Friday Free Reading!

A bit of a 'cheats post' this morning as I'm actually trying my hardest to come up with sensible sounding questions for an interview that I have this afternoon. Any good luck wishes will be greatly appreciated as I have a horrible feeling that it's going to be a bit of a fight to get into my suit...

In the meantime, Free Reading! I found this link on Facebook (can't remember who posted it but thanks anyway!) and it's an amazing resource if, like me, you haven't read a lot of science fiction written by women. Looking back at my reading, this is something that I really need to address. One of the perils, I think, of not reading an awful lot of sic-fi anyway and (recently) letting my reading be decided by a book's cover art... I'll have to see what I can do about that.

Anyway, enjoy some free reading!

Bits and Pieces in the Post...

I'm starting to get a few books turn up in the post, some of which might be read/reviewed while others make that short journey to the charity shop... Here are some that turned up in the last couple of days,

So there's a 'will definitely read', 'might read' and 'will not read' here, one of each :o) I have absolutely no interest in reading 'The Deepest Night' which looks like another 'Supernatural Boarding School Tale'. I may be doing it a disservice but there's only so much time in the day and more appealing books to fill it with! 'Children of Fire' looks like it could be it could be worth a go but I've never got on with Karpyshyn's 'Star Wars' books, have a read of the blurb and tell me what you think...

Long ago the gods chose a great hero to act as their agent in the mortal world and to stand against the demonic spawn of Chaos. The gods gifted their champion, Daemron, with three magical Talismans: a sword, a ring, and a crown. But the awesome power at his command corrupted Daemron, turning him from savior to destroyer. Filled with pride, he dared to challenge the gods themselves. Siding with the Chaos spawn, Daemron waged a titanic battle against the Immortals. In the end, Daemron was defeated, the Talismans were lost, and Chaos was sealed off behind the Legacy—a magical barrier the gods sacrificed themselves to create.

Now the Legacy is fading. On the other side, the banished Daemron stirs. And across the scattered corners of the land, four children are born of suffering and strife, each touched by one aspect of Daemron himself—wizard, warrior, prophet, king.

Bound by a connection deeper than blood, the Children of Fire will either restore the Legacy or bring it crashing down, freeing Daemron to wreak his vengeance upon the mortal world.

On the one hand, it looks like fun. On the other hand, more children born in Fantasyland who have magic powers...? Really not sure, has anyone else read it?

'The Orphan' though...? I've realised recently that I am after something properly spooky and this looks like it could fit the bill nicely...

Darren and Beth Lynwood always dreamed of having a son, but when young amnesiac runaway Adam enters their lives, he brings with him a creeping darkness that threatens to engulf their family and everyone around them.

When Adam's memories claw their way to the surface, Darren finds himself haunted by thoughts of his own childhood - and of a boy very much like Adam who was done an unspeakable wrong.

As buried secrets are unearthed, the Lynwood's happy home becomes the hunting ground for a relentless evil and an obsession that will not die.

There's no point locking the door.
There's no use shutting out the night.
Because the orphan is already inside.

If it's half as good as 'The Birthing House' (which I really enjoyed) then 'The Orphan' should make for some chilling reading and will definitely be read at some point soon.

What about you guys though? Do any of these books tickle your fancy? Leave comments in the usual place if they do... ;o) 

'The Charnel God' - Clark Ashton Smith

So I was mooching around on Amazon 'New and Used' yesterday, having a look at how much I could pick up second hand Fantasy Masterworks for. Yep, I'm still on the lookout for those books (definitely a long game this one…) and Amazon is a good place to start - a little too easy perhaps but that's another story. I'd never read anything by Clark Ashton Smith so was quite pleased to see that 'Emperor of Dreams' has gone down in price from 'Wow that's extortionate!' to 'Hmmm, might just have to treat myself to that at some point…' I wanted to read something now though (dammit!) and a little more online mooching led me to this site where I managed to download a whole load of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories. Where does a guy begin when faced with a lot of short stories and no idea where to start? In my case, I will invariably go for the story with the coolest sounding name and so my 'Clark Ashton Smith Reading' began with 'The Charnel God'…

"And all who die within the walls of the city are sacred to Mordiggian. Even the kings and the optimates, at death, are delivered into the hands of his muffled priests. It is the law and the custom. A little while and the priests will come for your bride."

"But Elaith is not dead," protested the youth Phariom for the third or fourth time, in piteous desperation…'

The more I read, the more I find myself after a baited hook that will catch me as quickly as possible. I don't know about you but I just don't have the time these days to wait and see if a story will catch the imagination. It's not that I won't give a book a chance, some books ultimately prove that they're worth persevering with. I just want it to do its job as quickly as possible. 'The Charnel God' does an admirable job, of baiting that hook, within a paragraph. A beautiful bride is about to be offered up to a hungry god; can her husband exploit the one loophole that might save her? Tell me that you read that paragraph and didn't want to find out what happened to Elaith. I wanted to know and I didn't stop reading until I found out. I'm not sure whether the conclusion to the tale was predictable or not (more on that in a bit) but the experience as a whole was dark and richly satisfying. I don't think I would want to read more than one short story in a sitting but I will be reading more.

A matter of life and death is playing out on the dark streets of Zul-Bha-Sair but it feels like the city itself takes centre stage as a fine example of how Ashton Smith can create a setting steeped in myth and dark legend. Phariom certainly spends enough time wondering around the streets while waiting to breach the temple of Mordiggian. This did make me wonder if the story should have been balanced a little more in favour of the plot but I couldn't really complain all that much when I got to wonder 'the gloomy, serpentine streets of Zul-Bha-Sair' with Phariom. 

'The sun had risen above the over jutting houses, but it seemed to him that there was no light, other than a lost and doleful glimmering such as might descend into mortuary depths. The people, it may have been, were much like other people, but he saw them under a malefic aspect, as if they were ghouls and demons that went to and fro on the ghastly errands of a necropolis.'

I like what Ashton Smith does here, basically saying that the city is a dark and gloomy place, with those over jutting houses, but a lot of this is down to Phariom's state of mind (and you can't really blame him for that). A great way to get double the insight for the price of one paragraph.

Like I said, I thought that Phariom perhaps spent a little too long wondering the streets, mention of 'furious, aimless haste' felt rather apt but the cityscape is worth it, giving the first time reader (me!) a little insight into Ashton Smith's world as well as the city itself. It's when we get to the temple itself that the plot decides to make an appearance with a nice twist that renders a seemingly straightforward tale a little more interesting.  Abnon-Tha, 'sorcerer and necromancer', is looking to double cross the priesthood of Mordiggian and this leads him into direct confrontation with Phariom (thanks to his apprentice taking a keen interest in the body of Elaith). There are some very tense moments here that are geared to make the finale as exciting as possible but the arrival of Mordiggian just overshadows everything, quite literally…

'Its form was that of a worm-shapen column, huge as a dragon, its further coils still issuing from the gloom of the corridor; but it changed from moment to moment, swirling and spinning as if alive with the vortical energies of dark eons. Briefly it took the semblance of some demoniac giant with eyeless head and limbless body; and then, leaping and spreading like smoky fire, it swept forward into the chamber.'

What an amazing description of something that clearly cannot be described. Something that is clearly holding a larger part of itself outside of human comprehension. As is right and proper in a pulp tale like this, the villains of the piece meet their end but I really wasn't sure about Phariom and Elaith being allowed to leave. Was it predictable that the 'good guys' win through? Or was it a bit more of a surprise, given the dark environs that they had found themselves in? I'm going to have to give that one some more thought…

For now though, 'The Charnel God' was a lovely slice of the darkest fantasy and I can see myself going back for another helping sooner rather than later.

The 'Dogsitting...' Catch-Up Post!

This post should have gone up yesterday but, to be honest, a day trip to Brighton beats blogging every time, even when it rains for large chunks of the day... :o) I didn't find any of the second hand bookshops I'd heard were in Brighton but watching Hope clean up on the 2p machines pretty much made up for that (there will be other times for bookshop hunting...) And today sees me dogsitting for a friend, not a hard job as the dogs seem to be catching up on their sleep right now. I like dogs :o)

So where does that leave the blog then? Well, everything gets bumped back a day which gives me a little extra time to make inroads to 'King of Thorns' (which is great by the way) and a couple of other books that I want to talk about here. What are they? Wait and see... :o)

In the meantime, my latest 'Black Company Re-Read' post went up on Tor.com yesterday and it would be totally remiss of me if I didn't link to it from here. Have a click Here if you want to read what I have to say about 'Shadow Games', a whole new chapter in the history of the Black Company and a step forward towards the big finale in Khatovar. Only five more books to go...

Short Story Sunday, ‘Nyarlathotep’ - H.P. Lovecraft.

So, guess which word I will mostly be copying and pasting over the course of this post...?  I tried to read 'The Call of Cthulhu and other Weird Stories' all in one chunk, when I was doing the other blog, but swiftly got bogged down in a set of stories that all felt the same. A man sees something that destroys his sanity and the story ends with him either about to kill himself or ruminating on matters beyond mortal understanding. I love Lovecraft's fiction but there is only so much of it that I can read in one sitting. A bite sized chunk for a bite sized post though? I can do that and ‘Nyarlathotep’ barely registers as a bite sized chunk in any case, weighing in at a painfully slender three pages.

‘Nyarlathotep’ is an odd one to call, being an introduction to one of Lovecraft’s pantheon as well as being the tale of a man caught in Nyarlathotep’s spell. You look at the length of this tale and wonder if there is enough room for either objective, let alone both, but it soon becomes clear that Lovecraft knows what he is up to.

‘… everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt.’

Starting things off on such a grim note, and then introducing this entity, really sets the tone of the piece; both in terms of background and an ominous promise of something that we can’t quite place, until it is far too late. Nyarlathotep is a messenger (or a harbinger of something…), arriving at the very point that humanity needs to hear what he has to say. And that’s the thing, mankind (as encapsulated by our narrator, who talks of ‘static electricity’ and ‘imposture’) clearly cannot understand the message and must pay the consequence.

And what a consequence… It is here that the story (for me) dissolves into a mass of apocalyptic imagery that suggested time travel but is also perhaps the narrator having his eyes opened to what lies beyond the narrow frame of human vision. It gets really weird here with the ‘revolting graveyard of the universe’ laid bare for the reader. This is powerful stuff with talk of ‘corpses of dead worlds’ and ‘charnel winds that brush the pallid stars’. If that wasn’t bad enough, this crescendo of imagery builds up to a point where Lovecraft feels that we are finally ready to learn just what Nyarlathotep actually is; a revelation that didn’t surprise me but was none the less powerful for it.

I’ve read several of Lovecraft’s stories but ‘Nyarlathotep’ is the one, for me, that really lets us know what his mythos is all about. Life is ultimately fruitless and governed over by gods that are indifferent to our presence at best, if they even know we are there at all (‘blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles’). Not a Sunday morning read then if you’ve had a heavy Saturday night but one I would recommend you read if you want a strange slice of weird horror…

Some More Quick Thoughts - 'Dredd' (2012)

Some things never change… I will always be the last person to see a film and very much the last person to blog about it afterwards. I get there in the end though.

The conversation about 'Dredd' has moved on from the film itself and is now firmly in the territory of 'Will there be a sequel? Please let there be a sequel…' Having watched the film on DVD a few times now (no worrying about 3D here, stupid 3D…) I'm very much in that camp; hopefully it will happen.

I'm a self confessed fan of the comics and I have to say that despite some unfortunate similarities with 'The Raid' (two very similar films just happened to come out the same time) the producers got it absolutely bang on the money here. Shying away from filming an established storyline, from the comic, lets the film stand on it's own two feet and avoids any of the pitfalls that the Stallone version (fun but horribly, horribly flawed) fell into. If there is a sequel then maybe that will be the time to look at something like 'Judge Death' (rumoured) or something like that. 

What we have here then is no special event, just another day in the life of a Mega City Judge and that makes the violence all the more depressing somehow. This shit goes on every single day and what Dredd and Anderson are doing to fight it won't even scratch the surface of a huge problem. They fight anyway (for what looks like differing reasons but I actually suspect they're more similar than Dredd would want to admit) and that is where the power in this film comes from. It's a very straightforward story but Karl Urban's Dredd carries it along nicely and Olivia Thirlby's Anderson acts as an effective counterpoint. A naive belief in the law (until Anderson has to actually enforce it) versus an implacable drive to see justice done.

Going back to the Stallone version for a second, I thought the only thing they did right there was the backdrop that it was all set against. It was proper Mega City One just like in the comics and that was cool. 'Dredd' moves away from this backdrop entirely with a grim and bleak cityscape that is totally different yet somehow encapsulates just what Mega City One is all about; a refuge in a nuclear desert where the only release for the populace seems to be violent acts of crime. Very much like Elephant & Castle, in London, but without the nuclear fallout. That gritty backdrop suits the underlying tone of the film far better than a futuristic sci-fi cityscape ever would have done.

It's like a whole new version of 'Judge Dredd' then with enough nods to the original (Chopper and 'The Krysler Mark' were two that I spotted) to keep people like me happy. I've got all my fingers crossed for a sequel and I wouldn't mind seeing more of Urban's Dredd in comics (I think that IDW missed a trick here…)

'Scorched Earth' (Nick Kyme, Black Library) ), Some Quick Thoughts on an Extract.

When I was offered the chance to review an extract from 'Scorched Earth' I couldn't help but say yes; mostly because I'm a sucker for the 'Horus Heresy' series (this is the closest I've got to one of their limited edition novellas) but also because it's fast becoming a habit to read stuff off my phone. There was also the fact that I have never reviewed an extract of something before and was interested to see how it would pan out on the page. Before we get started on that though, lets have some blurb for 'Scorched Earth' so we can place the extract in a wider context...




Nearly a quarter of a million loyal Space Marines lost their lives on Isstvan V – the Dropsite Massacre lasted only a few hours, and yet the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders were slaughtered by those they had once called kin. With the disappearance of their primarch weighing heavily upon their hearts, Ra’stan and Usabius of the XVIIIth Legion leave behind their fellow survivors and strike out into the Urgall Depression. Their mission: to find what, if anything, remains of mighty Vulkan...

‘I am a Space Marine of the XVIII Legion Salamanders, one of the Fire-born and true son of Vulkan, and for the first time in my life I know despair.’

The extract places us right in the middle of the ‘Dropsite Massacre’, on Istvaan, where Salamanders Ra’stan and Usabius are searching for the Primarch Vulkan whilst trying to stay alive. After reading more ‘impersonal’ recounts, in other books, this extract is a real breath of fresh air in that it deposits you right in the middle of this surpremely traumatic event. Ra’stan is fighting for his life but can’t quite believe it is happening. As a loyal marine, he never thought he would fight his own kind and Kyme’s portrayal of the aftermath, of the massacre, matches the turmoil happening in Ra’stan’s head. Everything is debris and nothing ever will be the same again.

The extract is very fast paced, not pulling a single punch, and Kyme’s prose makes it very easy to keep reading; engaging characters in a situation where you have to see how it is resolved. Having said that, the title of a forthcoming ‘Horus Heresy’ tale does give that away but I don’t think fans are going to mind too much about that.

Based on this extract, I think that if I had been given the whole book to review, I would have probably read the whole of ‘Scorched Earth’ in one sitting. I had a lot of fun reading and now I find myself in the position where I want to carry on. Maybe one day... :o)