J. V. Jones - A Sword From Red Ice

This series is not something I’ve approached very well. I started reading it some eight years ago when I reviewed A Cavern of Black Ice in 2009. The books are so intimidating in size that I kept putting them off and putting them off but my holiday finally gave me to push I needed to read the third book in the series. Thankfully Jones is kind enough to provide a handy synopsis at the beginning to allow people like me to remind myself of what happened so far.

A Sword from Red Ice comes in at 677 pages and the words are tiny. Despite being called A Sword from Red Ice the sword doesn’t actually appear until the last 20 pages of the book. The same thing happened in the other two so the titles of the books seem to be destinations of the journey of Raif.

Another note on the length is that I actually think it’s too long. There is a lot of stuff that happens to some of the characters than don’t add anything to the story. That said the series isn’t over yet but I would have forgotten some of the smaller things by the time I come to read the next one.

It is still a very enjoyable story with lots of intriguing characters. In fact there are so many characters that Jones forgot how many there were when writing the blurb. The blurb mentions three characters and their stories but the book itself is told from seven different perspectives, told a chapter at a time. I’m not sure why there is the need to tell the story from so many different angles when the three on the back are highlighted as the important ones.

Which brings me on to the biggest fuck ass in the book. Raina. She is such a twat that reading her chapters caused me to have a headache. If it wasn’t whining about what was going on, it was saying she was going to do something about it...and then not.

It’s also a very messily written book. I lost count of the amount of spelling and grammar issues throughout but there are so many chapters and words that it’s probably not that bad in terms of percentage.

Outside of this, there were a few things other than Raina that made me stop and take note, the first being Mal Naysayer and his Deux-Ex Machina ability to show up just as the right time to save Ash’s life. Another one is where Raif’s friend Addie develops an attitude problem for literally no reason, unless Raif didn’t give him a reach around in one of the deleted scenes, and Angus Lok’s 100% unnecessary involvement at the start and end of the book.

Another thing that made me laugh is Raif’s ability to survive his monstrous injuries throughout the entirety of the story. This was the same in the second book too. I mean, this guy is basically physically maimed at the end of the last story and somehow manages to continuously survive against all odds.

Despite the book’s length and what I’ve said above, I did get a lot of enjoyment out of the story and will be finishing the series... though I actually need to buy the next one first and probably arrange another holiday so I will actually invest the time in doing so.

A Sword from Red Ice by J.V. Jones was published by Tor in 2007. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Simon Toyne - The Tower

The Tower is the climax of the three-book series that started with Sanctus. Looking back at my review of the first book in the series, it started poorly where the first couple of pages were really hard to get into. The Key was a really good book and The Tower is also very well written but there were a few story choices that made me go ‘oh...’ in a letdown sort of way.

I was immediately worried early on when we are introduced to a new character – FBI Agent Shepherd. It was a little frustrating at first as I was enjoying the characters that had already been built so this new one was just getting in the way. My frustration was short lived however, as Toyne manages to make Shepherd likeable and interesting in a few short chapters.

Another interesting style choice was to write the book from two time periods with parts of the story being told in the past as it catches up to the present. All the story chapters from the past are written in italics which makes it easy to identify what is happening and when.

For all the well written, well paced and well structured writing, there are a few things that I didn’t like but this obviously goes with writing a trilogy where the first two books are set up to answer to a big mystery so when so much effort has been put in, it always feels like an anti-climax when you get to the end.

The following paragraphs contain major spoilers for the ending of the book so if do want to read the trilogy (and if you haven’t already read the first two books, why are you reading this?) stop reading now.

There were two things that I found irritating by the choices made at the end of the book, the first one surrounding the character of Detective Arkadian. We’ve spent the best page of 498 pages, plus the length of the other two books, getting to know the lovable oaf yet our fellow characters don’t seem to feel the same way. When he dies saving the life of others, no one seems to give two shits. Half the reason for my annoyance is because I thought for a lot of the characters that it was massively out of character to not be upset but then again, maybe I got it wrong and he was actually a massive knob?

The other thing that got to me was to do with the big reveal. Apparently the doomsday clock is counting down to the point when the universe reaches maximum expansion and then starts contracting back in on itself so essentially the half way point of existence. And that’s great. But why the fuck does a baby need to be born to commemorate the event? There are similarities with the birth of Jesus and other references in the trilogy point to it being connected to the story of Adam and Eve and the return to the garden of Eden... but none of this is explained and it’s a very flimsy connection to the expansion of the universe. It just didn’t make sense as a whole piece to me so I didn’t get as much enjoyment out of the end as I wanted to.

Despite that, it’s a very good book that’s hard to put down and I hammered through most of it in a few days.

The Tower by Simon Toyne was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2013. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Simon Toyne - The Key

I’ll start with a fairly obvious confession. I have not been giving this blog the time I should have – case in point I actually finished reading this, and several reviews to follow, back in July and August last year. This means I’m relying heavily on my notes to paint the picture of this book and the next one.

The Key is the follow up to The Sanctum, a book that turned out to be really enjoyable despite appearing to shit all over itself in the first few pages. The Key does not make the same mistakes. It’s a thoroughly engaging read from start to finish as are most second books in a three-part series. But more on that later.

The one thing I can’t quite get my head around is the fact that everything is so well logically constructed to make sense in our own world with the exception of the sacrament itself. That’s all I’ll say about that – after all, it’s a book I am recommending!

So with the praise out of the way, I’m only left with more nit-picking through the 437 page offering. I’ll start with the biggest one – mathematical ages of characters. Kathryn is Gabriel’s mother but if I’ve done the maths correctly, this would mean that she was 16 when she gave birth to him. The book makes this really easy to work out as both their ages are depicted on page 49. I suppose it’s feasible but it just doesn’t add up with the character traits – and it’s one of those things that casual observers would comment on – ‘oh, you must have been young when you had him,’ or ‘you look far too young to have a 32 year old son.’ No one says anything though – again, nothing really wrong with it, I just thought it was an odd choice.

Another thing I found surprising was the Vactican City’s approach to Information Security. On page 14 one character’s narrative states that he only has one attempt at entering a password without locking himself out of his entire computer. I get that it’s super-sensitive information but everyone fucks up typing every now and then. I would have thought that sense would have prevailed here and he would have had at least two attempts at entering the password.

The last one worth mentioning is on page 6 where Ghost is interrogating someone called the fat man. The fat man seems to totally forget that he has programmed his Sat-Nav with his home address seconds after being defiant in the face of having his family threatened. I’m all for characterisation but I just don’t get how anyone could be that stupid.

These are three very small observations that are more my personal preference that actual problems. The Key is a solid, enjoyable story with strong characters. Enough said.

The Key by Simon Toyne was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2012. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Ezekiel Boon - The Hatching

You know that feeling when you go on holiday that you haven’t brought enough books with you? Well this was the reason I bought The Hatching. I hadn’t read a decent horror book for a while and this one seemed to promise to fill the gap. However it turned out that The Hatching is closer to Scary Movie than Scream in terms of a horror offering.

The Hatching is a multi-perspective story told from I can’t remember how many viewpoints. It’s about spiders who want to eat everybody and how various parts of the world react to it. In general, it was a quick and relatively enjoyable bubblegum read that was in no way scary but there were several things that screamed at me throughout the story.

The first thing I found striking was that it’s an end of the world survival horror but I found myself not really caring about any of the characters and here’s why. Firstly there are too many viewpoints. The book is only 351 pages long and the words are well spaced out. Due to the vast array of characters, this didn’t give me enough time to emotionally invest in any of them. Sad to say, I didn’t care whether any of them lived or died.

All of the viewpoints have one thing in common. Sex. And Objectivity. All of characters constantly make sexual narrative towards their preferred gender and also objectify everyone. At first I was like, what, but after the third one did it, it started to become hilarious.

In addition to this, a lot of character types are clichéd. There is the scientist, the simple cop (who is also the divorcee with a child to protect), the president, the president’s aide, an author, the soldier. It’s all blah but I understand the purpose they are serving, it’s all just a bit too thin and doesn’t pull it off.

My final point is one that would have me shot in certain circles so I will to do this without attracting too much ire. All of the roles are filled by female protagonists. The scientist is female, the president is female and the solider is female. The solider is even narratively described as being massively superior to the men. Now, I don’t have a problem with this in the slightest. I watched Battlestar Galactica and I thought Mary McDonnell made a cracking president. But in this book, it feels that the women are effectively forced into this roles just because they are opposite typecasts. If more work had been put into the narrative and padded to develop the characters more, I probably would have been able to buy in to the characters and not noticed this at all.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that The Hatching feels very hastily written. The concept is great, don’t get me wrong but I feel that the idea is what drove the novel and the characters are just there to plod until the conclusion. This can sometimes work in movies but not so much in books.

The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone was published by Gollancz in 2016. RRP £12.99 (Paperback)

Simon Toyne - Sanctus

With a lot going on finding time to read has become quite difficult. Setting aside an hour at bedtime normally results in about three pages of reading before falling asleep – such is the current slow rate of reviews. That said, the quality of books I’m reading at the moment seems to be going up and Simon Toyne’s first book is no exception.

I must admit that it was another slow starter and I seem to have a developing dislike for books which set the scene for the story without using their central character. Sanctus follows the story of Liv Adamsen and she isn’t introduced until page 20. The first 19 pages outline what happened to Brother Samuel, a monk living at the Citadel in Turkey. While there is nothing really wrong with this approach, it made it harder for me to connect with the main characters.

So yeah, it’s a slow builder that takes a while to get going but the story telling and character development is really good throughout. It is a very slow build up but the last 200 or so pages really pick up the pace as the action builds.

I can’t really say a lot about the story as there are lots of twists and turns and it’s definitely worth reading. However there were a few things that I questioned during the 470 page novel.

The first of these occurred on page 120 where a credit card was used to receive a payment. Now I’m pretty sure that a credit card cannot be used in this way. Mind you, I’ve never had a credit card that’s been in credit before and I don’t even know how I would go about even doing it. It also seems a very strange way of organising a payment considering the many other ways there are to make secretive payments. In fact, I’m not even sure why you would draw attention to the payment method.

Also on the very next page, there is a reference to drinking a, ‘bucket of black coffee.’ I don’t know what it is with Americans being stereotypically portrayed in every single book going as drinking coffee all the time and seeing coffee as way to combat tiredness. This isn’t really a criticism of Toyne but a build up of frustration at many different authors.

Also, this isn’t really a criticism but the narrative style changes towards the end to be more like Lee Child where the use of full sentences is abandoned to build the pace. Like I said, not a criticism but I did notice it even though I was aware of its intention. I also think that narrative styles should remain consistent. I didn’t like the Lee Child style at first but at least the novel stuck to what it was doing throughout. I also think it wouldn’t have had that much of an impact on the pace if it had remained in the same style narrative, as evidenced by other books.

Everything about is really minor and totally subjective. Sanctus is a great read and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in to the next two books in the series.

Sanctus by Simon Toyne was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2011. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Chris Kuznetski - Sword of God

The reason for reading this one was simple. It was on the end of the shelf when I came to picking my next book. In general I know what to expect from a Chris Kuznetski, Payne and Jones (Batman and Robin) novel, so much so that I didn’t actually make that many notes on it.

My biggest criticism of his writing is that he foreshadows events far too much. More or less every chapter ends with a massive hint as to what will happen in the next chapter or the chapter after that and it’s a real shame too as his books and very readable and he is a great storyteller and character builder.

Despite my resounding praise for his work there is always nitpicking to be done. On page 67 (at least I’m lead to believe it is page 67 as it is directly after page 66 but doesn’t feature a page number. This is hardly Chris’s fault though as I’m sure he doesn’t do his own paperback printing) there is the use of the word ‘mum’ which I always find strange when written by an American author even when talking about Koreans.

Page 99 has a rather bizarre paragraph about Muhammed and how Muslims and English speaking Muslims deal with saying his name, which is fine... only it has no bearing on the story at all. Other than maybe highlight that Shari is an English speaking Muslim who doesn’t follow the customs but we knew that anyway and if it was such a big deal, why doesn’t anyone else mention it? The narrative isn’t really required and doesn’t add anything to the story.

I didn’t see anything else even worth mentioning until page 316 where another meaningless paragraph is present. The entire section about the Abraj Al Bait Towers feels tacked in just to tell us about the target for the terrorist attack. We knew about the building before this point so it might have been better to have explained the size of the building earlier. Another way to address it would have been during the mission scoping before Payne and Jones attempt to take down the terrorists – that way it would have fit in to the story properly rather than feeling like a total tack-in before the finale.

The last thing I picked up on was the incorrect spelling of character name on page 414 out of 422 where Henderson is replaced by Harrison which made me reread the chapter over again to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

So in summary, Sword of God is a good read with a few minor quibbles and definitely a good book to pick up if you are going on a long journey. However, I couldn’t help but be disappointed with the lack of an actual ancient sword to find. I do enjoy the epic questing, searching for ancient objects and myths.

Sword of God by Chris Kuznetski was published by Penguin Books in 2007. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

Stephen King - The Wind Through the Keyhole

When I found out another Dark Tower book was released, I was quite excited. I thought it would be great to dive back in to Stephen King’s crazy world of Gunslingers and apocalypse in spite of everything I may have said in my review of the final Dark Tower book. For the most part I was right. It is a tale that can work by itself and also as an extension of the seven-book extravaganza – but only if you make certain exceptions.

The main thing that stood out to me was the weird suedo-English used throughout Wind Through the Keyhole. In the main series you are made aware that there is a high speech and a low speech. The low speech is how we - in the real world - communicate with each other. The problem I found in this book was that King creates his own in-between language without any kind of background explanation as to what the words he uses actually words mean. The crux of this is that at points, it is really hard to understand what on earth people are talking about.

The Wind Through the Keyhole is actually a story within a story... within a story. That’s not actually overtyping, but fact. Roland is telling the usual gang of wanderers a story about his past. While telling the story of his past, he then tells another story in this story... it’s less complicated than I’ve made it sound but it’s still a bit weird. Especially when Roland is supposed to be telling them a story about the storm they are sitting in. Why not just tell them the actual story you told to the boy in the story from your past? It didn’t really make much sense in terms of framing... or over-framing. 

There were a couple of things that made me stop reading to question what was actually going on, more than just the suedo-language, during the 333-page addition to the Dark Tower. The first one occurs on page 132 when one character’s wife and child die. The next three words in the narrative are ‘Ross was gloomy.’ This feels kind of redundant in the face of another character losing everything they supposedly loved and is also ridiculously selfish when put into context. Ross is supposed to be a character we look up to and respect yet he becomes gloomy as he thinks his friend would resort to drink and violence in the face of his wife’s death because he will have to deal with it. Really?

The other thing that stuck with me, and I’m pretty sure this came up in the original series as well, is the description, ‘Turtle that holds up the world,’ which still feels like a Terry Pratchett Discworld rip-off. This could also be a reference to Chinese or Indian mythology but that seems like a giant leap in term of the Dark Tower story.

Other than that though, it is good standalone novel that fits nicely in to the Dark Tower journey. If any more of these come out, I will definitely read them but I would like to see more adventures from the actual journey to the tower rather than stories within stories within stories.

The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 2012. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

 

Lee Child - Killing Floor

This book was recommended to me by a friend who doesn’t read very much so I thought I would pick it up and give it a go. What I’m about to say may seem extremely negative and for the most part it is because there were a lot of things about the book I didn’t like. That said, once I got used to the writing style, it became a fast paced, accessible action-adventure which was difficult to put down. That’s the praise out of the way, let’s talk shittiness.

Now I’ve always been taught that the first page of anything you write is the most important, especially when it comes to novels. Selling yourself to publishers happens in about sixty seconds, maybe less depending on how many manuscripts they have to read. The first page here made me take a second check of what was going on because the last paragraph, which crosses over to the second page, starts with some newspaper bullshit of no relevance to the scene and moves immediately to the action of our main protagonist being arrested. I understand the reasons for this but it made me stop, think and need to re-read and that’s not something I should be doing on the first page of a novel.

As I’ve said above, it took me a while to get used to the writing style, however once I did it reads quite well. The main issues I had were with some of the character decisions made throughout the book and they link back to the writing. I will warn you now that some of things I’m about to say may be considered spoilers but I will try to be as vague as possible.

As early as page 39, I started to raise my eyebrows at some of the stuff that was going on. Apparently the Chief of Police sees Reacher at the crime scene at midnight. Not one person turns around and asks what the Chief of Police was doing there. Just a routine stroll around the out-of-town warehouse where someone was murdered as the exact same time?? This is explained later on as to why he thinks to saw Reacher there but that just poses more questions than answers. This carries on for the next twenty pages and not even the first-person narrator questions why the police chief is there. Maybe I’ve read/watched too many deductive programs but it would have been the first question on my list.

On page 80 when Reacher and Hubble turn up at the prison, the warden asks which one of the two of them is Hubble... but doesn’t address Reacher at all. This doesn’t make any sense. Either you are checking you have both of the right people or you know both of them. Why only ask one of them? Again, there is a clear reason for this but it doesn’t make sense to do it in the context it is done unless the Warden’s character is really stupid but if that’s the case, Reacher isn’t he so should have sensed something was up. The intelligence of Reacher is established early on when he works out that Finley is an ex-smoking divorcee just by looking at him.

In fact, a lot of the other points I’ve made about the narrative decisions relate to Reacher’s early show of observation and deduction. Apparently, it’s a super power that needs to re-charge because he didn’t work out that someone at the police station didn’t run the victim’s prints and was therefore in on the murder; he didn’t question the suspicious death of the previous investigator even though the evidence made me think it was murder (and I was right); he didn’t work out until a few days after the event, that the white supremacists who tried to kill him should have been trying to kill Hubble; he doesn’t think that taking a car from a house would alert anyone watching the house that he had been back there; he drives for 50 miles further than his petrol tank will allow him to go but after pointing this out, he isn’t surprised by this and doesn’t even do a fuel check after stopping.

 

It’s lucky though because his super powers come back in to play at the end as he manages to track down Hubble by making a fuck load of ridiculous assumptions about his fake name and location that, of course, are right on the money. Looking at this, it actually seems like his deductive brilliance is actually out of character.

On the subject of Reacher, he is the a-typical male character. He objectifies the one woman in the town who is actually attractive (according to the narrative anyway) and of course, she ends up fancying him too. It’s all very stereotypical.

So there you go, Killer Floor is a novel with some narrative decisions that are more puzzling that the decision to cast Tom Cruise as the 6-foot tall blonde guy. As I said though, none of that takes away from the fact that it’s a very readable book and there are some clever bits in there that make it worth reading.

Killing Floor by Lee Child was published by Bantam Press in 1998. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Chris Kuznetski - The Sign of the Cross

After making my way through the Conqueror series I was in a place for some much needed fun. I had previously read one of Chris Kuznetski’s books and Sign of the Cross just happened to be on the end of my bookshelf. This was good because, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and it was definitely the much needed entertainment I was looking for.

The story follows Kuznetski’s heroes, Payne and Jones, as they are tasked with tracking down a supposedly dangerous criminal in Europe. Meanwhile some other guys are re-enacting the Crucifixion of Christ using handpicked individuals as Christ’s replacement. As you can expect, these storylines cross paths in a fast paced, action packed and generally well crafted story.

A lot of what I’m about to say goes against what I’ve said above but I’m slowly coming round to believing that decent fiction cannot be completely well written without being horrendously boring. Entertaining fiction also appears to attract a certain type of pompous dickhead who will criticise someone’s choice of fiction, but I’ll get more into that one later.

Generally speaking, there are few mistakes in the 606 page text and only a few that were worth stopping for. One such issue occurred in the form of where you capitalise ‘dad.’ ‘My dad’ is not capitalised but ‘Dad,’ where Dad takes the place of a name, is a proper noun, and is thus capitalised... but not in Sign of the Cross. There are also a few duplicated words sprinkled around the text but that’s about all I picked up on that broke the flow of the story.

Another interesting one is when one of the wholly English characters used the term ‘mom.’ There is no way an English person would use the Americanism for Mum. Ever.

Moving on to the writing choices; the first one, and I may have mentioned this is my review of The Secret Crown, is that the police are labelled as incompetent from the outset. This one is surprising in that the police rock up at a murder site and immediately contaminate the scene. Like there is any way that would happen in a developed European city. The police in Africa were a lot better prepared when their murder happened and acted a lot more in line with what you would expect.

Another thing that struck me was the similarities between Jonathan Payne and Batman. His company is called Payne Industries. He has loads of money which allows him to run his own detective agency and travel the world at a whim. Both his parents are dead. And he is extremely resourceful. Jonathan Payne is Bruce Wayne.

Perspective is quite often a tricky thing and I’m beginning to wonder if what I was told about its use is actually true. In this book I was perplexed that when we were looking from Nick Dial’s perspective, when he is on a phone call we are able to see the other guy’s reacting in terms of grinning, raised eyebrows, the works. Either Nick Dial has an amazing sixth sense or there are perspectives flying around all over the place.

Geography is another subject that takes a hit. The first one is one that I cannot understand. I’m sure there is a good reason for this but instead of using the world renowned Oxford or Cambridge universities for a setting in Britain, Chris decides to create Dover University, one of the oldest, most reputable and fictitious universities in England.

Italy also doesn’t make a lot of sense. Payne and Jones are able to travel vast distances really quickly, probably on the premise that they have a fast car. However, a fast car does not account for the treacherous Italian country roads. 60 miles only translates to 60 minutes if you are driving at exactly 60 mph the whole way, which is of course impossible to do on winding roads with blind corners that will of course be filled with lorries and coaches, especially as it’s running to a tourist destination.

Which brings me on nicely to my last subject. Everywhere that Payne and Jones go there seems to be conveniently placed Americans to help them with whatever situation they find themselves in, especially when they are in a country where neither of them know the language.

Despite all of these issues as I said at the beginning, it is an enjoyable book that was hard to put down, mainly due to the strength of the story. I will be reading more of his books in due course. However, some people don’t feel the same way. While I’ve mentioned above that Chris Kuznetski fictionalised Dover University, some members of the literary community took this to heart and while focussing on this one detail, labelled the book ‘atrocious garbage.’ I guess some people make my reviews look kind!

The Sign of the Cross by Chris Kuznetski was published by Penguin in 2007. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Conqueror

I’ve finally completed this five book slog and I must admit, it took me a lot longer that I would have liked. Based on how quickly I’ve finished my next book, I think it says something about my enjoyment of this series. I did think that Conqueror was the best book in the series in terms of writing however it suffers from the same ongoing issues that plagued the previous books in the series.

I’m not going to dwell too much on this one as, like I said, it’s the best one and it’s probably just my taste that led me to taking so long to finish it.

Anyway onto the stuff I didn’t like. The way Conn Iggulden paints his characters is rather confusing. In the end of the last book, Batu was portrayed as an asshole who believed he was more entitled to lead despite his questionable heritage. However, at the start of this book, Guyuk is immediately made out to be an absolute cunt and Batu is the knight in shining armour who needs to stop Guyuk’s debaucherous leadership of the Mongol empire.

My problem with this is that the best part of writing historical fiction is surely that you can use your own creative whims to fill the gaps between the stuff that is officially documented. So why do we start here and not visit slightly earlier to watch Guyuk’s descent into depravity? Not only would it have made these early scenes easier to understand but it would have made for some interesting reading.

There is the other matter of the ever present, ‘here is that character I forgot about. But he/she is important so here is their funeral.’ This book goes one further by getting rid of Yao Shu by having him leave in one paragraph, and in the past tense, without even a word to anyone despite being ever-present throughout the series. It’s a strange choice because, once again, the character relationships are not something that is overly documented in history. It’s more the events, so I would have thought there would have been more focus on the characters than the events.

The above issues are more writing choices that I didn’t understand but there were a few mistakes that stood out. At one point, one of the Mongol character’s names is spelt incorrectly and towards the end of the book, Hulegu is referred to as Kublai’s older brother, which is careless prose, especially when you are dealing with three brothers at the same time.

And that’s pretty much it. The series has been more enjoyable than it probably comes across in these reviews but I feel I am due a long break from Iggulden and will be exploring different writers over the coming months, as well as revisiting some of my favourites.

Conqueror by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2011. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Empire of Silver

This is forth book in the five book epic that I’ve managed to drag out for far too long, mainly due to the fact that I simply could not get into the book. More on that later, but first – the overview.

In the aftermath of Ghengis Khan’s death, his son Ogedai, is elected to lead over his older brother Chagatai. Ghengis has built a reputation of destroying enemies and not having a home city so, in full respect of his father, Ogedai abandon’s Genghis’s principles and builds a fuck-off massive city in the middle of their homeland. Legend.

The remainder of the story follows Tsubodai as he tries to conquer the entire world while Ogedai sits on his ass at home with a heart condition after his younger, stronger, better looking, more sensible brother, sacrifices himself because some Chinese doctor said it would fix Ogedai. At this point, I was like, what a selfish twat, but I suppose you cannot argue with history.

While the story line follows the historical characters and is loosely based on the events as we know them, is takes bravery to write about a bunch of thugs who went around invading everywhere for no real reason and portraying them as the good guys. Despite this, Iggulden still tries to; albeit very weakly. There is one part where Tsubodai prevents a Russian woman from being raped, not because he is merciful, but simply to prove a point. She will inevitably die a more painful death freezing in the cold after her home was burnt to the ground, but there you go. The lesser of two evils, right?

Compared to the other books that precede Empire of Silver, the first hundred pages or so are actually pretty good. I didn’t notice any writing problems and the writing was well paced. I didn’t even realise how much of the book I had read and that is exactly how it should be. This was also the same for the last 150 pages or so, but there was a big chunk in the middle of the 428 page book that destroyed the pace and felt like a return to the last book in terms of style. There is not really any other word for it but boring. I found myself bored, only reading twenty pages at a time before finding something else to do, including falling asleep.

There are also a couple of new writing errors to pick on. On page 121 the use of punctuation and sentence structure leads to a watermill feeling astonishment at workers wearing soft slippers. There is language choice on page 255, where Tsubodai’s senses are offended twice in the same page where this expression has never been previously used. The writing should not draw my attention away from the story.

There are also the usual inconsequential spelling errors littered throughout. A ‘back’ instead of ‘black’ here, and some misplaced punctuation there, but my main issue with the book is the characters.

Number 1: Yao Shu. The horniest Bhuddist in the East. It’s not so much that his internal monologues about secretly wanting to pork every Mongol wife going wind me up, but more his character change. He wants to pork Sorthatani until the cows come home, but as soon as she gets a sniff of some power, he whips out his hate guns and the horniness goes away. The bit I do not understand is that angry sex with someone you don’t like can be even more satisfying than normal sex with the same person. Use the anger Yao Shu!

Number 2:  Batu. He is just a twat. He is the unacknowledged son of Jochi who, let’s face it, was never really confirmed as Genghis’s son in the first place and for the second half of the book walks around as the self proclaimed Prince of the Nation. Or at least proclaimed by the narrative, anyway. In another show of how big his balls are, he gets annoyed when he challenged Tsubodai’s authority and gets bitch slapped for it. After being raised by the Khan from the gutter, I would expect to see some respect, rather than a sense of entitlement.

Number 3:  Conn Iggulden’s failure to acknowledge a character’s existence unless he feels like it. It happened with Temulun in the last book, where he only wrote her back in to rape and kill her and he does it again here with Genghis’ illusive mother Hoelun. I was thinking to myself when Kachiun died (sorry, spoiler alert, the old man dies) that I’m sure the mother was still popping around somewhere, but we are simply told that she died at some point in the past. I don’t know what she did to piss off the author, but it must have been bad to be written off in such a way, especially when she was a key player to the survival of four of the series’ main characters in the first book and is effectively the mother of the nation.

The historical notes at the end are often a good source for reference material and I always read them out of interest despite them not forming part of the story. I’m glad I did this time because there are some humdingers in there.

According to the notes, Ogedai’s son, Kaidu, was present in at the battles in Hungary but is omitted for fear of introducing too many characters. This would probably explain why Iggulden didn’t focus on Hoelun and Temulun but I feel this is a kick in the teeth. There isn’t a fantastical overload of information in this series as it is, so to remove a piece of history because I’m too stupid to follow it is a very weak justification and also a tad insulting.

Iggulden also omits one of the most famous battles in Mongol history with another weak justification. I don’t really know why. With all the bullshit in the middle of the book, I could have done with some of the more well-executed battle scenes from the end. In fact, I almost feel robbed, especially when writing these scenes appear to be the author’s main strength.

There is one more book in the series and after that, I will be done with Conn Iggulden. After investing in the last four, I can’t stop now. Hopefully the final book offers a thilling finale that will make reading the whole series worthwhile.

Empire of Silver by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2010. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Bones of the Hills

On to the third book of the series and I am actually shocked to say that the writing in this one is much, much improved. And I’m not even being sarcastic.

We now follow Genghis on his travels through the Arab nations as he conquers and kills everyone in sight. Why? Because some Arab dude personally insulted him by killing his ambassadors. So Genghis abandons his conquest of China, turns 180 degrees and marches the entire nation in the opposite direction. I’m all for this ‘never leave a man behind’ attitude. It’s quite cool. But in terms of military decisions, why oh why would you do that? Destroy one enemy first and then move on to the next. More fool them as well because if you don’t attack them straight away, they will probably think you never will. Therefore, it would be a massive surprise when you march over the hill to avenge your friends who were killed five years ago. That said, I haven’t conquered entire countries before, so what do I know?

Despite my opening praise, the writing issues continue on from where we left off in the last book, this time with completely pointless narrative.  On page 52, Koryo is mentioned and it feels like it is mentioned for the sake of it. The paragraph in question is talking about how they were all happy to be home in Mongol lands, eating Mongol food. During the previous two novels, Koryo is mentioned once and the characters spend a few pages there. In fact, Jelme pretty much arrives there just to be called back so I don’t see how they can say they never had such good food in Koryo, which is mentioned first here, and the Chin lands when the men spent all those years away in Chin lands only. It is not even worth mentioning Koryo.

Whereas the inclusion of Koryo as a reference in unnecessary, there a few key characters who come back to forefront after disappearing into obscurity in the previous novels. In my last review I said that you may have been forgiven for forgetting that Genghis had a mother who was completely ignored throughout the second book. Well, another character has been completely ignored since she was born in the first book; Genghis’ sister, Temulun. One may think that Conn Iggulden does not like writing women into his books at this rate.

Anyway, the illusive sister reappears on page 61 only so that the readership can attempt to develop empathy towards her because she is savagely raped and killed some one hundred plus pages later. It’s crazy if the desired effect is for us to care, and I can imagine this is the only reason it’s in here as the sister has no historical relevance and her death didn’t cause Genghis to kill loads more people. It does, however, give his illusive mother a little bit more screen time as she makes another cameo appearance to be upset about another one of her children being killed.

There are a few other small issues regarding the repetition of names and some repeated information on the same page but it is inconsequential versus the author’s complete disregard of his own fictional characters. This is reaffirmed as I didn’t write anything about the last half of the 503 page book because the majority of it is actually well written. My main criticism is that it is a little dull and predictable and this highlights issues with the writer. He clearly had a plan towards certain historical events that he wanted to write about and has had to put in the boring bits to join up the main events of the story. These differentials should be invisible to the reader, however the fact that they are glaringly noticeable worsened what could have been quite a good story.

Bones of the Hills by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2008. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Lords of the Bow

Moving on to the second book in the series and we are now following the full life of Genghis Khan after having a glimpse into his sort of unknown, and completely fictionalised to the point of obscurity, childhood.

The first thing I noticed is that when Temujin decided to change his name to Genghis, lord of the grass, he has a complete personality transplant. I was expecting to read about the coming of the man who founded the Mongol empire but obviously skipping that bit made more sense to the author. We never see the improbable struggle of the young boy becoming a leader who cared so much about his own family that he put himself through pain and suffering. We just see the ruthless Khan of the Mongols who strikes down his enemies, and anyone else who even hints at personally slighting his borderline friends.

So yeah, I thought that the main character was a twat so I was prevented from even trying to enjoy the story. However, it didn’t stop me from identifying the continual writing style I don’t like. During the first chapter we are introduced to Kokchu, the clearly evil Sharman who only has loyalty to himself. In case you couldn’t tell he was evil from the first things he says, we are outright told he has evil intentions in the narrative.

There are continual writing style issues throughout the book which is at least consistent with Wolf of the Plains. The simple interactions between two characters get confused really easily throughout. There is no structure to the narrative at all and it’s made even worse when more than two characters are involved. I gave up trying to follow the interactions in the end and just went with where I thought the conversations were going.

Also, I’m not sure of the historic value behind the work and while I understand that Genghis was a bit of war monger, would he really think that after slaughtering over 90,000 innocent people that the Chinese leaders simply wouldn’t care? I really did think that these books would portray Genghis as a secretly decent guy. The first book went towards this by showing how he struggled against adversity to save his people from Chinese oppression, however after doing so, he decides to kill EVERYONE. It’s a little jarring.

There are several other small issues I have with the 456 page sequel. On page 195 it is really hard to work out who is talking. On page 228, one of the characters, Ho-Sa is either going back to his people or staying with the Mongols. If this was meant to be a sort of cliff hanger, then it is utilising a device that hadn’t yet appeared in the series and is completely out of sync with the rest of the book. If not, it is just another example of bad writing. On page 266, three different characters are referred to as ‘father.’ I signed up for a work of fiction, not a puzzle solving exercise.

The only notable problem remaining is that of disappearing characters. The red bird, which was a symbol of coming of age and presumably reclaimed from Eeluk at the end of Wolf of the Plains, makes a reappearance on page 298 and has presumably been there the whole time. The amount of pointless details the book goes into and useless exposition, you would think they would mention some of the time Genghis spends with the bird, especially seeing as it was apparently so important to him in the first place.

Also, did you know that Genghis has a mother? You could be forgiven for thinking he didn’t as she mysteriously disappears for most of the book but only after coming across as a key character in the early pages when she opposes Kokchu’s Shaman approach. It seems to start a plot line and then abandons it for no reason.

There are a load of others things I noticed but the above and the more irritating aspects. What really got me is where the first book is about a period of Genghis’s life that is little-known, his conquest of China is well documented so I would have expected the book to focus more on developing the characters, making them likable and perhaps investigating their personal interactions more. It feels like a very lazy book, especially with the thoughtless construction of the narrative.

Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2008. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Conn Iggulden - Wolf of the Plains

Ages and ages ago, I bought a book in W. H. Smith at a service station. This book was not Wolf of the Plains. It was Empire of Silver and I picked it up from my bookshelf about three months ago as the next reading project. However, when I opened it up, I discovered that it was the fourth book in a series of which Wolf of the Plains is the first, so naturally I had to buy the other three in order to read Empire of Silver. So a one book project became a five book project. Oops.

The Conqueror series follows the life of Genghis Khan and how he became the fearsome conqueror who build the Mongol Empire and slaughtered a load of people. Kind of like Hitler without prejudice.

It didn’t take long to come up with loads of criticisms, mainly relating to the way the prose is written. I don’t know if this is because I’ve spent the last six months in the Game of Thrones world, but when I got to chapter three, I noticed that the perspectives change about three times on the same page and sometimes within the same paragraph. No warning is given for this change either.

I’m not just basing this on my Game of Thrones experience either. Back when I was learning how to write, 

I was told on more than one occasion that certain parts of my writing were weak because of the change in perspective and that it showed a lack of control. If this is true, it certainly didn’t matter to Conn’s publisher as the story uses loads of perspectives that change throughout the book. If four people are having a conversation, Conn will switch between them giving the readers a sample of what each of them is thinking.

I carried on being annoyed by the way the story was written. The overzealous switching of perspectives is used on several occasions to let us know that a certain character is thinking something evil. This level of overshadowing is the equivalent of my boss telling me I’m going to be fired in a month’s time. I know it’s going to happen but there is nothing I can do to stop it.

By page 150 of the 455 page series opener, I honestly thought that Conn must think his target audience have absolutely no intelligence whatsoever and are not interested in applying any kind of thought to his prose. This is displayed by the constant and obvious overshadowing and underlining of previous incidents. It was one step above having annotated notes at the bottom of the page such as, ‘This is the character from the previous page who pushed Temujin into a pile of manure. He is going to get his shit fucked up later when Temujin kicks his ass!’

Also, the dialogue breaks were a little non-standard. One character would make an action or gesture in one paragraph and then have dialogue in the next. I had to do a double take a few times to work out who was actually speaking. One character would have some dialogue and then the other character would have an action which appears to be an acknowledgement of the dialogue and then this same character responds with their dialogue in the next paragraph. There are too many breaks and it makes the narrative very disjointed in places. In addition, if I have to do a double take to figure out who is talking then the characterisation through dialogue is clearly weak as well.

The last thing that really fucked me off massively was the use of Deus Ex Machina. To be honest I’m not the best at picking up on this sort of stuff but this one was horrendous and factors in the above perspective thing.

Temujin is captured by his old tribe and thrown into a hole to be executed. There is no way for him to escape. However, fortunately in the chapter previous, a character called Arslan, who swore an oath to Temujin’s father, just happens to turn up at the camp and take an instant dislike to the tribe’s new leader. So it was really fortunate that Arslan is there to spring Temujin out of his hole and help him escape. It’s almost worse than the ‘because I said so,’ approach to fiction taken by  Stephen King in the Dark Tower series, although, on reflection, I think this is worse as King’s was a little bit tongue in cheek.

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking; ‘You said Wolf of the Plains was based on the life of Genghis Khan. Surely this must have been based on real events?’ However, I have done my research! Well, that’s not strictly true but I did read the author’s Afterword where he outlines the real-life events that inspired his work of fiction. He makes no mention of this Arslan character and simply states that Temujin escaped. It would have been much more plausible for Basan to have helped him and I’m not sure why this Arslan character has been thrown into the fray anyway, other than to rescue Temujin from the hole.

I will most likely go on and read the rest of the story as it does have some good bits and will, at the very least, teach me a little bit about the Mongol Empire. I’m sure pretty sure I’ll find some new shit to piss me off in the next book. Watch this space.

Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2007. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

George R. R. Martin - A Dance with Dragons

I’ve finally reached the end of the current published instalments of A Song of Ice and Fire and I’m left with a resounding sense of... mild disappointment. It’s not that this book isn’t great because it is, and it is certainly better than A Feast for Crows which did feel like an epic slog. It’s just that, well... nothing really happened.

I bought the book in two volumes. Dreams and Dust (624 pages) and After the Feast (493 Pages) have a combined length of 1,117 pages and that’s a lot of prose to write without pushing any major storylines forward.

It’s hard to describe my dissatisfaction towards this issue with ruining the books for those who have not read them. Incidentally, this makes it almost impossible to talk about it with my two friends who have read the books when my other friends, who only watch the television series, are around. So everyone will have their opinion on the subject but mine is going to remain very general.

I will, however, express even more dissatisfaction toward the lack of chapters relating to Jaime, who I’ve actually grown quite fond of. It seems that he has some kind of part to play but this isn’t elaborated on at all as all he does is ride around the Riverlands to chat to some minor characters about the King. He’s hardly in it and when he is, he is very under-written.

I have the same criticism towards the Iron Islanders chapters but for different reasons. I don’t like them. I think their whole background is shit and that they are just there to be a minor irritant. All they do during the book is sail. And then sail. And then sail some more. Victarion says some stuff about being from the Iron Islands and that’s about it. But, because of my overall dislike of them, I have to continue to question their overall contribution. I mean, obviously they must have some part to play. But I will be really annoyed of having been subjected to their Drowned God bullshit throughout If they just turn up at some battle and get smashed to pieces by everyone else.

Victarion also has a poor memory or he is poorly tensed. On page 345 of After the Feast, I became really confused. Victarion, while they are sailing, occasionally captures some ships. When he does, he changes the name of the ship to be more to his liking. However when he captures one such ship, the Willing Maiden, and renames it Slaver’s Scream, it is then referred to by its previous name in the following paragraph. It took me a while but I go there in the end. But my confused could have been avoided had the line read ‘the ship formally known as the Willing Maiden.’

There were only two other things that stopped me during reading, so compared to A Clash of Kings and A Game of Thrones it is essentially a very well written novel.

Number one was on page 141 in Dreams and Dust. It’s the first page of a Davos Chapter where we are talking about torches in a hall. ‘Twenty iron sconces were mounted along his thick stone walls, but only four held torches, and none of them was lit.’ I’m pretty sure this sentence does not need the last comma and also it should be ‘were’ instead of ‘was’ as it is referring to four torches, not one.

Number two was on page 370 of After the Feast and is simply a case of mistaken sex. ‘I am beautiful, she reminded himself,’ which I absolutely loved because I fucking despise Cersei Lannister and want to see her die. Without giving too much away, this was one of my favourite parts of both volumes.

Despite what I’ve said above, I really did enjoy the books even if the end wasn’t very rewarding. This is even more frustrating after looking back over publication dates. A Feast for Crows was published in 2005 and A Dance with Dragons in 2011, so it looks like we’re going to have to wait another three years before finding out what happens to some of our beloved characters. And the less beloved ones as well.

A Dance with Dragons bibliography:

A Dance with Dragons – 1: Dreams and Dust by George R. R. Martin was published by HarperVoyager in 2011. RRP £9.99 (Paperback)

A Dance with Dragons – 2: After the Feast by George R. R. Martin was published by HarperVoyager in 2011. RRP £9.99 (Paperback)

George R. R. Martin - A Feast for Crows

So - moving on to book four of A Song of Ice and Fire and the book with the most misleading title so far. The storyline doesn’t venture to the wall so the reference to Crows, or the Night’s Watch, feels a little wasted.

We are introduced to many, many, many more perspectives and it is another monster of a book coming in at 776 pages. It was so long, in fact, that when I got to the end, I had to reread the first chapter again as the book has framing. In my opinion it seems a bit silly to frame a book of this magnitude, and if I’m completely honest, I still have no idea as to the relevance of Pate’s opening and his cameo appearance at the end, but I’m sure it will become relevant in some later book.

I also felt that the book was too long and makes the same errors as The Sword of Shadows series in that a chapter would get me interested in a character and as soon as I’m hooked, the perspective would change to another character that I wasn’t as interested in.

By now, we already have an established base of characters, most of which I enjoy, with the notable exceptions from my previous review. So I didn’t see the need to introduce yet more characters and also using generic titles such as, The Captain of the Guards. I’m also pretty sure (although it’s a little fuzzy) that a few of these characters only make the one contribution and I have to question the point of this. It seems that the author is keen to tell us every angle of the story whereas some readers would probably like to use their imagination and try to work out the bits they don’t know for themselves.

I don’t understand why the Greyjoy side of what’s going on is documented from three different perspectives in the book. I personally didn’t like this because I think the Ironborn side of it is boring. They seem to be a bunch of people living on a small island who think they are better than everyone else despite having nothing to show for it. If you honestly think drowning someone and then resuscitating them is a good way of making sailors, then you are clearly mental. Their saying, ‘What is dead can never die. But rises again harder and stronger,’ is stupid. What is dead is dead. And doesn’t rise again, unless it is a zombie. Or you are North of the wall.

Other than that, A Feast for Crows is an excellent book in an excellent series and I can’t wait to get stuck into the next one. A Dance of Dragons deals with the other half of the characters and chronologically runs alongside Feast. So that means no Ironborn (maybe) and the return of Tyrion Lannister!

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin was published by Voyager in 1998. RRP £9.99 (Paperback)

George R. R. Martin - A Storm of Swords

Instalment number three of the A Song of Ice and Fire saga is so large that it had to split of over two volumes of 569 and 554 pages respectively.

These two are by far the best books in the series so far, not only in terms of story but also in the quality of the writing. In Steel and Snow the only thing I picked up on was that a character’s name was spelt differently on the same page at one point.

We are also introduced to a new term towards the end of the book when we meet Prince Oberyn, who incidentally is one of my favourite characters. When talking about his... lover, she is referred to as his paramour. This, in itself wasn’t a major problem for me. In fact, quite the opposite. I thought it may have been a term commonly used in Dorne... until it appeared in some narrative from Tyrion’s perspective. I deduced that one of two things had happened. Either Tyrion was so awestruck by Prince Oberyn that he wanted to sound just like him (unlikely) or the author liked the term so much that they had to use it again – otherwise, why hasn’t it appeared previously when describing similar circumstances throughout the other instalments?

Blood and Gold was my favourite of the two volumes. I read it in its entirety in less than a week, (which for me is quick!) the story flowed really well and it was very difficult to put down. The only issues I had in this book were character related and subjective and I also found the answer to my earlier question in the A Game of Thrones review.

Continuing where I left off in A Clash of Kings, Catelyn Stark is just an unbelievable dick in relation to almost everything she says or does. She continually tries to put herself in the middle of things and always makes things worse for everyone involved. She has some classic moments in this book as well.

On page 59, she argues with Robb over his kingly decisions like she has the right of it and even uses her own ‘dead’ sons as a point of argument which is absolutely disgusting. Let’s go back to the fact that these sons might still be ‘alive’ if she had done the right thing and actually gone back to Winterfell to look after the two of them.

This point is really hit home on page 61 where she reflects that being able to use an axe may have given her the ability to better protect her sons and daughters. I’m milking this point but it really is a stupid internal monologue that only serves to highlight her deluded nature.

Incidentally Catelyn’s internal thoughts are not the most irritating of character traits in the book. For that, we need to look to the younger version of Catelyn – Sansa Stark.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS: Towards the end of the book, Sansa is taken away from King’s Landing to the Eyrie. She has suffered nothing but pain and suffering during her time in King’s Landing so her first thought of arriving in the Eyrie is that she was thankful to finally be safe... no, wait, that’s what I thought it should have been. In reality, her first thought is that there is nothing to do and that she would be bored. You have got to fucking kidding me, you ungrateful little shit!

In my review of A Game of Thrones, I was confused about a sentence that read, ‘...have the with the gods gave a goose.’ After reading Blood and Gold, I now know that ‘with’ was actually meant to be ‘wits’! I have had this hammered home because the expression, ‘Have the wits the Gods gave...’ is used in more or less every chapter where Tywin Lannister has dialogue.

The only writing that stood out as a sore point was on page 342 where Jaime is narrating and I couldn’t tell whether he was talking about himself or Barristan. The fact that this is the only writing issue I identified shows how brilliantly written the book is.

If you’ve read the first two books then you should definitely read these. If you haven’t read them though, don’t bother with this one as it will not make much sense, even if you have seen the television series. They are so different that you will have no idea what is going on!

A Storm of Swords bibliography:

A Storm of Swords 1: Steel and Snow was published by Voyager in 2000. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold was published by Voyager in 2000. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)