Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, Second Round :: False Covenant by Ari Marmell vs. Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

We begin the second round of Bracket Six of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books with False Covenant by Ari Marmell going against Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after the first 50 pages.

False Covenant: Pyr hardcover, July 2012, 280 pages, cover art by Jason Chan. False Covenant is the second book in the Widdershins YA series. It reached the second round by defeating Vampire Empire: The Kingmakers by Clay & Susan Griffith.

False Covenant opened with an action scene in which our heroine Widdershins gets caught up in a robbery gone wrong. In the second 25 pages, we learn that Widdershins is returning to her criminal roots in hopes of saving her struggling tavern, the Flippant Witch. Adding to her problems, a mysterious creature is terrorizing the citizens of Davillon at night, and the Finders' Guild orders Widdershins to investigate. Meanwhile, a stranger named Evrard is looking for Widdershins. Before he finds her, the phantom-like creature finds him.

Earth Unaware: Tor hardcover, July 2012, 364 pages, cover art by John Harris. Earth Unaware is the opening volume in the First Formic War series, a prequel to Card's classic novel Ender's Game. It advanced to the second round by defeating The Snow by Ross S. Simon.

The first 25 pages of Earth Unaware consisted of a chapter from the point of view of Victor Delgado, a young engineer mining comets with his clan beyond the orbit of Pluto, who learns of an object decelerating toward the solar system, which may be an alien spacecraft. Now in the second 25 pages, we have a chapter following ambitious business leader Lem Jukes, who plans to steal the comet currently being mined by Victor's clan, to test his company's new "gravity laser." The beginning of chapter three shows some New Zealand soldiers being tested for an elite fighting force, including a young man named Mazer Rackham.

The Battle: Both False Covenant and Earth Unaware are entertaining and engaging through 50 pages.

Starting with False Covenant, Widdershins is a spunky YA protagonist, and the story is moving along briskly so far, making the book easy to read. There are some good hints of who the players in the tale will be, including the enigmatic character Evrard. But it might have behooved Marmell to give us a better sense through 50 pages what's at stake in this story, to make the book harder to put down.

Anyone familiar with Ender's Game has a pretty good idea what's at stake in Earth Unaware, and the early appearance of Mazer Rackham plays that up effectively. But the greatest strength of the book through 50 pages is the interesting and intricate way Card and Johnston present their characters. For example, Lem Jukes is determined to conduct a successful test of the gravity laser, as a stepping stone to wresting control of their corporation from his own father. He confronts the lead researcher Dr. Dublin about the instructions he received from Lem's father about Lem:

"He told me you were going to be the captain of the ship," said Dublin. "He called you 'most capable.'"

A compliment from Father? A sign of the apocalypse. Of course Father was probably just trying to put Dublin at ease about the crew.

"Did he advise you to take any precautions on my account?" asked Lem. "Did he in any way suggest that you were to take care of me? Look out for me? Keep and eye on me?"

Dublin looked confused. "Your father cares for your well-being, Mr. Jukes. You can't fault him for that."

"A yes or no, Dr. Dublin. Did he give you special instructions regarding me?"

Dublin was taken aback. He fumbled, searching for the right words, trying to remember. "He said I was to make sure nothing happened to you."

So there it was. Undercut by Father again.

The paranoia seeping out of this passage makes Lem an intriguingly unlikeable character, which makes me want to keep reading.

THE WINNER: Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

Earth Unaware advances to the semifinals, to face either After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress or Pazuzu's Girl by Rachel Coles.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: False Covenant by Ari Marmell vs. Vampire Empire: The Kingmakers by Clay & Susan Griffith

We begin the first round of Bracket Six of the Battle of the Books with False Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) by Ari Marmell vs. The Kingmakers (Vampire Empire: Book Three) by Clay & Susan Griffith. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

False Covenant: Pyr hardcover, July 2012, 280 pages, cover art by Jason Chan. False Covenant is the second book in the Widdershins YA series. The first book, Thief's Covenant, competed in the Winter 2012 Battle of the Books, defeating Mark Hodder before falling to Stina Leicht. Marmell has written three other original fantasy novels as well as various tie-in works.

Widdershins, the heroine of False Covenant, is a skillful young thief in the medieval city of Davillon, with the minor god Olgun her constant companion. The book opens with Widdershins, in her alter ego as the young lady Madeleine Valois, attending a high society party hosted by Clarence Rittier, the Marquis de Ducarte. Widdershins is casing the place for a late-night robbery. But when she returns that night, she finds another band of thieves with the same plan, and the City Guard lying in wait. The opening pages also give us a glimpse of a high-ranking clergyman, Bishop Sicard, engaged in some surreptitious dealings.

Vampire Empire: The Kingmakers: Pyr trade paperback, September 2012, 391 pages, cover art by Chris McGrath. The Kingmakers is the third volume in the Vampire Empire series, which places vampires in a steampunk/alternate history universe with elements of romance. The Griffiths are a husband-and-wife writing team, who started out doing tie-in work, before launching the Vampire Empire series.

The Kingmakers opens with trench warfare pitting the Equatorians, fiercely loyal to Empress Adele, against a vast horde of vicious vampires. In this universe vampires are powerful and have the ability to fly, but they can be killed by ordinary means, without need for a stake to the heart. Sirdar General Anhalt leads an Equatorian army, aided by the famous warrior Greyfriar (himself a vampire), bogged down outside Grenoble, France. The Empress herself comes to their aid, using her power of geomancy to fend off the attacking vampires. The Empress and Greyfriar are in love, but he cannot approach her while she uses geomancy. The Empress is determined to use her power to take the fight to her vampire adversaries.

The Battle: These are both sequels, so a key to this Battle will be which author(s) can settle me quickly into their novels' universe. False Covenant has an advantage going in, that I read 50 pages of the previous volume, which I found most interesting——it took a spirited effort by Stina Leicht to knock Thief's Covenant off.

False Covenant also has an effective opening, quickly reintroducing us to Marmell's charming young protagonist Widdershins, with some amusing banter between Widdershins and her companion deity Olgun. Marmell gives us a good action scene early on, while unobtrusively summarizing his setting of Davillon and its complex web of competing religions. Marmell tells the story with a fun narrative voice. I especially liked that in the opening scene, party guests are scandalized by the incompetent servants working for the Marquis, which later proves a clever hint that the servants were really disguised Guardsmen laying a trap for Widdershins and her fellow thieves.

The Kingmakers has a good premise: steampunk with lots of vampires. We only get a glimpse of the Empress in the opening passage, but it is already obvious she is an admirably strong-willed female character. But the initial 25 pages do not give me a very good sense of what vampires actually add to the authors' steampunk setting. There is a horrific battle scene in the early pages, but is it any more horrific than real trench warfare? Placing a vampire battle in World War I trenches doesn't make much sense to me——what is the trench for when the vampires can fly and they don't shoot at you?——and has the unfortunate effect of making the fight seem familiar instead of strange.

THE WINNER: False Covenant by Ari Marmell

False Covenant advances to the second round, to take on either The Snow by Ross S. Simon or Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Winter 2012, Second Round :: Thief's Covenant by Ari Marmell vs. And Blue Skies from Pain by Stina Leicht

We continue the second round with Thief's Covenant by Ari Marmell against And Blue Skies from Pain by Stina Leicht. The book I most want to continue reading after 50 pages will advance to the semifinals.

Thief's Covenant: Pyr hardcover, February 2012, 272 pages, cover art by Jason Chan. A young adult fantasy, Thief's Covenant reached the second round with a hard-fought first-round victory over Mark Hodder's Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon.

The story follows Adrienne Satti, aka master thief Widdershins. The first 25 pages were mostly flashbacks to when Adrienne was orphaned as a young girl, and when she was the only survivor of a gruesome attack on the upper class of her city of Davillon. In the second 25 pages, we see her in the guise of Widdershins, a medieval cat-burglar, as she steals a tidy sum from a wealthy gentleman. She is assisted by Olgun, one of the 147 gods that intervene in this world, who for some reason is quite attached to her.

And Blue Skies from Pain: Night Shade trade paperback, March 2012, 359 pages, cover art by Min Yum. And Blue Skies from Pain got here with a win over Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Boneyards in the first round.

This is the sequel to Of Blood and Honey, in which a supernatural conflict involving the Catholic Church plays out against the background of the turmoil in Northern Ireland in the 1970's. Catholic priest-warriors have been battling dangerous fallen angels for generations. But one of the priests, Father Murray, believes they don't need to be enemies of one type of supernatural creature, the shapeshifting Fianna. At the beginning of the second book, Father Murray has persuaded the Church to agree to a truce. A key condition is that our protagonist Liam, half-mortal son of one of the Fianna, has agreed to be tested to help the Catholic warrior-priests determine if they really can co-exist peacefully with the Fianna. The truce is fragile.

The Battle: I'm enjoying both of these books very much.

In Thief's Covenant, Adrienne is a good, spunky protagonist, and there's a nice mystery to how the different phases of her life fit together. I am intrigued by what the 147 different gods in this world are up to. Marmell is also exploring the implications of social stratification in Davillon, which is an interesting theme for a YA book.

Because of all these strengths, I loved the first 25 pages of Thief's Covenant. However, the second 25 pages, which consisted mostly of Adrienne as Widdershins pulling off a heist, didn't work quite as well for me. The problem is with the god Olgun hanging over her shoulder. Olgun gives Widdershins someone to talk to, like the daemon Pantalaimon in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. But I didn't find the humorous banter between Widdershins and Olgun terribly funny, although that may be because it's aimed at younger readers. More importantly, Olgun's constant presence detracts from the dramatic tension, because we know if Widdershins gets in trouble, Olgun can get her out. Marmell hasn't told us what limitations there are to Olgun's powers, but hopefully he will soon, or perhaps he will introduce an antagonist god to make matters more difficult.

The opening scenes of And Blue Skies from Pain deal with the nuts-and-bolts of implementing a cease-fire between the Church and the Fianna, which I presume became possible through the events of the first book in the series. I love that, having arrived at a truce, Leicht doesn't hand-wave away the details of making the truce last. Instead, she dives into the politics of the situation, and manages to make them intriguing and believable.

Many of the preist-warriors are against the truce, either because they sincerely believe the Fianna are evil, or because they can't bear to accept that they have been killing innocents all these years. (It's hinted that there are similar misgivings on the other side of the cease-fire, but we haven't yet seen much of the Fianna other than Liam in the first 50 pages.) The priest "Inquisitor" doing the testing on Liam -- with an armed guard always at hand -- repeatedly refers to Liam as "it," unwilling to regard him as a person with a soul.

Throughout the examination, Liam is nervous, almost panicky, imagining that he has been betrayed and is about to be tortured. We soon realize the problem is not that Liam is prickly, but that he has grown up in a place where suspicion and distrust are learned from an early age. The similarities and differences between this supernatural conflict and the more familiar disputes in Northern Ireland are fascinating:

Father Murray said, "You're safe here."

"Are you mental?" Can't defend myself, Liam thought. Can't shape-shift. Trapped. Was stupid to have come here. A powerful need to run tightened his muscles. The reasonable part of himself knew he was over-reacting. Why was he so terrified of an Inquisitor and not the spotty boy with the Kalishnikov? Then it came to him. Loyalist hatred was mundane. Terrible as it was, he understood it. Loyalists hated anyone who wasn't a Loyalist. Every Irish Catholic knew that. He'd grown up with such things. On the other hand, murderous Inquisitors, demons, and Fey were aspects of a strange world he knew little about -- a world with rules he didn't know, a world he'd been dragged into against his will.

There follows some delicious dialogue where Father Murray intimidates the Inquisitor into being less combative, through a combination of reasoning and rank. The first 50 pages then end with a tense conversation between Father Murray and his superior Bishop Avery, discussing how to make peace palatable to others in the Church. It seems likely that the right solution to this conflict may not be the feasible solution, which I expect will create a moral dilemma for both Father Murray and Liam.

Based on the first 50 pages, I would recommend both of these books. But if I could only continue reading one of them, I know which I would choose.

THE WINNER: AND BLUE SKIES FROM PAIN by Stina Leicht

And Blue Skies from Pain moves into the semifinals, to battle either Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear or The Pillars of Hercules by David Constantine.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Winter 2012, First Round :: Thief's Covenant by Ari Marmell vs. Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon by Mark Hodder

Eight of our sixteen entrants have competed in the first round. We begin the second half of the draw with Thief's Covenant by Ari Marmell against Burton & Swinburne in Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon by Mark Hodder. The book I most want to continue reading after 25 pages will advance to the second round in the Battle of the Books.

Thief's Covenant: Pyr hardcover, February 2012, 272 pages, cover art by Jason Chan. Not counting some media-related work, Thief's Covenant is Ari Marmell's fourth novel and his first foray into young adult fiction, part of Pyr's new line of YA science fiction and fantasy.

The heroine of Thief's Covenant is Adrienne Satti, alias master thief Widdershins -- at least so says the book jacket; I haven't yet seen Adrienne as Widdershins in the first 25 pages. Instead, the book begins "two years ago," when Adrienne was the only survivor of a bloody attack on a group of the most rich and powerful citizens of the medieval city of Davillon, a rather gruesome opening for a young adult book. From there, the book goes backwards to "eight years ago," when Adrienne was a spunky young orphan. Finally, we come back to the present day to see Adrienne again socializing with the upper crust, under an assumed name.

Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon: Pyr trade paperback, January 2012, 386 pages, cover art by Jon Sullivan. This is the third of Mark Hodder's Burton & Swinburne adventures, steampunk set in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, involving real-life figures Sir Richard Francis Burton and poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. (It strikes me as a dicey proposition to use Richard Burton as a protagonist, since it invites comparison to Philip José Farmer's wonderful To Your Scattered Bodies Go.) I haven't read the first two Burton & Swinburne books, but they were generally well-received, including a Philip K. Dick Award for best paperback original for The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack.

Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon also opens by showing the protagonist at various points in time. But in this case, the different time periods do not correspond to the character's age; rather, we first encounter Richard Burton in the early 20th Century, which should be well after his death. First, we see him hiding in the grass some time after 1919, waiting for the chance to kill a man named Spring Heeled Jack. Next, Burton is in the middle of a bizarre battle in World War I, which bears little resemblance to our universe's version of that war. Finally, Burton is at a party in 1863, where an attempt will be made against his life. This is shortly before his departure on a second trip to find the headwaters of the Nile, i.e., the Mountains of the Moon, in search of a McGuffin. At the party, Burton explains to another character how history has been altered by the time traveler Spring Heeled Jack, which serves to catch readers up on where our story stands after two volumes.

Although it's not going to play a role in my decision here, it bears mentioning that the Burton & Swinburne series are marvelous-looking books, both in terms of Jon Sullivan's excellent cover art and Nicole Sommer-Lecht's striking design.

The Battle: This is a tough one -- there is plenty to like about both these books.

Starting with Thief's Covenant, Ari Marmell skillfully uses scenes out of chronological sequence to get us interested in multiple different aspects of Adrienne's life. How did she climb from an orphan to high society? Who was behind the slaughter of two years ago, and what happened next? What's Adrienne doing now?

Marmell also quickly gets us interested in the religion of this world, in which people worship the 147 different gods who have joined in a pact to watch over humanity. It seems these gods can become directly involved, as one of them interacts with Adrienne in the book's prologue. There is a terrific scene where child Adrienne asks a nun at her orphanage basic questions about these gods, things she should already know. At first, it seems a clumsy way for Marmell to infodump for the reader, but then we realize Adrienne is just setting up the nun:

The girl nodded slowly as though she understood, though Sister Cateline doubted that was the case. The nun had just begun to turn away, when --

"Can I ask one more question?"

Cateline repressed a sigh. "One more. Then you need to eat your supper."

"If Davillon has so many gods, how come not one of them got off his butt and saved my mommy and daddy?!"

Through 25 pages, the strength of Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon is the way-cool steampunk imagery:

To his left, the crest of a bloated sun was melting into a horizon that quivered in the heat, and ahead, in the gathering gloom, seven towering, long-legged arachnids were picking their way through the red weed that clogged no-man's-land. Steam was billowing from their exhaust funnels, pluming stark white against the darkening purple sky.

Harvestmen, he thought. Those things are harvestmen spiders bred to a phenomenal size by the Technologists' Eugenicist faction. No, wait, not Eugenicists--they're the enemy--our lot are called Geneticists. The arachnids are grown and killed and gutted and engineers fit out their carapaces with steam-driven machinery.
* * *
One of the gigantic vehicles had become entangled. Scarlet tendrils were coiling around its stilt-like legs, snaking up toward the driver perched high above the ground. The man was desperately yanking at the control levers in an attempt to shake the writhing plant from his machine. He failed. The harvestman leaned farther and farther to its left, then toppled over, dragged down by the carnivorous weed.

A major point of emphasis in Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon is playing around with historical figures; for instance, Burton meets a journalist who turns out to be H.G. Wells, then Oscar Wilde randomly appears as a cabin boy, etc. etc. Unfortunately for Hodder, I've always found it distracting when real people appear in cameo roles like that. I prefer alternate histories where the main characters are nobody I've heard of (e.g., Dick's The Man in the High Castle), so the focus is on how the world is different in this timeline, rather than how certain individuals end up doing different things. That is admittedly a subjective reaction. There are plenty of readers who get a big kick out of this sort of thing, and if you're one of them, you should definitely give Mark Hodder a try.

This is a very close call, but in the end, Thief's Covenant is the book that introduced me to the character I'm most interested in following further.

THE WINNER: THIEF'S COVENANT by Ari Marmell

Thief's Covenant moves on to battle either Stina Leicht's And Blue Skies from Pain or Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Boneyards in the second round.

To see the whole bracket, click here.