Having said that, at 120 pages in, the characters have done little other than wander round a bit and have a chat. Of course that’s a facetious comment, as much as the “Clench Game” is but it’s something I like about Donaldson in a perverse way. The first book of his I read was The Mirror of His Dreams in 1986. I was 11 and a very precocious reader. It was my third step into fantasy, preceded by some Dragonlance and started with the Hobbit. Talk about a step in at the deep end but while I waited for Donaldson to write A Man Rides Through, I devoured both Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and lamented the fact he said he wouldn’t write a third series, even though it was fairly obvious that the final volume was pretty final. This Mordants Need pair of books, of which The Mirror of His Dreams is the first, involve an inordinate amount of talking and plotting. Most of the activities take place in a few rooms of a large castle that feels like it inspired an awful lot of subsequent castles in modern fantasy. True, there is some action, and I’ve still yet to read a better series of sword fights than Artagel’s battles with Gart the High Kings Monomach, but the essence of the story is almost akin to John Le Carre’s Smiley’s People, which from memory involved an elderly spy sitting in a loft reading a lot of field reports in an attempt to spot some inconsistencies that would lead to the unmasking of a double agent. It is about people and the situations they are in. How the people react to one another is key to how things progress, so the dialogue is very important.

I’m probably the last person in the world who can objectively read a Donaldson fantasy book and give an opinion on it but I am enjoying Against All Things Ending rather a lot. The preceding volumes in this new series have irritated me by turn; Kevin’s Dirt is a form of the Sunbane, it’s nothing original, the Insequent are so puissant (to pilfer one of Donaldson’s favourite words) that it beggars belief that they made no appearance in the first 6 books that comprise the original two trilogies and don’t get me started on the likes of Esmer or Anele or I might get a little bit foamy at the mouth.

Still, for all the inherent weaknesses of the evolution of the Land this time round, the frankly embarrassing name that assigned to the previously dead Covenant (Timewarden? it sounds like something from a corny 1970′s sci-fi show!)   and what seems like a greatest hits tour of the Lands past that takes in Berek Halfhand, Viles, Ur-Viles and Caerrol Wildwood amongst others, this volume has me quite excited so far. The ante has been upped a lot, and I get the feeling the characters are at a precipice that might lead to quite unexpected results.

Full review once I’ve finished it no doubt.

Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time are available as audio books in unabridged format and they’re rather good. I certainly don’t have the time for a read through of all the books before the final volume is due out in early 2012, so listening to them for the hour or so it takes to walk to and from work in the morning seems an excellent compromise.

It’s interesting to hear the written tics that Jordan has spoken by the two narrators, they sound a lot more irritating than they do on the page. David Langford once described how it invented a drinking game based around Stephen Donaldson’s use of the word “clench” in the Thomas Covenant books that involved two people opening a copy of one of the books and reading until they found the word “clench”, the loser having to have a shot. Well I’m sure you could do that with Jordan if you substituted the word “dryly” for “clench” and if I hear the phrase “‘Ta’veren’, Loial began” one more time I might have to get a bit cross.

Nevertheless, the audiobooks are very good. There are two narrators, a chap who takes the male chapters and a woman who does the female ones. One of the things it deals with nicely is the pronunciation. It’s always a bit tricky with fantasy anyway but given that this is American fantasy read by Americans, a few of the words are pronounced quite differently to how I expected. At around 30 hours for the Eye of the World, which isn’t the longest in the series by any stretch, I think my walks are going to be fairly busy for the next few months.

This is a huge huge book. Over 1,000 pages in hardback in fact, which doesn’t bode well for the paperback version(s). I’ve not read any of Sanderson’s Mistborn series but I have read his continuation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time and I think he’s doing a better job of it than the great man would have himself.

The world Sanderson has created is very different to the general fantasy worlds that are often quite analogous with our own. There is a preponderance of crustacean based creatures in these books, which definitely makes a change. The magic system is quite unique too, not as confusing at the Malazan Warrens or as formulaic as the Channelling in the Wheel of Time books. To be honest, when one of the Shen does a bit of binding himself to walls and the ceiling whilst attempting to assassinate someone, it comes across as a bit Playstation (Prince of Persia perhaps). Still, it’s top stuff.

I’m about 400 pages in but you always know when you’re reading a good book when you glance at the clock and see it’s 1am.

The Way of Kings is out on 30th December, and available for pre-order from Amazon for a more than reasonable £11.76

I’m only 150 or so pages in so far but am enjoying it  a lot. Still impatiently awaiting the appearance of Mat and his trip to Jain Farstrider and Tom to the Tower of Genji though.

The book weighs in at over 800 pages so it may take me a few more days to finish this one. Then I can get onto the penultimate Thomas Covenant book. Great books, they’re like buses eh?

The second volume contained an awful lot of Edeard in the Void and Hamilton has promised the third volume will be more rooted in the Commonwealth. So far this seems to be bearing up, I’m 200 odd pages in and whilst we have been into the void a few times, it’s mostly be for small parts of chapters, rather than a hundred or so pages at a time.

It’s definitely a case of so far so good. I was very disappointed with the way the final book of the Commonwealth Saga panned out, Judas Unchained went a bit Keystone Cops with a car chase and the Planet’s Revenge was just, well, silly. I have hopes with an extra volume in this series things will be concluded to a more satisfactory degree.

The weapons and spacecraft are beginning to get interesting too. The Navy Deterrent Fleet and the Accelerator Ship are both examples of some left-field thinking at the extreme end of where Hamilton’s sci fi has gone before. I approve of this since I was a little disappointed by the appearance of ultra drives over hyper drives and (random letter)-sinks in the previous books. We’re not talking about flying trees here, so Dan Simmons has nothing to worry about, but it is a new direction for Hamilton.

I’ve around 500 pages to go, the view is positive so far, expect a review by the weekend all things being equal.

It’s not the first time I’ve read Dracula, that happened almost 15 years ago when I was a student. Back then I read it in one sitting and could hardly move when I’d finished.

Given its age, its a remarkably accessible book, really easy to read but also packed with genuinely unsettling moments. Dracula climbing lizard like out of his castle window is profoundly unsettling yet there are moments of humour too, as when one of the doctors proclaims, “Chasing an errant swam of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic.”

I’m about two thirds of the way through but expect to be finished in pretty short order, so expect a more in depth write up then.

Something about the cover rang some bells too, so I didn’t buy it. When I got home I had a rummage through our library- we have an extension on the back of our garage that’s full of double stacked book cases. Sure enough, I found a first edition oversized paperback, printed in 1999, that I’d never actually read.

Goodness knows why I’d never read it, maybe the cover put me off, but I’m now a couple of chapters in and enjoying it tremendously. I already like how mysterious the sorcery seems to be (it seems magical rather than mechanical if that makes sense), so expect a review once I’ve finished it.

Red Mars seemed to me like a political drama, built around the bureaucracy of setting up a colony that might as well be in a remote part of Scotland as on a different planet. Now I’m a bit older and less determined to drop science fiction books that don’t have extravagant space battles in them, I thought I’d give it another go. So far, so same as. This does not bode well…

The only issue I have with the book so far is the authors style of writing. It seems very passive, even sequences like the young Cromwell getting beaten half to death by his father are somehow strangely uninvolving. Hopefully the interest of the period and the events happening will compensate for this. Definitely worth a punt for £9.49 from Amazon though.

The fact that The Gathering Storm is the 12th volume in a series might give you an idea that I think its worth a read.  There are definitely problems with epic fantasy, as George RR Martin has found out, the longer a series gets, the more spread out the characters get and the harder it is to progress the story without hitting the 300,000+ word barrier per book.

And to be honest things were starting to drag in the last two or three volumes. This came to a head when Robert Jordan sadly  contracted what turned out to be a very rare and terminal disease. But he did write extensive notes and partial chapters so the series could be finished.

So it’s with this in mind I picked up volume 12 a couple of weeks ago after finishing the absolutely excellent Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. Chalk and cheese really, Abercrombie has written a thoroughly modern fantasy with dark humour and swearing, where Jordan/Sanderson have written classic high fantasy.

So far (over 500 pages in!) I am loving it. The story has really picked up pace and there have been a couple of real twists that have left me wondering where things are going.

Will post again on it once I have finished