Kevin's Watch

Finished Beasts by John Crowley, on to Engine Summer by... John Crowley.

Surface Detail by Iain M Banks

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While away, I'm reading Farthing by Jo Walton, a murder mystery at a country estate in an alternate history where the US never joined WW2 and Britain made peace with Hitler.

Ah well, I have made the fatal mistake of starting some Terry Pratchett, and as we know, one is never enough.

Read The Wee Free Men, Hat Full Of Sky and Wintersmith this weekend, and busy on I Shall Wear Midnight now.

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I'm on the home strait. Since Friday have read Soul Music and Hogfather. Now reading Thief of Time, all Terry Pratchett.

Snuff, also by Pratchett.

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Av, that may be my next. Please let me know what you think of it. The last Vimes book I suppose.

Oh, this is the 2nd or 3rd time I'm reading it. I like it. I like all the Vimes books generally.

In fact, I'm starting the Watch books again from the beginning, so reading Guards! Guards! now.

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OK, I shall look forward to Snuff. Still reading Thief of Time, and enjoying it.

Men At Arms.

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Pratchett's Feet Of Clay.

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Adam Roberts, Yellow Blue Tibia.

Just finished A Game of Thrones. It wasn't until I was about half way through that I realised I was doing a reread ) I'd thought I'd started and not finished the book a couple of times before but I didn't remember reading the whole thing.)

Anyway. I see the attraction of the books for people but it's just not my cup of tea. From my point of view nothing significant happened in the whole book. Yeah, there was a lot of intrigue; yeah, there were a couple of big battles; yeah, some significant characters met their end, but, at the level of what fantasy is supposed to do (according to SRD), nothing of significance happened.

Now granted the book may be setting the scene for what's to come, but I have my doubts. If you can't convey the sense of what's at stake in the first book in a series why would you expect readers to hang around for the second? What this felt like to me was a fantasy-style soap-opera. And this is probably why it failed to stick in my memory. It reminded me of people like Feist or Hobb, but they actually do the fantasy job quite well (well Feist did in his early books anyway).

This was more like reheated and sexed-up historical fiction (the War of the Roses, maybe) with a bit of grimdark thrown in for good measure (that GRRM may have invented grimdark is not to his credit ).

The only character that seemed more than two-dimensional to me was Tyrion Lannister (and I was surprised to find Tywin Lannister impressive as well when we finally met him. I didn't remember that from my first read and it may be that this time I was sick to my back teeth of the honourable but annoying Starks )

I don't have the second book, so let me know if you think it's an improvement on the first and worth reading.

u.

That's almost precisely my thoughts on the book, u. I had read it once before, but retained absolutely no memory of it. I reread it again recently, and didn't find anything in it that was interesting. I, too, wonder why all the fans.

Well, turns out I read The Golden Apple before I read Engine Summer by John Crowley. And I'm going to say this now: there is no way Illuminatus! will be able to top Engine Summer. That's not an insult to Illumintaus!, it is just not in the same league.

Now, on to Leviathan!

Wool Omnibus, for this month's KW Book Club.

I actually wanted to read Anna Funder's All That I Am, (having just finished Stasiland), but I was worried u would never forgive me if I voted his pick out of the race and didn't bother to read mine! So Wool it is.

Read Jingo and The Fifth Elephant this weekend, busy on Night Watch now.

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Finished Snuff (brilliant), re-reads now starting with Small Gods.

u., if you thought nothing happened in Game of Thrones, don't even bother with the rest of the series. Books 4 and 5 *really* don't have any plot movement to speak of.

Still finishing up the research for the final Pipe Woman Chronicles book, but that should be done this week, and then I can start reading for fun again.

Thud.

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