Reviews

The fantasy genre is notorious for its cliches. The same elements that make up a compelling tale, as expressed in The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, occur again and again. Fans continue to embrace them tirelessly, because as any fan of the genre knows, it’s the details that matter. It’s not where you’re going, but how you get there, and what happens to you on the way. Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy is a perfect example of that basic principle.

*The Edge of Tomorrow is a Tom Cruise military sci-fi vehicle, and it’s a bundle of contradictions that actually work out to a pretty good movie. Let me start by hitting you with what is obvious from the trailer: alien invasion, near-future powered armor. Those aspects are mostly handled well. The power armor is much more realistic than, say, Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor; it’s basically strength-enhancing and load-carrying with some token “armor” and a few mounted weapons.

The Elfstones of Shannara is, in my opinion, the best of the Shannara books. Terry Brooks has exorcised the need to imitate Tolkein, and is now free to explore a somewhat different – and more original – story. While he does not succeed in creating a classic that will ring down through the ages, he does manage a reasonably enjoyable fantasy novel. Unfortunately, reasonably enjoyable is still pretty flawed. The main issue in the story is whether the main character can access and use the power of the Elfstones.

The Empire of Isher (by AE Van Vogt) combines both The Weapon Shops of Isher and The Weapon Makers into a single edition. The combined work is still under 300 pages, but the sparse writing style means that a lot of action can be packed into those pages. While this edition was published in 2000, the stories themselves are noticeably dated. They are also unique and very hard to describe.

The Family Trade is probably best described as a unusual take on the usual sort of crossover story. The heroine, a trade journalist who has just uncovered the details of a massive money laundering scheme, finds herself at loose ends when her magazine’s ownership turns out to be involved. As if avoiding the goodfellas and finding a new job wasn’t enough to worry about, her adoptive parents finally reveal the details of her birth family, along with her mother’s personal effects and newspaper articles suggesting she was murdered, with a sword, in the middle of a 20th century city.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed. Thus begins the tale of Roland of Gilead, and of his quest to save the Dark Tower that stands at the center of all realities. We enter Roland’s quest partway through; he has left his father’s court some time ago and now travels the desolate remains of his world, a world that has moved on. Crazed townfolk on the edge of survival, cunning demons with the power of prophecy, and dangerous environments will all test Roland’s skills in this hauntingly beautiful story.

The Hidden Land is the second novel in Pamela Dean’s The Secret Country trilogy. Having accepted the Secret Country as real enough for the moment, the children must rise to meet the challenges they invented in the roles they were so eager to play in safe imagination. Yet they must do so without most of the strength and skills of the characters they are playing. Prince Edward, the eldest of the five, now rules a country on the brink of war with the Dragon King.

Yesterday, I went to see Fearless, Jet Li’s recent martial arts epic. It was pretty good, but also pretty much exactly what I expected. While there, I saw that the theater had allocated one of its screens to a flick called The Illusionist, a movie I had never heard of or seen previews or promos for. Based on the little title strip with showtimes, it looked interesting, and a few minutes wirelessly checking the reviews on Rotten Tomatos suggested it wasn’t awful.

I read this in a 2003 reissue; it was originally published in 1977. Despite this, it’s an engaging piece of hard science fiction that passes the test of time extremely well. The author was even lucky enough to guess at a Russian collapse, leaving the Chinese as the primary world power (other than the United States, of course). There are only a few references that date the book to its original publication, and none of those are jarring.

The King’s Peace is Jo Walton’s take on the Arthurian legends. Jo has never been a particularly good author for me, and this book is no exception. It is the first in a series, and I didn’t bother to pick up the rest. It’s also telling that this book, purportedly about King Arthur, puts a young woman on the cover and as the main character – the feminist impulse to re-imagine one of history’s most emphatically male tales in that manner loses most of its impact when it becomes clear that this retelling adds little to the genre of the Arthurian legends and lacks even the distinction of being the first or best feminist retelling.