Hugo Awards - Revisited

A while back I said I'd read and review the 5 books on the Hugo Awards list for this year.

I did well on this, read 3 out of the 5 books before the awards and managed to review 2 of them. Problem was, I was let down by the library copy of One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms going walkies for a couple of months. Poor excuse I know, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

This year’s winner was Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis, a duology that masquerades itself as a single novel. I managed to read Blackout before it won, but All Clear was only published in the UK after the Hugo was awarded.

Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I read this a while ago, and have been meaning to get a review up of it. Something well outside my normal reading zone, but I kept getting people at work saying I must read it, and for the sake of my job I have done!

Book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Author: Stieg Larsson

Mikael Blomqvist, a journalist for the Millennium magazine in Stockholm and facing a three month jail sentence for libel, is hired by industrialist Henrik Vagner to solve the forty year old mystery of the disappearance of Vagner's niece Harriot. In doing so, Blomqvist will find that some families have dark secrets that don't want to see the light, and that allies can come from the unlikeliest of places.

Book Review: Dervish House by Ian McDonald

Dervish House was the first of the Hugo books I read, but its taken me a bit to compose my thoughts about it. If that's a good thing or not, you'll just have to read the full review to find out!

Novel: Dervish House
Author: Ian McDonald

Set in the background of Istanbul in 2027, Dervish House is a novel that is steeped in both mysticism and nanotechnology. Following the fortunes of six characters across 7 days, the book weaves together the threads of the story to create a riveting story full of drama, conflict and intrigue.

Book Review: Feed by Mira Grant

I've actually read 2 of the Hugo nominees so far, I'm just behind on my reviews. This was the last one I read, I'm going to have to think a bit further on Dervish House before I put up a review.

Novel: Feed
Author: Mira Grant

In 2014, an act of eco-terrorism releases an untested cure for the common cold into the atmosphere. Days later, upon coming into contact with an experimental cancer cure it mutates into a highly virulent airborne pathogen. Good news, no more cold, flu or cancer. Bad news, the dead are rising and they aren't happy!

Kong is dead, Long live Kong!

A bizare title, but those that have been following George R R Martin's struggle to complete his latest book will know what I mean.

Earlier this year he annouced that as well as the TV series (review of the first episode coming soon), Dance for Dragons would be released on the 12th July. The one problem was, he technically hadn't finished writing it!

Yesterday, Martin posted on his Livejournal a picture of a dead King Kong (Kong being the proverbial gorilla on his back the last few years), and a post on the publisher's website (Link) confirms this.

Dance for Dragons is complete!!!

So, now all we have to do is wait for July. Hmm, now do I have enough time with my other reading projects to re-read the series. Only time will tell.

Book Review: The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

I'm sure many of you will be familiar with the film The Princess Bride. For those of you that aren't, its a cult fantasy film mixing comedy and action to great effect.

For some reason last week, I decided I wanted to read the book. Don't ask me why, but working in a library can cause these sudden book reading urges to happen.

If you didn't already know, the books author, William Goldman, used as a framing device the idea that he didn't actually write the book, instead abridged it from a much older, longer work by S Morgenstern. What I didn't realise was quite how much he kept this pretence up. The copy I read was the 25th Anniversary edition which includes a long forward by Goldman (all fake) and an eighty page appendix dealing with his none existent problems with the Morgenstern estate over royalties and the rights to publish a squeal.

While this doesn't detract from the book, I did find it highly unnecessary. As a framing device, the idea that he was abridging the book, and inserting commentary on sections he'd cut, was fine, and worked will within the novel. Why we needed all this extra personal fiction is beyond me.

Anyway, on to the story itself. If you have seen the film, you will be familiar with the story and the novel doesn't throw any surprises at you, and it wouldn't, as Goldman wrote the screenplay for the film. But the sections that didn't make it into the film give you more depth and background to the characters. You learn why the six fingered man killed Inigo's father and about Fezzik's early life. You see Buttercup and Weasly's relationship when they were younger, and Humperdinks character is given a much needed background boost.

Along with Goldman's "commentry" and the "original" text you also get a bit more of a feel for the world. I'd always thought that it was set in a fantasy world, however turns out to be more pseudo historical that fantasy. But with names like The Cliffs of Insanity and Rodents of Unnatural Size, its not hard to see how I might have come to my flawed conclusion.

In many ways, the translation from book to film is one of the best I've seen, but perhaps that's because I've come at it from seeing the film first. Scenes in the book play out nearly identically on the film, and any cuts or condensing is handled well.

Whether you've seen the film or not, I strongly recommend reading The Princess Bride. Just skip all the author's rubbish before and after. You'll be doing yourself a favour.