Books, November 2011
*** Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind. Incredibly engaging, kept me turning the (many) pages and made me want to read the next book (it’s the first of a trilogy) as soon as I was done. Many aspects of the story and characters are certainly cliched, but Rothfuss manages to give them enough life and interest that you don’t really mind.
* Diana Gabaldon - Outlander. Awful, if occasionally gripping, romance novel. It was recommended to me as good fantasy, but aside from using time travel to throw the heroine into historic Scotland, there is absolutely nothing fantastic or science-fictional about this book at all; the heroine could just as well have been a visitor from another country, and the story would have been about the same.
** Mervyn Peake and Maeve Gilmore - Titus Awakes. Awful. What this has to do with the Titus Groan of Peake’s Gormenghast novels, aside from sharing his name, I couldn’t say. Admittedly, my memory of the third book isn’t as strong as the first, so maybe this one arises more naturally from it (and it is based on fragments Peake left behind). But still.. not good.