Matthew Hunter

I’m re-reading Katherine Kerr’s A Time of Exile for a somewhat unusual reason. I’ve read the whole series before once or twice, at least up to the most recently published book, but on my last reread someone else had my copy of this book. Since I had read it before, I skipped it and picked up with A Time of Omens. When my copy of Exile returned, I figured I might as well reread it, even though I had finished the original reread quite some time before.

The Wreck of the River of Stars, despite winning the Heinlein award, is a book well suited to it’s title. It bears the unfortunate stigma of a tragedy with little impact, a disaster with little meaning. It lacks impact. If one is to consider the obvious parallels, it is a failure of Titanic proportions. There are many reasons for this. The writing is extremely awkward at times; unfocused and peppered with authorial asides and pointless digressions.

A Clash of Kings is the second book in George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. The Seven Kingdoms are beset by four Kings, all seeking to rule. The Starks, wolf-lords of the North, are scattered: Arya and Sansa hostage, Robb at war, Bran and Rickon learning to govern Winterfell. The Lannister host led by Lord Tywin opposes Robb Stark, and Tyrion is set to govern King’s Landing – if he can survive Joffrey’s whims and Cersei’s cunning.

The novel opens with Anita being called upon to rescue Nathaniel, her house leopard, from a local S&M club. After months of enforced separation from Jean-Claude and Richard, months spent learning to control her powers, Anita is suddenly thrust back into the world of the monsters and forced to contend with her enemies once more. And with her allies, as well, for not everything has been peachy with her boys while she was gone.

This is the follow-up to Smoke and Shadows, and while much of the prior criticism remains the same, there are some good points this time around. The plot is something one would expect to see in a really bad horror movie: while filming an episode of the vampire detective show in a haunted mansion, the crew gets trapped inside by some evil power, and must survive until sunrise. Another formula plot, though the author pulls it off as well as can be expected.

Take a Thief is a standalone novel that functions as a biography for Skif, one of the supporting characters in Lackey’s Heralds of Valdemar series. It’s a return to a previous time in the Valdemar universe, filling out events and characters previously only hinted at. Both the characters and the events benefit from a fresh look by a writer whose skill has grown substantially since the Arrows of the Queen trilogy, and fans of the series will enjoy a look at Valdemar’s criminal underclass – something which the majority of Lackey’s books mention only in passing.

A Talent for War is McDevitt’s latest novel, this one beginning a new series. The main character, a dealer in antiquities, is bequeathed a large inheritance when his uncle, an amateur archeologist, passes away. Along with the inheritance comes a lead on a discovery of great significance. The trail leads straight to the legend of Christopher Sim, a legendary commander whose guerilla tactics bought time to unify the planetary Confederation into a single force to oppose encroaching aliens.

The Stone of Farewell suffers from the usual problems of a middle book in a trilogy; the characters are caught midway between their youth and their maturity, the plots of evil seem ascendant, and neither the beginning nor the end are entirely satisfactory. Still, this is by no means a poor example. Simon’s quest to recover the sword Thorn from beneath the Rimmer’s tree has succeeded, at the cost of some lives and much trouble.

Arrows of the Queen is probably Mercedes Lackey’s first published work, or close to it, and that shows; although it’s well written for a first novel, it has the rough edges of inexperience, and a certain naive simplicity that renders it eminently suitable for children (really, young teenagers) and sometimes less engrossing for adults. All her works tend to have a touch of those qualities, but Arrows of the Queen is an explicitly escapist fantasy: a young girl’s dream of magical horses to cure her loneliness and carry her away from all her troubles.

Vanyel Ashkevron, Herald-Mage of Valdemar, has faced the worst that the world can throw at him. Karsite demons, enemy mages, creatures from the Pelagirs; he has faced and defeated them all. The bards he once aspired to join now sing songs of his exploits to a rapt nation. Young women worship his image while fearing to approach a legend. Even his teacher, Savil, acknowledges that Vanyel’s talents have exceeded her own in many areas.