Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield Profile: Urban Fantasy, Suspense, Horror, The Watches Pentalogy (Read in stereotypical movie preview voiceover) In a world where epic battles between good and evil are a dime a dozen on the Teen Fantasy shelves, one Russian author struggles to bring a sense of subtly and realism to stories about vampires, werewolves and wizards. (End voiceover) And that’s to his credit. Lukyanenko’s vision of a supernatural world where nothing is as it seems sounds trite on paper, but […]
Fewer demons, more elves in this one
This book is book 12 and the penultimate in The Hollows series, with several story lines that have been building throughout the series. It’s absolutely NOT the place to start. If you haven’t read these, start with Dead Witch Walking. Frankly, if you don’t know the series, you’d probably be best just skipping this review. Rachel is working security for Trent while Quen is on the West Coast. Despite her many former misgivings about working for and with the billionaire, she’s been enjoying herself, possibly a bit too […]
Alif The Unseen
“if you can’t pay with things, you could pay with skills,” said Sakina, motioning to the shadow. “Well, wait a minute,” said Alif, looking from the shadow to Sakina. “My skills are more or less limited to computers… I’m not sure how much help that is to an, ah, to a…” Effrit, said the shadow. I’m an effrit. And I’ve got a two-year-old Dell desktop in the back that’s had some kind of virus for ages. The screen goes black five minutes after I […]
Fables Vol. 19: Snow White
This volume has three separate stories: Bufkin and Lily, great Oz liberators, tell some of their follow-up adventures as they become heroes for hire. Bufkin has been one of my favorites, ever since the Magic Mirror painted him as one of the most formidable of foes, because “he reads, he reads EVERYTHING.” Bigby is off trying to track down his two missing cubs, while at home … Snow is trapped by an old promise and a new adversary, a situation that no one but Snow […]