Do It Anyway

Red Mars looks like a science fiction book on the surface. It’s set on Mars for goodness sake. I have an admission to make, I started reading this book (first of a trilogy) about ten years ago and never finished it. It’s seldom that happens to be honest and more frequent now than it was ten years ago.

Red Mars seemed to me like a political drama, built around the bureaucracy of setting up a colony that might as well be in a remote part of Scotland as on a different planet. Now I’m a bit older and less determined to drop science fiction books that don’t have extravagant space battles in them, I thought I’d give it another go. So far, so same as. This does not bode well…

When I was in my late teens I went on a bit of a Dean Koontz marathon. It was the early 90’s so even the stuff written in the 70’s hadn’t dated too badly at the point (no ubiquitous mobile phones for example). I ran through most of his back catalogue in a long summer and enjoyed pretty much all of what he wrote.  It is true to say that when you read his works back to back, the lead characters become a little but samey- basically they are idealised versions of Koontz himself, generous caring chaps, a lot of them with special forces backgrounds that they don’t like to mention because they’re working as a mechanic or something or other now days.

It’s been a few years now since I read anything of his, although I keep on meaning to go back and read the Watcher as it’s one of the books I remember enjoying the most when I was younger. But since the weathers been terrible this week, I’ve not really wanted to haul Wolf Hall into work every day as its over 600 pages and a bit too much like hard work in that respect, so I have another book on the go at work.

The House of Thunder lies a little about its age, it purports to have been written in 1994 but that’s the first time it was published under Dean Koontz’s name as the author rather than a pseudonym. It’s really older, dating back to the early 1980’s. But that doesn’t really matter, that’s part of the joy of books, stuff that was written a few years ago is still relevant, it doesn’t become outdated or outmoded by the latest remake or sequel like TV or film does.

I can see why The House of Thunder wasn’t originally released under the name Dean Koontz. Although the writing style is definitely his, the nature of the book isn’t particularly (although he has visited the central themes of it again in the 90’s with False Memory).

I’m not going to give the central plot point away as that will render the book a bit pointless but you shouldn’t be more than half way through before you get the gist of the twist. It’s fairly well telegraphed. Some of the prose is a little poor, and the way Susan falls for her doctor isn’t handled in the most convincing manner- it is very facile and more than a little twee.

It’s not a long book, weighing in at 350 pages, so it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. When I’ve finished A Christmas Carol for our bookclub, I think I’ll try one of his newer books. Or maybe I’ll dig out my ancient copy of Watchers…

Wolf Hall is a St Albans Book Group read, and my first venture into Booker territory. I’ve only progressed about 60 odd pages in so far but it is fairly enjoyable. The Tudors is a period of history that I never studied at school but over the last few years films like the Other Boleyn Girl and Witchfinder General have helped me to at least a rudimentary understanding of the period. Yes, I know you couldn’t get two films at such diametrically opposed ends of the spectrum, such is my taste in film 🙂

The only issue I have with the book so far is the authors style of writing. It seems very passive, even sequences like the young Cromwell getting beaten half to death by his father are somehow strangely uninvolving. Hopefully the interest of the period and the events happening will compensate for this. Definitely worth a punt for £9.49 from Amazon though.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this book rattles along at a fair old rate, a rate that the series hasn’t really managed since the first four or five volumes. Continue reading →

Crikey, that’s a title and a half for a book.

The fact that The Gathering Storm is the 12th volume in a series might give you an idea that I think its worth a read.  There are definitely problems with epic fantasy, as George RR Martin has found out, the longer a series gets, the more spread out the characters get and the harder it is to progress the story without hitting the 300,000+ word barrier per book.

And to be honest things were starting to drag in the last two or three volumes. This came to a head when Robert Jordan sadly  contracted what turned out to be a very rare and terminal disease. But he did write extensive notes and partial chapters so the series could be finished.

So it’s with this in mind I picked up volume 12 a couple of weeks ago after finishing the absolutely excellent Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. Chalk and cheese really, Abercrombie has written a thoroughly modern fantasy with dark humour and swearing, where Jordan/Sanderson have written classic high fantasy.

So far (over 500 pages in!) I am loving it. The story has really picked up pace and there have been a couple of real twists that have left me wondering where things are going.

Will post again on it once I have finished 🙂