Reviews and Comments

Mediocre urban fantasy about people rescued from death only to be turned into revenants. Our heroes in the present day include a couple such revenants, and a university professor. They face an adversary whose roots lie in the late 16th century, which we learn by following the exploits of John Dee and Edward Kelley (actual historical figures) in Poland of that time. But all the historical stuff feels superfluous to the main story and could have been boiled down from half the book to a couple of chapters. There's plenty of magic in the story, with little framework governing how it works, so it feels rather arbitrary. The book does have some suspenseful sequences, but overall I found it not very engaging,

Clever idea, and Scalzi has a lot of fun with it. His witty narrative and lively adventure keep things moving along, and the self-aware meta textual nature of the story is quite effective. Falls a bit short of my hopes in its exploration of the premise, as opposed to the ramifications thereof. The codas are moving, though.

Not one of Powers' best books, it's a story of various people in 19th century London haunted by ghostly figures referred to sometimes as vampires, but largely unrelated to the ones we know. The rules surrounding the creatures and how they're dealt with or worked around are hazy at best, and the eventual climax isn't very satisfying. It's sort of a sequel to The a Stress of Her Regard, and if you enjoyed that one then you'll probably like this one (I don't rank Stress among his best, either). But as a fan of his more tightly-plotted novels, I don't think this one measures up.