I'm not sure that the mythology laid out in the book is coherent--expelled angels battle the daughters of Zeus and a Mesopotamian ally for the souls of their offspring--but it is entertainingly loopy. The Post children are alternatingly sweet and cruel, generous and self-obsessed, noble and petty: perfectly drawn adolescents. Nylund juxtaposes the discovery of their powers with their own romantic awakenings to realistic effect.

I found the footnotes really distracting. I assume that they're there to provide a bit of a cheat sheet to the background myth-mining, but they're either too obvious or they give too much away. I was also struck by how claustrophobic the book was. With a supposed backdrop of hundreds of immortals and an endless supply of legends to reference, we only ever see a few people in the room at the time.

Still, it's a page-turner, and to the author's credit, he doesn't mortgage the conclusion of this book in his preparation for the sequels. Stepping outside the world of franchise novels was good for Nylund; I look forward to seeing more from him.

Fiona and Eliot Post are two orphans on the cusp of their fifteenth birthday. Living with their grandmother in a strangely strict regimen of rules, their lives are relatively dull and uninteresting. The myriad non fiction books (fictional books are forbidden!) provide much of the entertainment and life for these homeschooled twins, whose only outside outlet is their work in a nearby pizza parlor.

Their fifteenth birthday, however, coincides with the discovery of them by outside powers, and the discovery by them that their parents are scions of competing supernaturally powered families. Now at the center of a custody fight between gods and demons, set on trials by the gods and tempted by the demons, Fiona and Eliot soon realize just how protected and safe their previous, constricted existence really was.

Wow.

The novel reminded me of L Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero's Lost. It's clear that both novels have read, and been influenced by Roger Zelazny. The tone and the worlds created, though, are somewhat different and I think a good analogy is to think of another pair of writers, C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien. With her explictly Christian framework to the mythology of her supernatural modern day universe, Lamplighter's Prospero's Lost is the C.S. Lewis in this formulation. Nylund's novel, on the other hand, does not have that explicit framework. In fact, the novel seems to suggest that the appearances of supernatural beings throughout history have all been members of the various families depicted and hinted at in this book. In this way, its a more, for lack of a better work, pagan formulation than Lamplighter's.

Turning aside from the comparison, the novel itself is replete with all sorts of delights. The twins are well drawn and have a complicated sibling relationship which I found believable and a delight. I particularly liked the vocabulary/reference game that the two play. Only having had years of non fiction volumes to read for recreation, the twins are perfectly comfortable in making obscure references. For example, early in the novel, Fiona refers to Eliot being sick by asking if he has Nagleria fowleri(a type of amoeba contracted in water).

Another delight in the novel is the footnotes. While he doesn't pepper the text with the frequency of, say, Jack Vance, the novel's text and narrative is replete and enriched by the occasional footnote which makes observations from what seems to be the future of the events depicted. This further enriches and complicates the world and its narrative in a way that helps suggest that the world "continues" beyond the borders of its pages. The Playground of the Imagination, as Larry Niven calls it.

The characters themselves, beyond the Twins, on both sides of their relations, are a host that are complicated, complex and completely well drawn. Not all of the Gods could be considered good by even the most charitable reading of the text, and not all of the Infernals can be considered completely and irredeemably evil.

The novel is clearly and explicitly the first in a series, and I do hope that the novel sells well enough that Mr. Nylund has the opportunity to write and publish more of the books. I definitely will be looking forward to reading the subsequent volumes. As I implied before, people like me, who love Zelazny are going to cotton to this novel very well. (Hey, it has a character named *Fiona* who winds up having supernatural abilities. How can you say no to that?!). Nylund, thankfully, has had his time in the wilderness of media-tie-in novels not go to waste. The writing is engaging, inventive and enthralling.

Highly Recommended.

A truly fabulous book. It moves slowly but with a ton of detail. I ordered it for my 45 year-old self and had it snatched from my hands by my curious 12 year-old son as soon as I finished it. I have to forcibly remove it from his hands so he will sleep.

We have had great discussions about the multiple god personas, about possible plot twists, and about how parents should never make their kids wear dorky clothes...

A novel that appeals to young adults without pandering to them - good work!

I just finished Mortal Coils, and I must say it was excellent! The story of Eliot and Fiona held me captivated to the very end, and I was very pleased with the setup for the next work in the series.

Louis turns out to have a great deal of depth and complexity to him, something I really did enjoy, watching Eliot become something really special with the way that he is linked with his music, was also a nice touch and Annon, God of War, I found myself relating to his struggle at the end of the book, I look forward to there adventures in high school.

On another note I found myself sucked in just like I was many years ago when I first read "Wizard's First Rule" by Terry Goodkind, Yes it is a completly diferent series, but just like then I found that once i started reading I couldn't put the book down until I was finished.

All in all a excellent read and i'm looking forward to the next one in the series.

I didn't know what to expect when I was handed a copy of Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund. This was a new type of fiction that I had never explored (I'm a 43 year-old woman, while the target audience for this book is, I suspect, teenagers). While it took me a while to get a handle on the large cast of characters that Mr. Nylund introduces, once I did, I found that I became very interested in not only the main characters (Fiona and Eliot) but also in the side characters (the supernatural creatures who make up both sides of Fiona and Eliot's family). Mr. Nylund creates wonderful stages on which his young protagonists face challenges and depend on one another to overcome them. The author effectively captures the love/hate relationship that teenage twins often have. He handles this in very subtle and touching ways. It's often the quiet moments in this book that really allow you to appreciate the complexities of the characters and their relationships. As in real life, no one is simple and it's delightful to learn more about each character as you make your way through the story. I found myself very much in the twins' corner and turning each page to anxiously see how they were going to deal with their next predicament. I also took great glee in the antagonists that Mr. Nylund has created. They are deliciously decadent, scheming, threatening, and most importantly, empathetic and sometimes very likable in surprising ways. I'm very much looking forward to the sequel so I can find out what happens not only to Fiona and Eliot, but the rest of their family (including their first teenage love interests). I enjoyed the book very much. I hesitate to put this in the same category as Harry Potter because they are very different works and Mr. Nylund's book deserves to be evaluated on its own merits rather than trying to pigeon hole it into boxes with other fantasy books. Thank you, Mr. Nylund, for writing such an engaging and exciting book. I'll be there to support Fiona, Eliot, and the rest of their family as they move through the world of the supernatural.