Karsa Orlong

Same here. The third book almost killed it for me - I thought it was pretty average and really overstayed its welcome, which was a shame cos I liked the second book a lot. I started the 'Liveship Traders' trilogy but only read the first book. I just wasn't in the mood for it at the time

Yay!! <<does happy dance>>

I think the only other book I've scored that low was Richard Laymon's Endless Night, which was similarly nasty.

Funny you should bring him up - I read Stealing Light a few years back and didn't like it enough to read the sequels. Similar happened to me with Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space, but now that I've gone back to his work and become a fan I was thinking only recently of trying Stealing Light again to see if I enjoy that more, too. The other books in 'The Shoal Sequence' have had better reviews, which is encouraging!

A mixture, I think. I do fancy her 'Bel Dame Apocrypha' trilogy, which is SF, but it wasn't going cheap The new book is fantasy, though Yeah, K J Parker is a woman I tried reading Celia Friedman's 'Coldfire' trilogy but didn't get further than the first book - might be more your kind of thing than mine Just to prove that Jo Walton has read everything: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/09/a-blank-slate-in-a-complex-fantasy-landscape-cj-cherryhs-fortress-in-the-eye-of-time and http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/03/gods-and-kingdoms-lois-mcmaster-bujolds-the-curse-of-chalion

I think that indicates you thought the latter in the first place

It might've been, for all the good it did And yeah, he was the one with the elephants. How sad, for such an historical figure to be reduced to that sentence

I've read 6 of hers so far (and I'm about to start another one) and a total of 17 books by female authors so far this year. Still quite a low number, I think. Don't forget Elizabeth Bear Although it doesn't help you much, I find the SF Mistressworks website very helpful - I imagine there must be a similar site for female fantasy authors You could probably do worse than have a look at C J Cherryh's and Bujold's fantasy books. I haven't particularly liked the couple I've read, but you may enjoy Mary Gentle, too After I've read the next Bujold I'm thinking of giving Kameron Hurley a try. I picked up her latest on Kindle for £2.70 the other day

# 56 Hannibal (Carthage Trilogy Book 1) by Ross Leckie 1996 - Abacus paperback - 245 pages From Goodreads: "A battle is like lust. The frenzy passes. Consequence remains." Such are the observations made and ill-gotten lessons learned in this fictional autobiographical narrative of breathtaking range and power. Ross Leckie not only presents a vivid re-creation of the great struggle of the Punic wars and the profoundly bloody battle for Rome, but also succeeds in bringing the almost mythical figure of Hannibal to life. Introspective, educated on the Greeks, Hannibal has never been presented quite like this. Written from Hannibal's perspective, this riveting, unique historical novel charts the rise and fall of the great Carthaginian general who came so close to bringing down Rome. A tragic chronicle of love and hate, heroism and cruelty, Hannibal is a dramatic and ultimately nourishing exploration of the inner life and epic consequences of one of humanity's greatest adventurers and most bloodthirsty leaders. Thoughts: I've been wanting to read a novel about Hannibal for a while and a friend kindly loaned this one to me. It's primarily for this reason that I didn't throw the book across the room in disgust - it's not mine to damage. If it had been mine, I wouldn't even have inflicted it on the hospice shop. It's a crime - there is, buried somewhere in here, a good, thought-provoking story of what might drive a man to such lengths but it's buried and devolves into an over-simplified tale of revenge. What's it buried in? Violence. Easily the most extreme, graphic violence that I have read, and it's couched in such an off-hand style - which, I assume, is designed to make it appear commonplace - that it somehow seems that the author was getting off on it. I'm not usually one to bat an eyelid at violence in certain books because the historical and fantasy fiction I read often involves war, and the authors don't shy away from its darkness. But, even though these sorts of things may well have happened, this is the first author I've encountered who seems to want to describe it in the minutest detail. There were some instances that I found so sickening that I couldn't believe what I was reading. He doesn't want to leave anything to your imagination, so he describes it all. I won't go into detail. Apart from that, the writing style is often awkward. Sentences don't seem to work the way I thought they should, meaning I had to frequently re-read them to make sense of them. It's devoid of character. It's impossible to empathise with a character driven by such hatred. His wife, it turns out, is a beautiful dancer who he never speaks to before marrying her, and then she turns out to be an ace at logistics, medicine, and is also great at cooking and between the sheets. Bonus! Aaaaagh! It's so frustrating, because the autobiographical style could have really worked, but Leckie is insistent on concentrating on the 'graphic' rather than the 'biog'. There was so much potential here. It comes to something when I say that the previous book I read about Hannibal (by Ben Kane) was better than this - cos I didn't like that one much, either. If it hadn't been such a short book I wouldn't have finished it. In fact, I've given up on books that I would have given a higher score. I can't even be bothered to wonder how accurate the actual historical aspect of it is. I can't think of anything more to say about it, except that I won't be reading the sequels. 2/10

Nasty in a graphic violence way

'Course, when I said 'people' I meant you Hang on, your computer talks to you? Isn't that a bit too science fiction for you?

This might interest anyone who's read Dan's brilliant The Terror: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/09/british-ship-1845-franklin-expedition-found-canada The fools know not what they awaken

I thought it was great - but then I grew up in the 70s/80s so I loved all the pop culture stuff from that era Now I'll sit back and wait for people to question whether or not I've ever 'grown up'

I'm currently 200 pages into Hannibal by Ross Leckie. I nearly threw it down in disgust last night - it's possibly the nastiest book I've ever read - but I've only got about 40 pages left, so I suppose I might as well finish it

Appalling! Go and sit on the naughty step! <<heads off to check how many female authors he's read>>

I would debate that it's Young Adult. The main protagonists are young, but its biggest selling point is a nostalgia for popular culture from the 70s and early 80s

I may just have ordered Subterranean Press editions of four Alastair Reynolds novellas

There are twenty completed novels and one unfinished tale. I need to buy some more of them, soon! ETA: I'm starting to wonder if there's anything Jo Walton hasn't read: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/10/not-a-moment-to-be-lost-patrick-obrians-aubrey-maturin-series

I'm pretty sure they're the library's books

Congrats on your mod-ship, Claire!

# 55 The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian 1980 - Harper paperback - 360 pages From Amazon: Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home by despatch vessel to bring the news of their latest victory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New World, and the attentions of two privateers soon become menacing. The chase that follows through the fogs and shallows of the Grand Banks is as thrilling, as tense and as unexpected in its culmination as anything Patrick O’Brian has written. Thoughts: I'm quite happy and relieved that I didn't read the blurb on the back cover (which I've edited, above) because it pretty much gives away the whole plot, right up to the end. Why this keeps happening is beyond me, but it seems a very odd way to go. Who wants to have any book spoiled like that? Anyway, this is the seventh novel in Patrick O'Brian's 'Aubrey/Maturin' series. It's becoming apparent to me that these books are almost like a serial. Each of the past three books has picked up immediately after the events of the previous one - the stories are all individual, but the characters and settings flow from one to the next seamlessly. So this one begins as Jack Aubrey, Stephen Maturin, and Diana Villiers arrive in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to where they were heading at the end of the rather marvellous The Fortune of War, celebrating a first victory against the American navy. Given orders to return to Britain, Aubrey and Maturin are soon off on another adventure, this time into the Baltic, where Stephen, ship's doctor and spy, is soon up to his neck in more espionage shenanigans. It's these episodes ashore, I think, that are really keeping the series fresh for me, because they make for a break from the norm and mean that the action on the high seas is that much more exciting when it arrives (which it always does, of course!). This is where I trot out the same old things I've said about the previous books. I find O'Brian's writing completely immersive. Once I get into the rhythm of his prose it's almost impossible to break away. Admittedly this is made more difficult by the length of his chapters and the almost complete omission of section breaks, meaning that finding a point at which to pause is often difficult. But I guess that's part of the plan: the story sweeps me along and I find that, once I'm in, Aubrey's world comes alive. The books might as well have been written in the 19th century as the attitudes, looks and speech of the characters seems so perfect. There are no anachronisms here, nothing to kick you out of the experience at any point. The detail is amazing but subtle, meaning that there is never anything resembling an info dump (well, not since the first book anyway, when all those nautical terms almost overwhelmed), and the story flows with a wonderful ease as a result. If I was going to have one complaint about this particular entry into the series, it would be that there seemed to me to be a slight dead patch around the middle of the book, when Stephen and Diana end up in Paris for various reasons. It could be that I was distracted by some work being done in the house, but it seemed to slow the pacing down, although there's no doubt that it worked towards character development. But I was wrong, because in the final third that 'dead patch' became very relevant indeed, and my concerns were washed away with the tide. The latter stages of the novel fly by in a cascade of excitement, fear and tension, both at sea and on land, and it was like riding the crest of a wave. I can't describe it any better than that. It was fantastic. I'm sort of coming around to agree with that blurb from The Times on the front covers of these books. Patrick O'Brian may very well be the greatest historical novelist of all time. At the very least, he's quickly becoming my favourite. I was close to giving this one a 10 but I'm going to pull it up just short because I just preferred Desolation Island and The Fortune of War a tiny bit more. Only a fraction in it, though. 9/10

I just love all the MJ references in it - makes me laugh

The person who wrote that article deserves a kick, not only for trying to get people's hopes up with the title, but also for calling it a "'Game of Thrones' book", which is starting to bug me. 'Game of Thrones' is the tv series - the book series is called 'A Song of Ice and Fire'. There is only one book called A Game of Thrones [/pedant mode: off] Aaaaand breathe

Thanks! Although I prefer the Alien Ant Farm version Just ordered a book from Amazon US for the first time in years. Could've got it over here but it would've had to be either a used copy, or a new copy that was about £10 - £15 more expensive. It's this hardback: http://outtherebooks.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/story-by-story-thoughts-deep-navigation-by-alastair-reynolds/ Of course, what's going to happen next is that I'll start to collect all his other books in paperback so that I have the full set, despite having replaced a bunch of them with Kindle versions to try and save some shelf space

Glad you're enjoying ASoS, Devi. Best book of the series by a mile (so far) You're right about fantasy books, especially if you're having trouble holding them - they tend to be on the MASSIVE side of things. I think some of these authors have forgotten what an editor is, my favourites included . . .