tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63137352011-04-22T12:32:58.495+10:00Fantasy Books Read and ReviewedJustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1096002808164976172004-09-24T15:12:00.000+10:002004-09-24T15:13:28.163+10:00

An intriguing book. Secret societies and conspiracy theories, written by a self-proclaimed sceptic. It did take quite a while (about 150 pages) for the pace to pick up, but once it had started, it was relentless. Hooks at the end of nearly every chapter – not a mean feat considering the average chapter length is only 4-5 pages. It no doubt falls into the thriller category, but the

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1094864325183582872004-09-11T10:58:00.000+10:002004-09-11T10:58:45.183+10:00

Review to come.

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1094864254371676422004-09-11T10:57:00.000+10:002004-09-25T11:06:51.573+10:00

These are a collection of tales supposedly told to Bryce by his wife’s mother (grandmother? its been a while since I read it) about her escape from the turmoil surrounding the Russian Revolution. Her entire village is murdered, seems a lot of people have had things against Jews, and she escapes with a huge frypan strapped to her back, which saves her from several sword strikes. She travels with

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1094864084808574552004-09-11T10:54:00.000+10:002004-09-11T11:06:34.613+10:00

I left the book that I was close to finishing (The Family Frying Pan) at work, so needed something to tide my reading habit over. This filled the hole nicely, a quick, enjoyable read filled with the patented Douglas Adams humour. It would be very easy to miss the humour in what often seems to be nothing more than random twitches of his imagination, but I think that people like Terry Pratchett

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1094864023379051462004-09-11T10:52:00.000+10:002004-09-11T10:53:43.380+10:00

Review to Come

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1094863661128439812004-09-11T10:46:00.000+10:002004-09-11T10:47:41.126+10:00

Review to come (how slack have I been!!)

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1091865618934289602004-08-07T17:59:00.000+10:002004-08-07T18:00:18.936+10:00

This book has been adapted into a two part mini-series which aired recently on Australian TV. The mini-series was quite good, and thinking that the book is always better than the show I borrowed it from a friend. I have an interesting relationship with Bryce Courtenay’s writing; it seems that I either love it or am completely indifferent. ‘April Fool’s Day’ is one of my favourite books ever,

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1090293390498998502004-07-20T13:16:00.000+10:002004-09-24T15:15:40.276+10:00

Ship of Magic; The Mad Ship; Ship of Destiny. It has been way too long since I read these books for me to be able to write a proper review. But it suffices to say that trilogies like these remain the reason that I read fantasy novels. The only complaint I remember having was the conclusion to book 1 and book 3. There was no real conclusion in book 1, I suppose that you may not need one in

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1090293323916819422004-07-20T13:15:00.000+10:002004-08-07T17:54:51.200+10:00

The first book from the author of High Fidelity (which I loved; both movie and book) and About a Boy (which I am keen to get my hands on), this is a story about the neurosis of football fans. It is autobiographical, following Nick’s support for Arsenal and all the pain that goes with it. The world of British football is a foreign one to me and I think that if I was more knowledgeable then I

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1090293295631914442004-07-20T13:14:00.000+10:002004-09-11T11:05:41.013+10:00

I just read this out of curiosity. I am interested in legends, those of the Greeks and Romans may be the most well known, but those of the Australian Aboriginals, Native Americans and many African nations are equally interesting if perhaps less fully formed. It had the additional allure that Tolkien translated one of the most read editions. This edition actually had the old English one the

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1090293257013032792004-07-20T13:13:00.000+10:002004-09-24T15:03:58.613+10:00

This epic poem was originally written in Italian in rhyming triplets. I flicked through a number of translations at the university library until I settled on this one, which seemed the most natural, aimed more at a literal translation than twisting meanings to the confines of rhyme. This meant that only the first and last lines of each triplet rhymed, and occasionally not even them, but I think

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1090293203921402012004-07-20T13:12:00.000+10:002004-08-07T17:58:56.156+10:00

Books II and III of the Summer Tree trilogy and both vast improvements on number one. The threads that were somewhat haphazardly spun out are woven together into a storyline of breathtaking complexity, originality, and beauty. Everything seems interdependent on everything else. Kay’s writing style is very different to that of other fantasy authors. Heavy on symbolism and near poetic

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1085882247473786822004-05-30T11:56:00.000+10:002004-08-07T17:55:58.176+10:00

This was an ex-library book that my Mum brought and is actually inscribed by the author. 'Stay less anxious than this guy.' - it refers to the main character, a 16 year old boy whose parents are spending the year in Geneva, leaving him to live in Brisbane with his older cousin and her flatmate. From my perspective this guy wasn't that anxious. Well, for the most part he was less anxious than

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-108536040961206572004-05-24T10:59:00.000+10:002004-07-02T12:30:05.126+10:00

I have been meaning to read one of David Gemmell's books for quite some time. (Although I do have a suspicion that I may have actually read one at some stage.) There are two reasons for my interest. 1 - He is acclaimed as the king of heroic fantasy, and heroic fantasy is my staple mind candy; the book equivalent of an action flick. 2 - Most of his books are stand-alones. In a genre dominated

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1085317628812930452004-05-23T22:39:00.000+10:002004-05-23T23:15:13.046+10:00

Wow! It is going to take a while to digest this, but I really felt like writing about it immediately after finishing it. It was grizly, gruesome, exquisite, stomach-turning, vivid, disturbing, fascinating, perverted, wonderful. Definitely not for the weak of heart. Way too much gay sex for my liking, but the amazing imagery both repulses and *searches for appropriate verb* attracts,

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1085048661062918292004-05-20T20:24:00.000+10:002004-05-30T14:57:22.270+10:00

A very well written and thought provoking book. It looks at the decay in public language that had its beginnings in marketing and managerialism but has now become endemic in our communications, especially that of politicians and government agencies. Don Watson was Paul Keating's speech writer and wrote Keating's biography - Recollections of a Bleeding Heart. (Paul Keating was Australian

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1085048634695804182004-05-20T20:22:00.000+10:002004-05-30T11:43:25.170+10:00

I read this and really enjoyed it when I was about 15. I bought the trilogy rather cheap off ebay (they are actually copies from a prison library) and decided to see if they were still as good as I remember. Unfortunately I was disappointed. It seems my fifteen year old self and I have different tastes. Five ordinary uni students get swept together at a lecture on Celtic lore and are

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1084697557832210422004-05-16T18:51:00.000+10:002004-05-30T14:04:31.116+10:00

I am sure that I had some notes about this book, but they seem to have disappeared somewhere in the pile of paper that is my bedroom. I have been interested for some time about the book that saw this man hunted by the fundamentalist Muslim world. It was a long slog to get through it, but that is not to say that it was bad. It was long, and written in such a way that quick reading is not

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1083208702166843272004-04-29T13:17:00.000+10:002004-05-20T19:28:20.260+10:00

I don't think that there is much I could say about this book that has not already been said many, many times. I have read the first four before, but picked this one up again and finished it off in an afternoon. I am always interested to see how successful children's and young adult authors manage to tell their story imaginatively, and descriptively and yet retain simplicity. The series doesn't

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1083208647917511412004-04-29T13:16:00.000+10:002004-05-30T11:56:00.880+10:00

I have noticed that a lot of what I am currently reading is not strictly fantasy, although most of it does have definite speculative fiction leanings. I am a bit worried about the relevance of my blog title, and am thinking about changing it, but for now anyone who happens to stumble randomly into this blog will just have to accept the fact that I am going to post about everything I read and not

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1082283453287583982004-04-18T20:16:00.000+10:002004-05-16T18:47:59.020+10:00

I have always been slightly worried about works that are translated from the original language in which they are written. How much does the story change? How much of the poetry of the original prose is lost? But I think with this book translation was not a significant problem. The complexity is not in the prose itself - which is in fact very simple - but in the ideas and concepts that it

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1082283377458486022004-04-18T20:15:00.000+10:002004-04-19T21:35:04.280+10:00

While reading this book I had a number of people ask me what it was about and I really struggled to even convey the most basic plot outline. I will attempt to do slightly better here, but fear I will fail again. The book follows the development of Homo Gestalt, a group of humans that function as one entity, a perfect symbiosis, and the next step in human evolution. There is a girl with

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1082022629738468062004-04-15T19:31:00.000+10:002004-04-15T19:54:27.576+10:00

If I have a weakness as a reader it must be my inability to stop reading everything that this man writes. The first book in his Wheel of Time Series, The Eye of the World, remains one of my favourite books of all time, but its brilliance is starting to wear thin. The fact that he has now paused in completing the series to write a prequel (and in fact what is rumored to be a trilogy of prequels)

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1081940715712103632004-04-14T20:23:00.000+10:002004-04-14T21:11:22.246+10:00

Another Australian fantasy author who I heard talk at the Brisbane Writer's Festival. He has also co-written some Star Wars books, I am not sure if I think that is a good, or a bad thing. My general apathy and laziness has caused this review to be posted several weeks after finishing the books, and conequently much of the detail will be mssing. The fact that I only have vague recollections of

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1079606358071965562004-03-18T20:08:00.000+10:002004-03-18T20:42:36.890+10:00

Oh. My. Fucking. God. This was good. Really good. Really impressive writing. I often find that some 'literary' writers read like they are trying too hard. It takes a special author to write simple, flowing prose that is at once easy to read and inspiring in its beauty. I knew from the first sentence that I was reading something special. "On the first Thursday in November, Maisie Fielding

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1078654857407314762004-03-07T19:48:00.000+10:002004-03-07T20:31:04.153+10:00

Well its been three weeks since I finished a book, which is unusual especially considering I was only reading one (and a collection of short stories) in that time. But I have been busy, and sick. Louise Cusack is a Brisbane author who I heard talk at last year's Brisbane Writer's Festival. I have been keeping an eye out for books by many of the authors I heard talk that weekend and managed to

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1077006179691373832004-02-17T18:08:00.000+10:002004-02-17T18:26:51.420+10:00

Yes, I have become a lazy git already and am hence reviewing three books at once. In my defense they are the last three books of a quartet and all relatively small at under 400 pages, and I've been sick. Enough of excuses. For a quartet all these books have a very stand-aloneish feel. The main characters stay the same, and I supppose if you read them out of order you would miss some of the

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1075804841784713852004-02-03T19:50:00.000+10:002004-02-03T20:48:53.920+10:00

Harpy's Flight is the first book of the Ki and Vandien Quartet. I picked up the entire quartet relatively cheaply on eBay some time ago. Again it is a rather old novel, first published in 1983. I have started taking the occasional note as I read to try and jog my memory about what I thought of the book. When I put this down I felt vaguely disappointed as it didn't really seem to go anywhere.

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1074688669438709882004-01-21T21:44:00.000+10:002004-01-21T22:39:50.170+10:00

I have been meaning to read a Charles de Lint book for some time. I am conscious of the fact that I should read more outside of the high/quest fantasy genre. de Lint was an author I knew wrote urban fantasy? magic realism? (have actually found a reference calling it elfpunk) whatever you wish to call it, so I thought I would give him a try. My initial feeling in finishing the book was one of

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1073905630751676402004-01-12T20:59:00.000+10:002004-01-12T21:07:31.920+10:00

I often find that the hardest thing about finishing book is the crucial decision that comes straight after, what do I read now? This generally resolves itself with me starting two or three books and quickly choosing the one that I enjoy the most while the others rejoin the to read list. After finishing Kushiel's Dart, I have read some of the September edition of F&SF, having only just received

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1073824392161060802004-01-11T21:39:00.000+10:002004-01-11T22:46:29.186+10:00

I finished this yesterday, so I suppose that it is probably the easiest place to start. After reading close to a book a day over the holidays it felt a little weird to take just over a week to finish this one. Granted it weighed in at over 900 pages but still. There's never enough time to read, and full time work just gets in the way. So, plot summary. I'll keep it short and avoid even the

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1073816064668470752004-01-11T20:00:00.000+10:002004-01-11T20:14:45.443+10:00

As expected there are a few teething problems. Something is wrong with the way the template displays the links. Given my complete lack of knowledge with HTML it may take some time and some fiddling to fix. Other than that I am quite happy with the layout. Hopefully comments will be appearing in the near future, along with other pretty things. Eventually I want to set up my own layout instead

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313735.post-1073814556774257622004-01-11T19:21:00.000+10:002004-01-11T20:00:08.423+10:00

I think that this is my third attempt to start a blog that I may actually keep for a significant amount of time. Whether or not this one will be different is difficult to say. The content will certainly differ, I bore myself with the minutiae of my life, so God knows how anyone else reading those past blogs would have felt. But this blog is not going to be about my life. This is going to be

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09635522104425604249noreply@blogger.com0