Step into the wayback machine; this tale takes place long before The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, when the First Dark Lord, Morgoth, sought dominion over all of Middle-Earth. It's an easier read than some of the other scholarly works of Tolkien and a much more enjoyable read as a result.
Seeds of Change attempts to confront many of the pivotal issues facing our society, such as racism, global warming, peak oil, technological advancement, and political revolution. How well it does this I will leave up to the reader to decide. What the anthology does deliver on for sure is a thought-provoking array of fiction that I enjoyed reading.
Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell is a "Caribbean style" science fiction novel with a little bit different style because of that. While I did enjoy the world building, I wasn't initially intrigued enough to jump into the next book in the series. Eventually I did, though, and I loved Buckell's other installments.
Sometimes a book doesn't live up to the hype. Peter Brett's The Warded Man was one of those for me as a great premise fizzles out and is ultimately wasted.
Nostradamus has predicted a government official's murder and now that person has wound up dead. Did the Maestro perpetrate the crime to enhance his reputation as a soothsayer or is something more foul afoot? Mystery, intrigue, daring, and magic prevail in this debut novel in Duncan's Venice Series. As usual, Duncan does not fail to deliver.
Superb writing, great storytelling, and intriguing characters makes this first book in Bujold's Sharing Knife series a delight to read.
