the Fiction Demon

Life has been crazy lately, but I finally have some time to do a post about the second book in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series! I'm rereading all the Dresden Files books (actually listening to them in audio book form). I remembered this one as the Werewolf Book. I also remembered that Dresden gets beaten up a lot and has sex with Susan in this book. Going through it again, I was a little disappointed to discover that I had, in fact, remembered most of the key points. Much like the first book, Fool Moon opens with a grisly murder scene. I'm not a fan of detailed descrptions of blood and guts, but, if you are, than Jim Butcher is the author you should be reading. Then there are a lot of werewolves. The Alphas first show up in this book, and they don't appear to do anything useful. They just get themselves stunned in the climactic moments and then develop an adoring loyalty to Harry. It's cute, but not very integral to the plot, at least not the plot of this boo...

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...

So I started with a terrible review, then did a mediocre review, and now I will do a positive review. Howl's Moving Castle is a very famous and popular young adult fantasy novel. It's been made into a movie by the Japanese filmmaker, Miyazaki. I've met people who claim not to like reading, but who will sing the praises of this novel, and with good reason. Howl's Moving Castle is about a teenaged girl who is cursed and turns into an old woman. She goes to live in a mysterious castle with the wizard Howl, to work there and try and get the curse reversed. I love the humor in this book. The first chapter, for example, is titled "Sophie Talks To Hats." The narrative voice is amusing and engaging, and the fantasy, fairy-tale feel is just great. The characters are fun and well-developed, and so are the relationships between them. Also, I want to talk about the title, because I think it's important to the book's success. Howl's Moving Castle is a wonder...

I like funny fantasy. I wish there was more of it. So I picked up this book because it sounded like it would be humorous, and it was. Some of the time. The Accidental Sorcerer is the first in the Rogue Agent series . Basically, the book is about Gerald, a very incompetent but goodhearted wizard living in a world with both technology and magic (the world is never explained very well). He gets fired from his job after playing a part in blowing up a magical factory and must find a new job, so he goes off to some other country with an insane king and becomes court wizard. Overall, this novel was mediocre. There were some great parts, particularly the beginning. I love the idea of a factory which makes wizards' staffs, and reading about it blowing up was even more fun. In general, I would have liked to know more about Gerald's word and how it operates, but instead I got dragged off to this unimportant little country which is still stuck in medieval times, like every other fantasy l...

This is the first book in Morgan Rice's The Sorcerer's Ring series, about a boy named Thor who is struggling to be a knight, defeat evil, be with the princess, all those things that boys do in cliche fantasy novels. Rice is a self-published author who has become very well-known. It's not because of the strength of her writing, though. This boek is truly awful. It's so bad, in just about every way. I agree with every sentiment expressed in this wonderfully-written review but let me add a few of my own. First of all, the prose is really terrible. There are grammar mistakes, awkward phrasing, continuity errors in the plot ... but okay, so we don't all have a talent for poetic language. Honestly, though, did this author even do ANY revising? At least try! The plot is, of course, a collection of every overused fantasy cliché ever. But, again, that alone is not enough to make the book the affront to fantasy that it is. The clichés were so poorly executed that I felt p...

On this blog, I plan to mostly do book and series reviews. I want to start, though, with a story that illustrates the value of fantasy in my life, and, I believe, in the world. Last summer, I had the privilege of studying abroad for a month in Cuba. I wanted to take classes I needed, work on my Spanish, and, most of all, test my ability to adapt to a new environment. The Caribbean sun was hot, the thick, wet heat that makes it hard to breathe, the language was difficult and isolating, and the food and customs were so foreign to me. Although I knew why I was there, and there were many things which I loved about the experience of living in Cuba, I could not help but feel uncomfortable and homesick. My roommates and others in my school group shared similar feelings with me. One of my roomates, a girl whose colorfully dyed hair melted and turned strange shades of blue and green in the humid heat, loved movies, and had brought a USB with dozens of them saved on it. As the days faded into h...