A while back I began to collect some fantasy novels I'd had my eyes on. I used to wait until a fantasy series was complete before beginning to read book1, but I did still like to purchase those that I was interested in, having them on my TBR shelves, staring at me, sitting, waiting.
These days due to unreliable publishers, inconsistent formatting, vanishing dust jackets and a strange shift in cover finishes (from glossy to matte or vice versa), and of course, lastly and not leastly; due to the unreliability of certain authors I've mostly come to abandon my keeping in tune book-buying and instead have shifted to only purchasing books when the whole endeavour I'm interested in is complete. I'm only one person and I already have over a 1000 physical books waiting on my TBR shelves, and I frankly don't need the hassle of chasing down editions in a series that can't or won't match.
And even then, it can still go wrong sometimes, to whit I present you the evidence:
Name Forthcoming
An indefinite Forthcoming. Expect alot of talking about books.
Saturday 3 February 2024
Sunday 9 January 2022
Books I finished in 2021
Read in 2020 (part 3)
At the end of the year I also rushed through a few novella-length books, and among these was the Soul Drinkers Novella Daenyathos.
This one had been on my shelves for quite some time, since 2013 I think when the Soul Drinkers' new omnibi editions came out, but which books I both somehow missed out on, despite actually getting the separate hardback novella, which is just bloody typical isn't it?
The Soul Drinkers series of books concerns a space marine chapter which, despite remaining loyal to the Emperor, slowly succumbs to corruption and mutation. I remember the books being hugely entertaining, visceral and as creatively gruesome and imaginative as only Ben Counter could make them. The gist of the overarching plot is that the longer the series progresses, the more mutation crops up in the characters and the more their fall to Chaos becomes, or seems to become, inevitable. But despite this, these mutations and indications of corruption, for instance; their chapter-master losing his legs and growing spider legs in place, the Soul Drinkers remain a force loyal to Terra.
I have only read the first three novels, because when the omnibis for books 4,5 and 6 came out ( yes, TWO different omnibi's of books 4,5 and 6) they were pretty much immediately sold out, because Games Workshop is stupid and prefers to stifle its production to drive up the price, and so I actually never got to finish reading the series. And though I got the Daenyathos novella at that time, it seemed stupid to me to actually go read that when I couldn't finish reading the entire saga.
But stupid or not I've finished it now, and despite having become quite vague on the details of the rest of the series, I still actually enjoyed doing so. The novella's main draw is that it follows, shockingly, Daenyathos on his journey to entombment in a Dreadnought, with several shocking revelations along the way. It's quite action-packed but also frequently ruminative and though I was satisfied, I do wish I had read the damn thing right along with the rest of the series.
Another (very) short one was George RR Martin's The Ice Dragon, which technically speaking is more of a short story than anything else, but which, given the man's popularity at a certain point, was published a few years ago all on its own in a ridiculously lavish edition, wraparound dustjacket, internal artwork and all. It's a fairy tale set in the world of Ice and Fire and it's decent, though quite a little bit too short to warrant a standalone edition.
The plot follows a young girl who has more in common with creatures of ice than anything warm-blooded, and so when an Ice Dragon shows up (I mean, my God, what a surprise, right?) she begins to spend more and more time away from her family and more with the alien creature. But war looms on the horizon, and the girl's Ice Dragon isn't the only dragon in the skies. The ending is quite poignant, unexpected, and very good. It's a real addition to the world, not feeling out of place and yet retaining enough "alien-ness" to set it apart from the main series.
I'd been a fan of 2000AD's Tales of Telguuth comics and I picked up this short story collection as soon as I knew it existed. Both comics and the writings here were written by Steve Moore, a long-time friend of Alan Moore (though not a relation).
Despite the change in format, from comics to prose, the tales here genuinely 'feel' like the world we've come to know in the Telguuth comics, and that's because it's really Moore's writing the brought it all to life. Again we're treated to beautiful, lyrical prose, gorgeous naming, both hilarious, heartfelt and horrific stories, with memorable pro and antagonists and a feeling that you're in one of the most vibrant creations in fiction. It's a shame there's so little of it, but I recommend anyone, those lovers of the English language at least, to seek out these perfect stories. A joy to read out loud.
Lastly, there's a few novels here that I feel I should be writing a whole lot more about, and they should at least have been giving their own posts. But as writing is really something that I'm having severe difficulties with these days, this is better than nothing.
The Tooth Fairy is the last of the Terror 8 I still needed to read, and it ended up being quite a different story than I was expecting. It was a disturbing and at times rather an uncomfortable reading experience, but with the uneasiness coming from real life elements, rather than from the horror-trappings I was expecting. The Tooth Fairy is essentially a coming-of-age story dressed in dark fantasy clothing. It's a very sexually charged story, and though it never gets as ill-conceived as some of those sections from Stephen King's It, there's nevertheless some strange stuff in here. It might be better than King's novel, but only barely. Summer of Night is still the best one in this genre.
Next up, another novel that I should've given more attention to, but that for more reasons than usual I don't.
Sunday 31 January 2021
Read in 2020 (Part 2)
I admit, throughout the story I was constantly lost as to what was really going on. There are so many elements at play, and Karl himself is so out of the loop that he frequently ends up in locations where crucial events have already just taken place. This does create an interesting atmosphere and a growing conviction that there is a massive conspiracy afoot, and that Karl might just be the only one able to stop it all from playing out, working as he does just at the fringes, hunted by both sides.
It feels as if I'm giving the a wrong impression here, so here it goes; I enjoyed reading the Marks of Chaos omnibus, and if by some chance you get it (which is honestly very unlikely), it's a decent read.
Read in 2020 (part 1)
Sunday 11 October 2020
Gravity's Rainbow
I'm going to go and keep this one very short. I did not like reading this book at all and I want to talk about it even less. But as I am pretty compulsive, I need to write down something on it, even if it's just a little bit. and so, naturally, as these things go, the page blooms words.
Over the past few weeks I wrote down a whole hell of a lot on Gravity's Rainbow, most of it very negative, and I've deleted most all of it already, as I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not someone who can talk about it for a few reasons:
I don't have anywhere near enough background on the facts in the book, how much of them are true and how much of them are not. Regardless, there are a staggering amount of anachronisms in the book, or so it seems to me, most of them involving drugs and drug-use during the second World War, a product of the time, and apparently also the drug trance, in which it was written.
I am not a native English speaker, so when I'm uncertain about something I tend to give whatever I'm reading the benefit of the doubt, and despite that I think that to do so for this book would be likewise wrong. I also think it's more than likely that some of the book's much lauded humor went over my head or just came across as crass to me, precisely because of this lacking background of native English. It's also obviously dated and will be more so in time.
I tend to read books for themes and though there were certainly some of those that were interesting to me, the esoteric, the mysticism and the metaphysics especially were fascinating, pretty much all of the rest of them were very much not. There's a huge focus on male genitalia and though it's easy to see why this is, the iconic shape of the rocket is very much a phallic one, it can be overwhelming. There is a crazy amount of sex in this book, most of it very explicit, some of it flat-out obscene, and there were a few that just made me upset with the book as a whole, to such an extent that my stance of giving every book I care to dedicate my time to a fair review, or even just to give my take on it, became impossible.
Simply put, I don't want to talk about it. And yet, here we are.
The central plot points hinge on the creation of secret rockets by the Germans, a secret British agency trying to find them, and one man's strange ability to seemingly predict where a rocket will strike through means of sexual climax.
There are four parts to the book, and the above premise seems to go out the window by the third. But then, the premise is mine, my attempt to describe the entire plot in as little lines and time as possible, and though these things are there, to dilute the novel so would be wrong.
Above was also the first time I termed the book a 'novel', and I've avoided doing so because it is also wrong. This is not a novel, and is instead a setting, a set of themes interweaving in and around characters interacting, conflicting and generally, living forwards (most of them). None of it is straight, not the progression, not the truths, not the ending, not anything. Characters inhabit multiple names, seemingly. Characters see angels, ghosts and signs, and all kinds of supernatural trappings are spread throughout the story. Technology rears its head and every reviewer and essayist will espouse the writer's virtues in getting it down so truthfully, and so correct, but, really, it doesn't matter in my opinion, the truth is not something to be sought after in a book like this, and that is despite my worry at the blatant misrepresentation of a drug culture 80 years gone. The first seems pointless, but it's the latter that sticks in my throat, as bizarrely as it distorts landscape, characters and events into something really quite unlikely. The world is a different place under chemicals.
My main problem is that for all the praise the book deserves, there is just so much more stick that it also deserves, which it just doesn't seem to get.
My main impression is that Gravity's Rainbow is quite a vulgar reading experience. My second is that it fully deserves a second read.