Not So Great a Read

Empress by Karen Miller

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Read the Kindle version. There wasn’t a lot to like about this book. The main character Hekat is a young girl sold as a slave by her father. After convincing herself that she is beautiful and "in the god’s eye" her self-confidence lets her rise to become the titular Empress. The theology used in this book is interesting, but also brutal and bloody. The people worship the god who "sees them in its sight". The god is not a capital "G" god, and is an it. They worship it by sacrificing animals on a huge scale, drinking the blood when necessary for their ceremonies, and using scorpion pits to determine who is "seen in the god’s eye" and who is possessed of demons. Everything is described in graphic detail, which makes me glad my inner eye isn’t great at coming up with accurate pictures of events.

The characters are interesting but I didn’t find myself caring a much about any of them. Their futures became predictable early on and there wasn’t much suspense in getting to the end of the story. Apparently there are two further volumes in this story, which I don’t plan on reading. It just wasn’t that compelling.

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Novels of Bleak Futures

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I read this book years ago, maybe when it first came out in paperback, and kind of remembered that I didn’t like it that well. Since it’s coming up in conversations so much, I decided to give it another try. I’m three-fourths the way through it, and still feel the same way I did before. It seems very bleak and depressing. And I’ve also decided I have a hard time reading those kinds of books. I read to escape bleak and depressing, not to find new things to be despondent over. That’s probably why I like science fiction and fantasy so much, or at least the ones that have a positive take on the future.

I don’t remember exactly how this book ends. If I change my opinion – it’ll be posted here.

Now that I’ve finished this book, my opinion hasn’t changed. I found the ending unsatisfactory, I like my stories more neatly wrapped up than this was. The author does have a nice turn of phrase, which I found enjoyable. But in the future, my future looking stories will be more optimistic, I think.

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Horizon: The Sharing Knife, Book 4

The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Lois McMaster Bujold is known more for her Science Fiction writing, but has done some great work in the fantasy genre as well. The Sharing Knife books fall into the fantasy field. This fourth book in the series continues the story of Fawn and Dag, a farmer girl and a Lake-Walker man who have married and set out to do explore some of the world for their wedding trip. Some of the people they meet along the way have joined them and have become a diverse but close knit group of people. This book brings that journey to a close in a satisfying way. Fawn and Dag meet new people, some of who join them for a time. They also meet the nastiest, most frightening malice Dag has ever crossed in all his years of Lakewalker patrols. This malice threatens everything this group of travelers has dreamed of. The end of the story is very exciting and has an unexpected twist.

Lois McMaster Bujold is a great writer, whatever genre she is in. Her characters are vivid, realistic, and you can connect to them and care about them very easily. I would recommend this series to anyone interested in a love story told with sincerity, that has a bit of the magic of a fantasy book as well.

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Bones Of The Dragon By Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Bones of the Dragon by Margaret Weis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars I liked the premise of this book. It read like a Scandanavian mythology. The story is about a group of people who worship several gods, but have been told their gods were killed and new gods expect to be worshipped. The priestess knows this is partially true, but is afraid to confirm anything because it will demoralize her people as they battle their enemies. The Dragon in question is embodied in a sailing ship and the priestess is able to call it forth to help in battles. The main male character, Skylan,is young, brash, and thoughtless. He brought misfortune on himself and his people, but redeemed himself by struggling to overcome the obstacles they all faced and succeeded more often than not. I didn’t rate it any higher though because I found the reader of this book, Stefan Rudnicki, not to my liking. The story was kind of dark and bleak anyway and his narrative seemed to make it more so. This is one book I wish I’d read in regular book format, since the story itself was so intriguing. View all my reviews >>

The Amulet of Samarkand

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a YA book that was recommended to me by a Children’s Programs librarian. I fell in love with it right from the start. I actually listened to the audio book, wonderfully read by Simon Vance. He completely captured the voice of each character.

The story is about a young boy being trained as a wizard in a London very much like today’s – only wizardry and magic work there. But this isn’t anything like the other English boy wizard. Nathaniel is impatient to learn and studies ahead in books his mentor doesn’t think he’s ready for yet. Nathaniel decides to conjure a djinn (genie), which is difficult and dangerous. The djinn he summons, named Bartimaeus, is one of the best characters an author has ever written. He is mean, bullying, sarcastic, snide, and egotistical. He and Nathaniel get off to a rocky start and then the story really gets started.

Nathaniel asks the djinn to accomplish a task that even this self-aggrandizing genie is leery of accomplishing. The escapades from here are exciting, frightening, funny, horrifically sad, and eventually mostly victorious.

Jonathan Stroud wrote a wonderful book, complete with snarky footnotes by Bartimeus. Kids will love it, but adults can relish it as well. There are two more books in the Bartimaeus Trilogy; The Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate. Both should be read to complete the tale of Nathaniel and Bartimaeus.

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