Jane Lindskold

This is the first novel in a fantasy series about a very complex and fascinating world. Despite the cover, it’s not just about a girl and a pack of wolves, by far. She’ll travel far and discover all sorts of places and cultures. Yes, unlike most fantasy worlds, this one is actually filled with different countries, with their histories, traditions, ways of life, etc. There is also a growing number of interesting characters, and the main heroine herself is also a fairly complex (and show more likeable) person. Strong female characters have been fashionable as of late, but sadly many of them seem to have been born from the desire to supply the demand rather than inspiration, and much as I like the idea itself, Firekeeper is actually the first such heroine I’ve read about who seems like a real human being rather than an artificial construct. Even villains in this series resemble real-life people rather than demonic personifications of a thirst for power or other dark yearnings. The same naturalness applies to the plot, which is the opposite of conventional, to put it mildly – all my predictions regarding book 1 came to naught, and then I simply stopped making any. Also remarkably, the series maintains its high quality throughout its 6 novels. It was a treat to read, and describes one of the very few fantasy worlds I wish I could visit for real. show less

A science fantasy novel from 1997 that features two connected worlds: our own physical reality, and a virtual reality that has, perhaps, transcended the technological to embody as well something of fantasy, myth, fairyland and the human collective unconscious. And now the two are coming together in ways that should be impossible, as the virtual gods plot to conquer the physical realm.

It's a really neat idea, one that's very Zelazny, and it's done in a nicely self-assured way that never tries show more to ground its blend of technology and mythology in logic or technobabble, which somehow makes it work much better than you might think it has any right to.

Unfortunately, though, other aspects of the novel are less appealing. It's not bad, but it's way overlong, and its kaleidoscopic structure, jumping back and forth between characters who take a very long time to have anything to do with each other at all (and sometimes barely manage it in the end), wears on the patience more than a little. By the time I got to the end, I was getting decidedly bored with it. A spectacular, satisfying ending in which everything came to together brilliantly could maybe have turned that around. But unfortunately, as I understand it, Zelazny died before he could finish the novel, and while I give Lindskold credit for at least trying to pull it all together, the ending feels decidedly limp and anticlimactic after all that buildup.

It's kind of a pity, really. The basic idea is so good, and it's the sort of thing Zelazny was really good at. If this was a much tighter, shorter novel, and if he'd lived to finish it and managed to give it the well-written ending it deserved, I could see it taking its place among his more memorable works. As it is, well, I'm not sorry I read it, but mostly I'm just glad to finally be done with it. show less

Interesting - as good as the others in the series. It is more YA than the rest of the Honorverse, but that doesn't make it light - they're dealing with separations (a short-term, and the possibility of a long-term one), death, war between empaths, strong hints of long-laid plans behind a lot of what they've been dealing with in the first two books...Well, not exactly hints - we learn perfectly well that there are plans and something of why. The what...keeps changing, not to our heroes' show more advantage. Plus more standard YA stuff - love and loss and changing relationships (still not light, but more minor than the rest - not in our heroes' eyes, but in the eyes of (this, adult) reader). Nice to see Scott and Fisher again. I read the eARC, and there are a _lot_ of minor errors - typos and the like, plus stuff like at one point a human calls a 'cat by its treecat name, and three different 'cats apparently have three different names for the same person (I don't think so - could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's an error). I need to look at the finished work and see if those got fixed. I was under the impression that this was going to be a trilogy, but there's certainly plenty to go on with - the aforementioned plans, for one thing. I hope it does continue; aside from everything else (like great stories), this glimpse of early Manticore is fascinating. Not sure where these stories lie in relation to the Manticore Ascendant books, but they're either earlier or at the same time - no wormholes known. Enjoyed it, and will certainly reread, and look for more - it's a Weber, after all. show less

The first half of this book is kind of genius, then it falls apart into a roiling mass of cliche, as if Lindskold got bored with the story she was telling and just rushed to get the whole thing over with. It's a shame, because the premise is smart--dystopian future, first person narrator who can only speak out loud in found text but can speak to/hear inanimate objects. I'm actually mad about the lost opportunity of this book.