Review: more mini-reviews of The Widow's House, Full Fathom Five, The Leopard, Rogues, and The Causal Thief

If you're not already reading the Dagger and the Coin series, I can't help you.  It's not Abraham's best series, but it's very good and enjoyable.  Definitely a must for all fans of epic fantasy.  One of the things I liked about the fourth book was how the re-appearance of a dragon did not become the "deux ex machina" plot device it could have been.  Abraham's ability to play on the tropes of the genre is one of the things I like about these books.

Rating: 8/10.

Full Fathom Five is the third book in the loosely connected Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone.  One of the really interesting things about these books is how closely interconnected gods and mages are their world.  Gladstone does this by using a very legalistic component in his books so that there are lawyers, contracts, courtroom drama, etc.  This gives the books a very unique feel in a genre that sometimes feels stagnant.

This particular book features people who create idols for foreign businesses on an island much like Hawaii.

Rating: 8/10. 

This is my second book by K.V. Johansen.  The first was 2011's Blackdog, and while the world was interesting, the story felt too long and drawn out for the plot.  The Leopard is an improvement, featuring some characters from Blackdog as well as new ones.  The writing feels stronger and never gets bogged.  The two books written so far have a very mythic feel to them with gods, demons, sorcerers, curses, and quests.

Rating: 8/10.

After the disappointment that was last year's Dangerous Women, Rogues was quite a relief.  It is clearly a much stronger anthology than the other.  Most of the stories are quite strong and entertaining.  Even the authors I don't generally read or like managed to write decent stories.  This anthology may not be quite as impressive as Warriors, but it's certainly worth a look.

Rating: 8/10.

This is another sequel and third book for a series that doesn't seem to have a name, I think.  This loose series is very much on the science fantasy scale, like the Clarke quote, where any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  In this future, matter and information are interchangeable and virtually indistinguishable.  

This third outing was not quite as enjoyable as the first book, but I liked it a lot.  Rajaniemi is an author to watch.

Rating: 7.5/10. 

I've seen this one called a "side-quel" to Blindsight, which doesn't make much sense to me.  What I think is more accurate, it that it's a companion piece to the 2006 book about sentience and intelligence.  This tackles some of the same ideas, but in a different way that is kind of hard to describe.  In the appendix to this book, the author suggests, "faith-based hard sci-fi", which is certainly interesting.  I didn't enjoy Echopraxia quite as much Blindsight, but then a lot of ideas in this one were over my head.  The two books together are certainly full of fascinating ideas and just beg for multiple re-reads.

Rating: 8.5/10.

Hunter's Run

A three-way collaboration between George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham, Hunter’s Run tells the tale of Ramon Espejo. Ramon is a prospector on the colony world Sao Paulo who is always searching for the big strike. He happens to kill an important figure in a bar fight and flees to the outback to escape justice, however, out there he encounters a strange alien race who force him to be used for their own purposes. In the process, Ramon will discover truths about himself as well as prove what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.
Hunter’s Run was a long time in the making; Dozois originally wrote it as a novella in the late 1970s. In 1977, Martin invited Dozois to read his story at a workshop. The story received a chilly reception, however Martin liked it and suggested it could be made into novel form. He worked on it until 1981 before sending it back to Dozois who consequently buried it in his desk for 20 years. Martin then suggested the story needed a fresh writer and in enters Daniel Abraham, who carried the book to its conclusion, before returning it to Dozois for the finishing touches.
I liked this book quite a bit, which is hardly surprising considering Martin is my favorite author. The aliens in the book are distinctive and fleshed out as is the colony world of Sao Paulo. Though of course the story is really about Ramon Espejo. Ramon is a very gray character that struggles to control his drinking and his rage while among others. Yet anyone who knows the impulses of solitude and wanderlust will understand what drives him to explore. Martin and Dozois are close friends and both influenced Abraham so it’s no surprise that the writing style is consistent throughout the novel. In fact, I found it difficult to tell where one author left off and another began. I’ve never read Dozois, but the nicely ambiguous ending of Hunter’s Run, plus the grittiness of the setting, is quite typical of both Martin and Abraham. I felt that the story’s only real drawback was that it could have been expanded a bit more. The book also includes an afterword covering the history of the story as well as an interview with the three authors.
Final Rating: 9/10.