The Night Boat by Robert R. McCammon

One of my favorite places to visit is my local used bookstore, The York Emporium.The last time I was there, I picked up McCammon's Night Boat because I had previously read and enjoyed his novel Swan Song.While this book wasn't quite as good as that one, it was still a fun little 80s horror novel.

The book is set on a small Caribbean island. A man goes diving and accidentally unearths an old German U-Boat, which promptly floats back to the surface. This is rather unexpected since a submarine that has been sunk for decades shouldn't be able to do that. This being a horror novel, the reader will know that the boat is rising because the crew isn't quite dead and are out to exact some sort of horrible revenge.

This wasn't the best horror novel I've ever read, but it isn't as bad as some people say it is and is generally a fun read.

Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel by Greg Keyes

Since I haven't been updating this blog very much at all, I have decided to try to go back to my original formula of attempting to write a review of every book I read, though there will be a few exceptions this time. I will skip reviewing books when all I can think to say is something along the lines of "great book, just like the rest of the books in this series that I've reviewed."  To get back into the reviewing, I will sart with a book that I got from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program: Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel by Greg Keyes.

This was one ER book that I probably shouldn't have requested. It's a direct sequel to another book, which I haven't read, and it's set in the world of a video game franchise that I haven't played. This made in very hard for me to get into the book.

The prologue is basically a recap of the events of the previous book, so I wasn't too lost. The main problem came with all the Elder Scrolls terminology that I didn't know. I know what elves and orcs are, but I did not know what any of the other races were and could only infer some of them from the text. Despite it being rather important to the plot, I still have no idea what Oblivion actually is except that that's where the bad guys came from. This leads me to believe that this is the sort of book that is primarily designed to appeal to fans of the video game franchise.

This made it rather difficult for me to get into the story. Once I did get into it, it was a fairly exciting tale, but really, unless your a fan of the Elder Scrolls games, you probably shouldn't bother with this book.

The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens

I got an advanced copy of The Emerald Atlas in the mail the other day. It's a young adult fantasy novel about three orphans who find a magic book.

My feelings on this novel are somewhat mixed. On the one hand, I enjoyed reading the book. The plot was reasonably exciting and fairly fast paced once it got moving. The premise was bit shaky in spots; in ancient times wizards made three super powerful magical books, any one of which could grant near god-like powers, but somehow their city was destroyed by Alexander the Great, and the books were lost. I know if I had those three books, it would take a lot more than Alexander the Great to stop me.

The main problem with the book is the language. I've read plenty of books written for teens and even children. For many of them, I wouldn't know they were written for younger people if it didn't say so in the book.  This is not one of those books. This is one of those books where the language is dumbed down, sometimes to an almost condescending level.

This isn't a bad book, but it's not all that great either. I might be tempted to pick up the rest of the series, but the author really needs to learn not to talk down to his readers.