are a lot of references to earlier adventures. It reminded me of when I first started to read Marvel comics way back in the eighties, trying to figure out a complex backstory that’s only hinted at.

The Nightside is the hidden part of London, where it’s always three a.m., magic is real, but so is super technology, demons and angels and nightmares cloaked in flesh roam the streets, time travel of one sort or another and all other sorts of crazy shit is commonplace. This is the world John Taylor works in, a private investigator in a pristine white suit, not quite a knight in shining armour but the closest equivalent. He’s cursed with awesome, having a magical gift that can get him out of trouble but which costs him to use it, not to mention can be a beacon to his enemies. He has powerful friends, but equally powerful enemies and the difference between the two is not always clear. The job he gets at the beginning of The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny is simple but dangerous: escort a envoy from one side in the Elven civil war through the Nightside on his way to the court of the other side. There’s only one small problem, which is that Walker, the most powerful man in the Nightside, the one appointed by the Authorities to keep some sort of order, doesn’t want this envoy to reach his destination, as the civil war suits The Authorities fine…

The Best of C. L. Moore — C. L. Moore

Published on September 13, 2011

Cover of The Best of C. L. Moore

The Best of C. L. Moore
C L. Moore
372 pages
published in 1975

In the mid seventies Ballantine Books, just before it renamed itself into Del Rey, launched a “Best of” series of short story collections by classic science fiction and fantasy authors which I personally think is perhaps the best such series ever produced. Just at a time when science fiction was switching from being a short story, magazine orientated genre to one in which the novel is supreme, here were collections by all the old masters who had made their name in the pulp magazines of the thirties, forties and fifties. The series offered a sense of history to the genre just when science fiction was in danger of losing touch with its roots. It offered both a reminder to old fans of what had attracted them to the genre in the first place and to new fans a sampling of authors they may have thought oldfashioned or perhaps never had the chance to read in the first place.

One of such authors must have been C. L. Moore, who had made her reputation writing science fantasy stories for Weird Tales in the 1930ties. In the 1940ties, after she met and married Henry Kuttner she almost completely stopped writing on her own, instead collaborating with him (often under the Lewis Padgett pseudonym) on a series of classic sf stories, then moving on to writing crime stories and for television, both of which unfortunately paid better, in the late fifties. By the time The Best of C. L. Moore was published it had been the better part of two decades that she had written much new science fiction. Now that more than twice as much time has passed, this collection is still a great introduction to what C. L. Moore had to offer when not collaborating with her husband.

The Hour of the Dragon – Robert E. Howard

Published on August 4, 2011

The Hour of the Dragon

The Hour of the Dragon
Robert E. Howard
292 pages
published in 1936/1977

When I think of Conan I see John Buscema’s Conan: feet planted firmly on the ground, glaring at you from under his helmet, the weight of his muscular frame apparant in every picture. That’s the image I had in mind while reading The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard’s sole original Conan novel. Written in 1935 as an attempt to interest a British publisher, it was instead serialised in Weird Tales when the publisher went out of business. Recycling scenes and plot twists from earlier stories, it’s somewhat of a greatest hits story: Conan has to fight an overwhelming horde of enemies, is captured and has to escape a dungeon through his great strength, wrestle a supernatural creature and so. Buscema’s Conan naturally came to mind therefore: no other version has the sullen determination and toughness Buscema put in his Conan.

The Hour of the Dragon is set at the end of Conan’s career, after he has become king of Aquilonia. He doesn’t remain king long though as a conspiracy between neigbouring country Nemedia and Valerius, the last remaining heir of the old royalty of Aquilonia use magic to invade the country and depose him. They do this by raising an ancient evil, Xaltotun, an ancient sorcerer from the pre-Hyborian empire of Acheron. As the Nemedian army invades Aquilonia, Xaltotun nearly kills Conan and demoralises and destroys his army. Conan comes to as prisoner of Xaltotun who has … plans … for him. Valerius meanwhile has become nothing more but a pawn for the evil sorceror.

Sheepfarmer’s Daughter — Elizabeth Moon

Published on August 3, 2011

Sheepfarmer's Daughter

Sheepfarmer’s Daughter
Elizabeth Moon
506 pages
published in 1988

Sheepfarmer’s Daughter was Elizabeth Moon’s first published novel and is now available from the Baen Free Library as a sample to get you to try her other work. I got it to have something to read in those stolen moments where it’s too much hassle to dig a paperback out of my bag, but I can get to my mobile. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter was the ideal book for this: not overtly complicated, easy to read in small chunks without missing much of the plot and engaging enough to keep reading.

I’ve only read one Elizabeth Moon novel before this one, A Sporting Chance, a science fiction adventure story that was decent enough but nothing special. From all I had read about her other novels, they seemed much the same so until now I’d never really sought out her books. But it’s hard to argue with free books and people I trust had been praising Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, so when I needed something new to read the choice was easy.

Sheepfarmer’s Daughter is the first in a trilogy called The Deed of Paksenarrion, which Elizabeth Moon allegedly wrote after she was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons by friends of her and got annoyed by the way it handled paladins, to show what real paladins were like. A paladin is “a holy knight and paragon of virtue and goodness”, as Wikipedia calls it and in D&D it’s one of the character classes you can play. What exactly Moon disagreed with I’m unclear about, but there certainly is some D&D influence visible in the fantasy world she created. The other influence on the series was Moon’s own background as an US Marine, giving her a somewhat more realistic idea of warfare than many other fantasy writers have.