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Science Fiction for January 1998  by Henry Leon Lazarus  "Conclusion: For this you will have to undertake the third (or possibly the fifth) Tour of the trilogy.  If you do not immediately book for the whole set, you may well find yourself stranded halfway across the continent with having completed your Quest or discovered your Birthright."  This definition from Diana Wynne Jones' The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land (trade from Vista in England and one of the three books I bought at the last convention) demonstrates how difficult it is to get to the ending of some series. Since this months is filled with parts of series, I thought it particularly appropriate.  Terry Goodkind gets around the series problem by having his hero, Richard, confront a new problem with each book.  In his fourth adventure he must go to the lost Temple of the Winds (hard from Tor) to stop a magically induced plague. The plot may be a bit silly, but I  read it on a plane and didn't drowse off for the four hours of flying.  Felicity Savage takes a different approach for her excellent trilogy, Ever. It can be considered a historical novel set against an imaginary history.  In the second part, The Daemon in the Machine (trade from Harper Prism) Chrispin and his friend Micky escape the war in the waste, now going badly for the Ferupian forces, and find Micky's family in the Significant Kingdom, killing the daemon that drives their plane to get there.  After escaping the fire that engulfs the city, Chrispin goes to his ancestral home of Lamaroon where the increasing growth of daemons are effecting everything.  I am in awe at what Ms. Savage has accomplished in this series, and can't wait for the conclusion.  Stephen King's Dark Tower series may never have a conclusion, but it is easily the best writing Mr. King has ever done.  In the fourth volume, Wizard and Glass (Trade from Plume) Roland the gunslinger takes a quiet time in the quest to tell the others of his first adventure, and his first love and of the evil that still pursues him.  Connie Willis's latest adventure about the Oxford traveling group sends a time lagged (like jet lag) traveler to 1888 with a misplaced cat and a quest to draw two lovers together so that a diary will fit, and a quest to find the Bishop's bird stump (don't ask) that was destroyed in the Nazi bombing of Coventry Cathedral in 1940 and important for the rebuilt structure in the 21st century. To Say Nothing of the Dog (Hard from Bantam Spectra) is a riotous love story where everything works out in the end in spite of her character's attempts to fail.  Brenda W. Clough introduces the odd idea that super powers might be an affliction.  In How Like a God (paper from Tor) Rob ends up fleeing his family and living on the streets for fear he will effect them after he develops the power to control people. Neat.  C. J. Cherryh is doing a trilogy sequel to her long, but excellent, Fortress in the Eye of Time (paper from Harper Prism).  Tristan who had been created by a wizard , now has been given rule of a Provence in Fortress of Eagles and has to retake the capitol from renegades as the forces of war grow. I liked it a lot.  Now for some mysteries. Robert J. Sawyer, in Illegal Alien (hard from Ace) considers the plight of an alien from a first contact to Earth group, being accused of murder and facing a very public trial. I couldn't put it down. Dean Koontz introduces us to Chris, a man afflicted by a genetic disease that never lets him near the sun or flourescent lighting. In Fear Nothing (hard from Bantam), his first adventure, mysterious men and a troop of wild monkeys linked to biological research at a nearby closed army base, steal his father's corpse and chase him when he discovers them.   S. M. Stirling and James Doohan (Scotty) have a light little tale in The Rising (paper from Baen) about a flight engineer on a new starship who has to find the saboteur on board who murdered his predecessor.  Nice, fun action scenes make up for a generic background and a one dimensional villain who was a bit too obvious. To top of next column  QuickLooks Archives	I wanted to like Four and Twenty Blackbirds (hard from Baen).  Mercedes Lackey has a neat magical twist to the Jack the Ripper scenario.  The killer magically takes over someone and makes that person do the killing, getting two victims for the price of one.  However because the ending was predictable and the characters not fun, it just didn't work for me. The latest William Shatner book, In Alien Hands (hard from Harper Prism) is much better than Delta Search (paper) the first in this series.  This time Jim, the boy with the information in his DNA, enlists in an alien mercenary company and discovers his true talents.  It's a lot of fun.  I missed the first book of Ken Hood's tale of a mediaeval Europe haunted by demons.  In Demon Rider (paper from Harper Prism), Longdirk, the man possessed by an Irish hob, wanders across a Spain that could have been conceived by Cervantes and even has a Don Quixote type character to fend with.  It stands alone, but I found the first is out of print when I went looking for it.  The tale is very impressively written.  Finally some odds and ends.  Rick Shelly's Return to Camerein (paper from Ace) ends a sf military trilogy with the marines going in to rescue a lost prince, stranded by the war for seven years at a hotel.  Polgara the Sorceress (hard from Del Rey) by David and Leigh Eddings gives the three thousand years of her story, a must have for fans of the Belgariad series.  Diane Duane takes some cats on an adventure to a world of dinosaurs in The Book of Night with Moon (paper from Aspect).  As a cat owner myself, I couldn't see cats with jobs, let alone as engineers for the magical portals the wizards use.  If that doesn't bother you, it's a fun read.  Trade collections include Greg Egan's odd time warped stories, Axiomatic (Harper Prism) and A Magic Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic (Aspect) with older stories found by Margaret Weis.  The oddest paper collection is Revelations (Harper Prism), a decade by decade listing of the coming Apocalypse edited by Douglas E. Winter.  Greg Benford offers The New Hugo Winners, Volume IV (conventions 92-94) (Baen) which are the fan's best of the year choices. Elizabeth Moon has a collection of her own stories, Phases (Baen). Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams have stories from the magazine, Isaac Asimov's Christmas (Ace). Finally, Josepha Sherman and Keith R. A. Decandido have managed to talk authors into stories about common Urban Nightmares (Baen) like alligators in the sewers of New York.  Media books include a new and expanded The Star Trek Encyclopedia (hard from Pocket and edited by Michael and Denise Okuda) which now even includes Voyager info, Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology (Trade from Del Rey), and a nice Magic: The Gathering calendar (Workman Publishing)  Paper back reprints include: Walter Jon Williams's excellent sequel to Metropolitan which I've read twice City on Fire (Harper Prism); Fred Saberhagen's Pilgrim (Baen) joins two related Egyptian time travel novels; Alan Dean Foster's The Howling Stones (Del Rey) about primitives with left over high technology; another dragon novel by Gordon R. Dickson, The Dragon and the Djinn (Ace); and Jody Lynn Nye's new ship novel The Ship Errant (Baen)  Finally avoid Jules Verne's lost manuscript, Paris in the Twentieth Century (Trade from Del Rey) unless you are a student of his works.  It's a diatribe against the mechanization of the world overwhelming art against a well-realized twentieth century.  The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society meets monthly, with a guest speaker for each meeting. Guests are welcome to attend this, the second oldest science fiction club in the country.  Return to the SF Literature Forum Page
Many of the books in this column are available through the SF Literature Forum's bookstore. in association with Amazon.com.  Some even right here...	Currently Featured in the SF Literature Forum's Bookstore: The Daemon in the Machine, by Felicity Savage To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis How Like a God, by Brenda Clough Return to Camerien, by Rick Shelley Isaac Asimov's Christmas, ed. Dozois & Williams