Library Book: The Traveler

I don't really have a lot to say about The Traveler.  I saw it at work and was intrigued by the concept.  A mysterious masked man with weird time powers is fighting against weird time-powered assassins.  Why not give it a try?  So today I gave it a read.  And the premise is exactly what I got: some mysterious masked man fighting against weird time-powered assassins.  I kind of figured out who the masked man (the Traveler) was near the beginning.  I never really understood how his powers worked (or what exactly he was able to do - this was in stark contrast to the Split-Second Men, those assassin guys.  The Traveler was more than happy to explain about them). 

I do have to give a shout-out to the artist, Chad Hardin.  The art was very good throughout the story.

But other than the art, I was left feeling rather "meh" about the whole thing.  I realize this was his origin story, and it's possible the series might get awesome after this point.  But overall I didn't really care.  So if the library eventually gets the next volume (whenever that appears), I might pick it up.  But I'm not going to go actively looking for it.

Library Book: Shadow's Master

After a bit of a wait, I finally got to read the final book in Jon Sprunk's Shadow Saga: Shadow's Master.  This time around, Caim is in search of his mother, who he knows for certain is alive in the frozen north.  Armed with this knowledge, he sets out with a couple of friends he made in the previous book (as well as Kit) searching for Erebus, the citadel in which his mother is held.  There he will confront his grandfather: the Shadow Lord.

Meanwhile, Josephine has taken an army north.  She received word of an invasion from that direction and hopes to halt it in its tracks.  Of course, she also secretly hopes to find Caim while she's at it.  Unfortunately her army is tiny compared to the opposing force she finds.  And at the head of the horde from the north is Talus, the Thunder Lord, a sorcery who has destroyed all who oppose him using his magic.

While helping Caim out here and there, Kit is also left with a big decision to make.  At the end of Shadow's Lure, Caim declared he loved her.  But being Fae, they cannot touch one another.  And so she struggles with a difficult choice: does she love him enough to give up her immortality?

As with the previous two books, I really enjoyed Shadow's Master.  I liked that less time was spent with Josephine (in the previous book, I found that her chapters tended to drag on a bit).  But I also liked her chapters a bit better; they were shorter and filled with more action.  As I said before, in Shadow's Lure her chapters are full of political intrigue, which is fine but not what I personally wanted out of the Shadow Saga.  In Shadow's Master Josey has gone to war, and so her chapters have more action and less intrigue.  I also have to add that unlike the previous two books, Caim doesn't spend most of his time grievously injured.  Sure, he gets cut up in fights and whatnot, but no bear this time (I know, I'm a big fan of Caim's rotten luck from the previous two books). 

So overall, having read the entire trilogy, I really enjoyed it.  I look forward to whatever Sprunk works on next!

Short Story: Jack of Blades

I found "Jack of Blades" at the same time as "Reaver" (as well as "Theresa," which I have not yet read).  I honestly don't know anything about Jack of Blades; I'm guessing he's from the first game which I haven't played yet (but I'm going to first chance I get!)  Like "Reaver," "Jack of Blades" was a lot of fun.

I apologize, but I'm going to be giving some spoilers for this one. If you haven't read the story, go read it right now.  It's awesome!

"Jack of Blades" is about a guy named Xiro who wanders into a town taken over by Jack of Blades.  Xiro is told he cannot leave because Jack doesn't want his whereabouts being revealed to the outside world.  He then proceeds to accidentally kill two if Xiro's ten men (although the accident part is debatable.  There was a line to the effect of "his hand no longer shook" which led me to believe Xiro may have just been pretending to be unskilled).  In the wake of this, the villagers believe Xiro is a hero but he fervently denies it, claiming to be a no one.

Regardless of who Xiro is, his killings inevitably attract the attention of Jack.  Xiro kills two more of Jack's men in an "accidental" fire (I wasn't really buying the accident part) and is then brought to Jack's mansion where he is supposed to provide sport by fighting (or as they believe, dying to) a balverine.  After some incredibly bizarre stuff, Xiro manages to kill all of Jack's remaining men and reveals that "Jack" is an imposter   He listens to "Jack's" reasoning and then kills him as well.  The story never says exactly who Xiro is, but I thought it heavily implied that Xiro was the real Jack of Blades.

As I said, I don't know much about Jack of Blades, so I'm going to go play Fable 1 before looking into his character (having played 2 and 3, I'm pretty sure he must be from the first game).  But regardless, I really enjoyed reading this story!

As a side note, I'm not going to read "Theresa" until I've played through the first game.  I know she's originally from the first game so I want to play that before reading her tale.

Short Story: Reaver

I'm not going to lie.  I love Reaver.  So when I found a short story dedicated to him, I had to read it.

"Reaver" was a lot of fun (which I expected because it is about Reaver the character).  This is the story of how Reaver defeated Captain Dread, the self-styled pirate king.  In his witty and overconfident way, Reaver manages to undermine Dread's credibility before single-handedly taking on Dread and his crew!  The story can be a bit gruesome at times (there are some rather gory details) but it's a lot of fun!  Definitely worth the read, especially if you're a Fable fan.

Library Book: A Flight of Angels

I saw A Flight of Angels a couple of weeks ago while at work.  I've seen some of Rebecca Guay\s artwork on Magic: the Gathering cards and was immediately interested in reading this specifically to enjoy the art.  And now that I've finished it, I have to say it is an incredibly pretty book.

A Flight of Angels starts when some faerie creatures see something fall from the sky.  They go to investigate and find an angel has fallen from heaven.  After discovering the angel lives, they decide to hold a tribunal to decide the unconscious angel's fate.  And so those assembled tell stories about angels in order to decide this one's fate.

Besides that framing narrative, there are five tales told by the faerie creatures.  Of all of them, I liked the first one best; it was a retelling of Adam and Eve (and the art from the cover is from this tale).  The next two tales were about death.  One had an angel who was bad at everything, and so found himself as an angel of Death.  The next was about a woman who made a deal with an Angel of Death so he could not take her unless she invited him in.  Both were okay.  The fourth story was about a clumsy girl who caught the eye of an angel.  And the final story was about the war of the angels, in which some were cast out of heaven.

As I said, most of the stories were alright.  But the artwork was fantastic.  So if your main interest is the art in a graphic novel, this one's for you.

The Last Hunt

I waited a long, long time to finish reading Cara Diana Hunter's story.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, I started reading the Unicorn Chronicles when the first book came out in 1994.  Now, almost twenty years later, I finally know what happened when Beloved invaded Luster with her army of Hunters.

Egged on by the Whisperer, Beloved has torn a new hole into Luster.  This hole is through the Axis Mundi, the world tree that holds Luster togethe. In damagin it, the world is very quickly falling apart.

With the arrival of the Hunters, Cara is sent to one of the seven dragons for help.  The Unicorn Council, led by the new queen Amalia Flickerfoot, has decided that Graumag is the best choice.  Graumag is an unusual dragon (she is actually the same dragon from "After the Third Kiss;" it was rather fun being able to make that connection), one who owes her very life to Luster and so she agrees to help. 

But after enlisting the dragon's aid, Cara and Graumag are attacked by Hunters who were tasked by Beloved to capture Cara.  Graumag holds them off while Cara escapes, thus seperating Cara from all of her friends (except the Squijum).  Cara is left to find her way to the Axis Mundi where the largest battle to ever be fought on Luster's soil is about to begin.

I enjoyed reading The Last Hunt quite a bit (well I did manage to get through all 600 pages yesterday).  But I did miss some of the characters.  As always Cara is the main character, so we got to follow her through most of the story.  But many of the other characters did not play as big a role in this book as they have in previous ones and that made me sad.  For one thing I often found myself wondering what Lightfoot was up to.  And near the end of the book I found that the focus shifted away from Cara's father Ian which was a real shame; Coville set some great character things up for him in the third book (especially concerning what he had to go through in the Rainbow Prison to find his wife) which seemed forgotten about in the Last Hunt.  And I think the very end, wrapping up what had happened, needed a little more (I don't want to give this away in any more detail  as that is a spoiler).  But besides these issues, it was an interesting (and enjoyable!) book and I'm glad to finally know how Cara's story ended.

Dark Whispers

After all this time, I was finally able to read Dark Whispers, the third book in Bruce Coville's Unicorn Chronicles.  As I mentioned in my post about Into the Land of the Unicorns, that first book was published in 1994, while the second book came out in 1999.  Dark Whispers was originally published in 2008, nearly ten years later.  That's a long time to wait.  It was an even longer time because this final volume was split into two, making the entire series four books long (and about fifteen years in the making).  Dark Whispers is also the first book in the Unicorn Chronicles that I have not read before; I elected to wait until I had a copy of The Last Hunt before re-reading the entire series.  I apologize as there will be some spoilers here.  I'll try to keep them to a minimum, but the books are all related.

Dark Whispers begins where Song of the Wanderer leaves off.  Amalia Flickerfoot has been crowned the new Queen of the Unicorns.  And while learning how to be Queen, the Unicorns must face their greatest threat ever: Beloved and the Hunters have one of the Queen's Five Lockets, gateways into Luster.  It is only a matter of time before they cross over into Luster for the Last Hunt.  And thanks to the Geomancer, they know exactly when Beloved will cross: the Blood Moon. 

Grimwold, the Keeper of the Unicorn Chronicles, comes across an oddity within the Chronicles.  There are a few pages missing, as well as a crossed out passage.  He thinks he can make out a reference to "the Whisperer."  An old human who is also at the council, Alma Leonetti, is the only one who has heard of the Whisperer, and though she cannot remember from where she heard the reference, she suggests that the Queen send someone to the Centaur King in order to ask if he has the tale.  And so Cara, along with a small group, finds herself once again travelling through Luster in search of this elusive story.

Meanwhile on Earth, Ian Hunter, Cara's father, goes in search of his wife and Cara's mother.  He knows she is a prisoner of the Rainbow Prison, which is made of different shafts of light between Earth and Luster.  The problem is that once he is in the Rainbow Prison, it will be much harder to leave.

I honestly liked Dark Whispers better than Song of the Wanderer.  Dark Whispers had a better pace than the previous book.  I also don't think Cara's group ever got to be as big as it did in the previous book.  And by shifting the narrative from Cara to other characters, the reader is able to get to know these other characters a lot better.  Although it took me almost twenty years from when Into the Land of the Unicorns was first published to get this far into the story, I think it was well worth the wait.

But now onto The Last Hunt, the final book in the Unicorn Chronicles.