Battle of the Books, Winter 2012, Championship Round :: Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint vs. Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear

The championship match of the inaugural bracket of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books pits Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint against Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear. I've read to page 200 of both books (a little more than halfway through both), and the championship of the Winter Bracket goes to the book I most want to continue reading to the end. The winner will be featured in a full review at Fantastic Reviews (we'll also try to arrange an interview with the author), and will be eligible for the overall 2012 Battle of the Books Championship at the end of the year.

Eyes Like Leaves: Tachyon trade paperback, February 2012, 313 pages, cover art by Lauren Kelly Small. Eyes Like Leaves advanced to the finals by defeating When We Were Executioners by J.M. McDermott in the first round, then The Scar by Sergey & Marina Dyachenko in the second round, and finally Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card in the semifinals.

Eyes Like Leaves is a secondary world fantasy in a land similar to ancient Ireland. The wizard Tarn and his mentor Puretongue, who have the ability to change shape, are attempting to defend their land against the forces of the Icelord, who wishes to bring an endless winter. So far, Tarn has met up with Carrie, a young woman unaware of her own magical abilities, and the two of them have been hotly pursued by various "stormkin." Meanwhile, Puretongue and another young protégé travel by sea to meet them.

Range of Ghosts: Tor hardcover, March 2012, 334 pages. Range of Ghosts got to the finals with wins over Jack of Ravens by Mark Chadbourn in the first round, then The Pillars of Hercules by David Constantine in the second round, and finally And Blue Skies from Pain by Stina Leicht in the semifinals.

Range of Ghosts is the first volume of an epic trilogy in a setting inspired by the ancient Mongol Empire. Our hero Temur is in exile, after his brother was on the losing side of a war of succession against their uncle, but the uncle still wants Temur dead. Ghosts summoned by a sorcerer working for the uncle have abducted Temur's lover, and he has traveled to the "Range of Ghosts" to retrieve her. He is destined to meet up with Samarkar, a woman who has willingly undergone surgery leaving her barren, so she can train to be a wizard.

The Battle: I judge the Winter 2012 Battle of the Books a great success, because it resulted in me finding two excellent novels, both of which I highly recommend. Charles de Lint has long been one of the finest fantasists around, and Elizabeth Bear has joined him at the pinnacle of the genre.

Both Eyes Like Leaves and Range of Ghosts are exquisitely written throughout. Through the first three rounds, I've given numerous examples of the wonderful prose in both books -- click on the links above to read those samples. The sheer strength of the authors' writing has carried these two books to the finals. Because the quality of prose is so strong in both books, this battle will come down to which novel's story works best for me, now that I'm deeper into both books.

Both have engaging storylines, with appealing yet flawed main characters. I am enjoying both of them very much, and plan to finish them both. But, forced to choose, I must say that one of them is a bit more compelling to me, and I would be a bit more distraught if you pried it out of my fingers before I could finish. I think the difference comes down to two things.

First, while in Eyes Like Leaves, Charles de Lint makes effective use of Irish landscape and history and mythology, such as druids and shape-shifters, these are all story elements that are quite familiar to fantasy readers. Likewise, the evil lord seeking to bring an endless winter is a well-worn fantasy trope. It is to de Lint's credit that he combines these elements skillfully enough that the story never feels tired or derivative.

However, Range of Ghosts offers the more original fantasy world. I believe the main narrative is loosely based on the life of Timur, aka Tamerlane (1370-1405), but Elizabeth Bear has used his story as a springboard to create a unique landscape filled with unusual and fascinating fantasy elements. To take one of many examples, I love the way the moons in the night sky represent the heirs to the empire's throne, with a moon disappearing any time one of the emperor's descendants is killed -- and then suddenly all the moons disappear in favor of the single moon we know, when Temur crosses over the border to a neighboring land. Nearly every chapter has an interesting and unusual element like that.

Second, in Eyes Like Leaves, I love the main narrative thread involving Tarn and Carrie. There is a very nice sequence in the second hundred pages, for instance, where they have to shapeshift into the form of evil creatures to evade their pursuers, but then Tarn starts to lose himself in the role. But the sequences from the point of view of Puretongue and various side characters -- there are a surprising number of POV shifts in the second hundred pages -- are less compelling to me. In those other sequences, I was always anxious to get back to Tarn and Carrie.

There are no sections in Range of Ghosts that I feel any desire to hurry through. Over the second hundred pages, the novice female wizard Samarkar has emerged as just as important and engaging a character as Temur, with an interesting backstory. The sections from her point of view feature less action than Temur's, but they are equally absorbing. I'm also very interested in the glimpses of al-Sepehr, the dark sorcerer doing Temur's uncle's bidding, but clearly pursuing his own agenda. He is an intriguing, three-dimensional villain (or apparent villain), something that Eyes Like Leaves lacks.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Bear on a remarkable effort. I am confident that this time next year, Range of Ghosts will be on a very short list of my favorite novels of 2012. It is a most worthy winner in our inaugural bracket of the 2012 Battle of the Books.

THE WINNER: RANGE OF GHOSTS by Elizabeth Bear

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by to check out the Battle of the Books, and especially to the many participating authors who have commented here or blogged, tweeted, etc. about the contest.

If you've enjoyed this new format, you'll be happy to know that the review copies continue to pour in. We already have our next 16 books, and we will announce the bracket for the Spring 2012 Battle of the Books next week.

Battle of the Books, Winter 2012, First Semifinal :: Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint vs. Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card

The first semifinal contest in the 2012 Battle of the Books, Winter Bracket pits Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint against Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card. The winner will be the book I most want to continue reading after finishing the first 100 pages.

Eyes Like Leaves: Tachyon trade paperback, February 2012, 313 pages, cover art by Lauren Kelly Small. Eyes Like Leaves got here with wins in the first round over When We Were Executioners by J.M. McDermott and the second round over The Scar by Sergey & Marina Dyachenko.

Eyes Like Leaves is set in a fantasy version of ancient Ireland. The first 50 pages introduced us to the wizard Tarn and his mentor Puretongue, whose magical abilities include shape-shifting. Tarn has been sent to find Carrie, a young woman key somehow to defending the land from the "Icelord," who seeks to undo the longstanding balance with the Summerlord and bring an endless winter. At the end of the first 50 pages, Tarn had to transform into a dragon to defeat the wolves and "stormkin" chasing Carrie. This has utterly exhausted him, and now Carrie and the nomadic family of tinkers that has taken her in must defend themselves while Tarn is incapacitated.

Shadows in Flight: Tor hardcover, January 2012, 237 pages, cover art by John Harris / Macmillan audio, 7 hours, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki and cast. Shadows in Flight reached the second round by defeating Thomas K. Carpenter's Gamers in the first round and Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson in the second round.

Shadows in Flight is the newest entry in the Ender universe. Ender's old friend Bean nears an untimely death from the runaway growth that is a side effect of the genetic manipulation that made him so brilliant. He has traveled on a near-lightspeed spaceship with his three children who share his condition, in hopes that a cure would be found on Earth in their absence, but to no avail. The first 50 pages focused on the terrible stress on their family from the disappointment and isolation. The next 50 pages turn outward, as they spot a huge spacecraft which they believe to be a slow Formic ship, a bugger hive sent into deep space before the war between Formics and humans. They stop to investigate.

The Battle: Asking which of these two books I most want to continue reading is rather academic -- I am going to finish them both, and nobody's going to stop me. But a winner must be declared . . .

Shadows in Flight is smoothly written, with a nice pace and good dialogue and characterization, albeit not quite to the level of Card's finest work, such as Speaker for the Dead and "Unaccompanied Sonata." I think Card made a good choice introducing another ship for Bean and his children to encounter; we needed an additional story element or the family tensions would have become tedious. But I'm not crazy about having the alien craft be a bugger ship. It doesn't add up -- the hive queens can all communicate anywhere telepathically, and Ender's hive queen in Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide was very clear that she was the only one left after the war. More importantly, bringing the Formics back into the story makes this book feel like a rehash of previous volumes.

A synopsis of the plot of Eyes Like Leaves through 100 pages may sound unspectacular, but by his gift with language de Lint is turning it into a most memorable story. For instance, in the section I've just read, Tarn's energy (or "taw") is badly depleted from his battle as a dragon, and Carrie must discover the magical ability she didn't know she had to help him:

She tried to relax, to remember the sensation when Kinn and Fenne had been playing their music, tried to recapture that instant when the music had changed into something different, deeper. Still music, still present, but quiet as an in-held breath, expectant, interwoven with wonder. . . .

She started, drew a quick breath, then it was thick upon her, a magic-filled quickening of her senses, a deep stillness, old and rounded, sharply new.

She focused on Tarn's features and saw his weakness with a piercing insight. It was though she could see through the pale flesh to the spirit inside--a spirit thinned and weakened, bruised and weary. It was her first deepseeing and though she didn't have a name for what she was doing, she understood how it worked. She leaned closer still, cupped Tarn's face in her hands, and breathed his name into the silence.

Through 50 pages, Tarn was already an excellent protagonist and the tinkers were a nice group of side characters; now in these scenes, Carrie emerges as an interesting figure as well. Meanwhile, de Lint also shows us Tarn's state as an exhausted shape-shifter from his point of view:

In the deepest holds of Tarn's taw, he was all the shapes he had ever worn. He was a multitude of configurations that watched each other with eyes of gold and grey and mauve--those that had eyes. They were distanced, one from the other, but in that distancing, there was a sense of elusive oneness, a unity that drifted just beyond remembrance, beyond recognition.

They were each Tarn, but each was unconscious of their former unity.

. . . And those eyes watched, each the other, watched, seeking the memory of that forgotten singleness, watched with eyes familiar, eyes that echoed the struggle to remember, eyes like the autumn leaves of the mythic stonewood tree--gold and grey and mauve.

From this taste of how de Lint conveys his tale, hopefully you can see that my summary--that Carrie discovers her magical ability in order to help Tarn--doesn't do the story justice.

The only fault I found in Eyes Like Leaves through the first two rounds was that the good-versus-evil conflict was lacking nuance. In the latest section, de Lint has addressed that by giving us a glimpse of the tension among the evil forces. They are not blindly following the Icelord, but rather bowing to his power at the moment, while some harbor long-term hopes of overthrowing him. I am interested to see how the dynamics on the bad guys' side play out, and I very much want to watch Carrie's continued development and her interactions with Tarn.

THE WINNER: EYES LIKE LEAVES by Charles de Lint

Eyes Like Leaves advances to the championship round, to face either And Blue Skies from Pain by Stina Leicht or Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear. We'll post the winner of that semifinal round tomorrow, then the championship on Thursday.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Winter 2012 :: Final Four

We are down to the Final Four in the Winter 2012 Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books:

Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint vs. Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card

And Blue Skies from Pain by Stina Leicht vs. Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear

A huge thank you to everyone who has taken an interest in this tournament. Hits at the blog are way up over the past month, and at least half the authors of books in the tournament commented on it at our blog or their own or at Facebook or Twitter. We're very glad folks seem to enjoy this new format. We know we're having a blast, and plan to continue with this format for the foreseeable future. We already have 14 books for the next bracket, so we'll be announcing our Spring Bracket shortly after the current Winter Bracket concludes. Authors and publicists, if you want your book included, you can find the rules and an address to send your book here.

As for the rest of this bracket, we will announce the Charles de Lint / Orson Scott Card winner on Monday, the Elizabeth Bear / Stina Leicht contest on Tuesday, and then crown a champion on Thursday, February 16.

Looking over the bracket, we have discovered a lot more good than bad. While not every book has been to my (Aaron's) tastes, they are all very capably written, including the two self-published books. The books I had to drop out in the second round were so good that we are considering doing full reviews of a couple of them -- or maybe even following up with a consolation bracket.

I am a bit surprised that the four books we named as the "seeded" books at the outset all ended up advancing to the Final Four -- I was expecting more upsets than that. But I suspect that has a lot to do with the composition of this particular bracket. It wasn't that hard to anticipate that Charles de Lint or Elizabeth Bear might come up with a pretty fair book. It looks like our next bracket will have fewer "big names," and thus should be harder to predict.

As with the March Madness tournament, the upside of not having a lot of upsets is that the Final Four features a very high level of competition. Charles de Lint, Orson Scott Card, Elizabeth Bear, and Stina Leicht? Who couldn't find something they enjoyed reading out of that group? Don't forget to check back next week when we announce the results!

Battle of the Books, Winter 2012, Second Round :: Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint vs. The Scar by Sergey & Marina Dyachenko

We begin the second round of the 2012 Battle of the Books, Winter Bracket with The Scar by Sergey & Marina Dyachenko against Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint. The winner will be the book I most want to continue reading after finishing the first 50 pages.

The Scar: Tor hardcover, February 2012, 336 pages, cover art by Richard Anderson. The Scar, by husband-and-wife authors Sergey and Marina Dyachenko, advanced to the second round by its first-round win over The Isis Collar by Cat Adams. The protagonist of The Scar is Egert, a brash womanizer and excellent swordsman in a proudly militaristic society.

In the opening 50 pages of the book, he arrogantly attempts to woo a beautiful university student away from her fiancé, who responds by challenging Egert to a duel. Egert is the much better fencer and plans to humiliate the man, but in the heat of the fight kills him instead. A mysterious stranger then challenges Egert, defeats him easily and slashes him across the face, leaving Egert with the eponymous scar. Egert soon feels his confidence slipping away, and by the end of 50 pages we suspect he has been cursed somehow.

Eyes Like Leaves: Tachyon trade paperback, February 2012, 313 pages, cover art by Lauren Kelly Small. Eyes Like Leaves got here by defeating J.M. McDermott's When We Were Executioners in the first round. World Fantasy Award-winner Charles de Lint wrote Eyes Like Leaves in approximately 1980, but it was not published at the time, in favor of de Lint's contemporary urban fantasies.

Eyes Like Leaves is high fantasy set in a place much like ancient Ireland. In the first 50 pages, we meet the wizard Tarn and his mentor Puretongue, who both have the power to change shape. The two wizards are perhaps the only hope of defeating Viking-like invaders led by the "Icelord," who is apparently bent on bringing a permanent ice age to the land. Tarn has been sent to find a young woman who is important to the struggle, although he does not know why -- and apparently neither does she.

The Battle: Both The Scar and Eyes Like Leaves have very interesting and engaging openings. I would be happy to keep reading either of them, but the rules of the contest force me to pick one.

It's difficult to find any fault at all in Eyes Like Leaves. Every sentence is beautifully composed, with a lovely symmetry to the ideas de Lint expresses. For instance, Tarn travels quickly by transforming into a swan, but this weakens him, so he regains his strength by spending some time as a tree.

Through 50 pages, Tarn is proving a compelling character. He is a very powerful wizard, yet still thinks of himself as a mere apprentice. When he tracks down the woman he is looking for, he finds her in the company of a charming family of tinkers, who distrust him. Annoyed, but unwilling to compel these good people against their will, Tarn turns into a unicorn and races off:

Tarn sped for miles, the wind sharp in his mane until he lost his anger in the four-footed drumming of his hooves. He galloped till the cool hand of reason wiped his anger away. Then he knew shame. . . . Fool, he named himself bitterly. Worse than a fool. He was a prideful boasting ass with scarcely an ounce left of the sense that Puretongue had instilled in him.

Tarn chastises himself, yet his display of power causes the tinkers to be on their guard, probably saving their lives when they are later attacked by a host of evil creatures. However, it will ultimately be up to Tarn, in a form even more impressive than his unicorn shape, to drive the creatures off. These initial skirmishes with the forces of evil make for good action sequences, but we know there is a much larger conflict to come.

If I had to try to find something to criticize in Eyes Like Leaves, it would be what I mentioned in the first round, that the story is built around a rather too tidy good-versus-evil conflict. But after 50 pages, I'm finding the opposite problem with The Scar. The Dyachenkos have perhaps done too good a job of making their protagonist a flawed character. In particular, they took me a bridge too far when they had Egert sniffing around after the fiancée of the man he killed, as if entitled to her as a prize:

Egert had been watching over the fiancée of the student he killed, though he himself did not know why. It is possible that he wanted to apologize and to express his sympathy, but it is more likely that he entertained certain vague hopes in regards to Toria. As a worshipper of risk and danger, he was accustomed to taking a relaxed approach to death, his own and others'. Should not the victor have a right to count on an allotment of the relinquished inheritance of his vanquished foe? What could be more natural?

OK, so this guy's a huge jerk. But this is by design; obviously, the Dyachenkos intend him to be a jerk. Egert is totally self-absorbed, but presumably he is going to go through experiences, starting with losing his next duel, that will force him to change and perhaps find redemption.

But Egert at least should have the decency to feel bad about killing the student in his duel. To then expect the guy's fiancée to fall into his arms makes him a little too contemptible to sympathize with at all. Even without that sympathy, I could be interested in Egert if I knew he had an important role to play in some larger conflict, but after 50 pages we don't know that -- we've had a glimpse of a devious organization created by a mad mage, but we don't have any idea what they're doing or how it might relate to Egert.

This is a minor complaint. Overall, I'm still enjoying The Scar and finding it well worth reading. But that slight wavering in my interest in the protagonist was enough to drop this battle to Eyes Like Leaves, which I'm finding extremely enjoyable and exquisitely written.

THE WINNER: EYES LIKE LEAVES by Charles de Lint

Eyes Like Leaves advances to the semifinals, to take on either Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card or Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson.

We'll be posting another second round result every other day until we're done.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Winter 2012, First Round :: When We Were Executioners by J.M. McDermott vs. Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint

Our first matchup of the Winter Bracket of the 2012 Battle of the Books pits J.M. McDermott's When We Were Executioners against Charles de Lint's Eyes Like Leaves. Per our contest rules, I have read the first 25 pages of both, and the winner will be the book I most want to continue reading.

When We Were Executioners: Night Shade trade paperback, February 2012, 232 pages, cover art by Julien Alday. This is the second book in the Dogsland Trilogy, after Never Knew Another, which received strong reviews last year. McDermott is also the author of Last Dragon (2008), Maze (forthcoming from Apex), and various short fiction and poetry.

Dogsland is a squalid, medieval society, which does not tolerate anyone with demon blood. The tale follows a priest and priestess, demon-hunting "Walkers" who wear wolfskins and can transform into wolves. They are pursuing Rachel Nolander, a half-demon nomad, tracking her using memories drawn from the dead skull of her former lover Jona. The book begins with a series of flashbacks to Jona's memories, which is a nice way to introduce the story and characters, although the effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that Never Knew Another began the very same way.

Eyes Like Leaves: Tachyon trade paperback, February 2012, 313 pages, cover art by Lauren Kelly Small. Charles de Lint has been one of the leading authors in the fantasy field since his first full-length novel appeared in 1984. He has published some 70 books and won the World Fantasy Award among many other honors. Because of this distinguished record, we named Eyes Like Leaves one of our four top seeds in the Winter 2012 Battle of the Books.

Eyes Like Leaves is high fantasy, combining Celtic and Nordic mythology, as mages in the "Green Isles" attempt to defend their land against Viking invaders and the dark presence supporting them. The book has an odd publication history. Charles de Lint wrote it in approximately 1980, before his novels began to sell. Eyes Like Leaves eventually sold to Ace Books, but de Lint and Ace decided not to publish it, focusing instead on his urban fantasies in a contemporary setting. This proved a successful strategy for de Lint's career, but resulted in Eyes Like Leaves falling by the wayside. Subterranean finally published a limited edition hardcover of the novel in 2009, which I never saw, so I decided to allow Tachyon's 2012 trade paperback edition into the Battle of the Books.

The Battle: Both When We Were Executioners and Eyes Like Leaves are secondary world fantasies written in a literary style, and both open with a series of flashbacks. Both authors strive to write in an elegant fashion, but in When We Were Executioners, McDermott's efforts at stylish writing often fall flat. He has, for instance, an unfortunate habit of repetition -- the opening line of the book, "I dream of dead men," is repeated five times in the first four pages, and it's just not a good enough line to carry that off. McDermott's choice of language tends to come across as self-conscious. Here is the first-person priestess, waking from a night of dreaming memories from Jona's skull:

I stretched. I walked into the early dawn. "I'm getting breakfast."

My husband ran on ahead into the forested places down the side of the little mountain.

Easier like this.

I paused to watch the sunrise. Every hill is a mountain dying or being born; every mountain is a hill upon a hill upon a hill. From where I stood, I could see over the trees to a rising sun. It looked like the hills were on fire.

I started a fire of my own. Without the wolfskin on my back I was cold, but I had human hands, and I could build fires. My husband yawned awake, flashing his predator teeth.

I don't understand what "Easier like this" means -- it's easier to get breakfast as a wolf? The bit about how "every mountain is a hill upon a hill upon a hill" is working hard to sound profound and not getting there. And how could her husband yawn awake, when we just read that he "ran on ahead"? Perhaps that's meant to suggest the passing of many days blending together, but if so it was unclear to me and interrupted the flow of my reading.

In contrast, de Lint's writing is elegant, but in a way that flows smoothly, serving the story rather than distracting from it. His use of language is superb right from the opening page, when our protagonist Tarn flashes back to when an old wizard announced that he wanted Tarn, then a street urchin, as his apprentice:

"Me?" he asked.

"You."

"But, why?"

"The reasons are unimportant. Are you willing to learn what I can teach you? It won't be an easy task."

"I'll try, but . . ." Tarn met the greybeard's clear-eyed gaze. "Are you sure you haven't mistaken me for someone else?"

"I am sure."

"When will we begin?"

The tree-wizard smiled. "We have already begun."

They left Tallifold that day, journeying north to where autumn touched the summer woods of Avalarn. The wind teased their cloaks with curious fingers. The sky dreamed blue above them. The woods whispered wise about them.

Listening, watching, Tarn began his lessons.

The line, "We have already begun," is simple but wise, in just the way McDermott attempted and failed with "hill upon a hill upon a hill." The bit where "the sky dreamed blue" is a better turn of phrase than I found anywhere in 25 pages from McDermott.

One advantage When We Were Executioners has over Eyes Like Leaves is an interesting ambiguity. After 25 pages of When We Were Executioners, I have no idea whether my sympathies should be with the demon-hunters or the demon-tainted, and I'm not sure there would be a clear answer even if I had read the preceding volume. In contrast, Eyes Like Leaves presents a standard good-against-evil conflict. I suspect this difference has much to do with when the books were actually written. In 1980, when de Lint was writing his novel, good-against-evil was generally how high fantasy was done; today, readers expect more shades of gray.

But this is not enough to overcome my preference for de Lint's skillful writing. Most importantly, de Lint's clever language always drew me into the story, instead of snapping me out of it as McDermott's often did. Perhaps When We Were Executioners suffers from being the middle book of a trilogy, especially since I haven't read the first book, but I did not regret putting it down after 25 pages, while I very much wanted to continue further into the story of Eyes Like Leaves.

THE WINNER: EYES LIKE LEAVES by Charles de Lint

Eyes Like Leaves will advance to meet either The Isis Collar by Cat Adams or The Scar by Sergey & Marina Dyachenko in the second round.

To see the whole bracket, click here.