Matt Forbeck's Brave New World: Resolution

I started reading Matt Forbeck's Brave New World: Resolution a few days ago, but wasn't able to finish it until just now. 

In order to talk about Resolution, I'm going to be giving some spoilers.  So if you haven't read the book, or the previous one, you might want to stop reading this now.

I have to admit, the beginning of the book wasn't really working for me...it felt a little too removed from what had gone on before.  And I guess it was rather removed from the events of Revelation; Resolution opens with everyone safely on Isla Delta, having to explain how they got there. And then the action starts.  Delta Prime invades the island, and everyone except for Patriot (and Terri, the delta who is flying him around) get captured. 

I'm not going to lie, but it was at the end of all this (about halfway through the book) that I stopped reading.  Yes, I was busy.  But the way things played out, I wasn't really in a hurry to get back to the book.  But when I finally did start reading again (earlier today), I was once again blown away by how great of a storyteller Forbeck is. 

So anyway, everyone is captured, and Patriot needs to rescue them in a hurry, because Delta Prime is forcing Street and another gadgeteer named the Supplier to build a bigger bomb than the one that removed Chicago from the Earth.  But the two of them have found a way to send someone to Chicago.  And so Lisa goes, taking with her the plans to build a similar device there to bring everyone back home.

Of course, nothing goes smoothly.  As a diversion, Patriot and another delta manage to reveal the identity of the President.  And unfortunately he isn't who they thought he was...

The end of Resolution was fantastic.  There's no two ways about it.  It's a fast-paced ending with a lot of unexpected things happening.  This was a fitting end for the trilogy, and I'm really glad Forbeck was able to write this series, thanks to the funding he got on Kickstarter.  I'm looking forward to reading more of his books!

Matt Forbeck's Brave New World: Revelation

So I finished Matt Forbeck's Brave New World: Revelation last night.  I was really tired, but so near the end that I wanted to finish it before I slept.  And the ending was definitely worth the loss of sleep!

Revelation takes place a few weeks after the events of Revolution.  Patriot, Lisa and company are sent to Colorado to answer a family's distress call; it seems they were attacked by a super-powered man.  A man who may have just fallen out of the sky after the detonation near the end of the first book.  Their world is rocked when they discover the identity of the man: it's Superior, the world's greatest alpha-powered delta.  Superior disappeared along with Chicago 23 years ago.

Of course, they're not the only ones after Superior and the family of deltas he attacked.  Delta Prime is hot on their heels, bringing down their jet-van into a Catholic Church.  Patriot needs to find a way to get all of them out alive, which becomes less likely by the minute as they're surrounded by Delta Prime.

I have to say, for most of this book, I thought it was okay.  It wasn't as good as Revelation (which may in part have been because there were a lot of new characters who took center stage along with Lisa and Patriot).  But then the end happened.  I'm talking about the very end of the book, after the climax.  I wasn't at all prepared for it, even though in some ways I felt like I should have seen it coming.  After being blown away by that, I really can't wait to see how all of this ends in the final book!

Matt Forbeck's Brave New World: Revolution

When I first heard about Matt Forbeck's 12 for 12 Kickstarter drive, I thought it was a great idea. If successfully funded, Forbeck gets to write twelve novels during the year, and everyone who supported him gets some hopefully awesome books. No, I had never read any of his books before, but I loved the idea and really wanted him to succeed.

It's now been over a year since the first 12 for 12 drive ended and I received my copies of the first trilogy, set in a roleplaying setting Forbeck created years ago (Matt Forbeck's Brave New World). As I was flying home from California yesterday, I thought it was definitely time to actually read them! And so I read the first book, Matt Forbeck's Brave New World: Revolution, as I was flying home.

Revolution takes place in Crescent City, the city that grew on the edge of the crater where Chicago once stood. Super powered people, called Deltas, are required by law to register and join the American government/army (the Delta division, called Delta Prime). And while many do, there are just as many people who don't want to; they value their freedom and so run from the law. Many of them find their way into the rebellion called the Defiance.

Lisa believes she is an ordinary girl. But suddenly her life is turned upside down when both Delta Prime and the Defiance, led by Patriot, an ex-Delta Prime member, come looking for her. Patriot is captured while saving Lisa from Delta Prime. And so she finds herself teaming up with other members of Defiance to rescue a man she doesn't know, all the while trying to figure out why everyone wants her so badly.

I have to say that I really liked Revolution. So much so that I'm almost finished the second book, Revelation. I like the setting and I really like both Lisa and the Patriot (along with all the others!)  I do apologize for the future posts on this trilogy though: there will be spoilers!

Beauty and the Werewolf

I knew when I started reading Mercedes Lackey's Beauty and the Werewolf that there was a very good chance I wouldn't really like it.  A friend of mine at work read it and told me the main character is pretty annoying.  When I first started reading, I thought Isabella (or Bella for short) wouldn't be too bad. I mean, she was taking care of her stepsisters and seemed to have a good relationship with them (which is very much at odds with a fairy tale type story, especially one set in the land where the Tradition pushes your life into a tale for good or ill).  But then Bella gets bitten by a werewolf and the king sends her to live in seclusion with said werewolf for three months in case she was infected.  And that's when she starts getting really whiny and annoying!  Whenever she distracts herself in some fashion, she wasn't too bad.  But whenever she stopped to think, she'd just start feeling sorry for herself.  It was really annoying to read that sort of thing over and over again for the first half of the book.

Another issue I had was with the villain.  It was super obvious who it was pretty much from the beginning.  I kept hoping that I was wrong, that something would happen and the villain would turn out to be someone else.  But no such luck. 

I feel like I should give a bit more of the plot here, but there really isn't much to say.  The beginning is a bit Red Riding Hood, where Bella goes to visit a wise woman in the woods (conveniently named Granny), who trains her in herb lore and the like.  The werewolf attacks her on the way home.  Then, as I already mentioned, she is sent (or "kidnapped" as she keeps calling it) to the home of Duke Sebastian, the werewolf who bit her.  The house is full of invisible servants who can only speak by writing things on chalkboards.  The only other human in the house is Eric, Sebastian's half-brother (unacknowledged by their father) who works as the Gamekeeper and keeps everyone off the land so Sebastian won't accidentally kill someone should he break free.  Bella had a couple of run-ins with him before coming to the house.  So now Bella has to adjust to being away from her household and family, learning to live with Sebastian and Eric (again, for only three months if she doesn't become a werewolf herself).

I gave this book only 2 stars out of 5 on Goodreads.  I originally gave it a 3 because I like Lackey's writing style.  But this is not one of her better books.  The Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms overall has been kind of hit and miss, and in my opinion this was the worst of the misses.  The plot was too predictable in most regards (I think the biggest mystery for me revolved around the invisible servants, and that didn't really develop throughout the book) and I couldn't stand Bella through a good chunk of the book (as M- says in her review of the book on Goodreads: "the heroine is a spoiled manipulative child with flagrant Mary-Sue tendencies," which is unfortunately quite true).  Unless you're a super dedicated Lackey fan, you'll probably want to give this one a miss.

Hart's Hope

I first heard about Hart's Hope when I started reading Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (which I haven't actually finished reading!)  I was looking for help with worldbuilding at the time, so I was just reading that chapter.  Card started talking about drawing the city of Inwit (which ended up inspiring me to start drawing maps again) and later making the magic system for the book (magic comes from blood and sacrifices).  The whole thing sounded really interesting, so I ordered Hart's Hope to give it a read.

I started reading it over the July 1st long weekend.  I first tried reading another book, The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan, which I unfortunately lost interest in rather quickly and decided not to continue with.  So I started reading Hart's Hope instead.

When I first began reading, Hart's Hope was really promising.  Already interested in the setting, the characters of Palicroval, his friends (Sleeve the wizard, Zymas, and the Flower Princess) and Asineth (Queen Beauty) were all really interesting.  I was enjoying it (although, I must add, I don't approve of what happens in the beginning to Asineth.  That was terrible!!!!)

But then the book sort of changed.  Rather than follow all the characters I was liking so far, it started following another one, Orem.  It went through Orem's childhood and birth, and followed him for the rest of the story.  And while Orem is a really important character in the story, he was very boring.  I was less than half way through the book when I first considered putting it down.  And that feeling stayed with me for a good long while as I struggled to keep reading.

In the end, I did persevere.  And I'm glad of that.  I decided to keep reading for three reasons.  The first was that I took a quick look on Goodreads and was intrigued by some of the ratings; a few people really, really liked it, and I wanted to know why.  The second reason was that somewhere around the middle, I started to notice that the book was written in second person.  But there was no indication of who the narrator was.  So of course now I was curious and wanted to find out, all the while trying to figure it out based off the way they talked about the different characters (btw, I was wrong about who it was).  And finally, I really felt like Hart's Hope was going to pull a Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time on me.

Let me explain that last one.  When I first tried playing Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, it was the same night I tried out Ninja Gaiden Black.  And to me, Ninja Gaiden was a much better game in many, many ways.  Years later, when I finally went back to Prince of Persia, almost the entire time I was playing it I kept thinking "I could be playing Ninja Gaiden instead."  But then the ending of Prince of Persia happened and I was completely wowed by it.  So, based off of the reviews and the second person narrative, I was expecting to be wowed in a similar manner.

Hart's Hope didn't exactly wow me like Prince of Persia did.  But the ending did pick up quite a bit and I found that I enjoyed the book overall. This is a rather dark fantasy tale, a power struggle in a really neat world.  Unfortunately the middle of the book is quite a slog to get through so this book lost a lot of points with me there.

Kindle Book: The Great Gatsby

So when I heard The Great Gatsby was going to be a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, I decided I had to read the book before seeing it.  I didn't read it in high school, and having seen the trailer during Christmas, I thought I had plenty of time to read the book.  Of course, time ended up disappearing on me and here I am, finishing the book about a week after the movie's been out.

As soon as I started reading The Great Gatsby, I knew it was going to be a bit of a struggle; this book is not written for me.  But I persevered, and managed to finish it.  I could tell right from the beginning of the book that it was building to something, so that helped me persevere.

The Great Gatsby is the story of one summer in New York.  Nick Carraway moves next door to Jay Gatsby, an incredibly wealthy but mysterious man who throws outrageous parties.  As the summer unfolds, Nick slowly realizes just what it is that Gatsby is after.

I gave The Great Gatsby 2/5 stars on Goodreads because like I said, this book really wasn't for me.  I had a hard time wanting to read it (I only did because it was short and so I could go see the movie, which I'm hoping I'll like better).  It was an alright story but I much would have preferred reading something else.

Library Book: The Queen in Winter

After reading To Weave a Web of Magic, I immediately started reading The Queen in Winter.  It has stories from three of the four authors of the other book (replacing Patricia McKillip with Sarah Monette) so I was ready to be wowed.  Unfortunately that really wasn't the case.  Sure, I enjoyed these stories, but overall I thought that To Weave a Web of Magic was better.

This time Lynn Kurland's story "A Whisper of Spring" opens the volume.  This is the story of how Symon won the hand of Iolaire from her father, the Elf King.  Well, that happened after he helped her escape from Lothar's clutches.  I really liked that Iolaire wasn't passive; she managed to escape from her cell by herself.  I liked some of the characters (like Symon's father, who was hilarious) but overall this story was just okay, especially after Lothar was bested (which just sort of happened in a rather anti-climatic way).

Next up was Sharon Shinn's "When Winter Comes."  I was expecting to enjoy this one, having really liked all of the other stories I've read by Shinn thus far.  "When Winter Comes" takes place in her Twelve Houses world, which is somewhere I am completely unfamiliar with.  It is the story about two sisters trekking across the land.  One was kicked out of their house mecause she had a mystic baby.  The other sister chose to go with her.  So together they are looking for a safe place to raise the baby in a world which is deadly to mystics.  The premise was alright, but I found this story sort of plodded along until it came to an end.  The story was somewhat predictable and all around just ok.  Of the three Sharon Shinn stories I've read so far, this one was definitely my least favourite.

Claire Delacroix's "The Kiss of the Snow Queen" came next.  When I first started reading it, I really didn't like it.  I think it had a lot to do with the main character sort of waffling about what to do for a loooong time.  But once her decision was made, the story suddenly got a lot better.  "The Kiss of the Snow Queen" is sort of a retelling of "The Snow Queen."  Gerta is a seer, who is bethrothed to a horrible man.  Her and her father (the king) were forced out of their land by the Cath Palug, a nasty cat thing that killed her father's best warriors.  Gerta summons a sorceror named Cai to help.  she is also hoping that if he bests the Cath Palug, she will be given to him instead of to her bethrothed.  Unfortunately the Cath Palug bests him; she watches (through her mirror) as the cat drags him away.  Meanwhile a shadowy being enters Gerta's room and talks her into journeying to the Cath Palug to save Cai.  This being calls himself Loki; he is one of the Fallen Angels.  Loki himself is at odds with the rest of the story.  He speaks in a modern way, which ends up quite funny, particularly when he speaks to Gerta, who often calls him on his speech (ie "You speak nonsence again").  The two of them make quite the pair; overall it is their interactions that made this story pretty good.

The final story is Sarah Monette's "A Gift of Wings."  The beginning of this story was hard to get through; there are a lot of weird names of people and places (and no map to help keep it all straight!)  I found out after reading it that "A Gift of Wings" takes place in her world Meduse (where her Doctrine of Labyrinths books take place).  Once you get passed all that though, "A Gift of Wings" is a super good story.  It's about Maur, a wizard who was cripled in a war (both his hands and his magic), and Agido, a soldier who loves him. The story is about them learning to trust each other again in the wake of that war.  This is compounded by the fact that Maur was also hurt by the people who were supposed to be helping him heal, and so he is cold to Agido because he is trying to protect himself from being hurt like that again.  The story also has a murder mystery thrown in, which was interesting but a bit hard to follow (once again because of the names).  Agido is blamed for the murder, so she and Maur have only a few days to prove her innocence before the watch shows up. 

So overall, The Queen in Winter was an alright read.  I think it would be better if you are more familiar with some of the worlds the authors are writing about (particularly for Shinn's and Monette's stories).