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Bezig met laden... California Bonesdoor Greg Van Eekhout
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Posted originally on my blog www.csdaley.com I should buy myself a rubber stamp with the word sucker on it. This way when I am looking at new books and say the words, urban fantasy, heist, alternate history, genre blending, fantasy, I can just stamp my head sucker and buy it. I don't even really know how to begin describing California Bones. At its heart it is an urban fantasy set in a Los Angeles dominated by magic and canals (you read that right, canals. It is one of my favorite parts of the book). Ruled by a nasty piece of work called the Hierarch. Calling him a brutal, tyrant of a dictator is probably too nice of a selection of words. The magic is where the fun starts. You see bones make the magic system do its rounds. Any kind of bones; human, animal, fossils. Eekhout does a great job of building the magic system which is good because it is central to the plot. It seems the Hierarch likes to cleanse his Southern California nation of potential rivals and powerful Osteomancers (bone magicians). This is the leaping off point where we meet young Daniel and his family. They are caught up in one of the cleansings and Daniel escapes into the city where he becomes a brilliant thief. Fast forward a few years and we get to the meat of the story. Someone hires Daniel and his crew to break into the Hierarch's fortress. That's about as much of the plot as I want to give away. The joy of this book is the discovery. Eekhout does a bang up job of world building. Giving you just enough of a familiar Los Angeles to keep you guessing what surprise will come next and there are plenty of them. The book is relentless. It plows forward and barely gives you a chance to breath. Lots of action, magic, and suspense with a dash of dark grittiness thrown in for good measure. California Bones is one of the best times I have had reading a book this year. I curled up in my reading chair yesterday and plowed through it. It is a book that is hard to put down. So hard in fact dinner was a little late. I needed to know how it finished up. The best news of all is that it is book one of a planned trilogy and book two Pacific Fire is already out. I know what I will be reading this week. Pick it up and set aside a few hours. You won't regret it. I don't think I'm going to rate this, because although the premise was really interesting -- and the beginning of the book held a lot of promise -- there are several styles of fiction that just do not click with me, like portal fiction (random person is picked up, teleported to a new world, has to figure out how to stay alive), or false accusations. One of them is heist fiction. Yes, that means that out-of-this-world books like The Lies of Locke Lamora just do not rev my engine. This book would be very well recommended to anyone who enjoyed it. I read the first... oh, I dunno, quarter of the book before conking out. Kind of bummed -- I've been looking forward to this for a while, but that's the way the wind blows. I have another urban fantasy series to follow-just what I needed! Daniel Blackland is a deviation from the norm in this genre-he's not a lady shapeshifter, physically imposing or much of a fighter. He's certainly no cop or P.I. He's a thief and a con man whose very essence is magic. And he's spent most of his life keeping his head down. I liked getting both Daniel's and Gabriel's viewpoints and that Gabriel was something of a wildcard for a while. I knew I was rooting for Daniel, but I couldn't decide what to think about Gabriel at first. The magic is strange, original and brutal in this imagined Los Angeles setting. It just goes to show that in a saturated genre, a good writer can still think of something new. A few too-quick resolutions of tricky situations knocked down my rating a little, but overall, I'm really enthusiastic about this series and eager to see what happens next. Osteomancy involves getting power by eating the bones of magically-imbued animals, including people. The main protagonists both had a parent eaten by the wizard in charge of the region around LA, who carved it away from the US about a century ago. One, Daniel, responded by becoming a thief and trying to stay out of sight, while the other—no osteomancer—worked as an enforcer for the regime. That he is therefore a murderer many times over is referenced but not really dealt with; he’s better than the worst people in the story, I guess. When he checks out a slave headed for the death penalty to help his investigation, he doesn’t make the enslaved man wear a collar or send him back to be killed, so. Most of the action is about the other protagonist, who is himself a powerful osteomancer, putting together a heist from the ruler’s bone stash. If you like magical heist stories, this could be fun, though one of the twists is signalled so often that my only question was when the protagonist actually knew about it. Purportedly, later than I assumed. It was interesting enough that I’ll read the sequel, but don’t look for anyone trying to do the right thing for people other than the particular people they personally love. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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When Daniel Blackland was six, he ingested his first bone fragment, a bit of kraken spine plucked out of the sand during a visit with his demanding, brilliant, and powerful magician father, Sebastian. When Daniel was twelve, he watched Sebastian die at the hands of the Hierarch of Southern California, devoured for the heightened magic layered deep within his bones. Now, years later, Daniel is a petty thief with a forged identity. Hiding amid the crowds in Los Angeles--the capital of the Kingdom of Southern California--Daniel is trying to go straight. But his crime-boss uncle has a heist he wants Daniel to perform: break into the Hierarch's storehouse of magical artifacts and retrieve Sebastian's sword, an object of untold power. For this dangerous mission, Daniel will need a team he can rely on, so he brings in his closest friends from his years in the criminal world. There's Moth, who can take a bullet and heal in mere minutes. Jo Alverado, illusionist. The multitalented Cassandra, Daniel's ex. And, new to them all, the enigmatic, knowledgeable Emma, with her British accent and her own grudge against the powers-that-be. The stakes are high, and the stage is set for a showdown that might just break the magic that protects a long-corrupt regime. Extravagant and yet moving, Greg van Eekhout'sCalifornia Bones is an epic adventure set in a city of canals and secrets and casual brutality--different from the world we know, yet familiar and true. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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I loved the worldbuilding. Even though the entire book was set in Los Angeles, we get a glimpse of how this alternate world is much like, but unlike our today. Being a Los Angelina, I loved the historical figures that were featured in the book.
And, oh, the magic.... It was as fascinating as it was creepy and made sense.
I hope this was the beginning of a trilogy and/or that we see more of this world. I'm off to see what else Mr. Van Eekhout has written.
Highly recommended read.
EDIT 2/6/15 - Still as good as the 1st time. ( )