Review: A blend of high creativity, high adventure, and pulp
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 8, 2012
"Highly creative" fantasy works are often difficult to follow.  Either they are going off into unnecessary tangents, or they are making something too complicated.  I've read at least the first few pages of over 2000 books in the last few years, part of my routine of classifying whether I should read a book never, eventually, soon, or immediately.  Only three fantasy books have had openers so compelling that they fell into Immediate:Horker's Law,King's Sword, and now this one, Sky Pirates.Sky Pirates had some new-to-me facet of magic on almost every page, marking this as a work of high creativity. It's always logical, easy to follow, and fits within the flow of the story. The book never lets up as a great read. Mixing great action, high creativity, and high readability is almost impossible, especially in a sustained way.Ulrik is a captured pirate, doomed to die in the gladiator pits. He was once rich enough to buy flesh-shaping, and it's kept him alive through 30 fights.  Tonight, he faces Lem, a man with 99 wins.  Ulric is visited by a mage with multiple layers of ulterior motives.Reading the first few pages gets my highest recommendation (as does the whole book).