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

April 26th, 2010 by Alex

The first chapter of gainst All Things Ending is available for download as a PDF on Mr Donaldson’s website.

I am reading it at this very moment!

UPDATE

A very interesting read. At points it took me back to being 12 again as there was at least one word per page that I didn’t completely know the meaning of. I still think the phrase “Time Warden” sounds a little cheesy but I suppose we’re stuck with it.

I also need to have a real think how resurrecting Covenant should/does have a greater cost on the Land than the resurrection of Kevin Landwaster by Elena. Okay, the Law of Death was broken at the time but even so…

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

April 21st, 2010 by Alex
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.

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Heroes, Joe Abercrombie

April 20th, 2010 by Alex

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.

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

April 19th, 2010 by Alex

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.

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72 Virgins, Boris Johnson

April 19th, 2010 by Alex
Or Seventy Two Virgins to give the book it’s proper name.

Underneath the amiable bumbling buffoon exterior that Boris Johnson radiates like some sort of impenetrable armour is another amiable bumbling buffoon. He’s that clever. Somewhere underneath it all though is a thoroughly erudite and intelligent author.

Tom Sharpe is getting on a bit, and I must say his last novel, Wilt in Nowhere probably proved his 20 year hiatus shouldn’t have been un-hiatus’ed (wait and see if the Wilt Inheritance changes my mind) but Johnson’s first fictional read reminds me of the heady days of Sharpe’s finest, sans the ruder parts. When I was growing up I don’t think either Porterhouse Blue or Grantchester Grind were suppased  for their laugh out loud moments, expect possibly by Wilt. Johnson hasn’t quite achieved these heady heights but the fact 72 Virgins put me in mind of it has to be promising.

72 Virgins is a book of two halves really and whilst the writing is consistent between the two halves, the 2nd half that hinges on the main conceit of the book, is definitely the weaker of the two. Personally, I enjoyed reading about Roger the MP bumbling along, getting picked on by his children and being generally vague to his assistant in preference to the terrorist drama that was promised from early on. Is it carried out convincingly? Probably not entirely but the book chugs along at a merry old rate and you’ll find it in yourself to forgive it for seeming a little implausible in places.

To my mind however it’s when the action shifts away from Roger to the supporting cast that things begin to suffer a little. It’s still an interesting read and certainly doesn’t over stay its welcome but it left me looking forward to his next novel more than enjoying his current one.

Boris has shown with his championing of the traditional arts that their is still room for heritage in our great nations museums and galleries, that it doesn’t have to be all one armed lesbian mime shows that fill our theatres, and above all that it’s okay to like things that are highbrow. Lets hope his writing keeps up the high standard Seventy Two Virgins has set.

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Watcher of the Dead, J V Jones

April 16th, 2010 by Alex

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.

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The Broken Shore, Peter Temple

March 11th, 2010 by Alex

The Broken Shore is my first foray into detective fiction. Our book group selected it from the CWA (Crime Writers Association) Dagger winners from a couple of years back, so it came with a reasonable pedigree. The book blurb is also more than complementary, verging on the hyperbole at times as it decries the book as not just a great Australian crime novel but as one of the great Australian novels full stop.

Well it’s enjoyable but its certainly not the greatest thing since the invention of things. Temple has a very engaging writing style, he deals with the spoken word as it is spoken, which is rather uncommon in literature. The detectives and police in general speak in short clipped terms, whilst everyone else is a little more loquacious. It takes some getting used to but works well.

Try as I might however, I can’t hear the voices with an Aussie accent. I’ve spent 6 weeks in the country, so its not a lack of exposure to it. I suppose its the way that the back water hick town most of the novel takes part in are just like the back water hick towns in the deep south of America.

The plot itself centres around a detective called Joe Cashin (although in the great tradition of detective novels, he’s referred to as Cashin by pretty much everyone bar his mum), who has headed back to the small town he grew up in to lick the wounds of a serious accident he was involved in and recover. Then the equilibrium of quiet racism and rural crime is disrupted by the murder of a local bigwig.

Characters are set up as the perpetrators but its fairly evident they’re not to blame and things move on at pace from here. And it’s this that really proves the issue to be honest. The murderers only appear in the last 50 or so pages, basically at the reveal, so there’s no link to them other than the odd mention for the main bulk of the novel. This feels unsatisfactory when you finally get to meet them.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book enough that I’m going to dig out some of Temple’s other work. Particularly any other Cashin books he’s written, as I found the whole thing rather engaging.

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Ebooks- the price shame

March 2nd, 2010 by Alex

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The Antipope, Robert Rankin

February 24th, 2010 by Alex

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.

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The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1

February 14th, 2010 by Alex

The Walking Dead then, bit of a change here, this ones a comic. I’m not going to call it a graphic novel or anything pretentious like that, it’s 1,000 odd pages of pure and unadulterated zombie awesomeness.

It follows a group of survivors of some sort of apocalypse- we’re left vague to what this is as the main character Rick is in a coma for it and wakes up in an empty hospital- as they struggle to survive the zombie aftermath.

As the story progresses it becomes less and less about the zombies, after all there are only a limited number of ways people can be ripped to pieces by the undead, and more and more about the relationships between the survivors and how utterly horrible people can be to each other.

It gets increasingly bleak as it progresses, dealing with death, madness and a desensitisation to violence amongst other recurring themes.

The art work veers between the great and the clunky but the story is what matters and it is great. It’s a £45 RRP but currently only £25 at Amazon. Buy it whilst it’s still in print.

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