Rating System

Rating System

My ratings can be roughly described as the ratio of what I enjoyed about a book to what I did not enjoy.   I can’t pretend to be an objective reviewer, but I will always try to give an honest account of my reactions to each book and the reasons for those reactions.  In general, the reviews probably give a better sense of my opinion than the ratings-- one book may get a 3 for a very different reason that another book gets a 3, for instance, and the two books are not necessarily comparable.

5 – A book that is very close to my idea of a perfect reading experience. I don’t necessarily believe that it is a perfect book, as I don’t believe that perfection is an obtainable goal.  I usually believe the book contains a richly imagined world, interesting characters, a compelling, believable plot, and some quality that will linger in my mind for years to come. I don’t typically re-read books, but this would be on my ‘Would Read if Struck with Amnesia’ list. 

4.5 – This book is very similar to a 5.  There is something that kept me from giving it a top score.  I still think this book is at the top of the pile, when it comes to quality. 

4 – An excellent book. I really enjoyed and appreciated this book. I would definitely recommend it to others with similar tastes.

3.5 – A good book.  I enjoyed and/or appreciated this book.  I may have found it entertaining, even if there were some weaknesses. I may have found it interesting and well-written, but it didn't really captivate me.  On the other hand, it might just be a pretty good book, and one that I would probably recommend to others with similar tastes.

3 – I’m ambivalent about this book.  I had a hard time deciding whether I liked the book overall or not.  There may be some aspects of the novel that I greatly enjoyed, but some aspects that annoyed me to pieces. Alternatively, it could mean that I didn't really have strong feelings about it either way.

2.5 – I didn’t really like this book.  I didn’t hate it, but it left me feeling disappointed.  It was not without its redeemable factors, but they were not strong enough to leave me feeling positive about the reading experience.  Getting through the novel probably felt more like a chore than a pleasure.  It’s possible that there is just a huge mismatch between the novel’s target audience and me.

2 – I strongly disliked this book. Something about the book rubbed me the wrong way. I can often see how it could be an enjoyable book for someone approaching it from a different perspective than I am. 

1.5 – Mostly drivel. There might be a kernel of something interesting in there, but its bogged down by clichés, ridiculous plotting, simply bad writing, and/or other insurmountable problems.

1 – I can’t believe this was published.

Review: Elfland, by Freda Warrington

Elfland by Freda Warrington

Published: Tor, 2009

Awards: Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award

1^st Book in the ‘Books of the Silver Wheels’ Series

Sub-Genres: Contemporary Fantasy, Romantic Fantasy

The Book:

Aetherials, the elemental creatures some call the faerie folk, live in two worlds.  Some stay in their homeland of the Spiral, while some choose to spend their lives on Earth, blending in with the humans around them. Between these two worlds is a series of Gates, governed by an ordained Gatekeeper.

Elfland tells the story of two Aetherial families, the Fox family and the Wilder family, who live on the Earth.  The Wilders are seen as cold, haughty, and distant, while the Fox family seems full of love and laughter.  While these two families might look very different at first glance, they are hopelessly intertwined, past and future. 

The patriarch of the Wilder family, Lawrence, is the Gatekeeper.  He has angered the entire Earth-based Aetherial community by refusing to open the Gates.  He claims he is protecting them all from some terrible danger, but he is unable or unwilling to explain the situation more clearly.  The Wilder and Fox children now face their life on Earth, without the possibility of ever even visiting their ancestral home.  Some of them are obsessed with penetrating the closed gates, while others desperately want to turn their back entirely on their heritage in order to live a ‘normal’ life.


I have never read a book by Freda Warrington before, and I picked this one up to participate in the Women of Fantasy Book Club discussion. I had no idea what to expect going into this book.  While it is the first of a series, Elfland also works as a stand-alone novel.

My Thoughts:

Elfland seemed to be primarily a romance and a family drama, rather than a fantasy.  The characters and their personal relationships are really the driving force of the story.  The Fox and Wilder families seem rather isolated, as they are almost never seen interacting in a significant way with anyone outside of their small, closed community.  The story follows the Fox and Wilder children from their childhood through their growth into young adults, with all the mistakes and false starts they make in their lives along the way. 

The style of writing was very meticulous about physical detail, particularly visual detail.  I felt like every character was always completely described, down to every strand of hair and facial expression.  All of the characters and important locations were brought to vivid life.  I still have a clear image of each person burnt into my mind, and I finished this book weeks ago.   The prose kept me interested in the book, even at the low points of my interest in the characters and the plot.

The viewpoint jumps a lot throughout the book, but Rosie Fox could be considered the main character.  Rosie is flighty and overdramatic, and she has a very hard time trying to figure out what shape her personal life should take.  Her mistakes along the way tend to be incredibly emotionally destructive to both herself and the people around her.  Her older brother Matthew wants to turn his back on his Aetherial nature, and live fully as human, while her little brother, Lucas, just wants to make the people he loves happy.  The Wilder children, bad-boy Sam and charismatic, druggie Jon, each have their own troubled character arcs that interweave with the Fox children’s.  The older generation has its share of drama as well, and there’s a small group of human friends who find their place in the tapestry of the story.  Overall, it seemed like something of a soap opera, and this feeling was intensified by the absence of anything outside their small community. 

The fantasy elements were the Aetherial nature of the characters and the world of the Spiral.  For much of the book, one could just think of the Aetherials as an isolated ethnic group, since they did not seem much different from humans psychologically. Some of their physical abilities do set them apart, however. Aetherials can travel into the ‘Dusklands’, which is kind of an Aetherial perception overlaying the human world, and transform into more elemental shapes there.  They can also magically will their body not to become pregnant or contract STDs—a useful way to eliminate some of the consequences of sex in the narrative.  Aetherials also live for longer than humans, and are reincarnated in the Spiral after death.  

The humanity of the characters certainly made them feel more real and relatable, but it did result in one small drawback.  It irritated me every time a character blamed their behavior on their ‘wild Aetherial spirit’. They also tried to claim that Aetherials are ‘not bound by human vows’ a few times. I found this a little strange, since no one is literally bound by a promise.  You don’t have to be a fairy to break your promises; anyone can do that.  It was annoying to hear the characters glorify a lack of integrity as a noble trait.

My Rating: 3/5

Since I am usually not a reader of romance, this was not really my type of book.  However, the prose was lovely, and the Foxes, Wilders, and their few friends really sprang to life within the story.  Even so, outside of Lucas and Faith (Rosie's childhood friend), I rarely had positive feelings towards the characters.  Since, in this case, the characters really make the book, I think this affected my ability to get into the story.  I will probably not read the rest of the series anytime soon, but I may come back to it someday, when I'm in the right mood.

Review: The City & The City by China Miéville

The City & The City by China Miéville

Published: Del Rey, 2009

Awards Won: Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, World Fantasy, British Science Fiction Association, Locus Fantasy

Nominated: Nebula, John W. Campbell Memorial

This is the first book I’ve read by China Miéville.  As you can see by the genre split in the awards, this book is difficult to classify.  When one examines the plot, The City and the City is a detective story.  The protagonist is Inspector Tyador Borlú, and the story follows his investigation of the murder of a young female student, Mahalia Geary.  Solving the case is more complicated than it first appears, and Borlú must deal with both conspiracy theories and the odd difficulties caused by nature of his environment. It is the setting that pushes the story past the realm of a simple murder mystery and into the bounds of speculative, or at least weird, fiction. 

Tyador Borlú lives in Besźel, which seems to be somewhere in Eastern Europe.  What sets Besźel apart from our usual world is its partner city, Ul Qoma.  These two cities have some separate zones and some “cross-hatched” areas, where their land overlaps.  All that truly separates Ul Qoma and Besźel are the perceptions of their respective citizens.  People who live in Besźel are taught from birth to ignore, or “unsee”, anything or anyone in Ul Qoma, and vice versa. To help people always be able to recognize and ignore the foreign, Besźel and Ul Qoma have different architecture, fashion, and even mannerisms.   In some cases, however, this separation is accidentally or deliberately violated. In this case, the mysterious organization called “Breach” swoops down to take control. 

It is between the physical, cultural, and political cities of Besźel and of Ul Qoma that Tyador Borlú must navigate as he searches for the truth behind Mahalia’s murder.  It is possible that she knew something about a mythical third city, “in between the city and the city”, called Orciny.  Her murder leads Borlú deeper and deeper into the connections between Besźel, Ul Qoma, Breach, and Orciny.

My Thoughts:

I found myself taking the viewpoint of a typical foreigner, as described by Borlú.  I had a hard time accepting the separation between Ul Qoma and Besźel.  The whole book was written with a sense of realism and detail, and everything, except the basic premise of the dual city, seemed reasonable.  I’m doubtful that any human organization could possibly police every action and glance of every citizen, as Breach is purported to do.  In order to be sustainable, it seems that the system would need the wholehearted support of every citizen of Besźel and Ul Qoma.  Given my experience of people, in general, I find this very unlikely.

Why would people support this kind of mass doublethink in the first place?  Other than Besźel and Ul Qoma, the world seems to be pretty much the same as our modern world.  In our world, there does not seem to be such a shortage of land that people would be forced to “cross-hatch” their territories.  Was it simply a matter of two ethnic groups claiming the same land?  They would have had to hate each other enough to eliminate interaction through creating these mental borders, but tolerate each other enough to willingly share the same physical territory. 

There just doesn’t seem to be a logical basis for the origination of these cities, nor for the capabilities of the Breach organization.  The dissonance between the realistic style of prose and the impossible elements of the story overshadowed, for me, the actual plot.  I can only think that these elements exist deliberately. The City and the City is a traditional murder mystery whose setting juxtaposes the ordinary with the impossible, and smudges the lines between what is real and what is not.

My Rating: 4/5 Stars

I was much more enthralled by the setting than the plot or characters.  In the end, though, the setting was more than bizarre enough to keep me entertained.  I’m glad I read this book, and I will probably read his New Crobuzon series at some point in the future.