Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, Second Round :: No Peace for the Damned by Megan Powell vs. Be My Enemy by Ian McDonald

Our last second round match of Bracket Six of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books has No Peace for the Damned by Megan Powell doing battle with Be My Enemy by Ian McDonald. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after the first 50 pages.

No Peace for the Damned: 47North trade paperback, July 2012, 252 pages, uncredited cover art. No Peace for the Damned is Megan Powell's debut novel and book one of the Magnolia Kelch urban fantasy series. It reached the second round with a win over The 13th Zookeeper by Bernd Struben.

The opening 25 pages of No Peace for the Damned introduced us to Magnolia Kelch, a young woman with remarkable abilities, including mind-reading and regenerating her body, even after horrible injuries. Magnolia has escaped from her evil and ambitious family and volunteered to join the Network, a secret organization aligned against her family. The second 25 pages give us more flashbacks to Magnolia's mistreatment by her family, all of whom despise her, in part because they fear she will become too powerful to control. Meanwhile, Magnolia is having trouble gaining acceptance by the other members of the Network, most of whom mistrust her motives.

Be My Enemy: Pyr hardcover, September 2012, 263 pages, cover art by John Picacio. Be My Enemy is the second volume in Ian McDonald's Everness young adult series, after Planesrunner, although it is not difficult to follow without having read the earlier book. Be My Enemy got here with a first-round win over Besieged by Rowena Cory Daniells.

Be My Enemy stars two different versions of teenager Everett Singh, from two different alternate universes. One Everett Singh, a crewmember of the airship Everness, is working furiously to try to get the ship out of a frozen wasteland alternate Earth, as a massive warship closes in on them. The other Everett has been modified by a strange alien race, adapted into the ultimate soldier. Both Everetts are intent on finding the airship-Everett's father.

The Battle: One thing I love about the Battle of the Books is it prompts me to sample a whole lot of great stuff that I probably would have missed otherwise. I had never heard of Megan Powell and am not all that intent on finding a new urban fantasy series to read, but so far No Peace for the Damned is most engaging and interesting. Meanwhile, I am certainly familiar with Ian McDonald, one of the leading SF authors working today, but I probably would have been more inclined to read some of his adult books that I've missed, rather than his new YA series. Yet judging from the first 50 pages of Be My Enemy, this series compares favorably with McDonald's best work, which is saying quite a lot.

Through 50 pages, No Peace for the Damned is flowing very smoothly, and Megan Powell has done a marvelous job of generating sympathy for her main character Magnolia Kelch. Magnolia has an impressive array of abilities——mind-reading, telekinesis, becoming invisible——and yet she very much still seems the underdog, because her entire powerful family is aligned against her, while most of the members of the Network are also hostile to her. I am quite interested to see how she settles into the group, and how she combats her delightfully malicious family. There is also a potential romance brewing between Magnolia and one of the other members of the Network, but I'm less interested in that, because Powell has so far given no reason for Magnolia's attraction to the guy other than his looks.

Meanwhile, the opening of Be My Enemy is slam-bang awesome. Both Everett characters are engaging, and the similarities and differences between them are most interesting. McDonald also lets us see enough of the other characters around them to pull us into the story. The characters surrounding the Everett out on the ice are a very likeable group, particularly the captain and her spunky young daughter, who get to star in a terrific aerial battle in the second 25-page section. The characters the other Everett are encountering are a dangerous, perhaps trecherous lot, while the aliens' purposes are enigmatic. The latter Everett has so far retained his own personality through the physical changes he has undergone, but it will be a challenge for him to maintain that as he works alongside this ruthless group.

It's always a test whether a sequel can pull me into the story quickly enough to do well in the Battle of the Books. It's a testimony to Ian McDonald's skills that I'm fully enjoying Be My Enemy, while at the same time anxious to go back and read the prequel Planesrunner. No Peace for the Damned is off to a solid start, but Be My Enemy is the book that already has me fully absorbed in the story.

THE WINNER: Be My Enemy by Ian McDonald

Be My Enemy advances to the semifinals, where it will take on Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey, aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: The 13th Zookeeper by Bernd Struben vs. No Peace for the Damned by Megan Powell

The penultimate match-up of the first round of Bracket Six of the Battle of the Books has The 13th Zookeeper by Bernd Struben taking on No Peace for the Damned by Megan Powell. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The 13th Zookeeper: Strider Nolan trade paperback, February 2012, 303 pages, cover art by Azim Akberali. Bernd Struben was born in Holland but raised in the United States. The 13th Zookeeper is Struben's second novel after 40 Years (2008). He has also co-edited the anthologies Visions Vol. 1 and Visions Vol. 2, to which he contributed stories.

In The 13th Zookeeper, the planet of Zooearth has been terraformed to resemble prehistoric Earth and populated with Earth fauna, including primitive humans. Twelve zookeepers and a host of automated systems keep watch over the planet. Auren Bilder is a rich slacker, appointed as a zookeeper at his family's behest to save them the embarrassment of his presence in galactic high society. In the opening chapters, Bilder tracks down a poacher on Zooearth, while elsewhere in the galaxy a group of scoundrels discusses the possibilty of stealing valuable resources from Zooearth.

No Peace for the Damned: 47North trade paperback, July 2012, 252 pages, uncredited cover art. No Peace for the Damned is the debut novel of Megan Powell, who previously placed several stories in semipro publications (mostly from 2000-2003) and edited the anthology The Witching Hour (which published one of Nnedi Okorafor's earliest stories). No Peace for the Damned is the first in the Magnolia Kelch urban fantasy series. The sequel, No Love for the Wicked, is due out in August 2013.

The heroine of No Peace for the Damned is Magnolia Kelch, a young woman with extraordinary talents, including the ability to read minds and to regenerate herself even after gruesome injuries. As the book opens, she escapes from her evil and cruel family and volunteers to help the Network, a secret organization combating evil powers in the world, chief among them her family. Not surprisingly, several members of the Network distrust her motives.

The Battle: The Battle of the Books format causes me to sample many books I otherwise would not have opened. Here are two books I would not have read on my own, but I'm glad I gave them a try, for both start stronger than I had any reason to expect.

The 13th Zookeeper is an independent book with a frankly uninspiring premise: the protagonist has to defend a planet-sized zoo against an invasion of thieves. But for all that, the writing is solid through the opening 25 pages. I particularly liked the description of the band of ruffians we suspect will soon set off to Zooearth to do some crimes.

Unfortunately, my appreciation for The 13th Zookeeper is diminished by what I consider serious missteps in how the opening chapters are presented. First, our protagonist Auren Bilder discovers a poacher on Zooearth. Instead of capturing him to serve what, we are told, would be a two-year prison sentence, Auren instead uses the fellow's own poaching weapons against him, murdering the guy brutally and in cold blood. Struben has given readers no reason to believe Auren——who describes himself as lazy and certainly does not come across as an antihero——would do such a vicious thing, and absolutely no reason for us to approve.

Then we have a chapter following Captain Zacharia Thames and his band of ruffians. For most of this chapter the group seemed to be presented as lovable rogues. But then they discuss the possibility of abducting human beings from Zooearth for slave trafficking. So that's contemptible, and at the end of 25 pages I have no characters I can root for, and so not much desire to keep reading.

In contrast, No Peace for the Damned also gives us some very evil antagonists, but it's clear from the outset that they are evil; meanwhile, Magnolia Kelch is a most likeable protagonist. There is a harrowing flashback to some of the horrible treatment she received from her own family, which simultaneously cements our dislike of them and our sympathies for her.

That's not to say all the characters break into simple good-guy/bad-guy categories. Rather, some of the members of the Network are so suspicious of Magnolia that, from her perspective, they can be seen as adversaries. Yet their suspicions are understandable, in light of their own experiences with Magnolia's family. Those suspicions are also a barrier between Magnolia and a potential love interest.

So we have likeable people facing deadly antagonists, even as the good guys are in conflict with each other, through no fault of their own——that's a story I'd like to read more of.

THE WINNER: No Peace for the Damned by Megan Powell

No Peace for the Damned advances to the second round, to take on either Be My Enemy by Ian McDonald or Besieged by Rowena Cory Daniells.

To see the whole bracket, click here.