Books I’ve read Commentaries on the books I read, whether

Books I’ve read
Commentaries on the books I read, whether I like them or not
Pushing Ice - Alastair Reynolds
January 25th, 2009

I’m a fan of Alastair Reynolds, so it was with great pleasure that I picked this one off the shelf and started reading. This is not one of his Revelation Space novels, but rather an independent story. However, I suspect there may be a sequel of some sort, as the ending rather implies it (not that I would reveal the ending here!).

It is 2057 and a working ship is out among the asteroids picking up large bits of ice - comets to which they attach engines - or mass drivers, if you prefer - in order to steer the whole package to somewhere that needs it - somewhere in our solar system, anyway. Could be Earth or Mars, as far as I could determine.

Whilst they are doing this, on which they have been engaged for some time on this trip, the home planet advises them that one of Saturn’s ice moons, Janus, has suddenly left its orbit and seems to be accelerating out of the solar system. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Science Fiction | No Comments »
Thud! - Terry Pratchett
January 18th, 2009

Another of Pratchett’s prodigious Discworld output, and one I thoroughly enjoyed (again).

This story very much involves the Watch and Commander Sam Vimes. There are grags - deep-down dwarves, who never usually see daylight, spending all their time well below the surface in one mine or another - in Ankh-Morpork that seem to be stirring up trouble. It seems that they and their cohorts have been digging out the substrata of the city (which is only the multiple layers of city on which each succeeding rebuild takes place), removing the mud and building further tunnels in order to locate a special Device. This artifact, a stone cube, can evidently speak and give evidence of what really happened in Koom Valley some 2000 years ago.
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Posted in Fantasy, Humour | No Comments »
The Year’s Best Science Fiction (2007)
ed. Gardner Duzois
January 13th, 2009

One of the reasons that I haven’t posted much recently is this book; with 640 pages of large-format paperback - over 300,000 words - it has taken some time to finish. Besides, with short stories, you tend to dip in, read one or two, then read something else - which is what I did.

Gardner Duzois, himself a respected SF writer, has assembled - as he has every year for the last N years, a remarkable collection of 32 stories from both old-established writers and relatively new ones. As any good anthology really should. As far as I can determine, all these stories were published in 2007 in a magazine, online site or other anthology, prior to their inclusion here. Read the rest of this entry »

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American Gods - Neil Gaiman
January 2nd, 2009

I have been wanting to read this book for several years, ever since I finished Good Omens, that was co-authored with (now Sir) Terry Pratchett. And the link between the two authors is quite a strong one when it comes to this book; Pratchett sort of did it first in a somewhat more comic and lighter version called Small Gods.

That book dealt with the disappearing influence (and therefore psychic presence) of Discworld gods whose believer numbers were shrinking or had passed almost to nothing. Pratchett’s take was that they became physically diminished; Gaiman’s somewhat darker - though still humorous - interpretation relates only to the gods taken to America by their believers over thousands of years, and their waning worshipper numbers. Hence it is a little more based on the real world, if you see what I mean. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fantasy, Humour | No Comments »
Ash & Bone - John Harvey
December 16th, 2008

I wondered how long it would take to repeat a whodunit author in here. This is it, but not with the same main character. Most of Harvey’s books that I have read feature Charlie Resnick, a crime squad detective in Nottingham. He does appear briefly in this novel, but the main character is a retired detective by the name of Frank Elder.

Frank is inveigled out of retirement in Cornwall by the murder of a female detective sergeant that he once had the hots for, acting as part of a review team that looks at cases that have either gone cold or hit a blank wall. The DS has been sexually assaulted and then stabbed repeatedly, close to the Crouch Hill community centre in North London (about a mile from where I live, as it happens). Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Detective Fiction | No Comments »
The Antipope - Robert Rankin
December 15th, 2008

And now for something different; well, after the last two thrillers, here’s one in an altogether lighter vein. As the first part of the ‘now legendary’ (publisher’s quote not mine) Brentford Trilogy (which runs to five books), it was my introduction to Robert Rankin’s work. And this is probably the last one before Christmas from me.

Set in modern-day version of Brentford, situated as it is along the Great West Road/M4 motorway route out of the capital, near to Kew Gardens, this tale has a pair of ne’er-do-wells as heroes. John O’Malley, a ladies man and drinker, with his long-standing friend Jim Pooley do battle - eventually - against the forces of evil at large in the borough. Neither lad is permanently, if ever, employed and Jim is always trying to find that elusive multi-race treble or Yankee bet on the horses that will make him a fortune. Read the rest of this entry »

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The High Window - Raymond Chandler
December 7th, 2008

An altogether different kettle of fish to my previous review. Chandler didn’t write rubbish.

The private eye, Philip Marlowe, is called to a rich old woman’s mansion in the LA area (all Marlowe’s stories are based in the LA region) to investigate the theft of a rare coin that was part of her late husband’s extensive collection, and to recover it, if possible. The client is loud, overbearing and seems to drink port non-stop, but does not appear to be telling the whole truth.

It seems that her son married unwisely (according to her) to a night-club singer a couple of years previously, and she seems to have skipped town at the same time as the coin went missing. It probably would not have been noticed for a lot longer if someone hadn’t apparently tried to sell it to a coin dealer who knew where it might have come from. He called to verify if it was for sale. During the client’s lifetime, according to her husband’s will, the collection could only be sold as a job lot, so she became suspicious. Read the rest of this entry »