Karsa Orlong

I'm currently about halfway through Commander, a biography of Sir Edward Pellew, by Stephen Taylor

I've barely seen any of the tournament, due to the times. Sounds like that was the first really exciting game, though.

The last episode of Wolf Hall. Brilliant. Up to episode 5 of Fortitude.

Arrow 3x13 Agent Carter 1x07. Fantastic episode. Gutted there's only one more to watch.

I really quite fancied The Ritual, but I decided to read his Apartment 13 first and didn't think much of it at all, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of this one

The first six books of the Inspector Montalbano series are going for 99p in today's Daily Deal

^^ All those films would be half the length if he cut out all the bleeding slo-mo

Fortitude ep 3. Can't make up my mind about this as yet. Stanley Tucci is brilliant in it, though.

I forecast a 4/5

Brilliant review, Laura They do remind me of the way Erikson names some characters, though, particularly his Malazans. Another thing he 'borrowed' from Cook, perhaps I think that's true - I only ever really imagined them as a small group, so it was slightly disorienting when it went large scale like that. I have that problem with a lot of fantasy, I must admit. It must be very difficult to convey such huge numbers effectively. I think the author(s) have to walk a line between focusing on too few characters or too many, and I think a lot of them veer towards the latter - Erikson certainly does in the later books, and GRRM sure as hell does. As a case of the opposite, I remember reading Zelazny's Amber books and him throwing around numbers of dead like confetti and it had no effect on me at all, because I had no idea who any of them were That can be a major problem with first-person narrative, yeah. One of the worst cases of it that I've come across was in C J Sansom's Heartstone, where he had to come up with the most convoluted reasons for Shardlake - a lawyer - to go onboard the Mary Rose as it goes up against the Spanish Armada. Made no sense whatsoever I think there was more of a justification for it in Croaker's case, as the Company annalist.

Agent Carter 1x06 The Flash 1x13 - both brilliant

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson 2012 - Corvus ebook - 448 pages 'I will tell you a story, but it comes with a warning; when you hear it, you will become someone else.' He calls himself Alif, a young man born in a Middle Eastern city that straddles the ancient and modern. When Alif comes into possession of a mysterious book entitled The Thousand and One Days, he discovers a door to another world - a world from a very different time, when old magic was in the ascendant and the djinn walked amongst us. Thus begins an adventure that takes him through the crumbling streets of a once-beautiful city, to uncover the long-forgotten mysteries of the Unseen. Alif is about to become a fugitive. And he is about to unleash a destructive power that will change everything and everyone - starting with Alif himself... I liked: The blend of science fiction and fantasy, and technology and magic. That it's set in the present day, in a fictional city on the Persian Gulf, against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. A couple of the characters are wonderful, namely Vikram and (especially) Dina. The stories within the story, lifted from the book that starts all the trouble, The Thousand and One Days - a mystical counterpart to (you guessed it!) The Thousand and One Nights. These tales are presented so well that I wished there had been more of them. Wilson succeeds in making the religious aspects fascinating. The way others refer to Alif by his given name without the reader actually knowing what it is. The humour. I disliked: Try as she might to do otherwise, I felt that, in Alif, Wilson presents a character who is quite difficult to like, mainly because he's self-involved and seemed more re-active than pro-active. Considering the reasonable length of the book, I didn't think there was all that much to the plot, and it has the sort of ending that makes me think the author wasn't quite sure what to do with it. The amount of swearing seemed a) unnecessary and b) makes one of the pieces of blurb (which posits the book as a 'Harry Potter-esque adventure') seem idiotic. I did get the feeling, occasionally, that the characters' dialogue was more a case of Wilson putting across her political views rather than theirs. On the whole I enjoyed this book, which I've been meaning to read for quite a while, although it never really seemed to grab hold in the way I thought it would. I'm used to vintage sf being layered with social commentary, so it's intriguing to come across a novel that's doing it by setting its story in the present day. The overwhelming impression it has left me with is that G. Willow Wilson could have done so much more with it if she'd given it real drive, instead of letting it meander its way to an ending that left me thinking 'is that it?' In the end, I think it's a good book without being a great book. Memorable Quotes:

You're in for a treat. It's here that the series really kicks off, imo.

I'm just about to finish Alif the Unseen

The cover's definitely captured the feel of the posters from the time, so it achieves its aim I guess It's strange, though, that there is nothing on the cover - front or back - to tell you what the story is about, just lots of hyperbole taken from reviews. I hope you enjoy it, if/when you read it

Same here. Doesn't matter if it's standard def, either - I'll sit there watching, sit through ad breaks and everything, even though I've got the discs sitting on the shelf a few feet away Always happens with Aliens and LA Confidential, too

I'm really not, given some of the other stuff I watch

Yeah, that's what I meant, although I didn't think it was much better than last week's

Last week's Wolf Hall followed by this week's The Walking Dead. From the sublime to the ridiculous. I have no idea why you'd think that

Thanks Kay Well, if the jar does throw it out and you do end up reading it, I hope you enjoy it Ssshhhh! Nobody mention Gardens of the Moon

This is interesting, cos the Martinka brothers appear in the book, and here's a link to all the Carter memorabilia available through the Martinkas shop, 'Est. 1877 - Formerly owned by Houdini' - although I'm assuming they hadn't magicked up the internet at that point . . . http://www.martinka.com/martinka/auction/APSearch.asp?CMD=SEARCH&SearchFor=Carter&SearchDesc=Y&SearchClosed=Y

The problem there is that it's not a poster advertising Carter's show I'm not going to do anything else that'll put her off reading it

I was Googling earlier on to see if I could find any of them, but this is the only one that came up (and it's not colour in the book, obviously): Kay! Thanks Claire Must admit, I prefer the cover I've got to that one It is a hefty book but I was enjoying it so much I forgot about that aspect (although I did miss the ability to quickly highlight quotes)

Nooooo, I can't do that, it's a keeper I forgot to mention in the review that there's a fair amount of art within the book as well - reproductions of posters and such, which is exactly what the cover is supposed to be. I'm not allowed to nag