Review: Of Bone and Thunder

 Of Bone and Thunder by Chris Evans

From my brief investigations into the author (Chris Evans of The Iron Elves trilogy) it would seem that he’s a bit of a military historian and I definitely think that’s where this book stems from. It’s a story inspired by the Vietnam War (obviously with a fantasy twist) and you definitely get the impression straight away of confusing objectives coupled with oppressive heat. 

Of Bone and Thunder starts off in a slightly confusing manner, what with the prologue being from the perspective of a bird, but it very quickly drags you in and becomes a visceral, pumping tale that feels very real.

We start following normal soldiers doing a normal day’s work in heat that should only be experienced when you’re standing next to an industrial oven. We move on to a less normal soldier but still doing what amounts to a roughly normal day’s work. And finally we find ourselves following an airborne regiment doing a kind of normal day’s work.

We do see that the Kingdom back home is in turmoil and has almost exploded into open rebellion whilst conscripted soldiers fight in a searing hot jungle for a cause they don't know about.

I felt like, to start with, the plot meanders slightly with regards to the soldiers on the ground, rather than being propelled onwards into the maw of some great big bad evil end of the world nonsense. But I think that is also kind of the point with soldiers fighting a war that they see as pointless. That isn’t to say that the story isn’t compelling; we find ourselves sucked into the very real struggles of the soldiers on the ground (and air). 

One of my favourite parts of the story is the rags (read: dragons). Evans uses them to create dragon-based air squadrons. And it’s awesome. There’s something about the way Evans describes them that makes them feel heavy, hot, and oh so real and dangerous. And that’s before they even start breathing fire. I love it.

It’s compelling in its characters and every page reveals something deeper in each of the characters that makes you more interested in them. You become invested in the characters as you see their faults, their love for their comrades, and what they are willing to do to keep one another safe.

Evans does a great job of not pulling any punches or trying to glamorise warfare but at the same time the crescendo to the story will still get you cheering for the characters at their triumphs (I was smiling like a goon on the train). 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and thought it was a detailed exploration into the minds of soldiers on the ground, how social change affected them, and the stresses of dealing with a command structure unprepared for the environment they faced. 

It was well written, the characters were quite flawed but ultimately sympathetic and I found myself excited to get back to it. What more could you ask for?! Dragon? It has that too!

I would definitely recommend this book to fans of the Malazan series. This book is a dark exploration of war that still has also those features that make you want to read on and dig deeper into the world, the characters, and the conflicts.

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Review: Fearsome Magics

I've only picked up short story collections relatively recently, I (exceedingly) foolishly thought that they might not be good as a full length novel.

This book, Fearsome Magics (edited by Jonathan Strahan), proves I could not have been more wrong.

Inside we have stories from Garth Nix, K.J. Parker, Justina Robson, Ellen Klages, Christopher Rowe, Isobelle Carmody, Tony Ballantyne, James Bradley, Karin Tidbeck, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Frances Hardinger, Kaaron Warren, Genevieve Valentine and Robert Shearman. ( I didn't want to leave anyone out)

I enjoyed every single one of the stories in this anthology and highly recommend you go and read them all. But I thought that perhaps the best way to do a review was to pick some favourites and go into detail about those and then do a round up, so without further ado!

‘Home is the Haunter’ by Garth Nix

                This was one of the longer stories in the anthology and did take a little longer to get into  (but still not that long, I mean there’s not that long altogether!). A story of Sir Hereward and Mr Fitz, who just happens to be a living puppet, it took a little time to get drawn into the world but when I was I did not want to go anywhere. Once the story got going I could barely put it down, the writing was fantastic, the pacing was excellent, and the characters were outstanding. As soon as I finished this story I set out to find out more about Sir Hereward and Mr Fitz and purchased a collection of short stories on them. 

'Grigori's Theorum' by Isobelle Carmody

                I don’t think I have anything bad to say about this story.  A story about the end of the world, it gave me chills. The imagery that Carmody brought up and the feelings of sheer inevitability and acceptance just blew me away and I have been telling people about this story all week. Seriously, I thought it was amazing, an interesting concept exceedingly well told. 

"The Changeling" by James Bradley

                A haunting tale really blurring the lines between what might actually be magic and what we might just want to perceive. Exploring a theme of escapism and social acceptance this particular short story did stay with me for its ambiguity in its ending. Bradley definitely pushed his protagonist to the edge.

 

All in all I think this a very strong anthology with a collection of stories that are all wonderful, creepy, epic, and heart-breaking all at once. To say that I would recommend this short story collection would be a bit of misdirection. I have already recommended this anthology several times to friends.  It has strong female characters, teddy bears, maths, and a village jam and preserve competition. What more could you want?

If you need something to occupy your mind for an hour and you want something that will stay with you and you can get your teeth into, grab a steak and this book.

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Review: Emperor of Thorns (Audiobook)

Once again this was an audiobook but I actually got a signed hardcopy as a gift (awesome gift!) and it turns out the new POV character's chapters were in a different font, which I thought was really cool! 

Anyway! 

As per usual Mark Lawrence does a wonderful job of throwing us right into the action and then folding in the back-story like a fine cake made of blood, death, and misery. This time we join Jorg as he is about to make his way to Congression (I’m not sure if that’s supposed to the capitalised but why not?) and again some backstory woven in that adds wonderful depth to the world, story, and character.

A brand new twist on this book in particular in another POV character! Say what!

This time we hear from … Chella’s perspective (Sorry I had to look that up, fantasy audiobooks mean I’m not sure how to spell things sometimes). It’s an interesting tale and gives us much more information about the world and a fresh perspective on things (although definitely not a fluffy happy one).

If there’s something that Lawrence can do, it is weave different levels of stories together. We also get lots of those throwaway sentences that Lawrence is so good at which are just beautifully put together and just make you stop to appreciate them. 

One thing I was slightly confused about was the foreshadowing that Lawrence included in his book. Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of foreshadowing, especially if it means your second read through is completely different.  I’m not sure if I felt the foreshadowing was obvious, because it wasn’t very heavy handed at all, or perhaps more that Lawrence’s writing process is more of a (to use a term made famous by GRRM) gardener than an architect. Whatever the cause, reason, or rhyme I did find that I had seen ahead the twist long before it happened.

I don’t want you to take away that this is necessarily a bad thing, I’m not sure if it was supposed to remain a mystery until the big reveal or if Lawrence wanted us to guess it early on. With the story being in first person (for the most part) it added a tremendous amount of dramatic tension to the final chapters of the book and made those scenes all the more powerful. 

All in all this book was a very good close to the Broken Empire trilogy and I very much look forward to reading the next series that Lawrence has lined up for us (especially if he takes us beyond the end of Emperor of Thorns in his world's timeline to see what effects the finale had on it).

This was an excellent book of the same high calibre that Mark Lawrence has crafted before. In Jorg we get a philosopher, warrior, king, and broken thing. Mark Lawrence makes no apologies for Jorg but we don’t want to and we fall in love with him all the same (perhaps more so because of that). The story moves a little slower than the previous books but it is still quick and compelling. It will make you laugh, it will tear at you and make you cry and leave you wanting more stories from Lawrence’s world.

What more could you want?

 

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Book Review: Assail by Ian C Esslemont

Look at it! It's so awesome!

Hopefully I was not alone in my giddy excitement when I saw the title of this book.

Assail.

All Malazan fans will know the weight that sits on that continent. Throughout Erikson’s series we have seen some of the toughest characters be chewed up and spat out by Assail. And sometimes they even survive.

We enter the world of Malazan once again as we always do, with some new characters and some old faces, and I think by now with 15 books under most readers’ belts (I’m going to assume that you’ve read Esslemont’s series after you read Erikson’s) we have enough context that we are immediately drawn into the new stories. A young man from one of the tribes on Assail and a sea-captain on his way to the fabled continent are a couple.

Esslemont does a wonderful job of building tension and suspense in the first portion of the book. We are only given fleeting glimpses into what lies at the heart of the continent and what terrible things might happen. Further to this we are thrown a complete curve-ball with the prologue and only left with burning questions.

Esslemont builds on this consistently throughout the entire book and we are given hints, both great and small, about what is happening and important revelations about the world. I could barely put the book down in the first half for all of these hints and questions (I almost missed my stop a couple of times on the train) and then by the time the second half of the book comes around you’re caught up with the momentous plot you can’t put it down then either!

I will say that for some reason around Chapter Six there was this weird explosion of adverbs. As though Esslemont realised that adverbs can be okay sometimes and got a little carried away. It was a little off-putting once I realised he wasn’t doing it deliberately with one character to try and make a statement about their POV, but then after that chapter it dies down and all is well with the world.

Apart from the ‘Adverb Attack of Ch. 6’ Esslemont’s language is diverse and descriptive, and I did note at times how wonderfully creepy he could be (in all the right places). Esslemont’s voice really shines and I think that he has developed wonderfully since ‘The Night of Knives’ way back in 2004. He gives the proper weight and sadness to those characters and scenes that need it but is also a dab hand at cracking jokes. There was a wonderful moment in a climactic fight scene towards the end that did give me a mighty chuckle.

The Epilogue does a wonderful job of tying everything together in a neat little bow. I did wonder whether it was necessary and should have been a final chapter, but perhaps that’s just pedantic of me? Regardless, the Epilogue ties all of the threads of this book together and then shows us some of the paths the characters want to take next. So instead of leaving us with the unanswered questions that we were sometimes left with in Erikson’s work, Esslemont ties everything together and then scatters the seeds for the next round of storytelling. And each and every single one of those seeds should be an epic story in its own right.

By the time we reach the end of the book the world has been suitably threatened, our view on it has been suitably rocked, and we have had our hearts suitably broken. All in all, Esslemont continues to build and improve on his previous work. Every volume increases in complexity, skill, and epic scale.

I absolutely urge any fantasy fan to read the Malazan series, and if any Malazan fans are hesitant to pick up Esslemont’s series after what a good job Erikson did, I can assure you that you will not be disappointed. Esslemont has at least 3 more books to go and I for one cannot wait to read them. 


Assail is released on the 14th August and you can preorder it in hardback or ebook from Amazon, or from the publisher's website.

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