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Silent Scream Angela Marson I have noticed that many Goodreads reviewers are subtractors. What I mean by that is that they appear to evaluate books (or at least review them) by listing all the faults they can find, and then giving a low rating to those works that have lots of faults. In the alternative, adder, strategy, one looks for the good things in a book and gives a high score to a book that has lots of good stuff. I myself am mostly an adder (although I make no claim to absolute strategic purity). I mention this because  Angela Marsons 's  Silent Scream  has serious faults. I'm going to mention a couple of them, but I nevertheless give it a four-star rating. First, you should know (this is not a fault, but just something you should know going in), that  Silent Scream  is emotionally heavy. It concerns institutionalized children (mostly girls) who are abused in almost every awful way you can imagine. What's more, protagonist Kim Stone is herself a survivor ...

Tigana Guy Gavriel Kay Guy Gavriel Kay  writes historical fantasy. He doesn't like to be categorized, but he has borrowed the phrase  "a quarter turn to the fantastic"  to describe his work, so I think we're allowed to use it. I am a fan. I first discovered his  Under Heaven  series, which is about China, called Kitai in the novels.  Under Heaven  is brilliant. His first novel was, I believe,  The Summer Tree , which is the first book of the  Fionavar Tapestry  trilogy. It is not historical fantasy; rather, it is straight high fantasy, and I  did not like it . His next book after the  Fionavar Tapestry  was this one,  Tigana , and here we begin to see the turn away from the fantastic. I might call this one a half-turn to the fantastic. Although he has not, In  Tigana , yet reached that level of historical verisimilitude that his latest works display, and although magic is an explicit and key part of the story, it...

Interesting Times Terry Pratchett We met Twoflower in the very first of  Terry Pratchett 's  Disworld  novels,  The Color of Magic . He arrived in Ankh-Morpork as a tourist, introducing himself as being from the Agatean Empire, on the Counterweight Continent, the other side of the Discworld from Ank-Morpork. Twoflower returned home eventually (at the end of book 2,  The Light Fantastic ), after giving his magical luggage to Rincewind. Since then we have heard essentially nothing of the Agatean Empire, until  Interesting Times . In response to a request for the Great Wizzard from the Empire, Unseen University sends Rincewind there. The Agatean Empire is a sort of ill-defined amalgam of China and Japan. Like either one of those nations a century or two ago, the Empire is an autocratic state ruled in the name of an Emperor. Rincewind, the Great Wizzard (Wizzard is the label on Rincewind's hat), is drafted as the figurehead of a revolution. Rincewind is conspic...

Holy Terrors Margaret Owen Vanja Ros has a long history of disappointing people. She was the thirteenth child of Marthe Ros, and therefore, Marthe believed, ill-fated. She asked Death and Fortune to take her daughter. Death promised her, "Only one of you will go home." Death and Fortune gave their God Daughter Vanja a home. Vanja's mother never returned home from the forest. Marthe, now a ghost, is still furious about this. And so it went. Vanja went into service in a noble house and there she disappointed. Eventually she ended up as a thief. And then things got serious. A brilliant young prefect (police detective) came after her. She fell in love with him, and he with her, but she left him. She found her family and deceived them. She even became a goddess and failed at that. Now, to be clear, none of that is fair. It is, however, far too accurate a picture of how Vanja sees herself. When  Holy Terrors  begins, Vanja is estranged from Emeric, the prefect she loves, and sh...

Tigerlilja Erin Michelle Sky, Steven Brown In  J.M. Barrie 's  Peter Pan  Peter's great ally is Tiger Lily, who is introduced thus ...Tiger Lily, proudly erect, a princess in her own right. She is the most beautiful of dusky Dianas and the belle of the Piccaninnies, coquettish, cold and amorous by turns; there is not a brave who would not have the wayward thing to wife, but she staves off the altar with a hatchet. There's obviously a lot there that's problematic in the 21st century. So she gets a rewrite in this  Erin Michelle Sky  and  Steven Brown  prequel to  Tales of the Wendy . In addition, we get an origin story for Peter, something that to my knowledge  Barrie  never supplied. In fact, we start with Peter. Peter, it transpires, is descended from gods.  Sky  and  Brown  freely mix Norse and Greek gods here. In seeking to protect him from ancestral enemy Buri, Peter's mother accidentally curses him. You will forg...

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...