Berg, Carol -- The Daemon Prism

Have not yet read. I am starting 2012 out well behind the curve. (But this includes early January releases, I think -- I went shopping on the 30th. Also, I expect the Aztec books to go by fast.)

Retrospective for the year: Angry Robot has become the publisher for whom I will give practically anything a try. I buy mostly "safe" books these days (known authors, known series, known genres) but I picked up three brand-new-to-me authors this year from AB (and one last year). Not all of them have been great but they were all interesting (allowing that I haven't gotten to Reality 36 yet) and worth the shot.


Wizard and friends go off to deal with their religion, which has gone badly, badly wrong. Not their church -- their religion. The religion (and church, and beliefs, and priests, and heresies, and all the other things that go along with religion) is one of the better-done examples of same in modern fantasy. It's all believably more complicated than made-up religions usually are.

Anyhow, we finally get Dante's point of view. (It's roughly two-thirds him and one-third Anne, from the previous book.) The transition to the interior works well, because we get more about where he's coming from and also see (or fail to see) his (no pun intended) blind spots. He is still an absolute bastard to everyone, of course, and this is correctly explained and not excused. Then he is dropped into seven kinds of shit. The plot goes rocketing off through disasters, betrayals, and all manner of wonderfully horrible things. The only weak spot is the sudden appearance of some fairy-tale villains out of ancient history, complete with fairy-tale magic tokens which are crucial to the plot. But this does not detract much from a slam-bang trilogy wrap-up.


Books I have acquired recently
All the books I own