Maia granted an audience to the Count Bazhevel and Osmin Stano Bazhevin on a cold, bleak afternoon when the clouds were nearly the same colour as Maia's skin. Because the Count Bazhevel had annoyed him with his scheming, Maia chose to receive him in the Untheileian, even though Osmin Bazhevin's status as the dead archduke's fiancée would have ( Read more... )

Here's an idea:

If the point of what you're writing is bewilderment on being dropped suddenly into a maelstrom of political intrigue and unfamiliar names and faces ...

... why not start the book in a simple, accessible style, focusing on welcoming the reader in, be it through your protagonist's personality or lived experience or emotions; something ( Read more... )

I stopped doing my book reports in large part because I more or less stopped reading ... This happened about when I cleared my 'easy fiction' stack and moved onto the super dense French philosophy stack, oddly enough. I have dabbled in a little fiction here and there: Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tales, surprisingly a slog; Light ( Read more... )

As stated in the Darkwood review, I am friends with the author, so that may have coloured my reading slightly. And I read it within 48 hours of finishing the first book, so I can't comment on its standalone qualities, as it was for me essentially a continuation of the same story.

The action is divided between two parties: Gretel Mudd and the ( Read more... )

Having finished Dalemark, my next bit of catch-up reading was to add to the 'books by friends' pile. I had actually met Gabby Hutchinson Crouch through a friend back when I was living in London. We became Twitter friends several months later, and even though I've never seen her in person since, she's one of my online besties. So when she ( Read more... )

I'm reading The Little Flowers of St Francis, a nearly contemporary memoir of anecdotes about Francis of Assisi and the early days of his monastic order, and

• There are an awful lot of monks who go spend the night in the woods in pairs to, er, 'talk about God', just sayin' (hey, God is love, man)
• I have seen lots of depictions of St Francis but none ( Read more... )

And now, an entry for the gallery of deeply inappropriate title graphics:


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Someone on Tumblr asked me if I'd listened to the recent radio dramatisation of Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. I have - the first episode at least - and if you wish to do so you'd better hurry up because it expires tomorrow evening (UK time): Episode 1 / Episode 2Le Guin's own story is intriguing, what little I know if it, and the ( Read more... )

A few years ago, when Occupy was doing their thing and their grievances and agenda were in the news, I had this thought:

These are clever, resourceful, idealistic, fit young people in their prime, who evidently don't mind a bit of discomfort to prove a point. If they want to reject the system, why don't they pool their resources, launch a ( Read more... )