Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

Not a new book this but definately worth of a review for the archive. Tigana is Guy Gavriel Kay’s fantasy masterpeice. The storyline is simple. The Peninsula of the Palm is invaded by two sorcerors both with large armies to back them up. During the invasion the Prince of the Duchy of Tigana kills one of the sorcerors sons. This sorceror exacts a terrible revenge by using his magic to…

I hadn’t read anything by J.V. Jones previously but there have been a number of positive comments on the mailing list so when I saw this book in the bookshop I decided to buy it. The plot as summarised on the back of the book is fairly traditional. Villainous King bent on conquering the world. Three disperate individuals brought together to stop him.

But of course its not the bare outline…

This is J V Jones first book. I had already read and been impressed by “The Barbed Coil” when I got this and was hoping for something of a similar quality. Unfortunately I didn’t get it. “The Baker’s Boy” is part one of the “Book of Words” trilogy. I’m not sure if I’ll bother to read the other two books.

The story is very much a typical fantasy…

This is a very BIG story. I don’t just mean this (1225 page) book either since its part one of The Night’s Dawn Trilogy. I don’t just mean the trilogy is big either. The scope of the story is huge. The number of characters involved is large and the ideas aren’t exactly small either.

Its hard to summarise a book of this size and nature. There are a…

This is actually book two of a series (of indefinate length). Its a damn big book (1000+ pages) and it has a feeble map near the beginning with daft names like Westland, The Midlands and The Boundary.

All of which raises a number of questions:

1) Why did I buy book two when I haven’t read book one?

I do stupid things like that. I did it with The…

Book three (no I still haven’t read book one) with at least one more to come. This one weighs in at a mere 700 odd pages. Guess he was in a rush. Having defeated the Keeper of the Dead, our heros now has to deal with the world of the living. Not to mention a few of the Keeper’s servants who are a little miffed.

This book…

David Gemmell has been writing popular fantasy books for years now and anyone who has read any of his previous works will have a rough idea what to expect from this one. In this first book of the “Rigante” series we follow the childhood of Connavar, a member of one of the Rigante clans. As he grows to adulthood he shows considerable natural talents and certain mystical beings take an…

Right its the first part of a fantasy series. So lets get out the checklist:

Our Hero is a Prince……………………….CHECK
Our Heroine is a Princesss………………….CHECK
The villain is a powerful sorceror…………..CHECK
A “great evil” is about to sweep the land…….CHECK
Only our hero can prevent it………………..CHECK
The cover art depicts a scene from the book wrongly and in a terribly cliched manner…………………….CHECK

But you know what they say about judging…

I approached this book with considerable trepidation. I’m a big fan of Asimov’s original Foundation Trilogy but was not overly impressed by his later additions to the series like Foundation’s Edge where he attempted to tie the Foundation stories in with his robot stories.

So, knowing that this book took place prior to the setting up of the Foundations, that it featured robots and that it was written not by Asimov…

Foundation and Chaos is book two of the Second Foundation Trilogy is rather different to book one. For a start Bear sticks more faithfully to the Foundation universe as described by Asimov. How important that is will vary depending on the reader. More importantly, the plot of this book feels more cohesive, resulting in a more entertaining read.

The Second Foundation Trilogy covers the life of Hari Seldon, his invention…