(no subject)

Today I am in counting mode and my numbers are all represented by blue sticky notes. It makes a change from lists.

I have four articles to write for which I've done most of the reading. It's just a matter of sitting and thinking until I find my approach and then sorting out any missing reading and then writing. There are eight for which I still have to read. Two of the eight are computer reading and the rest are all paper.

All this is dull when I spell it out, but on my writing slope it looks very pretty. The sticky paper, you see, isn't ordered by what reading I have to do, but by who the pieces are for, and so I have a row of six and then one of four and then one of two.

I plan to spend most of my week entirely destroying all the pretty patterns.

Next week is all about writing*.


*And about my work experience students, but that's as well as writing, not instead of.

David Tallerman - Giant Thief (more Angry Robot)

I like novels that have wry narrators. Especially I like fantasy novels that don't take themselves too seriously and whose narrators know that the world is serious enough and needs a bit of cheek and a series of really stupid decisions made without remorse or, indeed, any overthinking. Giant Thief, therefore, had me from the start.

As fantasy novels go, it uses many standard tropes. A charming thief. A landscape littered with wonder (in this case, littered most particularly with giants). Armies. War. Megalomania. Easie Damasco walks through this landscape with cynicism and a sense of survival. It's his personality and humour that makes this novel not-quite-standard and kept me reading when I was supposed to be doing other things.

It's an old-fashioned novel. It's not big and it's not pretentious. It's non-stop and full of incident (often bloody incident, but incident). It is, however, entirely charming. Easie and his new sort-of-friend, Saltlick, are good companions in the sense of being interesting. Saltlick knows what he wants (or doesn't want), and Easie thinks he can talk or steal his way through life. Early on, Easie realises that stealing a giant was less useful than stealing a horse and resolves to switch the two. The rest of the tale is about why this goes dreadfully wrong, of course. The big questions (and all good novels have a big question) is whether Easie is ever going to learn common sense, or whether his uncommon capacity to make bad decisions is going to be his downfall.

Mostly this novel is about what happens when the wisecracking sidekick unexpectedly becomes the centre of attention. I was supposed to be doing other stuff today, but I opened the file and… the fact that this review is already written and the other stuff is yet to be done says it all.

The e-book will be out early next year, with paper versions also early next year. And ignore my earlier comment about dates, which was wrong.

(no subject)

It's BiblioBuffet day today. This time I talk about being kafkaesque and about Jewish Narnias thanks to a new book from Tachyon.