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Gardens of the Moon (Book 1 of The Malazan Book of the Fallen) by Steven Erikson

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Apr 212010

I was recently recommended Gardens of the Moon by a website that said if you like JV Jones and George RR Martin, you should probably check out Steven Erikson. I had a stroll up the town and a rummage in Waterstones and spotted Gardens of the Moon . I don’t tend to buy an enormous number of paperbacks unless I’m buying back catalogue and I’d forgotten high street prices- £8.99 for a paperback seems steep when I have Stephen Donaldson’s next Thomas Covenant book on preorder for £14.

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.

Heroes, Joe Abercrombie

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Apr 202010

There is an interesting blog post on Joe Abercrombie’s website that does a bit more than tell the reader he’s finished his first draft, it actually details the mechanics of how he writes. What I found interesting was how closely it tallies with what I was reading in this blog post at Bubble Cow.

Its worth a read, especially if you’ve liked the First Law trilogy or the excellent Best Served Cold or if you’re interested in the mechanics of writing.

Against All Things Ending: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen Donaldson

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Apr 192010

The penultimate part of the final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is due out this October and I just noticed that Amazon has the cover blurb up:

Desperate for help to find her adopted son, Jeremiah, Linden Avery has resurrected Thomas Covenant in a cataclysmic exertion of Earthpower and wild magic. But the consequences of her efforts are more terrible than she could have imagined. Sorcery on that scale has awakened the Worm of the World’s End: the ultimate end of all Time, and therefore of all life, has been set in motion. And on a more personal level, the results are no less extreme. The stress of reincarnation so many centuries after his death has fractured Covenant’s mind. He cannot tell Linden where to find her son. And his leprosy has renewed its grip on him, inexorably killing his nerves. The Ranyhyn had tried to warn her. Now, plunged to depths of desperation and despair for which she is entirely unprepared, Linden seeks radical responses to the dilemmas she has created. Searching for Jeremiah, and accompanied only by a few friends and allies – some of them unwilling – she takes chances that threaten her sanity, forcing her to confront the Land’s most fearsome secrets. Dreadful futures hinge on all of her choices, and she and her companions are driven beyond the limits of their endurance. Yet she still walks paths laid out for her by the Despiser, and his forces are ready . . .

The first two Chronicles are perhaps my favourite fantasy reads ever and I’ll admit so far the final series leave me torn. Perhaps 20 years is too long between the second and third series, despite what Donaldson has said about needing to develop as an author in order to be skilled enough to tackle the story, there are still some aspects I don’t like. The whole concept of the Insequent doesn’t fit comfortably with me. If a race as powerful as the Insequent has existed I can’t make sense of them not appearing in any of the preceding books.

Some of the reveals in the previous two books were pretty awesome but additionally some of the chapters also seemed like visiting the characters and creatures of the two previous trilogies to put ticks in boxes. I’m torn you see but the blurb for Against All Things Ending makes me really excited.

Watcher of the Dead, J V Jones

fantasy, finished reading, recommended 5 Responses »

Apr 162010

Watcher of the Dead is the fourth book in J V Jones’ (JVJ) Sword of Shadows series and as such I’ve assumed that you’ve either got knowledge of the previous 3 volumes, or, after reading this, you’ll be enthused to click on the link at the bottom and order volume one.

Until I just had a look, I always thought JVJ pushed this series out fairly rapidly but it turns out its 4 books in 11 years, which compares unfavourably to George RR Martin’s 4 books in 9 years (and I never thought I’d use the word unfavourably in comparing release schedules against Martin!). Still, its mostly due to a 5 year hiatus between books two and three, which caused me to reread books one and two at the time.

Book four, Watcher of the Dead, sees the action really hotting up. “Relentless” isn’t a word I use a lot, especially in a 400 page novel but it really is suitable in this instance: from Angus Lok, to Raif, to the Eye, Effie, Raina and so on, at the start of each and every chapter you’re desperate to continue the story of the person from the last chapter. For all of two pages anyway, and then you’re gripped by the continuation of the next characters story arc.

Poor old Raif is looking like he’s going to be held together entirely by scar tissue at some point in the not to distant future, there is some imagination involved in the regular torments he suffers. Certainly wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of the person that dreamt them up.

Part of the skill is keeping a tight rein on your characters, if they wander off you spend too much time getting them into place for the finale, and this is where series can lose it in the middle- endless trekking, contrived reasons for going somewhere and a lot of boredom for the reader. It’s obvious JVJ has spent a lot of time planning this series and this book particularly because at volume 4 we’ve not really encountered pointless marching for the sake of getting the chess pieces in the right place.

The only issue I have with this book is a silly one really. It’s so well written if you read the series back to back it exposes the shortfallings of the first book. Thats not to say Cavern of Black Ice is badly written because it isn’t, but this is on a different level, the writing is up there with the top contemporary fantasy crowd. I shudder to think the level of research thats gone in to some of it (although hopefully not as much research into the torture aspects as the post Iron Age technology and so on).

All in all, well worth reading. If you’ve read the other 3, it’s a no brainer to get this, if you haven’t, go grab volume one, A Cavern of Black Ice, you’re in for a treat.

If you want to see some more detailed analysis (containing *SPOILERS*), there are some after the click through.

The Antipope, Robert Rankin

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Feb 242010

The Antipope is probably unlike any other book you will have read. Robert Rankin himself was awesomely described as The drinking mans HG Wells by some august publication or other (it might have been Time Out, I can’t be bothered to get up and dig out a book to check).

It’s an apt description to some degree but also does the man no favours. I remember reading he was mortified to know having a strap line from Pratchett was the best way to increase sales but I digress.

Mr Rankin portrays himself as a teller of tall tales and this is the first of them. A common locale for his stories is the London borough of Brentford (it hosts the Olympic games, and is apparently the site for the Garden of Eden amongst other things), in an indeterminate time period that has some modern technology but uses pre decimal coinage.

Ostensibly the book follows the exploits of two gentlemen of the parish, John Omally and James Pooley. They are the sort of gents who put more effort into not having a job than they would put into actually having a job. I have a mental picture of a sort of Lovejoy/Tinker set up without the antiques. And with more drinking.

Rankin wrote a lot of his early books in the pub in spiral bound notebooks. He’d know he’d written enough for a novel when he’d filled a certain number of notebooks. This shows through in his writing, he has no love for computers, mobile phones or video games.

Whilst he might not love the modern, his clear affection for traditional drinking culture and the workings of the saloon bar. I’ve sat in a number of pubs in my time and Rankin captures the atmosphere so perfectly, even Inspector Morse wouldn’t be able to detect a problem.

The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extra ordinary is dealt with in a very charming manner. Brentford has its own Gandalf figure in Professor Slocombe who introduces the arcane nicely.

This is probably one of my favourite reads and one of Rankin’s most accessible. Some of his later books don’t so much breech the 4th wall, as knock it down an rebuild it as a barbecue. The first three Brentford books, the Aramgeddon books and the Cornelius Murphy trilogy are all completely accessible to newbies and I would really recommend you give him a go.

Book 12 Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

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Oct 112009

As I mentioned in my previous post, this book rattles along at a fair old rate, a rate that the series hasn’t really managed since the first four or five volumes. Continue reading »

Wheel of Time Book 12: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

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Oct 052009

Crikey, that’s a title and a half for a book.

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

Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie

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May 302009

It’s easy to get set in your ways and comfortable with the same authors. I’ve been reading Terry Pratchett, Robert Rankin, Stephen Donaldson, J.V. Jones and George RR Martin for years and it’s sometimes hard to give another author a chance. He’s new, how can be be any cop? is a hard mental shackle to break at times.

Fortunately my good chum Harry pointed me at The Blade itself by Joe Abercrombie and I was able to get past that stumbling block and read the first of what turned out to be a thoroughly entertaining modern fantasy trilogy. I’ll do a proper post on that series later but for now I want to talk about Best Served Cold, which is a follow up stand alone novel set in the same world as the First Law trilogy. It follows Monza’s quest for revenge as the mercinary captain is betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead. She is not a happy bunny, and goes about recruiting a bunch of misfits- a “savage”, posioners, ex-convicts, torturers, her old boss who she betrayed herself and so on, to wreak merry havok on those she deemed responsible for her near death. There is no epic questing for magical ornaments involved, which is good. There is a focus on character rather than on high fantasy concept. This is also good.

It’s interesting to see the lack of description doesn’t really get in the way of a cracking good yarn either. It’s really the characters where Abercrombie’s writing shines. He writes a good battle, an engaging posioning but it’s the dialogue between the characters and the underlying dark humour where he really shines.

There’s one stand out line that goes like this: “We talked about many things, fine wine, women, his impending destruction, you know small talk. He told me he’d have my head, I told him I quite understood, I found it enormously useful myself.” Which I think illustrates the genius of Abercrombie nicely.

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