I finished Canticle at the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, sitting in my twelfth-story room while morning light washed the night out of the sky.   This is book two of  The Psalms of Isaak, which is planned to be five books (the first book is Lamentation).

This series is an engaging for me as the George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire.”  The books are a little shorter and are coming out more regularly, and so I feel like there’s a chance of an epic fantasy series that will begin well and end both well and on schedule.  That’s my hope for this after being disappointed waiting for the next Song of Ice and Fire book and after the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series was interrupted (I am grateful the talented Brandon Sanderson is finishing them, but I haven’t read his book yet).  Yes, I am a fan of big fat fantasy, especially the broad and deep epic variety that has a theme and a story and interesting people on all sides of its conflicts.

I want to be careful of spoilers for either book, but the Named Lands are rich with both history and promise, and the novel is told through the eyes of many and varied protagonists, and the plot left the paths I thought it was walking often enough to please me immensely.

If you haven’t started the series, a taste is available in the story “A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon” up on Tor.com.  To read more about Ken and his work, go by www.kenscholes.com.