I don’t want to run a halfway decent idea into the ground, but I had so much fun with the “Ten Books, A Thousand Pages” project (Part One is here, and Part Two here) that I had to do it again. So I present The Return of Ten Books, A Thousand Pages, wherein I pick ten science fiction or fantasy books from the front-and-center display of the bookstore and read the first 100 pages of each to see if it’s something you (or I) would want to finish reading.
The idea is to do a quick and dirty review of the books that are going to be in your face the next time you’re out shopping or browsing the Recommended Reading sections online. And honestly, if a book can’t capture your attention in a hundred pages, I think it’s safe to find something you might like better.
London Falling by Paul Cornell
“You’re not going mad,” said Quill. “This is real.”
“Oh that makes it so much better,” said Ross sarcastically.
This book was described as an “urban fantasy” so I was expecting one of those S
hadowrun-esque hybrid stories where magic and dragons interact with cab drivers and office buildings right from the start. Instead, it looked as though it was going to be a regular “cop story,” with undercover detectives and paperwork and safe houses. There’s also a lot of very British terminology, which I normally like (“knackered” and “cuppa” are just fun to say) but this was police work British slang, so references to things like the Met and the caution (meaning the Metropolitan Police Service and the British version of the Miranda warning) started to bog down the flow of the story for this heathen American reader.
I thought “Oh, I guess this is just supposed to be a detective story set in the very near future.” But I wasn’t seeing anything futuristic, the police were even complaining about having to use a cassette recorder for an interrogation, so it’s really not in the future. I was ready to write this book off as a bad attempt, and go pick another book to read.
And then about 40 pages in, the story gets suddenly, shockingly, weird. Very darkly weird, horror story weird. But it didn’t feel out of place. Some books show that first otherworldly moment and it feels forced, as if the author is trying to get your attention by waving signs at you. But despite the first few chapters being completely normal (in a gritty, detective-story kind of way) when the weird moment hit, it felt like the author had been building to it all along. And then it continued to get more weird every few pages. I was honestly relieved; this was the book I’d been hoping for.
Will I finish reading it – Until I got to that first weird moment, I was thinking no. It’s not an easy read, you do have to wade through those first few chapters. But once it got going the story really grabbed my attention. I’ll have to finish it now, because in just 100 pages the author’s really made me care about each of the four main characters, and I want to see what happens to them.
Plus, at the 100-page mark they all go back into an insanely dangerous house, and if I thought things were strange before, they’re really odd now.
Exile: The First Book of the Seven Eyes by Betsy Dornbusch
“Draken’s throat had gone very dry. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.”
I’ll preface this by saying it’s a decently written book: nicely paced, good plot, cleverly worded, with well-defined characters. The only problem was: I didn’t care.
Draken is the bastard half-blood cousin to the Monoean king. After being framed for the murder of his wife, Draken is exiled to the country of Akrasia, who has an uneasy truce with the Brin. Along the way he meets up with Osias, a gorgeous necromancer (that from the description might look a little like Orlando Bloom) and Setia, a Moonling half-blood with a serious disposition and absolutely no body modesty whatsoever. They interrupt an assassination attempt on Queen Elena, and Draken turns it into a chance to hopefully clear his name and find his wife’s killer.
So we’ve got elves, magic, plots, and sex, and yet after 100 pages I can easily put the book down, wish all the characters well, and go find something else to read instead. I never hated it, but there’s something about the flow of the story that never peaked my interest.
Will I finish reading it – I’m afraid not, mostly because Draken seems to be turning into quite the “Mary Sue” character; everybody falls all over themselves to do nice things for him even though they just met him, and they all think he’s wonderful even though he doesn’t seem that impressive to me.
I also felt like there weren’t enough elves, magic, and sex. It was heavy on the plots, and schemes, and history, and arguments, and court traditions. Those are all good things, but the book definitely reads like a medieval mystery, and I’m not partial to mysteries. But if you like your fantasy more grounded, with painstakingly accurate descriptions of armor and well-thought-out battle plans alongside magic and the occasional elf, you might like the book.
Earth Girl by Janet Edwards
“This is Asgard 6. Tower down! Tower down!”
By the year 2788, portal transportation has made travel between solar systems as easy as travel between cou
ntries (which, with portals, is also pretty easy.) The problem is: once mankind left Earth, they found out that a small percentage of children were born whose immune systems won’t let them set foot on any other planet. The anaphylactic shock of a non-Earth atmosphere will kill them in minutes. As a result, Earth’s population is a tiny fraction of humanity, people confined to a single planet their entire lives because they can’t survive anywhere else. These unfortunates are viewed as “throwbacks” or “apes” by the rest of the population, despite being exactly as intelligent as any other human being, with just as advanced a culture as any other planet, just in a smaller space. (When humanity left Earth there weren’t enough people to support the cities, so most have crumbled into dangerous ruins.)
Jarra, one of that small percentage, never got over her bitterness and anger at the rest of humanity. Her parents gave her up to caretakers because they couldn’t bear the thought of having given birth to a throwback, and despite all her efforts to study hard and learn everything she’d need to go to the best university (on Earth anyway) she has to endure pop culture making fun of apes for a quick laugh. And she’s come up with a plan to get even. She’ll trick a school full of “norms” into thinking she’s one of them, proving that she’s just as good as them, and when they’re well and truly fooled, she’ll laugh in every one of their stupid faces.
Though, as usually happens, things end up a bit more complicated.
While technically a young adult novel, Earth Girl has many virtues for adult readers. You don’t have to be a teenager to enjoy Jarra’s “I’ll show ’em all!” plans. And Janet Edwards has created a very richly detailed future, filled with many fun elements. It’s a pretty open-minded society too: at one point Jarra is listening to someone noodle around on a guitar while singing a popular song about a girl who can’t decide between two boys. Her mother won’t let her have a “triad,” so eventually the boys get tired of waiting for her to make up her mind, and they just date each other instead. It was a completely off-hand description, only mentioned in passing, but I thought it was surprisingly sweet.
Will I finish reading it – Absolutely. By the 100-page mark there’s already been a rescue attempt of a team of researchers from beneath a collapsed building. Despite lasting for several pages, I felt like the tension never let up the whole time. And I’m really curious to see what happens when Jarra finally clues everyone in.
Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargil
It’s kind of like that, only breathless and without spaces between each word. At one hundred miles per hour.
For the first few pages I thought this was one of those beautiful, magical, modern fairy tales. It’s written (for the first chapter anyway) in this deliberate “once upon a time” style, and the story was very sweet and romantic. It took less than ten pages for the blood and gore to show up.
This is one of those fairy tales, really clos
er to horror in places than fantasy. The chapters bounce back and forth between the main story and excerpts from a treatise on magical creatures, and between the two you find out most of the awful little details you’d need to know to survive around the fey; changelings literally feed on pain and fear, there are a lot of good reasons why you never ever get on a genie’s bad side, and bogeys always fall hopelessly in love with the man they’re about to murder. It doesn’t stop them from murdering them, but they’re always very sad afterwards.
So far in the first 100 pages there’s been two places where, if it was a horror movie, I probably would have cowered down in my seat and covered my eyes because of the grisly details. But there’s also been a wonderful conversation between a little boy and a genie, along with some interesting facts about djinn; the plural of djinn is jnoun, and if a djinn tries to take on the shape of a beautiful woman it will always end up with sideways eyes that run from the forehead to the cheek, like a Picasso painting. I love tidbits like that.
Will I finish reading it – Yes, because the little details that are sprinkled throughout have completely sucked me into the story, and the violent, horrible death scenes keep startling me, so it’s hard to put down. I’ll admit, after a couple dozen pages the story got a little muddled: if you’re not paying attention you might miss the fact that you’re reading a flashback scene from before the baby was stolen, and then it jumps again and introduces Mallaidh and her mother, and her mother disappears after a paragraph.
While that one section was a little confusing, this may be one of those times where you don’t get an explanation for something in the first 100 pages, you have to read a little further to find out what it is you think you’re missing. I’m willing to give it that chance.
A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan
“If you do not understand what my husband has called my deranged practicality, very little of my life will make the slightest bit of sense.”
This was an extremely fun read. The book takes place on a world that seems a lot like Victorian Earth in all respects, except for the occasional dragon. Aside from the 
different names of countries (Akhia seems to be a Middle Eastern country, Yelang might be China, and Scirland is most likely England) everything else is what you’d expect from the late 1800’s. There’s travel abroad and arranged marriages and horse-drawn carriages, but there’s also a young girl who has a really hard time being ladylike when she’s completely obsessed with studying dragons.
The book is a memoir by the older and respected Lady Trent, who wanted to write about the time long before she became respected, back when she was just odd and people looked at her funny. It’s light-hearted and quirky, with a casual Victorian feel to the language, which makes it all the more fun when someone off-handedly mentions dragons.
The best description I can use for it right now is to say it’s a lovely book, I’m really enjoying it.
Will I finish reading it – Yes, because by the 100-page mark Lady Trent had convinced her husband to take her with him on an expedition to hunt dragons in Vystrani (which seems to the Russian steppes) and so far they’ve only seen one dragon when it almost ate one of their drivers, so now I have to see what happens next.
More to come in Part Two!