Karsa Orlong

Amazon I didn't mind paying those prices for them, as they're omnibus editions, with at least two novels in each

Laura, have you played Deadlight?

Book #62: Bleak Seasons by Glen Cook From Amazon: Having risked their lives and souls to capture the fortress of Stormgard, a band of weary soldiers known as the Company witnesses their commander's descent into madness and await the reemergence of their ancient gods. Thoughts: This is the seventh of Cook's 'Black Company' novels, and the first of a four book sequence called 'The Glittering Stone'. It follows on from the 'Books of the South' and the spin-off novel 'The Silver Spike', all of which I thought were excellent. The novels are presented, effectively, as extracts from the Company annals and have until now been largely told by Croaker, the Company medic and, later, Captain. There have been a couple of deviations from this which have worked well and, for large chunks of its length, this one does, too. At this point, the duty of keeping the annals has fallen to Murgen, the Company's standardbearer, for reasons far too spoilery to go into here, although he does observe that he's doing it because "One-Eye won't, and hardly anyone else can read or write". The proverbial short straw, then. The novel begins with Murgen on his knees amidst the burning remains of the annals. He has lost them, lost the Company's history, and with them his reason for being. Seems a bit extreme, you might think, and you'd be right, but the reasons for his despair only become apparent later in the story. For this one, Cook has adopted quite a challenging narrative structure. His prose is sparse at the best of times, and takes some following, which I love, but here he adds even more challenge by having Murgen, for unknown reasons, jumping forward and backward in time, reliving crucial moments of his life over and over again. These episodes, as he calls them, come upon him without warning and often last for days. Nobody knows why it is happening to him but, through his eyes, we begin to piece together what has happened since Croaker and the Lady were last involved. Shadow Games and Dreams of Steel both ended on mighty cliffhangers and it is only now that the aftermath starts to fall into place. The bulk of Bleak Seasons takes place in the city of Dejagore, finding the remains of the Black Company under siege from Shadowspinner and his army. The Company has divided into factions, with Mogaba and his Nar trying to take control whilst Murgen and the old-timers try to keep him in place long enough to survive. Among the returning characters (thankfully!) are the wizards One-Eye and Goblin, who once again proceed to steal the show. New characters include the Nyueng Bao and the especially brilliant Uncle Doj, master of the Path of Swords and wielder of Ash Wand, which I imagined as some kind of katana, as Uncle Doj comes across as some kind of Samurai. So it's mostly all good stuff, but I did find that it dragged a little in places. The idea of telling of the siege from inside the city walls is great, along with all the power games going on, but Cook obviously felt some limitations in this and so found some rather contrived ways of getting out of the city and telling other parts of the story. These bits didn't work so well, imo, because it took me out of the tension of the siege. Also, I did find that Murgen himself wasn't as engaging a narrator as his predecessors in the telling of the tale. Lastly, the book does seem to halt in mid-flow, like a candle being blown out. It felt like a very unnatural and abrupt ending to me, and obviously a hook to get you to dive straight into the next book, which I won't do just yet. Overall, I think this was the weakest book in the series so far. I do love the title of the next one, though: She Is the Darkness. Oh yes 6/10

Laura's always helpful I might give them a go next year some time. Can't say they're anywhere near the top of my TBR at the moment

Still can't make up my mind whether to read this or not

Sleepy Hollow 1x03 The Walking Dead 4x02

Release date for Ian C. Esslemont's sixth 'Malazan Empire' novel, Assail, is 3rd July 2014, a month after Erikson's second book in his 'Kharkanas' trilogy is published. Going to be busy, what with Mark Lawrence's next book coming out around then as well

She was great on Lou Grant, too

That was kind of my point

Arrow 2x01 & 2x02

That's you crossed off my Christmas card list

You'd get your own show on Channel 4

Saw on the news today that a school near the Forest of Dean was forced to close due to an infestation of False Widow spiders Beware spider pictures in the following: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-24623652

Aabba? Abbaa? Ababa?

Yeah, I read that a while back I'm still going with:

Yes it is! Well done gg, over to you

Some heroine

Well, it depends whether or not they have an alien gestating inside them before they can eat much But I'm guessing mostly cornbread Yes, yes indeed. Spots of slime

Of course there is! I can be a snob if I want to

No, I call myself a science fiction fan

My head's messed up enough as it is, thank you very much!

To be honest, since the first book I've never really looked at it. When I read Master and Commander I did have to buy a separate guidebook to help And it did help, but I haven't referred to it at all whilst reading the last two or three novels, which is a sign that I've settled into them now and am not so worried that I'm missing anything important through not understanding every single reference

That's a hard one for me to answer, cos I loved the film On the other hand, the trouble with the film is that it takes story elements from at least two of the books and chucks them in together, and - having read five of the novels now - there's no way Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany should have been cast as these characters I guess, in the end, it depends whether you can get past the nautical terms, because the books are mainly about the characters once you strip that stuff away. You could always try reading a couple of the samples on Amazon