FYI, Little King Henry is Free On Amazon

"Little King Henry" joins "Prime Pickings" to be free on Amazon.  Generally these things run for about a month from what I understand, so get them while you can.  "Prime Pickings" should just about be up.

Little King Henry by Richard Raley on Amazon
Prime Pickings by Richard Raley on Amazon

Real Review: Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Link:  Prince of Thorns

Here we have another "Debut of the Year". Fantasy publishers...please stop with that promotional tactic; I'll speak for the whole fanbase: we're sick of it. We don't believe you anymore. Too many of them have turned out disappointing or just outright bad. How about you let us decide what novel is the "Debut of the Year" and stop telling us?

/off of soapbox.

Is "Prince of Thorns" thee one? The "Debut of the Year"? Does Mark Lawrence get a cookie?

No...

Is "Prince of Thorns" good?

Yeah, kind of...

It had some things I didn't like: the age of the main character just isn't believable and seemed like it was there for cheap shock value. It believes that GRITTY IS GOOD, but gritty is neither good nor bad, it's only gritty. As always with a novel using two stories at two different times you have to be sure that both of them are equally good or else the reader will skim...I skimmed the flashbacks here.

It had some things I liked: the world was a future Earth screwed back into a medieval world by catastrophe. I'm always a sucker for those tales and some of the stuff here was pretty good.

It had some things I didn't like about the things I liked: the priests speaking Latin of all languages...the world being so easily medieval instead of even more of a mix than Lawrence showed us.

It had some things I liked about the things I didn't like: despite the age thing I routed for Jorg because as awful as he is...the antagonists are worse.

So no, not DOTY, but not bad.

3 stars.

Real Review: Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

Link:  Ghost Story


I'm going to admit something most Dresden fans will disagree with.

I didn't really enjoy "Changes".

Wait, wait...stop sharpening the pitchforks, put up your tar, unpluck your chicken's feathers. There was just TOO much action. There was no moment for a break, no moment for the characters to think or grow or talk about anything. Action scene after action scene after action scene. There have been some good ones over the years, but they aren't my favorite part of Dresden.

What makes Dresden so good isn't the Five Goblin fights, it's the character moments. Which is why most of "Ghost Story" was such a nice change of pace for me. We finally got to see the effects of the "Changes"; we finally got to have a breath...to relax, to let the characters have a moment to reposition themselves in relation to each other. I won't spoiler, but I liked some of the new combos and directions the characters are taking.

This doesn't make "Ghost Story" perfect, in fact I was pretty bummed when it moved from breathing into full on fight mode as a climax to the novel's villain. The end of "Ghost Story" has to have two of the more corny scenes in the entire series. I think I could have done without the whole world-under-threat storyline. It felt like a side problem to Harry's life.

Three and half stars and give the curve...because as always: I want to read the next one.

The Asylum Map

I don't feel like it's really needed but some asked for it and here is a ultra quick paint.net created map of the Asylum grounds.  Not to scale or anything, but you get the idea where the buildings/areas are at.

Click to Enlarge

Anne Boleyn, Vampire Baroness

In the words of the annoying mancer giving her problems:

Anne’s head tilted from one side of her shoulders to the other, long neck bending with it. Like she’s trying to see if the view changed my appearance. The ‘B’ on her neck shined with a flash, a damned beacon trying to get through to me.

“King Henry Price?” she asked again.

“I already answered you.”

“I’m sorry.” She shrugged, hands on her hips, rings rubbing against rough denim. “You’re just so ugly, aren’t you? Broken nose…so many scars. There’s nothing perfect about you. I thought with all the rumors about you being a hound that you’d be better looking. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised since we live in a time where every woman will stick a toaster in herself if it vibrates quickly enough.

“Women have no standards at all anymore. They don’t want to work for the complete experience. Seduction takes too much time, better to make a blog post about wanting to ‘get to know people’ I think the phrase is.”

“Rumors…” I said.

I locked on the word, ignored the rest. Yup, she wasn’t there for the teapots. Good to know. Asylum toady? Guild spy? Another mancer testing me before she bought a commission? Could have worked for the government…but then maybe not with the clothes she was wearing. She might have been related to Welf too. All possibilities, none the correct answer.

“Look at his little brain go click,” Anne said. “So cute.”

I glanced at the ‘B’ one more time. “If I’m King Henry and you are really Annie B, then doesn’t that mean I get to cut your head off?” I asked, lips pulling back along my teeth.

Something shifted in her. The second gear that Asylum women have when they’re about you put you in place. “You’re going to close down your shop and then you’re going to come with me for a few days,” Annie B told me in plain terms suffering no argument. “I need someone with the skill-set for an Artificer kind of problem that isn’t prisoner to the Guild bylaws and you’ve been volunteered for it. If you try to cut my head off, I’ll kick your little ***. Understand, King Henry?”

Volunteered? Who would volunteer me? Who could volunteer me? Short list. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the Lady. “I don’t hire out or build or design without a contract and unless I say so and last I checked—you didn’t offer me payment.” My hands couldn’t take it anymore—they curled into fists. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the Lady. Which one would get a kick out of volunteering me without mentioning it to me? All of them. That didn’t help…

“Get out of my store before I build up the anima to smash you across the street, you pushy psycho *****.”

That’s when she punched me in the face so hard I tumbled backwards five feet and slammed into my shelf filled with glassware.

Read more on Annie B in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords and Nook.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know what you're talking about.