Dragons and Weird Magic
A little short this week, and next week might be thin too as I’m currently trying to get in a long-awaited reread of the Expanse before the Hugo packet drops on my head.
Review: Dragon Precinct by Keith R.A. DeCandido
First of all, this is a beautifully written short novel in a solid fantasy world. It’s an older book recently rereleased, so I’m forgiving of the fact that some aspects of it are just a little bit stock fantasy, including halfling thieves.
His approach to half-elves is different and entertaining.
Unfortunately, DeCandido writes mysteries about as well do. Dragon Precinct is a police procedural in which detectives Danthres Tresyllione (half-elf) and Torin ban Wyvald (human) investigate the peculiar murders of heroes.
Only magick (yeah, it’s a ten year old book, he uses the k) could have done it, but the M.E. (Magickal Examiner) finds no sign of magick.
This is a cool mystery…that our detectives seem to solve primarily by pure luck. Maybe I missed something, but I didn’t solve it ahead of time and it felt as if it came out of the blue. I still enjoyed the book for everything but the mystery.
It also comes with an extended bonus story that plays with the idea that a story is remembered differently by all of the people who were there…
Enjoyable more as a fantasy than a mystery, but fun nonetheless.
(I won this one in a raffle)
Review: Scion of Cyador by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Got this one in a con loot bag. I’ve enjoyed quite a bit of Modesitt’s work and enjoyed this one.
This is SF that reads as fantasy…we get a brief explanation for the tech of the chaos towers, but the book itself feels entirely fantastical. Wikipedia calls it fantasy, but it’s 100% a lost colony story. There are a lot of these books and I read this one out of order, but it stands alone beautifully.
There’s some gender essentialism here (men wield one type of magic, women another) but I’m inclined to forgive it. It’s a good read, even if the ending becomes fairly obvious.
I did have one nitpick…the consistent use of the word “consort” as a synonym for spouse. Sorry, Lee, but “consort” has a specific meaning…a consort is the lower ranked spouse of a higher ranked person.
As an example, Catherine of Wales is Prince William’s consort, but Prince William is not her consort. I’m not sure why Modesitt chose this particular linguistic twist, but I’m the kind of person who gets irritated by this kind of thing beyond all reason. It’s the editor in me.