Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
If you are into things Grendel, have you tried the telling by John Gardner?Finished Gulag Archipelago. (sweet Galactus... I have no words).
I needed some extreme palate-cleanser.... something fun.
Currently reading all my Grendel Omnibuses. I went full Pokemon an nabbed all 4 plus the Grendel Tales Omnibus 1 and 2.
such fun! It's like reading Evil Detective Batman noir... then suddenly it goes into pre-cyberpunk noir, then Post-Apocalyptic Pulp World of Darkness.
Pre-ordered the new Grendel Prime Odyssey which drops in November.
VIVAT GRENDEL!
It's really good. My wife used to assign it in one of her courses regularly--which, now that I think of it, may not sound like a recommendation. But it's a book you can happily read for enjoyment, not just because someone has assigned it to you.If you are into things Grendel, have you tried the telling by John Gardner?
It's a retelling of Beowulf from his perspective. I have read it several times. Definitely worth a try.
I need to re-read his fantasies. Lately I've been reading some of his early sword-and-planet stuff and enjoying it.Finished Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword this week.
View attachment 30978
This is a great blending of English, Norse, and Irish myth into an absolutely brutal tale. I've read a few of his books now - The High Crusade, Tau Zero, and Three Hearts and Three Lions, and this was surprisingly grim in comparison to those. Really enjoyed it though, and he's quickly become one of my favorites of the Appendix N authors.
Yeah, I read the original, but grabbed the picture of the later version just cause I liked the cover. I feel like the story wouldn't work very well if it were toned down. It really had a classic myth feel to it where terrible things just keep happening and no one seems to have any control on the situation.I need to re-read his fantasies. Lately I've been reading some of his early sword-and-planet stuff and enjoying it.
I guess there's some disagreement about whether the original, and rawer, version of The Broken Sword or the later version (the one in the picture, which is also the one I read) is better. Both I think are available these days.
Finished Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword this week.
View attachment 30978
This is a great blending of English, Norse, and Irish myth into an absolutely brutal tale. I've read a few of his books now - The High Crusade, Tau Zero, and Three Hearts and Three Lions, and this was surprisingly grim in comparison to those. Really enjoyed it though, and he's quickly become one of my favorites of the Appendix N authors.
I guess the original also has deliberately archaic language, like always using the word 'glaive' for sword, so that might be another indicator of which one you have. The 1954 original was not reprinted until 2002, I think, by Gollancz. I've only read the 1971 version myself.Yeah I love this book, I assume the version I got is the original text as it is quite intense and grim.
I suggest that you have a look for his The Merman's Children, which is excellent, and gives a similar impression of being drawn from real legend and folk lore, but is not so epically bleak and Norse.Finished Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword this week.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely look for that.I suggest that you have a look for his The Merman's Children, which is excellent, and gives a similar impression of being drawn from real legend and folk lore, but is not so epically bleak and Norse.
I often marvel that this came out at the same time as The Lord of the Rings. It represents a very different change of direction that fantasy literature might have taken if Anderson rather than Tolkien had been the big new thing.Finished Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword this week.
This is a great blending of English, Norse, and Irish myth into an absolutely brutal tale. I've read a few of his books now - The High Crusade, Tau Zero, and Three Hearts and Three Lions, and this was surprisingly grim in comparison to those. Really enjoyed it though, and he's quickly become one of my favorites of the Appendix N authors.
I have a copy of that which I received as a birthday present long ago, but I haven't read it in decades. I also have a copy of Tim Harris' Restoration sitting on my shelf that I need to get around to someday.Finished Antonia Fraser's biography of Charles II. Her books are very very detailed, this one is basically 800 pages, but they really are something you can actually read cover to cover instead of being a massive reference tome that sits looming at you.
Charles is a very interesting and open-minded guy for his time as he lived in and sort of embodies a shift in European society from a Medieval to Enlightenment worldview. Also it avoids being a "great man" history as you do get a sense of life in general in England at the time. I'd really recommend it.
I think my favourite of C.J. Cherryh's is Cyteen. Maybe a little weak in the ending, but it's a taut thriller with o-for-awesome world building and really well done characters. It picked up a lot of well-deserved gongs, including a Hugo and a Locus.Last night I finished Hammerfall (2001) by C.J. Cherryh; I recently bought a used copy. It's good, though I think reading older stuff has spoiled me a bit for longer novels like this (about 440 pages in the paperback), since before c. 1970 or 1980 many SF novels would have been only half that length or shorter.
It's set on a very barren desert planet; its inhabited parts are ruled by an apparently immortal female prophet, called the Ila, whose fortress is in the only real city. Her capital is in the center of one of the worse (though still survivable) regions, and the areas around it are occupied by nomadic tribes. A bit farther off in the lowlands, there are villages built around wells. Some of these had risen against the Ila's rule, but their rebellion failed. All of that is backstory, as is the fact that some people in the world have begun exhibiting a madness that makes them want to travel east and which shows them visions. When the novel opens, Marak Trin Tain, who is son of the rebel leader and also one of the afflicted, has been gathered up with the rest of the 'mad' for transport to the Ila's capital. I won't say more about the plot for fear of spoilers.
The best facet of the novel, IMO, is the desert culture that Cherryh creates and details over the course of the book. We learn a good deal about how the tribal and village societies are organized, what their customs are, and how the Ila controls them. We also encounter the physical features of the desert world and see the sort of survival skills the people have worked out to live there. The plot isn't bad, by any means; just less interesting than the world-building, which is seamlessly integrated into the narrative.
I don't think it's giving too much away to say that the novel involves nanotechnology--the blurb on the book makes this clear, so it's hardly a surprise. Yet the SF underpinnings stay pretty far in the background and the nanites (or whatever) remain on the level of magitech in the book. In fact, Cherryh could have written it as a straight fantasy rather than SF with very few changes, I think. In that way, it reminded me of some of the stories I've read in the last few months from the 1930s-50s, which often give a very vague SF gloss to apparently supernatural things.
There is a sequel, though, and judging by its description and beginning (I checked it out on Hoopla) it appears the series will veer more firmly in an SF direction in that book.
I think my favourite of C.J. Cherryh's is Cyteen. Maybe a little weak in the ending, but it's a taut thriller with o-for-awesome world building and really well done characters. It picked up a lot of well-deserved gongs, including a Hugo and a Locus.
I think my favourite of C.J. Cherryh's is Cyteen. Maybe a little weak in the ending, but it's a taut thriller with o-for-awesome world building and really well done characters. It picked up a lot of well-deserved gongs, including a Hugo and a Locus.
40000 in Gehenna was my fav, I think, and Cuckoo’s Egg. I tried my hardest to get through Cyteen but failed. I should try it again…
Several years ago I stumbled on the Manifest Destiny comic, which can be summed up as “Lewis and Clark go west and meet monsters.” It was great, and I was disappointed to learn it had been put on indefinite hiatus.
Over the weekend I stumbled on two issues I’d never seen, and discovered the book had started up sometime in the last year.
Unfortunately, the story was terrible, combining “Babies make everything better!” with one of my least favorite bits of poor writing, where characters try to make moral decisions that seem weighty, but they forget the body count the subject of their moralizing has racked up to that point. Given earlier issues had made a point of not shying away from that aspect when it came up, it was especially frustrating.
I don’t think I’ll be expanding my collection of the series any further.