The Stone Canal
Follow up to The Star Fraction and second book in the Fall Revolution series
Category: Books
librarian?
Halting State
By far his best novel so far, Halting State is a near-future thriller set in Edinburgh.
his?
The Damned Utd
Quite, quite awesome fictional retelling of Brian Clough’s 44 days in charge of Leeds United.
Peace writes the entire story as if coming from Clough’s own mouth or subconscious. In one half of the narrative it’s the ‘present day’ and Clough is trying, and failing, to get to grips with the Leeds United job and the other tells the back story of Clough’s managerial career at Hartlepool, Derby County and Brighton.
It’s a fascinating insight into a brilliant and deeply flawed man. A man driven by all sorts of demons, including a desperate desire to prove himself and to best those he respected and those he hated. There was no-one he hated more than Don Revie and his Damned Utd of the title. A great football team that won by playing game in as cynical a fashion as possible. It was his burning desire to best Revie and doing so by turning his cynical machine into a pure football dream that got him to take the job in the first place. Only for him to ruin it by alienating the first team and the board as only he could.
It is quite simply the best football book I’ve ever read. If you have any love for the game you owe it to yourself to read it.
counting?
Elektra
Movie novelization. Was wrong that there might more depth to it than in the movie.
mange?
Roadside Picnic
Seminal Soviet SF, the source for Stalker – the highly acclaimed Tarkovsky film
elderglass?
The Lies of Locke Lamora
The best fantasy novel I’ve read in an age.
Set in a city reminiscent of medieval Venice, it’s a world full of pampered nobles and organized crime existing cheek by jowl.
Lamora is the head of a criminal gang who secretly flaunt the rules of criminal society by conning nobles out of their money.
The main plot is full of twists and turns putting the hugely likeable central characters through the ringer.
Flashbacks fill out some of Lamora’s history.
The seecondary characters are also rather well fleshed out.
His total disregard for the lives of his characters is something – lots and lots of deaths in this one.
It’s barely fantasy to be honest, barring a couple of central conceits, it could have easily been an historical novel.
I recommend this to anyone without hesitation.
indecision?
Love and Other Near Death Experiences
Late-night Jazz DJ Rob Garland narrowly avoids being killed in an accident and starts to question every trivial decision in life. After unburdening himself on his show he’s contacted by various characters with similar experiences. Prompted by his fiancee he embarks on a ‘quest’ to come to terms with the experience.
The book is occasionally rather funny, but is seriously let down by an obvious and laboured plot.
My verdict? This book cost me the princely sum of £1. About right I reckon.
feather?
Anansi Boys
Gods are a preoccupation of Mr Gaiman, what with the sheer number of Gods and godlike beings in Sandman, and of course the rather good and rather lengthy American Gods.
This time though the tone is less weighty. In a curious bybrid of fantasy, horror and humour the book relates the story of Charles “Fat Charlie” Nancy. Fat Charlie is a likeable, if rather ineffectual, man who finds out after his Father’s funeral that he was the spider god and trickster Anansi and not only that but he has a brother too.
On a whim he invites this newly revealed brother, Spider, into his life and things start to spiral out of control.
This is a very enjoyable book, wittily written and effectively scary at times. It’s only weakness is a somewhat unlikely denouement.
I’d recommend it as an introduction to Gaiman, maybe only bettered by Neverwhere. I’d also recommend it as a good read to just about anybody.
beloved?
The Ghost Brigades
The follow up to Old Man’s War is a curious beast. It’s set in the same context, even features a couple of characters from that first novel, but it’s protagonist is entirely different.
Jared Dirac is a Special Forces soldier in the CDF, what the regular forces call The Ghost Brigades. Unlike every other Special Forces soldier Dirac was created to host the conciousness of another man. Charles Boutin was the brilliant scientist behind the BrainPal and the transfer of conciousness that allows the CDF special forces to exist, but now he’s gone renegade and betrayed humanity to competing alien forces. However the transfer seems to fail and Dirac becomes a regular SF grunt.
The book follows Dirac through basic training and into full-blown combat and on to a confrontation with Boutin himself after he gains access to the man’s memories.
It’s a fun book but flawed in that it lacks a real sense of coherence and succeeds better in providing a satisfying ending to the story in the first book than anything else.
It’s still worth a read if you want a quick blast of Heinlein like old school science fiction, like.
37?
The Books I Read in 2007 were (in chronological order):
- Earth, Air, Fire and Custard by Tom Holt rated B-
- Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad rated A-
- Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien rated A-
- Ringworld by Larry Niven rated B+
- Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith rated A
- The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones rated A
- Breakfast at Tiffanys by Truman Capote rated B
- Glasshouse by Charles Stross rated A-
- Not A Runner Bean by Mark Steel rated B+
- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling rated B+
- Pattern Recognition by William Gibson rated A
- Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott rated C+
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling rated A-
- Old Man’s War by John Scalzi rated B+
- Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About by Mil Millington rated B-
- Storm Front by Jim Butcher rated B
- A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil by Christopher Brookmyre rated B+
- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain rated B-
- The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize by David Cavanagh rated B+
- Making Money by Terry Pratchett rated B+
- Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett rated A-
- Going Postal by Terry Pratchett rated A
- The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross rated A
- Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin rated A
- The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll rated A-
- The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt rated B+
- Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod rated A-
- Dark Light by Ken MacLeod rated A-
- Engine City by Ken MacLeod rated A-
- Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge rated A-
- The Sandman Companion by Hy Bender rated B
- Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett rated A+
I also read the five books of the Belgariad by David Eddings but didn’t bother to put them on the blog.