And yet another one! I enjoyed Gary Gibson’s other books, Angel Stations and Against Gravity, so was looking forward to this. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s big meaty space opera combining many of the elements I enjoy. It’s dark, wide-screen, concerns survival-of-civilization events and is populated with the kind of smart and often nasty characters that have become a staple of present day space opera, with the addition, when it comes to the Shoal, of some particularly Banksian aliens. I particularly like how he has dealt with implants, religion, AI and just the whole set-up of this future. And there’s exploding spaceships! I picked up this near 500-page book and roared through it in no time. Nice one, Mr Gibson. Oh, and unfortunately, this isn’t available until October, but you can pre-order it.

OK, I’ll be doing another signing at 6pm Thursday 9th of August at Waterstones in Lakeside Thurrock, so if you’re in the area, come and buy some books, say hello, get books you’ve already bought signed! See you there.

I’d read bits and pieces about this on the Internet and knew the name John Scalzi so when, on a recent visit to Macmillan, Peter Lavery handed over a copy of Old Man’s War I was happy enough to take it away and give it a go. The comments on the book from other authors were pretty good and here are the ones I think most relevant: ‘His dialogue is suitably snappy’ – Paul DiFillipo, ‘It’s Starship Troopers without the lectures’ – Cory Doctorow, ‘vivid characters’ – Ken McCleod. This book was also shortlisted for the Hugo award. Now, I always take such comments with a pinch of salt, because there are too many crap books out there lauded by an author’s author buddies and, as for awards, the opinion of a few voters or committee I feel is less important than that of those who actually go out and buy the books, and it strikes me that too many awards are political and nepotistic. I won’t tell you how wonderful was this aspect or that aspect of this book. Suffice to say I picked it up a couple of days ago and didn’t want to put it down, and I’ll certainly want to read its sequel The Ghost Brigades.

Well, I know I’m enjoying a book when everything else stops until I’ve completed it. This had its faults, but probably the same faults as mine in that the reader is too hooked into the action to take in all the detail. I was confused about the political set-up here until the end, and the snake heads were right out of Stargate Atlantis, but none of this was enough to distract me for long. David Gunn’s Death’s Head started off loaded with violent action and horror and continued in that vein, so I was hooked from about page two, then hooked landed gutted and fried in batter as soon as the talking gun put in an appearance. Yeah! Fuck the literarty-farty crap in the SFF world that has the self-proclaimed arbiters of taste creaming their panties. Take those oh-so-worthy tomes and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine. This took me right back to the fun I had reading E. C. Tubb’s Dumarest saga, Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter on Mars or the old Robert E Howard Conan books!
Only those were books I enjoyed as a teenager … um, perhaps I haven’t grown up … do I want to? Nah.
Nice to read unpretentious solid cover-to-cover entertainment without any concessions to the pc-focus-group-bullshit age we live in. Nice to read something that isn’t a dreadfully sincere allegory on our times, or a sophomore comment on this that or the other political, social, racial, religious or environmental situation by some prick having an attack of literature. It’s often the way when describing books to compare them to other books, or films – whatever. This I would call Starship Troopers meets Commando.Great fun.