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The Corpse-Rat Dog Stars Review
Sep. 11th, 2012 10:01 pmHey,
So I just finished up a pair of excellent books.
First up, The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby. A fun little fantasy novel with a fair bit of humor light and dark.
The book focuses on one Marius dos Hellespont, a middle-aged gambler, grifter, and thief who is currently working as a grave robber. While picking through the site of a battle, he is accidentally grabbed by an emissary of the dead (who mistakes him for the king killed in the battle) and dragged down into the underworld. The dead need a king. Once they realize that Marius is still living, they charge him with finding a dead king and returning him to the underworld to rule over them.
At first, Marius's only goal is to ditch his former apprentice (and now undead overseer) Gerd and flee the dead and their insane mission. But things go slightly awry and eventually Marius has to figure out a way to carry out his commission.
The dialogue is crisp and witty, the plot moves along at a brisk pace, characters all have some depth and undergo some change. It's really a great little fantasy novel. It sits somewhere between Lies of Lock Lamora and Discworld. Certainly some fun stuff.
Turning to something a little more sombre we have The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. It's the most moving and lyrical post-apocalypse book I've ever read.
So the world has collapsed, a super-flu killing off most of the world's population. Hig lives out on an abandoned airport with Begley, a gun-nut survivor type. Hig flies his plane around the area looking for trespassers, Begley picks them off with his sniper rifle. In between Hig goes hunting and fishing with his dog Jasper. All things considered, it's a pretty good life, but Hig questions what this life is really worth. Sure, they're both alive and pretty well off, but it's an uncompromising life that doesn't allow for negotiation. Eventually, Hig reaches a crisis and decides to fly out to Grand Junction, past his turn-around fuel limits to see if he can track down help.
I really liked this book. It's a pretty quiet book and fairly internal to Hig's state of mind -- the sentence structure is very thought-like with fragments that back connect to build up a picture (but it still reads very clearly). But there's a lot in there and you don't have to scratch the surface very hard or deep to see a lot of interesting layers down below.
So, both books are really good and worth your time.
September looks to be a slow month, but October is going to be on fire with a number of hot titles coming out that I'm interested in.
later
Tom
So I just finished up a pair of excellent books.
First up, The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby. A fun little fantasy novel with a fair bit of humor light and dark.
The book focuses on one Marius dos Hellespont, a middle-aged gambler, grifter, and thief who is currently working as a grave robber. While picking through the site of a battle, he is accidentally grabbed by an emissary of the dead (who mistakes him for the king killed in the battle) and dragged down into the underworld. The dead need a king. Once they realize that Marius is still living, they charge him with finding a dead king and returning him to the underworld to rule over them.
At first, Marius's only goal is to ditch his former apprentice (and now undead overseer) Gerd and flee the dead and their insane mission. But things go slightly awry and eventually Marius has to figure out a way to carry out his commission.
The dialogue is crisp and witty, the plot moves along at a brisk pace, characters all have some depth and undergo some change. It's really a great little fantasy novel. It sits somewhere between Lies of Lock Lamora and Discworld. Certainly some fun stuff.
Turning to something a little more sombre we have The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. It's the most moving and lyrical post-apocalypse book I've ever read.
So the world has collapsed, a super-flu killing off most of the world's population. Hig lives out on an abandoned airport with Begley, a gun-nut survivor type. Hig flies his plane around the area looking for trespassers, Begley picks them off with his sniper rifle. In between Hig goes hunting and fishing with his dog Jasper. All things considered, it's a pretty good life, but Hig questions what this life is really worth. Sure, they're both alive and pretty well off, but it's an uncompromising life that doesn't allow for negotiation. Eventually, Hig reaches a crisis and decides to fly out to Grand Junction, past his turn-around fuel limits to see if he can track down help.
I really liked this book. It's a pretty quiet book and fairly internal to Hig's state of mind -- the sentence structure is very thought-like with fragments that back connect to build up a picture (but it still reads very clearly). But there's a lot in there and you don't have to scratch the surface very hard or deep to see a lot of interesting layers down below.
So, both books are really good and worth your time.
September looks to be a slow month, but October is going to be on fire with a number of hot titles coming out that I'm interested in.
later
Tom
