Karsa Orlong

It's the weird thing with SE - I find his style so easy to read that I do end up reading it fast (or fast for me, at least - I still wouldn't class it as 'racing' ). I remember the first time I read GotM that I was reading it quite slowly at the start, and re-reading some bits to get it straight (particularly the poems, which I'm glad I did, cos there's so much info buried in them). But his style just clicked with me after a few pages and after that I was away. Maybe it's because I liked the air of mystery and history about it all, so I wasn't bothered about the stuff some people find difficult

Sarah, I just saw this photo of your TBR pile

What a great review, Chrissy I can't tell you the number of times I've looked at this book and been tempted to buy it, but never have done so. Tempted again now!

I prefer paperbacks, especially for authors/series of which I'm a fan - and for books I fancy where I really like the cover (never judge a book etc etc ), but I use my Kindle for ones I'm not sure about, wherever possible. I'm not a fan of audiobooks at all - I've tried a couple but just couldn't stand them. I'd stick to paperbacks if I had the space to keep them all, but the shelves fill up so quickly I'm forever having to take loads to the local hospice shop.

Good Morning, Vietnam is my favourite film of his, but my fondest memories of him will be from his stand-up routines, and from Mork & Mindy. Think this sums it up pretty well. R.I.P. Robin

If that's what you want to do, you go right ahead In all honesty, there is nothing that makes me enjoy any book/series less than feeling I have to 'race' through it

Um, no

Used copies on Amazon are pretty cheap

Oh I didn't feel let down as such - tbh, I wasn't expecting much from this one as I'd read some very scathing reviews of it so, if anything, it was actually better than I expected it to be I have 12 of his books left to read, but only two of those are Drenai novels. Don't know how I missed them out, but I haven't exactly been sticking to the order as they mostly stand alone anyway. I don't know when I'll read those two - I may wait until I do a Drenai re-read. I've got the ten non-Drenai novels to read, so there's a few to be getting on with before thinking about that

Shame you didn't enjoy The Stars My Destination - I loved it, it's one of my favourite books. I hope you enjoy Master & Commander a bit more - I thought it was quite hard work at the start with all the nautical terminology but, once I got past that I thought it was a great book, and the subsequent books are marvellous - a fantastic series I'm just making a start on The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor.

# 49 The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell 2005 - Corgi paperback - 640 pages From Goodreads: A thousand years after they fell in battle, two heroes--Druss and Skilgannon--are revered throughout the war-torn lands of the Drenai. Yet men and women live in abject fear of the Joinings, abominable meldings of man and beast, and of their mistress, the dark sorceress known as the Eternal. None can stave off these ruthless foes. But what if the soul of one such hero could be called back from the void, his bones housed again in flesh? An ancient prophecy foretold that Skilgannon would return in his people's darkest hour. To most, this is a foolish hope. But not so to Landis Kan. For years, as the power of the Eternal grew, Kan searched for the tomb of Skilgannon the Damned. And at last, he found it, gathering up the bones and performing the mystic ritual. But the reborn hero is an enigma: a young man whose warrior skills are blunted and whose memories are fragmented. This Skilgannon is a man out of time, marooned in a world as strange to him as a dream, remote from all he knew and loved. Thoughts: Although this is a direct sequel to White Wolf, chronologically it is the final book in Gemmell's 'Drenai Saga', set some 1,000+ years after the events of Legend. As such, I don't really want to say a lot about it beyond what the blurb above already says. It is a bookend. In it, Gemmell effectively brings together all the themes that have woven their way through the series and then proceeds to replay them. By setting the book so far in his world's future, he shows the reader how previous characters and events have shaped the lands for better or worse, reintroduces his moral dilemmas, and then sets about one final battle. It should be great. That it isn't is not so much disappointing as it is inevitable. The Swords of Night and Day has the feeling of a 'Greatest Hits Volume 2', where all the best known songs were in volume 1 and this is just mopping up the also-rans. That's a little harsh, in all honesty, but it does feel a little like he was going through the motions in order to wrap things up. It happily draws on the lore that Gemmell created and has a lot of fun with it. The main problem I found was that the characters weren't up to DG's usual standard. Without Druss to play against, Skilgannon is left somewhat wanting. He's troubled, but not as troubled as the blurb implies. In fact, he adapts way too quickly - to my mind - to his newfound life, and then it's business as usual. I never really felt like he was in peril at any given moment. The Eternal isn't given enough page time to truly take shape as the book's Big Bad, and probably lacks much impact unless you've read White Wolf. It is only really the secondary characters that come alive, particularly Stavut, Harad, and Shakul. Gemmell had a lot of fun with Stavut and Shakul particularly, and it is in their relationship that a lot of the his trademark humour and heart resides. The biggest problem facing The Swords of Night and Day, I think, is the quality of what preceded it. It's a solid, entertaining, fast-moving heroic fantasy novel, and it does occasionally pack an emotional punch, but it just can't hope to compete with the likes of Legend, the two Druss prequels, Knights of Dark Renown, etc etc. My score is therefore a comparison to those I have given the other books, and that maybe makes it seem worse than it is, which is a little unfair. It's good, but it falls a little short of great. 6/10

Unless they're Hairlock, of course But I've only just finished it!

Yeah, you'll probably be best using iTunes. You might want to make a back-up of your music before you do anything. These links might be of help: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1550 - how to convert songs http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1347 - how to import/add to iTunes library If you don't want to use iTunes you could try one of these alternatives: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/29716/heres-five-alternatives-to-itunes-10-for-easily-managing-your-ipod/

I'm going to re-read DG later this month, then MoI in September, HoC in October etc. That's the plan at the moment, anyway. Might not happen that way.

What I've noticed about it on each re-read is how small scale it is compared with what follows. A bit like comparing Tyrion to Gregor Clegane

I thought Winter's Bone was an excellent book and film

I agree completely, it overstayed its welcome by quite some margin (and I ended up really disliking it). Great review, Weave

# 48 Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds 2006 - Gollancz paperback - 352 pages From Amazon: Centuries from now, the basic right to expand human intelligence beyond its natural limits has become a war-worthy cause for the Demarchists and Conjoiners. Only vast lighthugger starships bind these squabbling colonies together, manned by the panicky and paranoid Ultras. And the hyperpigs just try to keep their heads down. The rich get richer. And everyone tries not to think about the worrying number of extinct alien civilizations turning up on the outer reaches of settled space...because who's to say that humanity won't be next? Set in the Revelation Space universe, this is the first short story collection by the author who has been called "one of SF's best and most ambitious novelists." Thoughts: Earlier this year I re-read Renolds' Revelation Space and then went on to read the other two books in the original trilogy, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. I thought all three books were brilliant but the ending of the trilogy seemed rather rushed and stank of deus ex machina. It didn't ruin the trilogy - which I found frequently thrilling, mind-boggling, and jaw-dropping - but it left some fairly huge questions unanswered. But now, here, in this collection of short stories, Reynolds provides those answers, almost as if he planned it all along. And you know what? He did have it planned all along, because the final story in this collection, the one which provides most of the resolution, was originally published before Revelation Space itself. Quite why a trilogy should need a bunch of short stories to provide closure is another matter entirely, and I would imagine that a lot of people finished Absolution Gap and never went back. Their loss. I think, in my review of the trilogy, I said something to the extent of 'a good editor would elevate Reynolds from merely brilliant to magnificent'. The two-novella collection, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days, went a long way towards proving that (to me, at least), and this collection finishes the job. The stories here are lean, mean, and focused. The eight brought together here are: Great Wall of Mars - an excellent way to kick-off the book as we meet Nevil Clavain again and learn what happened to him at the hands of Galiana and the Conjoiners. An exciting, action-packed story. 9/10 Glacial - This one's a terrific mystery, as Clavain and Galiana explore a remote ice planet where all the colonists appear to have lost their minds and killed themselves (kind of reminded me of the Star Trek episode 'The Naked Time' to start off with, although it quickly veered off in another direction). 9/10 A Spy in Europa - Does what it says on the tin. Two factions are vying for supremacy on Jupiter's moons. When a contact reports that they have valuable information, spy Marius Vargovic is sent to Europa to retrieve it. This one's a very short tale with a nice sting in the, erm, tail. It is linked, sort of, to 'Grafenwalder's Bestiary'. 7/10 Weather - An Ultra by the name of Inigo (Montoya? "You killed my father, prepare to die!" ) rescues a young Conjoiner woman from the clutches of pirates (Arrrr!). The captain of his ship hates Conjoiners, but she - known as Weather - is possibly the only one who can save them. Possibly my favourite story in the set, with great characters and some revelations about the Conjoiner engines which have played such a big part in the series. 9/10 Dilation Sleep - I thought this was the only weak story in the set. Effectively a haunted house story as a man, brought out of reefer sleep on a vast ramliner fleeing the Melding Plague, is stalked by someone or something. 6/10 Grafenwalder's Bestiary - Set on Chasm City some time after the Melding Plague, Grafenwalder is a collector of monsters whose temper and ego land him in hot water when he vies with another collector to find the rarest of exhibits. Almost a 'tale of the unexpected' where nothing is quite as it seems. 8/10 Nightingale - A tale of revenge, where a group of mercenaries is brought together to track down and capture a war criminal from Sky's Edge. The longest story in the collection, quite tense and full of twists and some very effective and disturbing 'body horror'. 8/10 Galactic North - The story of Irravel Veda, captain of a lighthugger transporting thousands of reefersleepers when it is damaged and forced to stop and make repairs. Lured by a signal from a comet, Irravel leads the ship into a trap that has consequences thousands of year into the future. The story that effectively binds together and brings closure to the Revelation Space universe. Brilliant. 9/10 Not a lot more to say, really. I'm not a big reader of short stories, but this collection is easily the best I have read. Reynolds's imagination is quite mind-blowing to me and from House of Suns, through the Revelation Space trilogy via Chasm City and on to Galactic North, I think he is now officially my favourite modern-day science fiction author. I was going to say 'the man's a genius', but I won't. Okay, I will 9/10