Surface Detail

Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


One of The best Culture novels I have read, I took my time reading it because there usually is quite quite a gap between each of them. This one is based around the journey of Lededje Y'breq an Intagliated Person, marked with a family debt, a fantastic Tatooto extending to her DNA, as a war from the Unreal levels of Virtual Hell extends into Real. I really enjoyed this Book with the Huge Guns , and quirky spaceships, and great story



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Book Review

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My synopsis of this series would be "Life's a bitch when your dad's Poseidon" preferably said in that ultra deep Movie Trailer Voiceover. Blurb is as Follows:

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a Greek God. I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual. Until I accidentally vaporized my maths teacher. That's when things started really going wrong. Now I spend my time fighting with swords, battling monsters with my friends, and generally trying to stay alive. This is the one where Zeus, God of the Sky, thinks I've stolen his lightning bolt - and making Zeus angry is a very bad idea. Can Percy find the lightning bolt before a fully-fledged war of the Gods erupts?

I got hold of this whole sequence of books and devoured them, one after the other. I had stalled in my reading, and just couldn't find anything to suit but these hit the spot just nicely. They are a fun, Quick read, well Plotted, full of action and Greek mythhology, I enjoyed them immensely.

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The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

'I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. My name is Kvothe. You may have heard of me' So begins the tale of Kvothe - currently known as Kote, the unassuming innkeepter - from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, through his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe the notorious magician, the accomplished thief, the masterful musician, the dragon-slayer, the legend-hunter, the lover, the thief and the infamous assassin.'

I really can't adequately express what a joy it is when you find that someone with so much talent as a writer gets to publish a fantasy novel. Kvothe and the world created is masterful and I look forward to the next book in the sequence.

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Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Shades of Grey is set in a post-apocolyptic future where most the remaining humans can only see individual colours,and most are completely colourblind. The society has now become a colourtocracy, with the colourblind on the bottom of the pile, the main protagonist is a Red named Eddie Russet, and we follow his journey as he comes to east carmine and meets a revolutionary named Jane Grey and her retrouseé nose. It took me a little while to get into the swing of this book,I got a little bit bogged down in the soap opera of daily life in the colourtocracy. But the elements that I enjoy so much in Mr. Fforde writing soon come to the fore, the humour, the lack of spoons, the madness of the rules, the mystery of the "something that happened" and all the future tech lying around in the ruins soon got me hooked, I stayed up til 4am last night to finish off this book. So to sum up if you like his previous books then this one won't disappoint you.

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Sandman Slim: A Novel by Richard Kadrey


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

'James Stark spent 11 years killing monsters in Lucifer's arena for the entertainment of fallen angels, but now he's back in seedy, magic-riddled L.A., trying to avenge his girlfriend's murder and hunt down Mason Faim, the black magician responsible for getting him sent downtown. He meets with some initial success, beheading second-rate magician Kasabian (whose head becomes Stark's smart-mouthed sidekick), but he can't find Faim. Instead he encounters Homeland Security agents, a near-psychotic angel and some odd nonhuman, nonangelic beings called the kissi.'

Okay i read this fairly quickly and whilst I did enjoy it I just found that the main character Stark was just too powerful for me to fully get behind him. I never felt he was in any danger , however that is always going to be a failing in first person perspective novels. I did enjoy the dark noir los angeles setting, the quality of the writing is excellent, and i will be definitely looking for ward to reading the second installment. So to sum up ,if you like your action balls to the wall, with lots of angels, demons, and vampires then you should really enjoy Sandman Slim.

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Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
One of the reasons I have come to really love the Kurt Wallander series of detective novels and why I really enjoyed this novel, is because of the main protagonist. Kurt Wallander is definitely one of the best realised and fully Human fictional Characters I have read. Wallander probably wouldn't be able to do the Times crossword in ten minutes like Morse, or be as hard boiled as Sam Spade, but instead his more dogged approach feels more realistic. In faceless killers we follow hime across a cold grey Skanian Winter following the horrific Murders of a pair of old age pensioners. We watch as he tries to solve this crime whilst going through a divorce and with his married life falling apart.There are tremendous twists and turns and an undercurrent of racial tension simmering in the background, with a great ending, all in all a really superb first novel

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The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Action ,Action ,Action... this novel is a non stop crashing blood and guts, crash dive into a future steam driven, dystopic society. The story follows the fortunes of two orphans, as they are hunted by malevolent forces, and in there attempts to escape have to save their country, the world, and ultimately themselves.

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