The Gutter Prayer presents an imaginative fantasy world populated by so many different horrors – eldritch and scientific – that its inhabitants live in a constant state of fear and shock. Its plot may be convoluted, but this only reinforces the overwhelming feeling that besieges the characters, who are hopelessly manipulated by unforgiving, inscrutable forces.
The book opens with a description of the city of Guerdon, marking the importance of the setting to the story. Guerdon is presented as a derelict place haunted by its past, the urge to escape from it, and its inability to do so. As the narrator describes it, “Guerdon has always been a place in tension with itself, a city [...]
This review contains spoilers.
The first novel of the His Dark Materials trilogy, Northern Lights (the American title is The Golden Compass) is a fascinating fantasy novel that envelops a child’s adventure in an enticing theological debate: the protagonist’s journey into the North to save her friends is wrapped around discussions about sin, guilt, and the nature of the human soul.
We follow Lyra Belacqua, a young orphan girl who lives in Jordan College in a fantastical world that is much like ours, but with one crucial distinction: in her world, a part of each person’s soul lives beside them, assuming an animal form – and these beings are called daemons. One day, Lyra [...]
Foundryside is a great urban fantasy novel set in a world where people can change the properties of matter – an ability held by powerful merchant houses that monopolize knowledge to maximize profit and control the city of Tevanne with an iron fist.
The protagonist is Sancia, a young thief with a very special ability: she can “communicate” with any object she touches with her bare skin, feeling what it feels, seeing its strengths and weakness, and also its history – where it has been, what hands have touched it. Although using it hurts her, it’s still a very useful talent for a thief to possess, as she can sense what any vault contains without opening it, among other [...]
The third book in The Wheel of Time series, The Dragon Reborn is a bit reluctant to move the story forward, recycling old themes, personal struggles, and even climactic fights. Its narrative strength, then, comes in the decision to abandon Rand to focus on his friends, finally giving them a chance to shine.
The story follows the events of The Great Hunt: Rand has been declared the Dragon Reborn and is surrounded by a small but devoted army. Convinced that he must act alone and quickly, Rand flees his camp and travels to the city of Tear to acquire a mythical sword that has the power to end the war with the Dark One once and for all. But the novel doesn’t follow Rand, turning [...]
The first novel of The Stormlight Archive series, The Way of Kings, offers a compelling “underdog” story with memorable set-pieces and a world brimming with mystery – even if it fails to fully justify its length and the focus on some of its characters.
The Way of Kings opens with the death of a king and follows the resulting conflict. After the Parshendi people agrees to form an alliance with the Alethi king Gavilar, they send an assassin to dispatch him during the night, leading Alethkar to a long, drawn-out war. The battles are being waged in the aptly named Shattered Plains, a barren and vast labyrinth of rent plateaus, filled with deadly chasms and crevasses. Due to the [...]
Driving the Deep is a successful sequel to Suzanne Palmer’s Finder, offering a similar adventure, where the protagonist meets strange people and visits memorable places, full of all kinds of danger. The standout here is the setting, an underwater facility that is both isolated and heavily guarded.
After saving a space station and surviving meeting with a race of inscrutable aliens in Finder, Fergus Ferguson finds himself with a much more difficult task to perform at the beginning of Driving the Deep: dealing with past mistakes and apologizing to his cousin. Ferguson is a fearless man when it comes to shootouts and fighting thugs in space, but when it’s time to face his family, [...]