Book Review: Libriomancer, by Jim C. Hines

This was the first book by this author that caught my eye.  I've grown tired of waiting for the next Dresden Files book to come out.  Skin Game came out three years ago and there is no sign of a release date for Peace Talks yet.  I miss the days when there was a new Dresden book just about every year.  I had a need to feed my fantasy appetite with something similar.  During my search, the first book I came across was Black Spark, by Al K. Line.  It was difficult to get into at first, but got much better by the end.  My review is here on my blog:

The second series I discovered was Magic Ex Libris, to which Libriomancer is the first book.  The concept intrigued me - I'd never seen anything like it before.  The fact that a major author like Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind) enjoyed this book and found it original helped fuel my desire to read it.  I read a sample chapter and found it interesting.  Then I came across a blurb somewhere which made a reference to Goblin Quest, also by Hines.  In this blurb, it was mentioned that Wil Wheaton (yes, Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and host of the Tabletop web series on Geek & Sundry) called Goblin Quest, and I quote:  "Too f***ing cool for words!".  I immediately had to shift gears and check this book out.  I enjoyed Goblin Quest immensely, and my review can be found here.

Afterward, I got distracted by a few other books, and when I came across a reduced price for Libriomancer I grabbed it immediately.  It does not disappoint.  The magic employed by the central character Isaac Vaino and his fellow Porters is very unique indeed.  I like to think of this book as a cross between The Dresden Files and Silverlock (or for modern day readers, perhaps Ready Player One, but change the video game references into references to fiction novels).

When you were younger, did you ever dream that elements of science fiction novels or films were real?  Did you ever wish you could wield Luke Skywalker's light saber from Star Wars?  Or use a phaser from Star Trek to vaporize a Klingon on the warpath?    Or wield King Arthur's legendary sword Excalibur?  Or have your own pet Mogwai from the Gremlins film?

Well, a libriomancer could live out such fantasies.  Put simply, a libriomancer has the ability to pull objects, and sometimes small creatures, from the pages of a book, and use them in the real world.  As long as it is smaller than the pages of the book, it can be pulled from the book and used.  This is an amazing concept!  And, we quickly start to learn that while this type of magic is useful, it is also incredibly dangerous.

The story started off a little slowly, but rapidly picked up speed and wouldn't let me go.  Someone has been killing Porters and vampires, seemingly in an attempt to start a war.  Isaac pairs up with a dryad named Lena Greenwood to try and learn who is behind the murders.  We learn some amazing things about Lena and her origins, about libriomancy and the Porters in general, and about the large community of vampires in the Michigan area.  I found the ideas in this book just as interesting and engaging as anything I've read in The Dresden Files series.

This book even contains a bibliography at the end which includes many of the books referenced (though certainly not all of them).  I'm hoping the additional volumes do the same thing.  A few other novels which are referenced include:

•    Dune
•    The Odyssey
•    The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The bibliography also lists references to fictional novels which were invented by the author for use in the story.  I went hunting for one of them, because the concept sounded cool, and I couldn't find it.  I learned later that the book was fake from its appearance in the bibliography!

This was a fantastic read and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed The Dresden Files and feels that Jim Butcher is writing too slowly.

As always, if you have read this book, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Book Review: Tsuchigumo: A Kaiju Thriler

On Amazon, this book is listed as "A Kaiju Thriller", and more specifically as a "Project Arachne novella book 1" and was first published in November of 2015.  Since then, the author has released two other books:  Blue Moon (a Jeremy Walker Thriller), and Kaiju Epoch (described as "Blue Moon side stories").  A new author tackling More than one series at once?  That's pretty ambitious.  I wonder if there is some influence from Jack L. Chalker (who I think was the reigning king of running multiple science fiction series simultaneously for a long time - James Patterson might be the current king in thriller-land these days), Philip Jose Farmer, Jim Butcher, or Jeremy Robinson.  But none of them did this right out of the gate - they published a few standalone novels first.  As of the writing of this post, Titan's Unleashed (Jeremy Walker #2) was recently released, and it looks like the second "Project Arachne novella", titled Chimera, will be released sometime in 2018 - I can already say I'm going to want to read it when it comes out.

Tsuchigumo is your typical giant monster movie (in the tradition of Godzilla - but this takes place in America) in book form.  If you look at the cover closely, you can tell that the monster is a giant spider (you may need to enlarge the image).  The author is a HUGE fan of Jeremy Robinson's Project Nemesis series (as am I).  Originally, Blue Moon caught my eye on Amazon, but then I noticed a comment from the author that Tsuchigumo is his best reviewed book, so I took a chance on that one first.

I did enjoy this story, the characters, and the fact that it mostly takes place near Roswell, New Mexico.  While the story itself does not break much new ground, there were original elements to the story that kept it entertaining.  There are several interesting aspects to the monster - some of them were very unexpected for me.  I will also state that it is very obvious that this is the authors first novel - there are many spelling and grammar mistakes throughout the book, but the story was engaging enough that I was able to easily overlook these issues.  That is saying something - even with all those errors, I was still interested.  Over the years, there have been many books, some of them considered "classics", or on occasion they were Hugo or Nebula award winners, that I have given up on when less than 50% of the way through - they just couldn't keep me engaged.

While a giant spider isn't exactly an original monster form, the "character" of the monster *is* very original, which makes this unlike any giant monster book or film that I have experienced, so some credit is due here.

At this point, this is the only book by this author that I've read, and I hope that his writing continues to improve in future books.  I know it's possible, as other authors have gone through this experience.  Read the foreword to Jeremy Robinson's The Didymus Contingency - then go on to read the whole book, because it's great!

At some point I expect to be checking out Blue Moon, but it may be a while before I get to it.