So where I’m moving too I can probably only fit in one bookcase. That means that a lot of my books need to go into storage. I’ve semi been planning for this eventuality and have been an ebook convert for years (an ebook library doesn’t take up any space!) But this gives me a major [...]
My lifestyle can hardly be consider glamorous. I’m either sat at my desk on the computer or grubbing around in the undergrowth for Tupperware but last night I got to travel into London to attend the book Launch of a friend: Empire State by Adam Christopher. It may not have been superstar-glamorous but it was [...]
Urgh! Not feeling too bright today which is rare for me seeing as I suffer from an over-active immune system and as a result rarely get ill. I was going to write a long ranty post about books and promotion and awards and nepotism but I guess that'll have to wait. Besides, I'm heading into [...]
Sea of Ghosts was very much a book of two halves for me. It’s an ambitious book that tries to do something a little different and when it works, it’s brilliant. When it doesn’t… well, we’ll come onto that. I have a real love of fantasy that abandons or subverts the medieval world trope we’ve [...]
Before I get compared to Martin Amis, let me say that I honestly think that YA is where the real innovation is going on in genre. It might not always be extending the boundaries but it's pulling new readers in, and more importantly hooking them. To understand my issue with it though, you have to [...]
First off, if you've come here expecting a ranty moan about ebook pricing, this probably isn't the blog post for you. If on the other hand, you're interested to hear what I learned from speaking to a work colleague who has started pirating books at 64, read on. Let's kick it off by saying that [...]
I read Rivers of London at a bad time. I’d just read Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson and absolutely loved the book, feeling it a pinnacle of post-Tolkien fantasy. I raved about that book. So of course anything I read after that was going to feel like a come-down no matter how much [...]
I fear this review is going to be a little worthless. You see, as a writer or critic we have some experience of the tools of writing: the character arcs, the themes, the worldbuilding, and so on. We’re able to unstitch novels and look at these component parts, judging each on its own merit. Hence [...]
I used to love ebooks. When I got my first ebook reader, a Bookeen cybook, I used it all the time and swore it was the future. I used to buy all my books from a place called Fictionwise that used bizarre economics whereby I always got more back in credit than I spent (to [...]
The Name of the Wind tells the life story of Kvothe, a legendary hero, and goes about showing the more realistic story behind the legend. It’s a book about deconstructing legends and in that sense, it’s a book about story. The problem for me is that a novel must have plot. It must have a [...]
