Gallowglass

On the bookshelf

Eugene Volokh blogs about Sean McMullen's "Souls in the Great Machine," and "Voyage of the Shadowmoon," both of which he evidently liked quite a lot. I've only read the former, but couldn't see the attraction myself - tolerably well written, and nice background, but I thought there were problems in plotting, and various SF tropes that didn't quite come off as believable. I find China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station," and "The Scar" much more to my taste - splendidly written, and -open- in a way that most science fantasy isn't - they give a real sense of a very complex world, which works according to its own peculiar logic, rather than being custom-built to fit the constraints of a bog-standard trilogy. John Holbo is also a Mieville fan, and is promising a post on the relationship between Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar, Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork (which as the similarity of names suggests, started as a parodic version of Lieber's city), and Mieville's New Crobuzon. But Mieville comes about dangerously close to Real Literature (although it's still fun) - if it's splendidly written trash that you want, you can't go far wrong with George R.R.Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Jacob and Matt can keep their Robert Jordans and Brian Herberts - for guilty pleasure reading, Martin just can't be beat. Complex politics (borrowing liberally from the War of the Roses), decent writing, and best of all Martin's willingness, which is entirely uncharacteristic of the genre, to kill off sympathetic characters at unexpected moments. The covers on the US editions are pretty awful - the first book, "A Game of Thrones" has a Fabio look-alike staring broodingly into the middle distance - but the contents are quite addictive. The only problem is that book number four in the series -still- isn't out, nearly two years after it was supposed to be published - causing extraordinary angst to me and a legion of other George R.R. Martin junkies. Expect an extended blogging silence from both me and Maria (also a fan) when it finally hits the shelves.

Update: moving onto the sublime, Patrick Belton displays excellent taste in touting John McGahern's new saga (link to Oxblog - permalink bloggered) - which I'm still waiting on myself, but have heard wonderful things about from friends. Apparently it's one of those books where not much happens in plain, but very beautiful prose. McGahern is now a sort of elder statesman of Irish literature, but used to be denounced by bishops from the pulpit; Ireland has changed a lot in the last thirty years.