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WoGF Review: Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
Besides having been brought up watching Star Wars as well as Lord of the Rings later on, Pat Doherty (Patremagne) has been a science fiction/fantasy fan in literature since the age of 15 when he picked up a Dragonlance novel. He is now a hopeless addict to reading and getting lost in new worlds. When not reading, Pat can be found playing and watching sports, primarily the Boston Bruins, and posting reviews and other ramblings on his blog, A Bitter Draft.
I’ve been meaning to read Elizabeth Bear for some time now, and after taking up Worlds Without End’s Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge, Range of Ghosts came out on top of that list. I was almost put off immediately after reading the first few pages – the premise is great, but the prose seemed uncomfortably stuffy. Luckily, around the second chapter or so, it either toned down a bit or I got used to it – either way, I’m happy that it did.
Temur is the grandson of the Great Khan, a noble of the steppes in every sense of the word. Range of Ghosts opens up with Temur near-death on a battlefield, surrounded by the bodies of the dead and dying, his dreams of glory shattered. After the Khagan Mongke died, the Khaganate was plunged into civil war, with Temur’s relatives waging it. Normally, following a battle, the souls of the dead are put to rest in the Eternal Sky. Unfortunately for Temur, nobody put the souls to rest, and those ghosts are used to track and haunt him throughout the story. Once-Princess Samarkar forgoes her right to the Rasan Empire as well as her ability to bear children in order to become a wizard. Somewhere along the way, the paths of Samarkar and Temur meet. But the characters and the plot, while decent, were nothing truly outstanding or complex. What really made this story for me was the world.
WoGF Review: Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough
Besides having been brought up watching Star Wars as well as Lord of the Rings later on, Pat Doherty (Patremagne) has been a science fiction/fantasy fan in literature since the age of 15 when he picked up a Dragonlance novel. He is now a hopeless addict to reading and getting lost in new worlds. When not reading, Pat can be found playing and watching sports, primarily the Boston Bruins, and posting reviews and other ramblings on his blog, A Bitter Draft.
Jo Fletcher Books is publisher to many good authors, including Tom Pollock, Snorri Kristjansson, and one Sarah Pinborough. Sarah is author of many dark stories, including her Dog Faced Gods horror series, as well as rewritten fairy tales, one being Poison (Snow White) and another being Beauty (Sleeping Beauty). I’ve yet to read any of her other work, so Mayhem was a first for me in a few ways. Prior to reading it, I hadn’t really read any novels that could be categorized under mystery or crime; I’d read some with elements of each, but never something strictly one or the other.
Two things drew me to Mayhem. First, there was the cover – exceptionally elegant and very fitting of the 19th century tale that is told. Second, Jack the Ripper. If for some reason you are unaware of who he was, Jack was a serial killer in late 19th century London who targeted female prostitutes and murdered them in brutal ways. He killed at least five women, likely more, but get this – he was never caught. This anonymity led to widespread terror throughout the area for years to come. Mayhem is not a story of Jack, though, but one of a new killer, dubbed by some as The Thames Killer and as The Torso Killer by others. Though there are similarities between Jack’s killings and those of the newcomer, primarily that they both target women, the protagonist, Dr. Thomas Bond, knows that there is indeed a second killer in the London slums who keeps his victims’ heads as trophies.
