Question of the Week: Playing Favorites

This week’s question is very open-ended, and there is certainly no right or wrong answer!  I want to know what your favorite fantasy or sci-fi book series is.  It can be anything, from young adult to adult, from well-known to barely-known.

What is your favorite fantasy or science fiction book series?

Post your reply in the comments section below!

Review: ‘Heroes at Risk’, Book 4 in Heroes series, by Moira J. Moore

Summary: The events of this book pick up right after those in the third book, Heroes Adrift. Shield Dunleavy Mallorough, known as Lee, is finally back home where she belongs: the Triple S house in the volatile city of High Scape. High Scape, the city of such frequent natural disasters that multiple Pairs are needed to keep things stable. But not long after Lee and her Shield, Shintaro Karish, finally return after their unexpected trip to Flatwell, they find out that High Scape is actually stabilizing—and Pairs are being transferred out.

Other strange things are going on in High Scape. Taro and Lee find themselves channeling strange events that feel almost out of control. People are digging up the ashes of the dead to use in spells. Magic use is on the rise, and Lee finds herself conflicted over what to believe about the reality of magic. A new fad has swept through the town, which Taro gleefully takes part in. He makes Lee buy a matching harmony bob with him, and in a very public and impromptu ceremony, the other Pairs manage to find out about the relationship between the Source and Shield—and most of them do not approve.

Lee and Taro find themselves facing all kinds of strangeness and unexpected events. And when Lee falls gravely ill, the question becomes whether the Pair will survive the strangeness of High Scape, or be swept up by it and destroyed.

My Thoughts: While I overall liked this book, it has some problems. It relies far too heavily on the characters to move the story forward rather than plot. By that I mean characters interacting is what tends to fill the book rather than events. The plot also feels like Moore has done it before—it reminds me a lot of the plot in the first book. I do like that she set up the plot for this book in the previous story with the introduction of harmony bobs in Heroes Adrift, before Lee and Taro left High Scape. I also like that the romantic relationship begun in the previous story is given room to move forward and develop, especially on Lee’s end since she is the one with the expectation that it will end.

Once again, I find the Triple S’s lack of interest and involvement unbelievable—unless Moore is setting up a confrontation or revelation in the next book. If that’s the case, which is entirely possible, then it makes sense. Otherwise, the Triple S council’s lack of involvement for an organization that is supposed to be independent and powerful makes no sense and is in direct opposition to the worldview Moore created from the very beginning of the series.

You have to read the previous books to really understand the events and dynamics of this one, though Moore does give short recaps of previous events. I don’t think it’s enough in my opinion to understand the history of the characters, which has a bearing on their actions and interactions here. I think this is the point in the series where you need to have read the previous stories in order to go any further.

I liked the ending of this book. It was funny and set up the next story while still wrapping up this one. Humor is one of the best things about this book and this series. Moore pulls off the humor and sarcasm very well, mainly through Lee’s character but sometimes through Taro and the others. However, I think sometimes the humor is used to hide the fact that her plot choices are progressively less and less interesting. A book can’t rely solely on the personalities of characters to be good, in my opinion—plot and events and such are just as important, if not more so.

In the end, I do like the book. I like what happens with the characters and the relationship between Lee and Taro. However, I think the plot is unoriginal and has been done already in this series. That is a serious drawback for me.

Book info: published 2009, 328 pages, ISBN: 9780441017768

Buy from Amazon * Author’s Website * GoodReads

Copy is from personal library

Question of the Week: Legolas v. Gimli

In case no one has noticed, I’m a big Lord of the Rings fan.  That being said, this week’s question concerns LotR.  Aragorn, the main human hero (Frodo is not human, so even though he’s the main hero of the story, Aragorn is the main human hero), had two friends who were sort of like his sidekicks.  They followed him everywhere, kicked butt when the hero was otherwise occupied, and generally kept the hero from doing something really stupid like going off on his own without his friends.

Who was the better “hero sidekick” to Aragorn: Legolas or Gimli?

Put your answer in the comments section below!

Review: ‘The Broken Crown’; Sun Sword Book 1, by Michelle West

Summary: Serra Diora di’Marano knew the harshness of the Dominion. The desert and the heat constantly threatened to overwhelm the heart of the Dominion of Annagar. It was a truth unquestioned that the Lord demanded harshness, for out of adversity and trial were true men made. The Dominion was a man’s world, with little room in it for women and the weak. Women like the Serra Diora learned early how to be silent and obedient, the property of the fathers who owned them and eventually gave them away to the husbands who would rule them.

Diora knew her fate. She would marry, and gain honor and prestige for her father with the marriage. As long as she remained honorable…as long as the clansmen around her thought her only gifts were incredible beauty of face and form, and a talent for music…as long as no one outside of her family knew of her curse, she would be safe.

If only life in the Dominion were so simple. The Tyr’agar, the highest man in the land, had lost a war and lost a great deal of strength as well. Unrest and hints of rebellion whispered on the wind, and Diora’s father, the Widan Sendari, knew of those hints all too well. Although true men of the Dominion and of the Lord of Day did not acknowledge love for anything beyond horses or war, Sendari loved his daughter more than he could ever admit. With the coming of upheaval in the government, Sendari has a plan with his friend General Alesso that will win the both of them everything, or lose it all…if Sendari can keep his Diora not only safe, but contained and out of the way long enough to win the Dominion or lose everything.

My Thoughts: This is one of those books that is either loved or hated. I don’t think there’s a middle ground with this one. It is the start to an epic series, and it is “epic” in every sense of the word. There aren’t a few principal characters in this series, there are many—sometimes more than you can keep track of!

What this book has working for it are a great deal of political intrigue and drama. There isn’t much romance, but West does include other types of love in how the family groups tend to treat and view their members. Those relationships are very dynamic and interesting, and provide a great deal of drama even without including the political and military dramas as well.

What this book doesn’t have working for it necessarily are the amount of detail and West’s writing style. I appreciate a well-built world, and this one is incredibly well-built and detailed. However, that does not mean I like to have the level of detail normally associated with Tolkien’s work. It gets a little boring at times, and there were a number of times in which I found myself glossing over things and trying to skip ahead. West also likes to repeat things, sometimes numerous times throughout the book. I’m not sure if this is because she thought the reader would forget the details or relationships between characters or if there was perhaps another reason, but in my opinion, if the reader is into the book enough to read beyond the half-way point, repetition and reminders like that are unnecessary the further along you get.

As for the characters, there is a lot to find intriguing. Diora di’Marano is one of the most interesting and dynamic heroines I think I have ever read—precisely because she isn’t a heroine as such. Yet you can’t escape the fact by the end of the book that she has become a heroine, albeit a very unorthodox one. She, more than any other character, kept me reading and wanting more. I want to know everything that happens with this character. Her aunt, the Serra Teresa, is sort of an older version of Diora, but darker due to her life experiences.

There are numerous villains in this plot line—both the human ones and the demons. As of this book, we aren’t entirely certain what the Allasakari demons have planned, but that is okay. It’s only the first book in a six book series, there is plenty of time to learn what exactly is going on and what’s going to happen. Plenty of mystery runs through the plot of this book, so if you don’t like having all the answers at the end of a book, this might not be the book for you.

Overall, I liked this book. It certainly has its drawbacks—too many boring and unnecessary descriptions, too much repetition, a bit too long—but it also has its upsides—great characterization, intriguing plots and subplots, and mystery that keeps you wanting to know more. I give it a 3 out of 5.

Book info: 1997 published, 768 pages, ISBN 978-0886777401

Buy on Amazon * Author’s Website * GoodReads

Copy is from personal library

Electronic Textbooks

If the publishing world is in turmoil over the changing media markets, then no other publishers are in as much of a tizzy as the textbook publishers.  Their whole strategy, it seems, is based purely on paper books.  I won’t get into the high prices and poor logic of reprints for a few minor changes–that is a whole new topic altogether.  But since I’ve been talking lately about the Kindle and e-readers, my thoughts turned to textbooks.

This semester I’m reading from an anthology for my class.  This thing is easily 2000 pages, probably more, and HEAVY.  Do I want to carry it around?  No.  Does it hurt my back or shoulder (depending on how I’m carrying my supplies, bookbag or messenger bag) to carry an extra 10 pounds?  Yes.  Would it make my life easier if I could read it electronically?  Absolutely.

In my humble opinion, students’ lives would be vastly improved if textbooks moved into the digital world more rapidly.  It is probably inevitable that this change will occur, but will it happen before my back is broken by the weight of all my texts?  Granted, high school textbooks were worse, since I had to carry them 5 days of 7.  Now I don’t have to do that, nor do I necessarily even have to take them to class sometimes.  Still, textbooks present health problems, as multiple studies have already shown, when that much weight is added to a person’s daily walk.  I still get neck pain, even when carrying my books in my bookbag and not a messenger bag.

Now, if I could buy the e-reader version of said textbooks and carry my Kindle to school, that would make my life heavenly.  I can only assume that other students would feel the same.  Electronic versions of these books wouldn’t necessarily even mean the need to buy a Kindle–most Kindle books can be downloaded to a computer and read that way, and most, if not all, college students have a computer of some kind.

But I fear the textbook world is in denial.  For so long these publishers have operated outside the world of logic and done their own merry thing.  They can’t even acknowledge the fact that their prices have skyrocketed beyond what’s reasonable, or that reprints to correct a few minor errors or add in a handful of facts is not a feasible operation.  The chances that this subset of the publishing industry will break into electronic textbooks is almost laughable.

Still, I hold out hope.  Some of my books were offered in electronic format, so I know that I can buy some of the materials I need that way. It would simply be nice, however, if this option became more widely available, and I could save my back some of the weight–and my wallet some of the price gouging!