In honour of the release of Oswald: Return of the King, the second volume in The Northumbrian Thrones series, I’m giving away, to people who haven’t yet had the chance to read the first instalment, three copies of Edwin: High King of Britain. I’ll post the books anywhere in the world at my expense and all you have to do to enter is leave your name in the comments below and then use the contact me bit of the website so I have your email to get back to you if you win.
As this is my giveaway, I’m likely to look with more interest at people who give me an idea of why they’d like to read the book, but you don’t have to say if you don’t want to.
So, as the saying goes, you have to be in it to win it! Comment away.
Note: the giveaway is now over. Thank you very much to the people who entered and I hope you enjoy reading Edwin.
Question: when to stop reading a book. I have no problem starting a book – and there’s a teetering pile next to my bed waiting for attention – but when should I stop reading a book once I’ve started it? All right, there’s some easy answers to this: if the book in question is so incompetently written as to become annoying; if, even after giving it a fair chance, the prospect of picking it up and carrying on seems more chore than pleasure – although there is an exception to this in the case of recognised classics: I’ll keep ploughing through these, even if they seem tedious, in the expectation that they would not have achieved classic status for no reason (and I’m just enough of a literary snob to want to tick another off the classics’ list even if I do find the reading tedious).
But as for Mr Mercedes – confession time here; although I am reviewing it, I did not read the whole book – I stopped reading despite the fact that it was a good, indeed riveting book. I stopped precisely because it was a riveting book, with all the page-turning compulsion that’s made Stephen King what he is and made me read a good fraction (although by no means all) of his books. I stopped because it was too good – or, rather, one of the characters, Brady Horsefield, the mass-murdering Mr Mercedes, was too good – in the sense of too vividly depicted – and, since nearly as much time is spent with him as the narrative point of view, I decided I really just did not want to have him inside my head any longer. So, having read to the end of part I, I skipped to the end, read his comeuppance, found out which characters had been sacrificed along the way in the service of the narrative, was dearly relieved to find out that the dog seemed to have survived, and then put the book down, satisfied and relieved. You know, much though I hate to say this, sometimes the best thing you can do is not finish a book.
The Fforde Invention Meter, having crept towards the red line in the first two books in the series, goes into the red, inspiration, zone. As ever, the joy is in the details, from reality grades I to IV, to the wild beasts of Wales, rather than the characterisation (Jennifer Strange is about as close to perfection as anyone outside the hero of a Dean Koontz novel can come). It’s just as well, really, that characterisation isn’t Fforde’s strong point, as this means I didn’t get too upset when some characters met unexpectedly terminal ends (the sort of ends which suggests they really really really won’t be coming back in the fourth and final book).
What’s the strangest thing you’ve heard people say on the street, in a tube, on the bus, anywhere in London? As I’ve usually got my nose buried in a book on the tube, I usually miss what people are talking about, but luckily for me plenty of others are busy taking notes and then tapping the questions, phrases, sayings and bon mots into Twitter on their iPhones to send to Time Out, which publishes them every week in the ‘Word on the Street’ section. This little book is a collection of some of the best – and when I say best, I mean most bizarre, ranging from ‘White bread is like the ninja of the food world. It’s a silent killer’ to ‘Clearly, there’s a reason nostrils are the same size as fingers’.
They’re surreal, rude and, sometimes, probably certifiable, but definitely compelling, which is what makes the ‘Word on the Street’ section of the magazine the turn-to page it is. This little book is probably ideal toilet or bathroom reading (and also very useful if, like me, you’re running behind on the Goodreads Reading Challenge) but at £6.99 it is really over priced. £5 would be more like it, and £2.99 would be ideal: there are, after all not that many pages (rather craftily, the pages aren’t numbered so without sitting down and counting you won’t know how many) but in terms of pence per word, only something like Where the Wild Things Are is worse value (although the Wild Things has the better pictures!). So, I’d advise sticking to the magazine – now a freebie – rather than paying for the book.
What is the song of an imaginary creature? Admittedly, the creature in question is a (metaphorical) mixture of velociraptor, knife block (with the knives all sticking blade up) and labrador, so not the most obvious candidate for song, but the question stands. Well, it turns out, rather than the sparking clash of metal, or the grind of tooth on bone, the song of the Quarkbeast is enchanting: yearning, lonely, and ever reaching towards a barely glimpsed and often receding, yet certainly there, consummation. Unfortunately, in a curious nod towards MAD (mutually assured destruction/desire) the Quarkbeast sings only when its twin approaches, and union with said anti-twin will bring absolute destruction, as when an electron and positron meet.
This is unfortunate for the Quarkbeast. It’s also unfortunate for anyone else within a mile or two. But it’s good for the reader. Jasper Fforde’s invention drive, which was revving nicely in the first volume of the series without getting much second gear, begins to pick up speed in this second book of The Chronicles of Kazam. And, after all, this is what we read Fforde for: invention, imagination, wordplay and dreadful puns (not so much character development). As with Thursday Next, where the Fforde invention drive (or FID for short) took until the second or third volume in the series to really kick into overdrive, so with The Chronicles of Kazam: after a few jerks and shudders in the first book, the story is really beginning to rev up nicely here and I anticipate the third and fourth will explode into the inventosphere. Three and a half stars for this one and anticipating four for the next.
Thank you for your submission to […]. I regret to inform you that we are unable to use it at this time. Here is what our editorial assistants had to say about this story:
Vote: Reject
Thanks for the wait while we considered your work. I’m sorry to say this is a “no” from me. While I loved the fact that Carvel had a unique voice, the voice was so distant that I never felt a real connection to his character. On a positive note, I liked the way you simply placed the reader into the story and never gave any more background information than was needed to understand what was happening in the moment. It was a pleasant change from the dreaded info dump. I hope you will continue to think of us for your future work. Thanks for submitting.
OK, if dogs could talk, what would they say? It’s easy with cats: they, of course, can talk, but they’re obviously not going to have conversations with the servile class. But dogs, what would they say?
At first thought, I’d have said, ‘Bone!’ or ‘Walks!’, with great enthusiasm. But that is to do down dogs – and besides, that’s pretty much what they always say when they can talk (or, in the wonderful film Up!, ‘Squirrel!’). You know, that’s too easy. Sure, some would go for the monosyllabic whuff of enthusiasm, but others would be more considered, more thoughtful, more mellow: they’d drop their head to one side, loll their tongues and say, ‘Bones, walks, sleep, huh, huh, master, love.’
Yes, I set off this review trying to make a case for literary dogs and I don’t seem to have made it to my destination. Neither does the Dan man (the world’s hardest working author): the protagonists of Fiefdom are dog soldiers, genetically modified to protect mankind and then, finding themselves the only survivors of an Ice Age, living on in the U-Bahn tunnels under Berlin. But, being dogs, once, their vocabulary proves rather limited, and though the book has all the Dandroid’s usual narrative drive, there’s a limit to how many times you can hear a dog soldier saying, ‘Tougher and tough’ before it begins to pall a little. Still, for a blood-soaked light tube train read (particularly appropriate given its U-Bahn setting), it rattles along as quickly as the new rolling stock on the Metropolitan line.
Liz Robinson at Lovereading has written the first review of Oswald: Return of the King: it’s lovely and, as writers rank only slightly below actors in our thirst for praise without wanting to show it, obviously thoroughly deserved!
Let’s give it the Isaac ‘Yaay!’
Here’s the start of the review:
A triumphant continuation of the ‘Northumbrian Thrones’ trilogy; these tales are bringing to life a forgotten time, when being a King was a dangerously unpredictable job to hold. The story now races ahead to Oswald who witnessed the death of his father in the first book ‘Edwin: High King of Britain’. This story feels even more complete than Edwin’s, knowing Oswald’s background helps to give flesh and emotion to this man and an appreciation of the difficulties battering his very existence.
In honour of the wonderful Jasper Fforde, and in particular his Thursday Next novels where the eponymous heroine enters Bookworld to save it from various menaces and perils, I’ve renamed the previously rather boring ‘book review’ section of my blog, ‘Adventures in Bookland’. And, in truth, that’s a far better title, for after all, when we read a book we do go on an adventure. If it’s a non-fiction book, then there will be intellectual adventure to go, hopefully, with narrative excitement and verbal fizz; if it’s a story, then, hopefully, there will be dragons!
And, yes, you’ve guessed it (the title does rather give it away), Jasper Fforde does give us dragons, or rather one (with a couple of slither ons at the end). He also gives us a version of Britain, the Ununited Kingdom, split into a myriad little principalities, rather as if GK Chesterton had sat down (on a sturdy, reinforced chair!) and divided the country up on Distributist lines. I particularly enjoyed the Troll Wall, in the far North, built to keep out what it says in its name – no doubt many Westminster politicians, looking with dismay at what is happening north of the border in this 2015 election year, would feel the same.
But now, enjoyable though The Last Dragonslayer is, can I ask a question. When was the last time we had, in books, a proper, fire breathing, maiden eating, gold hoarding, evil serpent? I know there’s been Smaug in the recent Hobbit films, but they hark back to Tolkien (to a greater or lesser extent!). But, since Smaug, have there been any properly evil worms? Thinking back over the last, er, rather too long, but let’s say forty years or so, I can remember Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, the Luckdragon of The Neverending Story, Gordon Dickson’s Dragon Knight stories, the aerial division of the armies in a modified Napoleonic war in the Temeraire series, and the dragons in George Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (which I’ve not read or watched, but have been unable to avoid). At worst, these dragons can be called dangerous, but most are positively cuddly (or, at least, as cuddly as fire-breathing beasts with scales can reasonably be expected to be).
Now, I understand that authors might want to play with the stereotype, to break it down and try it from a new angle, but really, don’t you think we have a whole new stereotype here? Now, dragons are always, always, misunderstood creatures, cruelly picked on by a humanity fearful of ‘the other’. Indeed, it’s become such a stereotype that the reward of the unexpected awaits the first writer to make the dragon back into what it was, traditionally: cold, calculating and thoroughly, completely evil.
There, I’ve given you the idea, free and gratis. Now get out there and write it. I, for one, will read it, and, on this day of St George, cheer the dragonslayer!
What better place to read a book than here? (And, what’s more, I made and fixed the tree benches myself, sawing notches into the trunk to anchor the planks and then screwing them into place.)
