the Fiction Demon

After many months I am finally back to blogging! I read the entire Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher (fifteen books so far) several years ago. Now I am listening to the audio book versions of every book. They are read by the amazing James Marsters. Going through the story a second time has refreshed my memory and given me a lot of new perspectives and opinions, and I will write them down here because I have no life. Just kindding, I do have a life, at least somewhat, but that doesn't stop me from being a supernerd about fantasy novels. So here are my thoughts on Storm Front, book 1 of the Dresden Files. THERE MAY BE SPOILERS! This is the first book in the series that started a whole new genre of urban fantasy mystery novels. And it's good. I've heard that a lot of people don't think the series gets good until after the first couple of books, but I don't think that's fair. Butcher couldn't pack the entire world of Harry Dresden into the first novel; it wou...

Johannes Cabal is a cynical, antisocial main character with dubious morals who somehow still manages to be entertaining and somewhat likable. He has sold his soul to the devil, but now wants it back. Under a time limit and with the help of his vampire brother and a traveling carnival from Hell, he has to get one hundred people to sign away their souls before Satan will return his. This is a fun read with very little to criticize or complain about. The premise is intriguing, and this book has a dark humor to it that makes for a hilarious read. For example, those condemned to Hell must begin their eternal punishment by filling out endless paperwork with meaningless minutia that they must get absolutely perfect. Hell is paperwork. Absolutely hilarious. Satan, as a character, was also strangely entertaining. I loved the structure of this book. Written largely in chapters that could stand alone as short stories, it gives the tale an episodic feel, like a TB show. If someone were to make a...

This one is an urban fantasy; everyone compares it to Harry Potter and Narnia. That's because it uses most of the same plot devices: an unhappy young man (Quentin Coldwater) gets into a school for magic, and he is fascinated with this Narnia-like fantasy world called Fillory. People complain about how Grossman kind of lazily combined the plots of Harry Potter and Narnia instead of coming up with his own original storyline. But I don't mind familiar plot devices as long as the author does something interesting with them, and I guess I can say that Grossman achieves this. It's certainly interesting enough. This doesn't mean that the plot doesn't have its flaws. It takes strange, unexpected turns, so that it's impossible to even make a guess at where the story is going. This can be exciting, or frustrating, depending on the reader. I think I would have appreciated a little more foreshadowing, so that things had more of a sense of coming together in the end. Like, ...

This next book review is another self-published one. After Morgan Rice, I was afraid to ever read another self-published book, but this one was much better. That's not saying much, compared to my review of A Quest Of Heroes , but still. Unenchanted is Book One in a YA series called An Unfortunate Fairy Tale . The concept is, admittedly, pretty cool: a teenaged girl finds out that she is a descendent of the brothers Grimm and must live out every one of the Grimm fairy tales, surviving all the dangers they bring with them, or the fairy tale curse will fall to her very young brother. There is a lot of potential with this idea. And it was realized. Kind of. A little bit. Okay, there were prblems. First of all, the main character, Mina, is annoying. I get that she is an insecure teenager, but she is constantly throwing a pity party. It gets old. Also, her romance with a popular boy in school isn't easy to get into. It's overly cliché, and that makes sense because it's part ...

Okay, so I haven't done a post in like six weeks. In my defense, my computer broke, and it took a long time to get repaired. No excuses, though. I have just graduated from college, and so I'll be so much less busy over the summer. I'll probably do a blog post almost every day out of sheer boredom, so there's that to look forward to. Anyway, on to the book review. Welcome to Night Vale is a wildly popular podcast which is formatted as the community radio show for an indescribably strange fictional town called Night Vale. Every time I try to describe this podcast, that's about as far as I get before words fail me. This is very dark humor, weird fantasy, thoughtful philosophy and utter nonsense all in one beautiful artistic endeavor. But let's talk about the novel. It follows Jackie Fierro and Diane Crayton, two citizens of Night Vale, as they get caught up in a series of reality-bending problems involving a man in a tan jacket. The story is pretty much indepen...

I'll start by saying that this is not a traditionally-published novel, which is why you've never heard of it. It was serialized in the online webzine Bewildering Stories . Since that very same webzine just rejected one of my own stories, I thought I'd do a review of something they published. Yes, I am vengeful and petty. So let me get to the point: The Long Dark Road to Wizardry is a cliche fantasy novel with very little character development and a plot that was interesting but ultimately unsatisfying. Harsh, I know. This novel takes place in some medieval fantasy land where people say 'twas all the time. I don't mind this so much; I like a good classic medieval fantasy. The plot is more episodic than an actual novel plot should be, with the characters having dramatic adventures seemingly one after the other. There is an overall plot, but , think it could have been fleshed out more. Again, I don't really mind this. What bothered me was the lack of character deve...