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 of Fantasy Reviews |
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Books for Review should be sent to: Don D'Ammassa, 323 Dodge Street, East Providence, RI 02914 |
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LAST UPDATE 8/3/26
Blood of the Serpent by S.M. Stirling, Titan, 2022
Conan the Barbarian is a member of a mercenary company in Stygia, where he meets Valeria, former pirate and now a mercenary herself. After she humiliates a local aristocrat, she and Conan are assigned to accompany a convoy fetching gold from a remote mine and bringing it back to the capital. They run into a slave revolt and have to flee into the wilderness, at which point the protagonist feels more like Tarzan than Conan. He has to battle killer apes, lions, cheetahs, snakes, baboons, and a rhinoceros, not to mention soldiers considering desertion and a priest who has taken a dislike to both of them. A nicely told novel although it did not feel like Howard’s characters. 8/3/26
At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald, 1859
For younger readers. A stable boy makes friend with the North Wind, an enigmatic entity that takes him on trips around the countryside and into the realm where the entity originates. He is returned to Earth where he has now become a kind of radiant source of peace and kindness. After some incidents in which he helps people, he falls ill and it is clear that he is going to die. The North Wind returns and takes him to another reality – a kind of allegorical Heaven. Cute at times, but nothing much really happens. 8/1/26
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, 1871
This is a better than average fantasy for younger readers. The princess lives in a castle on top of a series of mines, some of which are occupied by hostile goblins. The goblins plan to flood the active part of the mining system, drowning all of the workers, as well as abducting the princess. The son of one of the miners spies on them and hears their plot. He had previously repelled a band of goblins by singing because goblins can’t stand rhyming. The princess rescues him when the goblins catch him. The flooding plan goes awry and it is the goblin part of the underground that is flooded, drowning most of the goblins. The kidnapping party is routed by the princess and her guards. 8/1/26
The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald, 1877
Sequel to The Princess and the Goblin. It’s okay but not very interesting. The king is in poor health and Curdie, a young boy, discovers that he is being slowly poisoned by a group of his ministers who want to seize the throne. He organizes a strike force of unlikely characters who attack the castle, drive the conspirators out, and restore the king to health. For his service, he is allowed to marry the princess, which makes him heir to the throne. 8/1/26
Nation by Terry Pratchett, Doubleday, 2008
A rare not-Discworld novel. It is also much more serious in tone. It is set in an alternate history. One protagonist is the sole survivor when his island tribe is wiped out by a tsunami. The other is the daughter of a British official who survived a shipwreck caused by the same event. Together they become leaders of an effort to re-establish the island, but with a more rationale basis – no gods – and empathy for others. They have troubles with a traditional priest, a band of cannibals, and a group of mutineers. They also discover that the island was once home to a superior culture which explored the world before the rise of Europe. Very atypical of Pratchett. 7/28/26
Making Money by Terry Pratchett, Harper, 2007
This is one of the best books from the latter part of Pratchett’s career. The very clever man who reformed the local postal service in Going Postal has now been assigned the job of reforming the banking system. His attempt to introduce paper currency draws the wrath of a villainous family who prefer the status quo and whose patriarch wants to become the new city lord. Elsewhere, our hero’s girlfriend has inadvertently activated an army of four thousand golems, which results in political problems. Since there is enough gold to support the currency that has been printed, the policy is changed to a “golem standard” whose value is in the potential labor of all of those golems. 7/25/26
Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett, Doubleday, 2006
For younger readers. An apprentice witch attends a ceremonial dance designed to trigger the end of winter, but she inadvertently catches the idea of the title character, personified winter, who refuses to bring that season to an end and retreat into his six month sleep. One of her friends has to find the personified summer and waken her in order to end the crisis and restore the natural order of things. 7/25/26
Moonfall by Ed Crocker, St Martins, 2026, $30, ISBN 978-1-250-28775-5
Sequel to Lightfall and middle volume in a trilogy. The vampire city is facing widespread rebellion, which is supported by most of the protagonists. Although they are the most prominent part of the culture, there are also communities of werewolves, and they get more stage time in this volume. The chief protagonist is the young woman who is a kind of inspiration for the revolt. Although she is our primary focus, there are others who share the spotlight, including a particularly powerful sorcerer. Middle volumes are sometimes tedious but Crocker keeps the story moving, revealing secrets about the vampires, the werewolves, and some things about the characters we might not have suspected. The writing is clear, the plot moves rapidly, and while the lack of a clear climax is always a problem in these instances, the story provides enough new information to keep our appetite wetted for the conclusion. 6/2/26
Thud! by Terry Pratchett, Doubleday, 2005
This Discworld novel is a spoof of police procedurals and is one of my favorites. The trolls and dwarves both dislike the other because of an incident in the distant past. When a prominent dwarf is murdered, Captain Vimes and his crew investigate in order to prevent increased unrest in the city. They discover the existence of a third party which is acting to prevent the two sides from discovering the truth, that the original incident was misinterpreted and the two races were actually friends. The third party, a kind of cult, employs a discorporate demonic entity to murder dwarves who might cause problems. 5.29/26
A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett, Doubleday, 2004
For younger readers, sequel to The Wee Free Men. A young girl apprenticed to a witch has difficulties adjusting to her new situation. These are complicated by the arrival of a Hiver, an eons old supernatural being that can seize control of people’s bodies. It takes hers for a while and causes increasingly dangerous and offensive pranks before being driven out by her friends, a race of six inch tall people. Ultimately she has to face the Hiver again, this time on her own, and she learns that it longs for death and helps it to reach the land of the dead. She is almost trapped as well, but is rescued by Granny Weatherwax, who appears in many of the Discworld novels. 5/26/26
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, Doubleday, 2004
A Discworld novel. A professional swindler is given the choice of death or becoming head of the city’s moribund postal service, which has not delivered any mail in many years. He agrees to become a bureaucrat and uses his skills to actually revive the service. He is in direct competition with a telegraph company whose owner is crooked and who wants to become the new ruler of the city. Both sides are willing to cheat when they agree to a contest to see who can deliver a message faster, but the swindler prevails and exposes his rival’s criminal activities, which leads to his downfall. Above average for the series. 5/26/26
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett, Harper, 2003
Discworld takes on women’s rights as it introduces a new country whose quirky god has decreed a number of things anathema – the color blue, jigsaw puzzles, etc. – including a prohibition against women owning property. The protagonist is a young woman whose brother disappears on the battlefield. With her father dying, the family business will go to a distant cousin, so she dresses as a man and joins the army in order to find her brother. But she soon discovers that several of the other soldiers in her unit are also women impersonating men, for a variety of reasons, and by the end of the novel it is revealed that the majority of the army consists of women despite the ban. The satire is a bit more cutting than usual. 5/24/26
The Curve of the World by Vonda N. McIntyre, Aqueduct, 2026, $21, ISBN 978-1-61876-280-0
The late Vonda McIntyre finished this novel shortly before her death a few years ago. It is basically an historical fantasy centering on the Minoan culture, and a good part of the story is dedicated to describing various aspects of that culture as she had reimagined it. The novel is also a chronicle of discovery, in more than one sense of the world. The chief protagonist is undergoing the ceremony of becoming an adult as the story opens, and prophetically one of the characters tells us that it will be up to him to decide what kind of adult he will eventually be. There follows the chronicle of his self discovery, overlaid against an actual physical series of discoveries as he explores his world. Some of these involve fairly mundane adventures - pirates, physical dangers on the ocean - but others involve the fantastic, encounters with mythical creatures and the supernatural. For the reader it is also a rediscovery of part of humanity's history and an ancient culture with which most of us are unfamiliar. This novel reminds us all of what a tragic loss her passing was for the genre. 5/15/26
The Girl With a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean, Tor, 2026, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-81021-2
I sometimes complain that fantasy writers tend to tread in the same footsteps over and over again, particularly in terms of plot. Well, here's a welcome exception. The protagonist is a young woman who takes refuge in Hong Kong duringW World War II, specifically in the walled city of Kowloon. The city has its own distinct culture shaped in part by the traumatic experiences in the war and the fact that there are literal ghosts in the city itself. By the end of the war, our protagonist has become one of the few who can interact with the ghosts and calm the occasional troubled spirit. But she meets a dangerous challenge when a new, malevolent, powerful, and deadly spirit appears and begins claiming victims. This was a very different setting in both time, space, and circumstances, and the story is beautifully written. It is also gruesome enough that I could just as easily have listed this as a horror novel. Will have to find a copy of the author's fiurst novel. 5/5/26
The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G. Ballard, Holt, 1979
This is a contemporary fantasy. The protagonist steals a small plane, the crashes in a river near the village of Shepperton. It is never clear whether or not he is killed but some manifestation of him reaches the town and begins to display magical powers. The countryside becomes a lush jungle, flowers bloom spontaneously, he is able to fly and teach others to do the same, he can heal the sick, and so on. Eventually he even absorbs some of the people into his own body. He takes a lover but she is killed when the only person immune to his powers tries to kill them both. He then creates a society of astrally projected personalities and decides to await reunion with his dead lover. A very ambiguous story filled with bits of superb writing, although the plot seems to be almost an afterthought. 4/12/26
The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville, Del Rey, 2024
This collaborative fantasy breaks no new ground and although the prose is great, the story never got me involved. The protagonist is a superhuman figure, a warrior who has explosions of violence throughout the course of history. Sometimes he gets killed, but he always returns to life in order to battle some more – a kind of blend of Highlander and Moorcock’s Eternal Champion. There are a lot of very violent scenes. The main plot involves his desire to die for a final time and be freed of the curse that makes him reincarnate over and over again, and kill over and over again. I finished it, but I struggled a bit. 2/9/26
Operation Luna by Poul Anderson, Tor, 1999
This is a fantasy set in an alternate world where the supernatural is part of everyday life. It is the sequel to Operation Chaos and its chief protagonists are a werewolf and a witch. In this case, the project to arrange the first voyage to the moon is sabotaged by unknown forces and the government drops the effort. Our heroes organize a private project – naturally Anderson would consider this a better solution – eventually accomplish the job and unmask the villains who are opposed to space travel for reasons of their own. A bit preachy and the plot wanders all over the map. 1/25/26
Mother of Kings by Poul Anderson, Tor, 2001
This was the last Norse fantasy novel by Anderson, and as usual it is based on actual history and surviving legends. The primary character is the queen of Norway, who helps her husband defeat his enemies by using the magic that she learned as a child. Unfortunately, he eventually gets murdered and her nine children are not willing to be dominated by their mother. All of the characters in this are reprehensible or worse, and the deliberately archaic language does not help at all. Inferior to his other similar work in most ways. Anderson died about the time that this was published. 1/25/26
War of the Gods by Poul Anderson, Tor, 1997
Another Norse fantasy novel based on actual legends. The Aesir and the Vanir are at war. As a consequence, Odin causes one of the Vanir to be incarnated as a human, son of the king of the Danes. While he is still a child, he learns that a neighboring kingdom has invaded and that his father is dead. With a little help from Odin, he has a series of anecdotal adventures before he is able to reclaim the throne that is rightfully his. He then maneuvers and forges alliances to keep his enemies at bay, although eventually he gives up his throne in order to help bring the war among the gods to an end. Very familiar plot, but delivered entertainingly. 1/22/26
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett, Harper, 2001
This was the first Discworld novel written specifically for children. A young boy, a sentient cat, and some talking mice travel from one town to another, pretending to infest it and having the boy pipe them away. Then they encounter a town where some villainous rat catchers have been swindling the local people for a long time. They have also cultivated a super rat who can project waves of psychic terror. The boy and a local girl investigate and are taken prisoner. The cat and some of the rats try to rescue them and some confusion ensues. The villains are finally thwarted and the super rat is destroyed. 1/16/26
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, Harper, 2003
The first of five children’s books in a mini-series within the Discworld universe. I didn’t much care for this. A young girl who can see the hidden world that coincides with the real one has to rescue her brother when he is kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies. This involves her adventures inside several different dreams before she finds the one where he is being held. She is assisted by some relatively tiny people who become her allies. Pratchett's children's books were popular but other than the Johnny series, I found them uninteresting. 1/16/26
The Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett, Harper, 2001
The mysterious Auditors of Reality have decided they could administer the world better if time came to a stop, so one of their number assumes human form and commissions the construction of the perfect clock, which will bring time to a halt. Death personified suspects what is happening but is constrained from interfering, so he asks his granddaughter to act for him. There is also a group of monks who manage time and who take alarm when they realize what is about to happen. A variety of amusing supporting characters, the usual puns and bizarre situations, and some over the top martial arts sequences all come together nicely. 1/11/26
The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett, Harper, 2001
Cohen the Barbarian and his followers have decided to blow up the realm of the gods of Discworld as punishment for their treatment of Mazda, who stole fire and gave it to humans. Rincewind and friends have to head them off, because if they succeed, all of the magic in Discworld will be disrupted and everyone will die. They arrive on time, after several humorous adventures, and eventually convince Cohen that his mission is misguide. He and his horde all commit suicide, but their status is ambiguous because when the Valkyries arrive to taken them to Valhalla, they steal their horses and ride off to rescue Mazda. Pratchett manages to sustain his wit and originality despite the length of this revered series. 1/11/26
The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett, Harper, 2000
Vimes of the Night Watch becomes a temporary diplomat and goes to attend the coronation of the king of the dwarves. This is complicated because the dwarf clans are at odds about the succession, and a secretive group of werewolves is trying to stir the pot so that there will be a power vacuum that will allow them to dominate both factions. This involves stealing the coronation clothing to delay the ceremony and stealing a fabulous magical stone, as well as its replica, although it turns out that replica and original are both meaningless in this case. Back in Ankh-Morpork, an inept member of the Watch is placed in charge and nearly destroys the organization. One of the more serious entries in the series.
The Truth by Terry Pratchett, Harper, 2000
This was a prescient attack on fake news, among other things. The first newspaper in Ankh-Morpork is under fire from the Engravers Guild, who create a competitor that publishes nothing but lies, to demonstrate that newspapers are useless. At the same time, a cabal of wealthy residents is planning to replace the city’s chief administrator, Vetinari, with a pliable double so that they can control the city. They hire a pair of mercenaries to do this, but things go awry. A clerk is murdered and the only witness is a dog, who goes missing, but who turns up with someone who can translate dog speech into human words. There are efforts to eliminate the dog and other complications, but the truth finally gets published. But the vast majority of the public does not care either way.
Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett, Harper,
This was Pratchett’s take on vampires. The Magpyr family has built up their resistance to religious objects, garlic, daylight, etc. and they decide to use their hypnotic powers to convince King Verence to invite them to visit his castle. Of course they have no intention of ever leaving. Granny Weatherwax and the other witches separately and jointly rise to the occasion. The peasants eventually rebel and resurrect an older Count to replace the progressive young one because they prefer the tradition undead nobles. Granny Weatherwax uses magically enhanced blood to erase the resistance the younger vampires have acquired. This was one of the best Discworld novels. I particularly liked Igor, the traditional servant to the undead, and his dog, assembled from parts of other dogs who have died.
The Unicorn Trade by Poul & Karen Anderson, Tor, 1984
This is a collection of collaborations, including several poems and stories that are both fantasy and science fiction. There is also a short featuring the detective from Anderson’s three mystery novels. None of them, alas, are particularly memorable. A young man tries to outwit some fairies. A Martian colonist studies how swindles work on Earth. There are several vignettes involving centaurs, fairies, dolphins, and sphinxes. None of the stories are bad, but none are particularly noteworthy. 1/7/26
