Update

I recently attended the Gollancz Autumn Party 2008 (with fellow bloggers Deornoth and MinDonner, to give them their Westeros.org handles), which was a very pleasant evening rendered more pleasant by free wine and the proximity of the pub for when the function ended. I finished up the evening propping up the bar discussing American politics with Chris Wooding, which was interesting if random (neither of us being American). I met a lot of authors, including mildly embarrassingly some I hadn't read before (Graham Joyce, Robert Holdstock, Lisa Tuttle) and some who haven't been published yet (Stephen Deas) and renewed acquaintances from last year with Adam Roberts, David Devereux and the omnipresent Joe Abercrombie. I also met some of the team from Orbit UK and the head of Telos Books, David Howe (whose name may be familiar as a frequent Doctor Who writer), as well as several writers from SFX Magazine. There were actually so many writers around it was impossible to meet them all, and I sadly missed Ian McDonald and SF ubercritic John Clute. It was all a lot of fun, and more enjoyable than last year (where I had to travel for 15 hours to get there: this year it was more like 50 minutes).

Anyway, there are now several 'ongoing' review projects on the blog: over the next few weeks I hope to cover the remaining volumes of The Wheel of Time and the remaining seasons of Babylon 5. I'm going to intermixing the Jordan reread with some new material, such as reviews of Peter F. Hamilton's new book, The Temporal Void, and ARCs of the aforementioned Stephen Deas debut, The Adamantine Palace, and Adam Roberts' latest, Yellow Blue Tibia. Sadly, the Sandman reread has gone on hold as I've exhausted the volumes I currently own. I don't expect to get back to that until the New Year.

On the gaming front, I am currently playing Westeros: Total War. No doubt that will cause quite a few people to go, "Huh?" This is a user-created free mod for the game Medieval II: Total War which allows you to fight for control of the Seven Kingdoms. It is a very early beta release and not all features are implemented, but the game is already highly polished, as I hope you can see:

If you want to join in the fun, grab the beta from here and the patch from here.