The Last Wish is not what I expected. I liked the Witcher games reasonably well, but I liked the character in the stories of the games more than the one in this book. Andrzej Sapkowski creates this character who is trained by pain, knowledge, poison and discipline to become the ultimate monster killer. However, the result is a very ordinary person, one who is better at fighting and resisting various magic or chemical attacks, but still a regular dude. He has friends, he falls in love and has moral qualms, he gets defeated and knocked out.

The book is actually a collection of short stories with Geralt the witcher as the main character. Some are reimaginings of classical folk tales, but all of them are about real versus perceived monsters. Is something huge with dagger like teeth a monster to be killed or is there a cursed person inside. Is a normal human less monstrous just because he looks normal, or is he a cruel and vicious villain? In all stories there is a lot of dialog, with characters that are not clearly developed talking a lot about what is going on. I didn't like that. It felt like reading plays.

But even so, I would have said that the book is OK. Like someone trying to write a fairy tale of their own. Why not? But there was this expectation from the games that the witcher was a womanizer that decides who lives and who dies based on his own strange code and lives on the edge by the strength of his skill. In fact, in the books he is the most decent hero I've read about in a while. He is one of the last of a dying breed, like samurai or American native warriors, not because of the monsters that kill them off, but because of humans spreading everywhere and expecting everyone to live by their code of conduct. If he would kill all the monsters in the world, he would be the very next to be destroyed by the people who no longer need him and have always hated him. Let me tell you that it is hard to reconcile my expectations with the book character.

Bottom line: an OK book. Certainly not great in any respect. I recommend you read it before researching the character or playing the games. I think that the book makes the games more interesting, by adding a backdrop story, but the games make the story hard to enjoy... because they are simply better.

We Eat Our Own is a reimagining of the making of an infamous movie called Cannibal Holocaust. It was an exploitation movie, featuring all kind of violence, from rape to murder and cannibalism, but also one that strives for maximum realism. In her book, Kea Wilson is portraying a world of emotional dog-eat-dog, with the movie and even the reality around the film set becoming part of a cannibal act where people use and consume and corrupt others.

I can't say I enjoyed the book too much. It is very well written and it makes the reader get visceral feelings about the people and the events inside, however I couldn't make myself care about any of it. In striving for realism herself, Wilson managed to make all her characters human, flawed, real, and almost impossible to empathize with. You understand some of them, you even see yourself think or act the same, but none of it is something you would want to see yourself do. Also, while a lot of the people in the book are caught in an abuse cycle, none of them is actually stuck there. They can leave at any time. Perhaps this is the most intriguing and interesting point of the story: even the most horrible things that we do to each other require some form of consent from the victims, some form of submission, without which the abuse would never happen or at least, not last too long.

In conclusion, I am sure there are a lot of people that will enjoy the hell out of this book. People oriented, feeling focused people, perhaps. I had difficulty making myself finish it, even fully conscious that the writing was very good. But this is my review, so I will not grade this above average. Probably it is a good idea to watch Cannibal Holocaust first, even if the movie is only an inspiration for the book.

Malka Older is a writer, humanitarian worker, and PhD candidate at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (Sciences Po) studying governance and disasters. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than eight years of experience in humanitarian aid and development, and has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Sri Lanka, Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali. (quoted from the About the Author section) And if your interests are not exactly aligned with the author's, you will probably not like this book.

Infomocracy describes a near future in which countries have dissolved their borders and instead opted for a system of centenals, groups of 100000 people who vote for the system they want instead of having it shoved down their throats based on where they were born. A decent idea that deserves some thought. However, the entire story, action and drama of the book is about the voting process. It's like a cyberpunk novel written by a voting system enthusiast with an obsessive disorder, thus feeling both boring and out of touch. It was literally hard work finishing the story, trying to understand why I should care about the stuff happening there or about any of the characters.

Even taking into consideration that it is the first book Older wrote and that it is supposed to start a cycle (damn it, people, write something for its own sake, not for endless series and trilogies and sagas!), the book is still a failure, because it doesn't really explore the way microdemocracy works, instead focusing on a bunch of electoral agents and some of the underhanded methods to sabotage the system. The players are not clearly defined, the characters are shallow and so it is almost impossible to care about any part of the book. You want a good sci-fi book about microdemocracy, try Daemon, by Daniel Suarez.

Throne of the Crescent Moon is basically a young adult novel, even if the main character is a fat old "ghul hunter" rather than his young apprentice. Its freshness comes from the elements of Arabic folklore used as the basis of the fantastic elements. For me reading the book was an interesting experience, as in my head the plot was blending with the stories of One Thousand and One Nights and the animation of Disney's Aladdin. I felt that Saladin Ahmed wrote some delicious characters, even if a bit shallow, and that the story didn't lose points because of its simplicity, rather the opposite. The result is an easy to finish book with Middle Eastern mythology themes in a classic good versus evil story.

The book this reminded me most of was The Spook's Apprentice, but with a different mythology and a different character focus. Just like that series, this can be considered a book for children, but having elements that are appealing to adults as well. To me the most pleasing aspect was the different culture presented, although it wasn't something very new to me. I was raised on stories of spoiled khalifs and evil viziers, young and noble rogues and beautiful girls and mysterious magics, after all. And probably a large element of why I enjoyed the story was this connection to my childhood.

While I can't say it was some sort of masterpiece, this was an entertaining book for me. If you are looking for a relaxing read, try this one.

I read the book before I knew it was part of a trilogy, but of course it is. I would have personally preferred to have the first book as standalone, particularly since it had an almost open ending. It would have made it clear that the story isn't that important as the character. But hell, there is no mystery anymore, even in fantasy.

The Vagrant feels like a mix between Shogun Assassin and Samurai Jack, as it features a sword bearing silent type - well, he's a mute - walking with a baby through a desolate, part feudal part futuristic landscape, while demon essence is threatening to corrupt the world.

Peter Newman even uses a style of writing that often discards definite articles. A sword slashes, a man falls, a demon howls, stuff that happens, inevitably, randomly, viciously. I liked that the main character strives to survive, but he is not indomitable. He gets doublecrossed, wounded, almost killed. He doesn't win every battle and when he does, it is difficult every time. Luck saves him several times and some people he wants to save cannot be saved. Towards the end this tendency falters and he becomes a little bit too knighty for my taste. Abstract and stubborn principles start to rule him, he starts fights that he need not fight, jeopardizing his mission. However, that ends up playing a big part in the last part of the story, setting up the next books, I guess.

The demons are interesting, too. Creatures of corrupted flesh and demonic essence, they are just trying to survive in a world alien to them, while ruled by instincts alien to us. I liked that they were not boring empty clichés of evil and were almost sympathetic. I've long dreamt of a story that tells the story from a demon's perspective, hunted by religious jerks who want to destroy it and the dark magicians that conjured it who want to control it. I mean, wouldn't you be pissed off? This book is very close to that perspective.

Funny enough, I thought the scenes with the baby and the goat were really well done, as the author describes their internal mental processes with gusto and humor, without them being pointless comic relief scenes. Newman seemed to understand how children and animals navigate the world.

In conclusion, I liked the book. I would probably continue to read the series if not for having other books that I want to sample. It is stylistically interesting and the characters are well constructed, while leaving the main story a bit in the background. I liked that. At least at this time I enjoy reading character centric books more than the ones that focus on plot and ignore the people involved in it.

The Fireman has a lot going for it: world ending global pandemic, superpowers, people finding strategies in order to survive, communities giving into the mob mentality, heroes fighting evil, etc. Joe Hill writes well and the story captivated me from start to end.

That being said, there are some issues with the book. The story is about a global infection with a fungus that makes people burst into flames, but narrowly focuses on a few characters in a small American town. Yet the story abounds in details for every scene: what everybody does, what they think, how the scene changes. Also, while there are some explanations of why things happen the way they do, close scrutiny destroys any logical explanation, so less material would have helped suspension of disbelief. I feel like a little editing that would have removed 10-20% of the book would have benefited it greatly, fixing some issues with pacing. There were times when I just had to skip paragraphs, as in moments of tension the author insisted of describing all kinds of inconsequential things.

Also, at the end of some chapters, there were little phrases where the character would disclose the outcome of the next chapter. I did not appreciate that. Imagine a scene where a character is hopeful and, instead of hoping with them and then being devastated by the story, you just go through the scene knowing how it is going to end. Don't do that, Joe!

It was interesting that the main protagonist (who is not a fireman, BTW, that was a silly title) is a woman. Her character, abused, manipulated and lied to by people in authority in her life, is almost feminist in nature. Other secondary characters are also female or children, with the writing focusing on human relationships. If I didn't know better, I would have said the book was written by a woman. I can only commend Joe Hill for being so good at describing the world and the people from the eyes of this character.

Other than that, the story was really fresh. I don't want to spoil anything here, enough to say that it made my emotions alternate wildly between excitement, fear, disgust and frustration. While optimistic in nature, The Fireman describes so many ways in which people just give in to their inner selfishness and evil. The themes touched by the story vary, but gravitate around one central idea of human relationships: a couples, as communities and what happens when these seemingly good things are contaminated with fear. These are themes one is used to find in Stephen King books and, surprise!, Joe Hill is actually King's son. He is trying his best not to advertise this, though, and I think he is a good writer on his own.

The characters are very human, well created, frustrating in their mistakes, just like normal people are. The author made the lead characters a bit too clean, always taking the high road, always being spared of the tough soul scarring choices by their environment or the people around them. I thought that was a weak point in the book. Without being forced to make hard choices, characters have no reasons to evolve.

Anyway, my recommendation is to read this book. It is scifi and fantasy and clinical dissection of humanity. It is well written, even if a little too long for its story.

Almost two years ago, Variety was reporting that the book was being developed by Fox into a movie, yet there is no other information more recent about this.

There is a rule in writing, that if you are trying to tell the story from the viewpoint of another character than the main one, for example the villain, and it is boring, then your story is not good enough. It seems to me that this was the cardinal rule that Manuel Gonzales used to write The Regional Office Is Under Attack!. He wrote tiny interlaced chapters that alternately were describing the action, then the motivations and personalities of the characters through flashbacks. At first it felt fresh, then it just got annoying. There is only so much you want to hear internal monologues.

It would have been great if the story would have been better, or if the characters would have really been fleshed out. However, this book feels more like an exercise in writing, a funky experiment, than a real story. There are very intimate details about how people thought and why they did some things, but they also are empty, doll like characters. And that is too bad, because Gonzales is clearly a talented writer and the plot made me want to read on and find out what will happen to all the characters, only to be left high and dry at the end of the book, which stopped abruptly and spitefully. It was like "Hey, you wanted something else than to experience my new idea? Fuck you! You get nothing."

In the end, it was something that felt like a fairy tale, reinvented for art's sake and modernized just because it's fashionable. It's not even a first part of a series or something. It's a standalone book that showcases the author's idea of presenting many viewpoints on some incidents that have only marginal connection to science and fiction. It could have just as well been a soap opera about highschoolers and be just the same book. It wasn't bad, but I can't quite recommend it either.

I loved this book about the far future where humanity is ruled by benevolent AIs and vicious technological wars are being fought with xenophobic alien races. The greatest quality of Dark Intelligence is how it managed to define a world of varying degrees of power and intelligence that somehow manage to coexist without straining suspension of disbelief. I also liked that throughout the book there were hints on various hidden truths in the story, but Neal Asher didn't simply spoil the ending with them, nor did said ending rely solely on disclosing the twists that were glimpsed from those hints. The style of the writing was focused, easy to read, capturing the reader in the world the author created. I finished the book in just two days.

The subject of the story is also one that is very dear to my heart: what is the meaning of identity and personal purpose in life when anything can be changed, altered by either yourself or others, sometimes god like intelligences that just don't see galactic life as any more interesting than we would an ant hill. And while the book is part of a series set in a universe that Asher wrote a bunch of books about, the story is quite stand alone and can be read with pleasure without fear of a cliffhanger ending ruining it all. I liked it and probably I will try other books from the series and from this author.

It was difficult for me to finish Tea From An Empty Cup. While it was a rather classic cyberpunk novel, which I usually enjoy, I felt it was obsolete in a way that could not be fixed. You know, like when designers or artists try to imagine how computers will be in the future. Only after reading it I realized it was written in 1998, so it was normal for that time and age to misunderstand how humans behave in networked environments, but still... even if the subject was a bit interesting, I actually had to make an effort to go through with it. I think the reason for why I didn't like the book was that the characters were paper thin. Concerned to describe a chaotic virtual reality world in which anything is possible and nothing is regulated (although everything is billed), Pat Cadigan forgot to make us feel anything for the protagonists. And considering that this is a story about how technology is affecting our perception of identity, it made the book unpalatable.

Imagine a Matrix in which people enter voluntarily because the real world is boring by comparison. They create their own intricate fantasies that go well beyond the basic human needs like food or sex and focus on social cues that the participants struggle to constantly redefine and grab for themselves. In this, Pat Cadigan was spot on. However, other than this simple idea that nowadays is ubiquitous on the Internet via the various social networks, the book is nothing but a boring detective story, complete with the "normal" policeman character that enters this virtual world as a complete noob and somehow solves the case. The action is very inconsistent and the feeling I got from the flow of the plot was one of a dream sequence where stuff is cool just by merely being defined as such. At no time while reading the book I was enticed by the scenes in the story.

The concepts inside the book are interesting, but explored very little. The author seems to be under the impression that by merely listing them, the story will somehow become interesting by association, an ironic parallel with the characters in the book. Just think that this book was published at the same time The Matrix movie was released. The difference in quality between the two stories is just too big.

Central Station describes a very interesting cyberpunk style of future, where amazing yet commonplace technology mixes with the traditional and with the local culture in a world in which the Solar System has been colonized. And then the book ends. Lavie Tidhar manages to imagine all of this creative world, but doesn't succeed on making the book more than the collection of short stories it actually is. That doesn't mean the book is not worth reading or that other works from the author will not benefit from the world building in it, but it feels like a missed opportunity. The book is short, it describes interactions between a surprisingly small and somehow related people and then it just ends with none of the threads in it being resolved in any way. The main character remains as the background city of Central Station, former Tel Aviv.

The writing style is also a bit heavy. It is descriptive, a little pretentious, but it might have felt like that because I was reading in the subway or when going to sleep and I wasn't in the mood for intellectual work. Even so I believe that a lighter style with more attention to story development would have benefited this book.

Bottom line: I liked the story immediately and felt betrayed after it abandoned me right when I was intrigued enough to seek closure. It is worth a read and I hope Tidhar expands the world in other stories beyond the insular location of the book. I am also looking forward to reading other things from the same author.

Finally, a fresh, unapologetically sci-fi story with so many interesting ideas and cultural innovation that I can barely wait for the second book in the series to come out.

Yoon Ha Lee creates this far into the future universe in which everything from social structure to space travel and military technology is run by rigid doctrine that uses a particular calendar. Certain battle formations, using certain weapons, doing specific things leads to "exotic effects", carefully manipulated through higher mathematics, that power society and military expansion. Of course, there are multiple possible calendaristical configurations, but they interfere with each other, so after choosing one, any deviation is considered heretical. Add to this an Asian view of hierarchy and politics and you get the most delicious book I've read in a long, long time.

Ninefox Gambit is, unfortunately, merely the beginning of the story. While one could consider the entire thing a standalone book that leaves the rest of the story to the imagination of the reader, the rich universe that it creates makes followups inevitable. In this case, I can barely wait for them. There isn't much else to say about the book other than urge you to read it. As with any good writing, the plot is simple, but the individual scenes give its flavor. It is an almost unspoilable story, since it doesn't rely much on twists, but on bringing value in every chapter, through rich characterization and original scenecraft.

The only fantastical element in this book, except for a ghost that makes a short appearance, is a change in location. The rest is historical fiction in some place that feels exactly like Renaissance Europe, only it has another name and other gods. Worst than that, the story is boring and the writing mediocre. I couldn't finish it.

The story in Children of Earth and Sky follows a few chosen characters while they navigate the treacherous waters lying between warring (and spying) nations. I mean this both metaphorically and literally, since it is also about ships crossing the sea. Guy Gavriel Kay has been writing published works since 1984 which is why I was surprised to see such an amateurish writing style. He uses several tools again and again and again, without much effect. The worse, for me, was describing the same scene from different viewpoints, one after another, even if it did nothing to enrich the story or develop characters. Another is a certain repetition of a phrase for emphasis, something like "He didn't like the book. He didn't." OK, emphasized enough! Also I felt that the author coddled his characters too much. Instead of making them suffer in interesting situations, he just lets them off easy with crises that they can easily handle or at least manage with heroic skill. In one of the most important scenes, one of a battle, he kills off a major character, at which point I was thinking "OK, it's getting started", only to resurrect them immediately after. Ugh!

So beside being a boring historical drama (I mean boring even for a historical drama!), it really nagged me that it was marketed as fantasy. Maybe I am just getting fed up, considering I've just read a western and a heist story, both included in the fantasy and sci-fi genre because they happened in the future or in spaaaaaace. Bottom line: I can't in good conscience recommend this book and I am quite amazed that it has such a high rating.

Three is a western. The fact that it happens in a post apocalyptic cyberpunk world is incidental. Jay Posey writes about the classical strong silent reluctant hero who fights for a good cause represented by a woman who has changed her ways and her innocent child. There are cyber zombies, there are evil pursuers and a world in which the strong survive in strongholds that are few and far between.

The book works because the writing is good and because the author never attempts to explain what happened to the world or how things actually work. It could have just as well been magic and pixie dust and the story would have remained basically unchanged. And unlike what the title of the review might indicate, you can read the book as a stand alone story, even if it has sequels. It had a beginning, a middle and a resolution.

Bottom line: an enjoyable book, albeit a bit predictable. Its strong suit is the good writing rather than a particularly smart idea or world building or even subtle characterization. Characters are kind of cardboard, but their actions and what happens around them is all well written. I don't think I will continue to read the series, but the author intrigues me and so I may read other books of his, like the new Outriders.

This reminded me of The Call, by Peadar Ó Guilín, another very well received book I've recently read. It features a female perspective, fairies and an unapologetic dissection of the human soul. The Call is better, but still, this is a very interesting book I will also recommend reading.

In Roses and Rot, Kat Howard uses the world of the Fae as an excuse to examine the bonds between people, the toxic effects of self-centeredness, whether in a parent or in yourself as you try to achieve some of your goals at the expense of others, and how people have to sacrifice for what they love. Imagine a magical place where everything is offered to you on a silver platter, with the promise that the best of you will get... a golden platter or whatever. And there is always a price.

I liked the psychological aspects of the story. There isn't much else of it, actually. As I said, the magic is merely incidental as the book is about the struggles of artists and daughters of idiots. I would go as far as not calling it fantasy at all. I disliked the close similarity between Janet and the girls' mother - I won't expand on this for fear of spoiling it. Enough to say that Helena's character and sidestory felt like a training run for what could have happened to the protagonist if not for her sister, so in one fell swoop, two characters from the already short list of relevant ones are just shadow copies of others. Add to this a lot of other details that are customized for the lead and you start to suspect this is a very autobiographical story. I don't know Kat Howard so well as to say it was, though. I will quote from the book though: “These [fairy tales] will be more autobiographical in nature than the Grimms'.”

Bottom line: It was a heartfelt story and I liked it. It is also short and not part of a billionogy, so you can just read it and enjoy it. Less fantasy than psychological drama, though.

Dark Run is a classic pulp space mercenary book. It isn't even sci-fi at its core. It could have just as well been a western, a pirates or a heist book, as the science and technology don't further the story in any meaningful way.

I don't have anything specific to say about the book. Mike Brooks uses an overused plot of a specialized team of renegades being double crossed and having to defend their honor and punish the responsible. The characters are pure cardboard, with no subtlety, and even the humor is weak. I mean, it's pulp fiction, the author did a decent job writing one. As literature, though, it's not something I could possibly recommend.