Monday, August 07, 2006

Luna, some comments

Luna is an interesting idea, a romance publishing firm notice that there's some romantic fantasy going around and it's selling so they bring out their own line. They also get some pretty big names in the fantasy world to include some of their books in the range, Mercedes Lackey and Tanith Lee, to mention just two that come to mind. They also afford some other authors an opportunity to try this field out.

And some of the books are actually quite good. I've read a few and I'm almost tempted to subscribe to get them as they're published, getting them here is a little the other side of complicated for my comfort (a little complicated from here but eh, why not occasionally splash out on little things) but some of them really need more work. They need critical editors who know a bit about Fantasy and will hit the authors for abusing fantasy, particularly fantasy cliches.

Still I will keep giving some of the authors a chance to impress me. Quite a lot of it is actually urban fantasy, which I really do like, but often authors get one strike and then they're out.

Michele Hauf is getting a second chance with Seraphim, mostly because it involves one of my favourite characters, Joan of Arc.


Gossamyr has been brought up by her Faery father, half-mortal and half-faery she's caught between the worlds and when The Red Lady is draining all Faery who wander into the mortal world someone has to try to stop her. Gossamyr is chosen. This is based in pseudo-medieval France where the characters have Medieval attitudes when it's plot-important.

She finds Ulrich who comes with her to help her, he strayed into a faery circle 10 years ago but to him it's only been a few hours. He's searching for his daughter (Rhiana - oh look sequel!) and is trying to come to terms with the world being different than he left it.

The very worst thing I can say about this book is that I didn't care. I had absolutely no emotional involvement in the book and really didn't care what happened to anyone. It possibly could have done with some editing and some more work.

It's not totally a bad book, it's just not a good book and I nearly abandoned it a few times because I didn't really care what happened next. I'm sure the author is capable of more and better.

Sunday, August 06, 2006



In a world where the gods battled and five gods established themselves as the one true gods what happens when in another country there are another batch of gods who are claiming superiority?

The main character is Auraya and she's learning to deal with her place in the world as an immortal servant of the gods. What she has to do in the world and how she is going to help the world. The one think no-one really knows is the motivations of the Gods, and whether the gods they're fighting for are the good guys.

Not a bad read but not the best thing I've read. I'm not sure that it really was as good as she could write.