Aaron's Book of the Week :: The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

I drafted this back in the Fall, when The Hobbit was first hitting the theaters but neglected to post it. So belatedly, the Book of the Week is The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien, the second in the legendary Lord of the Rings trilogy. This is the 1965 Ace Books "pirated" edition, the first American paperback, with cover art by Jack Gaughan.

I previously covered the story of Ace's unauthorized edition of Lord of the Rings, and you certainly don't need me to tell you who this fellow Tolkien was. So let's use this space to discuss another aspect of the Lord of the Rings intellectual property rights, unrelated to the dispute with Ace Books. I confess I've never watched the animated Lord of the Rings films, so I was not aware of this oddity until researching the Ace editions for this blog.

It seems that when Ralph Bakshi was creating the 1978 animated version, the studio persuaded him to adapt the three books into two films. (That's not as odd as it sounds, since Tolkien himself never conceived of the story as a trilogy.) So for the first film, confusingly released (over Bakshi's objection) under the title The Lord of the Rings, the studio only acquired the film rights to The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. That left the door open, when Bakshi ended up not making the second film, for Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. (who did the previous animated version of The Hobbit) to make the 1980 animated edition of The Return of the King. The trouble is, they only had rights to the third book, so most of what occurs in the second half of The Two Towers, including the defeat of Saruman and what happens in Shelob's lair, is omitted from any of the animated films. Thankfully, Peter Jackson came along and made the whole issue moot.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Semifinal :: Nightglass by Liane Merciel vs. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

Our second semifinal in Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books features Nightglass by Liane Merciel against The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. The book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 100 pages will reach the championship round.

Nightglass: Paizo paperback, July 2012, 345 pages, cover art by Tyler Walpole. Nightglass reached the Final Four by defeating Paradox Resolution by K.A. Bedford in the first round and The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown in the second round.

Nightglass is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game. "Shadowcallers" control the unpleasant region of Nidal. Our young protagonist Isiem, identified by the shadowcallers as having magical abilities, has begun training against his will in the shadowcallers' dark form of sorcery. This training includes requiring Isiem and his fellow students to practice torture on slaves, on each other, and even on the shadowcallers themselves. Those unable to master the magical techniques face dire consequences. Isiem is among the most talented of the new recruits, but he is beginning to realize that may be an even greater curse.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb: Harper Perennial trade paperback, May 2012, 240 pages, cover photo by Clayton Bastiani. The Testament of Jessie Lamb advanced to the Final Four with wins over This Case is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova in the first round and A Guile of Dragons by James Enge in the second round.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the memoir of Jessie Lamb, imprisoned by her father for reasons she has not yet revealed, although they are becoming pretty obvious by the end of 100 pages. Jessie lives in a near-future world where the MDS virus has made it fatal for any woman to become pregnant. Jessie has flirted with various protest groups, whose youthful idealism contrasts with her father's cynicism. Jessie's father is a scientist, and from him we discover that doctors have learned to induce comas to allow pregancies to come to term, although the "Sleeping Beauty" mothers will never wake. They have also developed a vaccine that can be used on embryos frozen before the spread of MDS (and thus not already infected) to make the motherless children immune to the MDS virus.

The Battle: Here are two very well-written books with interesting stories, but between pages 50 to 100 both authors have introduced unpleasant story elements, which make it a challenge for them to keep their readers engaged.

In Nightglass, Liane Merciel has the daunting task of showing us how her likeable young character Isiem becomes indoctrinated in very dark arts without rendering him completely unsympathetic. To her credit, she mostly succeeds. She manages to show how a young man who means well could be so overwhelmed by the evil system around him that he begins to lose the ability to discern right from wrong:

Was it wrong to torture a helpless slave, if serving as their practice subject was all that kept that slave alive? Was it still wrong if he inflicted the same pains on his closest friends, and suffered them in turn? Not eagerly——not because he was able to take any pleasure in it, as more devout Kuthites seemed to——but because he, too, survived only by the lash?

If it was not wrong, was it right?

Isiem didn't know. He was increasingly unsure whether he cared. Questions of that sort seemed relics from another world . . . They were things that existed in books, and they had no place in shadow-swathed Pangolais.

Isiem will soon participate in a ceremony of torture, in which one of his classmates plans revenge against a despised teacher. The teacher richly deserves what is coming, and Isiem will be at a loss whether to help the other student or try to save the teacher.

I admire Merciel's ability to show Isiem falling into evil even as he remains a mostly sympathetic character. That said, I don't much enjoy reading extended descriptions of torture, and since I don't have a clear concept of where the story is headed——one suspects eventually Isiem will rebel, but there is no hint of that yet after 100 pages——it's difficult to feel enthusiastic about continuing.

The story of The Testament of Jessie Lamb has taken some similarly distasteful turns, including a scene in which Jessie suffers physical abuse from her father and a flashback to when Jessie was assaulted and a close friend raped. But somehow these scenes have been less offputting than the torture and oppression in Nightglass, perhaps because I have a stronger sense how this brutality is advancing a larger, important story.

When Jessie learns that the MDS vaccine will only work if surrogate mothers sacrifice their lives to produce immune children, she is at first appalled. But her own awful experiences lead her to an epiphany (while observing sea horses at the aquarium whose males carry the young) that society cannot survive without its hope in the next generation:

I knew Dad and I were both thinking about those frozen embryos which can be put in a surrogate mother and vaccinated against MDS. It's exactly the same thing. It gives us a chance of survival. And quite suddenly it struck me how amazingly clever that was. I was thinking about the extraordinariness of the way sea horses must have evolved over thousands of years, and then about how humans know so much that within a space of days they can use their brains to choose to incubate their babies in a different way. The shining sea horses hung like question marks in the water, staring at me with their sideways eyes. I remember staring back at them and realising that human beings are beautiful and clever and ingenious.

I suspect Jessie's father is soon to have a reverse realization, that what he viewed as a hopeful development for society carries terrible implications for his family that will cause father and daughter to become violently opposed.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb mostly focuses on the small scale, on Jessie and her family and closest friends. But Jane Rogers is telling a big story, about what happens to all of society when it loses hope in the future. This is what science fiction is for, and I very much want to see where Rogers is taking this tale.

THE WINNER: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

The Testament of Jessie Lamb advances to the championship round, where it will face Harmony by Keith Brooke.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Semifinal :: Railsea by China Miéville vs. Harmony by Keith Brooke

Our first semifinal in Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books features Railsea by China Miéville going against Harmony by Keith Brooke. The book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 100 pages will reach the championship round.

Railsea: Del Rey hardcover, May 2012, 424 pages, cover art by Mike Bryan. Railsea reached the Final Four by defeating The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh in the first round and Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor in the second round.

Railsea takes place in a bizarre world where trains travel rails criss-crossing a deserted tundra to hunt moldywarpes, moles that grow to incredibly vast sizes. The molehunters' homes are on "islands" somehow constructed above the railsea. People live in mortal fear of the earth, and indeed, the one time our young protagonist Sham actually touches the ground he is immediately attacked by vicious mole rats. Sham's train is commanded by a female Captain Ahab, whose "philosophy" hinges on finding the moldywarpe that took her arm. (It turns out that in this world, every train captain has lost a limb and is obsessed with the land creature that claimed it.) Sham and the captain find a photograph of a strange place where only a single line of rail crosses the land, but the captain does not share Sham's fascination.

Harmony: Solaris paperback, June 2012, 413 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Harmony (published in the UK under the title alt.human) reached the Final Four by defeating Wildcatter by Dave Duncan in the first round and The Croning by Laird Barron in the second round.

In Harmony, the Earth has long been occupied by multiple races of aliens, who have herded humans into "Ipps," Indigenous Peoples' Preserves. Our teenaged hero Dodge scratches out a living in the Craigside Ipp, which is visited by refugees from another town, Angiere, where aliens recently slaughtered nearly all the humans. Dodge also rescues a strange woman who lacks the "pids," personal identifiers, aliens have placed in all humans' bloodstreams. Tellingly, her name is Hope. A single chapter from Hope's point of view tells us she was in Angiere just before its destruction, which likely was no coincidence. Meanwhile, Dodge learns that a group of aliens is trying to help the humans, while others would prefer simply to wipe us all out.

The Battle: My guiding criterion in the Battle of the Books is not which book is better but which book do I most want to keep reading. Usually those are the same——I'd rather keep reading the book I think is better——but not always. Case in point: if you ask me which, Railsea or Harmony, strikes me as a better book after 100 pages, I will hem and haw and sincerely tell you they are both very good, but in the end I will say Railsea is probably the better of the two. Both books are very much about cognitive dissonance, creating a sense of strangeness, and nobody but nobody does weird better than China Miéville. The railsea is a striking construct, and his multi-layered world is wonderfully memorable.

But Harmony also contains plenty of interestingly strange elements, for instance the way humans have learned to convey immediate emotional responses through alien clicks instead of facial expressions. And I'm more attached to Harmony's key characters, Dodge and Hope; the only character developed so far in Railsea is Sham, and he doesn't much grab me so far.

There is a terrific scene at the end of the first 100 pages of Harmony where the aliens carry off the leaders of Dodge's community, then an alien asks the remaining people who is their leader now, and Dodge is startled to realize they are all looking at him. This tells me much about his personality, and it suddenly makes those around him his people in a deeper sense, which makes me care more about what happens to them all. This in turn makes me care about where the story is headed. I want to know whether Dodge can navigate the strange alien politics he has been caught up in, and whether he and Hope and Dodge's people can survive, and perhaps even find their way to a freer life.

In contrast, in Railsea, it doesn't matter to me very much whether Sham finds the place with only one railway line, or whether the captain tracks down her great white moldywarpe.

But wait! some of you cry. If Harmony has stronger characters and a more compelling storyline, doesn't that mean it was really the better book all along? Hmm, I answer. You could be right. If so, then what you're telling me is the Battle of the Books format is the best way to test how good a book really is. What an intriguing suggestion!

THE WINNER: Harmony by Keith Brooke

Harmony advances to the championship round, where it will face either Nightglass by Liane Merciel or The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five :: Final Four

Here we go! After completion of the second round, we're down to the Final Four in Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books:

Railsea by China Miéville vs. Harmony by Keith Brooke

Nightglass by Liane Merciel vs. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

We hope you've enjoyed this tournament so far. This sixteen-book bracket, our fifth, contained books from across the genre. There were science fiction, contemporary fantasy, high fantasy, historical fantasy, and horror books. Hopefully some sparked your interest. I know there are books that I (Amy) would like to read. Now only four books remain.

Stopping reading good books after only 25 or 50 pages can be difficult, and so can judging between two completely different books, but this format allows us to sample and spread the word about many more new books and authors than we otherwise could.

Three of the four "seeded" books made it to the Final Four: Railsea, Harmony, and The Testament of Jessie Lamb. The dark horse of this group is Nightglass, which is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game.

Thanks again to all the authors and publicists sending us great books to consider. If you're an author or publicist, click here for the rules and an address to send your book if you'd like to be included in a future bracket.

We have had a great response to the Battle of the Books format. More brackets are to come!

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: A Guile of Dragons by James Enge vs. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

Our final second round match of Bracket Five of Battle of the Books pits A Guile of Dragons by James Enge against The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

A Guile of Dragons: Pyr trade paperback, August 2012, 264 pages, cover art by Steve Stone. A Guile of Dragons reached the second round with a win over City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt.

The first 25 pages of A Guile of Dragons showed the circumstances of the birth of Morlock Ambrosius, hero of all of James Enge's books to date, whose mother betrayed his father Merlin. The second 25 pages show us the early life of Morlock, as he is raised by dwarves fiercely loyal to Merlin, although Morlock seems to feel nothing but resentment for his absent father. The first 50 pages end with Morlock being engaged by Merlin's old nemesis Earno to guide him across the northlands where the dwarves dwell.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb: Harper Perennial trade paperback, May 2012, 240 pages, cover photo by Clayton Bastiani. The Testament of Jessie Lamb got here with a first-round win over This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova (aka Melinda M. Snodgrass).

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the memoir of the title character, written from captivity at the hands of her father. In the opening 25 pages, she told us of the spread of the MDS virus, which kills any woman who becomes pregnant. In the second 25 pages, she recalls her involvement with a post-MDS youth movement, the idealism and (arguably foolish) enthusiasm of which contrasts with Jessie's father's cynicism. We also learn that, while there remains no cure for MDS, doctors have learned how to induce a coma in pregnant women in order to save the babies.

The Battle: This battle pits a high fantasy against a near-future science fiction novel, both focusing on a teenaged protagonist who does not understand his or her role in the sweep of history. I have no complaints about the writing in either book, but in both novels the significance of events in the characters' early lives is not immediately apparent. The battle comes down to which author nevertheless gets me involved in the main character's story.

A Guile of Dragons is well-written and easy to read, with plenty of vibrant details. Through 50 pages, however, there is little dramatic tension; the whole affair has the feel of an extended prologue to the other Morlock Ambrosius books. Reading this opening section does not make me feel especially compelled to continue with A Guile of Dragons, altough it does leave me very interested in checking out Enge's first novel Blood of Ambrose.

The opening of The Testament of Jessie Lamb is more successful at interweaving Jessie's small-scale personal experiences with the grand scope of the impending collapse of society. I think the key is the frame story, from which we know that Jessie has made a decision so drastic that her father feels compelled to imprison her for her own protection. Much of what Jessie describes doing with her activist friends seems trivial, as she acknowledges in hindsight——who really cares about discouraging air travel to reduce carbon emissions when the whole human race is dying out?——but Rogers has convinced me that it all ties into the story yet to come:

But looking back, if I hadn't done all that——the meetings and arguments and petitions and demonstrations, the hours hunched over the computer——if I hadn't done all that in good faith, and then been so totally frustrated——then maybe I would never even have found the next thing to do. If I'd never felt the thrill of imagining we could change things——perhaps I wouldn't have looked for it again.

At the end of this section, I am very interested to learn what decision Jessie has made and how her relationship with her father has so completely broken down, and I want to read more.

THE WINNER: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

The Testament of Jessie Lamb moves into the semifinals, where it will face Nightglass by Liane Merciel.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: Nightglass by Liane Merciel vs. The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown

This third match in the second round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books features Nightglass by Liane Merciel against The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Nightglass: Paizo paperback, July 2012, 345 pages, cover art by Tyler Walpole. Nightlass advanced to the second round with a win over Paradox Resolution by K.A. Bedford.

Nightglass is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game. In the dark realm of Nidal, strange and unfriendly "shadowcallers" come to the home of our young protagonist Isiem, looking for young people with magical abilities. Isiem has no wish to go with them, but is forced to reveal his talents in order to save a friend. The shadowcallers take Isiem to Pangolais, to be trained in a dark type of magic. He proves quite adept, but has little enthusiasm for his new home.

The Devil's Nebula: Abaddon paperback, June 2012, 350 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. The Devil's Nebula reached the second round by defeating a "seeded" book, Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem.

The Devil's Nebula is the first volume in the Weird Space series. The series is set in the distant future, when humans battle an alien race called the Vetch. The three-person crew of The Paradoxical Poet arrives illegally on the evacuated world of Hesperides, in search of a lost work of art as well as wreckage from a mysterious alien spaceship, only to find a Vetch ship already there. After an initial contact with the Vetch, the commander Ed Carew leads his crew through the alien ship. The first 50 pages end with The Paradoxical Poet being captured by a human patrol vessel.

The Battle: The entries in the second round of this Battle of the Books continue to maintain a very high level. Nightglass gives us imaginative and evocative fantasy, while The Devil's Nebula is good fast-paced space opera. You could hardly go wrong with either one.

I loved the last scene of the opening 25 pages of Nightglass, but the next 25 pages begin with an even more vivid passage. Isiem and his friend and two other children from their village arrive in Pangolais, where they are immediately told "the Joyful Ones" must see them:

The ironwork on the pillars held odd, egglike shapes hoisted high above the children's head. They resembled huge maggots, pallid and featureless in their cocoons of bent metal——but as Isiem walked toward the first one, it blinked open eyes he had not known it had.

"Ah," the thing croaked in a rusty, gurgling voice. Its face was a soft white sack of flesh, its mouth a wet glimmer between pouches of suet. Yellow sand caked the corners of its pinkish eyes. Caged from the neck down in iron, the creature could not wipe the crusts away. "Young blood. Come, children. Let me taste you."

It was a man. Hairless, limbless, locked immobile on a pillar in this seldom-visited section of the Dusk Hall . . . but at one point he had been human, whatever he was now.

* * *

Isiem held back, too frightened to obey. The other boys quailed with him. Helis, casting an angry look over them all, shoved between them to approach the crippled man.

"I'm not afraid of you," she announced, crossing her arms and closing her eyes. "Do it."

"A lie," the limbless one replied, his words thick and wet with yearning, "but I will." His tongue rolled out——long, long, infernally long——and engulfed her head in its slimy, blue-veined coils. Helis issued a muffled protest, but the tonge wrapped around her face suppressed it.

Eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww! And I mean that in a good way.

The Devil's Nebula has also started well, with our main characters exploring an enigmatic alien ship, which suggests there is more at play in this future galaxy than they realized. However, although I don't have any complaints about The Devil's Nebula, through 50 pages it hasn't offered any passages quite so memorable as some of those in Nightglass. And while the characterization is certainly not bad, the characters are painted with a rather broad brush. Ed Carew is "a loner. He had no emotional attachments of any kind, and no wish to form them." One of his crewmembers, Jed, is found after their encounter with the Vetch "still cowering in the undergrowth."

So far I have the sense there is more depth to Isiem and the other characters of Nightglass, and I want to learn more about them.

THE WINNER: Nightglass by Liane Merciel

Nightglass advances to the semifinals, to face either A Guile of Dragons by James Enge or The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: Harmony by Keith Brooke vs. The Croning by Laird Barron

The second round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books pits Harmony by Keith Brooke against The Croning by Laird Barron. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Harmony: Solaris paperback, June 2012, 413 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Harmony (published in the UK under the title alt.human) got here by defeating Wildcatter by Dave Duncan in the first round.

Harmony takes place long after the occupation of Earth by multiple varieties of aliens. Humans live in "Ipps," Indigenous Peoples' Preserves. In the first 25 pages, our teenaged hero Dodge saved a young woman who, inexplicably, lacked any "pids," the personal identifiers the aliens have placed in all humans' bloodstreams. In the second 25 pages, he learns that a human community in another region has been entirely wiped out for unknown reasons. Sol, the leader of Dodge's Ipp, sends him to a nearby Ipp in hopes of joining forces to prepare for the possibility of another such attack. While there, Dodge spots the woman he previously rescued.

The Croning: Night Shade hardcover, May 2012, 245 pages, cover art by Cody Tilson. The Croning reached the second round with a win over Fated by Alyson Noël.

The Croning began with a dark reimagining of the Rumpelstiltskin story, then took us to 1958, where an American man named Don frantically searches Mexico City for Michelle, his lost wife. In the second 25 pages, Don's search ends badly but not quite fatally. Don does not understand his strange occult experiences in Mexico City, and it seems Michelle knows something she is not telling him. We then get a brief glimpse of federal agents investigating a shooting in 1980, before flashing ahead to the present day, as octogenarian Don takes Michelle for a romantic getaway to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary.

The Battle: I hope the Battle of the Books is successfully conveying to all of you how many excellent writers we have today doing interesting work in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genre. For once again, here is a battle which forces me to choose between two very well-written and engaging novels. Both novels have done a nice job of pulling me in by placing their characters in grave danger from the outset.

As I mentioned in his previous battle, Keith Brooke has a marvelous knack for conveying strangeness. The bizarre scenery of Harmony's occupied Earth makes for a fascinating setting. Dodge takes it for granted, for instance, that the aliens use scent to manipulate humans, and that humans have added alien clicks to their language to express emotions. Every page introduces an interesting nuance to Dodge's strange life in the future. The first pages of The Croning depicted a similarly strange world of the past, or at least the past of an odd and frightening fairy tale. The next chapters bring us into the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, but with effective hints of something unfathomable lurking in the shadows.

I'm enjoying both these books and would be happy to continue with either. Forced to make a choice, it comes down to the characters. I liked the brooding "Spy" of the first chapter of The Croning, but I believe we're done with him. Now that we've switched to the present, I am not so attached to Don and Michelle. Don strikes me as a bit of a twit, and pretty much all I know so far about Michelle is that she has kept an important secret from her husband for over fifty years, which doesn't make her too sympathetic.

Meanwhile, in the opening of Harmony, Dodge has emerged as a very interesting and likable character. He inhabits an almost unimaginably strange world, but Brooke smartly also gives him mundane experiences to which his readers can relate. In a recent battle (ironically, the first-round battle that The Croning won) I made sport of a book's extremely lengthy description of teenagers kissing and groping. Here, in contrast, is a description of a teenage kiss that to me works perfectly:

Her lips pressed against mine, firm and cool, over in an instant. I flinched, surprised, and clicked, "!¡fear ǀ excitement¡!"

I reached for her but she had turned, stepped away, and almost before I could react she was pausing at the entrance to the villa, dipping her head to me in parting, and then she was gone.

I could taste her on my lips still. I could close my eyes and feel the pressure of her mouth on mine.

I care about what happens to Dodge, and I want to see more of Brooke's future world.

THE WINNER: Harmony by Keith Brooke

Harmony advances to the semifinals, where it will face Railsea by China Miéville.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor vs. Railsea by China Miéville

We begin the second round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books with Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor vs. Railsea by China Miéville. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after the first 50 pages.

Ghost Key: Tor hardcover, August 2012, 351 pages, cover photo by Marta Bevaqua. Ghost Key reached the second round by defeating Kangazang! Star Stuff by Terry Cooper.

Ghost Key is the sequel to Esperanza. Both books concern the struggle against malevolent spirits called "hungry ghosts" or "brujos." The first 25 pages were from the point of view of Kate Davis, a middle-aged bartender in the Florida keys embroiled in strange happenings she does not understand, and Nick Sanchez, a "remote viewer" for the government who senses the Florida disturbance but does not know what it represents. The second 25 pages are from the point of view of two characters who know perfectly well what is going on. Wayra, a centuries-old werewolf, arrives in Florida following the scent of his former lover Dominica. Apparently in Esperanza, Wayra defeated Dominica's plans to create a city of ghosts, but she has escaped to try again.

The next section gives us the point of view of Dominica herself, who is indeed attempting to create a city of ghosts in the Florida keys. She has recruited some 200 hungry ghosts (although so far "horny ghosts" might be a more accurate moniker), who have occupied the bodies of living humans. The section ends with Maddie, the human woman occupied by Dominica, managing to make contact spiritually with Nick Sanchez.

Railsea: Del Rey hardcover, May 2012, 424 pages, cover art by Mike Bryan. Railsea advanced to the second round with a win over The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh.

The opening pages of Railsea introduced us to a strange world where trains cross a deserted tundra in search of moldywarpes, moles that can grow to incredibly vast sizes. Our young protagonist Sham is experiencing his first moldywarpe hunt, on a train led by a female Captain Ahab, determined to find the moldywarpe that took her arm. In the second 25 pages, we learn a little more about the nature of this strange universe, composed of six layers, of which the railsea and the moldywarpes' subterranean lair are the bottom two. We then see Sham try to rescue two small birds thrust into a cockfight. The exhiliration of the resulting chase emboldens Sham to sneak onto a cart dispatched from his train to investigate another train lying on its side off the rails, a salvage venture which quickly turns dangerous.

The Battle: Ghost Key is populated with pretty standard fantasy creatures, werewolves and evil ghosts and such. But Trish MacGregor ties them together effectively, and does a nice job in generating interest in her characters. I particularly liked the section from the point of view of hungry ghost Dominica, who is flabbergasted at the suggestion that she and her followers are evil. "Brujos weren't evil. They only wanted to experience physical life."

What immediately stands out about Railsea is the bizarre setting. But equally impressive is Miéville's depiction of his protagonist Sham, a kind-heaerted lad who yearns for adventure but is intimidated when he finds it. Here, for instance after sneaking onto the salvage cart, he is called into action as the only one small enough to fit through a wedged doorway:

"I ain't even supposed to be here." Sham hated how his own voice suddenly quavered to his own hearing. But he was here, wasn't he? Snuck on in a sudden pining for excitement, & the universe had called his bluff. His job was to apply bandages & brew tea, thanks very much, not to haul arse into sealed-off wrecks.

Oh Stonefaces, he thought. He didn't want to go into the cabin——but how he wanted to want to.

* * *

All his crewmates were looking at him. Was it shame or bravery that made Shem say yes? Ah, well. Either way.

What Sham encounters on the other side of the door makes for engrossing reading.

While I'm not a huge fan of urban fantasies, I can appreciate them when they're done well, and so far Ghost Key is done quite well. If you like urban fantasy, you should check it out. But given a choice, I respond more to a fantasy story with original and unusual concepts, and Railsea is unlike anything I've read before.

THE WINNER: Railsea by China Miéville

Railsea advances to the semifinals of Bracket #5, to take on either Harmony by Keith Brooke or The Croning by Laird Barron.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers vs. This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova

The final first round match of Bracket Five of the Battle of the Books features The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers going against This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova (aka Melinda M. Snodgrass). The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb: Harper Perennial trade paperback, May 2012, 240 pages, cover photo by Clayton Bastiani. Jane Rogers is the author of eight generally well-received mainstream novels. The Testament of Jessie Lamb is her first try at science fiction. It was originally published in England in 2011 to a very favorable reception, including being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winning the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is set in a near-future world in which it has become impossible for women to have children. (Please don't say Rogers borrowed the idea from The Children of Men by P.D. James, because the premise was used well before that, notably by Brian Aldiss in Greybeard.) Teenager Jessie Lamb writes this memoir from the locked room in which she has been imprisoned, apparently by her father. She recounts the general panic and unrest when Maternal Death Syndrome, or MDS, first spread through society. MDS is a virus created by bio-terrorists, which has infested everyone. Triggered by pregnancy, it is fatal within a few days to any woman who becomes pregnant. But the threat of death is not sufficient to keep the boys and girls in Jessie's circle of friends from desiring each other.

This Case Is Gonna Kill Me: Tor trade paperback, September 2012, 318 pages, cover photo by Veer & Getty Images. Phillipa Bornikova is the urban fantasy alter ego of Melinda M. Snodgrass, the author of seven original SF/F novels, as well as a Star Trek tie-in and extensive work in George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards universe. Snodgrass also wrote several romances in the 80's under the name Melinda McKenzie. Her background as a fellow lawyer is easy to spot in much of her work, notably her Circuit/Circuit Breaker/Final Circuit lawyers-in-space trilogy, all of which were nominated for the Prometheus Award. Her most recent books under the Snodgrass name were The Edge of Reason (2008) and The Edge of Ruin (2010). Snodgrass also wrote several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and was story editor for the show's second and third seasons.

This Case Is Gonna Kill Me is urban fantasy slash legal thriller. Our protagonist Linnet Ellery, fresh out of Yale Law School, has just started work at a prestigious New York "White-Fang" law firm. In this society, vampires hold most positions of authority. In particular, all of the senior partners at the firm are vampires, and the male associates are vying to be made partners and also made vampires. But in this world, vampires only bite men; so as a woman, even if Linnet manages to become a partner, it will only be for one mortal lifetime. In the first 25 pages, Linnet is shunned by her fellow new associates and stuck in a drab assignment, assisting with a stale probate case. She gradually comes to realize that she is a pawn in a political contest between two of the senior partners.

The Battle: I am happy to say this is a battle between two excellent women authors who have created two strong, albeit inexperienced, female protagonists.

I like the opening of The Testament of Jessie Lamb very much. The prologue with Jessie Lamb in chains is a solid hook, immediately letting the reader know the gravity of her situation, which is very far from our experience and yet at the same time rather familiar, a father unwilling to let his little girl grow up. I find it quite believable that Jessie and her friends are terrified by MDS, yet still infatuated with each other, and also secretly thrilled by the whole thing:

But during that evening, before I started feeling ill, when we were all madly dancing and making the world spin around us, I had this fantastic sense of freedom. I thought I could be free of my Mum and Dad and their petty squabbles. I could soar. No one could say a thing to me, especially not anyone older than me. Because it was them who had messed things up.

The beginning of This Case Is Gonna Kill Me is also nicely done, but I'm sorry to say that, as much as I admire Melinda Snodgrass as a writer, I'm not her ideal reader for this one. I often have a hard time engaging with urban fantasies, and this one is a particularly hard sell for me because the opening section strongly emphasizes the legal side of the story rather than the urban fantasy. Through 25 pages, nothing fantastic has happened at all. I mean, Linnet is told all the senior partners at her firm are vampires, but hell, they told me the same thing when I started work as a lawyer. So far, the thrust of the story is big law firm politics, which I've experienced far too much of in the past twenty years (albeit not in a snooty Manhattan firm) to enjoy.

I feel badly for not giving Snodgrass more of a fair shake here, but then there is little shame in dropping a battle to a Clarke Award-winning novel with a very strong opening.

THE WINNER: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

The Testament of Jessie Lamb moves into the second round, where it will face A Guile of Dragons by James Enge.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt vs. A Guile of Dragons by James Enge

The penultimate match in the first round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books pits City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt against A Guile of Dragons by James Enge. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

City of the Fallen Sky: Paizo paperback, June 2012, 353 pages, cover art by J.P. Targete. Tim Pratt is the author of The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl and Briarpatch, as well as two collections, three media tie-ins, seven urban fantasies as by T.A. Pratt, and one novel under the name T. Aaron Payton. Pratt won a Hugo Award for his story "Impossible Dreams" and has been nominated for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, among many other honors.

City of the Fallen Sky is a Pathfinder role-playing game tie-in. (Another Pathfinder book, Nightglass by Liane Merciel, has already advanced to the second round in this bracket.) Our protagonist is Alaeron, an unscrupulous scholar in possession of magical artifacts he has stolen from Technic League. In the opening scene of City of the Fallen Sky, Alaeron uses one of those artifacts to rescue a beautiful woman named Jaya from two menacing thugs. But Alaeron soon will be menaced himself, both by an agent of the Technic League and the rich employer of the two thugs, and he may need Jaya to come to his rescue.

A Guile of Dragons: Pyr trade paperback, August 2012, 264 pages, cover art by Steve Stone. James Enge is the author of the Morlock Ambrosius trilogy, beginning with Blood of Ambrose, which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. Enge also teaches at Bowling Green, under a funny name.

A Guile of Dragons is the first in a prequel series, showing the early days of Enge's character Morlock Ambrosius. In the opening chapters, Nimue Viviana discovers she is pregnant by her lover Merlin. Fearing that Merlin will cast her aside, Nimue is persuaded by Earno Dragonkiller to betray Merlin. Earno transports Nimue across the Sea of Worlds, and she and her unborn child are transformed by the voyage.

The Battle: This battle matches up two excellent fantasists. Enge is going back to the origins of his signature universe. Pratt is working in the Pathfinder RPG universe, and the two previous Pathfinder books in the Battle of the Books were both impressive.

The opening of City of the Fallen Sky is also nicely written, but it lacks the engaging characterization of the other Pathfinder books I've sampled. Through 25 pages, I don't have a good sense of the character Alaeron. Hopefully as the book proceeds, he will develop enough personality to carry a novel, but the Battle of the Books can be unforgiving of characters who need time to grow on you.

A Guile of Dragons opens with a very clever short chapter explaining how our hero Ambrosius earned the enmity of the universe's competing Two Powers: "They both hated Ambrosius. He would suffer for inspiring them to agree on anything." From there, we flash back to before his birth, when his mother Nimue faced some agonizing decisions. Even if readers believe she was wrong to betray Merlin, her reasons are understandable, and we can still sympathize with her. Although I have not read Enge's previous books, the opening section of A Guile of Dragons is most engaging, definitely leaving me wanting to read more.

THE WINNER: A Guile of Dragons by James Enge

A Guile of Dragons advances to the second round, to meet either The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers or This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown vs. Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem

Continuing with the bottom half of Bracket Five of the Battle of the Books, we have The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown going up against Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Devil's Nebula: Abaddon paperback, June 2012, 350 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Eric Brown is the author of over two dozen science fiction books and is a two-time winner of the British Science Fiction Award. The Devil's Nebula is the first volume in the Weird Space series. Brown has a second book in this series forthcoming, Satan's Reach, and further volumes are likely. Abaddon Books specializes in ongoing shared universe series, mostly fantasy and steampunk and zombies, but this new series is all space opera.

The Devil's Nebula takes place in a far-future universe, in which humans have battled an alien race called the Vetch. Ed Carew is the captain of the ship The Paradoxical Poet. His three-person crew has been dispatched to Hesperides, a former human colony evacuated when the Vetch captured this area of space. Their ostensible mission is to recover a rare piece of art inadvetently left behind, but a secondary objective is to find the wreckage of a mysterious spaceship that crashed on this world. When they arrive on Hesperides, Carew finds a Vetch ship has arrived ahead of them, looking for the same wreckage.

Deadfall Hotel: Solaris trade paperback, April 2012, 301 pages, cover art by John Kenn Mortensen. By my count, Steve Rasnic Tem is the author of eleven books, seven solo and four in collaboration with his wife Melanie, and a half-dozen chapbooks. His work emphasizes horror, but also includes a fair amount of fantasy and science fiction. He has won a World Fantasy Award, two Bram Stoker Awards, and two International Horror Guild Awards, among other honors.

The protagonist of Deadfall Hotel is Richard Carter, whose wife recently died when their house burned down. Richard was able to save their daughter Serena, and now he struggles to care for her while dealing with his own grief. A strange man named Jacob Ascher offers Richard the chance to succeed him as the manager of the Deadfall Hotel. The first 25 pages end with Richard and Serena arriving at the secluded hotel, which readers suspect is filled with supernatural presences.

The Battle: We have here two top-notch authors working at the top of their form, and now I'm supposed to try to justify putting down one of their books after only 25 pages.

Through 25 pages, The Devil's Nebula is engaging, fast-paced space opera. We have already had our first encounter with the bad-guy aliens, which ended in an interesting hint that maybe they aren't so bad after all, and maybe there's a greater threat lurking out there in the universe. At the same time, Brown has done a nice job of introducing the dynamic between his three human characters. I particularly like how Jed is the brash member of the crew, but when they get into a scrap, it's pint-sized Lania who suddenly steps forward to take charge.

The opening of Deadfall Hotel is by design less dramatic, as Tem hints at the strange nature of the Deadfall Hotel and slowly develops the relationship between Richard and Serena:

"Daddy?" came Serena's sleepy voice out of the back seat. "We're in the mountains already? Why didn't you wake me up?"

"They're not as close as they look, honey." But he wasn't really positive about that. . . .

"When I was little, I used to think all my good dreams floated up into the mountains," Serena said softly. "But the bad dreams, the nightmares, they floated down from the mountains, and through the city streets until they found the bedroom they were looking for. Isn't that funny, Daddy?"

On a sentence-by-sentence level, Deadfall Hotel is exquisitely written. Not that much happens in the first 25 pages, but the quality of writing by itself would be enough to get it past many first-round opponents. But unfortunatey for Tem, The Devil's Nebula is also very nicely written, and Brown has advanced the plot far enough in the opening section to get me engaged in the story. While both books are well done, that makes The Devil's Nebula a bit more difficult for me to put down.

THE WINNER: The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown

The Devil's Nebula moves into to the second round, where it will face Nightglass by Liane Merciel.

To see the whole bracket, click here.