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A bit of a mixed bag in this post.  Still with a heavy Literary focus I’m afraid, and for those not quite so geeky or interested in Scifi/Fantasy as I am, there’s probably not a great deal here for you to find interesting.

I’m still not reading as much as I once did, instead listening on the Train to to Audiobooks quite a bit, partly because the fantastic iPhone/iPod makes it so easy.  This has also grown in to the Car because of the MP3 CD Player in the current Car, so one CD can quite easily last for 4-5 long trips to Manchester and Back again!

Audible is a great source of material for UK listeners, and you can download the MP3 and burn it to CD yourself.  There’s a reasonable collection of Scifi and Fantasy titles in their library.

There are one or two other sources, I heartily wish that Graphic Audio would hurry up and get their International MP3 Download service sorted out for us International listeners, but hey, Can’t have it all I suppose.

Amazon does also sell one or two MP3-CD’s and Audio Books, so it’s not the end of the world.

Of course there’s always Big Finish too with their ever increasing collection of Doctor Who stories.

In the odd moments when I do pick up a book, I’ve recently enjoyed the Biography of Theo Paphitis called “Enter the Dragon“.  Theo is one of the famous Dragon’s Den entrepreneurs.  I’m also currently enjoying the latest in Jack Campbell’s “The Lost Fleet” series.  The recent one is called Relentless (Lost Fleet).

I’ve also been sad to hear of the recent passing of David Eddings, author of Magician’s Gambit (Belgariad)Enchanter’s End Game (Belgariad)Castle Of Wizardry (Belgariad)The Sapphire Rose (The Elenium)The Diamond Throne (The Elenium)The Ruby Knight (The Elenium) and many more Fantasy works.    Rest in Peace David!

David Eddings

(7 July 1931- 2 June 2009)

Normally I’m quite a fan of David Weber;  I loved his Honor Harrington series, and the new series that started with off Armageddon Reef was a blast, but Hell’s Gate (Multiverse I) spectacularly failed to engage me.

The style of writing is as you’d expect, but even at 50+ pages in, the reader is still being subjected to intense character build up rather than any engaging action.  Only one plot “event” seems to have happened so far, with the rest just being build build build.

Perhaps that’s a symptom of the fact that this is a “new” novel, or the first in an intended series (called “Multiverse”) rather than one being set in an established environment.  There is a sequel called Hell Hath No Fury (Multiverse II).

Now as is becoming my habit, I part wrote this review during the time I was reading the book, so It will be interesting to see how my impressions change as I continue to read.  Sadly so far the book has failed to pull me in, and I’m finding it something of a chore to continue reading.

// EDIT // – So much so in fact that I ended up abandoning the title before I got even 1/4 of the way through.  It just wasn’t getting any better.

I wonder how it’s worked in co-authored novels like this one.  How much input did the two respective authors have, and was it in Storyline and Character development?  Actual writing?  Brainstorming?

All in all, I’d say this one was a useless 0/5

Yes, I’m happy that the amazing series The Tudors has been renewed for a FOURTH season by Showtime!   We’ve not yet been fortunate enough to see Season 3 in the UK.  It seems that Season 3 started in the US on 5th April, so I live in hope of an early Autumn slot for Season 3 on this side of the water.

Seasons 1 & 2 are of course available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and I’d thoroughly recommend the Blu-ray versions if you have the equipment to play it back.  It really brings to life the level of detail in the sets etc.

If only History had been this interesting or exciting when I was at School!!

Season 3 seems to feature a fairly significant cast change, as Henry has done a good job of disposing of most of the Season 1 & 2 characters.

Some interesting casting in Season 3 though, with Max Von Sydow as Cardinal Von Waldburg, and Joss Stone as Anne of Cleves.   I still can’t get MVS out of my head in his amazing role as Ming the Merciless.  I know he’s been in lots of works since, including one of my all time favourites “Dune”, but I still struggle to imagine him in any other role.

Max Von Sydow as Cardinal Von Waldburg

Okay, so I’ve not a huge amount to say other than to bore you all silly with the books I’ve been reading!

Having finished The Dreaming Void (Void Trilogy) by Peter F Hamilton, I ploughed straight in to it’s sequel, The Temporal Void.

I have to say I’m thoroughly enjoying Peter F Hamilton’s work.  Pandora’s Star (Commonwealth Saga) and Judas Unchained (Commonwealth Saga) were both pretty heavyweight Scifi of the finest kind, but the latest two manage to encompass a distinct Fantasy section within them with the key but discretely separate second thread plot device featuring Edeard the Waterwalker.    I would love to see PFH write an exclusively Fantasy based work, as I think it’d work very well indeed.

A nice big picture of the cover art here, as I think the covers for PFH’s works are fantastic!

And on a related note I’ve discovered something quite interesting on Amazon.   The company called photoshock are selling some intriguing works of art that rather pique my fancy!

Here’s an example; called ANDROMEDA: Battle Of Samsusa XL Gallery Framed Canvas Art Ready To Hang NEW sci fi, they seem to take high quality prints from TV and Film and turn them in to what looks to be extremely nice wall mountable (or even mounted) works.

I’ve added a couple that I rather like to my Amazon Wishlist!  Shame that it just missed my Birthday eh?

This is the Sixth Book in the Kris Longknife series that I’ve read, and overall I found this one somewhat harder to follow than the others.

The characters seem less well defined in this installment, perhaps that’s because the Author is settled in to his stride with these individuals now, and doesn’t feel the need to describe them as well as in previous installments, but the ultimate effect is that you need to read this volume more or less directly after one or more of it’s predecessors in order to keep up with the action which starts pretty much straight away.

Shepherd doesn’t seem to have quite the same flair for Military style Scifi as Elizabeth Moon or David Webber, but he does a passable job describing the combat, strategy and tactics.  On occasion the writing would have benefited from a more descriptive style, at least enough to give your imagination something to fire on.  He does also degenerate in to acronyms all too easily, and only occasionally remembers to explain himself a few pages or paragraphs further on.

It takes until the last quarter of the book for Shepherd to develop the overall point of the novel in the series, (which I won’t give away here), but this kind of distances this volume from it’s predecessors.  I rather suspect that he wrapped up most of his planned threads in the fifth volume of this series, and this is very much a bridge in to some new ideas which will give the overall storyline great boost in to the next novel in the series.

Overall an average attempt by Mr Shepherd, so I give Kris Longknife: Intrepid (Kris Longknife) a rating of

For reference, the prequels were:

I’ve done my usual trick of starting more than one book.

Currently I’m reading Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber, the author of the well known Honor Harrington series.

It’s a fascinating premise actually;  Earth is dead, wiped out by an unfathomable Alien species, and this is almost a parallel evolution story of Humanity as it struggles to start afresh on a new planet called Safehold on the other side of the Galaxy, but a planet in which Technology in any detectable form is prohibited in order to avoid detection by the same alien menace that wiped out Earth.  Weber does his usual job of considering Military strategy and politics, but this time he includes Religion, a corrupted Church being one of the chief protagonists, at least as far as I’ve read so far.

The “rules” of the colony having been set by the officers of the colony ships that found the planet, the initial colonists were made to “forget” everything previously, and so the officers were able to set themselves up as Archangels, virtually Gods of the new Church of Safehold.

I’ve added the sequel By Schism Rent Asunder to my Wishlist, but it’s not out on Paperback until mid-2009, so I’ll have to bide my time.  I still prefer paperbacks!

Also on the go is the second of the Runelords series by David Farland; Brotherhood of the Wolf (Runelords)

This one is a Fantasy work with another interesting hook, the whole Runelords thread which has given way to quite a few sequels, all of which I have lined up ready for when I get to them!

I’m also waiting for Amazon to dispatch my copy of Kris Longknife: Intrepid (Kris Longknife) by Mike Shepherd.  This is another military Scifi series, which I’ll blog about in due course!