“Among Thieves” by Douglas Hulick (Reviewed by Robert Thompson)

Official Douglas Hulick Website
Order “Among Thieves” HERE (US) + HERE (UK)
Read An Excerpt HERE
Read Fantasy Faction’s Interview with Douglas Hulick HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Douglas Hulick has a B.A. and M.A. in Medieval History. He also practices and teaches Western European Martial Arts (WMA) with a focus on early 17th century Italian rapier combat. Among Thieves is his debut novel.

PLOT SUMMARY: Ildrecca is a dangerous city if you don’t know what you’re doing. It takes a canny hand and a wary eye to run these streets and survive. Fortunately, Drothe has both. He has been a member of the Kin for years, rubbing elbows with thieves and murderers from the dirtiest of alleys to the finest of neighborhoods. Working for a crime lord, he finds and takes care of trouble inside his boss’s organization—while smuggling imperial relics on the side.

But when his boss orders Drothe to track down whoever is leaning on his organization’s people, he stumbles upon a much bigger mystery. A mystery involving a book that any number of deadly people seem to be looking for—a book that just might bring down emperors and shatter the criminal underworld.

A book now inconveniently in Drothe’s hands…

CLASSIFICATION: Among Thieves is like a cross between Scott Lynch’s the Gentleman Bastard series and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire, but told in a first-person narrative reminiscent of Alex Bledsoe’s Eddie LaCrosse novels, but without the hard-boiled cynicism. Apart from the occasional expletive and some graphic violence, Among Thieves keeps to a PG-13 rating. Recommended for readers who like their fantasy “dark and gritty”, but still accessible.

FORMAT/INFO: Among Thieves is 432 pages long divided over thirty-one numbered chapters. Narration is in the first-person, exclusively via the protagonist Drothe. Among Thieves reads as a standalone novel, but is the first volume in an open-ended series that will see at least two more sequels. April 1, 2011 marks the UK Paperback publication of Among Thieves via Tor UK. The US version (see below) will be published on April 5, 2011 via Roc.

ANALYSIS: George R. R. Martin, Steven Erikson, R. Scott Bakker, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, Glen Cook, Alan Campbell, Richard K. Morgan, Tim Lebbon, K.J. Parker, David Keck, Sarah Monette, Matthew Stover, Ian Graham, Jesse Bullington, Brent Weeks, Sam Sykes, Jon Sprunk . . . these are just some of the authors who are currently writing what may be considered “dark and gritty” fantasy, a subgenre that has exploded in popularity the past few years. Continuing this trend in 2011 is Douglas Hulick.

Douglas Hulick is the author of Among Thieves, an exciting fantasy debut set against a criminal underworld in the Byzantine/Constantinople-influenced city of Ildrecca. A world comprised of Gray Princes, Upright Men, Blades, Ears, Purse Cutters, Talkers, Whisperers, Agonymen, Whipjacks, Dealers, Jarkmen, Snilchs, Draw Latchs, Tails, Squinters, and various other Kin. Among Thieves though is the story of one Kin in particular, a Nose named Drothe:

“I’m an information broker, and I gather what I can by any means I can: paid informants, bribes, eavesdropping, blackmail, burglary, frame-ups . . . and even, on rare occasions, torture—whatever it takes to get the story. That’s what sets a Nose apart from a run-of-the-mill rumormonger. We not only collect the pieces; we also put them together. We don’t just find out something is happening—we find out why it’s happening in the first place. And then, we sell the information.”

Drothe may be a criminal, one willing to lie, cheat, steal, kill or torture in order to get what he wants, but he’s a very likable criminal. A lot of that has to do with the author’s decision to write Drothe in the first-person. First-person narratives are much more intimate than the third-person perspectives usually found in fantasy novels, so readers are able to immediately forge a strong connection with Drothe, making it easier to care about the protagonist, even if he is a criminal and commits immoral acts. In this case, Drothe’s first-person POV is made even stronger by a warm and very accessible narrative voice: “Battered, broken, his glory literally falling off him in pieces, he still stood tall and pointed the way to redemption. The carved souls under his care had vanished with his missing arm, but that didn’t mean they were forgotten. I could see the weight of his face, the droop of his eyelids, the slight lean of one shoulder. If ever an Angel knew despair and failure, it was this one.”

Other charming attributes include Drothe’s toughness, a quick wit, his persistence, and a strong sense of honor which extends to his family, his friends, his employer and his fellow Kin. Honor is Drothe’s most likable asset because it shows that he actually cares about other people more than himself, a quality that paints Drothe as a hero rather than an antihero. Of course, it’s his honor that also gets Drothe into trouble, especially as the stakes become bigger. In addition to all this, Drothe is also a fairly skilled fighter for his small stature and possesses magically enhanced night vision, which gives him an edge in tight situations.

Because Among Thieves is told in the first-person, supporting characters aren’t nearly as well-rounded as Drothe. Fortunately, Drothe develops some interesting relationships with the supporting cast that not only play an important role in Among Thieves, but could also prove vital in future tales of the Kin. These include relationships with Baroness Christiana Sephada, the mercenary Bronze Degan, the Upright Man Kells, the Djanese Zakur Jelem, and the Gray Prince Solitude.

World-building in Among Thieves is nicely balanced. Douglas Hulick provides enough information to give readers a solid understanding of the setting the author has created, but not too much to interrupt the flow of the story or slow down the pacing. The most interesting aspect of this world is the emperor, Stephen Dorminikos: “He was the Triumvirate Eternal, the ruler whose soul had been broken into three parts so that he might forever be reborn as one of three versions of himself—Markino, Theodoi, and Lucien—each version following the next by a generation, to watch over the empire. So the Angels had decreed, and so it had been.” Also of interest are the mercenary Order of the Degans with their sacred Oath; the history of Isidore, a Dark King who once “stood at the head of all the Kin, controlling a criminal empire that spanned the underside of the true empire”; and the Gray Princes—“Half-mythical crime lords who ran shadow kingdoms among the Kin” and were “legends to be avoided at all costs, if you were wise.” As far as the thieves’ cant used in the book, it does add a little flavor to the narrative, but is not nearly as colorful or distinctive as the slang used in Sarah Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths.

Magic in Among Thieves is pretty straightforward. There’s a power source called the Nether and then there’s the different degrees of magic that can be performed from simple street magic to more complex magic like dream manipulation or portable glimmer—magic keyed to ordinary objects that can then used by anyone with hardly any effort on the user’s part—and finally the much more powerful imperial glimmer which is considered “magic that was gifted to the emperor and his court by the Angels.” Not exactly groundbreaking stuff as far as magic systems go, but it does add an element of danger and excitement to the book.

Apart from Drothe and his engaging first-person narrative, what I love most about Among Thieves is the fast-paced, well-executed story. A story full of mystery and intrigue, breathtaking fight scenes, unexpected plot twists, surprising revelations and clever cons. A story that hooked me from the first chapter, kept me entertained until the very last page, and then left me begging for the sequel.

Negatively, I had a few minor complaints about the book, but nothing that really impacted the way I felt about the novel. Still, it’s impossible to completely ignore the various dei ex machina used to help Drothe out of deadly situations, or the way Drothe is able to hold his own against enemies who are far more skilled and dangerous than the Nose, or Drothe’s sudden advancement at the end of the novel which reminded me of the film, The Chronicles of Riddick. Once again though, these issues did little to dampen the excitement I felt when reading Among Thieves.

CONCLUSION: As far as fantasy debuts go, Among Thieves is not on the same level as such standouts as Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora or Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, but it’s damn close thanks to a fantastic protagonist in Drothe, Drothe’s accessible narrative voice, a very polished writing performance by Douglas Hulick, and a story that entertains from beginning to end. In short, it will be a crime if Douglas Hulick’s Among Thieves isn’t in the running for the best fantasy debut of 2011...

Three 2011 Novels - Short Discussion: Appanah, "Locke" and Anderson/Herbert (by Liviu Suciu)

Since I am trying to showcase as many 2011 interesting books of various kinds as I can, but the number of full reviews I can do is limited, it is inevitable that some books won't receive as complete coverage as I wish. I keep the continually updated post with 2011 books read HERE, while I revise review priorities all the time as my last quite unexpected review shows and from time to time I will try to do a short discussion of several books that otherwise would slip through.

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The Last Brother (A+, recommended unreservedly) by Nathacha Appanah (translation by Geoffrey Strachan) is a wonderfully written, emotional novel about a friendship between two very different boys. Raj a native of Mauritius, poor, more or less uneducated and with a tragic family history and David, an orphan Jewish boy from Prague that had found himself bewilderingly imprisoned in a camp on that remote and sometimes deadly island - due to an unforgiving climate and illnesses for natives and Europeans alike - by the British government after being denied access to Palestine in the early 1940's.


I heard about The Last Brother from the B&N newsletter on "new voices in fiction" and it intrigued me so I got a look the first time I saw it and I really liked it though I thought it was a bit too short to fully blow me away.

With the premise outlined above and with the book starting with Raj in old age recollecting what happened at least in general lines, there are few surprises as the direction of the story goes. The writing is top notch and the characterizations of Raj and David are superb, so the book becomes a page turner where you really get to care about the boys and you wish a miracle will happen and alter the already known events. The novel is pretty emotional but not in a particularly depressing way and I found myself very moved by many of the events and by the epilogue.

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Hellhole (A, recommended to fans of large scale epics) by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson is the start of an old fashioned space opera series that resembles the second author's Seven Suns sags in a lot of ways though its universe has different characteristics from the Seven Suns saga as far as FTL and the consequent distribution of power goes. The blurb below gives a good outline of the series' beggining though of course things are considerably more complicated and the characters cast is pretty big as befits a space opera saga.

"Only the most desperate colonists dare to make a new home on Hellhole. Reeling from a recent asteroid impact, tortured with horrific storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and churning volcanic eruptions, the planet is a dumping ground for undesirables, misfits, and charlatans…but also a haven for dreamers and independent pioneers.

Against all odds, an exiled general named Adolphus has turned Hellhole into a place of real opportunity for the desperate colonists who call the planet their home. While the colonists are hard at work developing the planet, General Adolphus secretly builds alliances with the leaders of the other Deep Zone worlds, forming a clandestine coalition against the tyrannical, fossilized government responsible for their exile."

"Hellhole" is traditional space opera and as noted above follows the same narrative structure as in both Kevin Anderson's series I've read - Seven Suns and Terra Incognita - with various pov's in various threads, in various locations throughout the settled universe - here there are 20 core-worlds exploiting 54 colony worlds of which the so called Hellhole is just one though it is quickly clear it will be the most important - threads that intertwine, separate, intertwine back.

As in Seven Suns and especially in the Terra Incognita series, important characters can die at any time so do not get overtly fond of anyone. The writing style is the clear one familiar from the above and the book is a fun adventure you do not want to put down, a bit on the campy side and predictable in large measure, but entertaining nonetheless since there are enough twists to keep things interesting and the characters quickly acquire the "root for/hate" characteristics so familiar from the earlier series.

As a series debut it ends on the typical KJA' semi-cliffhanger and I definitely plan to read the next as soon as I can get it, though my hope is the authors will keep the series manageable for its depth - currently I would say 3-4 novels, but of course if the universe expands considerably, could be more - since that was the one thing I disliked about Seven Suns, while Terra Incognita is among my current top fantasy series precisely by its relative compactness (though calling a series with three 600 page books compact stretches things a little, the natural comparison is with seven volumes sagas or 1000 page doorstops, not the slim 200 page The Last Brother above).

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Up Against It (C, enough nuggets to make it worth a check but a minor disappointment overall) by "MJ Locke" has a very interesting premise and a great opening 40-50 pages but things go mostly downhill after that. There are quite a few nuggets like a newly awakened AI that steals the show in all its interactions with humans and a "genetic cult" with surprising philosophies and depth, but the writing style of the pseudonymous author is just not up to handling the interesting world building she created and the novel is mostly a pretty boring slog despite its supposed frantic pace and race against the clock for the inhabitants of Phocaea to save themselves from multiple threats. Here is a little from the blurb giving you an idea of the setting:

"Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System's frontier. They're your basic high-spirited young adults, enjoying such pastimes as hacking matter compilers to produce dancing skeletons that prance through the low-gee communal areas, using their rocket-bikes to salvage methane ice shrapnel that flies away when the colony brings in a big (and vital) rock of the stuff, and figuring out how to avoid the ubiquitous surveillance motes that are the million eyes of 'Stroiders, a reality-TV show whose Earthside producers have paid handsomely for the privilege of spying on every detail of the Phocaeans' lives.

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In addition to Geoff, our story revolves around Jane, the colony's resource manager -- a bureaucrat engineer in charge of keeping the plumbing running on an artificial island of humanity poised on the knife-edge of hard vacuum and unforgiving space. She's more than a century old, and good at her job, but she is torn between the technical demands of the colony and the political realities of her situation, in which the fishbowl effect of 'Stroiders is compounded by a reputation economy that turns every person into a beauty contest competitor. Her manoeuvrings to keep politics and engineering in harmony are the heart of the book."



The two story lines indicated above, while theoretically converging in the last part of the book do not mesh well for the most part and the book jumps around without a clear focus and with little that conveys the sense of urgency of the events after the excellent beginning.

It is almost like Up Against It started with "how cool are these ideas and this setting!" and then fit a plot and characters around and the natural result is utter lack of coherence and continually disrupted narrative flow. While the cool ideas/setting keep the book readable for the aforementioned nuggets, the novel tries to be both traditional sf in which Geoff and his friends save the day and "realistic thriller" in which there are things like bureaucracies and parents and the two modes just jar badly one against each other.

“The King of Plagues” by Jonathan Maberry (Reviewed by Robert Thompson)

Official Jonathan Maberry Website
Order “The King of Plagues” HERE (US) + HERE (UK)
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s Reviews of “Patient Zero” + “The Dragon Factory”
Sign Up for the Free Short Story "Material Witness" HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Jonathan Maberry is the multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the Pine Deep Trilogy, the YA novel Rot & Ruin, and the Joe Ledger series which was optioned for TV for ABC. His nonfiction work includes Vampire Universe, The Cryptopedia, and Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead. He also writes for Marvel Comics including The Black Panther, Marvel Zombies Return, DoomWar, and Marvel Universe Vs. The Punisher. Upcoming releases including Dust & Decay (Simon & Schuster) and Dead of Night (St. Martin’s).

PLOT SUMMARY: Saturday 09:11 Hours: A blast rocks a London hospital and thousands are dead or injured… 10:09 Hours: Joe Ledger arrives on scene to investigate. The horror is unlike anything he has ever seen. Compelled by grief and rage, Joe rejoins the DMS and within hours is attacked by a hit-team of assassins and sent on a suicide mission into a viral hot zone during an Ebola outbreak.

Soon Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences begin tearing down the veils of deception to uncover a vast and powerful secret society using weaponized versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to destabilize world economies and profit from the resulting chaos. Millions will die unless Joe Ledger meets this powerful new enemy on their own terms as he fights terror with terror...

CLASSIFICATION: If Patient Zero was like James Rollins’ Sigma Force meets 24 meets Resident Evil/28 Days Later; and The Dragon Factory was like James Rollins’ Sigma Force meets 24 meets G.I. Joe meets James Bond; then The King of Plagues is like James Rollins’ Sigma Force meets 24 meets Dan Brown meets Tom Clancy.

FORMAT/INFO: The King of Plagues is 448 pages long divided over a Prologue, five titled Parts, eighty-nine numbered chapters, forty-seven interludes, and an Epilogue. Narration alternates between the first-person POV of the protagonist Joe Ledger and numerous third-person POVs including heroes (Dr. Circe O’Tree, Mr. Church, Rudy Sanchez, First Sgt. Bradley Sims), villains (the King of Plagues, his Conscience, Rafael Santoro) and minor characters. The King of Plagues is the third Joe Ledger novel after Patient Zero and The Dragon Factory. The King of Plagues is mostly self-contained, so reading the first two books is not a requirement, but recommended.

March 29, 2011 marks the North American Trade Paperback publication of The Dragon Factory via St. Martin’s Griffin. The UK edition (see below) will be published on April 12, 2011 via Gollancz.

ANALYSIS: The King of Plagues is the third novel to feature Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences, “a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can’t handle.” The first book, Patient Zero, combined zombie horror with terrorism set to a realistic post-9/11 backdrop. It was a brilliant idea and a total blast to read. Unfortunately, the sequel—with its cartoonish villains and an over-the-top plot featuring Nazis, a master race program, cloning, genetically spliced creatures and so on—was a major disappointment, dampening my excitement for the next book in the series.

Thankfully, The King of Plagues is a lot more like Patient Zero than The Dragon Factory. The villains for instance, are far less cartoonish. Granted, the Seven Kings are a secret society with names like Kings of Fear, Famine, Gold, War, Plagues, Lies and Thieves; they worship a Goddess; and were supposedly responsible for things like the Twin Towers, the flu epidemics and the economic crash of 2008; but as a whole, the villains in The King of Plagues are far more menacing and interesting than those in The Dragon Factory. Of course, it also helps that the novel features a couple of familiar faces from Patient Zero, one of whom becomes the new King of Plagues.

In addition to the better villains, Jonathan Maberry does a better job with Joe Ledger. Joe Ledger is the star of the series, and deservedly so, but in The Dragon Factory it seemed like Ledger was demoted to the second string in favor of bad guys and supporting characters. Fortunately, The King of Plagues features a lot more of Joe Ledger. More of Ledger’s rough charm and endearing sarcasm. More of his vivid descriptions of gunplay and hand-to-hand combat. And more of his fractured psyche—the Modern Man, the Warrior, and the Cop. Trust me, more of Joe Ledger is a good thing.

The biggest improvement with The King of Plagues however, is with the story. While the plot features secret societies, “weaponized versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt”, Area 51, and a prisoner named Nicodemus who possibly possesses supernatural abilities, the story in The King of Plagues is a lot more plausible than The Dragon Factory. This is because the novel focuses more on the terrorism angle that was largely missing in the last book, including such relevant ideas as Terror Town—a training ground dedicated to counter- and antiterrorism training; think tanks comprised of popular fiction authors to imagine worst-case scenarios; and terrorists using online social networks (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc.) for anonymous communication or stirring up hate crimes.

Besides being more plausible, The King of Plagues also packs an emotional wallop. In fact, between a bombing that captures the overwhelming fear and loss of 9/11, a seven-year-old boy dying from a weaponized version of the Ebola virus, innocent people forced to commit heinous acts in order to save their families, and Joe Ledger still grieving from the recent loss of a loved one, The King of Plagues features some of the series’ most heart-rending moments yet. Moments punctuated by Jonathan Maberry’s skillful writing:

“For one crystalline moment the entire scene was dead silent, as if we were all frozen into a photograph from a book on war. This could have been Somalia or Beirut or Baghdad or any of the other places on our troubled earth where hatred takes the form of lethal rage. We, the victors, stood amid gunsmoke and the pink haze of blood that had been turned to mist, amazed that we were alive, doubting both our salvation and our right to have survived while others—perhaps more innocent and deserving than ourselves—lay dead or dying.”

Despite the novel’s many improvements over The Dragon Factory, The King of Plagues still suffers from some of the same problems as its predecessor. Like taking too much time to establish the vast reach and power of the Seven Kings, which could have been summarized in a much more concise manner; weak subplots involving the villains that were either too easy to anticipate or too melodramatic; and shallow supporting characters.

CONCLUSION: After finishing The Dragon Factory, I was disappointed by the far-fetched territory the series had ventured into and hoped that The King of Plagues would not follow suit. To my relief, Jonathan Maberry’s The King of Plagues utilizes the same successful formula that made Patient Zero so much fun to read. A formula that made The King of Plagues nearly as thrilling and page-turning as the awesome Patient Zero. A formula that should be used for all future installments in the Joe Ledger series...

"Thera" by Zeruya Shalev (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Zeruya Shalev at the Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature
Order "Thera" HERE

INTRODUCTION: "Thera" is a book that I picked up from the B&N bookshelves because of the title and cover without knowing anything about the author or subject, only to discover a blurb that was not quite what generally interests me. But I opened it at random and the moment I read the first sentence I was just hooked and I knew I had to read it "now". On finishing it, I was so impressed by its extraordinary voice that I had to talk about it as soon as possible...

A November 2010 translation from Hebrew by H. Sachs and Mitch Ginsburg, the novel has been published originally in Israel in 2005, being the fourth novel of the author and the third translated into multiple languages and getting widespread acclaim.

"A woman, who suddenly decides to forsake her husband for brilliant fantasies of freedom and independence, confronts a complicated reality: unexpected isolation, awakening doubts, guilt, sorrow, and the troubles of her small son trying to adapt to a new situation.

Unexpectedly and paradoxically, the family Ella Miller destroys becomes a radiant fantasy in itself, and she sinks into an agonizing longing for the sheltering secure framework of her previous life, even when a new love, both promising and happy, finally comes her way. It goes on even when she tries to build a united family with her new love and his children. The new life turns out to be an unbelievably complicated learning process, a path paved with upsets that at times demand more of her than she ever thought she could give."

ANALYSIS: "Thera" is narrated in first person by 36 year old Ella Fisher, an archaeologist with slightly unorthodox theories about how the famous ancient volcanic explosion on the Mediterranean Island of Thera - Santorini - led to the freedom of the Jewish people in Egypt and the biblical exodus under Moses.

The novel is set in Jerusalem of the present day - as of original publication 2005 more or less - and follows Ella's increasingly complicated life over a relatively short span of time at least as narration goes. Despite seemingly being contently married with a colleague and former mentor and having a son she dotes on who is just starting school, one day Ella decides to kick out her husband Ammon for various reasons that are slowly revealed in the book.

"Thera" is a deceptively fast read despite its 400+ pages - the first person narrative and relative short time frame of the action essentially make it so - and the book is superbly written and translated. The storyline of the novel is less important than the way it is told and the portrait of Ella, her son Gili, the men in her life and the other two children of her "second family" and their relationship with Gili and herself make Thera work beautifully. The story alternates moods very well and the ending is also excellent capping a truly unexpected hit for me.

There are lots of poignant moments: when Ella essentially forces her way in Ammon's new apartment to see how her son copes there in her absence on one of the days when his father has custody - after more or less inveigling the address from Gili - and overwhelmed by the domestic feeling she experiences, she tries to get Ammon back after kicking him out not long ago, or when she has to cope with her son's school friends all having "full families" and has musings crudely put as where are the divorce statistics when you need them?

Later when she falls together with another "shipwrecked soul" partly by chance, partly with a little manipulation on her part, the story goes back to a more content semi-domestic mood though again not without its problems, not least the 3 children thrown together who have to sort of cope with the new arrangements - another poignant scene is when she buys six card packs for Gili and his new 'step brother' to share and Gili alternates between being happy to get them and suspicion that were not the other boy there he would have got all six for himself...

The above may seem a little banal in some ways, but the way the book flows is just impressive and Thera was a real pleasure to read end to end, so I truly urge you to try the available sample on Amazon and see if it instantly hooks you the way it happened with me.

As the setting goes, everything reads as normal for a modern Western prosperous city while the sometimes unusual facts of modern life in Jerusalem - eg schools have guards, men are often away on army duty... - are just presented matter of fact as are the various aspects of Jewish belief and culture inserted masterfully by the author.

Overall, Thera (A++) is just a superb piece of literary fiction that flows so well that is more of a page turner than most action oriented novels.

“Hidden Cities” by Daniel Fox (Reviewed by Robert Thompson)

Official Daniel Fox Website
Order “Hidden Cities” HERE
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s Reviews of “Dragon In Chains” + “Jade Man’s Skin”

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Daniel Fox is a pseudonym for an award-winning British author of several novels including The Books of Outremer. He’s also written children’s books, poetry, plays, and hundreds of short stories.

PLOT SUMMARY: Whatever they thought, this was always where they were going: to the belly of the dragon, or the belly of the sea.

More by chance than good judgment, the young emperor has won his first battle. The rebels have retreated from the coastal city of Santung—but they’ll be back. Distracted by his pregnant concubine, the emperor sends a distrusted aide, Ping Wen, to govern Santung in his place. There, the treacherous general will discover the healer Tien, who is obsessed with a library of sacred mage texts and the secrets concealed within—secrets upon which, Ping Wen quickly realizes, the fate of the whole war may turn.

As all sides of this seething conflict prepare for more butchery, a miner of magical jade, himself invulnerable, desperately tries to save his beautiful and yet brutally scarred clan cousin; a priestess loses her children, who are taken as pawns in a contest beyond her comprehension; and a fierce and powerful woman commits an act of violence that will entwine her, body and soul, with the spirit of jade itself. Amid a horde of soldiers, torturers, and runaways, these people will test both their human and mystical powers against a violent world. But one force trumps all: the huge, hungry, wrathful dragon...

CLASSIFICATION: Moshui: The Books of Stone and Water trilogy is a character-driven, Asian-influenced fantasy in the vein of Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price Quartet and Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori, while also containing elements of Kate Elliott’s Crossroads series and the Psalms of Isaak by Ken Scholes.

FORMAT/INFO: Hidden Cities is 432 pages long divided over six titled parts with each part divided into numbered chapters. Narration is in the third-person via several POVs including the slave-boy Han, the fishergirl-turned-emperor’s mistress Mei Feng, Mei Feng’s grandfather Old Yen, the young jade miner Yu Shan, an imperial messenger named Chung, the doctor’s daughter Tien, the bandit woman Jiao, the mother Ma Lin, the rebel leader Tunghai Wang, the imperial general Ping Wen, etc. March 22, 2011 marks the North American Trade Paperback publication of Hidden Cities via Del Rey.

ANALYSIS: Hidden Cities is the concluding volume in the Moshui: The Books of Stone and Water trilogy after Dragon In Chains and Jade Man’s Skin. Like its predecessors, Hidden Cities is highlighted by Daniel Fox’s elegant prose and a strong cast of characters. I’ve already gushed in length about the lyrical prose in my reviews of Dragon In Chains and Jade Man’s Skin, but it bears repeating, especially considering how much the prose adds to the reading experience. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Daniel Fox’s poetic writing style, the author’s trilogy would have been just another run-of-the-mill fantasy series, one I probably would have given up on after the first book.

Characters meanwhile, remain richly drawn, sympathetic and diverse led by Han, Mei Feng, Jiao, Old Yen and Yu Shan who have all been there from the beginning. Supporting roles include Ma Lin, Tunghai Wang, Tien, Ping Wen, Chung and Shen with each getting a chance to add their mark in the book, while minor characters like the fake doctor Biao, Mei Feng’s friend Dandan, the rebel General Ma and the deckhand boy Pao are given pivotal parts to play in the trilogy’s conclusion. Unfortunately, while the characters are a strength in the novel, there are just too many of them with narratives. Fifteen to be exact compared to the seven that the trilogy started with. In short, there’s just not enough pages to accommodate all of the different viewpoints, and as a result, a number of characters are given the short end of the stick including Yu Shan, Han, Ma Lin, Tien and the dragon.

Negatively, world-building is still a weak spot in Hidden Cities. I had hoped the book would finally provide some answers regarding the dragon and the Li-goddess and the Empire, but despite ample opportunities, very little information is offered, somewhat wasting the potential of the trilogy’s Asian-influenced setting. The biggest problem with Hidden Cities though is with the story. After Dragon In Chains and Jade Man’s Skin, I wasn’t surprised by the slow-developing plot or lethargic pacing in Hidden Cities. What surprised me was the novel’s lack of payoff. With any trilogy, I expect the third book to resolve storylines and provide a sense of closure. What Hidden Cities offers instead is cliffhangers and even more unanswered questions than what the trilogy started out with. In fact, Hidden Cities felt more like reading a middle volume than the conclusion to a trilogy, which is not what I had signed up for when I started the series.

CONCLUSION: As much as I love the prose and the characters in the series, it wasn’t enough to overshadow the bloated number of viewpoints in Hidden Cities or the novel’s lack of closure, which is especially disappointing since the book was supposed to conclude the Moshui: The Books of Stone and Water trilogy. Of course, it will be even more disappointing if there isn’t a sequel to tie up all of the loose ends left at the end of Hidden Cities...