Like many, I have found this season of Battlestar Galactica to be pretty disappointing. After a strong start that gave us some of the best episodes in the entire series, things seemed to deflate a lot. The writers didn't really seem to know where to go next with the story, putting Baltar on the basestar and then not really using him much, whilst the Galactica crew seemed to lurch from one bland crisis-of-the-week episode to the next. Now the season has concluded with four episodes which have been more interesting, whilst still not constituting a true return to form.
Maelstrom was heavily pre-hyped as the most shocking episode ever in the show's history. Mostly a character piece, it focused on Starbuck and her background, who's been startlingly under-used in Season 3. Her oft-mentioned destiny plays a key role in the episode, and some interesting minor details that first turned up way back at the start of Season 2 were used to further her storyline in an intriguing manner. Unlike most of the rest of the episodes this year, Maelstrom was pretty well-written, with no ham-fisted editing to wreck the pace of the episode. The ending had been spoiled months in advance, but even so it was pretty startling stuff, even if there was something very suspicious about it. Nevertheless, some strong acting and superlative CGI rounded off a worthwhile episode.
The Son Also Rises examines the aftermath of the startling episode before it and addresses the development of the fleet's nascent legal system in the face of Baltar's forthcoming trial. For an episode many feared would degenerate into BSG Law, it actually turned out to be quite good. Pretty much the entire episode lives or dies on Mark Shepard's performance as the lawyer Lampkin, and he delivers an outstanding portrayal with some exceptional dialogue of the kind this show used to deliver weekly, but has tailed off in the latest season.
The two-part episode Crossroads is a somewhat unusual season finale. Whilst the trial of Baltar delivers some good acting and some strong dialogue, it hardly seems the stuff of the major dramatic paradigm shifts that BSG excels in its season and mid-season cliffhangers. However, what at first seems to be a minor subplot about Colonel Tigh cracking up due to stress and guilt over his wife's death suddenly turns out to be of critical importance to the series. The final twenty minutes of the second part are pretty dramatic, jaw-dropping stuff which I'm pretty certain will leave half the audience convinced BSG has lost the plot for good, and the other half confirmed in their belief that this is the best show on television. Whilst I found the finale to be excellent, both of the big revelations at the end seem to be filled with plot holes of varying degrees, and it will be interesting to see how these are resolved. I'm also uncertain about the last show of the finale, which uses some slightly dodgy CGI and over-the-top music in a manner more befitting The Matrix than the show's normal realistic approach. However, the finale still achieves its goals of raising questions the audience will be desperate to learn the answers to, although we'll have a long wait for Season 4 to find out.
317: Maelstrom ****
318: The Son Also Rises ****
319: Crossroads, Part 1 ****
320: Crossroads, Part 2 ****
Forthcoming: a Battlestar Galactica TV movie based around the story of the Pegasus will air in the autumn of 2007. Season 4 will debut in January 2008. Season 3 continues on Sky One in the UK for the next several weeks and will be released on DVD in August 2007.
Thursday, 29 March 2007
Saturday, 24 March 2007
Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
This time last year a certain buzz was building up around the debut novel by a new American fantasy author named Scott Lynch. The Lies of Locke Lamora was preceded by an enormous amount of pre-release publicity on both sides of the Atlantic and attracted glowing reviews (a notable exception being an irate critic who claimed that anyone who liked the book had been bribed, leading to a lengthy and somewhat amusing blog-war, but that's by the by). Red Seas Under Red Skies is the eagerly awaited sequel, and the second novel in The Gentleman Bastard sequence.
Two years have passed since the events of The Lies of Locke Lamora. Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen are now residents of the city-state of Tal Verrar where, as you may expect, they are running another extremely elaborate long con, this time designed to rid the wealthy owner of the Sinspire of his worldly goods. As in Lies, events beyond their control intervene and, after a long and complicated chain of events, they find themselves at sea commanding a pirate vessel, despite the fact they know next to nothing about sailing. As readers of Lies may be able to tell, the result is an extremely densely-plotted story of cons-within-cons, double crosses, reversals and betrayals, with Lynch adding some new strings to his bow by describing some of the finest fantasy naval action since Paul Kearney's excellent Monarchies of God series. Oh, and cat-lovers may find themselves enjoying this book quite a lot.
It would be very easy to simply do a 'flight sim expansion pack review', which essentially boils down to, "If you enjoyed the original, you'll enjoy this." Simply put, Red Seas contains pretty much the same type of storytelling, the same attitude and the same humour as Lies. However, the book is in many ways an improvement. The city-state of Tal Verrar, with its Elderglass reefs and sculpted islands, is a rival to Camorr in atmosphere and detail, although the book spends less time in its city than Lies does. The smaller towns that are visited in the book are similarly brought to life vividly, as is the pirate haven of Port Prodigal, and Lynch hits the right note in describing the ships in the book as miniature travelling societies, each with their own quirks and memorable characters. The biggest success in the novel, and a critical one for the continued success of the series overall, is the deepening of the friendship between Locke and Jean, moving from the simple, well-founded loyalty shown in Lies to a much more complex game of give-and-take between the two. However, Lynch also brings in some exquisitely-portrayed new characters, several of whom even manage to survive the carnage of the story; Lynch's George RR Martin-style ability to kill off characters just after he's made you deeply emotionally invested in them is somewhat more restrained this time around, but that just makes it hurt more when he does it. There's also a lot of pipe-laying going on for future books in the series. New enemies are made, old enemies are touched upon, new allies are acquired and new mysteries are introduced, but Red Seas remains at heart a resolutely stand-alone novel. Reading Lies is certainly recommended, but is not essential to enjoy the story.
Turning to the negative, there are a few niggles which did concern me whilst reading the book, although these are of a somewhat trivial nature. I must confess that whilst reading the novel I felt the first third or so of the story was essentially a retelling of Lies with the names changed: the Gentleman Bastards plan a con, things seem to be going their way, complications ensue (of a similar nature) and they have to use their ingenuity to win free. However, the second our heroes hit the sea the story transforms into a somewhat different tale, and fears that Lynch is repeating himself are eliminated. Still, some readers may feel that the start of the book is over-familiar. This is going to be even more of a problem for those who read Lies and Red Seas back to back. On the other hand, some may feel the opening of the book being similar to the first one is no more of a problem than, say, the start of each Bond movie following a similar formula. Also, as with Lies, Red Seas is based in part around the subversion of traditional fantasy tropes, which makes it slightly more noticeable when the book employs these tropes without any development of them (the extremely fortuitous escape of a character from certain death at the end of the novel may actually be bordering on cliche). Again, those seeking to enjoy the story for what it is will probably take little notice of this. Finally, a fairly mystifying subplot is resolved in a rather unsatisfactory manner at the end of the book, and the events in the finale are dependent on several characters we only meet a few chapters before the end, when they could have been established much earlier. Readers of Lies may also feel that the opening chapters do not deliver on their promise that the events of Lies will tie directly into the storyline of the novel. None of these problems are critical by any means, but they are slight irritations marring an otherwise superb story.
Elsewhere, Lynch improves on areas that in Lies were found wanting. Those who found the numerous flashbacks in Lies distracting will also be relieved to know that the flashbacks are much less numerous in Red Seas, are more directly tied to the main storyline and pretty much disappear about halfway in the volume. Thus Red Seas is much better paced than Lies and, despite being longer, actually feels like a shorter, faster-paced read. By the way, the page-counts on Amazon.co.uk seem to be way off on this novel: my advance copy is 650 pages of text of roughly the same size and spacing as the release trade paperback edition of Lies.
Red Seas Under Red Skies (****), despite a few rough edges, is a marked improvement on The Lies of Locke Lamora (itself a fine debut) and confirms Scott Lynch's place as one of the foremost new fantasy authors on the block. The novel will be published in the UK on 21 June by Gollancz in both hardcover and trade paperback editions. The US edition will by published by Bantam on 31 July in hardcover. Sandstorm Reviews have a typically less rambling review than mine at this location. The author also has a website here. Book 3 of The Gentleman Bastard sequence will be entitled The Republic of Thieves and should be out in mid-2008. I look forward to it immensely.
Two years have passed since the events of The Lies of Locke Lamora. Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen are now residents of the city-state of Tal Verrar where, as you may expect, they are running another extremely elaborate long con, this time designed to rid the wealthy owner of the Sinspire of his worldly goods. As in Lies, events beyond their control intervene and, after a long and complicated chain of events, they find themselves at sea commanding a pirate vessel, despite the fact they know next to nothing about sailing. As readers of Lies may be able to tell, the result is an extremely densely-plotted story of cons-within-cons, double crosses, reversals and betrayals, with Lynch adding some new strings to his bow by describing some of the finest fantasy naval action since Paul Kearney's excellent Monarchies of God series. Oh, and cat-lovers may find themselves enjoying this book quite a lot.
It would be very easy to simply do a 'flight sim expansion pack review', which essentially boils down to, "If you enjoyed the original, you'll enjoy this." Simply put, Red Seas contains pretty much the same type of storytelling, the same attitude and the same humour as Lies. However, the book is in many ways an improvement. The city-state of Tal Verrar, with its Elderglass reefs and sculpted islands, is a rival to Camorr in atmosphere and detail, although the book spends less time in its city than Lies does. The smaller towns that are visited in the book are similarly brought to life vividly, as is the pirate haven of Port Prodigal, and Lynch hits the right note in describing the ships in the book as miniature travelling societies, each with their own quirks and memorable characters. The biggest success in the novel, and a critical one for the continued success of the series overall, is the deepening of the friendship between Locke and Jean, moving from the simple, well-founded loyalty shown in Lies to a much more complex game of give-and-take between the two. However, Lynch also brings in some exquisitely-portrayed new characters, several of whom even manage to survive the carnage of the story; Lynch's George RR Martin-style ability to kill off characters just after he's made you deeply emotionally invested in them is somewhat more restrained this time around, but that just makes it hurt more when he does it. There's also a lot of pipe-laying going on for future books in the series. New enemies are made, old enemies are touched upon, new allies are acquired and new mysteries are introduced, but Red Seas remains at heart a resolutely stand-alone novel. Reading Lies is certainly recommended, but is not essential to enjoy the story.
Turning to the negative, there are a few niggles which did concern me whilst reading the book, although these are of a somewhat trivial nature. I must confess that whilst reading the novel I felt the first third or so of the story was essentially a retelling of Lies with the names changed: the Gentleman Bastards plan a con, things seem to be going their way, complications ensue (of a similar nature) and they have to use their ingenuity to win free. However, the second our heroes hit the sea the story transforms into a somewhat different tale, and fears that Lynch is repeating himself are eliminated. Still, some readers may feel that the start of the book is over-familiar. This is going to be even more of a problem for those who read Lies and Red Seas back to back. On the other hand, some may feel the opening of the book being similar to the first one is no more of a problem than, say, the start of each Bond movie following a similar formula. Also, as with Lies, Red Seas is based in part around the subversion of traditional fantasy tropes, which makes it slightly more noticeable when the book employs these tropes without any development of them (the extremely fortuitous escape of a character from certain death at the end of the novel may actually be bordering on cliche). Again, those seeking to enjoy the story for what it is will probably take little notice of this. Finally, a fairly mystifying subplot is resolved in a rather unsatisfactory manner at the end of the book, and the events in the finale are dependent on several characters we only meet a few chapters before the end, when they could have been established much earlier. Readers of Lies may also feel that the opening chapters do not deliver on their promise that the events of Lies will tie directly into the storyline of the novel. None of these problems are critical by any means, but they are slight irritations marring an otherwise superb story.
Elsewhere, Lynch improves on areas that in Lies were found wanting. Those who found the numerous flashbacks in Lies distracting will also be relieved to know that the flashbacks are much less numerous in Red Seas, are more directly tied to the main storyline and pretty much disappear about halfway in the volume. Thus Red Seas is much better paced than Lies and, despite being longer, actually feels like a shorter, faster-paced read. By the way, the page-counts on Amazon.co.uk seem to be way off on this novel: my advance copy is 650 pages of text of roughly the same size and spacing as the release trade paperback edition of Lies.
Red Seas Under Red Skies (****), despite a few rough edges, is a marked improvement on The Lies of Locke Lamora (itself a fine debut) and confirms Scott Lynch's place as one of the foremost new fantasy authors on the block. The novel will be published in the UK on 21 June by Gollancz in both hardcover and trade paperback editions. The US edition will by published by Bantam on 31 July in hardcover. Sandstorm Reviews have a typically less rambling review than mine at this location. The author also has a website here. Book 3 of The Gentleman Bastard sequence will be entitled The Republic of Thieves and should be out in mid-2008. I look forward to it immensely.
Sunday, 18 March 2007
Black Man by Richard Morgan
The year is 2107. A century from now, the United States no longer exists. Religious and political strife has torn the country into three nations: the high-tech, rich Pacific Rim; the God-fearing, ultra-right-wing Republic (aka 'Jesusland'); and the liberal, UN-aligned North Atlantic Union. China is now the world's dominant economic superpower, whilst Europe and India's political and economic might continues to expand. After (another) lengthy period of war and turmoil, the Middle-East is relatively quiet. On Mars mankind's efforts to tame the Red Planet continue unabated. Forty years earlier, genetically-engineered supermen known as 'thirteens' were created to serve as unstoppable soldiers. But, in the wake of America's collapse, they are now feared and hunted. A few thirteens serve the UN, hunting down their fellows, but most have fled to Mars, or turned to crime.
Carl Marsalis is a black man in every sense of the word: a thirteen, a 'twist' who genetic pattern is based on that of the ultimate human alpha-males who became extinct twenty thousand years ago. Whilst most of the world doesn't pay a second glance at his skin colour, in the increasingly regressive Republic it is a target for prejudice and hatred. Luckily, Marsalis is more than capable of looking after himself. When his usual employers hang him out to dry after he is thrown in a Florida prison, he takes up an offer from the Martian colonial office: to hunt down another thirteen who has come back from Mars and embarked on a bloody and apparently senseless killing spree.
Black Man is the fifth novel by British SF author Richard Morgan. It is set in the same universe as his Takeshi Kovacs series (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies), but roughly 400 years earlier. It is a totally stand-alone work: you may glean a few insights from having read the Kovacs books first (particularly the source of the increasingly advanced technology that is being shipped back from Mars), but the book stands up by itself. Which is just as well, as it is by far his finest book to date and sets the bar improbably high for all other science fiction released in 2007.
The book has been retitled Thirteen (or Th1rte3n according to the cover) for the American market and it's easy to see why. This is an incendiary novel that absolutely pulls no punches and takes no prisoners. Morgan analyses the problems he sees in the USA's political and sociological make-up and uses them skillfully to tear the country apart. Not since Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy have I seen an author so convincingly show what can happen to a nation, to a mass of people, and how they develop. As an SF book relegated to the darker corners of bookshops, it's likely that the book will escape widespread scrutiny, but I can imagine this book being banned and then burned in certain parts of the American South, which it is not particularly flattering to (although the rest of the human race doesn't exactly come off lightly either). Morgan has said previously that he doesn't pay as much attention to his backdrops as he does to his characters and plots, but in Black Man the worldbuilding is exemplery. The San Francisco of Altered Carbon could feel somewhat cold and sterile at times, but the same city in Black Man is a vivid, three-dimensional place which fairly leaps of the page, as does 22nd Century New York, Miami and the other key locations in the novel.
The thriller element of the story is compelling. Morgan knows how to set up an intricate web of intrigue and mystery and when to make new revelations and bring in new characters. The world that Marsalis inhabits is a murky one of dubious loyalties and betrayals, through which a classic noir story unfolds (albeit a noir story with moments of extreme ultraviolence, a pretty explicit sex scene and a lot of swearing). Unlike the Kovacs novels, Black Man is told in the third person and there are several key POV characters as well as Marsalis, particularly the Martian colonial office agent Svegi Ertekin and her partner, Tom Norton. All are expertly drawn and deconstructed by the author. Marsalis himself is a fascinating character and hopefully Morgan will one day write books further exploring him further.
Black Man (*****) is everything modern SF should be: edgy, intelligent, compelling and deep. It is without hesitation I give it the first five-starred review of a book since I started this blog. The novel will be published in hardcover in the UK by Gollancz on 17 May and in hardcover in the USA by Del Rey on 26 June. The author has a website at this location. Sandstorm Reviews has an excellent (and far more concise) review of the novel here.
Carl Marsalis is a black man in every sense of the word: a thirteen, a 'twist' who genetic pattern is based on that of the ultimate human alpha-males who became extinct twenty thousand years ago. Whilst most of the world doesn't pay a second glance at his skin colour, in the increasingly regressive Republic it is a target for prejudice and hatred. Luckily, Marsalis is more than capable of looking after himself. When his usual employers hang him out to dry after he is thrown in a Florida prison, he takes up an offer from the Martian colonial office: to hunt down another thirteen who has come back from Mars and embarked on a bloody and apparently senseless killing spree.
Black Man is the fifth novel by British SF author Richard Morgan. It is set in the same universe as his Takeshi Kovacs series (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies), but roughly 400 years earlier. It is a totally stand-alone work: you may glean a few insights from having read the Kovacs books first (particularly the source of the increasingly advanced technology that is being shipped back from Mars), but the book stands up by itself. Which is just as well, as it is by far his finest book to date and sets the bar improbably high for all other science fiction released in 2007.
The book has been retitled Thirteen (or Th1rte3n according to the cover) for the American market and it's easy to see why. This is an incendiary novel that absolutely pulls no punches and takes no prisoners. Morgan analyses the problems he sees in the USA's political and sociological make-up and uses them skillfully to tear the country apart. Not since Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy have I seen an author so convincingly show what can happen to a nation, to a mass of people, and how they develop. As an SF book relegated to the darker corners of bookshops, it's likely that the book will escape widespread scrutiny, but I can imagine this book being banned and then burned in certain parts of the American South, which it is not particularly flattering to (although the rest of the human race doesn't exactly come off lightly either). Morgan has said previously that he doesn't pay as much attention to his backdrops as he does to his characters and plots, but in Black Man the worldbuilding is exemplery. The San Francisco of Altered Carbon could feel somewhat cold and sterile at times, but the same city in Black Man is a vivid, three-dimensional place which fairly leaps of the page, as does 22nd Century New York, Miami and the other key locations in the novel.
The thriller element of the story is compelling. Morgan knows how to set up an intricate web of intrigue and mystery and when to make new revelations and bring in new characters. The world that Marsalis inhabits is a murky one of dubious loyalties and betrayals, through which a classic noir story unfolds (albeit a noir story with moments of extreme ultraviolence, a pretty explicit sex scene and a lot of swearing). Unlike the Kovacs novels, Black Man is told in the third person and there are several key POV characters as well as Marsalis, particularly the Martian colonial office agent Svegi Ertekin and her partner, Tom Norton. All are expertly drawn and deconstructed by the author. Marsalis himself is a fascinating character and hopefully Morgan will one day write books further exploring him further.
Black Man (*****) is everything modern SF should be: edgy, intelligent, compelling and deep. It is without hesitation I give it the first five-starred review of a book since I started this blog. The novel will be published in hardcover in the UK by Gollancz on 17 May and in hardcover in the USA by Del Rey on 26 June. The author has a website at this location. Sandstorm Reviews has an excellent (and far more concise) review of the novel here.
Saturday, 10 March 2007
The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds
It is the year 2427. The place is the Glitter Band, ten thousand space habitats circling the planet Yellowstone, the golden heart of human space where a multitude of different cultures meet and trade, and a waystop for huge lighthuggers as they slowly traverse the distances between the stars at speeds just below that of light. This is the universe of Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds' critically-acclaimed gothic space opera which has now extended across five novels, two novellas and a short story collection. The Prefect is a stand-alone addition to this excellently-realised future history, taking place approximately a century before the events of Chasm City and Revelation Space itself.
Whilst the planet Yellowstone and its biggest settlement, Chasm City, deal with their own affairs, it falls to the prefects of Panoply to police the vast Glitter Band and its 100 million citizens, who practice the ultimate form of democracy, Demarchism. Every minute dozens of decisions, large and small, are put to the public vote and the people of the Glitter Band spend much of their time engrossed in politics, employing a form of VR known as Abstraction to talk to one another, or choosing to lose themselves in fantastical reflections of the real world. The greatest crime in the Glitter Band is an attempt to deny the will of the people. Voting fraud is a heinous perversion, one which the prefects exist to prevent at all costs.
An apparently routine case of voting fraud leads Tom Dreyfus and his team into a labyrinthe web of plots and conspiracies that threatens to destroy their very way of life. And, as this is a mystery novel, to say any more of the plot would threaten to indulge in spoilers. Suffice to say that the links between The Prefect and the other Revelation Space novels are subtle and numerous. The Prefect in fact occupies a position within its larger series framework similar to the position Steven Erikson's novel Midnight Tides occupies in his Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence: generally a standalone novel, but with equal arguments in favour of reading the book before the others (events in the other novels are clarified by information provided in The Prefect) or afterwards (when the reader understands exactly what will become of this society in the future).
Reynolds is on good form here, although arguably he fails to recapture the immediacy of his finest work, Chasm City. The Prefect is a somewhat more straightforward novel. Although there are several startling, late revelations and plot twists, the reader is in possession of most of the facts reasonably early in the book. Tom Dreyfus also remains a somewhat less complex protagonist then regular Reynolds readers may be used to, but as usual the author has a few aces up his sleeve which force the reader to reassess the character during the novel's conclusion.
In The Prefect Alastair Reynolds executes an enjoyable and extremely fast-paced return to the universe that made his name. The story develops nicely and explodes into a furious page-turning pace in its second half that barely lets up. At the same time Reynolds' ability to conjure up vivid imagery remains intact (one plotline is not for the squeamish or for anyone with a fear of knives), as does his assured grasp of his universe and the remarkable cultures and ideas that make it up. The book is not without its flaws - in particular, those who have already read Absolution Gap and know of Reynolds' fondness for ambiguous endings may be better-prepared for the conclusion than others - and there is perhaps a feeling that we are being set up for a sequel at the end, but these are fairly minor concerns. The Prefect is Reynolds' best novel since at least Redemption Ark, and is an engrossing read.
The Prefect (****) will be published by Gollancz in the United Kingdom in hardcover on 2 April 2007. The author has a website at this location.
Whilst the planet Yellowstone and its biggest settlement, Chasm City, deal with their own affairs, it falls to the prefects of Panoply to police the vast Glitter Band and its 100 million citizens, who practice the ultimate form of democracy, Demarchism. Every minute dozens of decisions, large and small, are put to the public vote and the people of the Glitter Band spend much of their time engrossed in politics, employing a form of VR known as Abstraction to talk to one another, or choosing to lose themselves in fantastical reflections of the real world. The greatest crime in the Glitter Band is an attempt to deny the will of the people. Voting fraud is a heinous perversion, one which the prefects exist to prevent at all costs.
An apparently routine case of voting fraud leads Tom Dreyfus and his team into a labyrinthe web of plots and conspiracies that threatens to destroy their very way of life. And, as this is a mystery novel, to say any more of the plot would threaten to indulge in spoilers. Suffice to say that the links between The Prefect and the other Revelation Space novels are subtle and numerous. The Prefect in fact occupies a position within its larger series framework similar to the position Steven Erikson's novel Midnight Tides occupies in his Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence: generally a standalone novel, but with equal arguments in favour of reading the book before the others (events in the other novels are clarified by information provided in The Prefect) or afterwards (when the reader understands exactly what will become of this society in the future).
Reynolds is on good form here, although arguably he fails to recapture the immediacy of his finest work, Chasm City. The Prefect is a somewhat more straightforward novel. Although there are several startling, late revelations and plot twists, the reader is in possession of most of the facts reasonably early in the book. Tom Dreyfus also remains a somewhat less complex protagonist then regular Reynolds readers may be used to, but as usual the author has a few aces up his sleeve which force the reader to reassess the character during the novel's conclusion.
In The Prefect Alastair Reynolds executes an enjoyable and extremely fast-paced return to the universe that made his name. The story develops nicely and explodes into a furious page-turning pace in its second half that barely lets up. At the same time Reynolds' ability to conjure up vivid imagery remains intact (one plotline is not for the squeamish or for anyone with a fear of knives), as does his assured grasp of his universe and the remarkable cultures and ideas that make it up. The book is not without its flaws - in particular, those who have already read Absolution Gap and know of Reynolds' fondness for ambiguous endings may be better-prepared for the conclusion than others - and there is perhaps a feeling that we are being set up for a sequel at the end, but these are fairly minor concerns. The Prefect is Reynolds' best novel since at least Redemption Ark, and is an engrossing read.
The Prefect (****) will be published by Gollancz in the United Kingdom in hardcover on 2 April 2007. The author has a website at this location.
Tuesday, 6 March 2007
Another Update
Before updating what's new with me and SF&F, a brief pause of respect at the news that Leigh Eddings has passed away. The wife of fantasy author David Eddings, Leigh was the co-author with her husband on all of his fantasy novels, uncredited up until the 1995 release of Belgarath the Sorcerer before she got a joint credit with him on their later novels. All-in-all, she co-wrote twenty-two books with her husband. Leigh passed away at the age of 69 on 28 February following a series of strokes. Condolences to her family.
After that subdued note, I received my first-ever review copies of books from Gollancz today, courtesy of Simon Spanton. Many thanks to Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist who put them in touch with me. The books in question are:
Selling Out by Justina Robson (Book 2 of the Quantum Gravity series, the sequel to Keeping It Real)
Black Man by Richard Morgan (a new standalone novel from the author of Altered Carbon)
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (a highly-recommended novel by a leading Polish fantasist)
The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds (a new standlone SF novel set in the Revelation Space universe)
I think The Prefect will be the first book I check out, on the grounds that his last Revelation Space stand-alone novel was the masterful Chasm City. I think I'll have to pick up Keeping It Real as well before trying Selling Out.
After that subdued note, I received my first-ever review copies of books from Gollancz today, courtesy of Simon Spanton. Many thanks to Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist who put them in touch with me. The books in question are:
Selling Out by Justina Robson (Book 2 of the Quantum Gravity series, the sequel to Keeping It Real)
Black Man by Richard Morgan (a new standalone novel from the author of Altered Carbon)
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (a highly-recommended novel by a leading Polish fantasist)
The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds (a new standlone SF novel set in the Revelation Space universe)
I think The Prefect will be the first book I check out, on the grounds that his last Revelation Space stand-alone novel was the masterful Chasm City. I think I'll have to pick up Keeping It Real as well before trying Selling Out.
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Galacticawatch 3
Following a month's break over Christmas, BSG returned for the rest of its third season. Following in the footsteps of the rest of the season, this latest batch of episode has continued BSG's insistence on being extremely and frustratingly variable in tone and quality.
Rapture picked things up from the mini-cliffhanger, with the Colonials ready to nuke the Temple of the Five to stop the Cylons from finding their way to Earth ahead of them. This cliffhanger is resolved in a fairly logical although surprisingly subdued manner (I was expecting Galactica to just nuke three of the Cylon basestars with no warning). Down on the planet there's fighting between the Cylons and Colonial ground troops and Dee mounts a rescue attempt to recover the wounded Starbuck, whilst Athena boards the Cylon basestar to get her daughter back. There is some very good stuff in this episode (Six breaking Boomer's neck after she goes a bit nuts; Tyrol decking Baltar) but in the main it struggles to make much sense. The explanation for the Eye of Jupiter at the end of the episode feels unconvincing and the supernova sequence, although visually spectacular, doesn't work scientifically. However, the episode is saved by Three's death scene, which is very well acted by Lucy Lawless and Dean Stockwell.
Taking a Break From Your Worries is a much better episode, a real return to form as Adama and Roslin pull out all the stops to get Baltar to confess his crimes, only for Baltar's impressive ability to pin the blame for his mistakes and weaknesses on others to become absolutely awe-inspiring as he twists and lies his way past Adama's best efforts to expose him. James Callis, always one of the show's best actors, is absolutely outstanding in this episode.
The Woman, King, is a much weaker episode, tieing with Hero as weakest episode of the season to date. A lot of characters behave very oddly in this episode, displaying racist sides to them that we've never seen before, and after everything Helo has done to save the fleet in the past it seems highly unlikely that no-one would listen to his concerns. However, even worse is the fact that Helo turned out to be right. Actually having him fall apart and start fantasising about menaces where there are none would have been far more interesting. A very disappointing episode.
A Day in the Life sees Adama confronting memories of his wife whilst Cally and Tyrol's lives are put in danger. This episode is better, with some strong CGI in the rescue sequences and a nice look at Cally and Tyrol's home life. Given how their story was emphasised in the Season 2 finale, it was strange that their relationship hadn't been explored again since the start of the season (although a couple of scenes in Unfinished Business did refer to it).
Dirty Hands is more of an old-school, Season 1-feeling episode showing how life in the fleet actually works. The episode is a bit of a downer, actually, showing that post-New Caprica the fleet is an absolutely appalling state, even compared to what it was before, with people working 12+ hour days, seven days a week, with no breaks or any hope of time off. Its examination of the class structure in the fleet, of the dangers of an inherited caste system unintentionally developing, and of how this can be exploited by an opportunistic politician (or in this case a political prisoner trying to win support and gloss over his past crimes) is surprisingly sophisticated. However, the episode is sunk somewhat by very inconstant characterisation of Roslin (who turns 180 degrees through this episode with no explanation) and through Adama's unusual attitude (do we really believe he'd murder Cally?). The idea from the first season that both characters would at least try to obey the law has long since disappeared by this point, leaving little doubt that the fleet is now under the control of a dictatorship (Roslin, it should be remembered, has never been elected by a public vote), benevolent and well-meaning though it may be. I hope this fact is remembered by the writers as they map out Baltar's trial.
Next week: allegedly the most shocking episode of the entire series to date!
312: Rapture ***
313: Taking a Break From Your Worries ****
314: The Woman, King **
315: A Day in the Life ***
316: Dirty Hands ***
Forthcoming: Maelstrom (04/03/07), The Son Also Rises (11/03/07), Crossroads Part 1 (18/03/07), Crossroads Part 2 (25/03/07).
Rapture picked things up from the mini-cliffhanger, with the Colonials ready to nuke the Temple of the Five to stop the Cylons from finding their way to Earth ahead of them. This cliffhanger is resolved in a fairly logical although surprisingly subdued manner (I was expecting Galactica to just nuke three of the Cylon basestars with no warning). Down on the planet there's fighting between the Cylons and Colonial ground troops and Dee mounts a rescue attempt to recover the wounded Starbuck, whilst Athena boards the Cylon basestar to get her daughter back. There is some very good stuff in this episode (Six breaking Boomer's neck after she goes a bit nuts; Tyrol decking Baltar) but in the main it struggles to make much sense. The explanation for the Eye of Jupiter at the end of the episode feels unconvincing and the supernova sequence, although visually spectacular, doesn't work scientifically. However, the episode is saved by Three's death scene, which is very well acted by Lucy Lawless and Dean Stockwell.
Taking a Break From Your Worries is a much better episode, a real return to form as Adama and Roslin pull out all the stops to get Baltar to confess his crimes, only for Baltar's impressive ability to pin the blame for his mistakes and weaknesses on others to become absolutely awe-inspiring as he twists and lies his way past Adama's best efforts to expose him. James Callis, always one of the show's best actors, is absolutely outstanding in this episode.
The Woman, King, is a much weaker episode, tieing with Hero as weakest episode of the season to date. A lot of characters behave very oddly in this episode, displaying racist sides to them that we've never seen before, and after everything Helo has done to save the fleet in the past it seems highly unlikely that no-one would listen to his concerns. However, even worse is the fact that Helo turned out to be right. Actually having him fall apart and start fantasising about menaces where there are none would have been far more interesting. A very disappointing episode.
A Day in the Life sees Adama confronting memories of his wife whilst Cally and Tyrol's lives are put in danger. This episode is better, with some strong CGI in the rescue sequences and a nice look at Cally and Tyrol's home life. Given how their story was emphasised in the Season 2 finale, it was strange that their relationship hadn't been explored again since the start of the season (although a couple of scenes in Unfinished Business did refer to it).
Dirty Hands is more of an old-school, Season 1-feeling episode showing how life in the fleet actually works. The episode is a bit of a downer, actually, showing that post-New Caprica the fleet is an absolutely appalling state, even compared to what it was before, with people working 12+ hour days, seven days a week, with no breaks or any hope of time off. Its examination of the class structure in the fleet, of the dangers of an inherited caste system unintentionally developing, and of how this can be exploited by an opportunistic politician (or in this case a political prisoner trying to win support and gloss over his past crimes) is surprisingly sophisticated. However, the episode is sunk somewhat by very inconstant characterisation of Roslin (who turns 180 degrees through this episode with no explanation) and through Adama's unusual attitude (do we really believe he'd murder Cally?). The idea from the first season that both characters would at least try to obey the law has long since disappeared by this point, leaving little doubt that the fleet is now under the control of a dictatorship (Roslin, it should be remembered, has never been elected by a public vote), benevolent and well-meaning though it may be. I hope this fact is remembered by the writers as they map out Baltar's trial.
Next week: allegedly the most shocking episode of the entire series to date!
312: Rapture ***
313: Taking a Break From Your Worries ****
314: The Woman, King **
315: A Day in the Life ***
316: Dirty Hands ***
Forthcoming: Maelstrom (04/03/07), The Son Also Rises (11/03/07), Crossroads Part 1 (18/03/07), Crossroads Part 2 (25/03/07).
Thursday, 15 February 2007
What's Cooking
What I'm doing at the moment:
Currently Reading: The Confusion by Neal Stephenson
Currently Watching: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy on DVD, Life on Mars, Rome, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica and Lost on TV.
Currently Playing: Baldur's Gate on PC.
The Confusion is a worthy and surprisingly superior sequel to Stephenson's Quicksilver, displaying Stephenson's trademark humour and eye for detail. The apparently pointless sprawling morass of storylines in Quicksilver has been replaced by a much stronger and focused plot as well.
Watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy again on DVD is an interesting experience. Viewing just one disc a night, spreading it across six nights, is a good way not to get too overwhelmed. Despite some minor flaws, the trilogy is very much an impressive and enthralling viewing experience.
On TV Battlestar Galactica seems to have gotten stuck in the doldrums. I'm hoping it pulls itself together because watching this once-fantastic show fall apart in front of me is a distressing experience. Lost seems to slowly be getting back on track, although I'm not putting money on it getting as good as it was when it started. Heroes continues to impress and Rome gets better with every passing episode. Great stuff. And the new and final season of Life on Mars is also looking very good as well after two episodes (with six more to go).
I played Baldur's Gate when it was first released (a distressing nine years ago) and it's surprising how well it stands up on a re-play. Just a solid RPG experience. I'm hoping to go straight through Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal, so we'll see how that goes. However, there's a fair few games coming out this year I hope to play along the way, such as Jade Empire, Crysis and Dragon Age, so I'm expecting interruptions to this schedule.
Currently Reading: The Confusion by Neal Stephenson
Currently Watching: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy on DVD, Life on Mars, Rome, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica and Lost on TV.
Currently Playing: Baldur's Gate on PC.
The Confusion is a worthy and surprisingly superior sequel to Stephenson's Quicksilver, displaying Stephenson's trademark humour and eye for detail. The apparently pointless sprawling morass of storylines in Quicksilver has been replaced by a much stronger and focused plot as well.
Watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy again on DVD is an interesting experience. Viewing just one disc a night, spreading it across six nights, is a good way not to get too overwhelmed. Despite some minor flaws, the trilogy is very much an impressive and enthralling viewing experience.
On TV Battlestar Galactica seems to have gotten stuck in the doldrums. I'm hoping it pulls itself together because watching this once-fantastic show fall apart in front of me is a distressing experience. Lost seems to slowly be getting back on track, although I'm not putting money on it getting as good as it was when it started. Heroes continues to impress and Rome gets better with every passing episode. Great stuff. And the new and final season of Life on Mars is also looking very good as well after two episodes (with six more to go).
I played Baldur's Gate when it was first released (a distressing nine years ago) and it's surprising how well it stands up on a re-play. Just a solid RPG experience. I'm hoping to go straight through Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal, so we'll see how that goes. However, there's a fair few games coming out this year I hope to play along the way, such as Jade Empire, Crysis and Dragon Age, so I'm expecting interruptions to this schedule.
Sunday, 28 January 2007
Author Profile: Peter F. Hamilton
Peter F. Hamilton is a British writer of science fiction, born in 1960 in Rutland, where he continues to reside. His work falls into two broad categories: near-future thrillers and mysteries exploring high-tech but plausible ideas; and far-future grand space operas, featuring richly detailed fictional universes awash with different alien races and technology based on modern theoretical physics. He began his writing career in 1987 and sold his first short story to Fear magazine in 1988. After several years writing short stories, his first novel, Mindstar Rising, appeared in 1993 and was the first book featuring near-future psychic detective Greg Mandel. Two sequels followed. However, it was Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, which began with The Reality Dysfunction in 1996, which made him a well-known name on the SF stage.
The Greg Mandel Trilogy was an interesting start to Hamilton's career. Set in the 2040s in a Britain devastated by global warming (London has apparently been destroyed by a fusion explosion and the new capital is Peterborough) and then ruined by an oppressive, socialist government, some critics complained it was little more than a right-wing writer's attack on the Labour Party (although the 'New Conservatives' who are trying to restore Britain are hardly painted more sympathetically). More to the point, it established Hamilton's credentials as a writer who enjoyed telling a good, rip-roaring, page-turning story. Although keen to use 'hard science', Hamilton's books have never been about the nitty-gritty details of string theory calculations, instead preferring to show the effects of such science and technology on ordinary people. The Mandel trilogy is a successful work, prefiguring the rise of the SF thriller subgenre of the early 2000s (led by Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City and Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon) and establishing Hamilton as a writer to watch.
That promise was delivered, with interest, in The Night's Dawn Trilogy. Whilst David Brin and Iain Banks had had some success in keeping the original space opera novel alive in the preceding years, it was Night's Dawn that brought it back into vogue. Set in the 27th Century, Hamilton painted a picture of a universe where humanity has spread across 860 worlds, splitting into two divergent strains (the traditional Adamists and the telepathic Edenists) and building vast, sentient space habitats and living starships whilst vast corporations fund the expansion of the human race. On a remote colony world a chance encounter between a low-tech colony and an utterly alien entity unleashes a nightmarish force upon the Confederation which is soon overrunning entire worlds. Night's Dawn is an impressive example of 'genre-bending' and horror and SF collide. The trilogy also established Hamilton as a writer of huge, brick-thick volumes. Whilst the Mandel trilogy had consisted of sensibly-sized 400-page books, each of the Night's Dawn novels extended across 1,200+ pages in paperback and were split in two apiece for American publication.
Hamilton's next two books were related to his grand trilogy. A Second Chance at Eden, published between the second and third volumes, collects several short stories from the Night's Dawn universe and shows a greater range than perhaps Hamilton had evidenced previously, most notably his ability to use different prose styles. His main novels employ a fairly straightforward, somewhat prosaic or 'clean' style to tell the story (with stories this complex, a fancy prose style is the last thing both the author and the reader want to worry about), but his short stories display a greater talent. After the release of The Naked God, Hamilton followed it up with a guide to the series, The Confederation Handbook, which published a lot of the background materials and notes he'd used to create his future history.
With Hamilton now established as a major force in British SF, he chose to move away from his Night's Dawn setting rather than exploit it through further novels. His next book, Fallen Dragon, was a stand-alone novel which postulated that mankind's expansion into space had faltered and run out of steam, leaving dozens of dead-end worlds essentially left to their own devices. Although a clever novel with a great twist ending, Fallen Dragon showed a more melancholy aspect of Hamilton's writing, and was not regarded as much of a success as Night's Dawn.
Hamilton's next work was not very well received. Misspent Youth returns to a near-future setting, but a different continuity to the Greg Mandel novels. In this new future, Britain is part of a greater European Union and its national identity seems in question. At the same time, a rich entrepreneur becomes the first human to undergo rejeuvenation technology and goes from being in his late 70s to having the body and health of a 20-year-old, which leads to conflict with his teenage son. Misspent Youth features some fantastic ideas, such as Hamilton's 'nightmare future' of what will happen if the Internet does kill off creativity since copyrights cannot be protected: a world where writers, directors and musicians cannot make a living and the only forms of entertainment left are soap operas and pornography. Misspent Youth is a relentlessly downbeat book, and did not receive much critical acclaim.
Interestingly, despite its weaknesses, Hamilton had cleverly used Misspent Youth to seed ideas for his next novel series. Choosing to return to the world of space opera, he planned two books set some 300 years after the events of Misspent Youth in a world where everyone undergoes rejeuvenation at regular intervals, with some people now being over 300 years old. Hamilton also cleverly reverse-engineered technology from Night's Dawn, so that freestanding wormhole gates directly and permanantly link various planets together, and travelling across the Galaxy is as easy as catching a train. Starships do not exist (they are not needed) and the apparently benign SI (Sentient Intelligence, essentially a friendly version of Skynet) watches over humanity from afar to ensure its survival. However, the disappearance of two stars some one thousand light-years from Earth proves the impetus for mankind to build its first starship, and unleashes a chain of events that leads to the wealthy and indolant Intersolar Commonwealth facing a full-scale war, whilst treachery lurks within. His Commonwealth Saga restored Hamilton's reputation as a writer of large-scale SF blockbusters, capable of addressing myriad storylines simultaneously and bringing them to a reasonable conclusion. Perhaps aware that Night's Dawn had been criticised for its 'neat ending', Commonwealth left more unexplained questions to be resolved in his newest series, The Void Trilogy, which picks up the storyline some eleven centuries further on.
Hamilton is now established as Britain's biggest-selling science fiction author, and is increasingly a well-known figure in the USA as well. Whilst Hamilton is not a flawless writer (some may feel his books may feature somewhat more sex than is necessary for the story and he sometimes shies away from big SF issues, such as the Singularity), he is reliably entertaining and extremely inventive. As Colin Greenland once said, his books often feel like "fifty SF novels in one," leaping from subject to subject, idea to idea, in dizzying fashion. He remains one of the more notable authors in the field today.
The Greg Mandel Trilogy
Mindstar Rising (1993) ****
A Quantum Murder (1994) ****
The Nanoflower (1995) ****
The Night's Dawn Trilogy
The Reality Dysfunction (1996) *****
The Neutronium Alchemist (1997) ****½
The Naked God (1999) ****
A Second Chance at Eden (1998) ****
The Confederation Handbook (2000) ***
Fallen Dragon (2001) ****
Misspent Youth (2002) ***
The Commonwealth Saga
Pandora's Star (2004) ****
Judas Unchained (2005) ***½
The Void Trilogy
The Dreaming Void (2007) ****
The Temporal Void (planned for release in October 2008)
The Evolutionary Void (planned for release in 2010)
The Greg Mandel Trilogy was an interesting start to Hamilton's career. Set in the 2040s in a Britain devastated by global warming (London has apparently been destroyed by a fusion explosion and the new capital is Peterborough) and then ruined by an oppressive, socialist government, some critics complained it was little more than a right-wing writer's attack on the Labour Party (although the 'New Conservatives' who are trying to restore Britain are hardly painted more sympathetically). More to the point, it established Hamilton's credentials as a writer who enjoyed telling a good, rip-roaring, page-turning story. Although keen to use 'hard science', Hamilton's books have never been about the nitty-gritty details of string theory calculations, instead preferring to show the effects of such science and technology on ordinary people. The Mandel trilogy is a successful work, prefiguring the rise of the SF thriller subgenre of the early 2000s (led by Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City and Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon) and establishing Hamilton as a writer to watch.
That promise was delivered, with interest, in The Night's Dawn Trilogy. Whilst David Brin and Iain Banks had had some success in keeping the original space opera novel alive in the preceding years, it was Night's Dawn that brought it back into vogue. Set in the 27th Century, Hamilton painted a picture of a universe where humanity has spread across 860 worlds, splitting into two divergent strains (the traditional Adamists and the telepathic Edenists) and building vast, sentient space habitats and living starships whilst vast corporations fund the expansion of the human race. On a remote colony world a chance encounter between a low-tech colony and an utterly alien entity unleashes a nightmarish force upon the Confederation which is soon overrunning entire worlds. Night's Dawn is an impressive example of 'genre-bending' and horror and SF collide. The trilogy also established Hamilton as a writer of huge, brick-thick volumes. Whilst the Mandel trilogy had consisted of sensibly-sized 400-page books, each of the Night's Dawn novels extended across 1,200+ pages in paperback and were split in two apiece for American publication.
Hamilton's next two books were related to his grand trilogy. A Second Chance at Eden, published between the second and third volumes, collects several short stories from the Night's Dawn universe and shows a greater range than perhaps Hamilton had evidenced previously, most notably his ability to use different prose styles. His main novels employ a fairly straightforward, somewhat prosaic or 'clean' style to tell the story (with stories this complex, a fancy prose style is the last thing both the author and the reader want to worry about), but his short stories display a greater talent. After the release of The Naked God, Hamilton followed it up with a guide to the series, The Confederation Handbook, which published a lot of the background materials and notes he'd used to create his future history.
With Hamilton now established as a major force in British SF, he chose to move away from his Night's Dawn setting rather than exploit it through further novels. His next book, Fallen Dragon, was a stand-alone novel which postulated that mankind's expansion into space had faltered and run out of steam, leaving dozens of dead-end worlds essentially left to their own devices. Although a clever novel with a great twist ending, Fallen Dragon showed a more melancholy aspect of Hamilton's writing, and was not regarded as much of a success as Night's Dawn.
Hamilton's next work was not very well received. Misspent Youth returns to a near-future setting, but a different continuity to the Greg Mandel novels. In this new future, Britain is part of a greater European Union and its national identity seems in question. At the same time, a rich entrepreneur becomes the first human to undergo rejeuvenation technology and goes from being in his late 70s to having the body and health of a 20-year-old, which leads to conflict with his teenage son. Misspent Youth features some fantastic ideas, such as Hamilton's 'nightmare future' of what will happen if the Internet does kill off creativity since copyrights cannot be protected: a world where writers, directors and musicians cannot make a living and the only forms of entertainment left are soap operas and pornography. Misspent Youth is a relentlessly downbeat book, and did not receive much critical acclaim.
Interestingly, despite its weaknesses, Hamilton had cleverly used Misspent Youth to seed ideas for his next novel series. Choosing to return to the world of space opera, he planned two books set some 300 years after the events of Misspent Youth in a world where everyone undergoes rejeuvenation at regular intervals, with some people now being over 300 years old. Hamilton also cleverly reverse-engineered technology from Night's Dawn, so that freestanding wormhole gates directly and permanantly link various planets together, and travelling across the Galaxy is as easy as catching a train. Starships do not exist (they are not needed) and the apparently benign SI (Sentient Intelligence, essentially a friendly version of Skynet) watches over humanity from afar to ensure its survival. However, the disappearance of two stars some one thousand light-years from Earth proves the impetus for mankind to build its first starship, and unleashes a chain of events that leads to the wealthy and indolant Intersolar Commonwealth facing a full-scale war, whilst treachery lurks within. His Commonwealth Saga restored Hamilton's reputation as a writer of large-scale SF blockbusters, capable of addressing myriad storylines simultaneously and bringing them to a reasonable conclusion. Perhaps aware that Night's Dawn had been criticised for its 'neat ending', Commonwealth left more unexplained questions to be resolved in his newest series, The Void Trilogy, which picks up the storyline some eleven centuries further on.
Hamilton is now established as Britain's biggest-selling science fiction author, and is increasingly a well-known figure in the USA as well. Whilst Hamilton is not a flawless writer (some may feel his books may feature somewhat more sex than is necessary for the story and he sometimes shies away from big SF issues, such as the Singularity), he is reliably entertaining and extremely inventive. As Colin Greenland once said, his books often feel like "fifty SF novels in one," leaping from subject to subject, idea to idea, in dizzying fashion. He remains one of the more notable authors in the field today.
The Greg Mandel Trilogy
Mindstar Rising (1993) ****
A Quantum Murder (1994) ****
The Nanoflower (1995) ****
The Night's Dawn Trilogy
The Reality Dysfunction (1996) *****
The Neutronium Alchemist (1997) ****½
The Naked God (1999) ****
A Second Chance at Eden (1998) ****
The Confederation Handbook (2000) ***
Fallen Dragon (2001) ****
Misspent Youth (2002) ***
The Commonwealth Saga
Pandora's Star (2004) ****
Judas Unchained (2005) ***½
The Void Trilogy
The Dreaming Void (2007) ****
The Temporal Void (planned for release in October 2008)
The Evolutionary Void (planned for release in 2010)
Friday, 26 January 2007
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
In 2006 Gollancz asserted themselves as Britain's premier SF publishing imprint. This year, mainly thanks to the efforts of Simon Spanton, it delivered three very high-profile debut novels: the much-applauded The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, The Stormcaller by Tom Lloyd, and the superb The Blade Itself by Joe Abercombie.
At first glance The Blade Itself is pretty old-school: it's book one of a trilogy (entitled The First Law; the second volume, Before They Are Hanged, is out in March), it features an old wizard mentor character and a barbarian hero as well as an untried youth, a feisty young woman and an army of nasty barbarians on the march in the north, whilst a resurgent desert empire threatens our heroes' homeland - the Midderland Union - from the south. There's also the threat of a non-human species gathering its forces beyond the northern-most reach of humankind's lands (isn't there always?).
Yet Abercrombie invests these storylines with vigour and energy. None of our heroes are quite what they first appear to be and the author expertly deconstructs them throughout the book, revealing their true motivations when you last expect it. Abercrombie is also a dab hand are writing excellent battle scenes and swordfights. There is also a hint of otherwordly alieness in this book, such as the scenes set in the House of the Maker which are quite memorable. The only major complaint I had about the book is the lack of a map. Most fantasy novels with a map don't really need them, but with military campaigns getting underway it would be nice to tell exactly where Adua is in relation to the Northlands, and where both are in relation to Dagoska, for example. But this is a minor complaint at best.
By the end of the book the pace has been ramped up to a compelling level, as our heroes depart in different directions to face their various destinies and full-scale war seems about to erupt on all sides. The Blade Itself is a tremendously enjoyable novel and I count myself fortunate to have read it late enough in the day to only have a brief wait for the second book.
The Blade Itself (****) is published by Gollancz in the United Kingdom in trade paperback and hardcover. The mass-market paperback will be available on 8 March. Pyr Books will publish an American edition in September 2007 (no Amazon listing as yet).
The sequel, Before They Are Hanged, will be published by Gollancz in the UK in trade paperback and hardcover on 15 March 2007.
At first glance The Blade Itself is pretty old-school: it's book one of a trilogy (entitled The First Law; the second volume, Before They Are Hanged, is out in March), it features an old wizard mentor character and a barbarian hero as well as an untried youth, a feisty young woman and an army of nasty barbarians on the march in the north, whilst a resurgent desert empire threatens our heroes' homeland - the Midderland Union - from the south. There's also the threat of a non-human species gathering its forces beyond the northern-most reach of humankind's lands (isn't there always?).
Yet Abercrombie invests these storylines with vigour and energy. None of our heroes are quite what they first appear to be and the author expertly deconstructs them throughout the book, revealing their true motivations when you last expect it. Abercrombie is also a dab hand are writing excellent battle scenes and swordfights. There is also a hint of otherwordly alieness in this book, such as the scenes set in the House of the Maker which are quite memorable. The only major complaint I had about the book is the lack of a map. Most fantasy novels with a map don't really need them, but with military campaigns getting underway it would be nice to tell exactly where Adua is in relation to the Northlands, and where both are in relation to Dagoska, for example. But this is a minor complaint at best.
By the end of the book the pace has been ramped up to a compelling level, as our heroes depart in different directions to face their various destinies and full-scale war seems about to erupt on all sides. The Blade Itself is a tremendously enjoyable novel and I count myself fortunate to have read it late enough in the day to only have a brief wait for the second book.
The Blade Itself (****) is published by Gollancz in the United Kingdom in trade paperback and hardcover. The mass-market paperback will be available on 8 March. Pyr Books will publish an American edition in September 2007 (no Amazon listing as yet).
The sequel, Before They Are Hanged, will be published by Gollancz in the UK in trade paperback and hardcover on 15 March 2007.
Wednesday, 17 January 2007
A Game of Thrones: The TV Series
For years, many George RR Martin fansites have been speculating on what would happen if the Song of Ice and Fire novel series were turned into a series of films or a TV series. What would stay in, what would get cut out, who would play who, etc. It was always laughed off as a game. After all, no-one would ever, ever be insane enough to even attempt this, would they?
From Variety.
From Chud.com.
From DarkHorizons.com
Apparently they would. HBO, which has turned out edgy, innovative, big-budget drama serials for years now, have decided to go for it. Their plan is to adapt each of the seven novels in the series into a TV season. Whether this would be a standard American TV season (22-25 episodes) or the 10-episode season format that HBO favours for some of its projects (like Rome, which returned for a second season last week) is unclear. They've already hired two screenwriters and George RR Martin has agreed to both serve as executive producer and also pen one episode of the first season. Martin himself is an experienced screenwriter, working on The New Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast in the 1980s, and the news he is taking an active role on the project has been well-received by fans, although not without concern. Book Five of the series, A Dance with Dragons, is expected to be published before the end of the year, but there are two more books (The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring) to come and a minimum of four-to-five years to get there. However, between fully greenlighting the project, pre-production, production and publicity, it looks like the TV version of A Game of Thrones will not be aired until 2009 or 2010 at the earliest, giving GRRM plenty of time to complete most of the remaining work on the novels before the TV series gets underway.
From Variety.
From Chud.com.
From DarkHorizons.com
Apparently they would. HBO, which has turned out edgy, innovative, big-budget drama serials for years now, have decided to go for it. Their plan is to adapt each of the seven novels in the series into a TV season. Whether this would be a standard American TV season (22-25 episodes) or the 10-episode season format that HBO favours for some of its projects (like Rome, which returned for a second season last week) is unclear. They've already hired two screenwriters and George RR Martin has agreed to both serve as executive producer and also pen one episode of the first season. Martin himself is an experienced screenwriter, working on The New Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast in the 1980s, and the news he is taking an active role on the project has been well-received by fans, although not without concern. Book Five of the series, A Dance with Dragons, is expected to be published before the end of the year, but there are two more books (The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring) to come and a minimum of four-to-five years to get there. However, between fully greenlighting the project, pre-production, production and publicity, it looks like the TV version of A Game of Thrones will not be aired until 2009 or 2010 at the earliest, giving GRRM plenty of time to complete most of the remaining work on the novels before the TV series gets underway.
"They tried for 50 years to make 'Lord of the Rings' as one movie before Peter Jackson found success making three," Martin said. "My books are bigger and more complicated, and would require 18 movies. Otherwise, you'd have to choose one or two characters."Already, the fansites have been erupting with ideas for the proposed series. However, as GRRM has already said, HBO have merely bought the rights to the series. Although they have detailed plans on how to proceed and have already assigned writers (and pretty prestigious writers at that, including the author of hit novel and Spike Lee movie veryThe 25th Hour, David Benioff), the series has yet to be fully greenlit. In my view, this could be a very successful project. There are issues, such as the needed buget being colossal, rivalling or exceeding that even of Rome, if not Band of Brothers, but overall the approach that HBO is taking is very reassuring. Expect this to be one topic to run and run over the next few years.
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