The decision to give this five stars was easy; it’s wonderfully executed, with clean copy editing and a plot that escalates stakes in textbook fashion.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1926757805?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
My annual roundup of the best books I read in 2016. A really good crop this time, with a higher than ever proportion of five-star books.
In preparation for writing some male-positive feminist romance, I went looking to see if there was any out there already. There is, and this is some of it – and extremely well executed, to boot.
I haven’t given five stars to a book for a little while, but this one was outstanding: well plotted, with complex characters and impeccable prose.
This book is part of the Noblebright Fantasy boxed set that C. J. Brightley has organised, and that I’m participating in. I just finished reading it the other day. It’s a good story, well told, with a young protagonist who learns to trust and who has to show courage and perseverance to help her new-found friends.
So that makes 5 books (including mine) that I can recommend from this bundle. There are 12 books in all, plus some short fiction, and until Saturday it’s only 99c – after that, we need to put the price up for technical reasons to do with the size of the file.
If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to pick it up: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K3534QI
Some of my folks here (such as MrsA Wiggins) may well enjoy these stories. They’re not fluffy, trite, or conventional Christian fiction, but thought-provoking, uncomfortable, and sometimes disturbing fantasy, science fiction and horror stories using Christian characters and elements.
And now, the third of three reviews of other novels with which my Hope and the Patient Man shares this excellent boxed set. (It’s 12 novels, plus bonus short fiction, for 99c, and all of them have heroes with integrity and honour standing up against a dark world.)
You may not be as familiar with Sabrina Chase as you are with Lindsay Buroker and C.J. Brightley, the other two authors I’ve featured. Like mine and Lindsay’s, her book The Last Mage Guardian is a bit steampunkish – enough so that Amazon suggested it to me because I’d enjoyed Lindsay Buroker’s work, and I’m glad of the recommendation. I awarded a very high four stars for this well-written tale of a young woman who finds herself in charge of the magical defense of Europe, some years after a devastating war started by the French.
It’s set in an alternate world. The date appears to be mid-to-late 19th century, from scattered clues. There are trains, but it’s magic rather than technology that gets the emphasis. The North American continent appears to be called Atlantea, and the countries of Europe have different names, their cities have different spellings, and there are other geopolitical differences like the continuation of a separate country of Bretagne distinct from France (or Gaul).
Although there’s a romance subplot between the two viewpoint characters, the emphasis is on the adventure and the magic, with a great boss battle at the end. Flooding cellar, explosions, collapsing masonry, levitation, it’s all good stuff. I liked both the main characters, enjoyed the world, and was happy to accept the more cinematic parts of the story in their own terms.
The editing (and writing) is fully as good as you’ll find from any big publisher, and better than you’ll often get from HarperCollins.
There’s a sequel, which I’ve also read and enjoyed, and I’ve explored some of the author’s other books (mostly SF, inspired by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my own favourite authors) and found them up to the same high standard.
So, preorder this boxed set of 12 novels, including The Last Mage Guardian, for 99c, and you’ll have some great reading come October.
https://www.amazon.com/Light-Darkness-Noblebright-Fantasy-Boxed-ebook/dp/B01K3534QI
Here’s the second of three reviews of books in this boxed set (currently 99c on preorder for 12 novels and a selection of bonus short fiction).
This time it’s of C. J. Brightley’s _The King’s Sword_. It’s the first in the series that led me to coin the (tongue-in-cheek) term “cheerybright” as the opposite of “grimdark”, which has now become “noblebright” and led to the existence of this boxed set.
It’s enjoyable, and even fresh, these days, to read a book in which the cynical, selfish opportunist is the antagonist, and the protagonist is a straightforwardly decent man. This is such a book.
I very much enjoyed the first-person viewpoint character, an ex-soldier discharged after an injury who happens across a prince in distress. (That’s a convenient coincidence, but it’s the only one the plot relies on.) Kemen Sendoa is a big man from a dark-skinned ethnic minority, raised as a soldier as is the tradition with foundlings and orphans in his country. Women are scared of him. Men are wary of him. He’d really like to settle down and have a family, but that’s not going to happen, he’s pretty sure. He’s lost friends, he’s battered by injury (and becomes more battered as the story progresses), but he retains a powerful loyalty to his country and its people.
His mentoring of the young prince is firm, but not harsh. When he’s hailed as a hero for fighting off raiders, he’s genuinely modest about it. He’s not without his secret shame, though, and he does have a character arc as he confronts it.
The prince is less fully rounded, but definitely has a lot of development in the course of the book, under Sendoa’s guidance. Rather than giving us a training montage, the author spends considerable time on the process of his training, which I welcome as more realistic than the usual “Chosen One is whiny and won’t put in the work, succeeds anyway when put under pressure” trope.
An enjoyable start to what became a delightful series.
https://www.amazon.com/Light-Darkness-Noblebright-Fantasy-Boxed-ebook/dp/B01K3534QI
As I mentioned last week, I’m in this 99c boxed set with several authors I admire, including C. J. Brightley, Sabrina Chase and Lindsay Buroker. In fact, three books that I’ve very much enjoyed by those three authors are in the set, and over the next few days I’ll give you my reviews of them – starting with Lindsay’s The Emperor’s Edge.
My book Hope and the Patient Man, a fantasy romance which I consider the best of my Gryphon Clerks books so far, is also included. As it happens, that one, Lindsay’s and Sabrina’s are all approximately steampunk (the set is currently sitting at #4 in the Kindle store for steampunk); but what unites the collection is not the set dressing but the approach. All these books have at least one person who acts with integrity from noble motives, even in a dark, grim world.
I thoroughly enjoyed Lindsay’s Emperor’s Edge when I first read it in 2012, and I went on to read, and enjoy, the rest of the series, and most of her now numerous other books. It has action, suspense and humour. It also has a kickass heroine who’s believable (and a natural leader – although she does engage in fighting quite competently, her real skill is in talking people into doing things). Her ill-assorted group – a cold master assassin, an alcoholic historian, a vain aristocratic pretty-boy and a surly teenage would-be wizard – are lively, fun and convincing characters, as is the idealistic youthful emperor they (unbeknown to him) are setting out to save.
Three things in particular that I liked were the strong heroine whose strength is not just that of a gender-switched man, the steamed-up setting that wasn’t all brass, clockwork and airships but actually felt like a real place, and the flashes of situational humour scattered amidst the action and the desperate plots. Also, the heroes are kind of incompetent sometimes, get a little bit battered about but not to the over-the-top degree that a lot of steampunk heroes do, and don’t end up lauded as heroes.
The whole thing has the worn feel of a setting like Serenity, and also the same kind of strongly individual, somewhat flawed characters in an ensemble cast that works both because of and despite its diversity.
You can get this, and eleven other books with heroic characters, plus bonus short fiction, at the link below for 99c (on preorder).
https://www.amazon.com/Light-Darkness-Noblebright-Fantasy-Boxed-ebook/dp/B01K3534QI
This is a kind of story I like very much: a grim setting with characters who aren’t grimdark antiheroes, but underdog battlers against the cruel and powerful. It reminds me of Daniel Swensen’s work in that way, and also in that it’s extremely well done.