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I haven't felt much like reviewing things I've read lately. The unusual sociability of Swancon has faded away and real life isn't very interesting.
Of the books I got at Swancon, though, I have to report that The Rook by Daniel O'Malley is unreadable. This is not a criticism of the story, although from what little I've read, it's rather derivative. I thought of Charles Stross right away when I saw the blurb:
On Her Majesty's Supernatural Secret Service.
It comes over as very British (though I assume the author is actually Australian, to win an Aurealis award) very fantasy-meets-MI5 and despite the deadly peril the main character is supposed to be in, rather dull. I just noticed that what it won was the 2012 science fiction novel category, and that is just odd. I got about 100 pages in and this is not what I would call science fiction; more urban fantasy.
Those things aren't the main problem. The reason it's unreadable is that Harper Collins have chosen to publish it in a quite small, faded-looking print, and that a lot of it is in italics. This is not a good combination and for somebody like me, who has a bit of trouble with small print anyway, it got too annoying to deal with. So yeah. Book free to good home. I'm assuming it's now been too long to give it back, though I would like to. My brief look at it before deciding to buy it wasn't enough, and of course didn't tip me off that quite so much would be in italics, which is harder to make out than the regular print.
I've read another ebook, book 8 of Sam Sisavath's "ghouls take over the world" series which is a zombie apocalypse series with intelligent zombies. More or less. They're into blood, not flesh, but you still die if they eat you. If you're lucky. They've all got rather grandiose titles which mystify me a bit. This one is The Horns of Avalon. I've enjoyed them enough to keep reading, though they're losing pace a bit at this stage. Book one, The Purge of Babylon, I thought was better. Even so, I still don't get why zombie, or pseudo-zombie books, persist in referring to their creatures as "dead." Something's alive to keep the body moving, even if it's a virus. It sure isn't the original owner of the body.
Of the books I got at Swancon, though, I have to report that The Rook by Daniel O'Malley is unreadable. This is not a criticism of the story, although from what little I've read, it's rather derivative. I thought of Charles Stross right away when I saw the blurb:
On Her Majesty's Supernatural Secret Service.
It comes over as very British (though I assume the author is actually Australian, to win an Aurealis award) very fantasy-meets-MI5 and despite the deadly peril the main character is supposed to be in, rather dull. I just noticed that what it won was the 2012 science fiction novel category, and that is just odd. I got about 100 pages in and this is not what I would call science fiction; more urban fantasy.
Those things aren't the main problem. The reason it's unreadable is that Harper Collins have chosen to publish it in a quite small, faded-looking print, and that a lot of it is in italics. This is not a good combination and for somebody like me, who has a bit of trouble with small print anyway, it got too annoying to deal with. So yeah. Book free to good home. I'm assuming it's now been too long to give it back, though I would like to. My brief look at it before deciding to buy it wasn't enough, and of course didn't tip me off that quite so much would be in italics, which is harder to make out than the regular print.
I've read another ebook, book 8 of Sam Sisavath's "ghouls take over the world" series which is a zombie apocalypse series with intelligent zombies. More or less. They're into blood, not flesh, but you still die if they eat you. If you're lucky. They've all got rather grandiose titles which mystify me a bit. This one is The Horns of Avalon. I've enjoyed them enough to keep reading, though they're losing pace a bit at this stage. Book one, The Purge of Babylon, I thought was better. Even so, I still don't get why zombie, or pseudo-zombie books, persist in referring to their creatures as "dead." Something's alive to keep the body moving, even if it's a virus. It sure isn't the original owner of the body.
