The drive to mass adoption of ereaders took a massive step forward today with Amazon announcing a £109 6inch wifi only Kindle on their UK store. A second version with built in 3G costing £149 was also released but it looks like this is going to drive prices down across the board. Drop the wifi and £20, and it’s almost the dream price for mass adoption.
Before you get all excited and think Asterix Gallus is an entirely new entry into the rather fabulous Asterix series, you had better know this is a foreign language edition of the first book. So why is it worthy of recommendation or even mention then? Well the language it’s in happens to be Latin.
I was fortunate enough to study Latin for 3 years at school. It was an extra curricula subject, lessons happened before and after school two times a week. And I was terrible at it. Much as I was terrible at German and French. But I did find it interesting and no more so than when I was reading familiar works of fiction translated into the dead language.
To this end, if you are familiar with Asterix, this is worth a punt and if you are studying Latin, it is also worth a read. It is exactly the same as the English language version, all that is different is the text. It wont make you a Latin guru overnight (I still got a GCSE grade D at the subject) but it will help your vocab and trick you into studying when you think you’re not.
As the title says really, if you get hold of a copy of the current issue of popular scifi magazine SFX, tucked away in the final third is a coupon for a free copy of hard scifi writer Reynold’s 2008 novel House of Suns. It’s a special SFX print, but the normal version is still on the shelves at £7.99, so it’s definitely worth a punt. It’s original coupon only for redemption though, so no photocopies.
The cover price of SFX is £3.99 or you may like to entertain this entirely fictitious scenario:
*Enter public library stage left
*pick up SFX
Oooh, a free book coupon!
COUGH *RIP COUGH *RIP*
*pocket coupon
*finish reading magazine
*stroll to Waterstones
Jul 062010
As I was saying last week, one of the main issues to adoption of ereaders is the price. The device is seen as a gadget in it’s own right and not a facilitator/enabler for the reading of books. I was reading earlier on Techlogg that Sony has cut the prices of its ereaders substantially in response to a price war going on between Amazon and Barnes & Noble with their respective devices.
The device that I’d like to see as the universal format for an ereader, Sony’s 5 inch Reader Pocket Edition has had $20 lopped off the price, bringing it down to $150. This is the smallest price cut in the range- Sony has knocked a whopping $60 off the Reader Touch Edition, which has a larger screen, expandable memory via two different card slots and a touchscreen. Sony are now selling this for $170, which considering the extra features over the Reader Pocket Edition, suggests the price for the more basic device could go a lot lower. Sony selling for what they think the market can tolerate? Probably.
It’s interesting to note that converting in pounds and adding VAT would put the Reader Touch Edition at £132, and the Reader Pocket Edition at £117. These prices are £70 and £30 cheaper respectively than Amazon are currently selling them for.
It’s speculation whether these price cuts will make it to these shores as Sony are notorious for pricing what they think the territory will accept but who knows, we might be closer than we think to an affordable quality ereader over here in good old Blighty.
I can’t quite believe its been two and a half months since I started reading Gardens of the Moon. Admittedly I have read other books in between but the length of time I spent reading this might give the wrong impression. This is a fantastic book. It’s sprawling and messy and annoying in places but the world and most of the characters more than make up for that.
There is a review on Keeping The Door that is a lot better than anything I could write- it deals with the complex structure, McGuffins and fantasy tropes really well and is worth a read.
So instead of regurgitating much of what Renai Lemay has said, I’d like to focus on a few of the things Erickson does well that make this stand apart from a lot of the other fantasy that’s about.
The system of magic that is used is complex, bewildering and initially almost completely unintelligible. This is great. Part of the thing about magic is that its supposed to be magic. If I’ve been told by the end of the first few chapters how the system of magic works, I’m either reading David Eddings Pawn of Prophecy or I’m reading an author who lacks the skill to deal with exposition without a dreary monologue from one of the characters (hey, perhaps its both). By the end of the book the system of magic based around warrens makes a lot of sense. That’s not to say it’s perfect; there are a few occasions where it seems Erickson drops a new warren or quirky rule in just to further the plot but this isn’t too instrusive. Unlike the demons in vials, which are more irritating.
The system of Gods is also worthy of mention. It’s divided into the Elder Gods, who nobody seems to pay much attention to any more, and the younger upstarts referred to as the Ascendants, who seem to take great pleasure in interfering in a way more akin to the Greek pantheon than via prophets or whatever. Logically the name Ascendant assumes that they have ascended, suggesting they were mortal at some point. There are several clues in the text that make veiled reference to this. Hopefully the next volume or two will make it clearer.
The whole concept of Moons Spawn is really rather interesting too. A city sized chunk of rock with a city on it flying around with a bunch of alien warriors and wizards on it should frankly be crap- it’s straight out of some multi author series but again it is handled very well. Amomanda Rake is an interesting character, as the Ascendant Lord of Moons Spawn he remains somewhat enigmatic throughout and as the individually most powerful wizard its interesting to see the other wizards reactions to what he can do.
Some of the characters such as Whiskeyjack, Tattersail and Crokus are pretty likeable but a lot of them aren’t. Much like a lot of the gritty fantasy that followed in its wake (this book is over ten years old now), Erickson isn’t afraid of writing an unlikeable character and he does it well enough that it isn’t a turn off to any one reading the book.
Gardens of the Moon isn’t an easy read by any stretch of the imagination but it is rewarding. A modern classic in my humble opinion.
This year, like last year and the year before that should have been the year of the ereader and ebooks. But it isn’t and there are some fairly obvious reasons why not.
Firstly the sort of pricing hi-jinks that I’ve documented before don’t help. If you can buy a hardback over the internet and have them post it to you for four or five pounds less than the ebook equivalent, there is no incentive to buy the electronic version. The soution is simple and can be borrowed from other media.
Sell the ebook for a sensible price ( Victor Finch has done a survey of what people are willing to pay here), and more importantly do what film studios are doing with BD releases. For a couple of pounds more than the stand alone price, they give you a double disk set with the DVD and usually a digital download version for your iPod. That means you could have a hard back to keep at home and a digital version to read on your commute. Sensible.
I’ve read a lot of claptrap about the cost of making an ebook and how high it is. About how publishing a physical book isn’t much of the total end cost of production. That is true but its a little pointless in its selective truth.
Shipping and storage are two other major costs of physical book production. Most production is done in the far east now days and that means shipping on the high seas. If you’re not expecting to sell out your first print run immediately, you’ll need your own warehouse or distribution centre. And you’ll need to heat it, staff it or pay someone else to do it for you.
Yes, editing, proof reading and the rest are all intangible costs but how relevant are they to electronic editions? To my mind they’re only really relevant if there isn’t a tangible paper copy. At the moment ebooks, certainly for mainstream authors and publishers, are an extra, not the be all and end all. This means the sunk costs have already been sunk. Apportioning them to the electronic version doesn’t make sense. Of course this is different for new authors or those braving the new frontier of electronic publishing but lets face it, those seeking to justify the high RRP aren’t web 2.0 literate are they?
Secondly I like Seth Gordin’s idea of a Paperback Kindle- strip the ereader of all it’s superfluous functions, make it good at purely what its supposed to be good for and sell it cheap. Stupidly cheap. In fact give it away for free with ten ebook purchases, it’s the medium not the message, don’t look to make a pennies profit on it because you’ll slow adoption and lets face it its all about mass market really. Sell the Sony PRS 300 for £70 and be done with it.
Finally, get those back catalogues up there. Do I really want to buy book four in a series when books 1,2 and 3 are unavailable in electronic form? It’s all about the catalogue available. Google are working on something big, their first entry into online retail (barring the nexus 1) and the market needs shaking up. Books for the Kindle, iBooks and every other format are riddled with DRM and are still too expensive.
Well there you are. If I worked for a large consultancy firm, I would charge you a couple of hundred grand for telling you that. Aggressive pricing gets you penetration, and a large affordable catalogue gets you consumer buy in. Email me for payment terms chaps.
When I was a nipper I used to read 2000AD. This was way before the turn of the millenium, when the year 2000 seemed a long way off. Its pages were packed with compactly but intricately drawn science fiction with the odd fantasy number like Slaine thrown in. I remember reading the first issue to feature Nemesis the Warlock, I remember the ABC Warrior, Rougue Trooper, Ace Trucking Co and of course Judge Dredd. Heck, if my mum hasn’t thrown them away, I still have some issues with Dan Dare in them- when the Eagle went out of print for a while, Dan Dare defected to 2000AD.
Shakara is a graphic novel that collects the series of the same name from the pages of 2000AD. Its a 2001 vintage, which is years after I stopped reading 2000AD but nevertheless it definitely has an old school feel to it.
The writer Robbie Morrison has paid his dues at 2000AD, he’s written Dredd, came up with the infamous Nikolai Dante and then gone on to write the Authority and Wildcats as well as stints on Batman and Spiderman. And lets face it, there can never be too many people with the surname Morrison in comics can there?
Its penned by Henry Flint, who manages to get the whole thing to look a lot like Nemesis the Warlock in terms of the out there beastial aliens and a lot of detail packed in to every panel. Although the plot is fairly straight forward the temptation to rattle through the 160 odd pages isn’t that strong as you really find yourself digesting each panel slowly to take in the artwork properly.
Its mostly in black and white, with some aspects like Shakaras eyes in colour- a conceit which works really well to highlight the otherness of the main character.
If I had to have some criticisms of the art work, some of it is a little derivative, the Shakara race themselves reminded me heavily of one particular member of the Celestials (http://www.immortalthor.net/bio-celestials.html#Gamiel the Manipulator) and a lot of the aliens seem to be tributes to various well known aliens. This is echoed in the naming of some of the characters, it’s obvious Morrison is a big fan of Dune as there are corruptions of Bene Gesserit and Fremen in the mix amongst others.
Fortunately the story more than makes up for it, a relentless tale of (initially) unexplained revenge by a spindly shaped robot like creature who only utters one word as it planet hops killing indiscrimately. You could level the criticism that its a little one dimensional but tales of revenge don’t really need to be too deep or meaningful. Yes, it does get sillier towards the end with giant robo-dinosaurs and assassins joining the fray but thats probably more to do with the original comic run being in 3 different stories rather than one long happening. It doesn’t detract too much from a read through in one or two sittings.
Definitely worth a read if you’re getting a bit bored with superheroes or zombies (which seem to be near ubiquitous at the moment).
Jun 152010
I tend to pop up to our local Waterstones about once a week just to have a rummage through the new releases. What stood out this week for me was the sheer amount of space devoted to Warmhammer tie in novels- the 3 shelves you can see in the image are entirely Warhammer. This could be forgiven if it wasn’t at the expense of more deserving titles but they’re missing A Game of Thrones, large chunks of the Wheel of Time, most of JV Jones back catalogue and they hardly have any Robert Rankin.
Shame on you Waterstones!
One Day by David Nicholls has the sort of busy cover thats full of recommendations from authors like Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby. The Guardian love him too and the inside cover is full of platitudes from people I’ve never heard of like Jenny Colgan, Faye Ripley and Kate Mosse. In fact there seems to be a quote from every section of the Guardian newspaper, barring the Sports or Motoring supplements in there too.It’s a concept novel, taking one day in the life of two people, Emma and Dexter, over a 20 year period. It starts and finishes with half a day at each end of the book in 1988 when the two main protaganists end up spending the night together on their university graduation. Emma is the worthy double 1st girl with aspirations, Dexter is the incredibly popular lad who scrapes a lower second in anthropology, the sort of chap who is more interested in how a job or career sounds rather than the practicalities of doing it.
Despite all of these things conspiring to make me detest the book before I’d even read the first chapter, I have to say I was won over. Partly by the well realised characters and basic humanity of it all, partly because after Kieron Gillen professed a hatred of Kular Shaker it was interesting to see the fondly mentioned but mostly because of Nicholls excellent way with our fair language.
This was a book group book and we did have a fair old discussion of whether the character were well realised (we agreed they were) and whether they were likeable (they both were to various different degrees) but for me the real pull was the language. Passages like this one just scream quality at me:
He ordered and then was off to the loo again, taking his second martini with him, which Emma found unusual and strangely unsettling.
It’s not verbose or overly complicated but it really sums up the situation of a chap taking a cocktail to the toilet in a restaurant superbly in my book. And it’s full of these little touches, Dexter calls one of Emma’s boyfriends “beard”, and its the sort of thing we can all associate with (or at least I can, I’m terrible with names). Although there’s plenty of tribulation in the novel, the underlying humour sees the reader through without thoroughly depressing him.
In many ways, despite the differences in style, subject, genre and pretty much everything else, One Day reminds me of something Douglas Adams could have written. The story is forgettable but the joy is in the little snippets and clever use of language.
Definitely worth a read, and its only three pounds something at Amazon too.
The Amityville Horror was another book group pick (nominated by me as well). It’s always interested me as it is supposed to be based on real events from the mid 1970′s. There have been numerous films, sequels, magazines articles and books written on the subject but this is the original one that started it all, written from transcripts of conversations had with the protagonists. If you want to delve into the history and what not of it all, there is a good Wikipedia article on the matter here.
This is proper 1970′s horror fare, setting a lot of what are now clichés in the horror genre including that good old built on an Indian burial ground that seemed to be trotted out in every B movie for a decade. But to be brutally honest, unless you’re interested in the background and the surrounding events, this probably isn’t the book for you. It was written about 6 years after Blatty wrote the Exorcist, probably the seminal 1970′s horror story (ignoring Stephen King for a moment) and couldn’t be further away from it if Anston had tried. Put simply, the man cannot write. Any one that uses exclamation marks in general prose should be given a good kicking in my book and he does this frequently from early on.
One of the group did say he was scared by the book but I can’t help thinking this was despite the way it was written rather than because of it. Some of the aspects contained within the book are unsettling, the basic premise is fundamentally scary in itself but it is let down by the writing that veers from novel to commentary page by page, with comments like “later on when they discussed it the Lutz’s felt…” peppering the text. When a book is neither an intelligent written selection of transcripts (lets not forget Dracula was written as a variety of journal entries and letters) or a novel in its own right, it’s difficult to get fully immersed in the story. This is a shame really as the main protagonists, George and Kathy Lutz, do have some decidedly odd things happen to them. Phantom embraces, odd behaviour, flies infesting rooms in the dead of winter, it’s all there really.
It is a fairly short read, which is why the book group went for it. I can’t help but think if we could have looked past the page count, then The Exorcist or The Shining would have been a profoundly more rewarding read, despite not being based on alleged true events.
Is it worth as read? As I’ve mentioned earlier, if the actual story itself is of interest to you, if you like reading about real life hauntings and so on, it probably is but if you’re actually after reading a well crafted book, in my humble opinion, you’re better off looking elsewhere.
