Signor Finzione

That ought to be interesting - I'll be sure to keep my eye out. She already has a strong social media presence (we often have geeky conversations about Dragon Age on Twitter ), and I look forward to seeing more of this kind of thing. (I saw The Iron Ghost in Waterstones today and had to refrain from buying it. I also had to refrain from buying the small version of The Copper Promise, as I have the huuuuuge paperback version that looks very odd on my bookshelf . . .)

Whoopsie! Since you've managed to save so much in other areas, though, you totally deserve it. So glad you enjoyed Mistborn #2 so much! I quite like politics-type stuff in fantasy, so will probably really enjoy this series. Mistborn #1 is next on my to-read list, right after I've finished Rivers of London. Do you think you'll read something else before you read book 3?

Ooh, The Iron Ghost is on my wishlist - I rather enjoyed Williams' first book. Richard Ayoade is awesome!

Ooh, bargainous! About to order my ticket for the Gollancz festival in October. Although it means I'm going to have to do some reading before then . . . out of all the authors participating, the only one I've actually read is Abercrombie.

Ooh Rogues is on my wishlist - let me know whether or not it's any good.

Yeah, I'd heard about it from others' reviews so I guess I was prepared for it, but even if I hadn't I don't think it would have bothered me very much. I hope you get along with Leckie too - it's about time we had something in common again. I bought Wolf Hall myself a few weeks ago (it was 35p in a charity shop!) and will undoubtedly give it a go eventually as I've heard you rave on about it and its sequel. I haven't actually bought it yet, but it's gone on the ever-expanding birthday list. I know, I'm becoming so broad-minded!

Good for you! The whole reason I scrapped my own TBR lists was because keeping track of stuff put extra pressure on me, which in turn made me really demotivated whenever I didn't read 'enough'. Reading should be fun! I recently read The Girl With All the Gifts and really enjoyed it. My review is here in case you're interested.

Review: 'Ancillary Justice' by Ann Leckie On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance. Ancillary Justice won about a million SFF awards last year; and while I haven’t read enough of the other contenders’ work to judge whether this one truly deserved all the top spots, I can say that it had me rooting for the unlikely protagonist throughout, and left me wanting more. Ancillary Justice plays with futuristic possibilities of science and technology, and subverts the way we think about concepts such as humanity, social inequality and gender. In Leckie’s future, ancillaries are a common feature on many ships. Created by fusing the AI of a spaceship with the body of a brain-dead human being, ancillaries are intelligent yet inhuman extensions of a ship’s consciousness. But although they are looked down upon by society and treated merely as pieces of equipment by those they serve, there is much more to some ancillaries than their creators could have anticipated: the protagonist of Ancillary Justice is (as the title suggests) an ancillary who is on a personal mission to exact revenge on the individual who betrayed her captain and destroyed her ship. Breq proves to be far more than simply a slave of the Radch, and is moulded yet not defined by her complicated interactions with those around her. As a protagonist she is unusual, intriguing and more than a little likeable. I initially found the plot of Ancillary Justice to be slightly confusing, although this probably says more about my own lack of familiarity with the genre and its tropes than it does about the novel itself. However, I would have been prepared to endure even more confusion if it meant avoiding the infrequent yet unwarranted infodumps scattered throughout the beginning of the book. This doesn’t happen often enough to really detract from the story, but it has to be said that there are one or two awkward instances of the old ‘let’s have a detailed conversation about lots of things we as characters clearly already know about,’ where I would have preferred a gradual drip-feed of information instead. My usual diet of traditional fantasy doesn’t generally stretch my brain in these sorts of directions, and I find figuring things out for myself to be fun rather than frustrating. The main thing I struggled to get my head around was the concept of the novel’s antagonist, largely due to the somewhat bewildering use of pronouns used by characters with multiple embodiments. Thankfully things became much clearer as the novel progressed, as did the subtle differences between the three different incarnations of the protagonist herself: I came to really appreciate the divergences in her behaviour between the past and the present. In fact, I would love to read Ancillary Justice again in the future having finally got my head around the way things work in the Radch. A point of interest within Ancillary Justice is the lack of gender in the imperial language of the Radch. As a result the first person narrator Breq refers to everyone as ‘she’, regardless of their actual gender. While this does lead to some confusion – namely in the instances where Breq is speaking in another language and is forced to try and pinpoint others’ gender in order to correctly address them – but eventually it becomes such a natural part of the narrative that you stop even trying to figure out whether a character is a man or a woman because, in Leckie’s world, it simply doesn’t matter. I would probably never have bought this novel if not for a bored evening spent searching for potential new reads using Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature. The beginning of Ancillary Justice – a chance meeting in suspicious circumstances with someone the protagonist has not seen in a thousand years – was sufficiently intriguing to hook me into buying, as was the clearly unconventional nature of the protagonist herself. The rest of the story is engaging and continues in a way that keeps the reader intrigued: it’s well-paced and nicely structured, with chapters that alternate between past and present to gradually reveal more and more about events leading up to the main plot. Furthermore the reader is made to care about secondary characters, including those not central to the main plot, despite the fact that we’re encountering them through the impassive filter of an ‘inhuman’ AI. And of course there’s the AI herself: she’s the main focus of the novel and I really came to care about her story, enough that I want to immediately grab the next book in the series to see what’s next for Breq. Bring on Ancillary Sword! 4/5

Thanks Gaia, I definitely think you'd enjoy it. I quite like the sounds of the Archived series - I look forward to hearing what you think of it when you do eventually read it. (Once again you can be my guinea pig ) Special, yes, that's the word.

Awesome. Will record them all and then have a mad binge at some point.

Have you seen the fourth(?) Resident Evil film where Steve, have you seen the TV adaptation of The Strain? I remember you read the book a couple of years ago. They're showing series one again at the moment and I wondered whether it was worth a watch . . .

FIrst and Only definitely sounds like it's worth a read. Gaunt's Ghosts sound very Bridgeburner-esque. Would you recommend it to a SF amateur like myself? I've never read any Warhammer books before, but I've read a couple of WoW ones, which I found rather bland.

Great review Gaia! I'm really glad you enjoyed it so much. Remember, it's not truly an epic fantasy book if it doesn't contain lots of slow talking sections. I'm really curious to give this a go now, especially after hearing that it has unique magic and interesting politics. Like you said, though, it's very strange that it has an extract from the third book rather than the second! As if readers are going to be so excited to finish the trilogy that they'll want to skip book 2 completely.

Am I Evil is one of my fave songs ETA: I just remembered it wasn't Diamond Head I saw . . . it was Machinehead.

Hi Liam - hope your wedding was perfect!

Awesome review again! I skimmed over the very first part (just in case it spoiled Blindsight ) but I love the extracts - and the way you describe Valerie is terrifying. Stuck on a ship with a freaky vampire? AND there's zombies?? Must. Read. This. Series. Is it better than the first book, or just as good? I know you said it's not quite as revelatory as Blindsight, but I guess sometimes simpler is better? Love Richard Morgan's recommendation.

It doesn't come off as arrogant at all. I think it's awesome.

You drew them yourself?! That's awesome! And yay for wonky eyes.

Hi Noll! I stalk your reading log fairly often, and always think that we'd have loads to talk about . . . if only we shared the same reading interests. ETA: Your avatar is ADORABLE by the way!

Alright - it's officially wishlisted!! Oh yeah! Just days before I joined the forum. I never know what the difference is. This is like the ancillaries in Leckie's novel! The Colonel sounds exciting. I've struggled with short stories in the past because I feel like they seem to end just as they get going. I'm guessing the length wasn't an issue here? Thanks for the spoiler warning. Was going to check out the story but will leave it for now!

It sounds epic. And makes me want to try these books even more . . . against my better judgement. Ha! I love that. It's alright, I Wikied it after you mentioned it. Have you ever read The Odyssey from start to finish?

350 pages! All in a day's work. That's what people keep telling me! I really must get back to my Discworld read soon . . . the only thing is, I have to get through Pyramids first, and from what I remember it was slightly naff.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of all the romanticised vampires hanging around these days, which is one of the reasons I tend to avoid urban fantasy. Vampires should be scary (like in 30 Days of Night ). The quotes I saw at the beginning of the story seem very appropriate in that they set a very particular tone for what's about to happen. I like it when quotes are used in this way. What I don't like is when fantasy novels include quotes from real writers (Joe Abercrombie does this in First Law) - no matter how great the quote is, seeing it attributed to someone like Milton or Shakespeare just pulls me right out of novel. An advantage SF has over fantasy, I suppose! Ooh I've never even heard of that (because I was too lazy to Google it ). One of the baddies in Myke Cole's Shadow Ops series is called Scylla - I wonder if that will become relevant in the next book? Ohhh of course! Maybe just a few general thoughts, then? When is it set in relation to the main novels, and is it required reading for Echopraxia?

Well there's no rush. Doesn't even have to be this year.

I do! I have Curse of Chalion. I also have Cherryh's Fortress in the Eye of Time. I haven't actually read my Elizabeth Bear yet (I have Range of Ghosts) but her work definitely sounds intriguing (even though I know you weren't massively blown away by the one you read). And I've had Moon's Paksenarrion omnibus on my TBR for ages. I might actually make a list of all these books I've bought but somehow never got around to reading . . .