Thief's Life

   With Thief's Covenant Ari Marmell joins the ranks of established authors entering the YA market; this sword and sorcery adventure novel following the life of a young female thief in a Renaissance like era city could easily sit beside the rougher adventures written by Brent Weeks, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch and  Richard Morgan.  The world  Widdershins inhabits is one of many gods, political and social intrigues  schemers, backstabbers, social climbers fools fops and thugs; much like one one outside our windows the numerous often meddeling household gods  aside . The tale is told in Terrintinoesque out of order fashion building the characters and setting slowly maintaining tension with breaking scenes to jump ahead or back at just the best moment to keep you wanting more. Multiple viewpoints are head from mainly Widdershins, sometimes Adrianne, sometimes Madaline, all the time wry witty and headstrong but we get her friends, acquaintances, antagonists and the occasional newcomers point of view too. The nove is a spare 280 pages in length and they pretty much fly by because it's kind of hard to put down once you start.

     Though Thief's Covenant is being marketed at the YA market even being printed in a pretty handsome hardcover edition it lacks nothing for grit, action and complexity standing well with the Nighangel and

First Law books etc I mentioned above.  Ari's book is like them  in all the ways that make sword and sorcery stories among my favorites; the characters drive the story along and are not driven by the plot itself; Widdershins is put in many situations where other people including friends try to get her to do or in many cases not do what she sees as the best course. She is smart and canny enough to know following her intuition is going to be best for her and has a strong sense of right and wrong though it is a pretty personal one at times.  Like Brent Week's Kylar she is someone who has had a hard and violent life coming up as an orphan and though we see less of her past then his Ari includes enough  hints and details to let you know her childhood was not an easy one. Through some of the "x" years ago chapters he fills in chapters in her story where she witnesses and causes some deaths and losses that form who she is in the now and to come chapters. Like the so called adult stories there is trash and garbage and more filling the ally's of her city of Davilon there are viscous thugs and nameless or in this case named cults that consort with unclen things; there is some onscreen blood and gore with mostly only the swearing used by others abscent.  

        Ari tells Widdershins tale out of chronological order effectively starting where her personal god Orgun becomes a dirty with a single worshiper. That scene happens in the first chapter which is set in her recent past and then proceeds to jump from past to present and beck building both impression of characters and the world. The way her builds temsion with foreshadowing and backshadowing effectively kept me in the story wether the viewpoint  was any of the aliases his protagonist uses or if it happened to be any of his other interesting cast of characters. They people he populated his tale with are all a little recognisable types but they never feel stale or one-sided no matter how short their lives may actually end up being. He leaves lots of clues around to figure out who is doing what eventhough for his heroine it's pretty much a mystery and she even jumps to some wrong but useful and fun conclusions in the corse of the story.

     I would happily recommend this to readers of fantasy adventure fiction with no reservations... it appealed to the young role playing gamer in me that is still dying to play in a setting and with characters that are are multi-layered and real as he writes. I want more of her adventures to be honest and I hope he has got a good number of them up his writing sleeves..

I received my copy from PRY for review....
You can look up Ari Marmell at mouseferatu to check him out and see his other pretty cool novels.....

       

Plans redux....

Has some events the last few days...

Don't know if any if the plans will be carried through ... The reviews at least...

And well the MIT thing that was a longshot anyway...

Plans....

Currently I'm spending time with friends in Holland... I've got quite a few books lined up to review including Lightbringer, Planesrunner, Jack of Ravens, the last Burton and Swineburne to name just a few and that's just from PYR... I am also participating in the pilot MIT online Electronics Engineering course that started this month that I hope to get the certificate from... the instructors seem really cool and quirky in a good way and I think I'm going to like doing the course... When I get a card reader I plan to start posting images from the walks we are taking daily in addition to photographing the food I'll be cooking. One if the books I have for review is Cook like a Rock Stat by Ann Burrell and I hope to cover that in some detail... Well I've got some coursework to get too and a review to write to post...

not at all about dead wood fiction....

Hi all...

I know I have been silent of late and I apologize for that ....

I follow a lot of author blogs and the one by Jay Lake is the one I have to say that has touched me the most... he is one of the most prolific authors in spec fiction these days and is totally open on his blog about his life and his troubles....

this morning I read a post about one of the people he turned me onto internet wise and the fact that this person recently passed away from an unexpected coronary event ... an I was terribly saddened by this.... and it makes me wonder at the magical effect of the technology of the day .... I have been touched emotionally by events in the lives of people I follow because of authors I follow and will never meet in person...

Some geeks like me morn the fact that the future we live in is mundane and lacking flying cars and personal jetpacks and colonies on the moon and mars but the reality we inhabit is magical in ways past authors did not see...

today I was moved to tears by the passing of someone I'll never know but in a way knew through electronic media..... namely twitter and blogs...

its really odd the future we live in and poo poo on a regular basis....

comedian Louis C.K. did a bit on this in one of his shows about the iPhone and smart devices and how people somethins think the tech is so slow and dumb but really its a kind of magic that we live with all the time.....

thinking back to when I was a kid the TV and the phone were magic in ways I never apperciated as a teen and well

I get now to miss someone I'll never get to meet but he has touched my life in a special way....  who says we don't live in a time of magic...

G.

I'm a colorblind green magic drafter!

Take the quiz at Brent Weeks.com

A Book of Tongues

 

       Book of Tongues by  canadian writer and poet Gemma Files is strait up a great joy, a marvelously twisted viscerally written grim horror set in the old west. Like George RR Martin's Game of Thrones her fiction is gritty, animal and unafraid to offend the sensibilities of more gentile readers . This novel is not for the easily offended or for the closed minded, to be blunt if gay sex is not something you want to read about or even have referred to don't go here. And this is not a novel for kids, period, end of story. Ms Files also uses the christian bible in ways that may be offensive to people who hold with the faith... just a gentle warning... I dug it but I'm a lapsed catholic... Now on with the show.

       Set in the last years of and following the Civil War the players and the world are all finding a new way to be. The existence of magic cast by people called Hexslingers has made little difference to history of this world; hexes as they are called do not play nice together since practitioners end up feeding on each other; beyond a short alliance don't hang together all that much.  Gemma follows the stories of the outlaws and those on the fringes of gentile society as is the case with all great westerns .  Her prose is if not flowery in image  is in aspect and takes many flights into imagery connecting it to its major mythological source - the blood driven Mayan Mythos, expect long consonant filled names, knives , fire blood and hearless chests.

      We start the tale in medias res as with all great epics, one of the protagonists Chess Pargeter late of the confederate force and son of a san francisco hoar being accosted in a San Francisco club for his fancy dress and ladylike manner. The miners attention draws the notice of our second hero the pinkerton spy Edward a man deeper then he seems at first glance who tries to warn the fool off his compatriot.  The dustup that follows and the eventual meeting with the gangs head Rook gives good introduction to the type of action that follows in the corse of the story.  The tale takes our party through a meeting with a celestial (chinese) mystic in Chinatown who gives more hints to the thrust of the tale and the future adventures of Rook himself, gives us the past of all the players large and small with trips into a pinkerton train car for a mission impossible style briefing and a confontation between spy and target that comes upon the reader quite quick.

         Gemma goes on to describe the past of the anti-heros Asher Rook and Chess and their time in the war. She portrays actions and decisions that are both smart and stupid and the events that lead up to the attempted hanging of a possibly one time good man. The sections that detail the fever dreams of Rook where he sees the Rainbow woman and is visited by a native shaman hold a great amount of un real yet substantive quality that gives them a credible dreamlike feel. Ms Files' players, Ed our erstwhile included do things that are flawed and human and though not always likable they do come off as human and believable in the same way as Martin's best characters always do. 

      If anything I found myself wanting the novel to be longer and deal with some of the lesser players like the earlier mentioned celestial albino Songbird and the leader of the pinkertons. We get few scenes with these players as we get with the scientist Jochiam Ashbury who is trying to study the nature of Hexslingers for the government. Gemma delves in to the much ignored native american mythology of the Maya and Inca for her more mystical elements opening up questions in my mind about that mythos that  I have had a little indoctrination to and makes me again want more.  This is one of the aspects that reading westerns have brought out of late the desire to learn more about subjects only touched on in my past education; the beliefs of the natives of the americas and the experience of the chinese and other  immigrants to the US.

      So like Deadwood, if the moralistic grey area, neither good not bad story really appealed to you as a viewer; if the aspect of potential of Clive Barker like descriptions dont make you quail and you dont mind some strange in your intimate encounters A Book of Tongues may be for you. It is good not so old fashioned western storytelling. Gemma gives you people of all stripes with wavering alliances and morality all trying to make their way in an uncertain and often cruel world; her characters are petty and crule, cowardly, oddly caring at times and nothing is ever easy in their world much like the real one.  Action here is fast deadly and dramatic and spellcraft is powerful and often unexpected. Ms Files gives the readers a lot to think about and ponder if they want on top of the great weird adventure that is A Book of Tongues. 

Ok partners that is the first of my western romp, Gemma I like your style; I will be on board for the second volume Rope of Thornes..... this stranger has to mosey for a little but I'll be back.

Mailbag

Hey there...

This week will see several reviews beginning my treatment of steam/neo western stories...


Tuesday I will hit the marvelous A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files

Thursday will be Tombstone day with The Buntline Special

And Saturday will see the Gunslinger reviewed...

I hope everyone will be entertained..

Next week I will trip back to fantasy to be followed by some hard SF and then back to Westerns and he'll maybe a little RPG reviews... I love me some print media and I think you should support read dead wood product too...