Fantasy land has been invaded. Sadly, not by anything intriguing or fresh, but by chick-lit.
Fire by Kristin Cashore (Gollancz)
Fantasy land has been invaded. Sadly, not by anything intriguing or fresh, but by chick-lit. In the wake of the crashing cash-registers that accompanied Twilight, too many writers who ought to know better are using fantasy as a backdrop for plots Mills and Boon would kill for. One such is Kristin Cashore. Her words begin convincingly to paint a world where magic rests in psychological as well as physical manipulation and where — because they can act covertly — the magically endowed are often hated and persecuted. It’s not a new trope, but it is constructed well. Then, four chapters in, the red-headed heroine meets the cold eyes of the haughty, bitter prince, and the book is magically transformed into romance. The effect of the spell on the genre is malign. Any possibility that a different world might nurture people who are not exactly like us flies out of the turret window, to be replaced by the changeling Trite. — Gwen Ansell
The Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin (Orbit)
For new writer Kate Griffin, it’s urban history — the history of yesterdays rather than the distant past — that enthrals. The Madness of Angels tells the tale of urban magician Matthew Swift, recently risen from the dead courtesy of London’s telephone network. The London ghosts and monsters he encounters are not chain-dragging mediaeval nuns, but conductors on an only recently defunct rail network: modern urban legends come to half-life. Wry wit and a cast of punkish eccentrics thread through a story written for everyone who loves cities and their myths. — Gwen Ansell
Rides a Dread Legion by Raymond E Feist (Harper Voyager)
Sometimes, history can be a burden. Raymond E Feist’s world of Midkemia has been alive now through dozens of books — so many, in fact, that a new generation of readers may be coming to Rides a Dread Legion who were tots when the earliest volumes appeared. The plot — lost elves pursued by ravaging demons attempt to take over Midkemia as their lost homeland — is standard fare. But to update new readers on the chains of history the world now drags behind it, the book is populated by tellers of old tales, and ancient kings whose grandsires remember at great length vital pieces of lost lore. Feist is a skilled writer, but the backgrounding occupies so many pages that, truthfully, nothing much else happens. — Gwen Ansell