This month's Classic: Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston.

I am a deeply superficial person.

--Andy Warhol

X-Men: Law of the Jungle

author: dave smeds
paperback, $6.99
281 pages

She strained to probe him. A whisper came. A misty image. Behind it, a shadow. Sauron the monster, enslaving Karl Lykos the man. His selves were still divided, but somehow the disharmony no longer impaired him.

In this Dave Smeds X-Men tale, Storm, Wolverine, The Beast, Cannonball, Psylocke, Archangel, and Iceman are called to the Savage Land by Ka-Zar and Shanna (and Zabu too!) to help fight the suddenly crafty Sauron and his gang of mutates. Smeds handles the wide array of characters well, and even provides a fair bit of X history for the reader along the way.

The book moves quickly. By page 33, the team is in the Savage Land, and not too many pages after that, battle is joined. By dividing the characters for much of the book, Smeds avoids many of the major pitfalls that await an author trying to J . uggle so many stars at once. The plot slides quickly along, taking the form of a series of skirmishes between Sauron's baddies and the good guys. Naturally the good guys win a few and lose more, until the end when in a classic X-scene, the final few uncaptured X-Men must... ah, that would be telling.

When I picked this up I was prepared to be disappointed. After all, we're talking about a massive franchise with decades of history behind it. We're talking about comic book characters jammed into a different genre. Smeds handles all of the characters well (though some are clearly secondary) and the prose more than adequate, making the book a good read for X-fans.

Wit'ch Fire

author: James Clemens
trade paperback
439 pages

With a triumphant grin, she watched her hand slide into the sunlight outlining the apple. Or at least she intended to. As her hand slipped higher, it vanished as it struck the edge of the sunbeam.

In Wit'ch Fire, Clemens begins what is obviously a long series of fantasy novels. How is it obvious? Consider the plot: a kingdom loses the good fight against evil. Centuries pass. A young girl becomes imbued with the magic of chi that deserted the land during the war. The current evil ruler seeks her out, for prophecy suggests she is the key to freeing the land. That would be enough for any one book, but there's more: a one-armed juggler, a nymph, a mountain man, an og're, an elv'in, a prophecy-wise uncle, and two cursed shapeshifters. Each has some large or small quest to fulfill.

Clemens relies on chance and circumstance to bring these diverse characters together. There is action aplenty, of course, and there's an exciting scene to bring the book to a close. Too many cooks spoil a soup, and too much preparation for later novels spoils this book.

Clemens' prose is readable, though he delights in quirky phrasing. The apostrophe-laden names are annoying. His choice to use familiar terms from fantasy is one thing -- but dressing them up with an apostrophe is another. In addition, he includes an odd forward that takes the form of an academic recounting the forbidden tale from long in the past. In addition, the kingdom losing the war against evil is included, when beginning in the "present" certainly could have added tension and mystery to the story.