Battle of the Books, Summer 2012, Second Round :: Faith by John Love vs. The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis

Our initial second round match of the Summer 2012 Battle of the Books pits Faith by John Love against The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis. The winner will be the book I most want to continue reading after the first 50 pages.

Faith: Night Shade Books trade paperback, January 2012, 373 pages, cover art by Adam Paquette. Faith, a science fiction space opera, is the first novel by British author John Love. Faith advanced to the second round by defeating My Vacation in Hell by Gene Twaronite.

A single unidentified, seemingly invincible space ship called Faith has been making unexplained raids on systems in the Commonwealth.

In the first 25 pages, Faith blew up a cruiser defending the Bast solar system, leaving one mortally wounded survivor. Then in the Anubis system, Faith took control of an automated freighter convoy. The military cruiser Wulf was disintegrating freighters to prevent Faith from crash landing them onto a moon base.

After the shrouded ship Faith passes, and Wulf turns to follow. The remaining freighters stop. Faith doesn't attack undefended civilian targets. But She faces and destroys Wulf.

Commander Foord and First Officer Thahl of the Outsider class space ship Charles Manson are ordered to defend the Horus system from Faith. They know what happened at Bast and at Anubis. They’re also aware of recent events in the Isis system, where five warships and the Outsider ship Sirhan encountered Faith. Faith easily disabled all the Isis ships. Sirhan picked up the survivors and left. Then Faith uncharacteristically subjected the city of De Vere to a smelly and humiliating, but not deadly, attack. Commander Ansah of the Sirhan, a former love interest of Commander Foord’s, is charged with desertion and cowardice. The book relates Ansah’s trial.

Once in the Horus system, Foord visits Thahl’s Sakhran (non-human) home.

It’s stressed that only an Outsider class ship fighting alone and unconstrained has a chance against Faith. The Outsider ships are outside the normal command structures, and crewed by outsiders, including sociopaths and psychopaths.

The Coldest War: Tor Books, July 2012, 251 pages, volume two of The Milkwood Triptych, cover art by Chris McGrath. The Coldest War is a fantasy alternate history book. The Coldest War got here by edging out Fair Coin by E.C. Myers in the first round.

British warlocks and a handful of Nazis with superhuman abilities powered by batteries secretly fought in World War II. The Soviet Union took over most of Western Europe. Britain remains a free country. The year is 1963.

In the first 25 pages, brother and sister Gretel and Klaus escaped from a high security Soviet research facility with some help from their superhuman abilities. In England, Reinhardt, whom the children call the Junkman, was trying to reverse engineer a battery to regain his special powers. William Beauclerk, younger brother of the Duke of Aelred, apparently did wicked things for Britain during the war.

When Klaus and Gretel arrive in London, Gretel, who is a seer, wants to go to a rummage sale. There they run into Reinhardt, their former Nazi associate. Reinhardt reluctantly leads Klaus and Gretel to his junky flat. Gretel shows Reinhardt that she has a blueprint for the batteries, something Reinhardt desperately wants. Gretel rips the blueprint and tells Reinhardt that he can earn the pieces by doing errands for her.

Raybould Marsh was formerly a British MI6 spy. He and his wife Liv have grown apart and their marriage is stressed by their caring for their severely impaired son. Marsh drinks alone in the pub until he’s belligerent and gets thrown out.

The Battle: We have a military space opera set sometime in the future going against book two of a fantasy alternate history series set in a different not too distant past.

Faith gets a brownie point for outrageously having a posh city sprayed with synthesized sewage. The Coldest War gets a brownie point for speculating a Soviet space station, and for Marsh having Haggard books stashed in his garden shed hideout.

Faith upped its game this round, but emotions seemed held in check. Ansah showed mainly indifference at her trial, and seemed resigned to her fate. Foord gave his concerns for Ansah their allotted time.

More emotions were at play in The Coldest War. Klaus realizes that he never truly understood what freedom meant. Reinhardt gets ticked off by Klaus and Gretel. Marsh rages at the world for what his life has become.

I’m curious about the next encounter with the mysterious ship Faith. But the richer setting and deeper emotions displayed in The Coldest War, despite my lack of knowing the entire back story due to my starting this series with book two, were enough to overcome Faith in this battle.

THE WINNER: THE COLDEST WAR by Ian Tregillis

The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis will advance to meet either Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper or Taft 2012 by Jason Heller in the semifinals.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

Following up on last week's Hobbit post, the Book of the Week is the first American paperback of The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, with cover art by Jack Gaughan. This is the infamous "pirated" edition, released by Ace Books in May 1965.

Ace initially did not pay Tolkien or his British publisher for the rights to Lord of the Rings, believing the books had unwittingly fallen into the public domain in the United States, due to the excessive number of copies imported here from Britain. (The validity of Ace's position apparently turned on whether one considers a book bound in the U.S. containing pages printed in the U.K. to be an imported edition.) Thus, the Book of the Week contains no copyright notice at all.

Ballantine subsequently published the authorized (and revised, so as to resurrect the copyright) paperback editions and launched a public relations campaign against Ace, with Tolkien actually comparing Ace Books to his villain Sauron. Ace relented and agreed to pay Tolkien for its edition and not to print further copies, thus assuring that the Ace editions would become the copies coveted by subsequent collectors.

Next week: the Ace edition of The Two Towers.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: The N-Body Solution by Sean Williams

My Story Recommendation of the Week is for "The N-Body Solution" by Sean Williams, the second SROTW from the anthology Armored, edited by John Joseph Adams.

The best science fiction can inspire awe with galaxy-spanning concepts, while simultaneously pulling the reader into the story through the characters' personal dramas. "The N-Body Solution" is a wonderful example.

"The N-Body Solution" is set far in the future, as we learn on the opening page, when the first-person narrator Alex enters a bar to get "as plastered as the ancients," and describes the place as containing "humans, sub-humans, post-humans, poly-humans——every category I'd ever heard of, plus some types that probably weren't human at all."

At the heart of the story is "The Loop," a series of matter transmitters left behind by a vanished alien race, which allow you to step from one world directly onto another. Each transmitter, however, is one-way; you cannot turn around and retrace your steps. But the name "The Loop" implies that if you keep going forward, eventually you'll come back to where you started.

Except that on Cyernus, Loop Junction 163 is broken. It appears to be in working order, but when you step into the "wormcaster," you're still on Cyernus. Cyernus is a dismal little world, and people who expected to have a whole galaxy ahead of them to explore do not react well to finding themselves trapped there. The suicide rate is high.

On Cyernus Alex encounters Enforcer Ei, who has a female voice, but it's hard to know for sure, since she never removes her powerful mech suit. The failure of Loop Junction 163 affects Alex and Ei in a similar way——it keeps them from outrunning their pasts.

The ultimate explanation for what has gone wrong with The Loop is simple and elegant, one of those things that seems immediately obvious after you learn what it is. Equally important, the character development of Alex and Ei, and how their encounter plays out on an individual level, is most satisfying.

Sean Williams is perhaps the most decorated Australian author of science fiction and fantasy ever, with eight Aurealis Awards and seven Ditmar Awards. He is equally adept writing solo work, collaborations, and media tie-ins (his Star Wars work has hit #1 on the New York Times best-seller list). He is also a favorite of our book group after hanging out with us late into the evening one night during the Denver Worldcon, as we discussed his outstanding novel The Crooked Letter. "The N-Body Solution" demonstrates that, even after 35 books, the quality of his writing remains as strong as ever.

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

The Book of the Week is The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I used to do "Book of the Week" posts highlighting some of the volumes from my personal book collection, in which I take absurd pride. I ran out of gas (but I sure as hell didn't run out of books) about three years ago——click on the "Book of the Week" tag if you want to sample some of the old posts——but I felt compelled to resurrect the Book of the Week today, when I read that this is the 75th anniversary of the original release of The Hobbit.

As any regular reader of this blog (and pretty much everyone else) already knows, The Hobbit is one of the most beloved classics of modern fantasy, and its author J.R.R. Tolkien arguably the most important fantasist of the Twentieth Century. Sadly, I wasn't around in 1937 to pick up the first edition of The Hobbit, which now runs to tens of thousands of dollars on the collectors' market. But I'm pleased at least to have the first American paperback, published by Ballantine Books in 1965, cover art by Barbara Remington.

Note that this cover has very little to do with the story of The Hobbit——you will search the text in vain for any mention of the ostrich creatures or the goofy-looking lion that appear on the front of the book. Tolkien particularly disliked the lion, and at his request it was airbrushed out of later printings. Artist Barbara Remington had not yet read The Hobbit when she did the cover. This is not quite so irresponsible as it sounds; Ace Books had recently beaten Ballantine to the American market with unauthorized paperback editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Ballantine rushed The Hobbit to press so as to forestall another pirated Ace edition.

For the next Book of the Week entry, I'll show you the unauthorized Ace edition of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Battle of the Books, Summer 2012, First Round :: Casting Shadows by J. Kelley Anderson vs. The Mongoliad: Book One by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear & five others

This battle, the last one in first round of the Summer 2012 Battle of the Books, features Casting Shadows by J. Kelley Anderson going against The Mongoliad: Book One by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, E.D. deBirmingham, Erik Bear, Joseph Bassey and Cooper Moo. The winner will be whichever book I most want to keep reading after the first 25 pages.

Casting Shadows: World Castle Publishing, trade paperback, 230 pages, February 2012, cover art by Rhea Ewing. J. Kelley Anderson is a US writer. Casting Shadows, his first novel, is a contemporary, dark urban fantasy. The first 25 pages covers a little over three chapters.

Edward Kelly, who is in his mid-twenties and living in a small town in Ohio, apparently wanted revenge for the murder of his sister and the deaths of his parents, so he got involved in malevolent magic. On a rainy night, Edward summons a servant into a body buried in the local cemetery. The creature becomes a black skeleton with dark flames in his eyes. Edward calls him Vincent.

Edward orders Vincent to kill the cemetery groundskeeper and his wife. But Vincent does nothing because he senses that Edward didn’t really want to hurt them. The groundskeeper thinks Edward is acting weird so he calls the police. Edward walks home with Vincent following. Edward is surprised that skeletal Vincent can talk to him telepathically, and is amazingly rational. Police Officer Michael Miller drops by Edward’s house and cusses out Edward for being in the graveyard. The policeman, Michael, is an old school buddy of Edward’s, and probably his only friend.

Edward needs to contact Seth, his unseen black magic teacher. Edward lights ritually prepared logs in the fireplace. Edward communicates with Seth through the fire. Seth is upset that Edward didn’t start a killing spree. Seth attacks Edward with blue flames. Vincent rescues his Master and battles Seth. When Edward is knocked unconscious, he dreams of two young girls and their grandmother. The grandmother has a skeletal helper that looks strangely like Vincent.

The Mongoliad: Book One: 47 North, trade paperback, 448 pages. The Mongoliad was originally released in a serialized format online. Two more books are forthcoming in the series. Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear are authors well known for their many works of speculative fiction and science fiction. Mark Teppo is the author of an urban fantasy series. E.D. deBirmingham has written historical fiction. Joseph Brassey teaches medieval fighting techniques. Erik Bear has written for a video game and Copper Moo has written magazine articles. The first 25 pages covers a chapter and a half.

The year is 1241, months after the Battle of Legnica where the armies of Christendom were decisively defeated by the Mongols. Near Legnica, which is now in Poland, a woman messenger/spy spots a group of men near the ruins of a monastery. They are training with swords and bows. They appear to be the knights of Shield-Brethren whom is she is seeking. She is cornered by their sentries. Feronantus, an older man who seems to be in charge, recognizes her as one of the Bindings, not a Mongol. She informs the men that Illarion, a friend of theirs, is hurt and she can lead them to him.

Meanwhile, in Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire, Ögedei Khan, Khan of Khans, the third son of and successor to Genghis Khan, is in his palace. His brother Chagatai Khan has sent an emissary because he’s rightfully worried about Ögedei’s drinking. Ögedei tells his wives that he dreams of riding a strong pony across the grassy steppes instead of talking to an endless parade of bureaucrats and court officials.

The Battle: Casting Shadows had a uphill battle against The Mongoliad: Book One.

In Casting Shadows, Edward abuses someone’s grandfather's corpse to make a skeletal servant and has murderous thoughts. That’s not typical protagonist behavior, especially for a character that’s apparently not all bad. I think that more should have been done to explain what drove Edward down this evil path. If Edward was somehow brainwashed by Seth, that should have been better conveyed.

The layout of Edward’s house was described in more detail than I needed. Edward’s dream sequence, which was presented without introduction and printed in all italics, was initially confusing to me.

The Mongoliad, Book One in chapter one introduces an unusually high number of characters. There’s a fighter in monk’s robes, a hunter wearing animal skins, and a handsome knight in armor. There’s an Irishman, a man who looks like a Saracen, and men that by their names seem to be Hungarian and Norwegian. The woman messenger/spy apparently speaks, of all languages, Tocharian.

The portion of chapter two that I read encouraged me to look up Ögedei Khan on Wikipedia. He’s a historical figure.

Casting Shadows gave it a try, but it was simply outmatched by The Mongoliad. Even though I don’t know where the story of The Mongoliad is going yet, the writing is solid, the cast is interesting and I want to read more.

THE WINNER: THE MONGOLIAD: BOOK ONE by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear and five friends.

The Mongoliad, Book One will advance to meet The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen in the second round.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: The Green by Lauren Beukes

With Amy taking over the current Battle of the Books, I've had some time to catch up on my short fiction reading, which means the Story Recommendation of the Week is back for at least a few weeks. The first of our new SROTWs goes to Lauren Beukes for "The Green," from the anthology Armored, edited by John Joseph Adams.

Armored is a Baen Books anthology involving future (well, mostly future) soldiers in powered battle armor. I'm not a big military SF reader, so I wasn't sure this would be my cup of tea -- I should have had more faith in J.J. Adams. This is a very strong anthology. While there is enough straight military SF in here to satisfy readers looking for that, Armored features a surprisingly broad range of different styles and approaches to the "armor" theme. More importantly, it contains a lot of terrific writing. I'm going to highlight two of the individual pieces here, beginning with "The Green."

"The Green" has a military feel, but without any organized enemy. Rather, the story's armed soldiers are explorers and miners, searching for commercially useful alien flora in the tropical region they call the "Green":

Green is the wrong word for it. You'd only make that mistake from the outside. When you're in the thick of it, it's black. The tangle of the canopy blocks out the sunlight. It's the murky gloom after twilight, before real dark sets in. Visibility is five meters, fifteen with headlights, although the light attracts moths, which get into the vents. Pollen spores swirl around you, big as your head. Sulfur candy floss. And everything is moist and sticky and fertile. Like the whole jungle is rutting around us.

One remarkable form of native life is a type of slime mold that can animate the dead. Our characters' base is haunted by several of these reanimated corpses, which the corporate employer charmingly designates OPP's ("Organically Preserved Personnel") but the soldiers call Pinocchios.

I love the voice of this piece. Lauren Beukes creates a miserable setting, but the story is still fun to read, thanks to our first-person narrator and her wise-guy 'tude.

South African writer Lauren Beukes made a big splash with her first novel Moxyland, and her second novel Zoo City won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. She also writes for film, TV, comics, and non-fiction magazines, all of which we hope won't keep her from writing plenty more of her distinctive fiction.

Battle of the Books, Summer 2012, First Round :: The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen vs. Pure by Julianna Baggott

This second to last battle in the first round of the Summer 2012 Battle of the Books features The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen going against Pure by Julianna Baggott. The winner will be whichever book I most want to keep reading after the first 25 pages.

The Land of Decoration: Henry Holt and Company hardcover, 306 pages, April 2012. Grace McCleen is a UK author and singer-songwriter. The Land of Decoration, her first novel, won the Desmond Elliott novel prize for debut fiction published in Britain. The first 25 pages consists of nearly six unnumbered chapters titled by topic.

Ten-year-old Judith McPherson builds a model of a land in her bedroom out of various bits and pieces. She calls it the Land of Decoration, after a description of the biblical Promised Land. She and her father are Christian fundamentalists living in Wales. They read and ponder the Bible every day.

On the playground, bully Neil Lewis threatens to push Judith's head down the toilet, but then the school bell rings. Judith spends the next days of the weekend worrying about what will happen on Monday. She practices holding her breath, fearing her head will be pushed underwater. She wonders what dying is like and can’t eat much. She briefly considers telling her father, but she doubts he’d believe she’s in danger.

On Sunday morning, Judith goes with her father to the Meeting Hall, which is a large metal shed. Her father’s congregation numbers about thirty, including some eccentric characters. They have a visiting speaker, Brother Michaels, who talks about faith moving mountains and miracles working best with ordinary things. Judith is very impressed with Brother Michaels, and afterword, asks him for some advice.

Pure: Grand Central Publishing, February 2012, 431 pages. Julianna Baggott is a critically acclaimed bestselling author who has written seventeen books, including novels for adults and younger readers, and collections of poetry. Pure is the start of a projected series. The first 25 pages consists of a prologue and a little more than two chapters.

The detonations (nuclear bombs) occurred about nine years ago. Pressia was just six then and hardly remembers. The detonations caused many of the survivors to be melded with various objects. Pressia was holding a doll, and the doll's head became one of her hands. Her grandfather got a small plastic fan lodged in his throat.

Pressia and her grandfather live in the back of a ruined barbershop. Pressia makes windup toy butterflies to barter. The local military regime, called the OSR, requires that all sixteen year olds turn themselves in or be taken in forcibly. Pressia will soon turn sixteen. Her grandfather has built Pressia a sleeping cabinet with a trapdoor to hide in.

Meanwhile, there are other people, the Pures, who were protected from the damaging detonations inside their Dome. Partridge and the other teenage boys at the academy are subjected to "coding sessions" to give them new skills. Partridge is pulled out of a history class to meet with his father, Ellery Willux, a head scientist. Partridge is not at all close to his father. During their talk, his father implies that Partridge’s mother, who supposedly died helping survivors outside the Dome, may still be alive.

The Battle: This match-up features two books marketed, more or less, as fiction. But the thing is, I (Amy) very rarely read mainstream fiction. Both books feature young protagonists. In The Land of Decoration, Judith’s father believes that it’s only a matter of time until someone blows the world up. In Pure, it's after the bombs have dropped.

The Land of Decoration is contemporary fiction that, so far, lacks in any fantastic element. The book is told in first person in a quirky manner. Despite the young age of the protagonist, this book isn’t written for a YA audience. Judith relates some peculiar personal details about the people she encounters. Some of the fundamental religious aspects, which may be about Jehovah’s Witnesses, make me want to grind my teeth in dismay. Judith's worldview seems so by skewed her religious beliefs.

Pure definitely has fantastic elements, but I found some of them to be unsettling, such Pressia’s doll head hand with the blinky eyes. This book, which has two teenage protagonists living in oppressive near-future societies, appears to be targeted at the YA audience. Yet it's a science fiction book with elements that don’t seem scientifically logical. Maybe it would have worked better for me if it didn’t mention real places, such as Baltimore and DC. I liked the jump rope rhyme of the children outside the Dome.

For me, this battle is a bit of a toss up. Pure has the genre content, but the The Land of Decoration feels more emotionally believable. Both books are well written. Guess I'll pick to continue reading about the Christian pre-teen instead of the post-apocalypse teenagers.

THE WINNER: THE LAND OF DECORATION by Grace McCleen

The Land of Decoration will advance to meet in the second round either Casting Shadows by J. Kelley Anderson or The Mongoliad: Book One by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear & five others.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Summer 2012, First Round :: Destroyer of Worlds by Mark Chadbourn vs. Silver by Rhiannon Held

This battle in the Summer 2012 Battle of the Books features Destroyer of Worlds by Mark Chadbourn going against Silver by Rhiannon Held. The winner will be whichever book I most want to keep reading after the first 25 pages.

Destroyer of Worlds: Pyr Books trade paperback, May 2012, 382 pages, cover illustration by John Picacio, book three of Kingdom of the Serpent. Destroyer of Worlds was originally published in 2009 in the UK by Gollancz. This series is connected to Chadbourn's prior trilogies, The Age of Misrule and The Dark Age. Aaron sampled the first book of the Kingdom of the Serpent series, Jack of Ravens, in the Winter Battle of the Books, and the second book, The Burning Man, was in the Spring Battle of the Books. Mark Chadbourn is a UK writer of about seventeen novels. He has won two British Fantasy Awards for short fiction, and a handful of his novels have been British Fantasy Awards nominees.

Destroyer of Worlds commences with an eight page long summary of what has happened before. Good thing, because I haven’t read any of the books in this sequence of trilogies. From this recap I took, basically, that the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons have fought battles throughout the ages, back and forth through time, with and against various Gods, and they are brought back to life after death. I decided to call this section background information. For the first 25 pages I read the prologue and a small portion of chapter one.

The war to end all wars is coming, the battle against the Void. In Asgard, home of the Norse Gods, an army of terrible creatures is invading. Hunter, Brother of Dragons, advises the Aesir to run. Many Aesir die in battle before they are forced to abandon Asgard. Elsewhere in the Otherworld called the Far Lands, Mallory and Caitlin, Brother and Sister of Dragons, are in a great walled city under siege by Riot-Beasts. Young Virginia Dare, from the original Roanoke colony, promises to show Mallory a secret way into the Fortress of the Void.

Riding on the supernatural Last Train are five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. Church, the Champion of Existence, talks with Veitch, who was previously a villain. Nature spirit Laura, seer Shavi and Ruth chat in another carriage.

Silver: Tor book trade paperback, June 2012, 317 pages, cover photograph by Trevillion Images. Rhiannon Held is a US writer. Silver, an urban fantasy, is her first novel, and start of a planned series. The first 25 pages is conveniently exactly three chapters.

Werewolf Andrew Dare tracks, in both human and wolf form, an unknown lone werewolf in New Hampshire. The lone werewolf smells of silver and pain. When Andrew finds her she’s in human form, and she’s scrawny and acting crazy. She can’t change, her “wild self” is gone. She claims Death calls her Silver.

Andrew decides against driving Silver far in his car. He checks them into a hotel and phones the Boston sub-alpha, and tells him that he found the lone and she’s more than he bargained for. When Andrew returns with some fast-food, Silver unsuccessfully tries to escape the hotel room. She argues that “the monster” is coming. Later, when Silver is resting again, Andrew looks at Silver’s hurt arm and sees an odd series of red welts. Andrew phones his Roanoke pack alpha, tells him that he found her, and it appears that someone injected her, a werewolf, with a liquid form of silver.

The Battle: We have a contemporary urban fantasy going against a world-spanning, epic fantasy which is the third book in trilogy. Werewolves seem to be in danger in Silver. The universe seems in danger in Destroyer of Worlds. Strangely, both books mention the lost English colony of Roanoke and contain characters with the last name of Dare.

Destroyer of Worlds starts with a dire situation, an eminent universal final battle. There are a host of characters with awesomely complicated pasts. Unfortunately, the characters I met in the first 25 pages of this book didn’t succeed in drawing me emotionally into the story. Maybe I couldn’t quite relate to their situations. Destroyer of Worlds suffers because it’s difficult to jump into a story in progress. Undoubtedly, this book would’ve worked much better for me if I had read the previous books.

Silver, on the other hand, is a more personal story. It’s set on a smaller stage. The idea of werewolves using silver as a weapon against other werewolves is different. I like that Andrew tries to minimize questionable appearances to avoid getting attention. Silver’s worship of The Lady, the moon, and her speaking with Death, who follows her, is interesting.

Someday I’d like to read more by Mark Chadbourn, but preferably something that begins a story, not ends one. So for this battle, I choose to go with werewolves.

THE WINNER: SILVER by Rhiannon Held

Silver will advance to meet Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove in the second round.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Summer 2012, First Round :: Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove vs. The Ultimate Game by Sean Austin

Moving into the bottom half of the bracket, the Summer 2012 Battle of the Books continues with Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove going against The Ultimate Game by Sean Austin. The winner will be whichever book I most want to keep reading after the first 25 pages.

Age of Aztec: Solaris paperback, 507 pages, cover art by Marek Okon. Age of Aztec is part of the Pantheon series, which are standalone military adventure novels featuring the gods of ancient mythologies. James Lovegrove is a British author of SF, horror and dark fantasy. He has written around a dozen novels, plus a similar number of books for children and young adults.

In Age of Aztec, the year is 2012, but the world is not as we know it. The setting is a mashup of modern Britain and the historic Aztecs. For instance, there are pubs and coca-leaf tea, plasma lightning guns and sharpened obsidian weapons. In this world, the Aztecs were never conquered by Cortez. Britain was subsumed into the Aztec Empire, and St. Paul’s Cathedral was demolished to build the City of London ziggurat. The weather in London is strangely tropically hot. The first 25 pages covers about a chapter and a half.

An Aztec blood rite is held at the London ziggurat. Thousands throng the streets for the festivities. A hundred participating volunteers queue for sacrifice. The officiating priest ritually dispatches sacrificial victims then the acolytes remove the victims’ hearts. A TV network aerodisc broadcasting the event dips low, unusually close to the temple. Out of the aerodisc jumps the terrorist called The Conquistador, and chaos ensues. Quote: “people were getting killed who weren’t meant to be getting killed.” The Jaguar Warrior police blast the temple and The Conquistador. Afterwards, in the debris they don’t find the Conquistador’s corpse, only pieces of his empty armor.

Upon reporting for work the next day at Scotland Yard, Inpector Mal Vaughn mets her DS (Detective Sergeant), Aaronson, who jokes about her having a casual sexual encounter, and tells her that Chief Superintendent Kellaway is looking for her. Mal witnesses Kellaway’s displeasure with Chief inspector Nyman for mishandling security at the blood rite. Kellaway kills Nyman with a macuahitl, an Aztec sword. Then Vaughn is promoted to Chief Inspector and given the dreaded Conquistador case.

The Ultimate Game: AAA Reality Games paperback, March 2012, 281 pages. Book One of Echo’s Revenge. This seems to be a tie-in novel for a future game from AAA Reality Games. This is first novel, for author Hart Getzen (aka Sean Austin). The first 25 pages cover an author introduction, a prologue, and little more than two chapters.

The author Sean Austin claims that this book is a report of an ongoing investigation, that some names and locations were changed to protect his sources.

Fourteen year old Reggie King and his eleven year old brother, Jeremy, of Washington state play an online multi-player game called ECHO’s Revenge, featuring a huge predator in body armor called ECHO (E-6) and mechanized ghouls. The game is an escape for the boys from their dysfunctional home life. Their mother, Jennifer Edna, called Jeda, is somewhat clueless and works late. Asa, Jeda’s live-in unemployed boyfriend, who is supposed to look after the boys, drinks and is abusive.

Reggie, aka Waiting for You, is one of top players of ECHO’s Revenge. He’s invited by AAA Reality Games LLC (interestingly the publisher of this book) to join a focus group with other Master level players, travel expenses paid. But Reggie doesn’t see the letter until the night before because his mean step-father, Asa, hides it from him. Of course, Reggie isn’t allowed to go. So early the next morning, Reggie sneaks away from home, leaving his brother Jeremy to cover for him, and catches a bus to AAA Reality Games lab, which is a couple hours away.

The Battle: We have a brutal alternate world SF novel, and a young adult gamers adventure book.

In the first 25 page of Age of Aztec, there’s already a sizable body count with gruesome onstage deaths. As in many recent British books, the profanity f*ck is used, in my opinion, over abundantly in conversations. I probably wouldn’t have picked up this book on my own.

In The Ultimate Game, the boys are likable characters, although some of the things they do seem a bit unbelievable, such as jumping out a second story window in winter to avoid their angry step-father. In my opinion, the writing seems a bit wordy and unpolished. But then again, this is a book targeted at young male tween and teen gamers, which I’m not.

For this battle, I have to go with Age of Aztec, even though it’s brutal, because I got to admit it’s a page turner.

THE WINNER: AGE OF AZTEC by James Lovegrove

Age of Aztec will advance to meet either Destroyer of Worlds by Mark Chadbourn or Silver by Rhiannon Held in the second round.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Summer 2012, First Round :: Hunter and Fox by Philippa Ballantine vs. Taft 2012 by Jason Heller

Continuing the Summer Bracket of the 2012 Battle of the Books, the fourth matchup pits Hunter and Fox by Philippa Ballantine against Taft 2012 by Jason Heller. 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.

Hunter and Fox: Pyr Books trade paperback, June 2012, 274 pages, cover illustration by Cynthia Sheppard, a Shifted World novel. Philippa Ballantine is a New Zealand author and podcaster living in the USA. She is co-author of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novels with Tee Morris. She is the author of the books Geist and Spectyr in the ongoing Books of the Order series. The first 25 pages cover a little more than two chapters.

The Caisah, ruler of the shifting land Conhaero, destroyed the native Vaerli people, taking away most of their magical powers. The Vaerli woman called Talyn the Dark, who rides a fearsome green steed, became the Caisah’s Hunter, killing and capturing people for her enemy. For her dirty work, Talyn is rewarded with pieces of a mysterious golden puzzle which Talyn believes is the only hope for her people.

Meanwhile, Finbarr the Fox, who is a talespinner and mage of sorts, tells an audience about life before the Caisah, how it was a golden time, even if the lands were less stable. He tries to raise sympathy for the Vaerli. His story earns him a beating from the Caisah’s Rutilian Guard. Then Finn travels to the city Perilous and Fair, where he spots Talyn, the Hunter herself, entering the Caisah’s citadel.

Elsewhere, Talyn’s lost brother Byre is called “Vaerli scum” and escapes an angry mob.

Taft 2012: Quirk Books paperback, June 2012, 249 pages, cover illustration by Doogie Horner. Jason Heller is journalist and author living in Denver. I live in the same metro area, but I have not met him (but fellow Fantastic Reviewer Aaron says he's a good guy). Heller is the author of The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook. Taft 2012 is his first novel. The first 25 pages include a prologue, three chapters, and various informational tidbits.

In Taft 2012, unlike in our world, President William Howard Taft mysteriously disappeared in March of 1913, the morning of the inauguration of his successor, Woodrow Wilson. For years, Taft was missing and presumed dead. The last thing Taft remembers is being exhausted and lying down to sleep on the Ellipse. Next, a confused Taft is pulling himself out of the mud, heading towards the fountain, and he gets shot in the leg.

Secret Service agent Kowalczyk saw a oversized, muddy man lurching towards a White House press conference, not halting when ordered, and so he shot the intruder. The water of the White House's South Lawn fountain and the rain reveal a man wearing a dirty tweed suit who improbably looks and acts like President Taft. He is taken into the White House to recuperate. The date is November 2011.

Taft is questioned by men in suits. Taft's identity is confirmed by physical traits, DNA tests, and his knowing a secret presidential ID code. Taft's great-granddaughter, who is a congresswoman from Ohio, wants to know what the hell is up. A panicked Taft momentarily mistakes a woman who is a history professor for his wife Nellie.

The Battle: We have a fantasy set on another world featuring magic and a brutal ruler, and a book set in the modern day about an improbably resurrected US President from a hundred years ago. These are two very different books, in tone as well as subject matter.

Hunter and Fox begins with a smorgasbord of fantasy concepts and world building. Various intriguing magic talents are presented, such as Talyn’s time-sense. I like the idea of the Chaoslands, with various peoples seemingly from different worlds. It’s interesting that the Caisah is immortal while the Vaerli are long-lived. Many things are touched upon, perhaps too many.

In the first 25 pages, the character of The Fox, Finn, is likable but I can only guess at his motivations. The Hunter Talyn appears set up to become an antihero.

Taft 2012 takes a preposterous idea and runs with it. There's no attempted explanation of how President Taft could appear after nearly a hundred years. No one yet is claiming Taft is a government conspiracy. Quotes, letters, memos, radio transcripts and other bits are nicely used to help tell the story. The character Taft believably speaks in an old-fashioned manner. I like the humorous touches, such as Taft's appreciation of Twinkies.

After reading a short sample of these novels, I asked myself in which book was I more curious to learn what happens next. I enjoy the escapism of reading books set in unreal fantasy worlds, but in this case I found I'd rather continue reading the book set in something resembling reality.

THE WINNER: TAFT 2012 by Jason Heller

Taft 2012 moves on to the second round, where it will meet Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper.

To see the whole bracket, click here.