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dancing_moonAll right, I admit it. Sometimes I buy so-so books because they look good and I want to complete my collection.
Case in point: Steelhands, part four of the Volstov/Ke-Han series, by former HP author Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett. If their debut novel, Havemercy didn't get some award for prettiest fantasy cover of the year, something is clearly wrong. Especially since so many sci-fi and fantasy books are actually competing in Most/Least Fugly Cover of Any Given Year...
Steelhands isn't quite as nice, but it still looked good and the series was entertaining enough for me to buckle up and buy the hardcover. I do actually recommend one to read this series - it is one of the very rare modern fantasy books with several queer main characters (no lesbians as of yet, but I really liked the female lead in this one) that still feel like "mainstream" fantasy. Now, what do I mean there? These are rather simple, fluffy books. Compared to the Temeraire series by Novik, the plots are somewhat simpler, the dragons are both much more mechanical and have much smaller part in the plot (it's often -about- dragons, but it's not -with- dragons driving the story in the same way). However, compared to Novik's somewhat alarming lack of queer characters even in the border-enviroment of the Dragon Corps, where women can wear male dress and take on male roles (and the heavens have not yet fallen, omigosh!!) and to her increasingly flat characters, the much shorter portrayals of the Volstov/Ke-Han characters come off pretty good. Since Jones and Bennett's books alternate between diffferent first-person POV's and switch main characters pretty much every book, they don't have time to build up the kind of character growth arch that Lawrence and the others in Temeraire's universe can go through. Only, unfortunately, one of the few characters to actually grow and change after all he's gone through is Temeraire himself. Even Lawrence tends to stagnate at time
Oops, but now we're going OT. I found Steelhands entertaining with several quite funny scenes. The vaguely Rome-inspired setting makes it a bit less beset by the horrid tropes of "one-true-king" and "yay-feudalismdoesn't work that way btw", although there is still some slightly skeevy classification of people/nationalitites going on. Not as bad as the (overall quite dreadful) second book in the series which, Shadow Magic. Just skip that, unless you find yourself becoming extreme fans, because it's bad on pretty much all counts.
I mean, the books aren't all that great. Except for smart quips and a cast of constantly bantering characters, the world-building is pretty weak, the plots aren't super original or engaging, nor do the (nicely designed) dragons do as much in the story as they could. But for fluff fantasy, this is a very welcome change to the usual hack'n'slash male-dominated stuff I tend to find.
So. Looking for a light, funny fantasy? Give it a try, not perfect, but I'll give them plenty of cookie points for the mere fact that they are two female authors with a fandom background who still do positive shout-outs to their LJ community.
If nothing else, any modern fantasy books which manages to have a "spunky young girl" as a main character and does not: constantly undercut her decisions, have her wax poethic about her own fabulous looks and run around motivated solely by her love interest, deserves a mention. Heck, Laura and her poor OCD-plagued fiancé Toverre were probably my favorite characters. Oh, all right, together with Luvander because he's just the kind of jerk I like to read about
Case in point: Steelhands, part four of the Volstov/Ke-Han series, by former HP author Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett. If their debut novel, Havemercy didn't get some award for prettiest fantasy cover of the year, something is clearly wrong. Especially since so many sci-fi and fantasy books are actually competing in Most/Least Fugly Cover of Any Given Year...
Steelhands isn't quite as nice, but it still looked good and the series was entertaining enough for me to buckle up and buy the hardcover. I do actually recommend one to read this series - it is one of the very rare modern fantasy books with several queer main characters (no lesbians as of yet, but I really liked the female lead in this one) that still feel like "mainstream" fantasy. Now, what do I mean there? These are rather simple, fluffy books. Compared to the Temeraire series by Novik, the plots are somewhat simpler, the dragons are both much more mechanical and have much smaller part in the plot (it's often -about- dragons, but it's not -with- dragons driving the story in the same way). However, compared to Novik's somewhat alarming lack of queer characters even in the border-enviroment of the Dragon Corps, where women can wear male dress and take on male roles (and the heavens have not yet fallen, omigosh!!) and to her increasingly flat characters, the much shorter portrayals of the Volstov/Ke-Han characters come off pretty good. Since Jones and Bennett's books alternate between diffferent first-person POV's and switch main characters pretty much every book, they don't have time to build up the kind of character growth arch that Lawrence and the others in Temeraire's universe can go through. Only, unfortunately, one of the few characters to actually grow and change after all he's gone through is Temeraire himself. Even Lawrence tends to stagnate at time
Oops, but now we're going OT. I found Steelhands entertaining with several quite funny scenes. The vaguely Rome-inspired setting makes it a bit less beset by the horrid tropes of "one-true-king" and "yay-feudalism
I mean, the books aren't all that great. Except for smart quips and a cast of constantly bantering characters, the world-building is pretty weak, the plots aren't super original or engaging, nor do the (nicely designed) dragons do as much in the story as they could. But for fluff fantasy, this is a very welcome change to the usual hack'n'slash male-dominated stuff I tend to find.
So. Looking for a light, funny fantasy? Give it a try, not perfect, but I'll give them plenty of cookie points for the mere fact that they are two female authors with a fandom background who still do positive shout-outs to their LJ community.
If nothing else, any modern fantasy books which manages to have a "spunky young girl" as a main character and does not: constantly undercut her decisions, have her wax poethic about her own fabulous looks and run around motivated solely by her love interest, deserves a mention. Heck, Laura and her poor OCD-plagued fiancé Toverre were probably my favorite characters. Oh, all right, together with Luvander because he's just the kind of jerk I like to read about
