This Year's Reading
#22 Iron Angel by Alan Campbell
The second volume of the Deepgate Codex, read in preparation for reviewing the final volume for Strange Horizons. I really enjoyed the first volume and this one lived up to my hopes. In particular Campbell is excellent at expanding his world in a way that feels right. The focus moves out from the ruined city of Deepgate to the surrounding country and then to far away lands and Hell itself.
It is remarkably boisterous and bloody, like a Meiville's novel that has gone on holiday. It is somewhat baggier and looser with characters abandoned for too long between appearances but it avoids most mid-series problems. More than the first volume it does end on a massive cliffhanger but what do I care? I'm about to read the next one.
#23 God Of Clocks by Alan Campbell
Read for review for Strange Horizons.
#24 Most Buxom by Aishling Morgan
Girl porn (of the real rather than Twilight variety). I read this with a view to seeing whether I could go into the trade which seems possible since this is pretty shoddily written.
#25 Riddley Walker by Russell HobanHe wer talking so many levvils at 1ce I dint all ways know what he meant realy I wisht every thing wud mean jus only 1 thing and keap on meaning it not changing all the time.
Me and all. It is less the fact it is written in dialect that makes Riddley Walker hard going and more that Hoban is deliberately using it to throw us into a different pattern of thought to the one we are accustomed to. This is brilliant but exhausting.
Bloomsbury oddly describe this as a Twentieth-Anniversary edition which seems to mean they have taken the average of Hoban's afterword (18 years) and Will Self's introduction (22 years). Self's introduction is typically peppery and takes a pop at Malcolm Bradbury in the first paragraph.
The second volume of the Deepgate Codex, read in preparation for reviewing the final volume for Strange Horizons. I really enjoyed the first volume and this one lived up to my hopes. In particular Campbell is excellent at expanding his world in a way that feels right. The focus moves out from the ruined city of Deepgate to the surrounding country and then to far away lands and Hell itself.
It is remarkably boisterous and bloody, like a Meiville's novel that has gone on holiday. It is somewhat baggier and looser with characters abandoned for too long between appearances but it avoids most mid-series problems. More than the first volume it does end on a massive cliffhanger but what do I care? I'm about to read the next one.
#23 God Of Clocks by Alan Campbell
Read for review for Strange Horizons.
#24 Most Buxom by Aishling Morgan
Girl porn (of the real rather than Twilight variety). I read this with a view to seeing whether I could go into the trade which seems possible since this is pretty shoddily written.
#25 Riddley Walker by Russell HobanHe wer talking so many levvils at 1ce I dint all ways know what he meant realy I wisht every thing wud mean jus only 1 thing and keap on meaning it not changing all the time.
Me and all. It is less the fact it is written in dialect that makes Riddley Walker hard going and more that Hoban is deliberately using it to throw us into a different pattern of thought to the one we are accustomed to. This is brilliant but exhausting.
Bloomsbury oddly describe this as a Twentieth-Anniversary edition which seems to mean they have taken the average of Hoban's afterword (18 years) and Will Self's introduction (22 years). Self's introduction is typically peppery and takes a pop at Malcolm Bradbury in the first paragraph.