And I Darken Kiersten White Vlad Dracula , also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad III of Wallachia, was the Voivode (ruler) of Wallachia (a part of what is now Romania) between 1448 and 1477. He was a contemporary of  Mehmed the Conqueror , the sultan of the Ottoman Empire (which became Turkiye) who eventually conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul, as  They Might be Giants  reminds us), ending the Byzantine Empire. It was an exciting time in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe! A historical novel about Vlad and Mehmed thus seems like a great idea. What we have here, however, is  close  to, but not  exactly  that.  Kiersten White 's  Conqueror's Saga , of which  And I Darken  is the first book, is an alternative history version of that time and place. The "alternative" part comes in the shape of Ladislav (that's a feminine form of "Vlad"). In  And I Darken  the first child of Vlad II (who in the real world was the father of Vlad...

Troll Bridge Terry Pratchett Cohen the Barbarian's father told him, he told him, "Son, when you can face down a troll in single combat, then you can do anything." Cohen wants to defeat a troll in single combat before he dies. But the task is beginning to look urgent. First, Cohen is no longer a young hero. As Cohen's horse tells him, "One day you're going to die. It might be today." That's the first problem. The second is that troll bridges are in short supply. As Cohen tells his horse, When did you last see a bridge with a troll under it? There were hundreds of 'em when I was a lad. Now there's more trolls in the cities than there are in the mountains. So, he's found an old stone bridge that still has a troll. The troll's name is Mica. Like Cohen, Mica is himself a relic of the old days. He is still proud to uphold the old trollish tradition of defending a bridge. What's more, he's chuffed at the prospect of being killed by a...

The Wendy Erin Michelle Sky, Steven Brown I am a fan of  J.M. Barrie 's  Peter Pan . His dark view of childhood is refreshing, if you have met too many angelic children in literature. Seriously,  J.M. Barrie  uses the word "heartless" eight times to describe children. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked. (Do your own research!  Here  is the Project Gutenberg full text of  Peter Pan . Do a text search for "heartless.") An even stronger selling point for  The Wendy  was the striking cover --    -- yeah, absolutely I want to read that! Don't judge a book by its cover, they say, but every now and then I do, and I am seldom misled. To be honest,  The Wendy  is not much like  Peter Pan . Wendy D...

Soul Music Terry Pratchett Soul Music  is the 16th novel in  Terry Pratchett 's  Discworld  series, and also the third novel in the  DEATH  subseries.  Discworld  is a long series -- 41 novels, not to mention the inevitable short stories. Any series so long is bound to be a little repetitive at times. Soul Music  seemed to me a kind of rehash of  Moving Pictures , on the one hand, and  Mort  on the other. Death (the  Discworld  character) is always slacking off. He gets tired of being Death and tries to take a vacation. The problem with Death taking a vacation is that he is what, these days, we call an essential worker. If Death takes time off, someone needs to fill in for him. In  Mort  that was Death's new apprentice Mort -- in  Soul Music  it is Susan, the daughter of Mort and Death's adopted daughter Ysabell. Susan is thus Death's granddaughter. The problem with putting a human in Death's job, ...

When the Moon Hits Your Eye John Scalzi I found myself disappointed by  John Scalzi 's  When the Moon Hits Your Eye . That's mainly because I was hoping for a novel and didn't quite get one. In his acknowledgments,  Scalzi  summarizes the structure of  Moon ...a book about the moon turning to cheese, have each chapter represent a day in the lunar cycle, each chapter with mostly different characters in mostly different places in the Unites States, reacting to it in ways specific to them alone... Now,  Moon  does in fact have a coherent story with a beginning, a middle, and and end. The problem is that, told as it is, in short day-in-the-life stories with mostly different characters each, it doesn't have the stakes that make a novel really interesting. We don't spend enough time with any of these characters to get to know and care about them. That at least, was how I felt. Instead, it felt to me like a themed short story collection. Some of the stories w...

A Darkness at the Door Intisar Khanani ** spoiler alert ** Intisar Khanani  finished book 2 of her  Dauntless Path  series with a cliffhanger. Rae, investigating the snatchers and their slave trade, was betrayed by Prince Garrin. The book ended with Rae being locked into a hidden chamber in a slave slip with half a dozen children bound for slavery. It's a kind of success! It's the tribute evil pays to competence. Rae now knows she's been on the right track all along, and was getting close enough to be dangerous to the slavers. And now she has the best possible opportunity to investigate how the slave trade works from the inside. It was, in fact, a very dangerous step for Garrin to take, although he probably didn't see it so. He's placing a lot of trust in the slaver captain and his other subordinates. That friendless children cannot escape the slavers does not guarantee that someone who's proven herself as competent as Rae has can be safely put away. Besides, Ga...

Sunrise on the Reaping Suzanne Collins I read  Suzanne Collins 's main  Hunger Games  trilogy years ago, when it was first published. Consequently, while I remembered Panem and the structure of the Hunger Games, I had forgotten most of the minor characters. When I began  Sunrise on the Reaping  I had no idea who Haymitch Abernathy was. That worked to my advantage, because I didn't know the most important thing about Haymitch -- that he would survive. Indeed, Haymitch's death felt like a real possibility almost to the end.  Sunrise on the Reaping  could, I think, be read as the first book of the  Hunger Games  series. Haymitch is a minor but important character in the novel  The Hunger Games , where he appears as the only surviving District 12 victor, and thus as Peeta and Katniss's mentor. He's an old drunken reprobate, but crafty. (In the movie, which I watched last night after finishing  Sunrise , he is played by the reliable Wood...