Book mini-reviews

[HereComesPete]

I like the sound of that.

That. Looks like there's three of them out.

[Anery]

Yeah, the Laundry series. I've read The Fuller Memorandum too, Pants if you want I can pass them on at i-series?

[Dog Pants]

Sounds good to me. I'll bring a selection of stuff to swap if you like.

[HereComesPete]

Read the first one, on the second. Good stuff so far. Plus it looks like there's some short stories as well. I'm liking the mix of face eating horrors from the deep and his constant hilarious cynicism.

[Roman Totale]

Sounds good, will check them out. He also has another book that sounds interesting - Rule 34:

DI Liz Kavanaugh: You realise policing internet porn is your life and your career went down the pan five years ago. But when a fetishist dies on your watch, the Rule 34 Squad moves from low priority to worryingly high profile.

Edit: three is a fourth one out, but you can get the first 3 for £17.17 on both Amazon and Waterstones (I plumped for the latter to grow my ridiculous points horde).

[Roman Totale]

Not read new Pratchett for a while (couldn't get into Making Money, Monstrous Regiment etc), but I think with Snuff he's back on form. Not top form, but still good.

A Vimes book, murder in the country, injustice etc etc. It spends a lot of time on Vimes which, despite the strength of the character, I feel detracts from the overall book. Can't put my finger on why but it feels different to the other single character focused books he's done (e.g. Reaper Man).

Oh, and on that note - where the fuck was Death? A character who has appeared in every Discworld novel to date (barring the kiddy ones), and they miss him out. Madness!

[buzzmong]

Ah, glad it's good, it's on my bedside cabinet and I was planning on starting it tonight.

[Wifeyberk]

Just finished reading the Patricia Amble series of books by Nicole young.

Basic synopsis: Patricia Amble, ex con (assisted euthanasia of grandmother, 3 years for manslaughter) does up houses for a living, sells them on and uses the profits to buy her next purchase.

Book 1 in the series is called Love Me If You Must. She finds herself in Rawlings, Dull, drab dreary place with up and coming real estate prospects. Buys this house, Body in basement, gets arrested blah de blah.... all works out well in the end and she finds herself with a beau called Brad Walters (oh no! the arresting officer!)...

Book 2: New start away from Brad, searching for the lost family she never realised she had. Shit hits the fan (it's a book, has to have suspense somewhere). Brad is left for dead at the end.

Book 3 All well. Finds her biological father she thought was dead from the age of like 3 or something.

Actually not bad novels if you like this sort of thing. what pissed me off about them was the fact that you had to buy the second to finish the first etc until you had read them all. But worth it.


Now reading James Herbert's, Nobody True. Actually a good book. Loving it.

Short versionfrom back of the book : I wasn’t there when I died.

I was having one of those out-of-body dreams, the kind where you feel your spirit has left your body and it isn’t really a dream. You may have read about the phenomenon, you might even have experienced it yourself.

But somebody murdered me while I was away.
Mutilated me. Chopped me to pieces.
Left nothing for me to come back to.

Who did it? That’s what I asked myself.
The serial killer who was terrorizing the whole city? Or someone closer, someone known to me, someone who maybe had a grudge, a score to settle? But I had no enemies. At least, I didn’t think I had.

Then I began to discover things about myself. And about the people I thought loved or liked me. My best friend, my business partners, my mother... my wife. Funny what people say about you when they think you’re dead.

And it’s scary when you meet the serial killer, when horror is followed by even greater horror, when your own family is threatened and only you can stop the killings.

So what do you do? You’re invisible, you can pass through solid walls, you can kind of fly.
But you have no substance, no real power. You cannot even touch.

What the hell do you do?

I had to find a way. Fast. I had to prevent more brutal slayings, the awful mutilations, and the desecrations. I also had to avenge my own death.

But how?

How...?

[Dog Pants]

Player of Games

I'd heard of Iain M Banks, and this was supposed to be one of the better novels, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Sci-fi, fantastic far-future sci-fi particularly, isn't really my thing, but I need something to break up the constant flow of military history books people keep buying me. So I went iinto this with an open mind and a hope that it would open up a new avenue of reading for me.

The story is set in a place called The Culture, a utopian society where most things are automated by sentient machines, and where the protagonist is a famous game player. With no work to do, gaming and partying are common ways to spend your time. Kind of like being a student. The protagonist is manipulated into playing the incredibly intricate holy game of a distant, alien empire, and most of the book is an exercise in his observations and interactions with them and it. This would seem to be where the strength of the novel lies; the xenoanthropology of following his understanding of the alien (and yet familiarly human in their habits, especially compared to the utopia-raised hero) civilisation, and the interactions and brutality he encounters as he progresses. As FJ mentioned in another thread, the ending is somewhat predictable, but then I certainly felt that the tale was much more about the journey than the destination, and as it was the last two words of the epilogue made me grin.

A very enjoyable book then, and one that will cause me to buy more Culture novels. I like the setting, despite it not really being my thing, and would like to read more.