Rob Steiner

You know you’re reading a great horror novel when you have to keep your eyes open in the shower — despite the shampoo stinging the hell out of them — so you can be sure there’s no rotting-corpse-ghost peeking in at you. Hell House by Richard Matheson is such a novel.

Billionaire Rudolph Deutsch is going to die, so he decides to pay a physicist and two spiritual mediums $100,000 each to prove whether or not life exists after death. He tells the team to spend a week in the Belasco house in Maine, a colossal mansion in a mist-shrouded valley that was the site of depravity, murder, and drug addiction in the 1920s spurred on by its maniacal owner Emeric Belasco. Previous teams have tried investigating the house, but all ended up either dead or mad before completing their investigations.

Dr. Lionel Bennett (accompanied by his wife Edith) is a physicist who goes to the house to prove that ghostly phenomena is nothing more than naturally occurring electromagnetic energy that all living humans emit. Spiritual medium Florence Tanner believes she can help the tortured souls imprisoned in the house to move on. And physical medium Benjamin Fischer, the only man to survive an investigation at Belasco house, accepts the assignment because he needs the money. But he knows Bennett and Tanner underestimate the evil that lives in the house, and he’s too afraid to “open” his psychic abilities to the house to aid the investigation.

The house slowly ratchets up the terror and physical assaults, culminating in grotesque visions and hauntings that challenge the sanity of each character.

Hell House is about as primal a novel as you can get. It’s simple in that it only has four characters and one setting, which makes for a quick read. But a simple story structure does not mean a simple story. The characters are complex, each with his/her own noble reasons for staying in the house, even when the hauntings turn brutal and repulsive. Their theories regarding who is doing the hauntings, and why, shift with each new clue they uncover.

Some of the hauntings and visions are gruesome and sexually explicit, but in an R-rated sort of way. If that’s not your cup of tea, then you might want to stay away from this book. But if that doesn’t bother you, and you want a genre-defining example of a haunted house tale, then you won’t be disappointed with the chilling Hell House.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that my first Jim Butcher novel is not a Dresden Files book, but The Furies of Calderon, the first in his epic fantasy Codex Alera series. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when you think Jim Butcher, you think Harry Dresden. So why start with Codex Alera?

Because I’m writing a Roman-themed sci-fi book and I was looking to do some shameless stealing. But that aside, I was also in the mood for a page-turning fantasy, and this one did not disappoint.

In The Furies of Calderon, the nation of Alera has a distinct Roman feel – its armies are organized into “legions,” its nobles have Latin names like Quintus and Atticus. But in this world, people can bond with the living furies of earth, fire, water, and metal, giving them magical abilities that keep the nation safe from the monsters and barbarians along Alera’s borders.

When a spy named Amara discovers a plot against Alera’s First Lord Quintus Sextus, she is ordered to the remote Calderon Valley to find out what the traitors are up to. She meets a 15-year-old boy named Tavi who does not have a fury, an odd occurrence among Alerans.  Amara and Tavi learn that traitorous lords within Alera are working with the monstrous barbarians to bring down the old and weak First Lord Sextus. It is up to Amara and Tavi to stop the coming invasion and bring proof to the First Lord of the conspiracy in his own court.

While the Roman elements weren’t as extensive as I hoped, the book overall was a very good read. The writing was entertaining and fast-paced, making the book feel much shorter than its 500+ pages. The final battle was a bit predictable, but satisfying nonetheless.

Most of the characters were finely drawn – Amara, the young spy with something to prove; Fidelias, the villain you could almost agree with. Unfortunately, the only character I couldn’t warm up to was the protagonist Tavi. He was certainly heroic and likeable, but in a way I’d seen before in many other epic fantasies.

Descriptions of the magic system seemed a little thin. I would’ve liked more information on how it worked, and how the furies feel about being bonded to humans. I assume Butcher saved that for later books, along with answers to many other questions.

Despite some nitpicks, The Furies of Calderon was the fun epic fantasy I was looking for, and a promising start to the Codex Alera.

Books in the Codex Alera:

• The Furies of Calderon
• Academ’s Fury
• Cursor’s Fury
• Captain’s Fury
• Princep’s Fury
• First Lord’s Fury

Conventions of War is the third and final novel in Walter Jon Williams’ Dread Empire’s Fall series. Lady Caroline Sula leads the guerrilla war against the rebellious Naxids on the Empire’s occupied capital world of Zanshaa, while Lord Gareth Martinez commands a battleship in the Fleet task force waging a war of attrition on the enemy’s economic heartland a la Sherman’s “March to the Sea.”

I can’t say much more about the plot without giving it away, but I can say the book wraps up the series with an ending that — while not “happily ever after” — was appropriate to the characters considering their previous actions.

Williams did all the things in Conventions of War that entertained me in the first two books — military space opera without the technical jargon, conflicted characters I cared about, and “realistic” spaceships and space warfare. Don’t get me wrong, I love laser battles and “warp drive” ships like any good sci-fi geek, but it was interesting to read about the challenges starship crews face with high-gravity accelerations and decelerations, along with the months it takes to simply go from one end of a single solar system to another.

If I had any criticism it would be the first two-thirds of the book felt like Williams was killing time before getting to the brutal fight for Zanshaa and the ultimate space battle with the Naxids. While Sula’s guerrilla exploits against the Naxids were appropriate to the story (though a tad drawn out), the murder mystery Martinez had to solve seemed thrown in just to give him something to do until the final battle.

That said, I still enjoyed the book and the series overall. While not as entertaining as book two (The Sundering), it was a satisfying conclusion to one of the best space opera series I’ve ever read.

Books in the Dread Empire’s Fall series:

• The Praxis
• The Sundering
• Conventions of War

When you pick up a Brandon Sanderson novel, you can be assured of an epic fantasy that does not follow the usual fantasy tropes, yet gives you everything you love about epic fantasy in the first place.

Well of Ascension is no different.

The second book in the Mistborn trilogy starts a year after the fall of the evil Lord Ruler in the first book, Mistborn. The Final Empire has fractured into several states, each ruled by a tyrant not much better than the Lord Ruler.

All except the Final Empire’s old capital Luthadel, where the idealistic Elend Venture has set up a parliamentary government, giving the skaa (the former slave/peasant class) the freedom they haven’t had in a thousand years. Back are Elend’s Mistborn lover Vin and her heroic crew of Allomancers who overthrew the Lord Ruler, but now the former scoundrels and thieves have positions of responsibility in the new government.

And responsibility for running a city is proving harder for them than overthrowing an evil tyrant. Aristocrats grumble and bicker, the skaa worship Vin as a god-like protector, and now two armies are encamped outside Luthadel and threatening to raze the city.

Meanwhile an ancient evil called the Deepness is rising again. Vin discovers that the fabled Well of Ascension can not only stop the Deepness, but keep Luthadel free of the tyrants besieging it.

Sanderson does his best to give us all the “cool” magic, battles, and monsters that fans of epic fantasy enjoy, while at the same time adding something new to the genre. While the Well of Ascension is the main “Macguffin” in this story, I like how the book does not fall into the standard quest plot. And when the heroes finally do find the Well, it turns out to be something they wish they’d never found.

Sanderson juggles a lot of different story lines, and does a fine job presenting the angst of the main characters in their new roles of leadership and responsibility. Sometimes he does his job too well, occasionally having the same characters complain about the same issues multiple times. The book might have been 100 pages shorter had he consolidated some of those redundant scenes.

But that minor quibble aside, I found the book to be a worthy follow-up to Mistborn, and an engaging set-up for the final book The Hero of Ages. Highly recommended.