Karsa Orlong

Second this BIG time

I saw! Luckily you don't have this one - I'd say it'd be a bad place to start if it was your first Asher. Tim, if you weren't enjoying The Skinner (though I can't imagine why! ), you could always give Prador Moon a go. It's a prequel to the whole Polity universe and it's relatively short, plus it's great!

Book #37: The Technician by Neal Asher From Amazon: The Theocracy has been dead for twenty years, and the Polity rules on Masada – but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hitlist. Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called ‘the Technician’, that attacked him all those years ago, did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race. It’s up to the war drone Amistad to discover this information, with the help of an ex-rebel Commander, the black AI Penny Royal and the amphidapt Chanter. Meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals stirs from slumber and begins to power-up its weapons . . . Thoughts: This is one of Neal's standalone 'Polity' novels and, as such, it doesn't really require any prior knowledge of his other books - although Amistad does appear in Shadow of the Scorpion, and the hooders and gabbleducks have certainly appeared elsewhere in his work. This story is basically a race against time. Twenty years ago, religious fanatic Jeremiah Tombs was attacked by the hooder known as the Technician (see cover art above) and - unlike all its other victims - survived. In the intervening decades he has been nursed back to health and protected because it appears that the Technician downloaded something into his brain - something several opposing factions very much want to get their hands on. What this download is and how it might change the course of Masadan history is what drives the story forward. I think this is the seventh or eighth of Neal's novels that I have read. I'm a fan, for sure. But this one is the first that I have struggled with. I felt it was too long, lacking in his usual dark humour, devoid of his usual memorable characters (apart from Tombs himself), and strangely lacking in his trademark action, taking far too long to come to the boil. It was a little too preoccupied with religion and politics, too. I also noticed an alarming amount of repetition of certain words, like he sat down to write sometimes and had a 'word of the day' that he had to use a predetermined number of times. 'Impinge' was one. How many times that cropped up, I lost count. And 'Euclidian'. Dear Lord that came up a lot! I thought, really, that it was only in the last quarter, where the proverbial seriously hits the fan, that the book really came alive. In that final portion, when he brings all the plot threads together cataclysmically, it becomes a great deal of fun, and it answers a lot of questions. It almost saved itself in my eyes, but I have to recall the first half of the book and the lack of pace, which is what really unseated it for me, and is very surprising in an Asher novel. Something of a brave attempt, then, but tinged with a little disappointment. 6/10

Both! I have too many series on the go, some of which I haven't been back to in ages, so I'm in danger of forgetting what was going on

Gary Richardson has always been awful, imo, not just this year.

Extremely unimpressed with Radwanska's attitude at the end of the match. But yay, GO SABINE! With all the fist-pumping going on, I'm worried the final might become a boxing match

I seem to have discovered a load of books I want to buy now. I don't want to abandon the plan, but reducing the TBR pile to 50 suddenly seems more problematic than it should be Plus I was planning on starting my big Malazan re-read when I got it down to 50, and I really want to do that, too

There you go

I was sitting in a pub with my back to the tv chatting to my mate. The expressions on the faces of those watching the match were hilarious

Comment from the BBC website: "A suggestion from Ed Lucas via Twitter that there should be a gap between matches of half an hour or so to allow punters "to get drinks and nipples ready". I'm assuming he means nibbles, but these big matches do make you tense - each to their own."

If you'd said 690 I would've taken you seriously

I was planning on not buying any books until I'd got the TBR list under 60, but I've taken a punt on this. It was originally self-published last year, but has since been snapped up by publishers. Don't know anyone who's read it, but I read the first few pages on Amazon's 'Look Inside' and liked it, then read comments comparing it to David Gemmell, so thought it was worth a go Of course, after buying it I noticed a comment later on comparing it to Brandon Sanderson, which is worrying

I do hate the way some players don't wait for their opponent before walking off court. Never used to be that way. There should be a rule Have to say, I loved seeing the McEnroe brothers playing McNamara and McNamee last night. Such good fun, and a reminder of the days when I really loved tennis

Hang on a minute! Looking elsewhere, you had a TBR list of 338 books in October 2011, and now you've got 690?? That means you've bought 350 books in less than two years

Like you'll stop at 10

I didn't realise it had taken you that long! Mind you, I don't consider 500 pages in a week to be slow

The latter!

I wish I could multi-task. Trying to watch the tennis and do my work at the same time doesn't seem to be happening

I'll hold you to that

Oh dear . . .

Did you finish it and straight away go back to the first book and re-read that scene?

Castle ep 5x15

Blimey, that was quick! I'm currently 43% of the way through Neal Asher's The Technician. I was too tired to read much yesterday

I ended up with a lot of books I didn't actually want thanks to those deals

Yeah, the last two books have been pretty poor. Bear in mind that the Guy Gavriel Kay books are fantasy, just based on European history. There's a thread about historical fiction here