Karsa Orlong
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Posts posted by Karsa Orlong
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Neither are the Stones, and that hasn`t stopped them.
Maybe it should have
Yes, had a good Christmas thanks, hope you did, too
I was asked to post some photos of the illustrated The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings boxed set I got for Christmas, so here they are - they aren't very good, though!
There over 70 full-colour illustrations inside the four books as well, but my attempts to take photos of a couple were even worse than these
It's a beautiful boxed set Also, I was given this big-ass hardback:
I finished The Sword in the Stone last night and started The Witch in the Wood this morning
And lovely Sari sent me these, too, which are excellent as they were the only ones I got that were complete surprises
Thank you Sari
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Thanks!
Yeah, I realised today that Erikson's blurbed it, so I'm doubly excited to read it. I think it's two books in one, too! Yeah, it's a four book series in two volumes
Blood Song (paperback) by Anthony Ryan (released in Feb)
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Awesome presents, Laura!
I've been wanting the Paul Kearney one for ages -
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Book #77: Tatja Grimm's World by Vernor Vinge
From Amazon:
Born on a primitive world, Tatja Grimm is frustrated by her peers' lack of intelligence. Setting off on a trek to find the ocean, she discovers that she is the most intelligent being on her world. So Tatja turns her eyes to the stars in a quest to find someone with whom she can communicate.
Thoughts:
This is classed as Vernor Vinge's first full-length novel, but that's a bit misleading, because it is actually two novellas from the 60s and a prequel from the 80s joined together to make a whole. It pretty much works.
We first meet Tatja when she is employed by the Tarulle publishing company which operates from a huge, multi-leveled barge that traverses the ocean world of Tu, plying its trade to various island groups and the coast of one mysterious continent about which they know very little. Tatja comes from the interior of that continent, and is brought before the editor, Rey Guille, by Cor Asquasenya as a potential actor to play the role of a barbarian who is the most popular character in their leading publication, the magazine called Fantasie. Pretty quickly, though, we learn that Tatja is not all she appears to be, and the speed with which she learns and out-thinks those around her sees her circumstances changing very quickly.
It's not until about halfway through the novel that Vinge starts to reveal the true nature of Tatja's origins, and he handles these surprises very well. But it's a curious book, generally. Whereas his best books take big, quirky ideas and technology, place them in a believable universe with wonderful characters, and then have fun, this one has none of the tech and really only the one big idea, which is central to the plot and its resolution. As it was (mostly) an early work it is occasionally a little rough around the edges, but the beginnings of Vinge's talent are there, especially with characters like Cor. It's interesting that he never once tells the story from Tatja's point of view - we always see her through another's eyes, and since those others don't know exactly who or what she is we are taken along by their ideas and also their confusion. It's an interesting way of doing things, and risks making Tatja completely unsympathetic, but it is successful on the whole, although I did find it occasionally jarring in that I felt I wasn't quite clued in to what he was trying to get across.
I would only recommend this as a place to start with Vinge if someone was finding the prospect of diving into his 'Zones of Thought' novels a bit daunting. It is reasonably short and to the point, and never strays from its central story. A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are, imo, masterpieces. This one isn't, but it's still worth a read - preferable after reading those others.
7/10
Merry Christmas everyone
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I went to Jersey as a child and thought it was magical .. I believe Guernsey is even more magical and less commercial.
Yes, that's definitely the case - and I'm not even slightly biased
I went to Jersey once and my Guernsey relations never let me forget it -
There are rolling highlights of the series on the red button all this evening up until about 3am tomorrow morning
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My dad was from Guernsey, Julie, and I've spent a lot of time there over the years. He loved his home and was one of eight children, so I've got loads of family over there
It's 9 miles by 4, sort of triangular shaped. It's a beautiful island with lots of lovely beaches, and St Peter Port is one of my favourite places. Due to the occupation during WWII, there are still a lot of German bunkers and such dotted around. They don't speak with a French accent at all, although they do have a slight accent which means they say words like 'glass' with a hard 'a' sound, like the first syllable of 'pacify'. -
Noooooooooooo, I'm not buying more books
ETA: okay, I might've bought one or two
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Very happy for Abbey and Aljaz .. she was the most improved imo and I thought he was an excellent choreographer .. he knew what suited her. Natalie couldn't quite shake off her Corrie image
but what an absolutely beautiful dancer. Thought Susanna would win so really surprised.Ditto to all of this. Really glad Natalie got to the final three, I thought she was brilliant, but Abbey was the one who improved the most (the dreaded 'J' word
) and she seemed a more natural dancer to me. I was surprised Sophie didn't make the final three but her show dance was the worst of the four and her dancing never looked quite right to me 
Natalie's show dance was the highlight of the whole series for me, though. Shall have to watch it again on Claire's site
ETA: I always wondered why they never had an It Takes Two after the final, so was quite glad they had the red button thing afterwards, even if it was a bit rough around the edges
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Happy reading in 2014 Sarah
Just think, this time next year you might have your TBR under 1,000
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When they get off their lazy behinds and tour again, I suppose
Or should that be 'if'? They're not getting any younger
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Well. Natalie's show dance was incredible. Got my vote. I still think she'll go out first, which will be a travesty. It was STUNNING. I don't like Artem but, blimey, well done mate.
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You must have read the wrong ones
But I'd wholeheartedly recommend giving Replay a go instead
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I've never heard of Grimwood before, and the plot you described was bonkers, indeed
. Mmmmm, I usually avoid Science Fiction like the plague, but this seems to have some sense of humour, at least Not intentionally it doesn't
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Book # 76: Into the Deep by Ken Grimwood
Blurb:
The fate of the world hangs in the balance, and rests in the hands of a beautiful marine biologist who is about to crack the code of dolphin intelligence.
Thoughts:
So you probably all know by now that Ken Grimwood's 1987 novel Replay is one of my all-time favourites, and that he sadly passed away whilst working on a sequel to that book, and that he only wrote four or five books in all. Well, apart from Replay, they're all pretty difficult to get hold of. A new copy of Into the Deep will currently set you back nearly £100 through Amazon Marketplace. Fortunately, I got this one used for 1p plus postage
That out of the way, I have no idea how to describe this novel
It is, quite frankly, bonkers on a colossal scale, and requires monumental powers of suspension of disbelief. Basically, if you can accept that mankind will one day be able to communicate with dolphins, and that whales are just huge repositories of knowledge and history that can be accessed like some vast supercomputer, well, you might like this book If you've read Replay, then you'll probably have realised that Grimwood had a bit of fascination with dolphins, and he takes that up several levels here, dealing with the affect of tuna fishing on the dolphin population through the eyes of fisherman Antonio and freelance reporter Daniel, and how their stories eventually dovetail with that of Sheila, the predictable beautiful marine biologist mentioned above. Add to that a rather unscrupulous oil company drilling right on top of an undersea volcano, and a university champing at the bit to withdraw the funding for Sheila's project, and you have the recipe for one of those cheaply hilarious movies you find on the Syfy channel most nights (although, fortunately, it's a bit better than Two-Headed Shark Attack, although maybe not as good as the awe(ful)some Sharknado
).I'm not selling this very well, am I?
What he did here is basically write a standard science fiction 'first contact' novel, but set it in our own oceans, and without any aliens. In fact, that's it - it's just occurred to me that it reminded me of The Abyss, that James Cameron movie, except without the space jellyfish. And the structure of the novel is actually not unlike Orson *spit* Scott Card's novelisation of that movie.
The bizarre thing is that, for most of its 380 pages, it's actually pretty readable and - when the various plot strands eventually start to twist together - actually quite exciting. The biggest problem I had with the book was his decision to anthropomorphise the dolphins. Not only does he tell big chunks of the story from a dolphin's point of view, but he also ascribes to them thoughts and motivations that are both human and inconsistent. One minute killer whales are known as 'danger cousins', the next they're 'orcas'; one minute they don't know what a boat is, the next they're calling it a 'hull'. And he gives them names which I had problems getting my head around, and I'm used to weird names in SF and fantasy books. The main dolphin is called Ch*Tril. Now, I have issues with apostrophes in names; throwing in an asterisk or a / or a \ as he does here and it's like the end of the world
And then there's the ending. Lordy, I don't even know where to start with that, even if I didn't want to spoil anything for anyone who might think about reading this. Let's just say that, once the main story has finished, there's a further 15 or 20 pages telling us what happened in the years afterwards, and it's just the most sappy, irritating wish-fulfillment I think I've ever come across. In fact, up to those last 20 or so pages, I was on the verge of giving it a 7. I'll say no more
Let's put it this way: this is no Replay. But then what is?
5/10
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Great deals, though. I didn't realise there were 7 Raven books - I only have 6!
Lightweight
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It's far, far better than the film
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Conn Iggulden's 'Emperor' series (five books) going for 99p each on Kindle in today's 'Daily Deal'
James Barclay's 'Raven' series (seven books) has been reduced from £27.99 to £18.19
Same for Alastair Reynolds0' 'Revelation Space' series (seven books)
I'm considering buying all of them
Bloody hell, that's 19 books 
ETA: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!
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No probs
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Okay, here you go
This is a list of David Gemmell's books grouped chronologically by setting.
Drenai:
Knights of Dark Renown (standalone)
Morningstar (standalone)
Waylander
Waylander 2: In the Realm of the Wolf
Waylander 3: Hero in the Shadows
The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend (prequel to Legend)
The Legend of Deathwalker (prequel to Legend)
White Wolf (Skilgannon the Damned Bk 1)
Legend
The King Beyond the Gate
Quest for Lost Heroes (sort of sequel to The King Beyond the Gate)
Winter Warriors (standalone)
The Swords of Night and Day (Skilgannon the Damned Bk 2)
Stones of Power / Sipstrassi:
Three sub-sets within this series. The 'Stones of Power' feature in all of them, but that's the only link as far as I'm aware.
Lion of Macedon (Parmenion Bk 1)
Dark Prince (Parmenion Bk 2)Ghost King (Stones of Power Bk 1)
Last Sword of Power (Stones of Power Bk 2)
Wolf in Shadow (Jon Shannow Bk 1)
The Last Guardian (Jon Shannow Bk 2)
Bloodstone (Jon Shannow Bk 3)
Hawk Queen:
Ironhand's Daughter
The Hawk EternalRigante:
Sword in the Storm
Midnight Falcon
Ravenheart
StormriderTroy Trilogy:
Lord of the Silver Bow
Shield of Thunder
Fall of Kings (posthumously finished by his wife, Stella)
Other Titles:
White Knight Black Swan (as Ross Harding)
Dark Moon
Echoes of the Great Song
Regardless of this, it's best - in my opinion - to start with either Legend, Waylander, Sword in the Storm, or the Troy Trilogy (even though Knights of Dark Renown is fantastic!)
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I want one regardless...
Learn to use Google then
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I wouldn't mind it if you did this, it should clarify things.
Righto, I'll get on it later
Steve's Bookshelf 2013
in Past Book Logs
Posted