Category Archives: Books

The Wise Man’s Fear – Patrick Rothfuss

After the jaw-dropping, life-devouring debut novel that is The Name of the Wind, comes The Wise Man’s Fear, the second in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. At 600+ pages the first in the series was a proper, epic fantasy-length novel, but it pales in comparison with The Wise Man’s Fear which runs to 992 pages in hardback (paperback is 1000+). Make no mistake, this book is huge. It’s not only its physical size either, but also its scope; the increased wordcount allows Rothfuss to broaden the horizons of his story, exploring more of his world and starting to fill in some more of the blank spaces on the map.

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The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss

Once in a while a story comes along that demonstrates why the fantasy series is such a wonderful thing, a story which justifies every single word written, and so far, two books in, Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles is one of those stories. Unlike the great series like the Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time, this forgoes the fellowship-style cast of characters and viewpoints for a single narrative, following a single character through his journey. That character is Kvothe, called Kingkiller, Bloodless, Lightfinger, Sixstring, and the first volume in the series is The Name of the Wind.

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Japanese Poems Steal Brains – Haiku Salut

For a band who describe themselves as “Baroque-pop-folktronic-neo-classical-something-or-other”, releasing a book of haiku probably isn’t too much of a stretch, creatively. Especially when that band is Haiku Salut, the Derbyshire three-piece who tour their aforementioned mixture of musical styles around the UK in an old postal van, playing songs like ‘Sounds like there’s a Pacman crunching away at your heart’ to an ever-growing fanbase. Illustrated by Katrine Brosnan, ‘Japanese poems steal brains’ is a collection of 100 haiku written by the band whilst on tour over the last three years.

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Death and Defiance – Black Library Anthology

As Black Library’s Horus Heresy series rolls inexorably onwards, reaching thirty novels with the release this year of The Damnation of Pythos, the authors’ output seems matched only by the appetite of the fans for new stories. The latest release in the series is Death and Defiance, a collection of five short stories from Nick Kyme, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Guy Haley, Andy Smillie and James Swallow. It’s a novella-sized collection, of a similar length to Sedition’s Gate, but unlike that and The Imperial Truth, which were limited-edition event-only releases, this is in the same ‘Collector’s Edition’ hardback as the novels are now initially released in.

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A Slip of the Keyboard – Terry Pratchett

According to Neil Gaiman’s foreword, behind the ‘jolly old elf’ veneer that many people see from meeting him at signings, conventions or interviews, Terry Pratchett is in fact filled with and driven by fury. Fury at injustices from the casual disinterest of unimpressed teachers to the baffling legal structure that doesn’t let a terminally ill patient choose the time and place of their death. When you look at his work in this light, you realise that Gaiman has a point. A Slip of the Keyboard collects together essays, articles and speech notes from across Pratchett’s whole career, from wet behind the ears journalist to Knight of the Realm, and while the topics vary wildly it’s a collection that showcases pretty much everything that makes him such a wonderful and well-loved writer.

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Fearsome Magics – edited by Jonathan Strahan

Magic can mean a great many things, and take endless forms; from legerdemain to magic rings, from hidden worlds to hiding in plain sight, a system of magic is a stock tool for many a writer, fantasy or otherwise. In Fearsome Magics, the latest Solaris Book of Fantasy, Jonathan Strahan collects together stories from fourteen authors, each dealing with magic in their own way. Given free reign to incorporate the theme into their stories however they wish, the authors involved here have contributed tales ranging right across the spectrum of styles and settings, showcasing breathtaking variety in the resulting collection.

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Pyramids – Terry Pratchett

First published in 1989, Pyramids was the 7^th Discworld book to be released; since then the series has grown and grown, now numbering 40 novels. While it may not have been clear at the time, this was the first standalone Discworld book, not part of a wider character arc such as Rincewind and the wizards, Death or the witches. Pratchett went on to write Moving Pictures and Small Gods which are sometimes combined with Pyramids as a sort of ‘Gods’ trilogy, but they’re very much independent novels. Set mostly in the ancient kingdom of Djelibeybi (read it out loud) this follows the story of Teppic who, fresh out of his exams at the Guild of Assassins in Ankh Morpork, receives an unusual summons to return home and take up the country’s throne.

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The Norfolk Mystery – Ian Sansom

Classic literary detectives are often dreadful know-it-alls. Hercule Poirot? Know-it-all. Sherlock Holmes? Definitely a know-it-all. It’s no surprise really, as their extreme levels of intelligence, which endow them with the required powers of observation to fulfil their roles, result in a propensity to be insufferable windbags. It’s hard to imagine sometimes how difficult it must be for their long-suffering assistants to put up with them. Ian Sansom has channelled this very problem in his novel The Norfolk Mystery, as Stephen Sefton, traumatised and shaken from his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, struggles to cope with the eccentricities of his new employer, Professor Swanton Morley.

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On The Map – Simon Garfield

Nowadays we take maps for granted; they’re an everyday part of life and something that most of us have grown up with without giving too much thought to. We use maps all the time without really thinking about it; when we use a satnav to get from A to B, when we check a weather app that uses GPS to find our current location, when we’re trying to work out how to get from Charing Cross to South Kensington on the tube. It wasn’t always this way however; in his book On The Map, Simon Garfield takes us on a tour through world history charting the way in which maps have evolved over time and what they can tell us about the way the world has changed with them.

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Warhammer : The End Times – Nagash

The Warhammer world came into being in 1983, and by 1987 had developed into its recognisable form. Since then there have been minor changes along the way as the tabletop game has developed and grown, but things have essentially remained the same since the late ’80s. With the release of Warhammer : End Times – Nagash, that’s all about to change. The first in an expected series of expansions detailing the events of the coming End Times, this is the start of a new era for Warhammer, shaking up the old order and breathing new life into a world which has existed for over thirty years.

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