Category Archives: Fantasy

After years of writing about vampires, witches and demons Anne Rice has turned her authorial eye on the werewolf myth. Set in the damp northern Californian city of San Francisco and its environs, over a period of a few months this 404 page novel attempts to explore the nature of good and evil, as the author does in ‘Interview with the Vampire’ and its subsequent series. As with the Vampire Chronicles Ms. Rice has built a world and history of a species that has its origins deep in human prehistory, in this case before the early cities of the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia.

It starts with a young ‘gentleman journalist’ falling in love with a house and its owner. Inheriting the house after a vicious attack that leaves him changed the journalist struggles to find his way. Luckily he meets a beautiful woman, falls in love, and finally finds guidance in the form of much older werewolves. It’s a coming of age novel with werewolves.

Okay, I’m really being succinct and I’ve missed out the big ‘adventure’ that provides all the action, but that’s because I found it a bit predictable. It was a fun read once I got into it. Unfortunately that’s the best I can say about it.

The characters are such stock archetypes I couldn’t really feel any sympathy for them. The hero is too good, always questioning himself, poetic, handsome, and wealthy; his mother is too much the protective superwoman with a brilliant career, his father the retired and retiring academic. His true love is so patient and perfect, his mentor so wise and good, the ‘bad guys’ are truly evil. In short, none of them felt real.

While the plot is good, it lacks any true excitement, one never feels the imperative to continue reading because one absolutely must, there is no feeling of doubt that the hero will overcome  and there will be a ‘happily ever after’. Basically it doesn’t go for the throat. It took me almost two weeks to read, and for a book of just over 400 words that’s a long time by my standards.

The prose is at times poetic, especially when describing the freedom the werewolf feels running through the forests and hunting, but at other times it is heavy, clumsy almost. And she should never, ever again attempt to write ‘intimate’ scenes, they sound awful.

It feels like Ms. Rice is re-writing her old books with a different species, and more Catholicism. Theological and philosophical questions of good and evil enter the narrative right from the first chapter. I don’t have a problem with people allowing their religious feeling to influence their writing; I just don’t like it shoved down my throat in fiction. The theology and philosophy is too heavily laid on; instead of being a subtle background melody informing the narrative, it is more like someone wanders in every few pages to beat you about the head with some religious tract.

I liked it by and large, but it never reaches the eloquence or genius of ‘The Vampire Lestat’ or ‘Queen of the Damned’.  There’s nothing original about the story but it was still a decent read, if nothing else is available. It’s a fairly good werewolf story, but Reuben Golding is forgettable where Lestat de Lioncourt is a genre-defining legend.

That’s all for now,

Rose

xXx

I have read every single one of this series, I’ve even read most of the short stories found in anthologies of vampire/supernatural romance. When I heard that thw twelfth in the series was to be published I immediateely put in an order with the local library for it.

I enjoyed the book, it resolved many of the plot lines of the past few books and allowed a certain amount of character development for the fae characters and for Sookie’s thoroughly human friends. We finally find out what she does with the cluvial dor. The end provides the reader with a clue as to the plot line for the thirteenth book, which is rumoured to be the final book in the series.

All this said, I do have some problems with it. The misdirection in the story line was fairly obvious and the plot threads were resolved rather abruptly in the last chapter.

3/5 – Good story, but Charlaine Harris has written better.

‘Rivers of London’ is the first of two books (currently available) detailing the adventures of Detective Constable Peter Grant of the Met, and last Apprentice Wizard in Britain.

In ‘Rivers of London’ we are introduced to Peter Grant, a probationary constable in the Metropolitan Police. At the scene of a murder he tries to take a witness statement from a ghost and thus comes to the attention of the last official Wizard in Britian, Nightingale. Nightingale is the head, and only member,  of a specialist crime unit known as ‘the Folly’, about whom most police officers have no knowledge, and the ones who do know about it don’t like talking about the Folly. Constable Grant becomes the second member of the Folly and an apprentice wizard. Between solving a series of supernatural murders and settling a territorial debate between the genii loca of the Thames and the Thames  valley/London rivers, the Folly are stretched to capactity. Covent Garden gets set on fire and flooded, Punch causes a riot in the Royal Opera House and eventually a sacrifice has to be made.

With a cast of well written, funny and occaisionally creepy characters this novel races around London giving a new twist to old tales. The central character is well drawn, heavily embedded in the location and very ‘real’. Constable Grant’s struggle’s to learn a vast body of arcane knowledge and match his scientific understanding of the world to that of magic is entertaining. Especially the exploding apples.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can’t wait to read the next one, ‘Moon over Soho’.