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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 30: The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells

Martians, Heat Ray, End of the World etcA while back (maybe a year or two?) I bought an anthology of H.G. Wells books for a couple of quid. 38 novels, polemical works and short story collections all in one handy kindle ebook.

Except not so handy. What they’d done was put all the books together in a single file without a proper Table of Contents (TOC) and no individual chapter breaks. So recently I’ve been fixing that. I split the books into separate files, tidied up the formatting, added covers, a TOC and chapter breaks. It was tedious, repetative but ultimately satisfying work. After all that I figured I should read at least one of those books. So I picked War of the Worlds – which I had in paperback – so I read that copy!

There’s obviously not a lot new I can say about this book. So I don’t intend to post a regular review of it, just a few impressions of this time reading it. If you really want a synopsis click on the image for a link to the Goodreads page.

First thing to say is that it’s hard to read this, well the first chapter specifically without hearing the deep warm tones of Richard Burton, and it’s true that through most of it I was humming Forever Autumn. And I think this is relevant because I think my memory of the story – and I have read the book before – owes more to the concept album than the book itself.

The second thing I noticed was how primitive the human technology was. I know that they were supposed to be out-classed but the fact that this book was written before there were even airplanes, when the main mode of transport was horse-drawn really brings out that difference in weapons tech. It also meant it felt a lot less like a “SciFi” novel because most of the action was at the human level, from the human point of view.

The next thing was how parochial it was. The devastation wreaked by the Martians is swift, extreme and pretty near total – but it covers an area of a few miles between where they landed and London. Even in the book this is acknowledged to some extent. There’s talk of escaping to France and of cities like Manchester and Edinburgh sending help when London needs rebuilding at the end of the book. I presume that this too was deliberate and that if they hadn’t been defeated (spoiler!) then the Martians would have sent further cylinders to build on their beach-head in the UK and spread outwards.

I think the thing that comes out really strongly, and was still a theme in the 2005 Spielberg adaptation, is the effect that the invasion has on an ordinary man and what he is forced to witness, and do, to survive. This stuff is still powerful.

Things I hadn’t remembered were the physical descriptions of the Martians, the way they fed – I knew that they consumed human blood but I hadn’t realised it was directly infused into their veins.

So anyway, a few impressions after re-reading this classic. I definitely enjoyed it but it left a slightly different taste to the one I’d expected.

7/10 – “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one”




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 29: The Girl in the Wave – Robert Kibble

The Girl in the Wave is different from the other books I’ve reviewed in two ways – first it was written by someone I know quite well and used to work with, second it’s not actually been published yet. So I’m reviewing a book you can’t get your hands on yet. Robert has published a couple of other books Fighting the Philosophical Leopard and other stories and Past Presence. I’ve read a couple of stories from Leopard but when I asked him which book I should read first he encouraged me to read this one rather than Past Presence.

So a bit of a dilemna for me, but not for long. I’d read it and I want it to count so I need to review it on my blog. What I will do is withhold a score since that would be unfair since what I read is probably not the final version. As I understand it he’s planning to give it a final edit at some point and then it will probably be published.

The Girl in The Wave is the story of a man who’s just finished university and is living with his parents in Cornwall and trying to figure out what to do with his life. He’s half-heartedly looking for jobs but mostly he spends his days pretty aimlessly. He’s taking a walk along the beach one day when he sees the eponymous Girl, swimming in the sea and suspended momentarily in a wave. He becomes fascinated by her and tries to find out who she is and of course wants to meet her. Once he has actually met this mystery girl they begins a relationship of sorts but in many ways the mystery only increases.

I enjoyed this book. It’s a quick read, I read it on a trip away of a couple of nights – being a novella rather than a novel. I think it’s a book of two halves. In the first part we follow the narrator as he discovers and tries to find out more about and meet this “girl”. In the second part we find out about her story. I found the first part of the story more intriguing, Robert builds the sense of mystery well so that you reader want to know more about this woman as much as the main character does. In the second part of the book at lot of the questions are answered and it becomes much more about suspense and tension. This was still enjoyable but not quite as much as the first part.

To be fair some of this may be due to some formatting issues in the version I had which were particularly pronounced in the second half of the book and quite distracting. Also I know that the ending in particular is something Robert was not 100% happy with. I suspect if he can figure out a way to end it differently he may well do that.

So no score for now, but when there’s an official version, I’ll probably re-visit it.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 28: Pump Six and Other Stories – Paolo Bacigalupi

It’s been a while since I did a book of short stories. I got this book through Humble Bundle’s first ebook bundle. For those that haven’t heard of them Humble Bundle usually specialise in “indie” computer games. They sell based on a “pay what you want” basis with some money going to charity and the files are unencumbered by DRM. I bought one of their earlier bundles because I wanted to support the business model which I like (particularly the no-DRM part). Anyway I now have an extra 12 books on my TBR list so I thought I’d better read at least one.

I’d heard of Bacigalupi and already owned The Windup Girl, but hadn’t read him. All I really knew was that he was well regarded and could be broadly considered “steampunk”.

When you’re trying to review a collection of stories you naturally tend to look for themes or similarities. This is perhaps unfair to some of the individual stories but I’m going to do it anyway because otherwise I need to review each story in turn and I don’t have the time or the heart for that.

I suppose there are two things that stand out for me that came through in nearly all the stories. The first is that Bacigalupi’s style veers toward a lot of description of the background details. This isn’t something I always enjoy but I know that for some it puts you right there in that world and makes it feel rich and complete. The second is that the stories are almost all kind of morality tales. They take a trend that’s occurring in our current time and extrapolate it into a possible future and show the ill effects this might have, whether that’s patented GM crops in The Calorie Man or global warming’s effect on water conservation with The Tamarisk Hunter. Again, potentially this isn’t something I will always enjoy because it can veer toward preachy but I think it most cases it avoided being too directly that.

My favourites were Pump Six – the tale of a society in decline where no-one is any longer interested in the technology that supports their lifestyle, Pop Squad – the story of a future where the trade-off for constant re-juvenation is enforced infertility, The Fluted Girl – about body modification gone mad, and The People of Sand and Slag – about the effects of physical invulnerability.

7/10 – definitely a good collection, some gems here.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 27: Thief of Time – Terry Pratchett

I originally started this review with “I didn’t plan it but it turns out that my 26th book is Discworld #26 Thief of Time” – except I’d miscounted, it’s my 27th. Anyway this was a book I was looking forward to because I knew that it was a favourite of many people. There’s perhaps one more Discworld book that I am looking forward to in this way and that’s #29, Night Watch.

Thief of Time is a story about the History Monks and how they manage Time on the Disc. It’s about a young apprentice to Lu Tze, the Sweeper, who first appeared in #13 Small Gods. It’s also about the building of a clock so accurate that it follows the tick of the Universe.

I almost don’t know how to review Discworld books any more because I keep coming back to the same themes, that they’re good but I don’t love them like I once did, that I’m not sure if that’s the books or me, that maybe I just know the patterns of humour too well, that they’re always at least pleasant and some are excellent.

So by reputation this was supposed to be an excellent one and whilst it’s toward the better end, particularly of the Discworld books I’ve read lately it didn’t blow me away.

There’s a lot of fun to be had though and I wouldn’t want to put anyone off.

7/10 another reliably good Discworld read.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 26: Finders Keepers – Belinda Bauer

So if you’re going to read, or are reading, Darkside then you may not want to read this review yet. It contains no actual spoilers but by implication it tells you at least one thing about the previous book.

Finders Keepers is I suppose the third in a trilogy of books which began with Blacklands but it’s more like the second Jonas Holly book after Darkside.

Finders Keepers begins as a child goes missing from a car on Exmoor and a note is left which reads “You Don’t Love Her”. More children go missing and similar notes are left. Once again a police team is sent across from Taunton, largely the same characters and once again Holly is involved in the investigation.

Steven Lamb returns again and plays a key role. Also this time we also get to meet his younger brother Davey who has a plan to catch the kidnapper.

There are things that Bauer is good at that she still does well in this book – the creation of tension and suspense, relationships between characters, particularly in families – but somehow it wasn’t as effective overall as her previous two books. I definitely didn’t have that same sense of wanting to know what happens next and being caught up in it. Also I think the actual crime and the villain are, ah, a little weird.

The main reason I read this straight after Darkside was to get resolution on Holly himself and you do get that but by the time it came the character was so abused – both in terms of himself and the way he’s used in the story – that I was a little jaded and didn’t really care. Which is a shame.

6/10 – not bad but failed to live up to the potential of the previous two books.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 25: Darkside – Belinda Bauer

Darkside by Belinda Bauer is the follow up to Blacklands which I read and enjoyed a couple of years ago. I bought Darkside as soon as it came out but with the way these things go I found myself reading other things first. (This, by the way, is why I’m wary of start a series.)

It’s not quite a sequel to Blacklands although it’s set in the same part of the world and Steven Lamb, the hero of that book is a character in this. It’s a few years later and Steven is now a teenager but the book follows the village policeman Jonas Holly. Holly is relatively young and had a promising career but had to give it up when his wife got sick. They now live in the village of Shipcott. When an elderly woman is murdered as the local policeman Holly is obviously involved, but after a bad start with a team sent over from Taunton he soon becomes sidelined even as the investigation grows and more murders follow.

Something happened to me when I read this book that used to happen all the time and hardly ever seems to happen any more. It’s the reason I read and the thing I look for when I read. I got so swept up in what was happening that I couldn’t put the book down. I just wanted to keep reading in order to find out what happened next. So for that reason alone I really loved this book. I thought the characters were great and the interactions interesting. The head of the Taunton team, who takes an instant dislike to Holly, seems at first blush to just be a barely competent detective who is merely there as an adversary and contrast to Holly, but actually he’s more interesting than that. Holly’s relationship with his wife and the relationship between his work and looking after his wife are also story threads that engage.

There is one thing, and that is the ending. It wasn’t that I was disappointed or annoyed, merely that there was something about it that was left unanswered. Maybe it didn’t need to be and so I chose to reserve judgement.

9/10 – a slightly ambiguous ending but it didn’t spoil an excellent book.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 23: Wool – Hugh Howey

I don’t want to bore you with apologies about how long it’s been since the last RED update (or blog post of any kind), however I will say, to be fair to Wool, that the long delay has been to do with events in my personal life making me not feel like reading very much. I stalled in the middle of this book but not because of the book itself.

Wool is set in a post-apocalyptic world where what’s left of humanity lives in an underground silo and the worst crimes are punishable by being sent outside for ‘cleaning’ which involves spending your last few minutes, while the poisonous atmosphere eats through your suit, wiping down the cameras so that the silo-dwellers can temporarily get a clear view of the outside. But, as ever, all is not what it seems. Is the silo really all there is?, is the outside really a poisonous uninhabitable wasteland?

First thing to say about Wool is that it was originally published in 5 parts and it shows. The first part – the original short story – is complete in itself. However it gives away some information as part of its climax that I think you’d want to keep back if writing the novel from scratch. Parts 2-5 are more connected but suffer from having being written individually and so characters and plot elements that seem central in part 3 may not be by the end of 5. Particularly with the characters it was harder to care when you realised they may not be around that much longer.

That said it was an intriguing world. (I was going to say “well-built” but you could pick holes in it all day long if you’d a mind to. I don’t usually.) And he certainly knows how to create tension. I can see exactly why Ridley Scott bought the film rights. The best bits read like set pieces from a good SciFi thriller movie. That said there were bits that felt like padding.

He’s written a prequel which I hear good things about and which was at least written as a complete novel from the word go. I will probably check it out eventually but it’s not next on my list.

6/10 – good plot, interesting world, characters and coherence needs work.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 22: Tigana – Guy Gavriel Kay

Oh dear. Been a long time hasn’t it? Still the increasingly inaccurately named Read-Every-Day project continues.

Tigana was the Sword and Laser Book Club book for June. And I did actually read it in June but given the current date it’s a poor show that I haven’t written it up until now. Anyway…

Tigana is a fantasy novel set in the world of the Nine Provinces of the Peninsula of the Palm. The Peninsula is split with half the provinces controlled by one foreign tyrant and the other half by the other with a single province remaining neutral. The story follows the journey of a young musician who becomes involved in a quest to unite and free the peoples of the Palm.

With a couple of strong caveats I really enjoyed this book. Caveat number 1 is that it takes a while to get going. If you’re tempted to give up try to keep going until chapter 5 or the scene in the hunting lodge. If you’re not gripped after that fair enough. Same logic applies if you feel confused. There’s a lot of geo-politics early on that does eventually become clear.

Second caveat is that the language takes its time. On S&L it was described as ‘flowery’. I think I’d call it ‘literary’ in any event it can be very descriptive at just the times when you want the story to move forward more quickly. But if that doesn’t bother you or you actively enjoy it then it will be a good read.

Although it’s a fantasy book and there is some mention of magic, mystical creatures and other realms this is really a story about people. It’s about war and the consequences of living with an invading power. There’s some interesting questions about morality in the book and you may find you come to be more sympathetic to more than one character who at first seems irredeemable.

It is quite a long book – 678 pages – and I had to “power through” to make sure I finished it on time. This had consequences for subsequent reading in that I didn’t feel like reading for long stretches after that. But I don’t really hold that against it.

7/10 – could have been more concise but a powerful read nonetheless.




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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler (pages 7365 – 7636)

There’s a phenomenon that occurs when someone experiences for the first time an incredibly influential piece of culture having already consumed many many examples of things that were influenced by it – you can be a little underwhelmed and feel that it appears derivative when in fact it’s the inspiration of things that seem more original. My experience of The Big Sleep was a little like that. Worse I have second hand parody versions in another medium playing in my head as I read. What I’m recognising as similar is probably the dialogue from Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Play it Again Sam or even Who Killed Roger Rabbit. I don’t think I can imagine never having heard all those echoes but I’ll try to not judge the book on them in this review.

The Big Sleep is a crime novel in which a private detective Phillip Marlowe is employed by a dying rich old man to look into the apparent blackmail of one of his two adult daughters. The case starts off seeming simple but a couple of dead bodies later and things become more complicated. How much you like this book will probably depend on how much you like Marlowe. Fortunately I found him tougher but sympathetic, more so than perhaps the snippets pf movie portrayals might have led me to believe. I think that’s partly because you have that inner monologue and because he’s cheeky and funny and ultimately humane. How can you not love someone who can come out with this, for instance?

…there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots of the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.

I did enjoy this book although the plot got a little too convoluted for my failing short-term memory at one point but fortunately it was just a few pages after that that Chandler put in a big exposition scene that explained everything so far. Unfortunately one of the parodies I’ve mentioned above contains a scene with enough superficial similarity to this story that I guessed the ending, however that was not a major problem and I might well have guessed it any way. It was relatively short (I’m currently reading a Stephen King!) but it packed a lot into that and didn’t outstay its welcome. I read it in an edition that includes two other Marlowe novels – The Long Goodbye and Farewell My Lovely and I will probably read them at some point.

7/10 – enjoy the original and try to ignore the many copies.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Expecting Someone Taller – Tom Holt (pages 6366- 6589)

I was ill this week, had a cold, which involved spending the best part of two days in bed. As such I didn’t do much other than sleep, eat and read. Also I wanted to re-read something I knew I’d enjoy.

So, Expecting Someone Taller, is comfort food reading for me.

I first read it when it came out which was whilst I was a student. I’ve re-read it a few times since, once in the last few years (but before the blogging of every book modern obsession). I have to say that the first time I loved it, at mostly because of the ending. Subsequent reads I enjoyed it but certain flaws jumped out at me. It’s thoroughly in the category of guilty pleasure.

Expecting Someone Taller is the story of Malcolm Fisher who hits a badger with his car one evening. As he watches it die he discovers that it’s not just a badge but a shape-shifting giant. The giant gives Malcolm a helmet that allows him to become any person he wishes and a very special Ring. This sets off a series of events where a catalog of mythical characters, apparently real, are after Malcolm and more especially the Ring.

This is very much a comic fantasy in the Terry Pratchett mould. It does for Wagner’s Ring Cycle what Discworld does for fantasy in general.

It’s basically a rom-com with the fantasy elements thrown in. Malcolm, a nobody who’s just been dumped by his girlfriend, is suddenly in possession of the most powerful magical item of all. How will he cope and will it help or hinder his (theoretical) love-life?

I’m not sure I ever found this laugh-out-loud funny but it’s definitely amusing and light and warm-hearted. The main character is likeable, most of the time. As a younger man I enjoyed the rom- part of it and the associated happy ending. I guess I still do though with a slightly more cynical eye – except when I’m ill in bed and wanting a comforting view of the world.

8/10 – mythical nonsense and jolly good fun.