I've been so busy writing Flash Fics and all sorts I haven't been keeping you up to date with what I'm reading..! here's the state of the current reading pile - plus the stuff that's on my kindle. You can see that it's teetering from spooky autumn into christmassy tales...
In recent weeks i've been immersed in a couple of stonking huge fantasy novels, both of which i've been enjoying a lot.
'Advent' by James Treadwell was an impulse buy, in WH Smiths on saturday. The cover copy makes it sound (deliberately, i think) like a modern day 'Dark is Rising' (hoping to grab the attention of grown-up 70s kids) and the novel is bearing that out so far. Cornwall, dark nights, slightly crazy ghosts, old houses, mermaids, enchanters - and a lovely sense of doom hanging over everything...
The Lev Grossman was a gift from Nick, and it's the sequel to 'The Magicians', which was one of my favourites of 2010. I don't think this Dawn-Treader-imspired follow-up made the same impact on me as the first book. I loved it and he's still massively readable - and I love the slight snarkiness and sarkiness in Grossman's fantasy. It just had less urgency for me than before. There's nothing here like the everyone-turns-into-geese chapter of 'The Magicians.' The chapters where we have to follow a mardy secondary character's backstory was a real distraction, too. I enjoyed the chapters in Venice - with the dragon under the canal - the most, i think. The 'low' fantasy, as they say, more than the 'high.' I hope there'll be a further follow-up, though.
Comments
Post a Comment