Posts Tagged ‘dark’
King of Thorns, by Mark Lawrence
Posted on: March 28, 2013
King of Thorns (Broken Empire, book 2), by Mark Lawrence
published in 2012
where I got it: purchased new
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It’s all about a change in perspective. Getting yourself somewhere where you can see the bigger picture, because there is always a bigger picture.
The story begins with a knife and a box. All Jorg can remember about the box is that it should never, ever be opened. If he opens it, it will destroy him. So strange, how something so small could destroy a person so completely. If the dream-witch Sageous can get into Jorg’s mind, the only place his thoughts, plans, and memories are safe are someplace out of his mind. The box contains Jorg’s salvation and his destruction.
Split into two timelines (and each with multiple flashbacks), King of Thorns is far more complex than it looks. In the “now” timeline, Jorg is 18 years old, about to get married, is surrounded by the armies of his enemy, Orrin, Prince of Arrow. If he’s going to defeat Orrin, he’s going to need the memories and strategic plans that are locked in that box. Haunted by the ghost of a child, Jorg continues to allow his baser instincts to influence him.
The other timeline is four years earlier, a few months after the end of Prince of Thorns. Jorg is King of the Renar Highlands. Not the crown he planned on, nor the last one he expects to wear, but he’s got to start somewhere. Young Gog is having trouble controlling his fire-magic, nearly setting the castle on fire more than once. Jorg decides to travel to a northern firemage, thinking if he can help Gog, maybe he can help himself. Gog’s storyline was one of my favorite parts of the book.
Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig
Posted on: July 10, 2012
Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig
published in 2012
Where I got it: the library
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Everyone is going crazy for Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds. Action packed and with an engrossing premise, shattered characters, and Richard Kadrey-esque prose, it’s no wonder this little book is getting a lot of attention.
Although a growing number of people are fascinated by her, Miriam Black wishes she could just disappear. As an adolescent, she gained the power to tell people the circumstances of their death. Perhaps the person lives until they are 95 and dies peacefully in their sleep. Perhaps it’s a housefire, or a drug overdose, or suicide. Living alone and on the run, she tries to avoid touching people. But of course it doesn’t work. Once upon a time she tried to save the life of a child whose death she’d foreseen. That didn’t work either.
Miriam comes off fairly crass, but it’s a facade. She’s not a mean person, she’s just really sick of shaking hands and seeing terrible visions in hospitals and bathroom floors. Her diary, nearly out of pages, is the only therapy she has, the only way she can get these feelings and fears and self hatred out of her system.
Miriam isn’t the nicest person in the world, so it’s doubly unfortunate that she’s mostly surrounded by assholes. Frat boys looking to get laid, truckers who might rape her, violent drug addicts, the scum below the bottom crust of society. Miriam doesn’t expect to meet anyone nice. And then she meets Louis, and everything changes. Louis is a completely normal, kind man. And in the moment before his death, he calls Miriam’s name.
Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman
Posted on: June 20, 2012
Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman
published in 1992, reprinted by Titan Books in 2011
where I got it: purchased new
(and don’t you just adore that cover art?)
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If you’ve never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I’m going to spoil the ending for you – the good guys win. Dracula and his brides are destroyed by the silvered weapons and quick thinking of Van Helsing and his friends. (If you’ve never read Dracula, you really should. I don’t do so well with the classics, and even I found it highly engaging.)
But what if that wasn’t how the story ended? What if Dracula won? What he traveled to England to be “among the teeming masses”, married Queen Victoria, and set London up as a safe haven for vampires? What if being reborn as the undead became acceptable, even fashionable? This is the premise of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, and a brilliant premise it is. The story has many of the trappings of Victorian literature, but with a number of deliciously dark twists. This was a book I absolutely couldn’t put down, Newman had me on page two. The premise was fascinating, the plot was engaging, and I adored the characters.
Under Dracula, who now styles himself the Prince Consort and Lord Protector, more and more businesses and society in London run from dusk to dawn, with socialites hosting “after-darks”, banks and merchants only being open at night, and a massive upswing in the sales of luxury coffins. For many, receiving the dark kiss allowed them to rise even higher in society, but for others, the opposite has been true. Those of the lower classes still starve and prostitute themselves, drunks still beg for money (but to buy pig blood, not booze).
Why don’t I watch more tv? Television is easy, available, and often populated by handsome people. Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t got a smidge of ye olde attention deficit disorder. I can curl up on the sofa reading and not move for three hours, but pay attention to a one hour tv show? Yikes. Or maybe it’s all the insultingly stupid commercials. there are some great TV shows out there, many available sans adverts on Netflix and other streaming services. So what the hell is my problem? stay tuned for a drunken essay* on this.
If what we read has some connection to escapism and wish fulfillment, what the fuck is wrong with me? I crave ultra dark fiction, the darker, the stranger, and the more dangerous, the better. I’m not talking blood and guts or serial killers, I’m talking the dark, tragic and painful kind, full of betrayal and heartbreak. If like me, you’ve been outed as someone who likes that type of thing, you know exactly what I’m talking about. What the fuck is wrong with me? I certainly don’t want to live rough, bathe only when it rains, steal stuff, starve, live in a cemetery, climb drainpipes in the rain, sleep under bridges, fall off horses, have a price put on my head, get betrayed, get chased by unnatural creatures, chill out with hookers, get tortured, get papercuts, get paid to hurt someone else, get blackmailed by sorcerers, or run through the woods while barefoot. I’m as far as a person can get from being an antihero haunted by violence or regret. I’m a slightly odd but very nice person with a cushy life, a steady job, and the best husband on the planet. I’m a total wuss who won’t even walk to the mailbox barefoot. So again, WTF? or maybe what we read has nothing at all to do with wish fulfillment?
oh wait, I do have a regret: not taking more literature classes in high school and college. Also, I played some really crappy cards the other nigh tin Ticket to Ride: India. ok, two teensy silly regrets easily fixed by next semester’s community college course catalog and a board game rematch.
My overly cluttered apartment is driving me crazy. Time for some spring cleaning, which means some of these books have got to go. It looks like a library sorting room exploded in here. Me thinks there may be some give aways of gently read books happening here soon. stay tuned.
With the spiffy blog, i’m always feeling pressured to read new things, which means my favorite rarely get reread. Other blogger buddies, how do you solve this? Do you reread at your whim?
Speaking of wish fulfillment, if you attended a scifi-fantasy convention, how likely would you be to attend a panel about blogging?
*you’ve been drinking, so it seems like the most amazing piece of writing in the world. And then you wake up and read it sober, and wonder what the fuck were you thinking? Those aren’t even sentences! Is that even English?
- In: read along | Scott Lynch
- 54 Comments
Hi Everyone! Welcome to our first weekend discussion of The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. As resident cat herder for this first section, I got to come up with the discussion starters. This discussion covers from the beginning of the book through the Interlude entitled “Locke Stays for Dinner”, as per the reading schedule. We’ve just met our characters, and we’re getting to know the island nation of Camorr – run by a Duke, but really run by the criminal underground, if you get my drift. We’re just beginning to get an inkling of what’s going on, and it’s already a wild ride!
participating? awesome! Leave a link in the comments to your discussion post in your blog so everyone else can find you. In fact, as the weekend progresses and more posts come up, I’ll be adding links to the bottom of this post. So check back again, and see what new discussions have gone up! while you’re at it, check out Scott Lynch’s live journal, for additional fun tidbits. Cuz he’s just nice like that.
not participating, but want to join in on the fun? Just say so in the comments, and I’ll ad you to the sooper seekrit list of goodies.
on twitter? use #lynchmob (until we offend someone, that is).
Here are this week’s discussion starters:
1. If this is your first time reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, what do you think of it so far? If this is a re-read for you, how does the book stand up to rereading?
2. At last count, I found three time lines: Locke as as a 20-something adult, Locke meeting Father Chains for the first time, and Locke as a younger child in Shades Hill. How are you doing with the Flashback within a flashback style of introducing characters and the world?
3. Speaking of the world, what do you think of Camorr and Lynch’s world building?
4. Father Chains and the death offering. . . quite the code of honor for thieves, isn’t it? What kind of person do you think Chains is going to mold Locke into?
5. It’s been a while since I read this, and I’d forgotten how much of the beginning of the book is pure set up, for the characters, the plot, and the world. Generally speaking, do you prefer set up and world building done this way, or do you prefer to be thrown into the deep end with what’s happening?
6. If you’ve already started attempting to pick the pockets of your family members (or even thought about it!) raise your hand.
my answers after the jump!
check out other discussions here:
Nashville Book Worm
Dark Cargo
Rose’s Thingamajig
Felix Pearce
Books Without any Pictures
Lynn’s Book Blog
Geeky Daddy
Scruffy Fiction
Vilutheril Reviews
Booky Pony
Tethyan Books
Paperless Reading
Beware of the Froggies
John Ayliff
My Awful Reviews
Just Book Reading
Kaitharshayr’s Musings
All I Am – A Redhead
Realbooks4ever
Coffee, Cookies and Chili Peppers
Travels through Iest
Logan K Stewart
Hugo Endurance Project
Lisa Pizza
Dark Cargo Explorer
Genkinahito’s Blog
SF Signal
Musings of a Bibliophile
the Bente way of Life
Updates to the Theory of Everything **NEW! ***
- In: read along | Scott Lynch
- 64 Comments
These are a few of my favorite things!
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is what you’ve been waiting for. This is the “February surprise”.
This is what all the fuss is about.
This spring, I invite you to join Dark Cargo, My Awful Reviews, @OhthatAshley posting at SF Signal, and Dark Cargo Explorer and Yours Truly on an epic journey through the elderglass towers, the corrupt marketplaces, the shark infested waters beneath the pirate ship fortresses, and the thief prowling alleys and bridges of Camorr. I invite you to join us on what could be the reading experience of your life. I invite you to join us on our read along of Scott Lynch’s debut novel The Lies of Locke Lamora, the unassuming looking fantasy novel that started cults, inspired restraining order style behavior, and quite possibly changed everyone’s ideas of dark fantasy and antiheroes. Don’t worry, we’ll be reading Red Seas Under Red Skies as well. Can’t have a summer without pirates, now can we?
If you’ve never read Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards sequence which starts with The Lies of Locke Lamora and continues in Red Seas Under Red Skies, this is your opportunity. If you’ve read one or both books before, the timing couldn’t be better for a re-read, as this whole thing is in preparation for the Republic of Thieves, due to hit bookstore shelves later this year. Yes! This year! Really! Scott Lynch said so!
How to join in, you ask?
It’s easy. all you have to do is reply to this thread* (or to any of the other participating bloggers) . I’ll add you to my super secret e-mail mailing list, and you’ll get an e-mail with discussion starters for each section of the book. Post your responses to your blog, and poof, the awesomeness has begun!
I got the opportunity to talk a bit about Scott Lynch with my friend John on a local radio show, Arts and More. and wow, can I tell you, 45 seconds to talk about your favorite author is not a lot of time!
If you found your way to this site from the radio show, welcome. Please have a look around. I do mostly Science Fiction and Fantasy, and am currently getting ramped up for my Vintage Science Fiction month, this coming January (note to self: buy more baking soda).
Scott Lynch has been called one of the finest fantasy writers of our time. His fiction falls smack dab in the middle of what’s become known as Dark Fantasy. That usually means the good guy is a bad guy, and the bad guy is even worse. It means sarcastic and witty dialog, the anti-heroes make a hobby out of getting beaten up, and thievery, language, violence, and back stabbing (literally) are every day activities. In Dark Fantasy, there are no white hats and dark hats, simply gray hats and grayer hats. Not so escapist as it sounds at first blush, is it?
in short: Dark Fantasy is good fun, and Scott Lynch is a master at creating it. When I feel like I’m in a reading rut, he is my go to guy. This isn’t my first time waxing rhapsodic about him.
Scott Lynch’s ongoing fantasy series, the Gentleman Bastard series, starts out in a fantastical Renaissance Venice style city, and is about . . . well, it’s about a lot of things. Friends, crime, revenge, more crime, screwing the bad guys over, some more revenge, and an itty bitty teeny weeny bit of romance. The first book in the series, The Lies of Locke Lamora, introduces us to the title character, Locke. We learn of his misspent youth, his training with Father Chains, and how he grew up to become known as the Thorn of Camorr, a con artist able to sell salt water to mermaids and spirit necklaces off sleeping duchesses. Lamora makes Danny Ocean look like an amateur. But there is dark revenge afoot, and of course Locke finds himself in the middle of it all. The second book, Red Seas Under Red Skies is a little more subtle, a little more mature. and there are lots and lots of pirates. Along with thousands of other rabid fans, I am hoping the third book in the series, The Republic of Thieves, will arrive soon.
If those reviews caught your interest, you can also find Lynch’s short story In the Stacks, about a group of students who are on a quest to return a book to the right shelf in a magical, wondrous library, in the anthology Swords and Dark Magic. His serialized novel, Queen of the Iron Sands, is available on his website.
Also, here is a wonderful and recent audio interview with Mr. Lynch done through Orion Publishing. He has a beautiful voice, doesn’t he?
In closing, if you’re not reading Scott Lynch, you are missing out on something very special.
Oh, and I also talked a bit about Patrick Rothfuss. But you probably already know who he is. Have you see his The Princess and Mr Whiffle? If not, go find a copy, it’s adorable, and it’s not at all what you think.
The Third Section by Jasper Kent
Posted on: October 20, 2011
The Third Section, by Jasper Kent
Published in Oct 2011
where I got it: received a review copy from the friendly folks at Pyr
Why I read it: Enjoyed immensely the first two books in the series Twelve, and Thirteen Years Later
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Taking place 30 years after the events of Thirteen Years Later, The Third Section (the third book in Jasper Kent’s Danilov Quintet) follows the children of Aleksei Danilov. His son Dmitri is in Sevastapol, fighting off the French and the English. When Dmitri discovers two dead soldiers, whose wounds match those witnessed thirty years earlier, he knows the creatures he helped his father hunt have returned.
Meanwhile, Aleksei’s illegitimate daughter, Tamara, has secured a post with the Tsar’s secret police, The Third Section. With a cover as a madam running a brothel, her official mission is informing on loose lipped politicians. Her supervisor attempts to unnerve her by showing her his torture chambers, but she barely reacts. Tamara has nothing left to lose, what could he possibly show her that would frighten her? When one of the working girls is found dead, covered in blood and missing her throat, Tamara begins an investigation that can’t end well.
And then we have Yudin, one of the most thrilling villains I have ever met. In Twelve, Yudin, or Iuda, as he was known then, identified Aleksei as a worthy opponent. Now that the game has started, Yudin won’t back away until there is a winner. And when one is immortal, the game never has to end. He is vicious, scientifically curious, and sadistic, and the pleasure of finally getting his point of view was a pleasurable horror unto itself. I have no sympathy for Yudin, but his talent for deception and the long game makes him beyond fascinating to watch.
Low Town (UK: The Straight Razor Cure), by Daniel Polansky
Published in Aug 2011
Where I got it: received review copy from the nice people at Doubleday/Random House
Visit DanielPolansky.com for more info
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review, the quick version:
Go get a copy of this book right now. all the hype surrounding it? completely deserved. More than the sum of its parts, Low Town is the kind of dark fantasy novel you’ve been waiting your whole life to read. For three days Polansky fed every secret weakness I’ve got, along with a few guilty pleasures I didn’t even know existed. Not a book for the faint of heart, Polansky took some major risks with Low Town. And every single one of them paid off.
review, the long version:
Surrounded by ridiculous hype, too big to fit comfortably in my handbag, with a title and cover art that didn’t tell me anything, and starring a drug addict/pusher thug. I stared at Low Town as it sat on my shelf. And the damn thing just stared back. Like it didn’t give a shit if I read it or not.
To prove that I was just as stubborn as the book was, one evening I picked it up, planning to read maybe 20 pages. 90 minutes and 75 pages later, all I could say was “holy shit is this good”.
Last night I wrote a thousand word emotional reaction to Low Town. Yes, it was that kind of book for me. But because I wisely hit “Save”, and not “publish”, hopefully today you’ll get a more rational style review, instead of a straight up unfiltered emotional reaction. There’s nothing I enjoy more than a book that keeps me up all night the day after I finish it. Low Town was that kind of book too. While flirting with being the bastard love child of Joe Abercrombie and Raymond Chandler, and written with the flowing invective style of Scott Lynch, Low Town is most certainly rated Super R.
Low Town is also one of those wonderfully subtle books where although the plot is thrillingly compelling, that’s not what makes this book so incredible. Aspiring writers, you wanna know how to create atmosphere and worlds that breathe all on their own? Wanna know how to write characters whose hidden depths ooze out their shadows to gently but surely addict your readers to learning their secrets? Wanna know how risk taking is really done? Read Low Town.
Prince of Thorns, by Mark Lawrence
Posted on: August 3, 2011
- In: epic fantasy | fantasy | Mark Lawrence | Review
- 19 Comments
Prince of Thorns, by Mark Lawrence
Published August 2011
Where I got it: rec’d review copy from Harper Collins/Voyager
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With an epic, empire-shattering sprawl that brings George R R Martin to mind, and a quick and snarky narrative style reminiscent of Scott Lynch, yet with a twist unlike anything I’vecome across, Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns is easily the most incredible epic fantasy I have ever read. To drop yet another name, this is a novel that practically vibrates with deliberateness, making me think of Patrick Rothfuss at times.
Showing a true mastery of foreshadowing, Lawrence drops hints both overt and subtle that creep up on the reader like a path of breadcrumbs that twists and turns through the forest. I don’t care if this path leads to a witch’s house, Lawrence has completely seduced me to the point where I can do naught but follow. I knew from the first chapter this was a book I’d be devouring. The plot set-up is fast and clean, the prose and dialog alive with “show me”, and long before the first twist hits you’ll realize this is nothing at all like your typical epic fantasy.
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