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Bring Down Heaven: The City Stained Red; Sam Sykes

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Rating: 3.5

Review: After reading the Aeon’s Gate series I really had no idea what to expect when I started The City Stained Red. To be truthful, the only thing I counted on was an action themed tale. Thank the heavens that it came to be more than that.

The City Stained Red takes place shortly after the Aeon’s Gate Trilogy, though you needn’t read the trilogy to enjoy this new joint series. I will admit that I didn’t finish Aeon’s Gate‘s final installment, The Sky Bound Sea, with a simple reason that I got distracted with another book. So I was a bit worried about how it would affect my understanding of this continuation series. Thankfully I only had minor confusion that was resolved after the third chapter.

The City Stained Red begins with our familiar vagabonds from Aeon’s Gate: Lenk, Kataria, Gariath, Denaos, Asper, and Dredelon -no- Dreadlon…. Dreadaeleon. Led to the city of Cier’Djaal, Lenk and co. start out looking for their employer from Aeon’s Gate who still owed them their promised gold from their last job. Lord Miron had proved himself quite the escapee, however, leaving Lenk and co. with nothing better to do than to stir up trouble. Not that they were trying.

Alas, trouble does seem to find our group of adventurers with every chance. This one fell to Kataria. Unwilling to allow herself to be enslaved by an oid (non-human) hating trader, Kataria practically sets off a war that had been on the brink of happening for years. Lenk and co. just had the misfortune of showing up at the wrong time.

I had no idea what I would think about this book when I started it. Which was actually something unfamiliar to me and was kinda awesome. My first thoughts as I started it were plagued with the similarities between the book and The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker (which I was playing when I started The City Stained Red). To my delight I later found out that Sam Sykes was inspired by the Legend of Zelda series which would explain some of the similarities. Not that it wasn’t already hinted through Sykes’ writing style that video games must have held some spot in his mind.

Once I had moved on from my late coming revelation, I delved into The City Stained Red with full force. I will admit that I enjoyed it more than what I had read of the Aeon’s Gate books. This book differed in that fact that the focus was more focused on plots and sub-plots whereas Tome of the Undergate wasn’t much more than an action filled fantasy. This time my brain was forced to work a little more, which for me is a huge plus. In fact there were a few times where I had read something to fast and would have to backtrack because something important had been missed. The balance of areas that needed devout attention and others that were a fast read through was my big take away from reading it through.

The other big thing I liked was being able to learn a bit more about the characters. While really this all boils down to the story being less of a “you hit me, I hit you back” kind of tale, the thing that developed was more independent characters. In fact most of them hardly see each other through most of the book. Of course, there is a thing as two much independency (everyone forget I, as a teen, said that). Sam Sykes’ books went from one extreme to another with Tome of the Undergate hardly having a scene without the whole team and The City Stained Red Which hardly had a scene with all of the team. While this did make an interesting tale. It confused me a bit as a reader since each of the five had their own sub plot, making it difficult at times to see where they were connected.

All in all I enjoyed The City Stained Red, it was miles better than the Aeon’s Gate books and it gave me some more of the story I crave. A lot of the reasons I didn’t like the book were mainly out of personal preference not because of bad writing. So thumbs up to Sam Sykes!

P.S.

Thanks so much to The Little Red Reviewer for sending me this book. :)

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This was the last thing I needed to see today.

Going Postal, By Terry Pratchett

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Rating: 5

Review: Now, this review has a lot of back story. I sat down to write my review a week or two ago. Why has it taken since then to get this posted? Several reasons, such as: I found out ten minutes after starting my review that Sir Terry Pratchett had in fact passed away, I then spent till two a.m. trying to get past the fact so that I could write (time that was supposed to be used studying), and finally after it was written, I deleted more than half of it and have been to upset about it to try again. Thankfully, I am back.

Now this is a book that I have wanted to read for a long time. My cousin is a Terry Pratchett fanatic and has pressed me to read this particular book for at least a year or two. Of course, I wasn’t avoiding the book, I just didn’t own it and my library lacked it as well. Though, this year I actually thought to put it on my birthday list and, like magic, I got it.

Going Postal is one of Terry Pratchett’s many Discworld books and takes place in Ankh-Morpork, one of the most notable cities in Discworld. This tale starts with the failed escape of a Mr. Albert Spangler, A.K.A Moist von Lipwig, who is to be hung in approximately half an hour. So as any man on death’s row, Mr. Spangler tried to stall in a desperate hope that someone or something would come to save him. That someone never came and Albert Spangler died.

Luckily, Moist von Lipwig managed to survive the ordeal.

Though waking to the office of Lord Vetinari, the very man who had sentenced his death, was probably worse than death. Even worse to find out that he could either die (again) or work at the local post office. But after much thinking, he decided on the latter (though he would soon grow to regret turning down such an easy way out).

There are two main things that really make this book worth reading: Moist von Lipwig himself, and the Lord Vetinari. These two characters compliment each other in a way that I have never seen but want more of now that I have been exposed to it. I read the book mainly to read the dialog between Moist and Vetinari. Both of these men have witty and sarcastic persona’s and when they are put into the same room the dialogue reflexes their personalities (and if you read my reviews you probably find out that wit and sarcasm are my favorite forms of humor).

But while I could probably write a paper about both of these characters, I will focus on Moist (as this is his book). Moist is the perfect con artist. He has brains and wit enough to talk himself out of nearly any conversation and while he knows how to stay low he can put on a show at a moments notice. His appearance, however, is his favorite attribute in that he is completely average in every possible way. Average height, average hair, average eyes, etc… Which means that he has yet to find someone who can describe his appearance with out saying thing like: his hair was light yet fairly dark and shortish longish. Which is all you could hope for as a con artist.

Of course the minute he becomes head postmaster, he had to change that. After a lifetime of trying to avoid intimate attention he now had to put on a show for the whole city every day. Which is a lot of fun to watch. I loved the inner commentary that Moist delivered nearly every page. He always added in unsaid endings of sentences or versions that he had wanted to say but thought better of.

I feel that this not only gives you the essence of Moist but all of Pratchett’s tales. He makes jokes about things that you don’t see in other books. My favorite being how he will write a homophone in a dialogue like “He’s going through a faze.” and have a retort like “Don’t you mean phase?” Which is what I have come to recognize as true Pratchett glory.

There wasn’t anything I didn’t like about this book. It was a fun, clean, amazing read. It made me laugh in public and try and get who ever was sitting nearby to understand what the joke was (they all were apparently hard to get when you hadn’t read the book….). I would recommend this as not only a great fantasy to start with but even a wonderful introduction to Pratchett and Discworld.

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