recent gubbins
I'm sat here having a 'nice' day off work. I say, 'nice'. I'm actually ill. I have this bloody cold that everyone seems to have at the moment and my head feels like someone has been stamping on it and then pumped it full of fluids. So I've dosed myself up with Lemsip and I'm trying hard not to sniff too much incase Elin goes postal.
Anyway, I finally managed to finish the Forgotten Realms novel, The Halfling's Gem by R. A. Salvatore the other day and to be fair, it wasn't terrible. My initial opinions haven't changed much. I still think his writing is purely functional, doing the absolute bare minimum it has to to tell the story, lacking almost any scene-setting description unless it's absolutely necessary (though part of me wonders wether this is actually his fault, or the editor's), the characters were two-dimensional but exaggerated enough to be memorable to be fair, and the story overall was entertaining and had a decent pace and flow to it. My biggest problems with it were the names which were ridiculous to the point of feeling anachronistic. You expect names like Wulfgar for a 'notherner' and Bruenor for a Dwarf, but Cattie-brie? What the hell is that? And Pasha Pook - giving rise to utterly unforgettable dialogue like, "You shall incur the full wrath of Pook!" And then there's the accents. The Dwarves and the unwashed masses speak in a sort of wierd mish-mash of Southern United States drawl and British West-Country. That said, I wondered sometimes if it was actually supposed to be that strange, strangled accent that some Americans seem to think is Scottish...
I've now started in on the far superior Mothstorm by Philip Reeve. Huzzah!
I borrowed an X-Box 360 from the work library the other day and also a copy of Mass Effect which I've wanted to play for ages. It looks gorgeous and so far has been reasonably gentle - probably because I've only played the first planet and only on the wussy setting. I'm looking forward to getting in to this over the next couple of weeks - until the 360 needs to go back.
Anyway, I finally managed to finish the Forgotten Realms novel, The Halfling's Gem by R. A. Salvatore the other day and to be fair, it wasn't terrible. My initial opinions haven't changed much. I still think his writing is purely functional, doing the absolute bare minimum it has to to tell the story, lacking almost any scene-setting description unless it's absolutely necessary (though part of me wonders wether this is actually his fault, or the editor's), the characters were two-dimensional but exaggerated enough to be memorable to be fair, and the story overall was entertaining and had a decent pace and flow to it. My biggest problems with it were the names which were ridiculous to the point of feeling anachronistic. You expect names like Wulfgar for a 'notherner' and Bruenor for a Dwarf, but Cattie-brie? What the hell is that? And Pasha Pook - giving rise to utterly unforgettable dialogue like, "You shall incur the full wrath of Pook!" And then there's the accents. The Dwarves and the unwashed masses speak in a sort of wierd mish-mash of Southern United States drawl and British West-Country. That said, I wondered sometimes if it was actually supposed to be that strange, strangled accent that some Americans seem to think is Scottish...
I've now started in on the far superior Mothstorm by Philip Reeve. Huzzah!
I borrowed an X-Box 360 from the work library the other day and also a copy of Mass Effect which I've wanted to play for ages. It looks gorgeous and so far has been reasonably gentle - probably because I've only played the first planet and only on the wussy setting. I'm looking forward to getting in to this over the next couple of weeks - until the 360 needs to go back.