Karsa Orlong

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

Lightweight

It's far, far better than the film

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!!!

No probs

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 Eternal Rigante: Sword in the Storm Midnight Falcon Ravenheart Stormrider Troy 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!)

Learn to use Google then

Righto, I'll get on it later

Oh you've no worries then, Waylander can be read completely on its own. It's a great book, imo, although I think I prefer Sword in the Storm

No, not at all. They pretty much stand alone. ETA: to clarify, King takes place hundreds of years after Legend, and Waylander - although set in the Drenai world - is a completely separate story. Maybe I should break that list down so it shows the various different sub-sets, would that be of any use?

Just copying this over from the David Gemmell thread and updating it so I know which ones I still need to buy (before they change the cover style of all of them). Ones I've read so far in blue, ones still on my TBR list in green. Legend (1984) King Beyond the Gate (1985) Waylander (1986) Wolf in Shadow (1987) Ghost King (1988) Last Sword of Power (1988) Knights of Dark Renown (1989) The Last Guardian (1989) Quest for Lost Heroes (1990) Lion of Macedon (1990) Dark Prince (1991) Morningstar (1992) In the Realm of the Wolf (1992) The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend (1993) White Knight Black Swan (1993) (pseudonym of Ross Harding) Bloodstone (1994) Ironhand's Daughter (1995) The Hawk Eternal (1995) The Legend of Deathwalker (1996) Dark Moon (1996) Winter Warriors (1997) Echoes of the Great Song (1997) Sword in the Storm (1998) Midnight Falcon (1999) Hero in the Shadows (2000) Ravenheart (2001) Stormrider (2002) White Wolf (2003) The Swords of Night and Day (2004) Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow (2005) Troy: Shield of Thunder (2006) Troy: Fall of Kings (2007) (posthumously finished by his wife, Stella)

It's not going to work, is it?

Yeah, we'll have to agree to disagree in this particular case, cos I loved the structure of it, although I do think the solutions to some of the problems/situations were signposted waaay too much.

Bridesmaids?

This looks good: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Time-Travellers-Almanac-Ultimate/dp/1781853908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387284626&sr=8-1&keywords=the+time+traveller%27s+almanac#_

Incidentally, David Gemmell also did the whole Celtic approach with his Rigante series, and I really liked it, so that's a good sign

I believe it was originally published in the three volumes, during 1954 and 1955

I'm about 120 pages into Ken Grimwood's Into the Deep.

Congrats to the Aussies - out-played us on every level. Would've been nice if we'd put up a bit of a fight but maybe the humiliation will do some of those players a bit of good (I'm not looking at you, Kevin Pietersen, oh no ). As an aside, some of those bounces off the cracks in the pitch were hilarious

I'm doing my impression of the Necromancer and resurrecting this thread Much excitement when I saw the trailer on tv the other night http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX1y5kGZcHc Starts 4th January on BBC4 (in HD!). They're also repeating season 1 over Christmas, starting next Monday. 'Twas the best thing on tv last year, imo

Oh crikey, yes, totally agree. More show dances like Tom what-his-face's and less like Louis Smith's, PLEASE!

So, The Desolation of Smaug. It had its moments but generally I spent more time thinking "why did he (Peter Jackson) do that?" rather than enjoying it. *sigh*

But, as far as I can see, if children are its target audience, then turning into three x 3-hour films and filling it with violence is denying it to the very people it's meant for Somebody needs to give Peter Jackson a slap. He's probably the only person in the world who doesn't realise that, at most, two 2-hour movies would have been far, far better

Probably not It had it's moments but, as has become the norm with Peter Jackson, it was half an hour of brilliance surrounded by two hours of his usual self-indulgent rubbish

No Oh, just back from seeing The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug