A Year-end Review for 1997 
by Henry Lazarus 

Fun 

Shirley Rousseau Murphy provided it with her delightful talking cat mystery, Cat under Fire (paper from HarperPrism).  In their second adventure, Joe Cat and Dulcie solve the murder of a young artist. They'd better watch out because the police chief is catching on. The worst that might happen is that he would hire them with an open account at Jolly's Deli  (ah, all the liverwurst they could eat.) She brings Drusella and Joe Grey, the two talking cats back to solve the mystery of an old age home which seems to have misplaced its tenants in Cat Raise the Dead (paper from HarperPrism) in a series I really enjoy, especially now that I have cats of my own -- non-talking, of course. 

Chris Bunch starts a Napoleonic, epic fantasy about a sorcerer and his general who fights his way to become The SeerKing (trade from Aspect), the first emperor of his kingdom in generations. This is solid fantasy with dangerous demons and evil necromancers that is a lot of fun and very raunchy. 

Harry Turtledove has a tale of an alternate 6th century Greece and the siege of Thessalonica (paper from Baen).  This is a world where prayers work and real Gods and centaurs co-exist with us humans.  I especially like the working men of the militia who defend the city. It provides an warm, happy look at honest craftsmen who usually stay out of site in fantasies. 

The background maybe generic, but Deborah Chester draws solid characters as the young girl, now the queen to the aging, thousand year old emperor and the gladiator are finally brought together in Shadow War (paper from Ace) part two of an engaging first trilogy. Realm of Light (paper from Ace) finished her trilogy nicely while keeping the reader on the edge of their seat almost to the last page.  At the end the two lovers are together, the ancient emperor who lived a thousand years too long has been vanquished, and even the gods settled.  There's nothing super special about this series, but Ms. Chester keeps everything fun and I look forward to her next work. 

Then there is the tale of the Texan who finds  a dead alien in a working space suit, Alan Dean Foster's Jed the Dead (paper) and is chased all over the west by the oddest people and aliens. More joke than novel, I couldn't stop giggling. 

The tale of a musicologist/ singer brought to a fantasy world where music creates magic has had many generic variations. But L. E. Modesitt, Jr. manages,  with careful attention to his background, to give The Soprano Sorceress (hard from Tor) a solid underpinning and a sense that the story has finally been told right. 

Anne McCaffrey has been filling in her science fictional history of  the world of Pern where dragons fly to kill the thread from the Red Star. During the second fall many traditions are established, like the Dragonseye (hard from Del Rey) and, of course, bad holders have to be worked with. 

Jane Jensen brings her game about Gabriel Knight, Sins of the Fathers (paper from ROC) to life. While occult detectives have been over done, Gabriel is new to the game and has to redeem the mistake of his which hunter ancestor in New Orleans, thus making the story fresh. I was almost tempted to go out and buy the game. 

Raymond E. Feist concludes his latest trilogy and eleventh book in his Riftwar series, as the kingdom faces its greatest challenge in the huge army driven by the Rage of a Demon King (hard from Avon). While familiar magicians try to close the rift keeping other demons out, the outnumbered kingdom army has to burn whole cities with slash and burn tactics to survive. 

R. Garcia y Robertson takes his time travelers to a bronze age (1504 b.c.e.) where other travelers have taken on the role of the classic Greek gods and have to be stopped. In addition to the action, Atlantis Found (paper from Avon) nicely melds what is known about the period to the Greek myths. 

Classic science fiction explores strange environments and none comes stranger that the version of Saturn that Robert L. Forward has created in Saturn Rukh (hard from Tor). It's a gaseous world of giant and intelligent floating beings that our explorers from earth have to contend with and communicate and eventually work with in order to survive.  This might eventually become be a classic. 

I did have a lot of fun with Elizabeth Moon's Once a Hero (hard from Baen) in which a young lieutenant who had once found herself in command of her star fighter after a mutiny had wiped out all officers over her, now is the only one who can save her new ship from being taken by the baddies. 

I also had fun with Clayton Emery's Card Master (paper from Baen) because of the odd magic that the card makers install into cards by stealing from their souls.  An Apprentice card maker has to learn his trade on the fly to defeat the evil intentions of other baddies. 

Michael A. Stackpole's Talion Revenant (paper from Bantam Spectra) has been held for eight years because of its length.   That's a true shame because this tale of an unstoppable man of justice who rides the land with only his sword, which he can call, and the ability to draw souls out of men is a very enjoyable read and I would hope that some sequels might be along eventually. 

Mark Sumner's view of a truly wild west, Devils Engine (paper from Del Rey) I also had to buy. After the civil war magic talents have warped the wild west.  This time Buffalo Bill, the rainmaker (who rides in a sail driven wagon) and Jake Bird have to stop Jay Gould and his railroad tracks designed to draw the magic from the west in a tall tale that is impossible to put down. 

I was glad when they sent me the sequel to The WaterBorn (paper from Del Rey). J. Gregory Keyes has improved greatly and strengthens his view of a world where gods and goddesses inhabit the natural world and the Blackgod (hard) uses the characters from the previous books to try and kill the river god. 

Had I not gotten the first of Leonaard Nimoy's Primortals as a review copy, I never would have looked at Steve Perry's Target Earth (hard from Aspect) which is a true hoot about a would be alien emperor running from the true rulers of the galaxy who comes to earth for a new start at empire building. The reaction to his radio messages is handled just right (I really giggled at the call in radio show opinion poll about whether he came in peace.)  I hope Steve Perry continues as the author of this series. 

I bought one of the earlier of Daniel Hood's magical mysteries, so I was very glad to see the latest, which takes place during the holiday of Beggar's Banquet (paper from Ace) and starts with a dead man washed in from the sea and a stolen jewel. As usual the solution involves both magic and murder. 

James White believes in anti-hmo's because his Sector General hospital works to heal patients of all galactic species, not worry about how much their care will cost. Final Diagnosis (hard from Tor) is told through the eyes of a human patient with a difficult to diagnose ailment and is the usual fun. 

Long after plague has wiped out our technological future a group of adventurers set off to find a cache of stored knowledge along Eternity Road (hard from HarperPrism). Even though the characters are interesting and pleasant, Jack McDevitt doesn't hesitate to let the dangers be fatal, giving greater realism to this odd future. 

Kay Kenyon has a more typical first novel in Seeds of Time (paper from Bantam Spectra). Her hero is a time diving pilot taking her ship back in time to other worlds which have passed through the same location the solar system is now.  Her present is dying and is desperate for new plant life. Clio's present is dictatorial and horrid enough to get her into numerous rapes, but all is not what it seems as paradox's are possible even if you don't visit Earth's direct past. It's a bit awkward and I hope Ms. Kenyon comes up to the potential I see here. 

Ron Sarti's second novel, also about Prince Scar, Legacy of the Ancients (paper from Avonova) takes his somewhat cowardly hero to the feudal Texas of the future where the evil king has started making muskets, a violation of the Pact.  I await eagerly more adventures. 

Jane Lindskold wonders about what would happen to a world when its magic leaves and When the Gods are Silent (paper from Avon).  Her fun tale of a circus hired for the quest and the odd female fighter who seems much more than she is, is a lot of fun and worth a reread, let alone a read. 

Matthew Woodring Stover (another newcomer) must have wondered what would happen if a certain fantasy tv heroine were put into real history.  Iron Dawn (trade from ROC) takes place a decade after the Trojan war and two centuries before David's conquest of Jerusalem in Tyre, then under Egyptian domination.  His axe woman, Barra has to face dark Egyptian death magic as well as prejudice with her two partners, a Trojan war veteran and an Egyptian minor magician. I can't wait for the next. 

Michael A. Stackpole has a nice, fun series started with A Hero Born (paper from HarperPrism) about a world gone to chaotic magic except for the empire, a section where reality is imposed and guarded by magical barriers. Locke, who is more than he seems, wants to follow in the footsteps of his father and fight chaos, and an evil plot to steal a magical object during his visit to the capitol give him that chance. 

John Barnes uses both time travel and alternate realities to tell of war between two empires of realities.  The second of these (I missed the first) is about a technologically raised eighteenth century and the evil groups attempt to take in over in Washington's Dirigible (paper from HarperPrism). Our hero has to fight an alternate version of himself, which makes it hard. 

Fans of David Eddings and Terry Brooks will really enjoy R. A. Salvatore's tale of a mad kung fu monk (with magic jewels), an elf trained ranger, and his love as they face the rise of evil as The Demon Awakens (hard from Del Rey) and brings out his troll, giant, and goblin armies to conquer their world. 

Talking about returns, Vicki the ex-cop detective now vampire returns with a new mystery in Tanya Huff's Blood Debt (paper from DAW). Ghosts of organ stolen victims haunt her friend (and vampire) to get them to solve their murders. The problem is getting the two vampires to put up with being in the same city while they solve the murders. 

I found Charles Sheffield's latest in the local Central library.  If you can locate it and have a taste for the juvenile novels that Robert Heinlein did in the 50's, you'll enjoy this tale of the rich kid, The Billion Dollar Boy (hard), who finds himself on dust cloud mining ship and has to learn to grow up and fend for himself. 

Laurel K. Hamilton doesn't take Amanda Blake to a fantasy world, her real world is ours if vampires, werewolves, and other monsters actually exist and teach schools or own night clubs.  In the Killing Dance (paper from Ace) Amanda has to fend off hired assassins while deciding between two boy friends, the vampire or the werewolf. This is a great action series. 

Backgrounds can be also developed from real history like the alternate Byzantine empire that Harry Turtledove uses for his Videssos series.  The latest details the battles taking place in The Thousand Cities (paper from Del Rey) as two empires vie.  Book four will probably complete this part of The Time of Troubles. 

I was fascinated by the political machinations in spite of the fact I could see the ending.  N. Lee Wood tells of the return of civilization after the magnetic pole switch of the earth left most survivors avoiding the hard radiation in domes.  Now that the magnetic field is coming back, a helicopter pilot has to make it on foot from the ruins of Philadelphia to the Pittsburgh Dome on foot in Faraday's Orphans (trade from Ace). The background he travels and the barbarian strangers are fascinating and fit the recovering background. 

I've always liked psionic tales and William Esrac's Dance to the Sun (paper from Baen) fills the bill. The rise of people with powers brought abuse by some so Saulus lives in a commune living by trafficking in illegal goods to avoid the controls their powers would bring. Nobody has reckoned with his ability to not only heal, but also genetic engineer, and reshape people. 

Of course, the first super hero was Tarzan and lovers of Edgar Rice Burroughs works will be glad to learn that Joe R. Lansdale has done a creditable job in bringing the lost manuscript up to publishable form in The Lost Adventure (paper from Del Rey) which has all the elements of a typical Tarzan adventure including a lost city and crazy monsters. 

For over thirty years Marion Zimmer Bradley has been mixing the psionic magic of the planet Darkover with the Taranen technological empire. Margaret Alton who has The Shadow Matrix (hard from DAW) and was raised in the empire, returns (see Exile's Song (paper)) with a ghost story, Darkover style, and a time travel tale that take her and her lover back to Darkover's Age of Chaos.  While more for lovers of the series, newcomers can start here. 

James Herbert gives us a plague in ‘48 (hard from HarperPrism) out of Nazi ermany that has wiped out most of humanity.  Most died fast, but some of the slow ying think that the blood of the unaffected will save them.  It's an exciting chase hrough an empty post-war London. 

Of course for light fun you can't beat Mark Sumner's The Monster from the Edge paper from Ace) about a tabloid reporter who finds X-file type monsters and ctually gets rid of them. I looking eagerly for the next in the series. 

Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball team together with a light story about an almost human girl with a healing horn on her forehead, Acorna (hard from HarperPrism)who tangles with a child labor importer on a planet whose economy rests on their labor.  Predictable, but fun. 

Mike Resnick tells the tale of the deadliest gunfighter in the galaxy. Frozen and waiting for a medical cure, he is cloned again, this time he has to find an elusive bandit and deal with the corrupt governor who wants his kidnaped daughter returned. All of this is no problem for the Widowmaker Reborn. (paper from Bantam Spectra). 

Then there's Ian McDowell's continuation of his Mordred story, Merlin's Gift (paper from Avonova) in which I violate my rule of never reading Arthurian tales.  The mad monk who miraculously evokes enough wine to drown Camelot was just one of the funny episodes. 

I also violated my rule about never reading books based on the Christ story with Dave Duncan's final tale of The Great Game, Future Indefinite (hard from Avon). Gods in his mythology are really visitors from parallel worlds who pick up Manna from their followers. Edward Exter from our World War One era has been fated to kill Death (another traveler). 

William Barton and Michael Capobianco tell of an expedition to Alpha Centuri (hard from Avon) which faces the puzzle of an alien space going civilization let themselves die when their home planet. Home politics get in the way, which would be good, except so much of this is related by overwhelming kinky sex, that the main story gets side tracked. 

Douglas Niles has been writing the more-standard fantasy that Terry Brooks used to right.  The ending of his trilogy about three waters, The War of Three Waters (Trade from Ace), follows the standard Tolkein formula but keeps it interesting with neat characters and events.  I'd love to see a more original plot set in this world. 

Denise Vitola's Opalite Moon (paper from Ace) is the second about a cop with werewolf tendencies, in a poor future where everyone needs a scam to survive.  Even the cops have to steal fuel for heat to survive. This time someone is murdering members of a sect that believes it can see fairies and they help it grow vegetables. 

I also loved Eric Flint's Mother of Demons (paper from Baen) which manages the difficult trick of making the alien squids sympathetic.  Human survivors from an expedition are the demons to these intelligent beings. Even without the technology that was lost in the crash, the knowledge of warfare humans bring is worth their small numbers. 

Patricia Kenneally-Morrison has been writing about Kelts in space for a while.  This odd series assumes that the Celts left Ireland in starships and that the irish myths took place in space. Blackmantle (hard from HarperPrism) is one of the early queens who fights (with spears and swords) to drive off the Firvoligans who have captured her planets. Then she has to use her magic to go to hell(the real thing) and bring back her love who was murdered. 

Mercades Lackey and her husband Larry Dixon return to her long series of Valdemar for a light, juvenile, side tale of a boy who joins the hawk brothers after his village is captured by a rogue mage and his army in OwlFlight (hard from DAW). I zoomed through it. 

David Sherman and Dan Cragg start a series about space marines, Starfist, that captured me from the get go. In First to Fight (paper from Del Rey) the marines have to deal with a desert planet being ransacked by revolting tribesmen settled from the worst of Earth's hard areas. Of course there's a bad ensign and technology that goes wrong so to place the platoon in the heart of the desert under attack by the horse warriors.  I can't wait for their next assignment. 

 I'm going to be more cautious about Time Station Berlin (paper from Ace). David Evens does a great job telling about how JFK's famous berlin speech ("Ich bin ein Berliner") could go wrong through only slight manipulations and is a lot of fun.  Others in this series haven't been readable, so watch out. 

C. Dale Brittain and her husband Robert A. Bouchard have a nice tale of a count (nicknamed Count Scar (paper from Baen) because of a childhood injury) new to his castle and a monk-mage who have to deal with religious fanatics after magical artifacts left hidden in the castle. 

It was fun as was the second book of Marjorie B. Kellog's Dragon Quartet, The Book of Water (paper from DAW) which takes the young girl, Erde and her dragon Earth from cold Germany in 913 to 2013 on the hot African coast where she meets N'Doch who finds himself partner to the Dragon Water. Ms. Kellog handles the odd contrast between a believable, starving near future and the fantasy of the dragons very well and I hope the rest of the series will be on equally high level. 

In Kings of Infinite Space (hard from HarperPrism), Alan Steele takes a resurrected kid from our time and sends him on a quest to rescue his lost and unrevived love in the twenty-first century.  This is one of those things in which everything turns out to be a conspiracy, which spoiled it for me. 

Everyone who hasn't discovered Terry Pratchett is missing a great humourist and story teller. Maskerade (hard from HarperPrism) is his version of the Phantom of the Opera.  When the coven of witches (now down to two) come to town and when the Opera House's ghost has turned to murder, they have to go from finding a third witch to catching the murderer (and of course helping Death's arm aches).  Of course the show must go on, (if the reader can stop giggling). 

I also sped through Ann McCaffrey's novelette Black Horses for the King (Trade from Del Rey) which tells of a young man who becomes King Arthur's farrier (maker of horseshoes) and who may have been the first one. 

Jo Clayton is in the middle of her tale about two worlds coming together, Drum Calls (hard from Tor), and creating magical changes in each. This is a very complicated piece of work (and may be the best Jo Clayton has ever done) but trying to read this in parts is like reading a serialized novel. This is a work that should be read slowly and carefully and with all parts present. 

Katharine Kerr is finally filling us in on her tale of civil war in Deverry, her alternate Celtic world where magic and reincarnation mix and the forces of the green Wyvern fight those of The Red Wyvern (trade from Bantam Spectra), like the English War of the Roses, fight their final battles but with the help of magic. This is the ninth book of a series well loved by those who have found it.  I'd start at the beginning. 

Receive the Gift by Louise Marley (paper from Ace) concludes her trilogy about descents from a crashed starship who survive on a very cold planet (summer comes once every five years) by their ability to create psionic warmth through singing.  I've enjoyed all three. 

Tara K. Harper has another of her wolf books, Wolf's Bane (paper from Del Rey) in which she finally introduces the aliens who are keeping the human colonists from space and technology. I've enjoyed some of these animal-talking (through psionics) books, but not all. 

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.