Microreview [book]: The Good, The Bad, and the Smug, by Tom Holt

Holt, Tom. The Good, The Bad, and the Smug. Orbit: 2015.

Buy it here as of late July 2015.

A witty successor to Terry Pratchett!

Just making the comparison should make Holt's day: Terry Pratchett was the acknowledged sage-king of fantedy (fantasy-comedy). The master wordsmith dazzled all with his lingual perambulations (a metaphor that doesn't really make sense, but what did you expect? I'm no Terry Pratchett, after all!), and the fantasy/comedy world felt his loss keenly indeed.

For myself, I've been searching for, if not a replacement, than at least a worthy journeyman successor to Pratchett, and judging from the comedic antics of The Good, The Bad, and The Smug, I may have struck gold with Tom Holt.  The book is a wittily written yet fairly fast-paced laugh-out-loud action-packed exploration of both the nature of good and evil and the possibility of multiple worlds (possible due to what Pratchett would have called "quantum", with references to the "space time continuinuinuinuum"). While not quite at the finely polished level of Pratchett's mature works in the Discworld series, for example, Holt's effort is mighty respectable.

The reader soon feels drawn to the tale of unlikely companions, an elf reporter and a goblin king (ostensibly mortal enemies), in their quest to save the world from what we might call the banality of good. They struggle in the name of "evil", but everything about them screams "good guys," unlike a certain goblin character who figures out the only way to escape imprisonment is to convert to good and stick to it come what may. The main antagonist is a strange Rumplestiltskin-like figure who is not all he seems, in that sense much like the recurring trope of doughnut-as-portal in spac
e-time.

You'll chortle aplenty with this book, and though I can't quite recommend it as highly as I would the finest of the Discworld series, Holt has shown he belongs in the same sentence as Pratchett--no small accomplishment!


The Math

Objective Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for finding the perfect balance between engrossing story and comedic digressions

Penalties: none (save falling slightly short of Pratchett's brilliance)

Nerd coefficient: 8/10 "Well worth your time and attention"


[For those wondering "only an 8?" considering how much I obviously enjoyed this book, NB: Nerds of a Feather is the mortal enemy of grade inflation, and an 8/10 indicates several standard deviations above a run-of-the-mill level. For more information, see here.]

Reviewed by Zhaoyun, who, in addition to contributing to Nerds of a Feather since 2013, has been thoroughly enjoying fantedy since first discovering Terry Pratchett like a gazillion (okay, maybe 15) years ago!

6 Books with Fantasy Author Robert Jackson Bennet

Robert Jackson Bennett is a two-time award winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, an Edgar Award winner for Best Paperback Original, and is also the 2010 recipient of the Sydney J Bounds Award for Best Newcomer, and a Philip K Dick Award Citation of Excellence. His fifth novel, City of Stairs, which earned a rare 10/10 in our review, is in stores now. Today he is here to share his "6 books" with us...

1. What book are you currently reading

I just finished The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. Liked it quite a bit.

2. What upcoming book you are really excited about?

I don't quite know, to be frank. Nearly all of my purchases are impulse buys these days.

3. Is there a book you're currently itching to re-read?

I would say Nabokov's Pale Fire or The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. Both are masterclasses in writing. Also Mythago Wood .

 4. How about a book you've changed your mind about over time--either positively or negatively?

One of the things that sucks about getting older and reading more is that you realize a lot of what makes certain young adult books really sing for you is that, frequently, you've never seen these tricks done before. You have nothing to compare it to. So when I went back and reread Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising , it was a bit like going back to a place you thought was a giant palace as a kid, and now find it to be a bit cramped and ordinary.

5. What's one book, which you read as a child or young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing? 

I think a lot about Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave , and its romantic depiction of magic and myth. Gosh that was good.

 6. And speaking of that, what's *your* latest book, and why is it awesome?

City of Blades . Comes out in January of 2016. It brims over with explosions and whatnot.







-Robert Jackson Bennett

AiIP Microreview: The Glass Falcon, by E. Catherine Tobler

The Meat: I love adventures. Mary Shelley, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Mark Twain, so many others- I love stories that simply carry you away. So it is probably little surprise that I am quite fond of this story, but there are far more reasons than the fact that it is simply an adventure story, through and through.

Tobler has what I would term a gift for words. The Glass Falcon is a novella- fairly short, a mere 89 pages. But her vocabulary, and use of ornate, precise and detailed language makes it seem much longer, or rather, deeper. In a world of epic fantasies that drag on forever (lookin' at you, George R.R.), I really appreciate a story - author - who knows what details to include, which ones to omit, and how to express them in a rich way.

I also enjoy the way very diverse elements blend together - on one hand, it is a steampunk adventure, a sort of love letter to Paris that doesn't precisely exist - But also deals with shapeshifters, Egyptian gods and ancient history, and the mystery which lies at the heart of this story. It's a lot to pack into 89 pages, and it is done without moving too swiftly or getting bogged down in clunky exposition.

Potential spoiler alert here, but I have to comment on it, because it was masterfully handled, and central to the story and its ending: the perspective of the gods. Every bloody YA/NA (which this is not), paranormal, etc book out there right now has gods and immortals by the bucketload, and they are all perfectly relatable to humans. This is catastrophically stupid. These infinite beings fall in love with normal humans, schoolgirls, etc, with no problem at all. Instead, Tobler gives us a treat with how it really would be- these beings of extreme power and wisdom don't actually relate to our world very well at all. Not in how they talk, not in how they act, or even how they think.

My only complaint has to do with the characters. While this story stands alone, reading its predecessor (Rings of Anubis) is helpful. I like Folley quite a lot- she is a well-developed, strong character, but I didn't feel she progressed much though the story. She enters the story, reeling one might say, from the events and revelations of Rings, rightly so, but for a character of her strength and depth, by the end of Falcon, I really think she would/could/should be much more in control of things - in fact, there is one scene where she is quite in control (not like that, you perverts). More of that, please. Likewise, Mallory acts more as a sounding board than he did in the Rings, where we saw him much more strong-willed and determined.

The Math:

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses:
+1 for being a well-balanced, complex story that is not over-long
+1 for the spoiler alert thing above

Penalties:
-1 for having the human characters remain stagnant

Conclusion: 9: very high quality/standout in its category

Grab it here, and pick up Rings of Anubis while you're at it.

Thursday Morning Superhero

With my disinterest in both the Mavel and DC events, but pull list is shrinking each week.  Despite this, some good titles dropped this week and my attention is turned towards the Great Fables Wake.  Happening this upcoming weekend in Austin, fans of the beloved Fables will be treated to panels, original art, contests, and a pool party.  I am looking forward to returning to Fabletown one last time and celebrating the book the brought me back to comics many years ago.

Pick of the Week:
The Beauty #1 - This debut from Image sure looks like a sure fire hit.  Creators Jeremy Haun and Jason Hurley describe it as "the little book about an STD that makes you beautiful."  The Beauty tells a story that includes The Beauty, people who are very attractive that are carrying the disease, and the rest who are not as attractive but are disease free.  This divide has created anti-beauty activists and a wave of crimes related to the disease.  Very interesting premise and a great first issue that will leave you wanting more.  The first issue centers around a girl who has the disease who has apparently spontaneously combusted.  There is more going on with the STD then people realize and it will be interesting to see how things develop.  I smell a future TV deal with this one.  This is a great time to hop on this bandwagon. 

The Rest:
Batman #43 - We are one step closer to the return of Bruce Wayne as Batman, but Jim Gordon has one last massive task to complete.  He needs to stop Mr. Bloom.  Mr. Bloom is an intriguing villain who has been selling super powers via seeds he creates.  This type of power is sure to catch the attention of other villains, and it is clear that not everyone is happy with what he is providing to Gotham's criminals.  I feel that we are very close to Bruce putting on the cowl again, but Gordon has been a worthy replacement.  He just needs to survive one last battle.



The Walking Dead #145 - Things have been relatively calm on for Rick and company, but that has all changed after the recent events with the Whisperers.  An emotional issue is setting the stage for the next big arc that will likely end with a lot of beloved characters dead.  For some reason I fear Carl will either be killed or kill someone we care about.  He is too involved with the Whisperers and it isn't going to end well.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #8 - After months of my friend telling me I should be reading this book, I finally decided to listen and am pleased that I did.  I caught the end of an arc that was filled with mind control, Cat Thor, humor, and action.  Ratatoskrage, a rat god who was involved with Wikipedia in some way, was wreaking havoc on New York City.  Squirrel Girl, with the help of some Asgardian friends, banishes the foe and sets the foundation for a new arc that I am exited to start from the beginning.  The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was truly a joy to read and I have plans on picking up the back issues and adding this to my pull list.

 

POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

6 Books with E. Catherine Tobler

E. Catherine Tobler was born on the other side of the International Dateline, which either gives her an extra day in her life or an extraordinary affinity when it comes to inter-dimensional gateways. She is the senior editor of Shimmer Magazine and lives in Colorado, which has a distinct lack of inter-dimensional gateways, but an abundance of mountains, which may prove mad indeed.

1. What book are you currently reading?

I got an early copy of The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard (who will be joing us for her six books on 8/25! -ed), thanks to Netgalley. This book is about a vaguely post-apoc Paris, and that is absolutely in my wheelhouse. Fallen angels, fashion, great houses, conspiracy, politics, murder mysteries. Lucifer is on the prowl in every shadow and it's just unexpected and fantastic.

 

2. What upcoming book you are really excited about?

The Crown & Key books juuuust came out this summer, from Susan and Clay Griffith, and they look like an amazing combination of steampunk, urban fantasy, historical hijinks, and maybe romance (I hope romance!). They appear to be a trilogy: The Shadow Revolution, The Undying Legion, The Conquering Dark, and I am really eager to read them.

3. Is there a book you're currently itching to re-read?

I haven't read The Lord of the Rings in quite some time, but recently bought the digital version, and would love to revisit Middle Earth. Some of Tolkein's passages are so very striking; especially haunting are the scenes where Sam and Frodo are looking for water in Mordor.

This spring, I revisited the Gateway series by Pohl, in anticipation of its eventual television series. I'm surprised how well it holds up--I read it first when I was in high school and did not expect to love it as much as I still do.

4. How about a book you've changed your mind about over time--either positively or negatively?

This is a difficult question, given our relationship with books is often be influenced by our circumstances when we first read or encounter a work. The winter I was twenty-one, I was terribly sick and reading a staggering amount. I encountered Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. This book swept me away and I was enchanted--even more when I discovered it was not a stand-alone, but the first in a series. Devoured. While this is still a series I read, my opinion of it has changed greatly--because I have changed greatly. When I read it at 21, I was not someone who thought much about rape or how it is so often used/portrayed in books and television. It never occurred to me exactly how much it is used--though now it does. I look at those books and cringe to think exactly how many people are raped within them. Gabaldon does one unusual thing with it in book one, but beyond that, the series dilutes the horror, because it happens so very often/

 

5. What's one book, which you read as a child or young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing? 

 

 I would say it's a trio of books--or perhaps worlds is the better word. Narnia, Oz, and Wonderland all absolutely shaped my reading mind and later my writing mind. The idea that our world could be opened and one could enter entirely different worlds was amazing to me. How I longed to be Dorothy or Lucy or Alice. I wanted to meet baffling creatures in snowy woods, fight wicked witches, and drink myself silly at tea parties.

6. And speaking of that, what's *your* latest book, and why is it awesome?

My latest book is more a novella, The Glass Falcon. It's part two in the Folley & Mallory Adventures, a series set in turn-of-the-century (the last century, that is!) Paris and Cairo. This second adventure takes the shapeshifting pair to the Louvre, to solve a mystery that may be buried in the bone-laden catacombs beneath Paris. It is absolutely about stepping from our world and into another, and surviving the perils (and delights) one discovers there.

Gen Con 2015: Five Games Under the Radar

Over 61,000 gamers filled the halls of the Indianapolis Convention Center to play games with their fellow nerds for this year's Gen Con.  The gaming hobby is thriving and it was a blast participating in the best four days of gaming in the world.   This convention is only going to get bigger as events and hotels sold out within minutes.  With such a large and captive audience, Gen Con is the ideal setting for some major announcements and releases.  Big games like Mysterium and Flick 'em Up generated large amounts of buzz, but I have five under the radar games that you will want to check out in the next year or so.

1. Cat Tower - The surprise hit at the IDW Games and Pandasaurus booth was Cat Tower. In a simple game of stacking cats, players take turns rolling a die and stacking cardboard cats in an attempt to get the tower as high as possible without knocking it down.  It sounds simple, but gets stressful as the tower of cats gets higher and higher.  This is going to see the table a lot in my family and might possibly pair well with some adult beverages.  What is not to love about stacking cats.

2. Candy Chaser - My gaming group has been enjoying bluffing games for some time.  My son, who is eight, has expressed an interest in this genre and Candy Chaser from Iello Games may be his gateway game.  In Candy Chaser, you are the Han Solo of candy.  Players attempt to be the best candy smuggler in the galaxy, but you have to be careful not to tip your hand as you could find yourself out of the game.  It will be fun to challenge my son in a new form of strategy, but I am a bit nervous about teaching him to be too deceptive.  I may regret it when he is older.

3. Star Trek: Five Year Mission - While not too under the radar, Star Trek: Five Year Mission from Mayfair Games is a cooperative dice placement game that assigns players as roles in the crew in an attempt to avoid total destruction.  There are a few twists that the game throws at you, whether it be emergencies that require you to address them in 60 seconds or limits to your communication.  I was able to check this out in a charity function and it is organized chaos at its finest.  Great cooperative game that will have you on the edge of your seat.

4. Bottom of the 9th - This game pulls on all of my nostalgic heart strings.  Bottom of the 9th by Dice Hate Me Games is a two-player game in which one player is the closer and one player is the home team trying to push one more run across the plate.  Using bluffing, deduction, and the luck of the dice, this game is sure to recreate the tension and drama of a one-run game.  To keep things fresh, players have the options of mixing up their line-up with Topps inspired trading cards.  I feel like I am 8 again!

5. The Village Crone- This new release is expected to ship in October from Fireside Games.  Players assume the roles of witches and hope to cast spells on unexpected villagers to earn points and secure victory.  The board is made up of six modular tiles, which adds replay value, and travel around collecting ingredients and casting spells.  The game is easy to learn and play, but offers enough depth to keep players interested as they attempt to earn 13 points and be named the Village Crone.  This sounds like it will make a great new gateway game and could very well bring even more people into the wonderful world of gaming.

POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

6 Books with Science Fiction and Fantasy Author Aidan Moher

Aidan Moher is an author and Hugo award-winning editor of A Dribble of Ink, a blog about science fiction and fantasy. He likes his family and beaches, and lives in Canada. Today Aidan shares his "6 books" with us...

1. What book are you currently reading?

I started Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown last night and I haven't been able to put it down since. It's lovely. Imagine the charisma and honesty of Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor mixed with the magic-stuffed period drama of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell without all the fat and tangential tomfoolery. It's very clever and delicate in the way it approaches class, race, and gender in Napoleonic-era England. An absolute joy so far.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

If it's not cheating to mention something I've read that doesn't release until January, 2016, I'm going to say Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky . It's a weird, wonderful, heartwarming story about love and the apocalypse. I haven't read anything like it before, and Anders does an incredible job of weaving an ever-changing voice through the novels' narrative to match her aging protagonists. It's a wonderful accomplishment and I think it's going to hit like a wildfire when it's released early next year.

If that's cheating, then I'll choose The Spider's War by Daniel Abraham. It's the concluding volume to his terrific The Dagger and the Coin series--which is one of the most refreshing and subversive epic fantasy series of the past decade. I love the way he is consistently mingling expected tropes with unexpected results, and Geder Palliako is one of the most endearing and fascinating anti-heroes since C.S. Friedman introduced readers to Gerald Tarrant in the Coldfire trilogy.

3. Is there a book you're currently itching to re-read?

Terry Brooks' The Elfstones of Shannara --in part because of the upcoming television adaptation, which looks surprisingly good, and in part because, well... you'll find out in a couple of weeks.

4. How about a book you've changed your mind about over time--either positively or negatively?

I could go on at length about my adolescent love and respect for Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth series, but I won't. I so infrequently re-read novels that my original opinions of them, for good or ill, remain rather crystalline.





5. What's one book, which you read as a child or young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

Calling back to question three, Terry Brooks' epic fantasies, particularly The Elfstones of Shannara, had a huge impact on me as a writer, and really cemented me as a fan of big, secondary world fantasy. I loved the way he juggled multiple storylines and had flawed, vulnerable protagonists--something I continue to try to work into my stories whenever possible. The Elfstones of Shannara is his Brooks' best work, and the Shannara series was a perfect stepping stone for a young reader just coming off of Tolkien.

6. And speaking of that, what's your latest book, and why is it awesome?

My latest book (also my first) is called Tide of Shadows and Other Stories . It's a short story collection featuring a wide range of science fiction and fantasy stories spanning interstellar colonialism, a love triangle between a knight, a princess, and a dragon, and a grandchild's love for her mysterious (and very old) grandmother in a world covered by ash. I'm incredible proud of the breadth of the collection. In his review of the collection, which had me absolutely tickled, Rob Boffard, author of Tracer, said, "Each of the stories is like a little clock: beautifully crafted, intricate, distinctively handmade, with a dozen tiny complications in its inner workings. The range is unreal: space stations, angel wings, fairytale dragons, ancient shadow monsters…all unconnected, and yet it feels like it’s all part of a bigger whole. It’s exquisite."

-Aidan Moher

***

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012.