DAW - No 3 - The Probability Man

 

I found this book tough to get into.

The plot is quite a challenging one, where effectively actors appear to be sent to worlds to recreate historical and fictional dramas as a means to give the populace something else to think about rather than how bad their lives were. This predates streaming services and I doubt it would be written in today's world. Back in the 1970s though there were only a few channels and programmes ended at midnight and started again around 8am, so I guess with that context this plot makes some kind of sense.

I didn't really connect with the lead character, Spingarn, which resulted in my not really connecting with the book.

Not sure what else Brian N Ball has written but I think there's where he failed here.

DAW - No 2 - The Mind Behind The Eye

This has got to be one of the strangest Science Fiction books that I've ever read.

The Earth is being invaded by giant beings from a distant planet. During hostilities one of these giants is brought down and killed. Kept in a very large refrigerator the alien is then converted into a vehicle for a couple of very clever and gifted scientists to take the fight back to the alien home world.

Yep. the scientists sit in the creature's head and drive its body, operate its speech and effectively try to come across as one of them. 

Oh, they have to learn the language too.

I've read a fair number of books in my time and thought, 'Yes, I could have come up with something a bit like that, just not as well written.' This is not one of those books. I wouldn't have come up with this in a million years. 

I'll look out for any other books by Joseph Green in the DAW back catalogue. I'm not sure how he could follow this one tough.

DAW - No 1 - Spell of Witch World

 

Although this is the first book published by DAW it is actually the Seventh book in Andre Norton's Witch World saga. As someone who has not read the others the result was that I think I lost a lot of context and certainly a lot of the history.

Centred on twins, warrior brother and witch sister the story ambles along nicely but the problem I found is that since reading books like this I've read books by the likes of Steven Erikson and Joe Abercombie and I'm afraid this felt very light weight in comparison. The central characters were never as fleshed out or engaging as books written today, I guess there was more novelty in fantasy stories and the book gathered fans based on the story and concepts rather then the writing style or characterisation.

All in all, it was readable and moved along nicely. It didn't however make me want to track down the other six and immerse myself in more of Andre Norton's stories.

DAW books

When I was growing up I started my reading of fantasy with R E Howard's Conan books and science fiction books by A E Van Vogt and Isaac Asimov.

I still remember picking up my first R E Howard Conan book, the Sphere edition of Conan, when I was 10 years old at a charity event run for the local children's hospital (which was to take out my appendix a few years later)

I think my original version was black surround 

but picked this up recently.

Every now and then over the coming years I would pick up a book by the DAW publisher.

It allowed me to sample the works of new writers and I loved the yellow spine which made them all look so neat on my shelf.

A few years ago I started coming across DAW books in Charity shops and decided to pick them up with a view to re-reading, or reading them for the first time.

A year or so later it became more about the collecting than the reading but I am working my way, slowly, through them.

 

Books I've read this year.

Well this year I finished the fabulous Malazan - Book Of The Fallen series by Steven Erikson. Not a set of books that you can, or would want to, dip into now and then, this series totally consumes any spare time that you have and really is best read from beginning to end, in my opinion, with no breaks for other books. It's a very rich, and consequently very complicated, world of characters, religions, politics and ... well let's just say it pretty much has it all. I loved it from beginning to end and once Erik has finished the trilogy that he's currently working on, and I've had a little time to invest in the work of some other writers, I'll be back for sure.
I've also read a couple of books by Glen David Gold, Carter Beats the Devil and then Sunnyside. I really enjoyed them both and the writing style reminded me of that of Michael Chabon and whilst Carter Beats the Devil was more accessible I found Sunnyside more intriguing and a little disturbing.
I also managed to sneak a few old favourites in there, A.E Van Vogt's Slan hadn't aged well, great story premise but the writing seemed a little tired following on from the books I'd already read this year. I also managed to fit a couple of R.E Howard's Conan stories in there, which read as well this year as they had when I first read them many years ago. The man could write.
Add to this the latest Skulduggery Pleasant story (I've been a fan since reading the fisrt few to my daughter at bedtime quite a few years ago) from Derek Landy and it's been a pretty good year's reading all told.
Amazon have finally managed to put the Wild Cards books in Kindle format. These books are to me what comic books should be. George R.R. Martin does a great job writing and editing tales of Jokers and Aces, previously normal people who have been altered by an alien mutagen cloud. Thanks to Chris Dingsdale for letting me know that they were now Kindleable, I'm two stories into the first books, Wild Cards, and really enjoying it. I'll read these until I run out of them and then maybe I'll be ready to dip my toe back into the Eriksonverse.
Having time to read is definitely the plus of now having to travel to work by train every day and 45mins must be a good length of reading time as I'm certainly getting through a good number of books.

Joe Hill - writes interesting comics and books ...

Following a recommendation from Andy Bloor, I picked up the first issue of the second series of Locke & Key, and am hooked. It's great when you discover something new, that already has a bit of history, as you can then seek out previous issues and works by the creator. Joe Hill the writer of the comic also writes books without pictures, and a quick visit to my local Waterstones scored a hit on both counts. So I was in possession of the hard back collection of Locke & Key series 1 - Welcome to Lovecraft and also his horror book The Heart Shaped Box. As it was the former that hooked me in the first place I started with that. It's really very good, and startlingly it's his first comic work I believe. Great characters, character development, well paced, well written (not just formulaic story telling), an interesting story set in an even more interesting environment (the mansion is fabulous with its history and secrets) ... with a back story that is there just waiting to pounce. Can't wait for the second collected volume. Whilst I'm not a big fan of horror I really enjoyed The Heart Shaped Box too. An intriguing idea again, and again great characters develop through the story through a number of twists and turns until the end ... which I thought I'd worked out but happily was wrong about. Recommend you look this up if you get the chance.