Pierre Grimbert "Six Heirs" (AmazonCrossing, 2013)

My curiosity was raised when I read that Grimbert’s Ji series was a bestseller in France.  My experience with French SFF has been limited to some comics and archaic Arthurian texts, so I wanted to see what Grimbert had to offer.  Unfortunately, Six Heirs doesn’t offer anything that can’t be easily found here in America.

The setup is good, and out of the ordinary.  Several generations earlier, a stranger traveled to all the various kingdoms & requested that they each send a representative to the small island of Ji on a particular day.  When the day arrives, the assembled representatives go off with the stranger, & seemingly disappear.  Eventually a small group of surviving representatives return, but refuse to discuss where they went or what happened.  Their descendants create a tradition of gathering every few years to honor the memory of their ancestors, and to celebrate the extended family that they have become.   In the present day, on the eve of one such gathering, a murderous cult begins assassinating the titular Heirs of Ji.  As they try to avoid the assassins, the small group of survivors gathers together to attempt to determine exactly what is going on.

Despite the premise, the execution of Six Heirs comes off as something that you feel like you’ve read before.  This is in part due to the reliance of well-worn tropes in the story and characterizations.  The setting is solidly faux European, with many small feudal states that don’t really feel differentiated.  The characters themselves fall into near cliché.  We have the mage (Corenn), the barbarian (Bowbaq), the rogue (Rey), the warrior (Grigan), and the young people (Leti & Yan, who do double duty as the romance subplot).  None of this is particularly well differentiated from piles of cookie cutter fantasy that you have probably read.

Concerning the prose itself, I was underwhelmed.  It is workmanlike and functional, but nothing more.  That may or may not be a function of the translation.  If anything it reminded me of the numerous Tolkien clones published in the 1970s.  

It’s also worth noting that Six Heirs does not really function as a standalone novel.  By the end of the story, Grimbert gives us no resolution to any of the primary plot points or character arcs.  In this regard, Six Heirs seems to be more of a multipage introduction to the series than an episode.

At its best, Six Heirs is a functional enough epic fantasy for a YA reader.  Fans of Eddings, Brooks, etc may very likely be intrigued by the story of Ji.  A reader looking for more sophisticated storytelling will be disappointed.

Evie Manieri “Blood’s Pride” (Tor, 2013)

Evie Manieri describes herself as a fan of intricacies.  I would describe the plotting of The Wire as intricate, where certain actions don’t pay off for 1 or maybe 2 seasons.  Blood’s Pride must be a whole other sort of intricate, most likely meaning cramming as much as possible into a single story.

The story of Blood’s Pride takes place a generation after the city state of Shadar is conquered by the seafaring Norlanders.  The Norlanders have come in order to control magical ore which can only be found in Shadar.  Needless to say, the people of Shadar are not happy about the brutal rule of the Norlanders, and Blood’s Pride is about their attempt to overthrow the rule of the Norlanders and regain control of their own city.  

Before getting into some of the problems of Blood’s Pride, let me mention a couple of things that worked well for me.  First of all, Manieri’s overall vision is admirable.  She has envisioned a fantasy that is different from the norm.  Sure, some of the characters do fit some familiar tropes – the mixed blooded outsider, the slave who is really a secret king, etc.  But the overall storyline of a city fighting back against foreign oppression is not one commonly told.  Secondly, she does a good job with the pacing of her story.  I found myself being pushed forward to the end of the book quite rapidly.  In a new fantasy world, she doesn’t waste time on info dumps or other long expository passages, but focuses on plot development instead.  This means that in spite of the flaws of the book, it is an entertaining read.

But there are some problems with Blood’s Pride as well.  Some of them are logical, and there may be explanations that work that we simply haven’t received yet.  For example, how is a culture that can’t be exposed to sunlight an effective expansionistic empire?  Wouldn’t that whole “sunlight kills them” thing be a very effective natural deterrent to their activities?  Another culture is split between living in the desert and at sea, yet has members who are gingers.  As a ginger myself, I can tell you that neither boating nor desert excursions are things that gingers are well suited for.  While she packs plenty of cool ideas and details into the book, most of them create more problems than they solve, once you begin to examine them.  For example, how do they transport those huge flying animals on ships?  Why use the ships if they can fly?  How does that magical ore make those swords?  And if they bring the blood south to pre-bond the swords, how are they transporting that much blood in a world without refrigeration?  See what I mean?  Now this is only the first book of a trilogy, and many of these problems may be resolved in the later volumes.  But it is a bad sign when this seems to be a trend in only the first book.

A more significant problem is the development of the characters.  There have been some complaints about her naming conventions, with readers saying that they found it difficult to follow.  I don’t think that the problem is with the names, per se.  Rather it is with the character development.  Blood’s Pride has a rather large cast of characters, and unfortunately they are thinly developed at best.  What’s happening is that readers are confused by shifting perspectives on the story due to the lack of character depth.  The tangible thing that they can latch onto is the names, but the real issue is the lack of in depth character development.  The names themselves are no stranger than bog standard fantasy names.

I thought that Blood’s Pride was an entertaining read with a fast paced plot and an unusual fantasy world.  Unfortunately that was overshadowed by the author’s tendency to cram too much into a single volume.  Not only are there too many loose ends in the world building, but character development has also suffered as a result.  It doesn’t matter how many “oh cool” ideas or moments are in the story if the reader isn’t invested in the characters. 

Karen Lord “The Best of All Possible Worlds” (Del Rey, 2013)

Ultimately this is a book about optimism.  Characters struggle and suffer, bad things happen, but the possibility for growth and happiness exists.

The plot is fairly simple.  Following a genocidal attack, Sadiri refugees on the planet Cygnus Beta are struggling to continue their existence as a distinct culture.  Their fundamental problem:  most of the women were killed in the attack, leaving the refugees with an extreme imbalance of male survivors.  In order to find an appropriate pool of potential brides, a joint delegation from the Sadiri community and the Cygnus Beta government travel around the world, visiting various locales in order to gather genetic samples.  

Lord’s story centers on two characters:  Grace Delarua and the Sadiri councilor Dllenahkh.  She’s warm and empathetic.  He’s cool and cerebral.   You can guess how it goes.  (But that’s OK.  Sometimes judicious usage of a trope plays off well, and this is one of those cases.)  Delarua is the primary POV.  Her personality shines through and builds the tone of the book.  Delarua’s empathy ensures that we are invested in the characters and through them in the small personal story that Lord tells.

Lord makes an interesting choice in TBoAPW.  Events that would be the core of most SF books are somewhat marginalized, and occur in the background. The destruction of the Sadiri home planet, kidnappings, the investigation of slavery, the prosecution of a telepath who has been manipulating others; we see the events only in the aftermath as they play out in the lives of our small group traveling around Cygnus Beta.

And so back to optimism.  We see the aftereffects of these various disasters and problems, but the focus in on overcoming them.  Rather than dwell on the negative, Lord gives us a story of survival and ultimately triumph.  We are given a tour of a world that has its share of problems, but are left feeling that these problems are solvable, and that ultimately it is possible to not just endure, but to create better lives.

The Best of All Possible Worlds is an outstanding novel, and quite frankly so accomplished that it is difficult to believe that it is only Lord’s second novel.  It’s rare to read such a humanized story of interstellar colonization, and rarer still to read one so polished.  It’s sure to be one of my favorite reads of 2013.

Kathleen Tierney "Blood Oranges" (Roc, 2013)

First things first:  Kathleen Tierney is the nom de urban fantasy of author Caitlin Kiernan.  Ms Kiernan is an extremely well regarded stylist, who primarily writes in the vein of “the weird”.  She has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award, & the Locus Award, among many others.

The plot is bog standard urban fantasy.  Monster hunter Siobhan Quinn is bitten by a werewolf, then saved and bitten by a vampire, the Bride of Quiet, who intends to use Quinn for her own nefarious purposes.  Being a sassy monster hunter, Quinn doesn’t take kindly to this idea, & starts looking for answers and revenge.

On one level this is a breezy, if gritty, urban fantasy.  Quinn’s quest for answers and revenge pushes things along at a brisk pace.  The writing is very accessible, and suitably quippy for the genre.   What is ultimately more interesting is how Tierney uses this plot as a platform to deconstruct urban fantasy novels.  Quinn is absolutely not a Mary Sue.  She’s a homeless junkie who just accidentally got involved with monster hunting.  She’s not sexy (unless you like shark eyes, piranha teeth, & bits of blood and gore in someone’s hair).  She’s really not very good at it, and seems to succeed more from dumb luck than anything else.  The various supernatural characters are likewise not sexy, or protective, or anything remotely resembling some sort of potential life partner.  Instead, they tend to be horrific, with their own thinly veiled agendas that clearly are not in line with Quinn’s best interests.

A word needs to be said about the actual writing in Blood Oranges.  As Caitlin Kiernan, she is known for beautiful, at times rather ornate prose.  In her guise as Kathleen Tierney, she abandons this entirely.  Blood Oranges is told from the POV of Quinn, a junky and runaway who presumably hasn’t attended school since the age of 12.  The prose style reflects this character.  It is coarse and at times simplistic, but then that’s the point isn’t it?

Blood Oranges is a boot to the head of urban fantasy.  An angry, blood stained rebuke to the writers of simpering sparkly vampires and faux heroic heroines who love them.  It’s a blast of punk rock attempting to cleanse the airwaves from bloated soft rock balladry. 

Richard Parks “Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter” (Prime Books, 2013)

Yamada no Goji is a supernatural detective in feudal Japan.  For a fee, he investigates situations involving various supernatural phenomena (foxes, ghosts, demons, trolls).  

A couple of things about the book will either make it or break it for you. First, this is a collection of short stories, not a novel.  This means that the readers’ expectation of character and plot development will not be fulfilled.  While there are some recurring characters and themes, there is no overall plot to this collection.  Yamada no Godji gets called in on a case, investigates, & moves on.  This can be frustrating, as each story just seems to be a variation on what came before, and not any sort of progression.

Second, the setting is unusual.  While recent years have seen growth in non-Western fantasy stories, the feudal Japanese setting is still rather unusual.  I am no expert on Japanese folklore or history, but my impression was that Parks dealt with these issues with sensitivity and a certain amount of accuracy.  But readers may be upset to discover that none of the typical Western tropes are in use here. (Although it’s possible to see how tropes could develop from this setting – the scheming courtier, the bandit, vengeful ghost, etc).