Book of the Week: Godslayer, by Jacqueline Carey
I'm not normally big on Tolkien knock-offs, but Godslayer (and the first volume, Banewreaker) offers up an interesting alternate interpretation; namely, what if Sauron just had really, really bad PR? What if so-called heroic virtues are really character flaws? Carey's prose is ornate but highly readable, never teetering over the line into self-consciously smurfy as so many high fantasy writers do. It can't be an easy task to invoke sympathy for all the bad-guy characters, but it's nicely done here.