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Lord_Bieter:
The Florin and Lorenzo Trilogy
by Robert Earl
The Florin and Lorenzo Trilogy is what I refer to as jolly good trash. The first book, The Burning Shore is full of action and light-hearted adventure. It begins in Bretonnia, in the city of Bordeleaux, where Florin, a cocksure disinherited merchant's son, has gambled his way into debt and runs to Lustria with Lorenzo, his faithful friend and manservant, to escape his creditor, an evil old gangster who becomes quite a major bad guy throughout the series. The expedition to Lustria is a disaster, and though they find a lot of gold they get besieged in an abandoned Lizardman Temple-City by, you guessed it, Lizardmen. They eventually escape and return home rich men.
Wild Kingdoms is the second book and in this one, Florin and Lorenzo get sent by a noblewoman to find her daughter, the daughter is suppossedly held by ogres in the Ogre Kingdoms, the girl, Katherine, is eventually found to have become integrated in Ogre society after being saved from a goblin ambush by an ogre named Jarmoosh, who Katherine treats as half father figure, half hero. She is at first unwilling to leave the ogres but is persuaded to leave eventually by her new boyfriend, a Strigany guide Florin hires earlier in the book. Once again this one is full of light-hearted adventure and action.
Savage City is the last full book in the series and is mainly centered on Katherine. This one is a lot more emotional, love-interest based, and generally depressing. After getting Katherine back to her mother, a conniving shrew who intends to marry her to the fat son of the old gangster from the first one for his money, Florin and Lorenzo get back to living it up with their Lustrian gold. The marriage is ruined by Katherine already being married to Sergei, the Strigany guide. Sergei is killed, an then subsequently, Katherine's pet sabretusk Tabby is also killed and the marriage goes ahead. Florin and Lorenzo later save her at the gangster's house from being raped and they go into hiding in the worst part of town. The book ends with Katherine founding a little society of happy little sunshine poor people in the Sump, the name of the worst part of town where the dregs of the dregs of society hang out. The gangster never gets killed or anything and you feel deprived of a true ending.

There are a couple of decent short stories in the story too Haute Cuisine being the best one.
Overall the series get a 7 out of 10, if, and only if, you do not take the stories seriously. Take one of the books seriously and its ruined, but keep an open mind ready to laugh for the sake of laughing then there GREAT! They're not well-written, nor is plot awesomely worked out, but the characters are hilarious and alot happens to keep you interested.   

General Vargoth:
I'm going to add one here, despite it being a while since a review was added. That and, given the '404' when I click "Library" at the top of the page, it may not even be added. But still:

THE VAMPIRE WARS TRILOGY
By Steven Savile

Well, what to say about this trilogy? It started out with great potential, like so many trilogies do, and meandered away to the extent that I struggled to even turn a page in the third book. It is obvious from the title that these books are based around the Vampire Counts; more specifically Vlad, Konrad and Mannfred von Carstein. Each book revolves around a single Count, although Mannfred makes his appearance in Konrad's book and fully comes into his own in the third and final part of the trilogy. Still, even his impressive might can't save this.

The book is packed with action; from the various conflicts of each war against the Vampire Counts to the grudge held by Kallad Stormwarden and his various attempts to fulfill it. Savile has no qualms about killing off characters you think, after a few chapters, might become permanent members of the story. More than once I found myself thinking "Oh, he'll make a good companion" and then BAM! Dead. In fact, one of them main characters in the first book suffers such a fate. I think it shows real ingenuity and a willingness to take risks on the part of the author, and commend Savile for it. Unfortunately, most of the characters he kills off in this way are the only ones in the trilogy who are actually interesting or worth reading about. Every time he killed one off, I found myself thinking "great, so we're stuck with X for longer"; sarcastically, of course.

Savile's main error is repetition. After a book we understand the vampiric need to feed, to drink blood, and so on. Every other paragraph in all three books reinforces this in some way, from vampire's thinking it to humans stating it. It becomes beyond annoying, to the point where I almost began skipping these parts because I could pretty much guess, 100%, exactly what words would be there. The book is obviously going to be gloomy, given who its about, and I think Savile struggled to find a way of getting this across. After using combat, he falls back repeatedly on "they drink your blood", to the point where it loses what it brought at the beginning.

This is only a short review because, honestly, I struggle to find anything good to say about it. The action is well-written, but the moment it contains vampires it becomes repetitive to the point of complete boredom. I'd recommend reading the first book, Inheritance, but would only recommend the second and third if you can get them for free.

2 out of 5 stars.

Rowsdower:
Ciaphus Cain series

The Ciaphus Cain series is written by Sandy Mitchel who has created a protagonist who is a mesh of Blackadder and Flashman. The books are written via Cain's recollections and 'edited' by his lover, Amberly Vail [an Inquisitor]. Cain purposely leaves parts out, misremembers events or just blatantly lies to cover what he was really doing [or not doing] at the time.

One passage in particular sticks out to me from 'The traitors hand'. He leads a platoon of men into a house of ill repute to arrest some Slaanesh cultists but the 'working' girls open fire. He says something along the line of "I've never seen men, so worried about entering a brothel before"

SaintofM:
Do we have a film section for reviews?

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