RFAK No. 11, The Dragon Orb, by Mike Shelton

The Dragon Orb, by Mike Shelton, 326 pages.

Some books are a slow burn – which is why I rarely stop reading a book, even if the beginning is a bit iffy.

That’s the case with Mike Shelton’s The Dragon Orb, a book that starts out with a klunk (with some wonky writing) but ends with a flourish of storytelling that made me glad I didn’t give up.

A few of the characters are a bit too perfect, but that’s okay.

The writing, especially at the beginning, is stilted, but that’s okay.

Why okay? Because the story pulled me through. As I read I began forming visions in my head of what the characters looked like, and began placing them in bits of geography I’ve visited as Shelton told his story. To me, that’s a sign of a good book.

I think part of the klunk came from the king-men and other vocabulary borrowed from the Book of Mormon. Not that it’s terrible the author did that, but the familiarity had my head hollering “B of M” every time it came up. Nevertheless, I got used to seeing such wording in the book, so that passed. To anyone not familiar with the borrowed vocabulary or concepts, there won’t be an issue.

Shelton’s characters are prefab, and we only get to see one of them grow as the story progresses. The rest are driven by the narrative and the (obvious) roles they’ll play in future novels. Shelton suffers the same characterization affliction I do – his characters pretty much sound the same.

The book might win the award for Least Likely Poisoning – I’m not sure anyone could successfully lunge up to someone and force them to drink out of a little glass bottle without the victim vigorously fighting back and succeeding. But I’m not a poisoning expert.

RFAK No. 10, Waking Beauty, by Brittlyn Gallacher Doyle

Based on Internet searches -- and the popularity of the Sleeping Beauty tale -- it's clear the question of "What happened to Aurora and her prandsome hince after [insert evil fairy's name here] curse was reversed?

I've not read the others. And I'll admit, this book took a while to grow on me. But I liked its message of finding oneself after the powers -- both good and ill -- fade. I'll leave it there with no spoilers.

Perfection is indeed a character flaw, as Claire nee Aurora discovers in this journey. And -- not really a spoiler here because who couldn't see this coming -- another character flaw is believing the prandsome hince who kissed you awake is the one who's kiss is supposed to break the curse. Though it seems like cheating to have the kiss of some rando waken you when the non-rando's who's supposed to deliver the real curse-breaker is right there.

One annoying aspect of the book: When the prandsome hince isn't needed in the story or would interfere somehow in some interesting way, he's easily shooed away. Maybe too easily. Particularly after suspicions are aroused. But maybe that's just me.

One note for the author and editor: Horses have reins. Not reigns. And it's clear in several passages here that both author and editor have some trouble with homonyms. But that's a small matter.

RFAK No. 9, Billy Blacksmith, The Demonslayer; by Ben Ireland

One of the things I detest the most about your typical high fantasy story is the inevitable training montage. Pupative hero has never wielded a weapon more deadly than a spoon, yet shows natural talent in the arena or ring or whatever when the skeptical trainer puts him or her through the wringer. A little blood is shed and before you know it, WHAMMO, you’ve got the Hero trained up and thumping baddies’ skulls like he or she’s been doing it since they were children.

It’s not often you see such a training montage be mostly baseball, a blood ritual, and a plucky, comic-relief sidekick who’s kinda scary with her fascination with throwing knives.

At least she didn’t end up as bait in the trap to get the hero to go to the spot where the baddies are waiting (that fell to the nebbish book-nerd friend, natch).

And here you have the tale of Billy Blacksmith, Demonslayer.

This is entry-level fantasy, I have to remind myself. Those looking for the kind of tale in which the characters sound like their bums are stuffed with tweed best look elsewhere. Ben Ireland isn’t that kind of writer, clearly. Though it’s also clear he loves a good adventure, and is good at action scenes.

The comic asides are, well, kinda predictable. Humor is much more difficult to write than action. The humor here smacks of the typical in your superhero movie. Battle, smirk, characters say something funny, more battle. It’s fine in its way.

I’m not getting much of a connection with the characters – though sometimes I have to read a book more than once for that to happen. Ireland’s characters are just what you expect them to be – Billy, the tubby baseball player turned hero, amazed at his gnarly powers which came about with the help of a visiting demon who performed one ritual to trigger the “demonseed” blood in Billy’s veins.

There’s Ash-lea (yes, just like that), the throwing-knife champion, who battles right alongside Billy despite NOT having any demonseed blood in her aroused. Then there’s the nerdy Greyson, along for the ride to be the helpless victim. Billy’s a foster kid whose parents (spoiler) died defending him and his slightly older brother as waifs from invading spiders, similar to the one that tries to get Billy at the opening of the novel. So the orphan thing, combined with his terrible foster parents, the Fosters (snigger), are supposed to make him sympathetic.

Eh. It’s been done.

Contrariwise, the rich redneck family going hell-for-leather to rescue their son? Loved every minute of it.

Overall, this is a good, contemporary tale that would probably pull reluctant readers into fantasy novels, and that’s no mean feat.

RFAK No. 8, The Fire Queen, by Emily R. King

I’ll start off by saying this:

Be careful when you write in the first person.

This I’m learning firsthand as I read “The Fire Queen,” by Emily R. King. I set the book aside while on vacation – it’s tradition to read Terry Pratchett while on vacation – and coming back into it, I’m confused. The author writes in the first person. I’m right now at a loss trying to remember who is who, and who is the “I” speaking in the current chapter. She uses the characters’ names as names of the chapters to aid the reader, but more on that later.

Setting the book aside may be part of the trouble. I’d have to review any book thus abandoned and picked up again to get myself resituated in the story. But writing in the first person is risky, particularly if you’re relying on your readers to keep track of things. I’m a relatively unreliable and lazy reader, so I don’t like to look too far back in the text to find contextual clues.

And while using the characters’ names as chapter names is a good help, it’s more of a hurt as readers are inclined to use chapter headings as kind of an index to find places in the book (I’m using a version of the ebook that doesn’t allow bookmarking, so trying to find my place again when the chapter names are nothing but character names is difficult.)

This difficulty set aside, I’ve enjoyed The Fire Queen. While the gnarly powers I’m a little weary of are still there, it’s refreshing to see characters also engaging their wits as King’s characters do. (Small spoiler coming.) Kali could have used her control of fire to blast her way out of the underground labyrinth she’s imprisoned in at the outset of the contest of skills she’s thrust into, but she uses a rock instead (never mind the labyrinth is supposed to be impenetrable but we only spend a chapter in it).

And maybe this is all a good learning experience for me as I write my own books. Those I’ve read for this contest are tightly edited, with none of the little tangents I tend to find myself going towards as I write my own books. And that’s both good and bad. Avoiding the tangents keeps the story moving, but sometimes going off on a tangent can be something that pays off later.

Back to the labyrinth for a ferinstance. Kali encounters some spooky chiller glowing eyes there, and she runs from them – as we all would. But that’s all that’s said of the spooky eyes. Doing more with them might have made the labyrinth live up to its hastily-mentioned reputation. As it is, all we get are the spooky eyes. And maybe that’s just foreshadowing something else that happens in the books. I guess it’s wise to choose which tangents to go down.

I give King much credit for managing the differing storylines, despite my occasional difficulty in remembering whose story I’m reading, exactly. She does enough to demonstrate when one story is happening compared to the others, and showing us only what the other characters know (despite what we’ve seen already) to help heighten the tension.  And there is a lot of tension, which King builds nicely, particularly as various characters continue to sow lies and discontent leaving even the reader to question characters’ loyalties. To a point.

Altogether, this is one of the better books I’ve read for the 2017 Whitney Awards. A strong contender.

RFAK No. 7, Winter Falls, by Jacque Stevens

Oh, so this is a retelling. Of a Hans Christian Andersen story, “The Snow Queen”. It’s one I’ve never heard of. But that’s not saying much, as when it comes to HCA, I haven’t read a lot.

So I didn’t go into reading Jacque Stevens’ Winter Falls with any preconceived notions or baggage about how the story should go.

There are two worlds here. The first is the snowy world of Katie Graham and her family, and the roguish Shay. There are inns and ice skates. Logging and trains. There’s a Model T at one point, if I recall, and another male on crutches and with an IV in his arm. This world is muddled. At first, it felt like the timeless, somewhat wooly world created by Lois Lowry in The Giver, but the more I read, the more this world entered the wool of ambiguity. Katie’s specific slice of the world seemed pre-industrial revolution. But then there was the Model T and the IV. So I don’t know.

The second world is richer – it’s the world of fairy tales where (spoiler) Katie finds the mother she never knew and just leaves her there.

Like all fairy tales, this is a tale of wanting something. Katie wants a lot. But there are a lot of complications in Katie’s way, least of all the Snow Queen who comes to her vaguely time-defined village and takes away Shay, who could probably be played by sleazy-cool John Cusack if this book were filmed. (He might be a little old for the role, but you get the picture.) Katie’s biggest obstacle is, of course, Katie, something she learns while on her journey through the fairy tale world, which she entered after leaping after Ophelia off a bridge into the water.

Things just kinda blandly happen in this book. Even the battle between good and evil at the end is fairly bland, with no real sense of menace (you’d think a Snow Queen would get tired of freezing her enemies or creatures-as-tools, but nooooooooo). And the encounter with the fairy of fall? Borr-ing. This is where Katie meets the cat-like woman who is her mother, lost in this fairy tale limbo between life and “the light,” which is left undefined. Her mother shows little interest in her, and we learn why (no spoilers this time). Even the How Do We Solve This Problem denouement at the end is kinda bland.

Stevens falls into the same trap I do as a writer – all of her characters sound the same. There’s little variation in voice.

It’s an okay book if you’re a fan of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, and want a slightly soppy romance. Other than that . . . 

RFAK No. 6, The Crystal King, by John M. Olson

It was over rather quickly.

And I mean quickly. Within the span of a few pages, the evil invading king and his evil invading army were defeated by the plucky underdogs. Shortly thereafter, in what’s sure to be a setup for a sequel, the leader of the plucky underdogs is unanimously if begrudgingly appointed leader of them all and will marry the daughter of the defeated evil king.

Nobody made mistakes.

No major characters died.

Pretty sure only one named character died.

And here we are, finished with John Olson’s The Crystal King.

A fine story. But it feels written. Written to hit all the proper points of a novel. And I know it seems callow of me, an unpublished author, to say so – but this book won’t be winning the Whitney Award for fantasy for 2017.

I lost track of the pretty bows in this book.

The rebellious, slacker son of a baron grows up into the role and makes no mistakes but gosh darn it just feels so inadequate in the job but he does Everything. Right.

The spy of the baron, held in thrall by the baron because the baron has enslaved his wife with one of the magical crystals, betrays the baron to help the rebellious slacker son, whose mini crystal-controlled mercenaries rescue said spouse not really knowing who she is.

The rebels defend themselves against all odds using a rag-tag, fugitive fleet of cats, badgers, cows and rodents trained to perfection by those who Shouldn’t Be Meddling in Such Affairs.

And the big, bad baron dies but his evil plotting is twisted enough by the rebellious son to redeem him at least on paper with his people, so he can die as a martyr or something rather than a traitor.

The rebellious, slacker son doesn’t get the girl, or at least the girl he wants.

Olson writes a good battle scene, I’ll give him that. But the book feels like it was written to a checklist, rather than to a story.

RFAK No. 5, Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson

We might have a winner, folks.

If I can have my way come judging time for the YA fantasy nominees at the upcoming Whitney Awards, Sara B. Larson’s “Dark Breaks the Dawn” will be the winner.

I was told this story was a retelling of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” Which probably shows how unfamiliar I am with the story in Swan Lake – though I’ve long loved the music.

So I don’t know how faithful the basic storyline is – I assume it is fairly connected – but what makes Larson’s novel work is the crisp – often too spare – storytelling, and the little twist at the end astute readers will see coming yet it comes as somewhat of a surprise nonetheless.

And there’s very little smooching in this book. And the betrothed is apparently (spoilers) dead at the end. And the lady’s a swan. So I could have my daughter read this book and not have to explain anything. That’s a good sign in my book, as this is the first entrant in this category that has met this qualification for what you’d think would be a given for LDS-written YA fantasy.

I wonder if part of Larson’s success with this book is due to her maturity as a writer. This isn’t her first go-around with fantasy, nether her first start at a trilogy. So she knows the ins and outs of YA fantasy and is able to avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve read in other entrants.

Not that there aren’t a few.

The battles are short. The visit with the giant spider, anticlimactic. And as the fra’as were busy guarding the farmlings with theirkrytoses a lot in this book, I had a hard time keeping up with the jargon. (I know Tolkien set a high standard when it comes to inventive language in fantasy – as does Shakespeare – but Tolkien was a linguist at heart and Shakespeare was a genius, so they get a pass.) Writers generally fall into two camps with creative language – they either get it right and don’t let it get in the way of the story, or they get it almost right and the reader has to stumble around a lot trying to remember what ALL THESE WORDS MEAN. This book falls into the latter camp.

None of the characters in this book are standouts – they’re pretty typical fantasy fare: the menacing baddie, the brooding baddie’s son who might be a closeted good guy, the evil queen, the good queen, the spunky heroine, the spunky heroine’s lady-in-waiting, the main love interest, the love interest of the spunky heroine’s lady-in-waiting, etc. We get glimpses of them enough to know what role they play in the story, but little else. And Larson’s world is pretty devoid of anything but humanoids. Which I know reveals I like much messier books (though not "Little,Big" messy).

Check out Walter Wangerin Jr’s “Book of the Dun Cow” and “The Book of Sorrows,” if you want an idea of the kinds of messy books I like.

RFAK No. 4: Crystal Blade, by Katnryn Purdie

So the trend, it appears, in YA fiction – LDS YA fiction, no less – is for strong heroines who have to have a semi-sexy scene in order to take the curse off, what I don’t know.

I feel like with every book I read, I’m sitting in the advertising executive’s room listening to the preliminary pitch for Simpsons’ Individual Stringettes:

A Wapcaplet: Sex, sex, sex, must get sex into it. Wait, I see a television commercial – There’s a nude woman in a bath holding a bit of your string. That’s great, great, but we need a doctor, got to have a medical opinion. There’s a nude woman in a bath with a doctor – that’s too sexy. Put an archbishop there watching them, that’ll take the curse off it. . . 

The archbishop there watching in the case of Kathryn Purdie’s “Crystal Blade” is probably the LDS audience (intended or not, I’m not sure since the book isn’t billed as LDS fiction) reading. There’s nothing explicit. The sexy scene – coming right after a minor character’s suicide, no less – is brief. But again, I can’t recommend it to my daughter saying “An LDS author wrote this, so it’s okay.” Because it’s not.

Other than that, I have no quibbles with Purdie’s novel, second in a series. In fact, of those I’ve read for this contest, it’s the one that’s captivated me the most to want to find its predecessor.

Okay, one quibble: Too many emotional descriptors. Just let your character be emotional – sad, angry, what have you – in what they say, not in how they set their jaw.

In this way, reading these books for the Whitney Awards is an excellent education in writing. I get to see what works and what grates – and then I get to translate that into my own fiction.

Purdie’s story is top notch, with a heroine seeing and acknowledging her flaws, wanting to use her powers as a means to an end, but seeing that means as evil, even if the end is good. More of Popeye’s philosophy of “Wrong is wrong, even if it helps ya.” So that’s a great aspect to this story.

The betrayal part – the novel’s tagline is “Betrayal Cuts Deep” is maybe augmented by reading the first installment. I mean there’s betrayal here, but I’m not sure at the depth of it.

So, a good story. One I might hesitate to have my daughter read, because of the aforementioned scene.

I will now continue to scour the earth for smutless fires.

RFAK No. 3: Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

I've been rightly told I need to get more female characters into the books I write.

I'm not sure this is the way to do it.

Because, first of all, there's this:



Not that I mind a good kissing book. "The Princess Bride," for example. A great kissing book.

Then there's Tricia Levenseller's "Daughter of the Pirate King." Also a kissing book. But it's kissing for all the wrong reasons.

I've just had to endure two foreplay scenes within seconds of each other. With different men. And all for nefarious reasons: Princess Alosa isn't above using sex, or at least the promise of it, this is the Whitney Awards we're talking about here, to get what she wants. I'm sure nothing will consummate until Alosa weds the winsome First Mate Ridenm but even then I don't want my fourteen-year-old daughter reading this book, marketed as it is as YA fantasy (that's the category I'm reading for the awards, you see).

There's a bit of this here as well:



I am also guilty of this. I'm very aware of this. Which is why it stands out so much in this book.

Witness:

"What did you do?" he asks.

I quirk an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"You . . . you just changed. You looked off for a moment, but I thought I'd imagined it. Now you look yourself again."

I don't know how to quirk an eyebrow. Raise, maybe? But everyone raises an eyebrow. Too cliche. Invent a new one, apparently. There are better ways to show the confusion (perhaps made a little harder by Alosa's constant shifting between real confusion and feigned confusion).

Also -- spoiler alert -- Alosa is half human, half siren. We learn this right before this exchange. Right after this exchange she's concerned Riden, the dreamy-scummy first mate of the Night whatever pirate ship, senses she's using her gnarly powers. When he could have just been commenting on her taking a pensive moment. In other words, lady, he has no idea what's going on -- he's just a guy.

There's also a lot of what I call the Neil Diamond Effect: I am, I said. I am, says I. Lots and lots of attribution when attribution could be eliminated to make the dialog flow more smoothly. Trust your readers to know who is saying what, and only offer attribution when there might be doubt, that's the rule I'm struggling to pound into my own head.

There is certainly a woman in this book. But if a guy wrote this, it'd be creepy. And whether it's girl or guy, I can't recommend this book to a YA fantasy audience.

RFAK No. 2: Blood Rose Rebellion, by Rosalyn Eves

Anna Arden is a chimera. That’s why she’s a Barren – a person unable to perform magic. Two souls inhabit her body and rather than cooperate with magic, her souls tear it apart. So she’s uniquely positioned to be the One to rip apart the Binding holding magic back from everyone but the elites in the magical Europe imagined by Rosalyn Eves in “Blood Rose Rebellion.”

Oh yeah. I should probably say: spoiler alert.

But I bring up this pivotal plot point not just to spoil the book for readers, but also to discuss the book as a reader and critic.

With “Blood Rose Rebellion,” Eves has created a chimera that’s part Jane Austen drama of manners and part alternative history such as Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.”

“Blood Rose Rebellion” starts out heavily on the Austen side, with Anna Arden the embarrassment of her establishment family, chased by the foppish Freddy Markson Worthing, who should have stuck to singing about the lilacs on the street where she lives. She quickly injects the magic – thank heaven – as Anna clumsily breaks her sister’s debut spell and recalls crippling her younger brother with magic gone awry at an earlier ceremony of her own.

I’ll confess my interest in Austen’s novels extends only as far as playing the Simpsons “Tapped Out” game on my Kindle while my wife listens to whatever it is Colonel Brandon is talking about, so I was worried as I read this book. But much like Homer hollering “Woo hoo!” whenever something in the game goes his way, I soon found myself getting lost in this book, even when it shifted from Clarke back to Austen and then back again. She relies just enough on the Austen side to remind us she’s straddling two stratified societies, and that Anna doesn’t fit into either one of them.

Eves nails the surface of the otherworldly, alternative history vibe that makes such novels so appealing. It’s natural to assume that had magic existed at the time of the Hapsburgs, there would be a political and magical alliance as both wanted or needed each other to stay in power, and that the egalitarian streak running through Hungary at the time would also sweep up Luminates – and Barrens – tired of the old order.

Where the book goes awry lies in the muted message on the good and evil that the Binding – a magic spell put in place by the Luminate, who believe only those of certified blood lines should practice magic – hold at bay. Maybe the hinting at menace is meant to heighten the tension, but oft times the tension can’t be there if the hints are too subtle. Sometimes, the reader has to see cards the characters can’t yet see. Especially calling one of the evils Hunger – a personification that, if literal, makes no sense, unless the implication is that hunger, with the lower case, is abolished via the binding. Maybe I’m misinterpreting. But there’s a serious lack of menace on the evils the Binding traps, and a serious lack of blessing on the good – one is mentioned, briefly – also held in check. Some of that comes out in the story’s climax, but there’s an awful lot of it missing, too.

Perhaps that’s why there’s a “Volume 1” printed on the flyleaf of this book.

RFAK No. 1: Crossings, by Sarah Johnson

Written August 3, 2017.

Questions about Sarah Johnson’s Crossings:

1.      What are the gifts the Peltens have, and why is their used frowned on? I gather some used the gifts to control/mesmerize others, so I can see that. But it’s not really explained in the book.

2.      The characters are generally pretty flat. Eliinka’s parents are dead and she misses them. We don’t get to know them even in flashback. Sure, I’d miss my parents if they both died of the plague, but I’d share a few memories, aside from mentioning her mother helped her in music. That’s about all we get.

3.      We get a little inking into Zerin’s story, he was betrothed before. But we get to hear that much, and then, poof, he’s dead.

4.      Eliinka has one stress characteristic that’s repeated throughout the book – she digs her fingers into her palms. Over and over and over and over and over again. Once she squeezed so hard she cut herself and I almost stroked out because she did something different.

5.      Eliinka’s religion is central to her character – but like the gifts, it’s barely explained.

6.      Too much juice. Way too much juice.

7.      This is just a nit – but there’s some “modern” phraseology that slips into the book. I’ll have to look for examples. It just sounded off to my ears.

Positives about Sarah Johnson’s Crossings:

1.      The plot moves along rapidly, with good action from the main characters.

2.      There is good distinction between the Pelten and Virun cultures.

3.      Jereni has a good pulp heroine feeling about her, though she’s not just a body to be goggled at.

4.      Good evolution of Eliinka’s thoughts about her own culture versus the Verun, she sees both the good and the bad in both, whereas beforehand she was ignorant of both good and bad in both cultures, aside from rumor and hearsay.

5.      Ladies, be prepared for women to take the lead in this adventure. Men are all in the background.

Book Reviews

Now that this year's Whitney Awards gala is over, I can reveal (probably) that I got to be a judge in one of the categories for 2017. I got to read a lot of good books.

What'll follow in the next week or so are reviews I wrote of the books as I read them. Maybe not a good idea, but still.