Cover Art and Blurb, 'The Lady' - K.V. Johansen (Pyr)

Just because, Raymond Swanland :o)

It is my firm belief that Raymond Swanland couldn't do bad cover art if he tried. The guy clearly has the talent of ten lesser artists coursing through his veins which must be the reason why I can't draw at all... Well, that's my reason and I'm sticking to it.
And here's the blurb,

Possessed by a ghost who feeds on death, the undying assassin Ahjvar the Leopard has been captured by the Lady of Marakand, enslaved by necromancy to be captain of her Red Masks. His shield-bearer Ghu, a former slave with an uncanny ability to free the captive dead, follows Ahjvar into the war-torn lands of the Duina Catairna to release him, even if that means destroying what is left of Ahj’s tormented soul.
           
Deyandara, the last surviving heir of the Catairnan queen, rides into a land ravaged by disease and war, seeking the allies she abandoned months before, though they have no hope of standing against the army led by the invulnerable Red Masks of Marakand and the divine terror of the Lady.
           
In the city of Marakand, former enemies ally and old friends seek one another’s deaths as loyalists of the entombed gods Gurhan and Ilbialla raise a revolt, spearheaded by the Grasslander wizard Ivah, the shapeshifting Blackdog, and the bear-demon Mikki. The Lady’s defenses are not easily breached, though, and the one enemy who might withstand her, the Northron wanderer Moth, bearer of the sword Lakkariss, has vanished.

I really want to read this but although I have a copy of 'The Leopard' to hand, I've never read 'Black Dog' and am wary about doing a big ol' catch up (my life is a big ol' catch up right now and I haven't got any time for more of the same). Can anyone set my mind at rest/confirm my fears...?

'The Lady' will be published by Pyr in January next year.

'Ladyhawke' - Joan D. Vinge (Piccolo Books)

Captain Etienne Navarre is a man on whose shoulders lie a cruel curse. Punished for loving each other, Navarre must become a wolf by night whilst
his lover, Lady Isabeau, takes the form of a hawk by day. Together, with the thief Philippe Gaston, they must try to overthrow the corrupt Bishop and in doing so break the spell...

So, am I comfort reading again? Yes, yes I am. The way things are at the moment, this blog would be a desolate and empty place if I left all the comfort reading out. Just bear with me a little longer and I'll be back to the good stuff before you know it (and I'll spare you the childhood reminiscing this time round, I supect there's only so much about cheese on toast that anyone can reasonably be expected to hear).

So...

Did you watch the film or read the book first? As far as I was concerned, I didn't even realise that there was a film until some years later and, looking back, I think that was a good thing. Yep, I'm talking about the awful eighties 'disco' soundtrack that accompanies Rutger Hauer fighting the Bishop's Guard (trying his manful best to ignore it as he does so) I'm sure a little piece of me died when I saw the film for the first time and the music started playing. But the book though…

I've had my copy of 'Ladyhawke' for almost thirty years and it still hasn't lost its power to utterly captivate me. I start reading and that's it, I'm in the story until it finishes. 'Ladyhawke' is by no means a classic and doesn't do an awful lot that is different. A curse is a curse wherever you go and this is very much the deal here. Where Vinge makes things shine though is her characterisation and how this shows through when you actually see Navarre and Isbeau have that 'almost together' moment on the cusp of dawn. There's a part of me that is an old romantic and it never fails to make me well up a little to see two people in love who can't be together
because of evil magic. Vinge also has a happy knack of being able to get inside her characters heads and really lay them bare in such a way that you can't help but will them on. Navarre comes across as one dimensional initially but he is anything but once Vinge lets you into his head.

But I was saying, two lovers that can never be together... What was I talking about? Of course they will be together! I told you that this is a book that doesn't do an awful lot differently and the outcome is never really in doubt (hence the comfort read) despite some moments where you wonder what could happen. The final chapters are stirring affairs that rush the reader headlong into the final outcome whilst still giving the reader a feeling of doubt (especially when the bells ring, you'll know what I mean if you've read the book/seen the film). It's a heady mixture that still keeps my eyes on the page, even though this is a book that I must have read
dozens of times now.

It's no secret then (and definitely not a spoiler) that the ending is a happy one; like a medieval fairy tale with loads of grim bits but a hefty dose of morals at the end. Everyone gets what they deserve and this kind of ending doesn't really gel with the 'grimdark' tone of todays fantasy fiction. There's still a place for it though and I'd say a very necessary one. Our world may not be one for happy endings but fiction tells us that happy endings can happen and it's important for us to know this. 'Ladyhawke' does this very well indeed and there are enough second hand
copies floating about out there for you to get some of those good vibes
too. I'd thoroughly recommend it in fact.

'Couldn't Even Really Get Started, Let Alone Finish It…', 'The Black Guard' - A.J. Smith (Head of Zeus)

The city of Ro Canarn burns. With their father's blood fresh upon the headsman's sword, Lord Bromvy and Lady Bronwyn, the last scions of thehouse of Canarn, face fugitive exile or death. 

In the court of Ro Tiris, men fear to speak their minds. The Army of the Red marches upon the North. Strange accidents befall those who dare question the King's new advisors. Those foolish enough to speak their names call them the Seven Sisters: witches of the fire god; each as beautiful and as dangerous as a flame. 

And, called from the long ages of deep time by war and sacrifice, the children of a dead god are waking with a pitiless cry. 

All that was dead will rise. 
All that now lives will fall... 

Look at that blurb and bask in the glorious promise of epic fantasy… Cities with stirring names? Check. A Lord and Lady on the run? Double check. Attractive ladies who get up to all sorts of machinations in the name of their 'fire god'? And what about an ages old threat waking up to lay waste to the world of the living? Check and Check.

It's a blurb that really wants people to think that it's the next 'Song of Ice and Fire' and I really wish that's what 'The Black Guard' had been. If it had been then I'd still be reading it instead of casting about looking
for something to take its place. As it is, I will go back to 'The Black Guard' at some point as there is a lot of potential in what I've read. It's just a real shame that I made it about two hundred pages into the book and found that the story was still to get going… Slow and steady may win the day but 'too slow and steady' has a nasty habit of sending me to sleep
these days. Reading that first chunk of of 'The Black Guard' was like wading through treacle; really sweet but ultimately tiring.

While there is an argument to be made that a lot of epic fantasies take time to get going, you could look at any of these series and it would be really apparent how they have worked round this issue. Compelling characters, ominous foreshadowing, even a dirty great battle where the aftermath can be explored. 'The Black Guard' has none of these things, preferring instead to weave its narrative around the edges of the plot and give you tantalising glimpses of what is to come. Well, that is the idea anyway; it never quite worked for me, mainly because the plot is so slow but also because Smith plays his cards a little too close to his chest and you never really get much of a glimpse of anything.

But you know what? I'll be going back to 'The Black Guard' and powering my way through the rest, probably when the insomnia really kicks in and I know that I've got a couple of hours to myself to really get stuck in. Is that slow pacing deliberate then? Is 'The Black Guard' a book that forces you to
take your time and really get a feel for the setting? I'm thinking it's more like David Bilsborough's 'The Wanderer's Tale' but I'm happy to be proved wrong when I give it another go. In the meantime, has anyone else here read 'The Black Guard'? Did you make it any further than a couple of
hundred pages? If so, what did you think?

'Doctor Who and the Stones of Blood' - Terrance Dicks (Target)

Searching for the third segment to the Key to Time brings the Doctor and Romana to present-day Earth, where the travellers have to contend with stone circles, Druidic rituals and a not-so-mythical goddess known as the Cailleach. 

Unsurprisingly at the moment, it's all about comfort reading for me right now (which explains why it has taken me weeks to get to where I am with A.J. Smith's 'The Black Guard' but more on that another time…) and it struck me how the term doesn't quite gel with a lot of genre fiction. For example, last night I was after a comfort read and, at one point, it came down to a choice between 'A Game of Thrones' and 'The Stand'… I guess 'comfort reading', in this case, is more about familiar settings and
characters rather than the story itself and that's why you're looking at another Doctor Who post today :o) The Target novelizations are all about
comfort reading for me; familiar stories that I either read or saw on the TV, all wrapped up in cosy memories of cheese on toast for tea and lunchtime trips to the mobile library that used to park outside the shopping centre. And where is that shopping centre now, eh? It’s the foundations of an Asda, that's where it is. But anyway…

I never saw 'The Stones of Blood' on TV but borrowed it from the library, as a kid, and was scared by it just enough to make me pick up a copy again from the local comic book store (which is incredibly well stocked on Doctor Who books, I sense the possibility of another collection starting up…) and see what how the intervening years had treated it. These days, a Doctor Who book is normally good for a bus ride to work and back and 'The Stones of Blood' proved no different in this regard. It still had the power to scare as well, mostly through what is implied rather than what you actually see happen. The note of fear in De Vries' voice, coupled with the keen timing of the Ogri attack, makes for a nerve wracking passage and there are more of these interspersed throughout the book.

I'm at the point now, with the Target novelizations, where it almost goes without saying that 'The Stones of Blood' is, for the most part, a 'by the numbers' retelling of what viewers would have seen on the TV. Dicks does take time though to capture that quirky sense of two mildly eccentric
people bouncing off each other (the Doctor and Professor Rumford) although I wasn't so keen on the way he basically gave away the identity of the main villain very early on. I know people would have seen the show before reading the book (so it wouldn't have been much of a surprise anyway) but
it still felt a little clumsy, in terms of structuring a book, to do the 'big reveal' so early.

There's also a slightly disjointed feel to the book in terms of how it slips from 'slightly Gothic horror' on the Moors to the overtly sci-fi element of the tale. When each piece is taken on its own though, both are done very well in terms of atmosphere (my personal favourites were all the bits set on Earth, just on case you hadn't worked it out already).

A nice little read then. It goes without saying (so I should probably stop saying it…) that fans of the TV show will get the most out of 'The Stones of Blood' and that is probably why I enjoyed it as much as I did. I do wonder why BBC Books aren't republishing these books in omnibus editions or
something like that...

Things that the Discworld books have taught me...

A Wizard's staff has a knob on the end.
The hedgehog is a particularly lucky animal :o)

There, now we've got those out of the way... (And yep, I made up at least two verses to the 'Hedgehog Song' when I was a teenager. I'll bet you did too)

I haven't picked up a 'Discworld' book in a few years now (whenever I reviewed 'Unseen Academicals' on the old blog, that was the last time) but I still remember some of the things that I learned through laughter. Genre fiction takes itself far too seriously and needs a little fun poked at it from time to time. The series as a whole wouldn't miss 'The Colour of Magic' at all. If you laugh with a character (no matter who they are) then you'll want to follow them right to the bitter end. And sometimes, it's ok to admit that the jokes just aren't tickling you any more and that new laughs are waiting over the horizon.

The thing that has struck me just recently though is how Pratchett does away with the whole notion of good and evil. People are just people, trying to do their thing and continuously running smack bang into other people who are just trying to do their thing. Trying to create something for themselves out of the raw stuff of daily life. What really scares Pratchett though (or at least, what he thinks should scare us) is the grey conformity of the Auditors where creation and growth are stifled and there is nothing left to do but exist (and don't you just feel the note of despair in those passages).

I'm in a grey area right now and have been for a long time. The greyness of depression played a part in my old blog finishing and it's doing its level best to tread all over this one too (hence the lack of posts just recently). It's hard to muster up the energy to do anything other than just exist sometimes.
I'm not done yet though (not quite yet) and if you're feeling anything like me then hang in there for a bit longer. If you can, be a Terry Pratchett character trying to create a little something for themselves out of the raw stuff of daily life. Even if it's just writing a sentence or two; once you've done it then depression can't take it back, no matter how much it wants to. It's all yours and you can be damn proud of what you've done.

I'm rambling a bit now so will stop just about here before all meaning is lost. I just wanted to let you know that depression is a bitch but I've got your back. And read 'Guards! Guards!' One of the older Discworld books but still the best of a pretty amazing bunch ;o)

Books 'Not in the Post' - 'Huge Spider!' Edition

Ok, maybe it wasn't such a huge spider but it scared the **** out of me when I looked up and saw it above the doorframe… Of course, Hope wanted to keep it so she could 'teach Mummy not to be scared of spiders'. No chance of that; at about half six yesterday morning Hope and I stood outside the house, waving goodbye to the spider as it was released from its pint glass prison and strolled off down the street. Seriously, it strolled; no-one was going to mess with this beast and it knew it.

 

But anyway, the books!

  

I've pretty much cleared my comic book shelf these past couple of weeks (if I'm not going to read them…) and made a few quid out of the deal. Most of that was spent yesterday as I browsed some second hand bookshops on the way to meet Sue and the girls from the station. Check em' out,

I've got most of the 'Conan' stories already so 'Conan' and 'Conan the Adventurer' were pure indulgence, bought mostly for the covers and to see how Lin Carter added to a couple of the unfinished tales. But mostly for the covers :)

I've read a few of the Vlad Taltos books (well, more like a couple) and really enjoyde them so 'Dzur' being a book that I hadn't read and only costing a pound was a good combination. It looks like it could be a good read for the bus when I'm commuting, anyone here read it?

The slightly blurred looking book, top right, is a rather well kept advance copy of Jeff Vandermeer's 'Acceptance', concluding book in the 'Southern Reach' trilogy. I haven't read 'Authority' yet, no excuse really, but it still didn't take much to persuade me to part with a little more cash. It will be a little while before you see a review here but you can expect one, definitely.

And the final book? I had just enough money left for either 'The Very Best of Tad Williams' or Erikson's 'The Wurms of Blearmouth'. The winner is obvious (clue, it wasn't 'The Wurms of Blearmouth'…) and I'll be dipping in and out of it every time full length novels feel a little too much like hard work ;o)

And that's that! Anything there catch your eye?

'She Who Waits' - Daniel Polansky (Hodder)

Low Town: the worst ghetto in the worst city in the Thirteen Lands.

Good only for depravity and death. And Warden, long ago a respected agent in the formidable Black House, is now the most depraved Low Town denizen of them all.

As a younger man, Warden carried out more than his fair share of terrible deeds, and never as many as when he worked for the Black House. But Warden's growing older, and the vultures are circling. Low Town is changing, faster than even he can control, and Warden knows that if he doesn't get out soon, he may never get out at all.

But Warden must finally reckon with his terrible past if he can ever hope to escape it. A hospital full of lunatics, a conspiracy against the corrupt new king and a ghetto full of thieves and murderers stand between him and his slim hope for the future. And behind them all waits the one person whose betrayal Warden never expected. The one person who left him, broken and bitter, to become the man he is today. 

The one woman he ever loved.
She who waits behind all things.

 

Reading is a journey and nowhere more so than in speculative fiction where if you're not following the progress of an actual journey (thanks for that Mr. Tolkien…) then you're watching the main character make a mental journey towards a complete change in character. Once upon a time, this second kind of journey was the sole preserve of kitchen boys 'with a destiny' who would find destiny/nobility thrust upon them and have to adapt accordingly. These days aren't those days though and thank goodness for that. We now have characters seeking redemption from the pits of immorality, we have others who are happy to sink yet further; the most interesting characters though are the ones where you can see that change but have to question their motives and direction. Did X commit the vilest crimes for ultimate good or were they just scraping the bottom of the moral barrel for their own ends? These are the kind of characters that really get you thinking and invested in a story, genre fiction can't have enough of them as far as I'm concerned.

For my money, Daniel Polansky's Warden is the greatest of these; a character who will happily spread chaos in the pursuit of aims and leave you wondering whether he's a good man forced to do bad things or… the other way round. 'The Straight Razor Cure' (a much better title than 'Lowtown') and 'Tomorrow The Killing' have posed these questions already and to excellent affect. 'She Who Waits'… Well, the best way to sign off a series is to leave the reader with a few tantalising questions and Polansky somehow manages to do this while at the same time giving said reader an appropriate sense of closure at the same time. The story ends here and I for one wish it hadn't.

For those of you familiar with the series, 'She Who Waits' follows a path well travelled by the Warden. Lowtown is starting to fall to pieces under the pressure of a mystery that apparently only Warden can solve. While he is doing this, Warden must watch not only his back but those of his closest friends. And while he is doing this... Warden is also putting the pieces into place that will give him the revenge that he been searching for all these years.

And that's what sets 'She Who Waits' apart from any number of 'trilogy concluders' (I've said it so now it's a word) that follow the safe path through to the end. Not only has Polansky been playing an incredibly long game (seriously, there are things in 'The Straight Razor Cure' that make a lot of sense now) but he's not afraid to torch the whole thing once he has finished playing. Imagine that slow, patient build up; imagine the pieces finally falling into place... And then gasp as Polansky elects not to play it safe after all, sending everything and everyone straight to a hell of Wardens own making. You've got to admire the way that Polansky holds his nerve here when the safe option would have been so much easier. Lowtown is a brutal place at the best of times, by the time 'She Who Waits' comes to an end you will have seen a Lowtown only hinted at previously. Not only does it open your eyes to what Warden has to live with, it makes the story fly by and will have you almost forgetting the inevitability of the ending.

I'm not going to give too much away but it's clear to anyone that there is only one way for a man like Warden to leave a tale like this. Polansky deals with it very matter of factly and you get the impression that's just how Warden would have wanted it. I really appreciated the respect that Polansky has for his characters that he comes across as more than happy to let characters like Warden show him the way to the finale, not the other way round. That is why I will be reading more books by Polansky while other authors will fall by the wayside, 

Does 'She Who Waits' tread an awfully familiar path then? I'm afraid it does. Does it matter though? Not to me it didn't, not when the plot flowed the way it did. Should I read it then? Damn right you should, just as soon as you've read 'The Straight Razor Cure' and 'Tomorrow The Killing'. 'She Who Waits' is a worthy finale to what has turned out to be quite the superb trilogy (almost without anyone noticing, shame on you all). Read it.