House of Reeds (Hardcover)

For instance...Fitzsimmons. In the first novel, Fitzsimmons is brought foward as a possible love interest for Gretchen. He is a secondary character, certainly, but present a great deal throughout the book. In the House of Reeds, Fitz is back and this time his "crush" on Gretchen is pointed out very obviously. Near the end of the book, however, Fitz is suddenly killed off with little fanfare. Just, oh he's dead, moving on. I found this turn dissapointing.

I truly enjoyed Gretchen's "reawakening", which I think is one of the more interesting parts of the story. Her newfound (or refound) "powers" bring and interesting mysticism to the series.

While you don't absolutely have to read the first book to read the second, I would highly recommend it.

To provoke the war, Aztec priests pretend to be nordic opponents of the Aztec empire, sharing military equipment with the native population of Jagan. But not even the priests recognize the dangers they're provoking--dangers that include hidden weapons from millions of years of civilization (many made unusable by the lack of fuels and metals in a world where mines where exhausted thousands of years earlier but suddenly useful with the Empire's reintroduction of lubricants, power supplies, and metal), real opponents of the Aztec rule, and even possibly remnants of ancient civilizations with no love for the upstart Aztec Empire.

Author Thomas Harlan has smoothed out the often-clunky writing of some of his earlier books and offers some fun and fascinating world-building. What if the Japanese and Aztec empires had been able to strike first? With Japanese metal technology and their shared martial traditions, the combination would have been daunting. Adding to that a mysterious ancient civilization and hunt for its artifacts and you have a powerful basis for story-telling. Harlan adds some nice battle sequences and considerable blood-letting to keep the pages turning.

HOUSE OF REEDS is nicely done, even to its twist at the end. It did, however, fall a bit short of my hopes when it came to the characters. I didn't really get a good understanding of what Gretchen was up to, or why we should care about her successes or failures. In the difficult balance between developing characters and putting them in danger, Harlan chose action--perhaps a bit too often.