The Demon and the City, by Liz Williams
pros: great idea; interesting characters and plot; Chinese culture and mixture with Indian pantheon; Zhu Irzh; the badger/tea pot; the guild of dowsers; Mhara; Robin Yuan; the forgotten temple; the ultimate fate of the angry dowser and his goddess
cons: very violent; the demon’s lover is just unlikable, although a bit sympathetic; too much mayhem and collateral damage; reality is very dark and ugly; what happened to the second celestial being?
misc: Singapore 3; meridians; Chi and feng shui lines; viral drugs; wealthy society vs. working and poor; earthquakes; Celestial boat; Celestials; Jade Emperor; demoted goddess; Bad Dog City; Chinese afterlife; Detective Inspector Chen; Sergeant Ma; exorcists; sorcerors; black pill; devas; Hell money
ISBN 1597800473; 256pp; pub. 2007
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Cry of Justice, by Jason Pratt
pros: thoughtful author; good ideas and situations; some very likeable characters; lots of things happening; Seifas
cons: special terms were too similar to Spanish or Latin words and felt awkward; a bit preachy or pedantic; some characters were annoying; choppy rhythm due to use of journal entries and alternating POV; too many descriptions and explanations – the story would have been shorter and the flow would have worked better with less dissertation
misc: Seifas; Jian; Portunista; philosophical; redemption; responsibility; really big birds; mysterious origin/purpose of good guy (Jian)
ISBN 0977888401; 480pp; pub. 2007
Shapechangers, by Jennifer Roberson
pros: interesting idea; female lead stands up for herself; Carillon matures; the animal lir
cons: female lead is more headstrong and stubborn than strong; reads too much like an old gothic romance; council-sanctioned rape and forcing pregnancy on captives to increase a race is disgusting and ruined the whole book and series for me
misc: Cheysuli; hawk; wolf; crofter’s daughter; half-breed; Old Ones
ISBN 0886771404; 224pp; pub. 1984
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Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay
pros: well-written; some likable characters; well-developed world, familiar enough yet also obviously a fantasy world; many underlying themes
cons: I’m not sure what it was really about – fate? unity in the face of a common foe? redemption? futility?; I would have preferred one main character instead of the various characters, or at least just Devin and Dianora; more sex than was necessary; the edition I read from the library was a very low production quality with faded ink, many typos, and repeated pages. The one listed below looks like a different edition.
misc: music is a big part of story; Devin is a great singer; villains are juxtaposed, one might preferred over the other but is more powerful and driven by revenge and the other is more casually destructive and has the threat of total domination of a foreign power behind him; slightly Russian flair to names for Tigana and its folklore, rest of island culture seems like renaissance Italy
ISBN 0451457765; 688 pp; special ed., 1999
A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny
pros: it’s by Zelazny; animal characters, especially Snuff, the dog; use of literary and historical characters like Sherlock Holmes, a druid, Cain, Dr. Frankenstein (I may not have recognized all of them); action; dog hero’s “rounds”; surprise with the rat; catnappery world of dreams; portrayal of story from animals’ viewpoints
cons: I didn’t care for the ending, it was both a little anticlimactic and predictable; I didn’t like that one particular character dies; Holmes was annoying; a little confusing at times (it is a Zelazny, after all); end of the world threat sort of fizzles out, doesn’t really work as driving conflict in story; a little negative about cats’ nature
ISBN 0380771411; 280 pp; pub. 1994
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