Karsa Orlong

Yeah, I've got them all in paperback up to The Snowman, but I got annoyed (as you know!) when they changed the style of the covers so, if I was going to be my usual self, I'd have to re-buy the first four books with the new covers so that they all matched on the shelf. But I'm not going to do that. Sheesh, you're so contrary And thanks, I'm pretty sure already that Revenger is going to be a gem. I loves me an Elizabethan murder mystery, I does. Plus, I really enjoyed Clements' first novel. I'm willing to bet it's going to be a better thriller than The Crucifix Killer, too. Hope I'm not tempting fate!

Good choice, Brian! The only positive I can find is that I only paid £1.99 for it

I don't think I'll pay the current price on Amazon for it, no. When The Leopard came out for Kindle is was reduced to £4 almost straight away, so I'm hoping that might happen again You?? Not like I haven't got enough to read anyway

Yes, and it borders on 'book snobbery', which is almost as bad as 'music snobbery'. It's like all genres, there are good and bad examples, and sometimes the bad outweigh the good. The people who have this misconception are usually the ones who haven't read any sf. It'd be like me commenting on chick lit - ain't gonna happen I finished The Crucifix Killer - truly abysmal. Started Revenger by Rory Clements this morning.

The Crucifix Killer by Chris Carter Amazon blurb (because I can't be bothered to sum up the 'plot' myself!): "When the body of a young woman is discovered in a derelict cottage in the middle of Los Angeles National Forest, Homicide Detective Robert Hunter finds himself entering a horrific and recurring nightmare. Naked, strung from two wooden posts, the victim was sadistically tortured before meeting an excruciatingly painful death. All the skin has been ripped from her face - while she was still alive. On the nape of her neck has been carved a strange double-cross: the signature of a psychopath known as the Crucifix Killer. But that's impossible. Because two years ago, the Crucifix Killer was caught and executed. Could this therefore be a copycat killer? Or could the unthinkable be true? Is the real killer still out there, ready to embark once again on a vicious and violent killing spree, selecting his victims seemingly at random, taunting Robert Hunter with his inability to catch him? Hunter and his rookie partner are about to enter a nightmare beyond imagining." I saw this going cheap when I first got my Kindle, saw it had 4.5 stars on Amazon, read a few of the reviews and thought I'd give it a go. Oh dear. For a while, I didn't think I'd get past the first few pages. Some of the dialogue is atrocious (the 'bang-your-head-against-the-wall-was-this-written-by-a-12-year-old' kind of atrocious). The characterisation, if there is any, is purely accidental. The plot is from the join-the-dots and colour-by-numbers school. You've seen it all before in every bad cop show and movie ever made. The characters are truly just stereotypical cardboard cut-outs. Some of the time it seems they are just there to talk back and forth, spouting the author's thoughts as he tries to get the 'plot' clear in his head. Eventually, as these conversations progress, one of the characters will inevitably say "are you kidding me?" or "are you out of your mind?". Then they'll suddenly start using contractions where none appear elsewhere ("ain't" crops up a lot, although it doesn't fit in with the way the rest of the dialogue is written in any way shape or form). The main character, Hunter, is apparently obsessed with the case, which has been haunting him for years, yet he's quite happy to take time out and go on a lunch date. Erm, okay. His partner, Garcia, is just there to ridicule and then worship Hunter's ways. I don't even want to start on the pimp, D-King. And yet I kept reading. The thing with this book is that it's a very fast read (probably because half of it is unnecessary). It's not exciting or tense (pre-requisites for a thriller, I would have thought) but it does have one fairly good twist towards the end, and the reasoning behind it is quite clever. However, when you stop to think about it, the twist is only a twist because the author withholds vital information until he wants to spring said twist, which is a pretty cheap trick. The crimes involve sex and torture. It's unpleasant and yet somehow laughable, because it's written like a teenage boy's sick fantasies. I'm starting to worry about the art of thriller writing. Some of the books I've read in the last couple of years seems to be going down the Hollywood blockbuster shock-and-awe route, rather than crafting genuine plot, atmosphere and thrills. This is one of the worst culprits I've come across so far. Avoid. 4/10

Cracking book Janet. If you liked that, try The Time Machine

For anyone interested, GGK's wonderful, marvellous, magnificent The Lions of Al-Rassan is re-issued in paperback in the UK this week, first time it's been available here for a long time (other than as an ebook). Just got my copy through to replace the imported one

Evanescence. By Evanescence, surprisingly.

Over the weekend I finished Bernard Cornwell's Harlequin and am now 76% of the way through Chris Carter's The Crucifix Killer.

The Town. Very silly but quite enjoyable.

I really, really want to read these books. But not until I've taken a big bite out of my TBR pile, unfortunately! Re Moby Dick, I read that some years ago. It's a great cure for insomnia, I'll say that for it ...

Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell This is the first of Cornwell's 'Grail Quest' trilogy, set near the beginning of The Hundred Years War. It begins at Easter 1342, when French raiders, led by Guillaume d'Evecque, land at Hookton in Dorset. There, a young man named Thomas, who secretly yearns to be an archer in the king's army, has been pushed to follow his father into the priesthood. He and his friends are standing the Easter guard at the church when the French begin to burn the village. Thomas snatches up his bow and escapes, and takes his first life soon after, as the raiders retreat from the village with their prisoners and loot. He sees and memorises Sir Guillaume's crest, and also sees another man dressed in black armour who is known only as the Harlequin. When he returns he finds his father dying in the church, from where the raiders have taken a great treasure. His father begs him to retrieve the relic. That's the prologue. The story then skips forward in time, and Thomas is making a name for himself as an archer in King Edward's army in Brittany, and most of what happens involves actual events from the period, told through the eyes of various characters. Through various twists and turns, Thomas's quest gets ever more complicated, and his own involvement in it is thrown into question. This is my fourth Cornwell book, after his marvellous Arthurian trilogy 'The Warlord Chronicles'. If Harlequin isn't quite as good it's understandable - the bar had been set very, very high. I think this book gets pretty close. Unlike 'The Warlord Chronicles', this isn't told in the first person, and the viewpoint jumps around quite a bit. Most of the time this works really well, although it did get a bit confusing in some of the later battles, particularly at Crecy, where I had to re-read a couple of passages to clarify who was doing what. That aside, this is another winner. Cornwell seems to have that innate ability to make you care about his characters. Jeanette, Will and Guillaume, particularly, leap off the page. There's a boo-hiss bad guy by the name of Sir Simon Jekyll who's maybe just a little bit too bad - some shades of grey might've been welcome here - but he fits in with the general sweep of the story. Thomas himself is likeable enough and I look forward to seeing him develop over the next two books. It's hard to doubt Cornwell's ability to evoke the atmosphere of the period, and his writing style is so fluid and easy to read that he is able to convey characterisation, plot and historical fact without it seeming at all clunky. There are some nice touches of humour, too, generally involving Will and Father Hobbe, which were very funny. The action - and there is a lot of it - is pretty brutal. Bear in mind here that it involves cavalry, so some horses don't come out of this very well, which can be distressing (this coming from the person who stopped watching the Grand National years ago because he couldn't bear to see the horses fall). Also, there is a rape, although it is not described in any detail. Looking forward to reading the next one, Vagabond. 8/10

That was actually the last book of theirs that I read, and was the worst, so if you liked that you will love The Belgariad

Yes, his wife gets equal credit on their later books, but she wasn't named on the earlier ones even though she was apparently just as involved. Can't believe I didn't mention Tim Powers' 'The Anubis Gates' - that's another one well worth a look.

I'd highly recommend Guy Gavriel Kay, Michelle, particularly 'The Lions of Al-Rassan', 'A Song for Arbonne', 'Sailing to Sarantium'/'Lord of Emperors' and 'Tigana'. They're historical fantasy. Not a huge amount of magic in them, just brilliant characters, wonderfully written. I'd go along with BloodyNine and recommend Feist's 'Magician' (although it would be just that one book for me, wasn't keen on the follow-up). I'd say that, unless you want to suffer the frustrations the rest of us are putting up with, stay away from George RR Martin (even though the first and third books in his series are among the best fantasy books ever written, imo). I'd go along with Abercrombie's 'First Law' trilogy, too, although it is more in the 'heroic' fantasy genre than the books you have mentioned. In a similar vein, David Gemmell is the master - try 'Waylander' or 'Legend'. He writes brilliant characters. Ooh, and Anne McAffrey, too (although her 'Pern' books could just as easily fall under science fiction as fantasy). If you fancy more urban fantasy, try China Mieville's 'Perdido Street Station', or Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere'. I'll throw in Jim Butcher's 'Dresden Files' books, too. They take a couple of books to get going, but they're tremendous fun. You know what I'm going to say next (it would've been at the top of the post but I wanted to be unpredictable ... ): if you fancy a real challenge, a truly original take on the genre set in a world with its own millennia-spanning history, unique races, characters, magic, then give Steven Erikson's 'Malazan Book of the Fallen' series a whirl. You might be like Poppyshake and not get into it but it's worth a try. Six out of the ten books in the series rank among my all-time faves. I'll let someone else talk about Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Jack Vance, Janny Wurts et al as I haven't read enough of them to really judge. Oh, and avoid Terry Goodkind like the plague ETA: I should, of course, have mentioned David Eddings' 'Belgariad'. It was responsible for starting me on the fantasy genre 30+ years ago. Also, I have to mention Bernard Cornwell's take on the Arthurian legend, 'The Warlord Chronicles' (starting with 'The Winter King'), which are just fabulous.

Stinger's fab. I'm not surprised, after reading that one!

Blimey, hello stranger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vjg7dQhARY

Oh crikey, I remember that now! Seriously, though - who'd want to be Sipowicz's doctor? Yeah, Castle's great fun, and it seems to have made him quite a star. I think Joss Whedon has a guaranteed recipe for cancellation. Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly - Nathan Fillion just got caught in the undertow on that one I think!

Caruso does seem to have a, shall we say, large ego, doesn't he? I remember at the time when he left the show he was claiming that he was going to become some kind of major movie star. I liked Kelly as a character but the whole thing took off when Bobby Simone arrived. Just remembered that Titus Welliver was in both Brooklyn South and Deadwood. Titus Welliver. What a great name. Seems to be a guarantee of cancellation, though!

Yay, I really hope you enjoy it, Shelley. More time travelling fun!

Yeah, the Jimmy Smits seasons were best although, for me, that show was always about Sipowicz and Dennis Franz, he was just so good in that show. It did start to get silly in the end, as they always found away to kill off yet another one of his family members just to put him through it a bit more, but I'll never forget the episode when Sipowicz and Simone turned up at a hospital to take the details about a body that had been brought in, and they found it it was Andy Jr. Franz was just outstanding. Definitely not your imagination! Stephen Collins and Roddy McDowell. I think the network were trying to cash-in on the success of Indiana Jones at the time, but the show wasn't really that kind of thing, iirc.

Oh yes, Boomtown was very good. Kind of like Kurosawa's Rashomon for tv Another one that springs to mind is Bochco's Brooklyn South, which I was really getting into when it was cancelled. I think Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, much as I loved both of them, each ran their course, but Brooklyn South had great potential, imo. Oh, and I forgot, for me, one of the most obvious ones - HBO's Rome. Loved it.

I'm 135 pages into Harlequin and really enjoying it

Good man! Would it be your first Asher, James? If it is, I would probably recommend starting with The Skinner instead, as I think it's a better book - although it is the first book in a sequence, whereas Cowl stands on its own ...