kgbooklog

Ursula Vernon, "No Unicorns in Heaven"
Sofawolf (2005) ISBN: 0-9769212-2-7
Score: 2

This is a short bonus comic included in the first collection of her webcomic Digger, and tells the story of the sculptor who made the Statue of Ganesh featured in the main story.

K.J. Parker, Devices and Desires
Orbit (2005) ISBN: 0-316-00338-7
Score: 2

Start of the Engineer trilogy, an epic fantasy without the fantasy (it is set on another world). It's a story about technology, yet the most advanced country has frozen its tech just short of an industrial revolution. The plot and character motivations need some suspension of disbelief, since the conflict mainly consists of the antagonist demonstrating that "love is the most destructive force in the universe". I really wish the female characters had a chance to be something more than just pawns and objects of obsession.

Next Book: Charles Stross, The Merchants' War

John Twelve Hawks, The Traveler
Doubleday (2005) ISBN: 0-385-51428-X
Score: 1.5

Start of the Fourth Realm series, an urban fantasy about using ubiquitous surveillance to crush dissent. Fairly exciting, but I would have been happier without the supernatural element (Travelers are people who can send their souls into other dimensions; the Fourth Realm is our world). Slight spoiler: V jbaqre vs gur nhgube vf njner bs gur vebal bs univat gur crbcyr svtugvat gb or aba-pbasbezvfgf arngyl cnve hc vagb urgrebfrkhny pbhcyrf.

Next Book: Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

Sarah Monette, Melusine
Ace (2005) ISBN: 0-441-01286-8
Score: 2

Start of an unnamed high fantasy series; the title refers to a city ruled by wizards, though much of the book takes place outside of it. There are two POV characters (a wizard and a thief), but while they aren't nice people they still don't deserve all they're put through. This is one book that really needed a map and glossary but didn't get one; the author's website has a description of the calendar, but there are still things you have to figure out yourself (like that "hocus" means "wizard" not "demon", and I still don't know how much a "great septad" is).

Next Book: Charlie Fletcher, Stoneheart

Patricia Briggs, Raven's Strike
Ace (2005) ISBN: 0-441-01312-0
Score: 2

Second half of the Raven duology, where we learn why it is a bad idea for gods to fall in love. Enjoyable, but I like her urban fantasy series better.

Next Book: Justine Larbalestier, Magic's Child

Frances Hardinge, Fly By Night
Harper (2005) ISBN: 0-06-087627-1
Score: 3

This is a juvenile pseudo-historical[1] novel about a girl, a goose, and a con man who get mixed up in some nasty politics. Contains lots of lying, stealing, fighting, betraying, censoring, and wonderfully anthropomorphic descriptive passages.

[1] It ends with this disclaimer:
"This is not a historical novel. It is a yarn. Although the Realm is based roughly on England at the start of the eighteenth century, I have taken appalling liberties with historical authenticity and, when I felt like it, the laws of physics."

Next Book: Kelley Armstrong, Broken

Michelle Sagara [West], Cast in Shadow
Luna (2005) ISBN: 0-373-80236-6
Score: 2

Start of a high fantasy series about a young woman from the slums with unique magic powers. She's not quite a Mary Sue: while she does get away with breaking a lot of laws and rules, she also gets beat up a lot, isn't shown to be very bright, and no one has anything good to say about her appearance. It's structured mainly as a mystery but a lot of information is concealed from the reader (and the heroine), and there were a bunch of tiny inconsistencies that bugged me. Reading this, I realised that all the Luna books I've read (C.E. Murphy, Laura Anne Gilman, and Laura Resnick) have nearly identical prose styles: self-depreciating first-person female.

Next Book: Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

Kelley Armstrong, Haunted
Bantam (2005) ISBN: 0-553-58708-0
Score: 0

Another novel in the Otherworld series, this one narrated by the ghost of a half-demon evil witch, who turns out to be just as whiny as the living good witches.

Next Book: Alan Campbell, Scar Night

Maria V. Snyder, Poison Study
Luna (2005) ISBN: 0-373-80230-7
Score: 1.5

Start of a romantic high fantasy series, about a young woman, convicted of murder, who becomes the food taster for a paranoid ruler. The setting is fairly interesting, but the plot and characters are fairly cliched and what little we see of magic doesn't seem too well thought out (which has me a bit worried about the sequel).

Next Book: Jim Butcher, Cursor's Fury

Albert Uderzo, Asterix and the Falling Sky
(translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge)
Orion (2005) ISBN: 0752873016
Score: -2

Another solo Asterix graphic novel by Uderzo, in which the series unmistakably jumps the shark. Good (Disney style) aliens and bad (Japanese style) aliens bring their deadlocked war to ancient Gaul, each hoping to grab the secret of the magic potion to give their side an edge. Predictable events follow, and then the good alien erases everyone's memory (but not the reader's, unfortunately).