Dave Butler Writes

Bookshelf: Terra Incognita

Posted on April 25, 2016 by David

The Edge of the World is book one of Kevin J. Anderson’s Terra Incognita trilogy. The trilogy is set in a Byzantium / Crusades style world, immediately putting itself beyond the herd of faux-Europe off-the-shelf fantasies. Anderson’s world is dominated by two rival but related religions that share a single sacred city, Ishalem; this trilogy follows the events that unfold following a major act of destruction in that city.

What follows then is a sprawling multi-character epic fantasy featuring sea serpents, twisted loyalties, assassins and saboteurs, exploration themes, strange spiritual explorations at the end of the world, humans and gods in conflict with each other, religious fanaticism, mythological beasts and relics, lost continents, tragic romance, harem politics, and the first winkings of an early modern era. Anderson’s storytelling chops propel the reader from one chapter to the next, but his compassion for BOTH sides of this tortured conflict of sister civilizations is what really gives Terra Incognita its soul.

Terra Incognita is as grand and riveting as A Song of Ice and Fire, considerably more humane, and finished. I’d love to see these books made into movies.

Posted in Bookshelf | Tagged A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin, Kevin J. Anderson, Orbit, Terra Incognita, The Edge of the World, The Key to Creation, The Map of All Things | Leave a comment

Bookshelf: The Seer

Posted on April 13, 2016 by David

The Seer is a gripping epic fantasy novel about the curse of talent and the overreaching of power.

Sonia Orin Lyris’s debut novel The Seer follows young Amarta, who has a limited ability to see the future. The future is not fixed, shifting with the changing intentions of the key actors, and Amarta sees only flashes. Moreover, the future is her sole gift; she cannot see the past at all, for instance.

Limited though this ability is, it makes her the target of an ambitious climber. She encounters Innel at the book’s opening, in which he forces her to tell him how to kill his own brother, with whom he is at odds. In an interesting twist that is one part harem politics and one part talent contest, Innel’s defeat of his brother puts him in a position to become Lord Commander and Consort to the Princess.

Not done climbing, Innel turns back to the young seer who got him this far. Manipulating her with mages, assassins, and torturers, he leans on her gift to consolidate his power and discover and end threats to the kingdom. But can the climber climb too far for his own good? And will the seer survive the climbing?

Posted in Bookshelf | Tagged Baen, Epic Fantasy, Sonia Orin Lyris, The Seer, YA | Leave a comment

Bookshelf: Dandelion Iron

Posted on April 11, 2016 by David

YA literature has been exploding in recent years, but in all its eccentric fecundity, it’s never seen this before: post-apocalyptic all-girl cattle drive.

In 2058, the Juniper—that part of North America that used to be Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado—is a rough place to be. The nuking we received in the Sino-American War (the “Yellowstone Knockout”) left the Juniper without electricity, the Sterility Epidemic left all of North America with few children and almost no males, and the New Morality movement threatens to leave everybody without joy.

Cavatica Weller is a fighter who believes in love. She fights for the love of her friend Anju when Anju’s boyfriend Billy turns out to be fertile, and therefore a precious commodity targeted for purchase and sale by the wealthy. And she fights for her family when her mother dies, joining her sisters Wren and Sharlotte—domineering, trigger-happy, and maybe insane—to carry out their dead mother’s plan: to drive their cattle herd to market off the regular trails, west, across the Juniper, to Nevada.

Dandelion Iron is one part Lonesome Dove, one part Little House on the Prairie, and one part Mad Max. You’re going to love it.

Posted in Bookshelf | Tagged Aaron Michael Ritchey, Cattle Drive, Dandelion Iron, Juniper Wars, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Wordfire Press, YA | Leave a comment

City of the Saints in the Humble Bundle!

Posted on April 7, 2016 by David

The year is 1859. US Army agent Sam Clemens rides west in his amphibious steam-truck, the Jim Smiley. His mission is to get the unruly Kingdom of Deseret, with its air-ships and its rumored phlogiston guns, into the looming conflict on the side of the north and union.

His opposite number is Edgar Allan Poe. Believed dead for a decade, Poe works deep undercover for the nascent confederate conspiracy, traveling in disguise as an exhibitor of Egyptian antiquities that conceal weapons and other gadgets: a hypnotic hypocephalus, a canister of flesh-eating brass scarab beetles, and the mysterious Seth Beast.

Poe is dying of consumption. Worse than the possibility of death by disease or defeat at the hands of that ingenue Clemens, though, is the risk of being defeated by his arch-nemesis and former lover, the chief counterintelligence agent of the Kingdom, the counterfeiter, poisoner, and seductress, Eliza R. Snow.

I wrote City of the Saints with the distinct fear that it might never, ever find an audience, and I wrote it as an act of sheer love. Now, not only is the book in print with a mid-sized and rapidly growing publisher, it’s currently (and for the next 13 days) in the famous Humble Bundle, along with Frank Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, Jody Lynn Nye, Neo Edmund, and a power-punching host of other top-notch authors.

So if you’re an ebook reader, go take a look at the Humble Bundle. There’s an astonishing array of stuff available at the price you set, including unpublished classics from past grand master, reissues of out-of-print works, series headers by young writers, and even outsider art. Like mine.

Posted in Steampunk | Tagged Aaron Michael Ritchey, Alan Dean Foster, City of the Saints, Frank Herbert, Jody Lynn Nye, Josh Vogt, Kevin J. Anderson, Lois McMaster Bujold, Mario Acevedo, Neo Edmunds, Quincy J. Allen, R.J. Terrell, The Humble Bundle, Wordfire Press | Leave a comment

Bookshelf: The Nymphos of Rocky Flats

Posted on April 6, 2016 by David

The Nymphos of Rocky Flats is the only vampire novel ever de-classified by the Department of Energy. In looking at the Amazon reviews as I write this, I see a few complaints about the title. I’m not sure why — the title gets straight to the point.

Nymphos begins the story of Felix Gomez, soldier, private detective… vampire. Felix doesn’t want to be a vampire, and studiously drinks animal blood rather than human, despite the loss of power that causes him.

That marginal loss of power just might undo him, as Felix is hired to investigate an outbreak of nymphomania at the Department of Energy’s site at Rocky Flats. If wild women weren’t enough, Felix finds himself caught between Romanian vampire hunters, an aggressive dryad, traditional vampire lords who want to push him away from the last vestiges of his humanity, and even… just maybe… UFOs.

And all Felix wants is forgiveness.

This is not a book for children. But if you like your vampires less romantic and shiny, and more randy, wisecracking, and armed, this might be the book for you.

Posted in Bookshelf | Tagged Felix Gomez, Mario Acevedo, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats | Leave a comment

Bookshelf: The Feather and the Moon Well

Posted on March 28, 2016 by David

Shean Pao’s debut novel The Feather and the Moon Well is a deeply romantic fairy tale told about and from the points of view of the fairy creatures, that asks the question: can a creature change its nature?

The owner of the Moon Well is Anarra, also called the Willow Woman or the Witch of the White Tower. Anarra is a goddess of the older order that preceded the Tuatha de Danaan, the Aes Sidhe, and humans still call upon her as a capricious dispenser, sometimes of blessings and sometimes of curses. Anarra is trapped outside time in her tower, but within her moon well glimpses a feather that may be a hint of salvation.

Barbarus is an imp in the service of a great demon, sent by his master Rash’na’Kul (a Lord of the Sixth Hell) to bargain with the Willow Woman. To win her freedom, Anarra agrees to cast a spell that will enable Rash’na’Kul to overcome a demon of the Seventh Hell. One key ingredient of the spell, though, is the essence of love, so for the Willow Woman to escape her tower and the imp to flee his servitude, either Anarra, or Barbarus… or both… must fall in love.

Posted in Bookshelf | Tagged David Farland, David Farland Discovery, Fairy Tales, Ireland, Shean Pao, The Feather in the Moon Well, Wordfire Press | 1 Comment

Bookshelf: The Dragons of Dorcastle

Posted on March 1, 2016 by David

Alain is a Mage; his power, like that of all his Guild, comes from the key insight that the world and everything in it are unimportant illusion, easily manipulated. When the caravan he is guarding comes under attack from suspiciously over-armed bandits, he finds himself defending his philosophical opposite: Mari, a Mechanic, whose strength as a member of the Mechanic’s guild comes from accepting the world as real and engaging with it. Escaping from the desert wherein they are stranded alone is only the beginning of their adventures.

The Dragons of Dorcastle launches Jack Campbell’s conceptually ambitious and rollicking YA fantasy adventure series, The Pillar of Reality. The truth-hoarding Great Guilds have always been rivals, but now as catastrophe threatens to overtake the world of Dematr, the Mage Alain realizes that his not-always-cooperative ward is the prophesied agent of the world’s salvation.

The Mage-Mechanic dynamic plays out in fun ways; the Zen qualities of Campbell’s Mages mean they’re not simply a different path to getting things done, they’re a philosophical denial that anything can be done at all, coupled with an insistence that anything that could be done wouldn’t matter and a detachment from caring about any of the (illusory and irrelevant) outcomes. This puts Alain at odds with the spunky, determined, and well-armed Mari, and sets up their inevitable challenged romance.

Posted in Bookshelf | Tagged Jack Campbell, The Dragons of Dorcastle, The Pillars of Reality, Young Adult | Leave a comment

Bookshelf: A Cloak of Frost

Posted on February 15, 2016 by David

One day the North Wind delivers a baby to a baker and his wife. They love the child without giving her a name, and mostly the village of Snelling-on-the-Oak accepts her… mostly. But the child is magical. She builds homes for fairy folk and tells herself stories that for her become real, and mysterious crowns are delivered to her foster parents. And one day the North Wind comes back to warn her that, for her family’s sake, she must leave Snelling-on-the-Oak. The girl refuses, and shortly thereafter the magical talent that had always been visible only to her manifests itself to the entire village. The North Wind returns, and with sorrow in her heart the girl leaves home to find her destiny and her name.

In her new book, A Cloak of Frost, Leafty launches a new series in the same setting as her excellent Fairy Godmother books. She continues to display her own magical storytelling gift and her lilting once-upon-a-time narrative voice, in a tale sure to please fairy-tale readers of all ages.

Posted in Bookshelf | Tagged A Cloak of Frost, Danyelle Leafty, Fairy Tales | Leave a comment

To Coincide with a Full Moon

Posted on February 7, 2016 by David

“Ordinary people were much more aware of the heavenly bodies than they are today. It is artificial lighting, in street and house, which has made us less conscious of their endless mutations. Few dwellers in large cities now know what the current phase of the moon may be, and an eclipse will pass unnoticed by all save professional astronomers. But in the pre-industrial world men carried torches to light their way and arranged their journeys to coincide with a full moon.”

— Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic

Posted in Quotation | Tagged Astronomy, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic | Leave a comment

Bookshelf: Unforgettable

Posted on February 4, 2016 by David

Nat Morgan is unrememberable. Literally. If you leave his presence, in sixty seconds you’ve forgotten him entirely.

He’s been this way since birth; the only reason he survived infancy was his mother’s recognition of the problem, and her determined writing of journal entries and notes to herself. One of the book’s most poignant scenes is the one in which Nat realizes what he’s cost his mother, and walks away.

After a career as a thief, Nat becomes a CIA agent. Even as a spook, he has to be handled with very specific protocols and by very particular case officers, to avoid being forgotten by the Agency. His talent, combined with a flair for quick improvisation, makes Nat Morgan hard to stop, but will they be enough when Nat has to team up with a Russian agent to stop an evil billionaire from building a quantum computer that will enable him to rule the world?

Eric James Stone’s novel debut (he’s a prolific writer of short stories) Unforgettable is THE BOURNE IDENTITY wrapped inside an inside-out MEMENTO. It’s a clever and exciting read.