Karsa Orlong

Yes you are and no I won't

Told you I was going for the obscure Perv Ooh, good answer Although the 'better books' part just earned you one of my evil glares

Crikey, something that I really wasn't expecting just happened in The Shadow of the Torturer

No, it's okay! It's almost certain that I will read it in the near future. Sometimes it's nice to deviate from the plan (I.e. the TBR pile ). Pessimist! So if I like your choices but you don't like mine, does that mean I'm more open-minded than you are?

http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/7865-steves-bookshelf-2011/page__view__findpost__p__280811

I think we're going to pick one to dip our toes in the water, so to speak. I don't know about Frankie's choices (yet) but I tried to make sure that each of mine was a very different take on each genre, so I hope Frankie may come back at some stage and read more of them I'm already tracking down three of you choices, Frankie. I've downloaded samples of Under the Skin and Fingersmith to my Kindle - I think the latter will put me outside my comfort zone, which is cool. I'm going to start with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, though, and have already ordered it from Waterstones. Thanks for the suggestions, it's been great fun!

Thanks Tim. Yeah, I read the first volume of his Books of Blood many years ago, and I read The Hellbound Heart last year. I guess you could draw some comparisons with Neverwhere, although this is obviously a lot darker.

Book # 35: Weaveworld by Clive Barker Synopsis: WEAVEWORLD is an epic adventure of the imagination. It begins with a carpet in which a world of rapture and enchantment is hiding; a world which comes to life, alerting the dark forces and beginning a desperate battle to preserve the last vestiges of magic which Humankind still has access to. WEAVEWORLD is a book of visions and horrors, a story of quest, titanic struggles, of love and of hope. It is a triumph of imagination and storytelling, an adventure, a nightmare, a promise… Thoughts: It's a hefty old book, this - 752 pages. Set in Liverpool in the late 80s, Barker sets the scene of a city subdued by recent riots. The protagonist, Cal, lets one of his father's pigeons escape from the loft in the back garden and, in pursuing it, comes upon a house that is being cleared whilst its elderly owner nears death in hospital. The fugitive pigeon has landed on the sill of an upstairs window and, as Cal climbs the garden wall to try and get to it, he stumbles and falls towards a carpet that the removal men have unrolled beneath him. In doing so, Cal has his first sight of the Fugue, a magical world created within the weave of the carpet by a gentle race called the Seerkind. This brief encounter with an apparent Garden of Eden draws Cal back to the house again, in search of the carpet. There he comes face to face with Imacolata and her sisters (wraith-like beings of shadow who, in true Barker tradition, plumb the depths of depravity), and Shadwell, a salesman who is in Imacolata's thrall. They are after the carpet for very different reasons and, as Cal flees the house with a torn piece of the carpet in his hand, he encounters Suzanna, daughter of the owner of the house, and they are drawn together as they first run for their lives and then quickly realise that they must not let it fall into evil hands. It starts at a brisk pace, and really begins to fly when the carpet reveals its secrets. I must admit that I found it difficult to engage with Cal as a character. I'm not entirely sure why this was, whether it was down to me or to Barker's writing, but Suzanna was much stronger, imo. The book covers quite a long period of time, and there are several sections where months are necessarily compressed into a few pages, where Barker tells us what has happened in the interim. These parts worked well, I thought. Life goes on beyond the Fugue, after all. The Fugue itself is a magical place, a refuge for the Seerkind, in the midst of a decaying city. I guess that, as this was written towards the end of the Thatcher years, you can stand back from it and draw easy parallels. Typical of Barker, he can't quite leave the depravity and body horror behind, and it makes for some moments which - as well-written as they are - are still gross rather than scary. Having said that, I think Imacolata and her sisters (who were mainly responsible for these passages) were my favourite parts of the book, and I would've liked to have known more about them. I enjoyed Weaveworld but, annoyingly, I was very distracted whilst reading it - especially during the middle section - and I can't help feeling I would have liked it a lot more had I not been so. As a result, I've actually found it hard to write this review. The middle section of the novel seemed to me to drag a bit, whilst it picked up considerably in the final third, and I liked the ending a lot. It's a book that has a lot to say about dreams and desires, and the world in which we live, and a lot of it still seems relevant today. 7/10

I Was Legend?

Well it looks like Amazon's reach grows yet further - Waterstones are to start selling Kindles: http://www.telegraph...-hardbacks.html Interesting, because I think Waterstones sells Epub format ebooks, which the Kindle doesn't take 'out of the box' does it?

Yes, dreadful. The dog was the best thing about it

I didn't think anyone was that interested, tbh, but I'll try and do something S'okay I used to play video games. In fact, for a few years I was playing games instead of reading. Over the last three or four years I've rediscovered the joys of reading and I've stopped playing video games completely. Unfortunately it's also affecting my writing, in that I get more excited about reading than I do about trying to finish one of the stories I have rattling around in my head I loaned the first book to a colleague (who's been reading the George RR Martin books). He read the first 70 pages of Gardens of the Moon and has given up. It's a shame. There's a definite hump in the first book that you have to get past to reach the good stuff, probably around the 200 page mark. All I will say is get past that hump, meet Crone and Anomander Rake and Tool, find out about the sword called Dragnipur that imprisons the souls of those it kills, and witness a battle between a bunch of dragons and a Jaghut Tyrant. If you reach the end I defy anyone not to want the next book immediately Anyway, my colleague says he likes fantasy, so he's obviously a wimp to have given up so easily <<snooty look>> (and, no, Poppy - none of this is aimed at you, if you're reading this ) Edit: My colleague just informed me he's reading a Dragonlance book instead. I rest my case!

Ah, no, my fault - I just listed his books together, it's not a series. The only ones that you need to read in order are The Sarantine Mosaic, comprising Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors I don't, no - I probably should, shouldn't I? Something to bear in mind for next year's lists ... Oh, thank you - that's very kind Same here! At the end of the day, though, you've got to read what you enjoy Oh definitely, please do! Also, check out the online SF Encyclopedia: http://sf-encyclopedia.com/ That's my favourite series, for sure. Be warned: it's Marmite (Vegimite? ) - people either love it or hate it. If you love it then all other fantasy seems ordinary in comparison. If you hate it, well, you hate it When I reviewed the final book I called it "the most epic, sprawling, original, inventive, infuriating, exhilarating, amusing, confusing, heartbreaking, uplifting and uncompromising series that I have ever read". I'd strongly recommend reading some reviews, like these: http://nethspace.blo...-by-steven.html http://www.sfsite.com/05a/ma343.htm I don't want to put you off it, I just think you should know what you're letting yourself in for It's not for everyone, for sure.

I've got that one in my TBR pile, along with Imperium. I read Lustrum a couple of years back and thought it was fantastic, not realising that it was the second book in a trilogy I think, for the fantasy and science fiction, I can only re-hash some of the posts up-thread, but whilst I was doing my, ahem, extensive research for Frankie I did come across this list of some of my favourites that I posted elsewhere: The Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson Dune - Frank Herbert The Night's Dawn Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers Tigana/The Lions of Al-Rassan/A Song For Arbonne /Sarantine Mosaic- Guy Gavriel Kay Hyperion - Dan Simmons The Forever War - Joe Haldeman Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester I Am Legend - Richard Matheson Replay - Ken Grimwood The Kraken Wakes/The Day of the Triffids/The Midwich Cuckoos - John Wyndham The Time Machine - H. G. Wells A Game of Thrones/A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin Feersum Endjinn - Iain M. Banks The Belgariad/The Mallorean - David Eddings Voyage - Stephen Baxter Chasm City - Alastair Reynolds Perdido Street Station - China Mieville His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi I'm adding to this all the time, naturally

Specifically for historical fiction, Devi? It's a genre I've only got into myself over the last two or three years, but I've got a few favourites so far: Steven Saylor's 'Roma Sub Rosa' series, set in and around Ancient Rome: http://www.stevensay...omaSubRosa.html Rory Clements' 'John Shakespeare' series, set in Elizabethan England: http://www.roryclements.com/index.asp Steven Pressfield's 'Gates of Fire', about the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae: http://www.stevenpre.../gates-of-fire/ C J Sansom's 'Matthew Shardlake' books, set in Tudor England: http://cjsansombooks...ardlake-series/ Bernard Cornwell you already know about

You're not butting in at all, Michelle - everyone's welcome! I can't answer that one for you - cos I'm trying to answer the same question for myself about your list

It's called 'Sebastian Bergman': "The Cursed, Part 1 Brilliant, difficult and politically incorrect, Sebastian Bergman is one of Sweden's leading police profilers. His life and and career are on the skids when he returns to his home town, two weeks late for his mother's funeral but just in time to help the local police solve the brutal murder of a 15-year-old boy." http://www.bbc.co.uk...rammes/b01jg0nt

As you've already got I Am Legend on your TBR pile, Frankie, consider these instead: The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester It's an oldie but a goodie. The story is endlessly inventive and, in Gully Foyle, probably has the greatest anti-hero I've ever come across. If you can get past it's slightly quaint stylings it's a fabulous, fast-paced read. "Gully Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class. EDUCATION: none SKILLS: none MERITS: none RECOMMENDATIONS: none That's the official verdict on Gully Foyle, unskilled space crewman. But right now he is the only survivor on his drifting, wrecked spaceship, and when another space vessel, the Vorga, ignores his distress flares and sails by, Gully becomes obsessed with revenge. He endures 170 days alone in deep space before finding refuge on the Sargasso Asteroid and returning to Earth to track down the crew and owners of the Vorga. But, as he works out his murderous grudge, Gully Foyle also uncovers a secret of momentous proportions . . ." Excerpt: http://www.amazon.co...ader_0575094192 Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds Getting into the big boys now One of my favourite reads of last year, Chasm City is a marvellous, galaxy-spanning revenge thriller. It's got three interweaving plot lines that somehow combine to make a logical whole. This, for me, is modern-day science fiction at its best. "Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake - until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner's pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone. But Chasm City is not what it was. The one-time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city's inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. Before the chase is done, Tanner will have to confront truths which reach back centuries, towards deep space and an atrocity history barely remembers." Excerpt: http://www.amazon.co...ader_0575083158 Please don't tell me you've already been recommended those two!

Watched the final two episodes last night. Damn, that was good! I felt a bit lost when it ended. I could quite happily have sat through more episodes.

Right, here we go then, Frankie! A lot of hard decisions (although some were made easier by your ex having already recommended some of my faves ). I've tried to stick to books that can be read as one-offs and that don't require reading of sequels/series etc. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay I changed my choice from 'A Song for Arbonne' to this because it was the first of GGK's books that I read, and I loved it so much I went out and bought all his others. It's also closer to high fantasy than the others, and his wonderfully lyrical writing style is in full flow. "Tigana is the magical story of a beleaguered land struggling to be free. It is the tale of a people so cursed by the black sorcery of a cruel despotic king that even the name of their once-beautiful homeland cannot be spoken or remembered." Excerpt: http://www.amazon.co...ader_0451457765 The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers This is one of those stories that really shouldn't work - but it does. Powers throws everything (including the kitchen sink) into the mix and comes up with a rollicking time travel adventure. "Winner of the 1984 Philip K. Dick Award for best original science fiction paperback. The colonization of Egypt by western European powers is the launch point for power plays and machinations. Steeping together in this time-warp stew are such characters as an unassuming Coleridge scholar, ancient gods, wizards, the Knights Templar, werewolves, and other quasi-mortals, all wrapped in the organizing fabric of Egyptian mythology. In the best of fantasy traditions, the reluctant heroes fight for survival against an evil that lurks beneath the surface of their everyday lives." Excerpt: http://www.amazon.co...ader_0575077255 Replay by Ken Grimwood I only read this one recently, so it's fresh in my memory. I found it exciting, scary and heartbreaking. I got a 'Fantasy Masterworks' edition of it, but it's not really fantasy or science fiction, it just is what it is - a fantastic story beautifully told. "At forty-three Jeff Winston is tired of his low-paid, unrewarding job, tired of the long silences at the breakfast table with his wife, saddened by the thought of no children to comfort his old age. But he hopes for better things, for happiness, maybe tomorrow . . . But a sudden, fatal heart attack puts paid to that. Until Jeff wakes up in his eighteen-year-old body, all his memories of the next twenty-five years intact. If he applies those memories, he can be rich in this new chance at life and can become one of the most powerful men in America." Excerpt: http://www.amazon.co...ader_0575075597 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card I read this many, many years ago and, whilst I can't remember the detail, I remember the effect it had on me. It's a fantastic, exciting, thought-provoking, as all great science fiction should be. "Ender's Game is one of the great ones, a novel of extraordinary power that is among the very best the genre has ever produced. Written at a stage in Orson Scott Card's career when it seemed as if he could genuinely do no wrong, Ender's Game takes a familiar theme from war fiction — war as seen through the eyes of a child, as in Ballard's Empire of the Sun — and reframes it by making the child the war's central figure. It is a tale defined by a sense of both tragic inevitability and cold irony. It is not merely about the loss of innocence, as so many stories are with children at their center. It is about innocence systematically deceived and purposefully destroyed in the fanatical pursuit of a misguided higher ideal." Excerpt: http://www.amazon.co...ader_0812550706 I Am Legend by Richard Matheson Forget about the Godawful Will Smith movie, or the Charlton Heston version - those films alter the story almost beyond recognition. I Am Legend re-invents the vampire myth as something far more believable and terrifying and is easily the best vampire novel I've read. It is taut, nerve-shredding and yet a wonderful examination of isolation and loneliness. And it has the best final page of any book, ever! "Robert Neville may well be the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone. An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him. By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.... "I Am Legend is a better, tighter, sharper book than Dracula which makes it the best vampire novel ever written. It's a terrifying thriller, but also a canny moral lesson with an unforgettable finish." (Kim Newman EMPIRE )" Excerpt: http://www.amazon.co...ader_0575094168 These are all among my favourite books - I hope you enjoy whatever you choose

I actually quite like the sound of all of them I'll have a proper look tomorrow, and give you my suggestions, too. Thanks Frankie!

Ah, don't stress over it. Stick to fiction if it makes it easier. Just list them all and I'll pick from them

Finished Clive Barker's Weaveworld.

Whatever you like You're obviously finding this much easier than I am I blame your ex I think I've got it down to three fantasy and three sf

This is 'A Good Thing' I noticed you've got Cornwell's 'Grail Quest' trilogy on your list, Devi. I'd highly recommend his 'Warlord' trilogy as well, if you haven't read it. I actually much preferred it to the 'Grail Quest' books