Karsa Orlong

I so nearly bought Phantom on my way home last night. It was half price in Smiths. For some reason I resisted, I think because I want to reduce my TBR pile a bit first 640 pages into The Eye of the World. 150 pages to go . . .

I've always called it SF, so I give a little cheer when someone else does - it's such a rarity. I just can't bring myself to say 'sci-fi', I don't know why. It's always been SF or science fiction to me. I suppose the snob in me relates 'sci-fi' to pulp novels and 50's B-movies Grrrrr

It's costing me a fortune in broken keyboards

This is what appeals to me the most about it . . . unsurprisingly! Thanks for the review, Michelle. I am intrigued by it but it's not quite reaching to top of my wishlist just yet. Oh, and thank you for calling it SF rather than sci-fi

I'm not much of a Feist fan, but that one is a decent read. It's one of those that I bought when it originally came out, never read, got rid of, and then decided I wanted to give it another try

LOL, I hope not! They were the first books I'd bought in a long, long time. Since then I've become obsessive about books, so I'm still on that slope There were two other books in that order, too: Raymond E. Feist's Magician and Tom Lloyd's The Stormcaller. The first one is decent, the second I didn't like much at all. Of the four, Gardens was the last one I read. I was scared to read it because of the comments about it on Amazon - a bit daft, in retrospect, seeing as it was the one I really wanted. It's just as well I didn't read it first, though, otherwise the others wouldn't have got a look in. I agree about the title change for The Painted Man.

Totally geeky fact: I got The Painted Man in the same Amazon order in which I bought Gardens of the Moon. May 2009 that was (yes, I did just check ) - I was at the top of a very slippery slope

I can't make up my mind, to be honest. I'll finish it by the end of the week, hopefully (the first book, not the whole series ), and try and post some thoughts

Great review of TPM, Tim. Glad you enjoyed it in the end - you didn't seem to sure about it at first I see The Daylight War is almost upon us - might give me a kick up the backside I need to finally read The Desert Spear. I love the cover art for his books

Nooooo, I can't do that! Not until lunchtime, anyway

550 pages into the first Wheel of Time book. Only about 250,000 pages left to go . . .

I haven't bought any books this year . . . Adding this to my wishlist, though ETA: Oh, it's already on there Hmm, wonder how long I'll hold out for . . .

I thought you might FWIW, there are a couple of other branches in this area, I just don't like them as much. There's also a small Foyles up past St Paul's, and a huge Smiths on High Holborn which has a pretty decent books section, so I should still be able to fulfill my quota of 'novels that I really shouldn't buy until I've read the ones I've already got'

Nope. The window displays were empty, the shelves inside were empty. I could see staff packing boxes, and there was a notice on the door saying "This branch has closed. The nearest branch is . . . " etc etc.

I guess they're closing the smaller ones if there are others in the same area This one was my 'go to' branch, though - even though it was smaller I always seemed to find what I wanted in there. Well, not work, that's for sure

Just went for my usual lunchtime stroll up to Waterstone's only to find that they've closed it down. Gutted.

Yeah, more Peter Jackson excess.

Cool, must get it myself at some point

This is intriguing. Joihn Scalzi is returning to his Old Man's War universe with a series of thirteen 'episodes', to be released in ebook format over the next couple of months starting from 15th January. Amazon has them at 63p each. Apparently they will later be released in a single ebook that will be roughly the equivalent price of buying all thirteen episodes individually. There is also to be a treebook version at a later date. Announcing The Human Division Episode 1: The B Team on Amazon I've been meaning to read the second book, The Ghost Brigades, for a while, guess I need to hurry up

It must have been feeling lonely in there

Well you'll be alright then - that's about the level you need for what I've read of it so far The latter I don't know - what does the echo in your head say? Thanks, CFP!

Nor me But, as I said in post #29, if I don't start it now, while I have some enthusiasm for it, I'll just never do it. It'll keep sliding down my list of priorities until another ten years have passed

The Malloreon was great. More of the same, really. I loved it

I'm going to start on the first book this weekend

Book #1: Blood Rites by Jim Butcher For Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, there have been worse assignments than going undercover on the set of a film. Dodging flaming monkey poo, for instance. Or going toe-to-leaf with a walking plant monster. Still, there’s something more troubling than usual about his newest case. The film’s producer believes he’s the target of a sinister entropy curse - but it’s the woman around him who are dying, in increasingly spectacular ways. Harry’s doubly frustrated because he got involved with this bizarre mystery only as a favour to Thomas, his flirtatious, self-absorbed vampire acquaintance of dubious integrity. Thomas has a personal stake in the case Harry can’t quite figure out, until his investigation leads him straight to Thomas’s oversexed vampire family. Harry’s about to discover that Thomas’s family tree has been hiding a shocking secret: a revelation that will change Harry’s life forever. I've kind of neglected the Dresden Files series for a while now, so it was high time to get back to it. It's become so complex that I had to go and read up on Wikipedia to remind myself what had been going on in the previous books (I would advise against doing this - the Wiki entries seem to have been written by someone with only the loosest grasp of the English language ). Still, with my mind vaguely refreshed I jumped in. Blood Rites is the sixth book in the series and it's a cracker. When Thomas, a vampire of the White Court, asks for his help, Harry finds himself on a film set working as a gopher. What Thomas hasn't told him is that it is the set of a porn film Ahem. This doesn't change the fact that the boss of the studio is being hunted by a particularly vicious curse. How this ties in with the ongoing storylines is one of the book's neatest surprises, and Butcher juggles all the various threads very well indeed. It's a book that is plotted tightly and not only moves along its own plot but throws in various curveballs that I can see having lasting effects as the series moves forward. All the vampire Courts turn up at one point or another, as do other characters from Harry's past (including a demon with a grudge). As the blurb says, Harry's life will never be the same again. It also has one of the most exciting and scary setpieces I've read in a novel for a while, and it riddled with the usual deadpan humour that Harry excels at. Plus, it's one of those books that makes you want to start the next one immediately upon finishing the final page. Which I won't, but it did make me want to 9/10