Great Book
I’d like to recommend QUEEN FERRIS to anybody lurking on my blog. This is the second volume in the STONEWAYS TRILOGY and it was just wonderful. S.C. Butler does an incredible job of making characters in a fantasy novel into people. The kind of people you’ll recognize — your chatty aunt Ethel, or the mother with whom you’ve had this difficult relationship. Too often characters in fantasy novels sound like British actors playing Roman generals and politicians. You know what I mean, that feeling that by making them BBC formal they’ll seem ancient and different. Butler doesn’t do that — he has people being people, and that includes dithering and second guessing themselves. I loved it.
He also has the coolest Dwarves, ever. I want a Moonstone necklace, _right now!_ I don’t want to spoil anything, but these are moonstones like no moonstones you’ve ever seen or heard about. He had a daunting task because when book one ended his protagonists were very young people ten or eleven years old, but he gracefully moves us forward in just a few chapters until they are 18, and on the verge of adulthood.
Anyway, that’s my book plug for the day. I’m halfway through Jack McDevitt’s latest, CAULDRON and enjoying it very much. I’m trying to find time to read, but it’s hard when I have so much writing to do, and my wonderful horse to ride.
Melinda
January 17th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve requested the first novel in the Butler series from my local public library (it has to come via interlibrary loan from a different branch); that will let me see if the series fits my tastes as well as it does yours. I don’t tend to hear about YA series all that often, but Garth Nix’s Abhorsen books are one of my very favorite fantasy series of the past couple of decades (not just “favorite YA fantasy series”), so I’m willing to check out a new YA series.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:23 am
Sam has also created a strange unique magic system for
the Stoneways world that feels very different from anything I’ve
seen previously. That’s one of the things that makes his world
stand out in my mind.