Athena Posted July 3, 2015 Share Posted July 3, 2015 Great review, it sounds like an interesting book! I don't know if it wouldn't be too scary for me, but I'm glad you enjoyed it . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissy Posted July 3, 2015 Share Posted July 3, 2015 I accidentally bought the book when I went to wishlist it. Oops. There's no point in my not keeping it now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karsa Orlong Posted July 3, 2015 Author Share Posted July 3, 2015 Oops! At least it's only £2.99 (assuming you bought the Kindle version . . . . ). Hope you enjoy it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted July 3, 2015 Share Posted July 3, 2015 We've got to stop meeting like this............. Ditto on World War Z.....double ditto! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karsa Orlong Posted July 3, 2015 Author Share Posted July 3, 2015 I'm sure I'll get to it eventually I got so caught up in The Silence that I've had real difficulty choosing what to read next. Looked at the first page of four or five different books and couldn't decide, nearly plunged straight into Lebbon's The Hunt but figured I should give myself at least a day or two's breathing space before doing that. Eventually settled on Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobblybear Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Another one for the wishlist. Sounds like a great read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Sounds awesome! Great review. Going on the the wishlist! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karsa Orlong Posted July 5, 2015 Author Share Posted July 5, 2015 Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds 2015 - Tachyon Publishing paperback - 192 pages From the author of the Revelation Space series comes an interstellar adventure of war, identity, betrayal, and the preservation of civilization itself. A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur—and for humanity—peace is not to be.On the brink of the ceasefire, Scur is captured by a renegade war criminal, and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. She revives aboard a prisoner transport vessel. Something has gone terribly wrong with the ship. Passengers—combatants from both sides of the war—are waking up from hibernation far too soon. Their memories, embedded in bullets, are the only links to a world which is no longer recognizable. And Scur will be reacquainted with her old enemy, but with much higher stakes than just her own life. Alastair Reynolds' latest novella is a briskly paced tale of betrayal and revenge, full of the twists and shocks for which he is renowned. Surprisingly, though, it's not as full of his big ideas as usual. The slow bullets of the title are data capsules stored within soldiers' bodies, detailing their military record and personal details. These play several different roles within the story, from being a method of torture and death, to a person's only link to their past when the systems around them start to fail, to their last great hope of somehow saving some of the data from those failing systems. To Scur, the first-person narrator of the story, they are all of these things. When the story begins she is captured by an enemy and shot with a second slow bullet programmed to give her a lingering, painful death. The arrival of the Peacekeepers make the enemy flee but, as Scur tries to cut the bullet out of herself, she loses consciousness. When she wakes up she is on a strange ship in a strange system with hundreds of other people who find themselves in the same predicament. Unravelling the mystery of how and why she has come to be there, and how she and her shipmates are to survive, is what makes up the bulk of the story. It's an enjoyable read but not Reynolds at his best. For all the complexities of the science and the plotlines, I always find Reynolds's style very engaging and easy to read, and that's still the case here. The characters here are okay without being particularly outstanding. Perhaps the only real disappointment for me was the mention of an alien race - the Sickening - who have caused various spoilery things to happen and then disappeared. They are never really revealed or explored in any depth, merely a plot device to move the story in a certain direction. I wanted to know more about them but sadly that was not to be. However, the ending was a pleasing surprise, and Scur's final words were, I felt, poetic and memorable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted July 6, 2015 Share Posted July 6, 2015 Ah, a new Alastair Reynolds book! That explains why I hadn't heard of it before. Great review! It's a shame it wasn't one of his best but I'm glad it was still very enjoyable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timstar Posted July 6, 2015 Share Posted July 6, 2015 I added The Silence to my wishlist and bought The Hunt as it was only 99p. I'll get round to Reynolds... one day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karsa Orlong Posted July 6, 2015 Author Share Posted July 6, 2015 I started reading The Hunt this morning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karsa Orlong Posted July 8, 2015 Author Share Posted July 8, 2015 The Hunt by Tim Lebbon 2015 - Avon ebook - 400 pages Escape and they’ll kill your family.The cruellest game. The highest stakes. Only she can bring his family back alive …Rose is the one that got away. She was the prey in a human trophy hunt organised by an elite secret organisation for super-rich clients seeking a unique thrill. She paid a terrible price. Every moment since she has been planning her revenge … And now her day has come.Chris returns from his morning run to find his wife and children missing and a stranger in his kitchen.He’s told to run.If he’s caught and killed, his family go free. If he escapes, they die.Rose is the only one who can help him, but Rose only has her sights on one conclusion. For her, Chris is bait. But The Trail have not forgotten the woman who tried to outwit them.The Trail want Rose. The hunters want Chris’s corpse. Rose wants revenge, and Chris just wants his family back.The hunt is on … And that's all there is to it, really The Hunt is a straight ahead thriller, the first of its kind Lebbon has written as all of his previous work has been in the horror genre. And when I say straight ahead, I mean straight ahead. It hits the ground running, quite literally. Chris Sheen is out one morning for a 12 mile run. When he gets home his wife and family are gone, there are signs of a struggle, and a stranger's in the kitchen drinking coffee. The stranger tells him to wait for 50 minutes and he will receive instructions. During that 50 minutes Rose appears in his house, spinning some claptrap about an organisation called the Trail, and the human trophy hunts they organised for bored, rich psychopaths. Needless to say, given the evidence, Chris's disbelief soon begins to disappear. What follows is a very simple chase story. It's told from three points of view: Chris, Rose, and Chris's teenage daughter, Gemma. The latter was a bit of an eye-opener for me because, given the wonderful character of Ally from The Silence, Gemma quickly brought home to me that these characters were only very rough sketches in comparison. She gets very little page time in the book but the reader is supposed to immediately accept that she is brave and very clear of thought in an extremely scary and tense situation, whilst her mother wibbles in the background. It was quite a stark contrast in the nature and depths of the characters in the two books, I thought. Also, the baddies - the hunters and the members of the Trail - get no character at all - zero, zilch, nada. I really felt the book needed that - I really wanted to know what made these people tick, why on Earth they would want to hunt down and kill a fellow human being, let alone murder his wife and kids. Oh well. My real problem with the book, though, was its length. I think straight up action/thriller novels such as this have a finite life before they become repetitive, and this one passed it quite early on. By about the fifth time Chris thought about calling the police, and then running through all the reasons why he couldn't and shouldn't do that, I felt like shouting at him "yes, we get it, move along already!" Also, I noticed in the author Q&A at the end of the book, that Lebbon wanted Snowdonia to become an extra character in the novel. It's true, there are endless descriptions of hillsides and ridges and hollows and streams, but I never really felt like I was there. To me, repeating that sort of thing over and over again, as if the reader doesn't already understand Chris's predicament, is just padding. Cut all that out, reduce the page count, and I would've liked it more. I also wasn't overly sure about the central premise: tell him he's going to be hunted and, if he gets caught, his family will be set free. He had no guarantees of course. Get caught and they die. The whole idea behind that didn't quite add up, IMO Overall, I found The Hunt reasonably enjoyable, but nowhere near as good as The Silence. Warning: Some animals may get hurt during the course of this novel. And a lot of humans, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobblybear Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 Sounds like it may be an interesting read, but I will see how I get on with The Silence first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karsa Orlong Posted July 10, 2015 Author Share Posted July 10, 2015 Off to Calgary and Vancouver See you all in a couple of weeks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nollaig Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Enjoy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissy Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Off to Calgary and Vancouver See you all in a couple of weeks Have a fab time Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaliepud Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Have fun! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little Pixie Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Have a great time, Steve ! Do they do poutine in that part of Canada ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Signor Finzione Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Have a great tiiiiiiiiime!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Don't drink the water! (It's got Polar Bear wee in it). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janet Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Have an awesome time, Steve - and may the magic music make your morning mood! (and your afternoon, evening and night mood too, for that matter!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 I hope you have a great time, Steve ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karsa Orlong Posted July 17, 2015 Author Share Posted July 17, 2015 Hello from Vancouver!*waves* Just had breakfast and sitting here using the hotel's Samsung tablet (one in every room). Have an awesome time, Steve - and may the magic music make your morning mood! (and your afternoon, evening and night mood too, for that matter!)Hee! The show in Calgary on Wednesday was incredible - so many songs I've never seen them play live before: Jacob's Ladder, Hemispheres, Cygnus X-1, Lakeside Park, What You're Doing, more of 2112 than I've seen too. Tonight is likely to be the last time I ever get to see them. It's going to be quite emotional I think - I already shed a tear or two at the Calgary show during Subdivisions and The Spirit of Radio ... and maybe Xanadu too If they play Losing It I will go completely A Farewell to Kings indeed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karsa Orlong Posted July 17, 2015 Author Share Posted July 17, 2015 Oh, almost forgot - they were filming an episode of The Flash right next to the hotel yesterday - only my favourite tv show this year. I couldn't believe it! I went and watched for about half an hour. Saw Grant Gustin and waved, then Jesse L. Martin nearly knocked me over running to get in a car Unfortunately the security people wouldn't let anyone take photos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissy Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 Hey Steve! *waves back* Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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