My understanding is Butcher tried to get more traditional fantasy published for a long time, unsuccessfully, before he hit it big with his urban fantaMy understanding is Butcher tried to get more traditional fantasy published for a long time, unsuccessfully, before he hit it big with his urban fantasy series "The Dresden Files". It would seem that, after enough continued success with that series, the publishers offered to put this series out. Its sadly pretty clear why this wasn't a very successful endeavor until after he was an established author. Its...not great. Predicating a high fantasy series on a dare about romans and pokemon seems like a bad plan, and a thing only an author already guaranteed by a publisher to have his stuff put out would do. Skip it....more
I didn't check any of the mood boxes, as I'm not sure who this book might actually be for. Nor can I imagine a mood that would have made it any less oI didn't check any of the mood boxes, as I'm not sure who this book might actually be for. Nor can I imagine a mood that would have made it any less of a chaotic mess. Lets be honest, I did not go into this with high expectations. After all, the old edition I have features John De Lancie's face plastered across 2/3rds of the cover, floating over some fire and a couple of crossed vaguely southeast asian swords. The synopsis basically says its about an earth changing events that awakens psychic powers in humans. But it failed to even live up to those limited expectations. Its hard to summarize the plot (maybe the problem with the synopsis on the dust jacket) because its pretty disjointed throughout the book. There are...beings?...but maybe transhuman AIs of some kind?...they occasionally are described as post-natural. This book predates 'transhuman' entering the lexicon as I'm assuming its something along those lines, its never made particularly clear. One of them lives in a giant egg inside Earth. Other ones I guess live on other planets? Again, never made clear. The one that lives in Earth is either crazy, evil, or both. But that doesn't have anything to do with humans getting psychic powers. Planets, on a cycle of blank (we're not told what scope of time) pass through shockwaves or regions of space that help the beings wake up (except maybe the other ones are always awake? and the earth one apparently still does stuff in its sleep...maybe even on other planets?) and *those* are what awaken psychic powers in humans (and maybe other similar creatures on other planets). Except they don't really seem like psychic powers. They're very...new age-y...with a lot of description of altered perception that doesn't make a lot of sense, and is kind of hand waved with 'interaction on higher levels of being'. Presumably, we're mostly following one family, who all get lots of powers. Because, oh yeah, the same energy field or whatever just flat out kills huge swaths of the population. But maybe some people have been acquiring powers for years (like one of the antagonists)? And...trigger warning here...nonverbal folks with autism have unique gifts/powers that put them above the conflict between 'light' and 'dark' psychic humans (though we only really see one of those 'dark' humans)...and are also not handled in particularly sensitive or accurate way. Oh, and the family's hand crafted sailboat (because the father being an artist that makes bowls and sculpture taught him how to make a boat?) has the same name as DeLancie's. Its a little hard to figure out what span of time events are taking place across throughout the book...days? Months? Years? Sometimes events that seem like they should have taken weeks only have characters sleeping a couple of times. Other times, things that should take a day or less seems stretched out over way too much time? Anyway, don't read this. I can't even accurately summarize it...there are plots started and dropped. Characters kind of come and go without explanation. The book digresses into a lot of weird nonsensical musings by both characters and post-natural beings. Between the poor writing, poor editing, and mess of a plot its hard to even tell what's going on sometimes. Because yeah, the editing is *bad*. John DeLancie is a ton of fun as an actor, and I'm not sure how much of this was actually written by him, but him and/or Tom Cool either did not have a clear story outlined and in mind when they started this, or they just did not have the writing chops to pull off whatever it was they were going for. And, as they author bio's *really* want to be sure you know, yes, Tom Cool is his real name....more
I wish I could give this 1.5 stars, as it doesn't even quite even live up to 2 stars. 'Nightside' was supposed to be an urban fantasy, leaning farther I wish I could give this 1.5 stars, as it doesn't even quite even live up to 2 stars. 'Nightside' was supposed to be an urban fantasy, leaning farther into horror, about John Taylor...a private eye with...a 'private eye' as his magic power. That gives you an idea of the quality and creativity you'll experience throughout the book. John is pulled back into the shadow city (the Nightside) within London in service of a case after 5 years away and vowing never to return to his place of birth. Its kind of hard to fully miss these days with urban fantasy, but this manages to do so. The Nightside (which, as others have said is a name/phrase we see ENTIRELY to frequently throughout the book) feels like a thinly veiled and poor shadow of the London of Neverwhere. In fact, the book as a whole feels like an artless imitation of Neil Gaimen's work mashed up with more mainstream urban fantasy, traditional hard-boiled detective novels without a solid grounding in the tropes of genre, and horror minus anything actually disturbing or horrific. It frequently tells rather than shows, with long exposition between characters info-dumping descriptions and information on one another rather than letting us experience the world. While some nods to Zelazny's Amber and Moorcock's Champion are fun references, they push the feeling of the overall book further into realm of low-quality fan fiction. As does the frequent shifting of tone from what is clearly attempting to be horrific/disturbing to a humorous tone that never actually manages to be funny....more
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