There is an interesting blog post on Joe Abercrombie’s website that does a bit more than tell the reader he’s finished his first draft, it actually details the mechanics of how he writes. What I found interesting was how closely it tallies with what I was reading in this blog post at Bubble Cow.
Its worth a read, especially if you’ve liked the First Law trilogy or the excellent Best Served Cold or if you’re interested in the mechanics of writing.
The penultimate part of the final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is due out this October and I just noticed that Amazon has the cover blurb up:
Desperate for help to find her adopted son, Jeremiah, Linden Avery has resurrected Thomas Covenant in a cataclysmic exertion of Earthpower and wild magic. But the consequences of her efforts are more terrible than she could have imagined. Sorcery on that scale has awakened the Worm of the World’s End: the ultimate end of all Time, and therefore of all life, has been set in motion. And on a more personal level, the results are no less extreme. The stress of reincarnation so many centuries after his death has fractured Covenant’s mind. He cannot tell Linden where to find her son. And his leprosy has renewed its grip on him, inexorably killing his nerves. The Ranyhyn had tried to warn her. Now, plunged to depths of desperation and despair for which she is entirely unprepared, Linden seeks radical responses to the dilemmas she has created. Searching for Jeremiah, and accompanied only by a few friends and allies – some of them unwilling – she takes chances that threaten her sanity, forcing her to confront the Land’s most fearsome secrets. Dreadful futures hinge on all of her choices, and she and her companions are driven beyond the limits of their endurance. Yet she still walks paths laid out for her by the Despiser, and his forces are ready . . .
The first two Chronicles are perhaps my favourite fantasy reads ever and I’ll admit so far the final series leave me torn. Perhaps 20 years is too long between the second and third series, despite what Donaldson has said about needing to develop as an author in order to be skilled enough to tackle the story, there are still some aspects I don’t like. The whole concept of the Insequent doesn’t fit comfortably with me. If a race as powerful as the Insequent has existed I can’t make sense of them not appearing in any of the preceding books.
Some of the reveals in the previous two books were pretty awesome but additionally some of the chapters also seemed like visiting the characters and creatures of the two previous trilogies to put ticks in boxes. I’m torn you see but the blurb for Against All Things Ending makes me really excited.
Or Seventy Two Virgins to give the book it’s proper name.
Watcher of the Dead is the fourth book in J V Jones’ (JVJ) Sword of Shadows series and as such I’ve assumed that you’ve either got knowledge of the previous 3 volumes, or, after reading this, you’ll be enthused to click on the link at the bottom and order volume one.
Until I just had a look, I always thought JVJ pushed this series out fairly rapidly but it turns out its 4 books in 11 years, which compares unfavourably to George RR Martin’s 4 books in 9 years (and I never thought I’d use the word unfavourably in comparing release schedules against Martin!). Still, its mostly due to a 5 year hiatus between books two and three, which caused me to reread books one and two at the time.
Book four, Watcher of the Dead, sees the action really hotting up. “Relentless” isn’t a word I use a lot, especially in a 400 page novel but it really is suitable in this instance: from Angus Lok, to Raif, to the Eye, Effie, Raina and so on, at the start of each and every chapter you’re desperate to continue the story of the person from the last chapter. For all of two pages anyway, and then you’re gripped by the continuation of the next characters story arc.
Poor old Raif is looking like he’s going to be held together entirely by scar tissue at some point in the not to distant future, there is some imagination involved in the regular torments he suffers. Certainly wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of the person that dreamt them up.
Part of the skill is keeping a tight rein on your characters, if they wander off you spend too much time getting them into place for the finale, and this is where series can lose it in the middle- endless trekking, contrived reasons for going somewhere and a lot of boredom for the reader. It’s obvious JVJ has spent a lot of time planning this series and this book particularly because at volume 4 we’ve not really encountered pointless marching for the sake of getting the chess pieces in the right place.
The only issue I have with this book is a silly one really. It’s so well written if you read the series back to back it exposes the shortfallings of the first book. Thats not to say Cavern of Black Ice is badly written because it isn’t, but this is on a different level, the writing is up there with the top contemporary fantasy crowd. I shudder to think the level of research thats gone in to some of it (although hopefully not as much research into the torture aspects as the post Iron Age technology and so on).
All in all, well worth reading. If you’ve read the other 3, it’s a no brainer to get this, if you haven’t, go grab volume one, A Cavern of Black Ice, you’re in for a treat.
If you want to see some more detailed analysis (containing *SPOILERS*), there are some after the click through.
The Broken Shore is my first foray into detective fiction. Our book group selected it from the CWA (Crime Writers Association) Dagger winners from a couple of years back, so it came with a reasonable pedigree. The book blurb is also more than complementary, verging on the hyperbole at times as it decries the book as not just a great Australian crime novel but as one of the great Australian novels full stop.
Well it’s enjoyable but its certainly not the greatest thing since the invention of things. Temple has a very engaging writing style, he deals with the spoken word as it is spoken, which is rather uncommon in literature. The detectives and police in general speak in short clipped terms, whilst everyone else is a little more loquacious. It takes some getting used to but works well.
Try as I might however, I can’t hear the voices with an Aussie accent. I’ve spent 6 weeks in the country, so its not a lack of exposure to it. I suppose its the way that the back water hick town most of the novel takes part in are just like the back water hick towns in the deep south of America.
The plot itself centres around a detective called Joe Cashin (although in the great tradition of detective novels, he’s referred to as Cashin by pretty much everyone bar his mum), who has headed back to the small town he grew up in to lick the wounds of a serious accident he was involved in and recover. Then the equilibrium of quiet racism and rural crime is disrupted by the murder of a local bigwig.
Characters are set up as the perpetrators but its fairly evident they’re not to blame and things move on at pace from here. And it’s this that really proves the issue to be honest. The murderers only appear in the last 50 or so pages, basically at the reveal, so there’s no link to them other than the odd mention for the main bulk of the novel. This feels unsatisfactory when you finally get to meet them.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book enough that I’m going to dig out some of Temple’s other work. Particularly any other Cashin books he’s written, as I found the whole thing rather engaging.
