http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2115472.html[return][return]These wee Puffin Doctor Who ebooks are having a good run right now. Here we have the celebrahttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2115472.html[return][return]These wee Puffin Doctor Who ebooks are having a good run right now. Here we have the celebrated Patrick Ness, delivering a very solid tale of two marginal teenagers in wartime Maine, finding themselves dealing with a peculiar fad for truth-telling gadgets which turn out to be alien tech, with a mysterious celery-wearing stranger and his scandalously dressed companion all mixed up with it as well. This is the first of the books in this series which is not told from the tight narrative viewpoint of Doctor or companion, and all the better for it....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2115188.html[return][return]another in Talbot's alternate history of Grandville, where most people are anthropomorphisedhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2115188.html[return][return]another in Talbot's alternate history of Grandville, where most people are anthropomorphised animals and England is only now recovering from two hundred years of French rule after defeat at Waterloo. As well as taking us to the dark heart of political conspiracy, with overtones of Tintin (and also, frankly, Dangermouse), Talbot reflects art history too in his distorted gaze; he refers in an afterword to the CIA's funding of Abstract Expressionism. It's a witty, absurd and also rather bleak story....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2118356.html[return][return]It's a decent enough fantasy novel with some vivid steampunk moments; I felt it comparable thttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2118356.html[return][return]It's a decent enough fantasy novel with some vivid steampunk moments; I felt it comparable to Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon, in that the setting is more imaginative but the writing not quite as passionate....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2110875.html[return][return]a typically competent story from Rayner (who is one of the most prolific authors of written http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2110875.html[return][return]a typically competent story from Rayner (who is one of the most prolific authors of written Who these days); take the basic concept of Blink, add a dodgy stage magician (reminiscent of Priest's Prestige?) and the X-Factor, and a twist in the tale involving a beloved small dog, and then update it for a new Tardis crew. Short but very sweet....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2117885.html[return][return]This is a brilliant book - passionate, opinionated, reflective, sometimes angry and occasionhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2117885.html[return][return]This is a brilliant book - passionate, opinionated, reflective, sometimes angry and occasionally self-critical; fascinating on the details of life in Shanghai before and during WW2 (a fifth of his life, which takes up almost half of the book).[return][return]Empire of the Sun comes back towards the end, with an account of how Spielberg made the film of Ballard's book about his wartime experiences, but apart from that there is a lot of interesting reflection on how he became a writer, why in particular he chose science fiction - shown as a fairly calculated choice rather than instinct - and the rewards of being a parent to three children. It's rare I would say this of a book, but I actually wished it had been twice as long....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2118648.html[return][return]Marc and Kim finally realise their attraction for one another, and together with most of thehttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2118648.html[return][return]Marc and Kim finally realise their attraction for one another, and together with most of the mysterious people they have encountered in the previous three volumes, they find themselves on a vast airship heading for the mystery at the core of their world - pursued by agents of the clericalist oppressive government which appears to be determined to stop them. I do hope that the last volume rounds this narrative off properly - the buildup so far has been very good....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2112789.html[return][return]Selina ended up taking on the (small, run-down) family estate in the foothills of the Dublinhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2112789.html[return][return]Selina ended up taking on the (small, run-down) family estate in the foothills of the Dublin mountains, and combining the burdens of twenty-first century farming with her academic career and family. This is an extraordinary book about dealing with changes in family and society, beautifully written, lucidly and emotionally told, and with no punches pulled in her own self-examination of dealing with the intricacies of both family commitments and government bureaucracy, in the years of the inflation and bursting of the Irish property bubble. It's brilliant and you should all go and get it....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2103897.html[return][return]This is basically a two-joke book, and the punch line to the second joke is delivered less thttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2103897.html[return][return]This is basically a two-joke book, and the punch line to the second joke is delivered less than a third of the way through; all the characters sound the same; and we don't ever get an Explanation for what is going on. Having said that, the third of the three codas, a time-travel parallel worlds love story, is far superior to the rest and I would have given it a much higher ranking on its own....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2112677.html[return][return]Tony Lee's narrative achieves a very happy union with Matthew Dow Smith's art here, and the http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2112677.html[return][return]Tony Lee's narrative achieves a very happy union with Matthew Dow Smith's art here, and the story arc arc is rounded off dramatically and satisfactorily. The book is rounded out with three stories from the 2010 Doctor Who Annual, which I now realise I hadn't read; they too are very good....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2110526.html[return][return]I really really enjoyed it. For once, the world-building and languages worked for me; the cohttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2110526.html[return][return]I really really enjoyed it. For once, the world-building and languages worked for me; the coming-of-age story of the disguised magician hero had some new wrinkles; the university setting of much of the book has of course echoes of other fantasy educational establishments, but remains very much its own; and basically, Kvothe as a character engaged my interest and I needed to find out what happened next....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2107520.html[return][return]Leonard has the Seventh Doctor, Benny, Chris and Roz encountering an alien computer which ishttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2107520.html[return][return]Leonard has the Seventh Doctor, Benny, Chris and Roz encountering an alien computer which is kidnapping children in 1919 to turn them into perfect soldiers. Even in 1995, when this was published, this must have seemed a desperate attempt to rewrite The War Games; the first season Sarah Jane story Warriors of Kudlak takes the same rather improbable wrinkle of using children but does it far far better. The premise is weak, the violence is nasty and gratuitous, and the evil computer is persuaded to see the error of its ways after hearing three sentences from the Doctor....more
The first two-thirds are about the composition of the appendices of LotR; the rest brings together some short essays, mostly unfinished. Two of these are rather interesting. "The Shibboleth of Fëanor" looks at how the original 'þ' became 's' in Quenya but remained 'þ' in Sindarin, as in the name Sindacollo, the Quenya version of Thingol; Sindarin itself is a Quenya word, the Sindarin calling themselves the Egladhrim. There is also an intriguing late set of thoughts on the true identity of Glorfindel, who appears in quite different contexts in both LotR and the fall of Gondolin; one fascinating possibility is that he actually was killed in the First Age but allowed to return from the Halls of Mandos to accompany Gandalf on his mission, which would explain why the Nazgûl are particularly perturbed by him.
There is also the fragment of The New Shadow, a sequel to LotR which clearly wasn't going anywhere; it is a story of boyhood orchard-robbing near Minas Tirith which didn't quite come together. It's been rather instructive to see the number of false starts Tolkien made on what might have been substantial works - The Lost Road, The Notion Club Papers, and his various attempts, all pretty unsuccessful, to tell the story of Ëarendil. These are not journeyman pieces; they were mostly written when Tolkien was already a published author. Fortunately, of course, he had the luxury of abandoning lines of writing that were just not working out (though he went back to Ëarendil several times over). But it's worth remembering that many good pieces of writing have quite a lot of less good writing from the same pen behind and below them, most of which we readers will never see....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2107359.html[return][return] I didn't like it quite as much as I had hoped; I thought there was basically some neat ideahttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2107359.html[return][return] I didn't like it quite as much as I had hoped; I thought there was basically some neat ideas and world-building in there, but actually I think Charlie Stross does this sort of thing rather better. Too many made-up words, and present tense throughout didn't really focus my attention....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2114935.html[return][return]This brilliant book accompanies the brilliant series of podcasts. It is the same hundred objhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2114935.html[return][return]This brilliant book accompanies the brilliant series of podcasts. It is the same hundred objects from the British museum's collection, but this time in dead tree format. The individual talks, which were 11-14 minutes on the radio, are down to 5-7 pages here, so I think quite substantially cut; but what we get in return is pictures of the actual objects, which radio cannot give. Actually in most cases I felt I actually had got a fairly good impression of the objects' appearance from listening to the audio version, but there were a couple where the picture does make a big difference - the sexually explicit Warren Cup, and the extraordinarily detailed mechanical galleon of Augsburg. Anyway, it is all very nicely done (though I did notice as I browsed the maps at the end that none of the objects is from, er, Ireland)....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2103685.html[return][return]This is the first in internal chronology of the Third Doctor / Jo spinoff novels, though in http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2103685.html[return][return]This is the first in internal chronology of the Third Doctor / Jo spinoff novels, though in fact the last to be published, in 2003. Veterans Dicks and Letts return to the theme of The D�mons, but this time invoking Ancient Greek deities as aliens disputing their rule of Earth. Almost half of the book is taken up with a lengthy prequel where the younger Lethbridge-Stewart, in the margins of the 1946 Corfu crisis, falls in live with the goddess Persephone and must rescue her from the Underworld, which is accessed via southern Albania. (I bet that this is the only Doctor Who story set in Albania - actually, I'm pretty sure it is the only one that even mentions the country.) The book is fairly clearly divided between Letts' work on this opening section, and Dicks' reshaping of The D�mons for the rest of the book. It is fun, especially for those of us who grew up more on Dicks' novelisations of the Pertwee era rather than the original TV broadcasts.[return]Prequel stories for companions are fairly rare (I can think offhand of Harry in The Face of the Enemy, Erimem in The Coming of the Queen, Mel in The Wrong Doctors and the brief glimpse of Rose at the end of The End of Time - Amy/Amelia is in a different category) but on reflection I find it surprising that there are no others featuring the Brigadier. The screen Brigadier is a bit older than Nicholas Courtney (who was 17 at the time of the real Corfu incident), so there are plenty of possibilities for military back-story, in which perhaps he just misses being confronted with the sfnal elements of the plot and solves problems without ever really being aware of their causes. Just a thought....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2108490.html[return][return]An excellent story of a raid on the National Gallery of Scotland, mostly from the point of vhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2108490.html[return][return]An excellent story of a raid on the National Gallery of Scotland, mostly from the point of view of the upper-middle class robbers who hire an underworld boss as an accomplice, and also that of the detective investigating them. I expected the tension to be about whether or not they would be caught - and knowing Rankin, either is possible - but in fact there was an excellent twist at the end when the real story is revealed....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2117940.html[return][return]A depressing, miserable piece of whining. Author who hasn't done much sf writes a post-apocahttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2117940.html[return][return]A depressing, miserable piece of whining. Author who hasn't done much sf writes a post-apocalypse novel where the decline of society mirrors the narrator's the decline into old age, and thinks it's something special. Avoid....more
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