I have opinions again!Regular readers (ha!) will have noticed that this
web-site first went stale, then went away entirely... Well, I've now moved back
from London to Belfast for an exciting new job, and although I've less free
time now, I feel energised enough to try resuming
The Review
Experiment. Watch this space for more badly
written but enthusiastic reviews.
Read More Fri - August 6, 2004City of Pearl - Karen TravisNow and again you have to break out of your normal reading and try something new at random - usually this results in reading crap so that you can justify sticking to recommendations from tried and test sources, but now and again you get a treat like this. A solid character driven standalone SF adventure. Aliens, marines with big guns, aliens with bigger guns, religious fundamentalism, more aliens, stupid scientists, evuuul corporations. And a cop. Trust me, better than it sounds. Read More Thu - August 5, 2004Blood Follows - Steven EriksonA limited edition novella from a small press, by one of Commercial Fantasy's most bankable authors. Cost per printed page to me? Far too high! Read More Sun - August 1, 2004The Atrocity Archives - Charles StrossFantastic, another one for my Top 5 Novels of 2004. In the author's words, this is "a British spy thriller in the tradition of Len Deighton [...] that Neal Stephenson might have written to an outline by H. P. Lovecraft." If you liked Tim Power's Declare and understand why departmental software licensing audits are usually ridiculous, then this will be right up your street. Read More Fri - July 30, 2004The Japanese Sword - Gregory IrvineGuess what this is about? Lavishly illustrated, this book from the Victoria & Albert Museum reminds me that I've not been there for years, but that maybe I'll get a lot more out of certain exhibits on my next visit. Read More Tue - July 20, 2004Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes - Peter WattsI am an idiot. About a year ago I got sun-burnt really badly because I made the mistake of opening Watts' Starfish "for a few pages" while sitting outside on a sunny day. I couldn't put it down. Then I read Maelstrom, another superb novel. So why did I wait so long before ordering a copy of this stunning short story collection? Read More Sun - July 18, 2004Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee - Robert Van GulikI felt like I'd been reading too many genre mysteries lately, and fancied a change. Obviously I thought to myself, "What I need is a reprint of a 1949 translation of a C18th Chinese novel based on the cases of a real-life C7th district magistrate. Oh, here's one." Read More Sat - July 17, 2004The Ghosts of Glevum - Rosemary RoweThe sixth in a detective series set in Roman Britain. Nothing I like more than a murder where the detective is in a toga. The Ghosts of Glevum is Rowe's first hardback release, and it's deserved, with the plot showing a marked improvement over her earlier enjoyable-but-very-formulaic novels. I'll look forward to the next one in its own right, and not just as a stand-in for, say, a Lindsey Davis novel. Read More Thu - July 15, 2004The Greek Myths: 1 - Robert GravesWhat an interesting book. This is a meticulously researched compendium of Greek myths, in fairly dry summarised form, which accompanies each myth with an analysis attempting to present an explanation of the story in terms of it being an encoding of the social, political and religious history of the region. I admire the scholarship, but feel that the constant insistence on most stories being explicable in terms of, say, a sacred king, his tanist and their Moon-queen started to feel like the work of an author with a pet theory. Read More Mon - June 14, 2004Booklog backlogTo my surprise, I've had a couple of emails
asking why the book reviews have dried up. Am I dead? Nope, just been very busy
at work and too lazy when at home. I've posted a few hastily written updates
tonight, which leaves only (!) thirteen
(Update:
twenty) recently read titles to get through
before I'm back up to date. Watch this space, or better yet, go read one of the
good review sites out there! I like Infinity Plus, The SF Site, The Agony Column, or Emerald City. Or better yet, go read
rec.arts.sf.written.
Read More Thu - June 10, 2004The Samurai - Stephen TurnbullI've read several of Turnbull's excellent histories now, so I thought I'd tackle his 1977 classic, which was once regarded as a authoritative reference. It reads very much like a condensed summary of his later work, providing a terse but colourful overview of Japan's fascinating history from 500BC through to the Meiji Restoration. Read More Sat - June 5, 2004Rashomon and other stories - Ryūnosuke AkutagawaThis is very short collection of very short stories, but the writing is elegant and there isn't a single word wasted by this classic Japanese author. Read More The Aeneid - Virgil (Translated by David West)I really enjoyed The Odyssey but I still wanted to see where the long form of the Trojan Horse story came from, so onto Virgil. Funnily enough two thousand years of readers weren't wrong; The Aeneid is a good read. Read More Sun - May 23, 2004The Odyssey - Homer (Translated by E. V. Rieu)I had a mixed reaction to the first appearance of the tragic Muse in western literature, The Iliad, but I wasn't going to content until I'd read the original version of the Trojan Horse. With the power of the The Iliad's themes perversely growing with distance from the turgid middle books, I've decided to read The Odyssey and The Aeneid. I know I'm repeating countless generations when I say that The Odyssey is a superb, lively read. Read More Sat - May 15, 2004Eastern Standard Tribe - Cory DoctorowDidn't like Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, liked A Place So Foreign (and 8 more), so it makes sense that I thought this was both good and bad. Read More Fri - May 14, 2004The Last Legion - Valerio Massimo ManfrediThe blurb says, "The Last Legion is a bewitching novel of bravery, love, myth and magic." No, no, it's not. In fact The Last Legion is an awful novel, full of bad movie cliches. Go read Allan Massie's The Evening of the World instead, same themes, very different treatment. Read More Thu - May 13, 2004The Evening of the World - Allan MassieAllan Massie is a clever boy, as he insists on showing us by writing a sweeping Romance, rich in allegorical digressions, which pretends to be modern translation of a C13th novel by the infamous Michael Scott, written to educate his young charge Frederick the Second by showing the trials and tribulations of a C5th Roman.With footnotes by a Templar and a Rosicrucian... all of which would be unbearably smart-arse if he wasn't such a good writer, and this such a good book. Read More Sat - May 8, 2004Heretic - Bernard CromwellThis was a very disappointing conclusion to a mediocre series. In particular, the ending infuriated me, with the author simply choosing to have a dirty great deus ex machina step in. Read More Mon - May 3, 2004Stories Of Your Life And Others - Ted ChiangShort stories aren't normally my thing, and I've never read anything by Chiang before, but this tremendous collection puts him on my 'Buy on sight, in any format' list. Read More Sun - May 2, 2004A Hat Full Of Sky - Terry PratchettThis is the sequel to last year's The Wee Free Men, and although it's being marketed as Young Adult, I enjoyed it as much as any other Discworld book. Read More Sat - May 1, 2004The Iliad of Homer - Richard LattimoreMore brain exercise. Well, to be honest, I'm mixing a bit of cultural appreciation with SF reading. I know that sections of Simmons' Ilium were wasted on me as I'd never read anything other than very condensed forms of the Iliad, and as part two of Simmons' epic, Olympus, is out soon, I thought I'd get prepared. Read More Mon - April 26, 2004The River God's Vengeance (S.P.Q.R. VIII) - John Maddox RobertsWhat do you do when you read something which is as much fun as The Tribune's Curse? How about reading the sequel? (I'm not saying it's a clever plan, but it's a good one.) Read More Sun - April 25, 2004The Tribune's Curse (S.P.Q.R. VII)- John Maddox RobertsRemind me again why I used to regard the SPQR series as second rate entertainment? This was a great read! Read More Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan - Karl FridayTime to exercise my brain again. This title is, well, what it sounds like - a serious history of bushi in early medieval Japan. It's good too. Read More Sun - April 18, 2004The Confusion - Neal StephensonThe sequel to last year's Quicksilver, this huge novel is volume two of Stephenson's ambitious Baroque Cycle. It's a rich, lavish feast of a novel and I thought it was absolutely superb. Read More Sat - April 10, 2004Newton's Wake - Ken MacLeodI went right off Ken MacLeod after his last trilogy. Cosmonaut Keep disappointed and though I struggled through some of Dark Light, I just couldn't find the interest to even open Engine City. I was therefore a bit leery of buying Newton's Wake in hardback, but it turned out to be well worth my pocket money. Read More Fri - April 9, 2004Cowl - Neal AsherIn which Neal Asher completes his journey from the small presses all the way to a major hardback release. Read More Wed - April 7, 2004New Jeff Vandermeer web-sitesIn a shocking departure from my traditional
content of "What I read, and only what
I read", I can't resist pointing out two new
web-sites from that gifted madman Jeff Vandermeer. Worth a look just for the
gorgeous artwork, but there seems to be enough cool content for me to plan a
return visit or eight.
www.jeffvandermeer.com Author-centric. www.ambergris.org City of Saints And Madmen-centric. Read More King Jesus - Robert GravesTo enjoy this novel properly, to be able to separate fact from fiction, historical interpolation from sheer speculation, would require a few years in a seminary, a few more in the Rabbinical equivalent, and a side-degree or two in the classics, middle-eastern archaeology etc... Read More Wed - March 31, 2004Market Forces - Richard MorganA change of pace for Morgan, this is a bitter, snarling satire on executive competition and the ultimate deregulated market. Unlike The Space Merchants or Jennifer Government, this is unrelieved by humour and although well written, it's hard to finish a book when you detest the, er, main character (can't call him the hero). Read More Sun - March 28, 2004The First Man In Rome - Colleen McCulloughA weighty and incredibly well researched blockbuster about the careers of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the late Roman Republic, let down by dull prose. Read More |
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Total entries in this category: 139 Published On: May 29, 2005 09:39 PM |