Collinsfort Village
Joe Ekaitis
WindRiver Publishing
Fiction, YA Fantasy
*+ (Terrible/Bad)
DESCRIPTION: The small suburb of Collinsfort Village is about as normal an American town as you can get. On any given weekend, boys play basketball at the park, girls play hopscotch on the sidewalk... and, once a month, a griffin reads storybooks at the local library.
Unbeknownst to the people of Collinsfort Village, Errington Felzworth Griffin, better known as Griff, not only reads books, but writes them under a pseudonym - one that has spent more than its fair share of time on national bestseller lists. He lives in a modernly-appointed cave outside of town with Bear, a friendly grizzly who restores old cars for a living. The two are an accepted staple of town life, even if they draw a few stares from outsiders, and Griff is just as happy to avoid the rabid fans and packs of journalists who would descend on him if anyone learned he was the author of the nation's most popular fantasy books.
When a young friend, Dennis, stumbles onto a key to Griff's secret identity, the proud creature has to decide whether to fess up or find a way to keep the boy quiet. His decision sets in motion a chain of events leading from Colorado to California, through mishap and misunderstanding, to the doorstep of a dragon and the unearthing of a long-buried secret.
REVIEW: I have never struggled so hard to come up with an unbiased, remotely informative Description in my reviews. Why? The same reason this book only earned one and a half out of five stars in the ratings: nothing happens. Oh, the characters are pleasant enough, in a Fluffy Bunny story* kind of way. The fact that one of those characters is a grizzly and another a griffin hardly seems to matter (which is a shame, as it might've been interesting to explore a modern world that had to adapt to talking animals and mythical beings... a notion that, aside from Griff's trouble shopping for groceries, is pretty much ignored.) They wander around having vaguely heartwarming moments and obvious mishaps and unnatural, stilted conversations that were probably meant to be clever - the kind of benign encounters where one can't help but imagine dippy made-for-TV-movie music in the background. A dragon turns up about halfway through, bringing with him the only semblance of a plot I managed to find in the book (and a fragment of racial backstory that would've made a much more interesting tale), but the matter resolves easily enough, save some unnecessary theatrics and drawing-out by the people who resolve it. Otherwise, aside from a brief moment of tension concerning whether or not Griff would remember to flip the morning pancakes in time, there was no plot. No plot means I was at a loss to understand just why these characters existed, what the point of their aimless (non)adventures around town was, or why this book was written at all. (It would be wrong of me to suspect that the main reason the book was written was for vicarious fulfillment on the part of the author.) Maybe the plot fell out during shipping, or the fact that I read a used copy meant that someone else had already worn it out.
Bottom line: I read books to be entertained. This book did not entertain me. End of story, and end of review.
* Fluffy Bunny story - A story where every good character is equally nice, villains are obvious to everyone but the protagonists, plotlines are painfully transparent, morals are taught with glaring clarity, and anything resembling tension, conflict, or danger is strictly forbidden lest it traumatize oversensitive children (or rather their overprotective parents.)
Friday, July 9, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Artist's Photo Reference: Wildlife (Bart Rulon)
Artist's Photo Reference: Wildlife
Bart Rulon
North Light Books
Nonfiction, Art Reference
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Photographer Bart Rulon gathers reference images for many different animals, from squirrels and deer and bobcats to tigers and orcas and elephants. Also included are five painting demonstrations, showing how to use these images when composing original works, as well as quick tips for taking professional-quality reference pictures on your own.
REVIEW: I found this book in the clearance section at a local wild bird store, unbelievably. For the price, I can't say I'm too disappointed. Several of Rulon's photos are disappointingly dark, the form of the animal partially obscured or even cropped altogether. Still, it's interesting just how many different animals he manages to cover in this book. The painting demos, while interesting, are way beyond my meager expertise, so I can't comment on their usefulness yet. In the end, while I'd hoped for a little more, this one manages to retain a place on my admittedly-overcrowded art reference bookshelf.
Bart Rulon
North Light Books
Nonfiction, Art Reference
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Photographer Bart Rulon gathers reference images for many different animals, from squirrels and deer and bobcats to tigers and orcas and elephants. Also included are five painting demonstrations, showing how to use these images when composing original works, as well as quick tips for taking professional-quality reference pictures on your own.
REVIEW: I found this book in the clearance section at a local wild bird store, unbelievably. For the price, I can't say I'm too disappointed. Several of Rulon's photos are disappointingly dark, the form of the animal partially obscured or even cropped altogether. Still, it's interesting just how many different animals he manages to cover in this book. The painting demos, while interesting, are way beyond my meager expertise, so I can't comment on their usefulness yet. In the end, while I'd hoped for a little more, this one manages to retain a place on my admittedly-overcrowded art reference bookshelf.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Oddest of All (Bruce Coville)
Oddest of All
Bruce Coville
Harcourt
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Anthology
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Bruce Coville, prolific author and editor, compiles nine of his original short stories in this anthology.
REVIEW: Usually, I find Coville a fairly safe bet when it comes to anthologies. His previous collections (Oddly Enough and Odder than Ever) had a nice range of tales, from silly to scary to downright bizarre. Comparatively, this collection feels flat. The stories all read fairly fast, but only a handful linger in the memory for any length of time. More than one feels like an unfinished start to a book that never happened. Though not a terrible anthology by any means, I suppose I just expected a little more from Coville.
Bruce Coville
Harcourt
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Anthology
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Bruce Coville, prolific author and editor, compiles nine of his original short stories in this anthology.
REVIEW: Usually, I find Coville a fairly safe bet when it comes to anthologies. His previous collections (Oddly Enough and Odder than Ever) had a nice range of tales, from silly to scary to downright bizarre. Comparatively, this collection feels flat. The stories all read fairly fast, but only a handful linger in the memory for any length of time. More than one feels like an unfinished start to a book that never happened. Though not a terrible anthology by any means, I suppose I just expected a little more from Coville.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Dragon Keeper (Robin Hobb)
Dragon Keeper
(The Rain Wilds Chronicles, Book 1)
Robin Hobb
Eos (HarperCollins)
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The war between the Traders of Bingtown and the Chalcedean raiders is over, won in no small part through the Traders' pact with the dragon Tintaglia. In exchange for keeping the Chalcedean ships away from their shores and the Rain Wilds River - home of the buried Elderling cities and the secretive Rain Wilds Trader families who extract their treasures - the humans agreed to help Tintaglia usher in the next generation of dragons. The sea serpents (in truth larval dragons) finally fulfilled their ancestral urges, swimming up the acidic Rain Wilds River to build their cases on the banks and complete the metamorphosis into full-fledged dragons.
At last, the much-anticipated day of their emergence has come... but something has gone horribly wrong. What crawls from the cases are not, as Tintaglia was, adult dragons ready to fly and hunt. These hatchlings are deformed, deficient in body, ancestral memory, and - in some cases - mind. None are flightworthy, and many don't even survive long past emerging. Tintaglia herself seems to have given up hope, abandoning the hatchlings and the Rain Wilds River when she finds a new mate. Bound by their contract, the Traders continue feeding the dragonlings, but the costs are mounting and rewards minimal... and there are rumors of a very handsome prize from the ailing Chalcedean lord, seeking dragon flesh for its miraculous curative properties...
Incomplete ancestral memories tell the dragonlings of a great Elderling city which once lay further up the Rain Wilds River, in the days before the massive cataclysm that destroyed the Elderlings and turned the waters acidic. If there is to be any hope of them surviving, surely it is to be found among the remains of the civilization where dragons and humanlike Elderlings once lived in peaceable coexistence. But, malformed and unable to hunt, they cannot make the journey alone. They will need humans to travel with them, on what will likely be a one-way journey into a land so wild and dangerous not even the hardiest of Rain Wilds Traders have ever braved its depths and lived to tell the tale.
REVIEW: I loved Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy, and am thrilled to see her continue to explore this part of her greater Farseer universe. (I wasn't as impressed with her Farseer Saga, and haven't read the follow-up Tawny Man trilogy; some reference is made here to events in those books, summing up enough so casual readers shouldn't be thrown.) Her dragons are wonderfully unique, even if they are often remarkably arrogant around puny little humans, and I enjoy her world of the mysterious Rain Wilds and the liveships. Unfortunately, this feels more like a piece of a book than a whole book in and of itself. It ends on a strangely incomplete note, as if it were randomly cropped from a much larger work. (This may well be what happened; the second book, Dragon Haven, is already out, a suspiciously fast turnaround time unless the two were written as one.) Roughly half of the book is merely a setup to the journey, establishing characters and rivalries and motivations, which seemed a little much given the size of the book itself; the journey was barely underway when I ran into the back cover. As I've come to expect, Hobb creates nicely-drawn characters, each one with strengths and flaws, and while I found one in particular irritatingly selfish, I'm reserving full judgment until the end of the series; one of the most irritating people in her Liveship books become one of the most powerful and intriguing by the end, after all, so something similar may be in the works here. On the whole, I liked what I read, but thus far I prefer the Liveship books.
(When I finished, I strongly considered ordering the second volume, but I have to keep my reading slate relatively clean for the impending arrival of the sixth Temeraire book. Sorry, Hobb, but right now Novik's producing more consistent work...)
(The Rain Wilds Chronicles, Book 1)
Robin Hobb
Eos (HarperCollins)
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The war between the Traders of Bingtown and the Chalcedean raiders is over, won in no small part through the Traders' pact with the dragon Tintaglia. In exchange for keeping the Chalcedean ships away from their shores and the Rain Wilds River - home of the buried Elderling cities and the secretive Rain Wilds Trader families who extract their treasures - the humans agreed to help Tintaglia usher in the next generation of dragons. The sea serpents (in truth larval dragons) finally fulfilled their ancestral urges, swimming up the acidic Rain Wilds River to build their cases on the banks and complete the metamorphosis into full-fledged dragons.
At last, the much-anticipated day of their emergence has come... but something has gone horribly wrong. What crawls from the cases are not, as Tintaglia was, adult dragons ready to fly and hunt. These hatchlings are deformed, deficient in body, ancestral memory, and - in some cases - mind. None are flightworthy, and many don't even survive long past emerging. Tintaglia herself seems to have given up hope, abandoning the hatchlings and the Rain Wilds River when she finds a new mate. Bound by their contract, the Traders continue feeding the dragonlings, but the costs are mounting and rewards minimal... and there are rumors of a very handsome prize from the ailing Chalcedean lord, seeking dragon flesh for its miraculous curative properties...
Incomplete ancestral memories tell the dragonlings of a great Elderling city which once lay further up the Rain Wilds River, in the days before the massive cataclysm that destroyed the Elderlings and turned the waters acidic. If there is to be any hope of them surviving, surely it is to be found among the remains of the civilization where dragons and humanlike Elderlings once lived in peaceable coexistence. But, malformed and unable to hunt, they cannot make the journey alone. They will need humans to travel with them, on what will likely be a one-way journey into a land so wild and dangerous not even the hardiest of Rain Wilds Traders have ever braved its depths and lived to tell the tale.
REVIEW: I loved Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy, and am thrilled to see her continue to explore this part of her greater Farseer universe. (I wasn't as impressed with her Farseer Saga, and haven't read the follow-up Tawny Man trilogy; some reference is made here to events in those books, summing up enough so casual readers shouldn't be thrown.) Her dragons are wonderfully unique, even if they are often remarkably arrogant around puny little humans, and I enjoy her world of the mysterious Rain Wilds and the liveships. Unfortunately, this feels more like a piece of a book than a whole book in and of itself. It ends on a strangely incomplete note, as if it were randomly cropped from a much larger work. (This may well be what happened; the second book, Dragon Haven, is already out, a suspiciously fast turnaround time unless the two were written as one.) Roughly half of the book is merely a setup to the journey, establishing characters and rivalries and motivations, which seemed a little much given the size of the book itself; the journey was barely underway when I ran into the back cover. As I've come to expect, Hobb creates nicely-drawn characters, each one with strengths and flaws, and while I found one in particular irritatingly selfish, I'm reserving full judgment until the end of the series; one of the most irritating people in her Liveship books become one of the most powerful and intriguing by the end, after all, so something similar may be in the works here. On the whole, I liked what I read, but thus far I prefer the Liveship books.
(When I finished, I strongly considered ordering the second volume, but I have to keep my reading slate relatively clean for the impending arrival of the sixth Temeraire book. Sorry, Hobb, but right now Novik's producing more consistent work...)
Forging Dragons (John Howe)
Forging Dragons
John Howe
Impact
Nonfiction, Art
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Dragons have been an integral part of the human psyche and global myth cycles since the dawn of civilization. Even today, writers and artists seek to explore and understand the great beasts, the very embodiment of archetypical forces beyond reckoning. John Howe, a popular fantasy artist and illustrator, describes several dragon projects.
REVIEW: Much like his Fantasy Art Workshop, Howe doesn't use a step-by-step approach to recreate his paintings. Rather, he shows some of his initial sketches and the finished product, with notes on how certain designs evolved and certain effects were achieved. (He even points out flaws in his own work and things he felt could have been handled better.) He also talks about dragon legends from around the world, revealing a genuine interest in and appreciation of them beyond a mere paycheck. I still think he could use a little more variety in his dragon styles - they almost invariably have the same slick-scale sheen and dentition - but I can still appreciate how he does what he does with them.
John Howe
Impact
Nonfiction, Art
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Dragons have been an integral part of the human psyche and global myth cycles since the dawn of civilization. Even today, writers and artists seek to explore and understand the great beasts, the very embodiment of archetypical forces beyond reckoning. John Howe, a popular fantasy artist and illustrator, describes several dragon projects.
REVIEW: Much like his Fantasy Art Workshop, Howe doesn't use a step-by-step approach to recreate his paintings. Rather, he shows some of his initial sketches and the finished product, with notes on how certain designs evolved and certain effects were achieved. (He even points out flaws in his own work and things he felt could have been handled better.) He also talks about dragon legends from around the world, revealing a genuine interest in and appreciation of them beyond a mere paycheck. I still think he could use a little more variety in his dragon styles - they almost invariably have the same slick-scale sheen and dentition - but I can still appreciate how he does what he does with them.
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