fantasy – Page 109

Review of Legends II: Volume III

Legends II: Volume III
Edited by Robert Silverberg
Containing stories by Robert Silverberg, Neil Gaiman, and Orson Scott Card
Read by Jason Culp, Peter Bradbury, and Michael Emerson
4 Cassettes – 7 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0739310860
Themes: / Fantasy / Majipoor / Mythology / Alternate History / Gods /

The cover of this audiobook prominently displays the names “Neil Gaiman” and “Orson Scott Card”, so I was a bit surprised to find a Robert Silverberg story leading off the collection. It probably shouldn’t have been unexpected, because a look at the back of the audiobook includes blurbs from all three stories – it’s just from the front, the audio appears to include two stories, not three.

“The Book of Changes” is set in Silverberg’s Majipoor universe and is a fine story about an epic poet’s discovery and subsequent writing of his masterwork. The story is steeped in the history of Majipoor, but is clear and enjoyable to a person unfamiliar with that history, as I am. Silverberg has created a world that is as much science fiction as it is fantasy. In Majipoor’s past, humans colonized then got into a war with the native inhabitants. These past events are discussed in Silverberg’s story, but the tale is firmly focused on the poet and the act of creation – something Silverberg knows much about. Jason Culp’s performance was near perfect.

The second novella in the collection is “Monarch of the Glen”, written by Neil Gaiman. The story starts in a hotel bar where Shadow (the main character from Gaiman’s American Gods) is talking to a Scotsman. It is immediately notable that the story is in good hands with Peter Bradbury, whose crisp, clear accents place the listener firmly in the setting which in this case is Northern Scotland. The scotsman offers Shadow a job as a bouncer, but Shadow knows that something is afoot beyond the obvious. Neil Gaiman provides a story that is just as mythic and mysterious and unexpected as his previous fiction. This is a Gaiman story through and through, which is as marvelous a thing as a visit from a good friend.

Last up is Orson Scott Card’s “The Yazoo Queen,” which is set in his Alvin Maker universe. It’s read by Michael Emerson, who performs a sort of old-west style voice which works very well with the prose Card writes with throughout the series – conversational with plenty of 19th century slang and pronounciation. THe story is a prologue to The Crystal City, the sixth novel in the series. In the story, Alvin Maker and Arthur Stuart meet Jim Bowie and Abraham Lincoln while travelling on the Mississippi River. Card’s world is early 19th century America where the Revolutionary War never took place and the magic (called “knacks”) that superstitious folks believed in back then really works. Alvin, the focus of all the stories, is a maker – he can see into things and change them, making them better. He’s chasing after the Unmaker and each volume in the series is building toward a confrontation between the two.

Another notable thing about this audio is that each story is preceded by a summary of what the series is all about. I found each one interesting – in the case of Silverberg’s Majipoor, it was all new information and in the case of the other two, it was a recap for me. But in all three cases it was very welcome.

Three very enjoyable stories read by three top-notch narrators – highly recommended!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Magic Time: Angelfire By Marc Scott Zicree and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Magic Time: Angelfire
By Marc Scott Zicree and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Read by Mark Bramhall, Ann Marie Lee, Ned Schmidtke, and Robertson Dean
12 CDs – 14.5 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0786183799
Themes: / Fantasy / Magic / Science / Post-apocolypse /

Magic Time: Angelfire is the second book in what could become a long series of novels. Marc Scott Zicree personally introduces the book, saying that it was originally pitched as a TV series, and very well might have been a good one.

In book one (called Magic Time), the world changed. Technology is erased and replaced with magic, with people all across America become infused with powers of different sorts, often dark. I have not read the first book, so I don’t know any of the specifics. (Blackstone Audio has the first volume, too.)

Here in this novel, Cal Griffin and a band of people travel the post-apocalyptic, non-technological, magic-filled America in search of the source of it all. The book seems written for TV; the characters are strong, distinct, and quirky. The dialog is full of current colloquialisms. The images are vividly visual. And the action comes fast and constant, with the characters fighting dark creatures while getting closer and closer to their goal.

The novel’s chapters are each told in first person from one of the character’s point of view. A different reader is used for each character, and the actors all do a very good job portraying their character. Ann Marie Lee has a fantastic voice, but had to maintain an intense angry attitude throughout that made me wish her character would calm down, maybe have a decaf latte or something.

The idea behind the novel was good, and, if it ever makes it to TV, would be a series I would check out. I wouldn’t stick with it, though, if the series didn’t go any deeper than a formulaic string of action sequences designed to increase tension. I was interested in the characters and what they were going through, but longed for something a bit more. Of course, leaving a reader wanting more is good thing for a storyteller to do.

The cover is graced with an excellent piece of artwork by Iain McCaig of what I believe is a “flare” – a type of creature that some folks were transformed into when the world went awry.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of A Coyote in the House By Elmore Leonard

A Coyote In The House
By Elmore Leonard; Read by Neil Patrick Harris
3 CDs – 3 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Children’s Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0060728825
Themes: / Fantasy / Anthropomorphic Fiction / Movies / Crime /

This dog was cool for a homeboy, an older male who had peed all over this big yard, marking it to let everybody know this was his turf and nobody else’s. Keep it, homes. Live here and get food handed to you. Believe you’re somebody in your pitiful kept world, no better than a slave.”

Buddy’s the aging movie star, Antwan’s the streetwise hipster and Miss Betty is the showgirl. Buddy also happens to be a German Shepherd, Antwan is a wild and wily Coyote and Miss Betty is a bouffant Poodle. A Coyote In The House is a kid’s book in the tradition of Jack London’s The Call of The Wild. In essence this it is the same story, simply with a sub-urban as opposed to an arctic setting – that and Elmore Leonard’s patented prose. It’s not just Leonard’s dialogue that’s distinctive; it’s his story structure, characters, and cadence that all scream Elmore Leonard. And that’s very disconcerting. Leonard hasn’t written anything but adult crime novels and westerns so to hear this audiobook was truly odd. I think kids and adults who listen with together will both be pleased. It’s a fun story but it’s a strange experience for fans of Elmore Leonard’s other novels.

I couldn’t get over how Leonard completely ignores the impossibility of the situation he’s created. I know it’s a kid’s story, and kids won’t likely see it the way I do, but this story is utterly impossible. It basically ignores everything we do know about animal intelligence and replaces it with hipster lingo and human motivations and then marches on, oblivious to all the impossibilities those things entail. As an example, Buddy, the aging German Shepherd movie star, watches his old movies all day long – every animal in A Coyote In The House is intimately familiar with movies and movie stars – this despite the story logic that these canines, felines and avians can’t understand most of what humans say (and vice versa). Further, the animals can’t manipulate objects with their paws like in a Disney movie say, and yet somehow Buddy is able to – off screen – grab a VHS tape of one of his movies put it in the VCR and watch it, rewind it and put it back before his owners get home and see him. “Oh come on,” you say. “It’s a kids story, it doesn’t have to make sense.” Maybe. It didn’t ruin the experience for me but it didn’t let me fully enjoy it either. I just think that it’d have been a far better story to tackle, realistically, the animal’s perspective head on.

One other curious thing of note. The use of the word “bitch.” In any other Leonard novel it wouldn’t be a novelty – here it refers doubly as a slang term (for adult listeners) and as a female canine for children. Some adults may have a problem letting their kids hear such words, when the usage is not clear cut but I think that’d be the wrong attitude to take – the word is legitimately used here and I’d be far more concerned about kids thinking that animals are just like people – when they aren’t – than learning a “bad” word. Performed by Neil Patrick Harris, A Coyote In The House has a goodly number characters with distinctive voices. Harris is quite impressive as a reader! His audiography seems to consist mostly of children’s novels, perhaps a legacy from his child stardom. In any case he’d be a good reader of adult novels too.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Dead Until Dark By Charlaine Harris

SFFaudio Review

Dead Until Dark
By Charlaine Harris; Read by Christine Marshall & William Dufris
1 MP3-CD – 10 Hours 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Paperback Digital
Published: 2004
ISBN: 1584390018
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Mystery / Romance / Vampires / Telepathy /

Roadhouse waitress Sookie Stackhouse has a problem: she can read minds. And who wants to go on a date with a guy when you can’t get near him without seeing the images of yourself flitting through his head. It was just easier to stay home and watch TV. Until the night she got a bottle of beer for a new customer and found one man whose mind was a blank wall to her. What difference did it make that he was a vampire?

Dead Until Dark is the first book in Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mystery series.

Told in the first person through our viewpoint character Sookie Stackhouse, we get a slice of life story small town southern USA. The only difference is that’s part horror, part fantasy and part mystery. The horror element comes in with the vampires.

Sookie, our southern belle viewpoint character, lives in a pretty normal world with her grandmother in an old house. She waitresses at the local bar. There are just a few things that make Sookie different from thousands of real life women like her. She’s “disabled” with telepathy and has been since childhood. Oh and vampires not only exist but are quite common. You see, vampires, in this otherwise normal world have ‘come out of the coffin’ as it were, and thanks to new federal legislation are to be treated as regular human people with rights and responsibilities under the law. It’s now illegal to kill vampires, either by staking them or draining them for their healing blood. And of course they’re not allowed to attack humans and this is all possible thanks to the new artificial blood products designed to keep them alive. But not everything is in equilibrium in this world, a few human “fangbangers” slavishly worship the vampires and some vampires want to keep their old status and be outlaws. So when “Bill,” a civil war veteran, returns to his home town and wanders in to Sookie’s bar the community isn’t exactly ecstatic – but they figure if he’s willing to “mainstream” they’ll let him be, for now. But soon old family feuds and carpetbagger Vampires stir up trouble for Bill and Sookie both. And when poor young women all over town end up murdered all eyes turn to the vampires and those who sleep with them.

I really enjoyed this novel; Charlaine Harris made a brilliant decision to tell this story first person through Sookie’s eyes. Sookie is a bright, fun character who loves the life she leads – even if she is a little lonely. Every other character in the book stands up too. The mystery elements start slowly and the plot creeps up on you. What I liked best is the originality, vampires and telepaths are nothing new, but the way Harris puts it all together is fresh and fun. I don’t know if I’d continue enjoying the characters in their further adventures, but I enjoyed the heck out of them in this one. I should also mention there is one historical celebrity, never mentioned by name, who turns up in a minor role, that performance alone made the novel worthwhile. It’s hilarious. One heck of a lot of the enjoyment came from the masterful performances by lead reader Christine Marshall. Her southern belle voice is so just much fun, she truly inhabits the role like no other reader I could imagine. But she didn’t do it all alone; she’s assisted by veteran reader, the always enjoyable William Dufris. Dufris shows an even broader range than I’ve ever heard from him before. You’d swear there were half a dozen male actors reading his lines. Sound quality is as good as anything I’ve heard on mp3, this is high bit-rate easy access fun listening in a slick package. Recording levels are high and Paperback Digital has their own introductory music. Track spacing is also good. Together they do an absolutely marvelous job in performing Harris’s sparkling prose. I’d venture to say this is the best novel yet from newly minted audiobook publisher Paperback Digital.

Paperback Digital hired artist Jason B. Parker to do the cover art for each of their novel releases. When I first saw them I wasn’t too impressed with Parker’s covers, but the more I see the more I like them. Either he’s getting better or my tastes are changing! I’ve here reviewed the mp3-cd version this is audiobook, it is also available via download from both Fictionwise.com and the Paperback Digital website. Hardcopies (mp3-cds) come in DVD style cases with insert paper covers, CD-Roms come with disc art. Downloads are slightly less expensive but nearly as easy to load onto an mp3 player. A must listen for any fantasy fan who’s happy to have a little romance thrown in.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Monstrous Regiment By Terry Pratchett

Monstrous Regiment
By Terry Pratchett; read by Stephen Briggs
8 Cassettes – 12 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: 2003
ISBN: 060569964
Themes: / Fantasy / Series / Humor / War / Soldiers / Feminist /

God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He’s good, nobody can touch Him.
– John William Gardner

Okay, so Terry Pratchett is not God. But he does share the Deity’s gift of inconsistent greatness. He is, at least, a genius of English prose, not content simply to write funny stories, but daring to tweak the nose of our language and showcase its penchant for both the sublime and the silly. If your ears have been trampled lately by elephantine sentences that flatten entire stories beneath them, then you should treat yourself to some Pratchett. His exquisitely chosen details and extended comic riffs will cleanse your literary palette like a chilled Riesling.
Monstrous Regiment, set in Pratchett’s private universe known as the Diskworld, is a harmless novel about war, sort of. Actually, it’s about soldiers, and about soldiers who don’t actually get much war on them, which is fortunate, because Pratchett’s humor is nowhere near dark enough to handle the strikingly unfunny hell of war. There are some touching moments, and some very funny details (like his adroit comparison of war and a large city), but they don’t add up to a great novel.

Don’t get me wrong, the story is cute enough. It concerns a girl named Polly Perks from the war-happy country of Borogravia who manages to sign herself up, against religious edict, in the armed services. Polly is a plucky and likeable heroine; her Sergeant Jackrum is irascible yet equally likeable; and her vampire, troll, Igor, and human fellow soldiers are a somewhat quirky, mysterious, yet unsurprisingly likeable bunch. Add to this a silly Lieutenant and a couple familiar characters like William DeWord and Sgt. Vimes, and you have the makings of a harmless jape that pokes fun at young men, military officers, greedy countries with pretensions to benevolence, ridiculous religious fundamentalism, and people who think with their socks. But this book is too lightweight to be much more than an amusing diversion. The Borogravians are let off too lightly for the savage devastation of their own country, the deaths that occur have little impact on anyone, and the theme of female empowerment seems diluted by excessive application. What’s more, the entire structure of the story seems slightly off-balance: The climax is anemic, and the denouement protracted.

On the audio side, however, this book is a joy. Stephen Briggs is billed on the cover as a disturbingly devoted Pratchett fan, which nearly frightened me off. But have no fear, the man can read well, too. His voice conjures the entire cast of Monty Python as well as some note-perfect monster stereotypes, and he nimbly handles Pratchett’s playful prose, both in the small turns of phrase that pepper the story throughout and in the occasional extended verbal set pieces. He gives these inspired moments the space they deserve, like old Aunt Audrey waving her arms to clear a room before performing her world-famous flying back flip off the china cabinet.

All in all, this is an amusing but sub-par work from a master of humorous fantasy. If you’ve never read Pratchett before, I recommend dropping a brick on your little toe for punishment, and then picking up The Colour of Magic, Guards! Guards!, or The Thief of Time. You can save this one for later, when you still want to laugh and think, but not so hard.

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Review of Legends II: Volume One

Legends II: Volume One
Edited by Robert Silverberg; Stories by George R.R. Martin & Anne McCaffrey
Read by Graeme Malcolm & Alyssa Bresnahan
3 Cassettes – 5.25 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0739310828
Themes: / Fantasy / Series / Collection / Dragons / Knights / Royalty /

The tag line to this audio book is “New short novels by the masters of modern fantasy”. Would it have knocked out any teeth to use the word “novella?” It’s like calling a pack of number 2 pencils “a pallet of light-duty lumber.” A novella is not merely a novel that was born sickly or abstained from performance-enhancing drugs; it is a distinct literary form with a tighter focus in theme, setting, character, and time. Has the novella become such a bane to publishers that they seek to disguise it with a new name, as politicians have disguised the apocalypse of global warming with the ambivalence of climate change? I hope not. The literary form of Goethe, Conrad, Silverberg and Leiber still has a lot to offer us today. Its name should be spoken with pride, and its name-bearers sold, bought and read (or listened to) without shame.

A great place to start is George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire: The Sworn Sword”, which is a fine example of a fantasy novella. It is tightly focused on a single, weighty event in time: The final clash between the proud, nearly-extinguished ser Eustace, and the desperately aggressive Lady Webber. Caught in the middle are our protagonists: Dunk, the simple knight with a sense of right and wrong that supersedes his own pride and safety, and Egg, whose compassion for even the lowest grows every time we see him. Heraclitus proposed that character determines destiny, and this is certainly true here. Everything that occurs within Martin’s tough, gritty, complex tale feels like an inevitable result of the characters and their choices. For those looking for lots of sword-banging, spell-casting action, this isn’t the place to find it. This story deals more in verbal confrontation, shades of revealed truth, and the nature of honor and treachery. My only quibble is that the ending, hard-won as it is, is a little pat, especially after the moral ambiguity of Dunk and Egg’s first story “The Hedge Knight” and the foregoing mass of this one. But given everything else about this absorbing tale, hewn from the same wood as the rest of the Song of Ice and Fire, this is a very minor point.

Martin’s pacing is slow and deliberate, shining a light into all the crevices of the personal, moral and physical terrain covered here. Graeme Malcolm’s reading is fittingly unhurried and considered. A British accent is a must for high fantasy like this (in my opinion), and Malcolm’s is dignified and readily intelligible to the American ear. There is even a compelling, extensive introduction to tune your ear to it. I think you’ll enjoy Malcolm’s voice characterizations, as well, as they are subtle, yet distinct, and seem well matched to the characters. Some music is present, mostly as punctuation between the book title, the introductory material, and the story itself, which is helpful. It also accompanies the brief prologue and epilogue to the story, which is not helpful, but also not too distracting.

Anne McCaffrey’s story “Pern: Beyond Between” is much less successful. It seems less a novella (let alone a wee novel) than a doughy short story that got rolled out a little too thin. The main ingredient is the disappearance of Lessa and Hoth into the great unknown of Between, but sifted in are travels in space, time, and Between; a few changes in viewpoint; and even a digression into a different genre. Sadly, the result never quite rises off the page. You will never quite taste the wistful loss and the painful discovery this story hints at, nor feel the fullness of the characters in your belly. It will leave you hungry for the Pern you remember from the original novels. And should you have missed these rightfully revered classics, I highly recommend skipping the appetizer-sized review of it which precedes the story. It gives a little too much away.

As with the first story, the reading of this one is wonderful. If Alyssa Bresnahan’s voice isn’t the voice I heard in my head while reading the original Pern series, no one’s is. It is the perfect complement to McCaffrey’s prose, flawed as that may be. Again, music is used to separate the introductory material from the story, and this time it is kept sensibly out of the narration.

The sound and production quality of both these stories are exceptional; however, they make an oddly matched pair. McCaffrey’s story could be safely given to your emotionally stable ten-year-old niece, but some of the language and themes of Martin’s would blister the poor child’s ears. And the packaging? Even calling it bland would imply an effervescence it sorely lacks. And of the 11 authors represented in the hardback version of this book (which lists only a tiny bit more than this audio book), only two are represented here. How much would you have to shell out to hear the novellas from all these distinguished authors? I shudder to imagine it. In short, while one of these stories is outstanding and the narrations excellent, this audio book does little to attract a new audience to the novella, and it certainly does not provide great value for the money.

Posted by Kurt Dietz