Shores of Night

Reviewed by Emilia Etherheart The third book in "The City of a Hundred Rows" series, this review is based on the electronic version supplied by Angry Robot. What has gone before ... Book One (City of Dreams and Nightmares) introduces our heroes - Tom, a street nick (urchin) and Kat, a fellow street nick but older, wiser and tougher. Tom gets lost in the lower levels of Thaiburley, the city of a hundred rows, and Kat is employed to return him to his rightful level. As they make their way across the city they find all is not well, uncovering plots against both the city and the Prime Master, leader of the city. Book Two (City of Hope and Despair) introduces a new enemy, the Soul Thief, a nightmare from Kat's childhood. We learn more of Kat's background, the political structure of the Heights, and how daily life works in the under-city. At the end of the book the two companions have separated, Kat staying in Thaiburley and Tom going north to the Citadel of Thaiss. Bo...

The first of the Temeraire novels by Naomi Novik is, if I were forced to use one word to describe it, charming. Set in a well imagined world, during the Napoleonic War, where dragons coexist and are trained by humans (or maybe its the other way around) to serve as messengers, fighting dragons and so on and so forth the novel takes a naval captain and promptly drops him into an alien situation when he captures a French frigate and discovers a dragon egg in the hold. The characters are well realised and the dragons, in particular, are beautifully written and well wrought. The relationships they have with their riders is particularly interesting and Novik's dynamic is well thought out, if perhaps slightly flawed. The conflicting natures of the dragon corp and the navy are well illustrated and set out, with the navy perhaps winning out slightly over the dragon riders in terms of discipline and kindness. If the book does have a flaw its that the twist is too obvious; it really didn...

Back to work today (so naturally I'm blogging... perhaps not my wisest move). I managed to do a little reading over my break and thought I'd post some reviews (as much to get more posts on the site as anything else). First up we have Victorian Undead 2: Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula (with a slight detour through Jekyl and Hyde), an alternate Victorian world where the great detective deals with various undead threats (the first series had a zombie outbreak in London with Moriaty as its mastermind). Ian Edginton has a fairly good handle on Holmes and Watson's voices and his world building is logical and ties in to the first miniseries. Importantly his Holmes joins the investigation of Dracula's appearance in Britain with a sensible reason for doing so rather than simply being shoehorned in, and Edginton ably contrasts the logical methods that Holmes employs and Van Helsing's faith based perspective. It's not perfect, there are places where the narrative jars a li...

A little early, perhaps, but December always turns into a chance to review the year for me, as things wind down and people get ready to go out into a new year. Over the next couple of weeks I'll write a few posts about this year and how I hope next year will go - staying on the writing/gaming (at the other blog) and reading side of things naturally. On the writing front I've started two novels, one for National Novel Writing Month and one just generally, and have got both to around 50,000 and over words. It's an exhilirating process laying down the first chapters and feeling the world take shape as I write. I do find its more of a struggle once I'm past 50,000 words for some reason but with perserverance I'm hoping to get over 100,000 words for both of them and, more importantly, get both novels finished in the spring, albeit with a damn good slog. The first novel, A Fatal Thirst, I worry crosses too many genres - it has vampirism, science fiction and post apocalyps...

I'm still reading this , and will post a full review when I've finished it. All I'll say at present is that it's just lost some points for having the protagonist have the "magic" blood of the empire's royal family through being the bastard son of the king.

In September DC Comics relaunched its universe, effectively pressing the reset button and going from square one again. The new universe is darker and edgier, with more nods towards both Wildstorm and Marvel comics; heroes are distrusted and villified rather than being held up as the lights of humanity. In some ways this is a shame as it gets rid of what was largely DC's unique voice, will there be a Flash museum in this new iteration? It seems unlikely. Rather than try to read all 52 titles I very much cherry picked my way through the new comics to see which ones took my fancy. Partly this was for financial reasons, the cost of comics means that I'm not willing to walk off with tons of books and partly it's because with the best will in the world I'm a bit tired of superheroes; for an idea that should be extremely flexible it's begun to feel brittle and restricted, as if it will only go so far before it snaps. Also the fetishism for the 1960s and 70s by DC's pub...

I picked up this book at FantasyCon down in Brighton and its taken me a while to read, I'd hoped to post this a few weeks ago and only finished the book at the weekend. It's a slim volume, with an attractive cover, even if you don't like clowns, but the real treasures lie within. The first part of the book ties into the Vampire Gene series and for people like myself who haven't read the novels (yet) they provide an interesting window into that series. The protagonist Lucy is very much an atypical vampire for today's culture. Whilst most books and films seem to delight in having the vampire struggle against their hungers Sam Stone delights in the carnal blood lust that the image of the vampire evokes. Lucy is unapologetic in her appetites for sex and blood, and arguably could stand shoulder to shoulder with the other vampire elders of literature in that regard (she's better at hiding but equally as monstrous as Dracula in her own way). The other pleasing aspect o...