Land of Nod, The Artifact by Gary Hoover

‘Land of Nod, The Artifact’  by +Gary Hoover is one of those genre-bending tales that sucks you in and soon you are hooked. It is a little bit sci-fi and a lot fantasy. I first read this book in 2011 and recently re-read it while visiting grandchildren. I think it's well worth a second look!



The Blurb:
Jeff Browning has been haunted by terrifying dreams since the mysterious disappearance of his father (a renowned physicist). But when he finds a portal in his father’s office, he must overcome his fears in an attempt to find him.
The portal takes him to another dimension – one populated by fantastic and dangerous creatures and also an advanced society of humans.

As Jeff looks for clues regarding what may have happened to his father, he is accused by some of being a spy while thought by others to be a prophesized figure . . . who may be the key to victory in a developing war.


My Review:
The plot details the adventures of Jeff Browning, a fourteen year old boy who is struggling with the loss of his father. Jeff has dreams that frighten him and he tries to avoid sleep as much as he can. One day he decides to search his late father's locked office, and while he is in there he finds a strange machine with a hole in the center that leads to somewhere else. He climbs into it and embarks on a strange series of adventures, finding that his father may not be dead but may actually be there too, somewhere.

Jeff has mysterious powers that aren't fully explained in this book but they are hinted at, rather strongly, as being more fully explained at a later date. Fortunately, Jeff is taken in by a family, and they help him.  As he begins searching for his father, he is accused by some of being a spy, and is thought by others to be a prophesied figure, 'The Raja' a savior who may be the key to victory in a war that is looming on the horizon.  This is because of the locket which he wears that his father gave him years before.

This world is populated by fantastic and dangerous creatures and also an advanced society of humans. That society, while very different from those on earth, parallels Jeff's earth in many ways. 

Hoover blends science and technology with mysticism and prophecy to create a world that is both familiar and strange.  There are many different issues keeping Jeff from finding his father, from useless politicians whose self-interest outweighs the greater good to a war that he eventually finds himself in the middle of.

The characters are well drawn, and the strange world is also well crafted and visually real. The beasts that Jeff must fight are quite frightening and the battles are very realistic. While this is a great stand-alone tale, Hoover sets you up for the sequel, Land of Nod, The Prophet, quite neatly. This is another good adventure book for readers of all ages. I enjoyed this book immensely and highly recommend it!

My grandson and I will be reading Land of Nod, The Prophet over the summer, and I confess, I've been cheating--I've already begun reading it! What a great series!

Still Searching for the Next Great Read

Each week I try to review a book that really rang my bells.

So what happens when I have read 6 books in one week and out of those six books I was only moderately interested enough to finish 2 of them, and I still don’t have a book worth calling ‘best’?

I keep on reading, hoping to come across a new L.T. Suzuki or a young Tad Williams.

What do I look for in a book? First, because I read so much that is produced by the indie author, I don’t really expect perfection in the editing department. After all, even big name authors like Rick Riordan and Stephen King have some editing errors in their work and they have big publishing behind them. As a rule, if it is a great story I can ignore most errors as long as they aren’t too frequent.  

But if I can be forgiving about some editing errors, there is one thing I must have and that is a real, interesting and original story that is worth talking about and worth telling my friends about. I want a well-thought-out plot with great tension and characters that interest me and draw me into their lives.  I want consistent, believable magic and political systems and if you have nothing new for me, then I want new takes on old plot twists. I want a big finish if it is the first book in the series, despite that fact that the author may have a series in mind.  I want that first book to stand alone, and leave me wondering what is going to happen after that last page is turned.

In short, every time I start a new book, I am hoping to read something that moved me the way L.T. Suzuki's 'Imago, A Warrior's Tale' moved me when I first read it. The trouble is, I already reviewed it here on October 21, 2011.

I am sorry to say that this week I didn’t have time to read more than 6 books. Out of those 6 books, 2 were moderately good reads and 4 were stinkers.  The four stinkers had more problems than I could explain in one post.  I will simply say that atrocious sentence structure gagged me with overwhelming descriptions of eye-color and scenery or offended me with random, inexplicable incidents of extreme violence for the sake of the shock value. The authors had killed their own books in the first 5 chapters. 

Rather than poke needles in my eyes, I deleted them from my Kindle and moved on, hoping for a jewel in the next book.

The 2 moderately decent books began with great promise.  They had imaginative plot ideas, and wonderful characters.  In both cases, I finished the book because of the characters and I wanted to know what happened. Neither book ended well, and by the halfway point the plots were faltering and I was unable to understand how the characters used their rather muddled magic powers.  But I did like the characters and I hope that the authors continue working on their writing skills because they do show promise.

But I do have around 50 or more books queued up in my Kindle that I have not yet read (being only able to read about 6 a week) so I am sure to have something new and wonderful to talk to you all about next week!

Until then, my friends! Happy reading!

The Best In Fantasy Year in Review

This year, in July I began my quest to try to read and discuss one really good fantasy read a week.  At the time that I began this quest, I had no idea just how difficult and time consuming a task that would become!  I quickly discovered that for every one book that I loved, I had to read four or five that I quite frankly didn't love. Many books that have received high critical praise didn't ring my chimes at all. 

For this post, I had to decide which book-cover was my favorite book cover, and that was incredibly difficult!  The art and graphics on most of these books is so great that I would be proud to have it on my walls.  Still, Stephen King's incredible cover for 'The Dark Tower' looms as the best cover that I have seen this year.  The joke there is that I never reviewed that book, although my friend Jesse Schlecter reviewed the series as a guest post!  Still, I am using it as the cover of choice for this post. A very close runner-up for cover of the year is Valerie Douglas' 'Servant Of The Gods', which was my final review of the year.

Since my reason for writing the Best in Fantasy was to discuss the books that I loved, you have never heard of the ones that I like moderately, or even not at all, and you will never hear about them unless we are chatting in person! I don't have the deeply rooted belief that I am the final word on whether a book is bad or great that a true critic needs to have.  You have come to realize, I am sure, that I have a rather quirky sense of what I consider to be a great read.  My choices of books tend to be quite divergent and often obscure.  Reading pleasure is so subjective and individual, that I simply try to promote what I personally consider to be little gems.

Several little gems really stood out in my mind this year, and they may or may not surprise you.  The first book that leaps to my mind when I think of the book that I enjoyed the most this year is  L. T. Suzuki's 'Imago - A Warrior's Tale'.  I was blown away by that first book in the series.  I dropped everything and immediately began reading everything in the whole series.  The more I read, the more I was addicted!

Another little gem that rocked the Casbah for me was 'Black Numbers' by Dean Frank Lappi.  That is the scariest, most compelling book I have read in a very long time.  I am now waiting on pins and needles for the sequel! 

I also dipped deep into the realm of Young Adult Fantasy, and along with J. K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' (which was my inaugural post) I read Alison DeLuca's 'Night Watchman Express', Rick Riordan's 'The Lost Hero' and Gary Hoover's 'Land of Nod - The Artifact'.  Although all of these books are written from a teen's point of view (an age which I left behind along with the dinosaur), each and every one of them captured my attention and drew me completely into their world.

I also review many books by authors who have passed on, but whose works live on and still pull the reader in, even after all the years since their passing.  Fritz Lieber's classic ' 'Swords and Deviltry', Robert Jordan's 'New Spring', and Marion Zimmer Bradley's 'Mists of Avalon' were just a few of the classics that I re-read this year for this blog.  I was so happy to re-read their work, and discovered many things in them that I hadn't noticed the first time around.

We also lost several great writers this year. The prolific, amazing Anne McCaffrey passed on in November, and Diana Wynne Jones in March.

Despite the losses, and despite the amazing number of books that I have had to read just to find one gem a week, this has been a truly great adventure.  Each and every book that I have reviewed in this forum is a book that I absolutely loved reading, and I would gladly read again. Thank you all for being a part of my first year at this!  I hope to be able share many more little beauties with you in the years to come!

Rick Riordan, Son of Neptune

The Son of Neptune – Rick Riordan



As many of you know, I love everything Percy Jackson, and last Sunday I was privileged to hear author Rick Riordan speak in Olympia Washington at an event promoting the local Timberland Library. He spoke in an outdoor plaza to a crowd of about a thousand avid fans. I was also quite inspired by his ability to motivate the young authors in the crowd. Unfortunately, I was not able to get my copy of ‘The Son of Neptune’ signed, as I didn’t know about the event in advance and didn’t realize that I would need a ticket, but I felt good about the whole event despite that disappointment. Riordan is an extremely funny man; personable and quite humble about his success. 

The Son of Neptune opens with Percy Jackson picking up where he left off in ‘The Lost Hero’. In that book, Percy had disappeared, and the tale revolved more around Jason Grace. This tale starts with Percy suffering from Amnesia and being hunted by two gorgons who refuse to stay dead whenever he kills them. All he knows is that he is looking for some one named Annabeth. As he is running from the gorgons he rescues an old bag lady who turns out to be the Roman Goddess Juno. She gives him the choice of remaining where he is and being safe or going to the Roman camp for demi-gods where he must save the gods but could regain his memories. Percy being Percy, he opts for his memories.

The Roman camp is quite different from the Greek Camp Half-blood, and Percy doesn’t know why he feels like everything is all wrong. There are Lares (household gods) and the camp is divided into legions in the same way that the Roman Army was. The military culture of the Romans is alive and well in this camp.

Here is where we meet Hazel, a daughter of Pluto and a girl whose darkest secret is her talent of creating precious metals and jewels spring from the earth comes with a curse for those who find them. We also meet Frank Zhang, a son of Mars and a gifted archer. His golden arrows are very unique, and he too has a dark secret.

Mars sends them off on a quest to Alaska, to rescue Thanatos, guardian of the underworld. During the quest we learn that the ancient Goddess Gaea is plotting to destroy the Gods, and how the demi-gods like Percy are supposed to stop her.

First they travel up the coast, to Portland, Oregon looking for Phineas, and on to Seattle, Washington where they discover that Amazon.com is run by Kindle-reading Amazon Warriors!

Continuing with his third-person narrative as he did in The Lost Hero, Riordan switches perspective from Percy to Hazel and to Frank, giving a well rounded view of what is going on with each character. I felt completely involved with them and learned a lot about Roman Mythology that I had never known. I also discovered that my birthday (which I share with Mercedes Lackey) falls on the Feast of Fortuna, which begins at sundown on the 24th of June.

Riordan neatly answers some of the questions that were raised in the first book, and of course, raises more. I laughed out loud several times, and held my breath as the heroes made their way through the dangers set before them. I highly recommend this book to everyone who loves an epic adventure, epic mythology and likes their epics with a modern twist!

Losing Beauty, Johanna Garth

As the title of this blog  proclaims, normally I read epic fantasy and science fiction. However this week I am blogging on a tale that is very different from my favorite epic hack-and-slash-fest type of saga.  Stay with me - I haven't lost my love of all things Tolkien, just temporarily branched out a bit.

Losing Beauty by Johanna Garth is an urban fantasy in the broadest sense, being a modern take on the Hades - Persephone tale.  I am a sucker for mythology of any sort, and Greek mythology offers a lot opportunity for new retellings, as Rick Riordan has shown us in his Percy Jackson Series.

I met Johanna in the course of business since we are both published by Fantasy Island Book Publishing.  I was intrigued by the cover of her book, and when I bought the Kindle book I found myself completely absorbed in her tale.

The story begins with Persephone Campbell, a girl with a problem. Persey is a beautiful girl, and everyone loves her. Even as a child, people find themselves telling her their  problems: terrible things which no normal person would ever tell anyone, much less a child. Even so, people can't resist telling her their deepest and darkest secrets; a thing which continues into her adulthood. Her ability to draw the deepest secrets from people is strange, and it emerges that she was adopted as a baby and her father was listed as 'unknown'.

Three men love her to the point of obsession. After high school, Persey marries her high-school sweetheart, Aaron Strait out of a sense of duty, more than anything else.  She loves her husband, but she realizes that her love for him is not the sort of love that a wife should feel for her husband. Still, she does love him and remains a loyal wife.

Persey goes to work for the same company as Daniel Hartnet, a man with an uncanny ability to read people, that he calls his crap-o-meter. This ability to read motives is every bit as uncanny as is Persey's ability to draw out secrets. He discovers that he can't read Persey, and that really intrigues him.  He soon becomes obsessed with her, but like the moderately decent man he is, he respects her commitment to her marriage.

Johanna Garth draws her characters well. Haden is a bad man, selfish and focused only on his own desires but quite seductive and very compelling.  Daniel Hartnet is not lily-pure in his motives, but he is a basically good man and also quite seductive.   Aaron is a simple, high-school jock-made-good; a man who is solely driven by his desire to protect and provide for her; and she is completely aware of that. Aaron becomes very successful, and on the surface everything looks perfect.

What she does not realize is that she is the one true love of Haden, also known as Hades, God of the Underworld. He has followed her progress since her earliest childhood, grooming her to be his wife in various different guises. He has even posed as the coach in her highschool. There is no length that he won't go to to have her.  When she marries Aaron, Hayden puts a terrible plan into action, using all of his resources as Lord of the Underworld; and soon she finds herself tied to the last person she wants to be tied to.  That is where the adventure really begins.

Persey is a nice girl, but her secret ability is hard for her to bear; and she feels that she is responsible for a tragic event that is the sole responsibility of Haden. He, of course, uses her insecurity to bind her to him even more tightly.
Johanna Garth has written an urban fantasy that is sophisticated, and romantic. It is a wonderful adventure that takes Persey from rural america to New York to Asia, and has many twists and turns that are quite unexpected. The ending was quite unexpected! 

While this book was a real dip into uncharted literary waters for me, I freely admit that I had a great time reading this story and highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good romantic urban fantasy. I am now a fan! I will definitely be reading anything Johanna Garth writes!

Rick Riordan 'The Lost Hero'; and Gary Hoover 'Land of Nod - The Artifact'

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan 

 I read and loved the Percy Jackson series, so I was wondering where Riordan was going to go with this tale. Well, he went straight to the bank with this one; this book bodes well for the new series "Heroes of Olympus".

The action starts immediately. Jason is a boy who is suffering from amnesia. He wakes up on a school bus not remembering anything from his past, including anything about who he is. He is sitting next to Piper McLean, a girl who is apparently his girlfriend, and a boy, Leo Valdez, who claims to be Jason's best friend. The bus is taking them, along with the rest of their grade at their school, the Wilderness School, on a field trip to the Grand Canyon.  The Wilderness School is apparently a school for delinquents.

While they are there, they are attacked by ‘venti’ or storm-spirits. Their teacher, Coach Gleeson Hedge, reveals himself to be a satyr, and helps fights the venti. Jason surprises himself by automatically using a sword disguised as a coin to fight off the spirits when he is threatened. Coach Hedge is captured while defending them. At the height of the battle, pegasi (two winged-horses) land next to them, carrying strangers: Annabeth  and Butch (who has a rainbow tattoo; he is a son of Iris). Annabeth is angry because she had a vision that she would find a clue to her missing boyfriend, Percy Jackson, at the Grand Canyon. She was told to look for the "boy with the missing shoe"; Jason lost a shoe in the battle, but has no memories of his own identity, let alone Percy Jackson's whereabouts.

The three students are informed that they are demigods (children of a god and a mortal) and are taken back to Camp Half-Blood where they meet other demigod children like themselves. There, Leo is revealed as a son of Hephaestus, Piper as a daughter of Aphrodite, and Jason as a son of Zeus and the brother of Thalia. He remembers his sister while seeing a picture of her in Cabin One. After scarcely 24 hours of learning about their previously hidden identities, the three receive an urgent quest to rescue Hera, queen of the gods, who was captured by unnamed forces.

This book hits the ground running, and doesn’t stop until the end, where Riordan sets you up for the sequel, in classic Riordan style.  The action is great, and the monsters are wonderful.  There is even a mechanical dragon, which I find to be an interesting idea.  I liked this book and will definitely be reading the sequel, The Son of Neptune when it debuts in October for sure!

Land of Nod – The Artifact by Gary Hoover

‘Land of Nod – The Artifact’  is one of those genre-bending tales that sucks you in and soon you are hooked. It is a little bit sci-fi and a lot fantasy.  The plot details the adventures of Jeff Browning, a fourteen year old boy who is struggling with the loss of his father. Jeff has dreams that frighten him and he tries to avoid sleep as much as he can. One day he decides to search his late father's locked office, and while he is in there he finds a strange machine with a hole in the center that leads to somewhere else. He climbs into it and embarks on a strange series of adventures; finding that his father may not be dead; but is actually there too, somewhere.

There are some similarities to 'The Lost Hero' in 'The Land of Nod - The Artifact.  In Riordan's 'TheLost Hero' Jason suffers from amnesia.  In 'Land of Nod - The Artifact' Jeff Browning feigns amnesia in an effort to conceal that he is not from that world.   Also, Jeff, too, has mysterious powers that aren't fully explained but they are hinted at, rather strongly, as being more fully explained at a later date.

Fortunately, Jeff is taken in by a family, and they help him.  As he begins searching for his father, he is accused by some of being a spy, and is thought by others to be a prophesied figure, 'The Raja' a savior who may be the key to victory in a war that is looming on the horizon.  This is because of the locket which he wears that his father gave him years before.

This world is populated by fantastic and dangerous creatures and also an advanced society of humans. That society, while very different from those on earth, parallels Jeff's earth in many ways.  

Hoover blends science and technology with mysticism and prophecy to create a world that is both familiar and strange.  There are many different issues keeping Jeff from finding his father, from useless politicians whose self interest outweighs the greater good to a war that he eventually finds himself in the middle of.

The characters are well drawn, and the strange world is also well crafted. The beasts that Jeff must fight are quite frightening and the battles are very realistic. While this is a great stand-alone tale Hoover sets you up for a sequel quite neatly, and I will definitely be looking forward to it! This is another good adventure book for readers of all ages. I enjoyed this book immensely and highly recommend it!