"Spell of Catastrophe" Review

Via Boing Boing, I checked out Mayer Alan Brenner's weblog earlier this week. He is in the middle of putting some of his out-of-print books on-line under a Creative Commons License. And the first two in a his "Dance of the Gods" series are already posted.

After my re-read of a "A Wrinkle in Time" yesterday (sniff), I felt like trying my hand at the first in the series, entitled "Spell of Catastrophe". It was pretty darn good. The characters are wonderfully interesting (Shaa especially is awesome), the plotting is first-rate and I really liked the more nuts-and-bolts approach to magic used. I had an especial fondness for stories that start with multiple threads that end up coming together in a rip-roaring climax. This book definitely delivered on that. A fun weekend read.

You can get the first two books "Spell of Catastrophe" and "Spell of Intrigue" here.