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The new update has added the Crazy Space Sphere from the end of PORTAL 2 as a recruitable companion character in SKYRIM.

This is, of course, to showcase the alliance between Valve and Bethesda which means that full mod support will be given to SKYRIM within the Steam menu system, meaning that regular users can add, remove and use mods with a minimum of fuss. As an extra bonus, the new update also adds totally sweet high-res textures to the PC version of the game, as well as the construction kit so you can create your own mods really easily.

Shadow Games

The wars in the north have come to an end. The threat of the Dominator has been eradicated, and the remnants of the Black Company are setting out for their ancestral homeland of Khatovar. Unexpectedly joined by their former ally and enemy, the Lady, they strike out across the Sea of Torments and across the vast southern continent. But their return has been foretold and the Prince of Taglios convinces the Black Company to join his war against the enigmatic Shadowmasters, an alliance that will have long-lasting consequences for the Company and its members.

Shadow Games is the fourth book in the Black Company series and marks the opening of a fresh chapter in the history of the mercenary army. Much of the plot baggage from the first three book is jettisoned as new characters, factions and locations are introduced. Some things stay the same, such as Croaker's ongoing first-person narration, but broadly speaking this is the series moving into fresh pastures.

It's a move that is mostly successful. The book covers an enormous amount of ground, combining the Black Company's mammoth journey (of about 7,000 miles according to one estimate) with political machinations in Taglios and military action as the Shadowmasters attempt to invade Taglian territory. It's as busy a book as its predecessors but Cook's mastery of pace wins out as normal, delivering a terrifically entertaining, page-turning read.

It's only towards the end of the book that the first notable problems appear. For the first time Cook seems to have run out of space to tell his story, resulting in a cliffhanger ending and a 'shocking' revelation being made in the final pages. How successful these moves are will vary for each reader (and, given the fact that the book is commonly now published in omnibus, not a huge problem), but it does feel a shame that the book lacks the feel of being a complete novel but also standing as part of a larger tapestry that the first three volumes enjoyed.

Beyond that, Shadow Games (****) is a fine epic fantasy novel and a worthy continuation of the series. It is available now in the UK and USA as part of the Books of the South omnibus.

Dreams of Steel

The Black Company and its Taglian allies have fought a great battle against the Shadowmasters at Dejagore. Whilst much of the Shadowmaster army was destroyed, the allies also suffered grievous losses and most of their army was forced to retreat into the city, where it now stands siege. Trapped outside and with Croaker missing, Lady is forced to assume command of the routed Taglian forces, attempt to regroup them and forge a new army strong enough to relieve Dejagore, but finds that politics and religious machinations amongst her own troops are as much a threat as the plotting of the enemy.

Dreams of Steel marks a notable change in the Black Company books. For the first time, Croaker is dropped as the primary POV in favour of Lady, who now serves as the main POV character, narrator and 'annalist', recording events for posterity. This shift in structure and approach is successful, with Cook employing a character who is far less prone to moralising than Croaker (it serves to remember that Lady was, more or less, the main bad guy in the original trilogy, and has only repented up to a point) and is still fully capable of using incredibly ruthless and bloody means to achieve her goals.

The book adopts a multi-pronged approach to the plot, with Cook alternating between Lady's endeavours, the situation with the Shadowmasters (who are, refreshingly, a foe of limited resources who themselves are in a bady way following the events of the previous novel), political events in the Taglian capital and the emergence of a third faction who delights in playing everyone off against each other whilst they sneak around in the background. This approach is successful in getting across the full weight of the story but also serves to slow the pace down. Compared to the first four books, which covered thousands of miles, numerous battles and some interesting character and plot developments in relatively modest page counts, not a huge amount actually happens in this book. For the first time, it feels that Cook is falling prey to the curse of the long epic fantasy series, namely the slowing of the pace and the easing off the throttle for more introspective books that may be interesting, but not as energetic as earlier books in the series.

Cook is enough of a good writer to overcome this problem with some solid battle scenes, an amusingly straightforward answer to politicking and some interesting characterisation, particularly of Lady as she realises how she has been changed by her time with the Black Company. However, returning readers may start to feel a little wearied when, once again, an old enemy assumed dead books ago unexpectedly returns to play a role in events.

Dreams of Steel (***½) is an enjoyable novel, but the shine of the Black Company series is starting to wear off at this point, with the first signs of it falling prey to some of the limitations of the subgenre. The novel is available now in the UK and USA as part of the Books of the South omnibus.

The Silver Spike

The Black Company has departed into the far south, taking Lady with them. For Darling, Raven, Case and the other outcasts from the Company, their future is uncertain. But when an enterprising band of treasure hunters steals the Silver Spike, within which lies imprisoned the undying essence of the Dominator, the world is again thrown into jeopardy and the heroes of the northern wars are called back into service.

The Silver Spike is a novel set in the Black Company universe, though not part of the main series. It's instead a 'sidequel', picking up after the events of the third novel in the series but taking a different group of characters off in another direction and following their adventures.

It's an interesting book, and I suspect one of the more contentious in the series. On the one hand, it's Cook on form, delivering an epic story of clashing forces ranging over vast distances but contained in a single volume. On the other, it's probably one of the starkest and most cynical books I've ever read in the epic fantasy subgenre.

In the earlier books in the series (published in the 1980s before this kind of thing became par for the course) Cook overthrew a lot of the conventions of the subgenre. The good guys sometimes did evil things and the bad guys sometimes showed compassion or mercy. The principal villain of the first three books is a hero (or at least a protagonist) in the next two. There was a high degree of cynicism, but also the apparent presence of hope .

The Silver Spike has little truck with that. There are masses of death and destruction, conveyed in a wearying tone that is at times genuinely depressing. The costly victories of our 'heroes' in the first trilogy are revealed to be brief as new villains (albeit of lesser magnitude) arise to replace the ones defeated first time around. One of the antagonists in this volume and (SPOILER WARNING!) one who gets away scott-free at the end is a murderous paedophile (apparently Cook's angry commentary that sometimes the worst people prosper). Those who do put their lives on the line to save the world end up fading into obscurity in a backwater, uncelebrated and unremembered.

It's a dark and grim novel that is not a happy read, for all of Cook's excellent writing skills. It's the epic fantasy equivalent of one of those 'difficult' albums that you listen to for the technical accomplishment or emotional power but you wouldn't in a million years put on at parties. It's an angry, harsh and raw book.

Characterisation is pretty good, with the 'antihero' cast of thieves and adventurers well-drawn, for all their nauseating habits. Raven is a bit more one-note than in previous books, but Case (our part-time first-person POV character for this volume) develops into a more complex, interesting character, as does Darling. There is a degree of repetition in the volume that regular series readers might find a tad predictable (Darling's use of the weird creatures from the Plain of Fear as her own personal army, yet again) but otherwise Cook's reliable powers of characterisation and plot development are in full force.

The Silver Spike (****) is a dark, grim and at times rather nihilistic read, but one that remains engrossing thanks to the author's writing skills. It may leave you wanting to read something more upbeat afterwards, though. The book is available now in the UK and USA as part of the Books of the South omnibus.

This is not the ending. There are no beginning and no endings to the Wheel of Time. But it is AN ending.

I think it's going to be this, or a flash-forwards to the next turning of the Wheel where everything starts happening again.

Scott Bakker's PRINCE OF NOTHING and ASPECT-EMPEROR trilogies sound like they might be suitable, particularly if you are a fan of DUNE. Imagine LORD OF THE RINGS if it had been written by Frank Herbert with a lot more magic and sex and you're halfway there.

I back-up the suggestion for Steven Erikson's MALAZAN series, and raise it by mentioning Brandon Sanderson (particularly a good choice if you like Rothfuss). I recommend starting with Sanderson's MISTBORN trilogy, which is complete and highly enjoyable.

So no J. V. Jones "Bakers boy" then ? (Boy becomes magician!)

I would consider Jones's sequel series, THE SWORD OF SHADOWS (which starts with A CAVERN OF BLACK ICE), which is flat-out awesome. Whilst some characters recur, it's mostly new characters in a new area of the same continent, so you can read it without reading the BOOK OF WORDS sequence (of which THE BAKERS BOY is the first book) first. The difference in quality between the two series is enormous, with THE SWORD OF SHADOWS comfortably standing among the best ongoing, long-running fantasy series around.

There is an element of, 'isn't that obvious?' about this idea, but the truth is that there is no hard and fast rule. Some people will remain lively, productive and inspired into their 90s. Others will peak much earlier and decline. Some may peak, decline and then recover.

For example, the list of authors given is questionable in itself. Clarke is 'best-known' for the ODYSSEY books, but only because of the movies. His most critically-acclaimed novels are RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA and THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE, which come from later in his career (also CHILDHOOD'S END from much earlier). The author of the list also neglects to point out that the WHEEL OF TIME went off the boil for a long time (seven years, at least) but Jordan himself did drag the series kicking and screaming back into shape with his last published novel before he died. As for Moorcock, ELRIC is his best-known work but also (IMO) one of his weakest. Later works, such as MOTHER LONDON and the PYAT sequence, are vastly superior.

Tolkien is also a questionable one, as his late-life writings (mostly collected in UNFINISHED TALES) are in many ways far more interesting, introspective and sophisticated than LORD OF THE RINGS. He never wrote another novel and a lot of THE SILMARILLION was drawn from earlier-written drafts and ideas, but from the glimpses in UNFINISHED TALES (and the HISTORY series) he was very far from having peaked in 1954. Depending on POV, King's last few novels have also been a return to form (or at least his last couple of books have been 'event' books that have excited readers in a way we haven't seen for many years).

The author of the article also ignores any author whose continued production of superior work well into their eighties or nineties puts his argument in doubt. Jack Vance (97) is brought up in the comments (and handwaved away as the 'exception that proves the rule') but there's also Gene Wolfe (80 and counting) and Brian Aldiss (87 and counting) to consider.

Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian Cameron Esslemont

With the Pannion Seer defeated, the Jaghut Tyrant Raest imprisoned and peace declared with the Malazans, the beleaguered citizens of Darujhistan are finally hoping for a time of peace and prosperity. Of course, this is the perfect time for an ancient force of unspeakable evil to escape from the barrows outside the city and unleash a new age of chaos and war across most of Genabackis. This war will draw in the Moranth and the Seguleh, the Rhivi and the remnants of the Malazan armies still stationed on the continent. Far to the south, treasure hunters are looting the crashed ruins of Moon's Spawn, searching for the storied Throne of Night, whilst in another realm hunters are searching for the missing High Mage Tayschrenn at the very Shores of Creation. But the fate of Darujhistan, Genabackis and maybe the world will rest in the hands of one fat thief and a bunch of Malazan deserters who want nothing more than to run their pub in peace.

Orb Sceptre Throne is Ian Cameron Esslemont's fourth entry into the Malazan world, expanding on the novels written by his friend and collaborator Steven Erikson. It's an interesting book in that, unlike Esslemont's previous novels which largely focused on new characters, this novel extensively features characters Erikson has used and developed in several previous books, most notably the curiously-dictioned Kruppe. This poses challenges for Esslemont, but thankfully he overcomes them with aplomb. Kruppe occasionally feels a bit off, but most of the other shared characters (Caladan Brood, Duiker, the ex-Bridgeburners, Torvald and Rallick Nom and more) come across very well.

The narrative is, as is typical with Malazan, somewhat disjointed, with several apparently unconnected storylines unfolding before converging at the end. This disconnect seems more pronounced than is normal for Esslemont and is briefly worrying, since he has far less page-time to play around with than Erikson (despite being almost exactly 600 pages long in hardcover, this is the one of the shortest books in the series). However, as the storylines move together and things start making sense, the book picks up a tremendous momentum. The second half of the novel is stuffed full of battles, plot revelations and character moments that are satisfyingly epic. By using elements familiar to readers from other books, Esslemont is able to imbue events with more meaning than would otherwise be the case. When four hundred Seguleh (the sword-wielding taciturn badasses of the Malazan world) show up, the reader knows that some serious carnage is about to go down, for example.

For this reason, Orb Sceptre Throne works much better for established Malazan fans than newcomers, particularly those who have already read Gardens of the Moon, Memories of Ice and Toll the Hounds. A number of plot elements stretching all the way back to Gardens of the Moon are expanded upon and backstory is (finally!) given for the Seguleh, the Moranth and indeed Genabackis as a whole. It's also nice to see some established characters given more depth and bigger roles than previously, such as Antsy, who becomes a major player in events at the crashed Moon's Spawn.

On the negative side, there's a number of story elements that are somewhat obtuse, either referring to storylines still to be detailed or referring very obliquely to events in other novels. Some characters fare better than others, and notably after the initial ferocious power and abilities shown by the antagonists, they seem to be caught a bit flat-footed by the forces arrayed against them at the end of the book. Also, it's confusing why Esslemont alludes to the fact that a fan-favourite character is still in the environs of Darujhistan when that character plays no role in the book (despite events being more than epic enough to attract his attention).

Despite these minor niggles, Orb Sceptre Throne (****½) is a well-written, thoroughly enjoyable addition to the Malazan canon. It is available now in the UK and on 22 May in the USA.

Blue Remembered Earth

Tanzania, 2161. The matriarch of the Akinya family, Eunice, a famous pioneer of space travel and exploration, has died at the age of 130. The family convenes for the funeral, but grandson Geoffrey would prefer to be carrying on his research into elephant cognition. When an anomaly is discovered amongst Eunice's possessions, Geoffrey is asked to investigate, the beginning of a journey that will take him from Earth to the Moon to Mars...and further still.

Alastair Reynolds's new novel is the first in a new sequence, Poseidon's Children, which will span 11,000 years of human history. As such, the three books in the sequence will presumably be stand-alones, divided by immense gulfs in history, but with added context given to the reader by reading all three in order. Reynolds and his publisher have backed away from the 'trilogy' moniker (and the 'Book One of Poseidon's Children' tagline present on some early drafts of the cover has been removed) to de-emphasise the idea this is a serialised story that people will have to wait years to be concluded.

Reynolds is noted for having a somewhat grim vision of the future in his previous books, so Blue Remembered Earth is notable for its more optimistic tone. The human race has become richer and more technologically advanced than ever before, with Africa now driving the world economy and formerly war-torn, poverty-stricken states are now prosperous and driven. The price of this new era of peace and development is the Surveilled World, a state of near-total coverage of the planet by AIs which intervene if any crimes are detected. As a result almost no crimes or murders have been committed in decades (although Reynolds, a noted fan of crime thrillers, can't help dropping one puzzling and apparently impossible murder in as a subplot). This near-total surveillance state is not so prevalent on other planets and moons, however, due to time-lag issues.

The book is essentially a treasure hunt, with Geoffrey and his sister Sunday following the trail of clues left behind by their grandmother which ultimately leads to the Big Reveal. The trail, and the resulting plot, are somewhat convoluted and, it has to be said, unconvincing. Nevertheless, the story is entertaining with a constant stream of inventive ideas: an area on Mars controlled by rogue machines; an AI simulacrum of Eunice who provides advice and becomes more and more like the real Eunice as they uncover more information; attempts to help improve the quality of life for zoo elephants by merging them holographically with a real herd in the African wilderness; and a system-wide telescope being used to scan for signs of life on other worlds. The characters, particularly Geoffrey and Sunday (our main POV characters) are well-developed as we learn their respective reasons for turning against the family's strict business-oriented hierarchy, but even their antagonistic siblings (who initially appear to be villainous) are fleshed-out satisfyingly by the end of the book.

As the most low-tech of Reynolds's books to date, Blue Remembered Earth is perhaps his most conservative in terms of ideas and scale and scope. This isn't a bad thing and he seems to enjoy working under greater technological constraints than previously, but occasionally he seems to chafe against the restrictions (the robots on Mars and the large-scale mining of the Oort Cloud both seem somewhat more advanced than the tech elsewhere). He also doesn't fully explore the freedom implications of having a state of total surveillance, other than in a cursory surface manner.

Still, Blue Remembered Earth (****) is highly readable, brimming with ideas and refreshingly optimistic. Recommended. The novel is available now in the UK and on 5 June 2012 in the USA.

I've just learned, that there is a 'Carrier Command' remake in the works. I really hope they don't wreck this...

There's a good preview of it here.

In short, it's looking very faithful to the original. The only major differences are the addition of a purely optional campaign mode (featuring cut scenes and a mission-based structure) alongside the massive freeform mode, and the fact it's set on another planet rather than an artificially-created island chain in the Pacific.

Quite a few people have mentioned X-COM, and expressed disquiet that the new 'XCOM' game is a first-person shooter.

Good news!

Firaxis - the makers of CIVILIZATION - have listened to your pleas (well, not yours specifically, but the harsh outcry from the Internet in general) and will be releasing a modern update of XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN in 2012. It's still turn-based, it has base-building, it has the Geoscape screen, it has R&D. It pretty much has everything from the original (er, although the action point system has been simplified and you can only take 4 men on missions).

The FPS has also been pushed back to 2013 for reasons unknown.

Erikson definitely didn't learn the lesson of conciseness. Sometimes more incident and character development happens in one of Cook's 250-page books than in one of Erikson's 1,300-page ones (though that's rather rare).

The White Rose

The Black Company - or rather the handful of its survivors - has broken ranks with the armies of the Lady and sworn its allegiance to the White Rose, who is prophecised to bring the Lady down. But the Lady's armies have besieged the Plains of Fear, hemming the Company and their allies in. As the threat draws in, Croaker, annalist of the Company, receives anonymous messages relating how the wizard Bomanz awoke the Lady and the Taken in the first place. As events unfold, it becomes clear that the Lady's husband, the evil Dominator, is planning his own return to the world, a prospect that cows even the Lady, and that the growing war will soon develop a third side.

The White Rose concludes the original Black Company trilogy, wrapping up story and character arcs begun back in The Black Company and continued in Shadows Linger. Based on those two books, the reader might go into this novel expecting a massive magical conflageration and battles of mythic proportions. Again, Cook blindsides the reader by crafting something far less predictable and much, much weirder.

Much of the book takes place on the Plains of Fear, an area warped into what can only be called surrealness by the presence of a god manifesting as a tree. Talking, teleporting menhirs warn of strangers on the plain, whilst flying manta rays and immense windwhales pass overhead. These chapters are more akin to the New Weird than anything in the epic fantasy canon, and keeps things fresh and offbeat. After this sequence the story moves to the Barrowland, the prison of the evil Dominator, where an unlikely alliance of convenience must be struck in order to ensure the Dominator's destruction.

The White Rose is certainly not the ending that I think anyone was expecting, but this is a good thing. Scenes where the apparently evil, amoral Taken and their mistress show their doubts and fears in the face of the threats of both the White Rose and the Dominator show an impressive degree of characterisation. Cook also reveals the backstory of the wizard Bomanz which shows that history has been rather unkind to him, and sets the warped version of history that Croaker and his friends are familiar with straight. Cook's succinct but still memorable prose and typical mastery of pace drives the story to a conclusion that it is expectation-defyingly small in scale, but nevertheless logical.

The White Rose is the third book of ten (so far) in the Black Company series, so obviously there is more story to come, but Cook brings things to a solid conclusion and the book has no cliffhanger for future books, making it an ideal pausing point for those not wishing to plough through the whole series in one go.

The White Rose (****½) shows Cook defying expectations once more and delivering a morally complex, atypical epic fantasy that is compelling to read. It is available in the UK and USA now as part of the Chronicles of the Black Company omnibus.

Shadows Linger

Six years after the mighty Battle at Charm, the Lady's Northern Empire has expanded further than ever before, carrying the Black Company into the distant lands of the east. However, orders come that will drive the Black Company on a march of thousands of miles to the far north-west, to the city of Juniper were mighty forces will clash as the result of the activities of one dirt-poor innkeeper.

Shadows Linger is the second novel in The Black Company sequence and comes as a bit of a surprise for readers expecting more of the same. The Black Company was a vast war epic, huge in scope. Shadows Linger feels a lot smaller in scale and more intimate, with the bulk of the action taking place in the single city of Juniper and focusing on the troubled life of the innkeeper Marron Shed. This division of focus - between Juniper and the Black Company as they cross an entire continent to get there - requires Cook to adjust his POV structure from the first volume. Whilst the bulk of the action continues to be relayed by Croaker, annalist and physician of the Black Company, we also get third-person POV chapters focusing on Shed. Later it is revealed that Shed recounted his adventures in detail to Croaker, explaining how this structure works.

Cook is at home with the small-scale story as he is with the larger, and he is able to inject real fear and tension into the mundane storyline of Shed's debt worries. As the story continues, we realise how Shed's apparently irrelevant concerns are related to the bigger picture, and once the Black Company reaches Juniper we snap back to a larger, more epic story with far-reaching consequences for the characters (several major characters don't make it to the end of this one).

The story itself unfolds relentlessly, with superb pacing as we flick between Shed's activities, Croaker's narration and the third-hand reports of the Black Company's march on Juniper. There are also hints of genuinely weird and fantastical ideas here, such as the bizarre landscape of the Plain of Fear (which features much more strongly in the third volume) and the black castles which grow from seeds (which Erikson clearly cribbed for the Azath Houses in the Malazan sequence). There's a feeling of constant invention as Cook deploys weird and wonderful ideas and combines them with the more traditional military fantasy shenanigans he has set in motion.

Complaints are few. The timeline feels a little shaky (in order for it to work, Croaker has to spend months and months in Juniper, which doesn't feel the case in the book) but this is not particularly a major problem. A few characters established as major players in the book seem to end their story arcs with damp squibs or rather off-hand deaths, but this may be part of Cook's intended effect - not everyone is a hero and some people do just expire unexpectedly in undramatic fashion. There's also much more of an obvious cliffhanger for the third book, but given that the third book has been out for decades and is combined with the first two in omnibus editions, that's not particularly problematic either.

Shadows Linger (****½) is more than a worthy follow-up to The Black Company. It's a fast-paced, addictive read which sees Cook not resting on his laurels and trying some new approaches and ideas, and succeeding well. The novel is available as part of the Chronicles of the Black Company omnibus in the UK and USA.

THE MALAZAN BOOK OF THE FALLEN itself, the 10-volume sequence by Steven Erikson, is complete, and should be read in publication order:

1: Gardens of the Moon
2: Deadhouse Gates
3: Memories of Ice
4: House of Chains
5: Midnight Tides
6: The Bonehunters
7: Reaper's Gale
8: Toll the Hounds
9: Dust of Dreams
10: The Crippled God

The NOVELS OF THE MALAZAN EMPIRE sequence by Ian Cameron Esslemont takes place simultaneously with and slightly after the MBF series and illuminates some elements in it. There is some cross-pollination, but broadly speaking you can read the MBF itself without worrying about them. The NME series is as follows:

1: Night of Knives
2: Return of the Crimson Guard
3: Stonewielder
4: Orb, Sceptre, Throne
5: City in the Jungle (due 2013)
6: Assail (due 2014)

Erikson is writing a prequel trilogy which starts this year with FORGE OF DARKNESS, but this will illuminate background info for the main MBF series and is not essential reading. He also plans a sequel trilogy to the MBF series for several years down the line.

The Black Company

The Black Company is an elite mercenary force whose history goes back centuries. Last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, the Black Company fights for coin, but is also a proud army that is its own master. Accepting the commission of the Northern Empire and its ruler, the ruthless Lady, the Company soon finds itself fighting a war against an oppressed populace struggling to be free...but the leaders of the rebellion seem every bit as ruthless and amoral as the Lady and her senior sorcerer-warriors - the Taken - are. Evil battles evil, a continent bleeds and through it all the Black Company struggles to survive.

Glen Cook's Black Company books are widely regarded as being amongst the most influential and important epic fantasy novels ever written. Steven Erikson cites them as the primary influence on his Malazan series, whilst George R.R. Martin is a fan. A dozen years before Martin made 'grimdark' cool, Cook was already writing adult stories about wars, soldiers and the causes they fight and die for, with no elves in sight and no punches pulled.

Published in 1984, The Black Company is an object lesson in how to write a large-scale epic fantasy and execute it with razor-sharp focus and nuanced characterisation, and to do so in a relatively modest page count. More happens in The Black Company's 300-odd pages than in many entire trilogies. Empires rise and fall, battles that make the Pelennor look like a playground scrap are fought and all is seen from the point of view of a single medic and historian, who is all to often drawn in to become part of the events he is trying to dispassionately record.

The book is episodic, with each (very long) chapter relating a different incident during the war. As the Lady's empire battles the Rebel, so the different Taken feud amongst themselves and the Black Company are caught up in one of the exchanges (but don't exactly get much gratitude for taking sides), giving the conflict an air of complexity and extremely conflicted morals. This is emphasised by the addition to the Company of its first native northern soldier, Raven, who has his own agenda. Given that we are with the POV of Croaker, the medic, for the entire novel, Cook achieves an impressive depth of characterisation of the other principals. Other well-developed characters include the old, feuding mages One-Eye and Goblin, Raven and his mute ward, Darling, and the Taken Soulcatcher, who may be a servant of darkness but even he needs to unwind and chew the fat from time to time.

The prose is clipped and efficient, though some criticise it for being blunt. Cook skips descriptors in some sentences, or uses a soldier-style shorthand designed to transmit information with maximum efficiency and conciseness on the battlefield. It can be a little odd at first, but once you get into the author's headspace it becomes second nature, and a marvellously effective way of telling a large, epic story in a constrained space.

Problems? The absence of a map makes the geography of the war (which is critical to the plot) sometimes a little confusing. With one exception, we really don't get to know anyone on the side of the Rebel, making them a somewhat faceless and uninteresting foe. Cook also prefers to avoid exposition, starting in media res and pausing for explanations only rarely. However, unlike Erikson (who employs a similar device at the start of the Malazan sequence) Cook's story is actually pretty straightforward, and by the end of the novel the reader should have pieced together everything pretty nicely.

The Black Company (****½) is a novel brimming with verve, confidence and attitude. As fresh and readable today as when it was published a quarter-century ago, it's a stellar opening to the Black Company series. The novel is available now in the UK and USA as part of the Chronicles of the Black Company omnibus (along with its immediate sequels, Shadows Linger and The White Rose).

Eden: a world of perpetual darkness, lit by fluorescent vegetation and headed by geothermal trees. Five hundred humans - the Family - live in an isolated valley. They are all descended from the same couple, Tommy and Angela, astronauts stranded on Eden one hundred and sixty years ago. As a result, genetic deformities and aberrations amongst the Family are commonplace. The Family is held together by the dream that one day Earth will send a rescue ship to pick them up and take them home.

For teenage hunter John Redlantern, this dream is a futile delusion. He believes that the Family must branch out to survive, as the valley's food stocks are dwindling. But the only way out of the valley is a dangerous ascent over an unlit, freezing mountain that has killed every person who has tried to climb it. John's determination to escape to a better place splits the Family apart, but how much is John's plan motivated by a desire for humanity to survive on Eden and how much to appease his own ego?

Dark Eden is a dark (thematically and literally) novel that uses an interesting SF concept - a world in perpetual darkness - to explore themes about human society and the impact of ideas, traditions and rituals on a small group of people. Chris Beckett, the author of the excellent Holy Machine, has been noted as an author who fuses SF subject matter and 'literary' ambitions together into something interesting. Whilst hardly new - there's a faint hint of Brian Aldiss or early Ballard to his work - it's something that Beckett does well, creating stories that work from a scientific viewpoint as well as a literary one.

Eden itself, with its luminous trees and vividly nocturnal wildlife, is a fine, stirring creation. It's the inverse of the superheated Earth of Aldiss's Hothouse, a world here plunged into utter darkness and, away from the geothermal foliage, total cold. How this is possible is left to the reader's imagination: does the planet orbit a black hole or a brown dwarf? Does it orbit a normal star and is merely tidally locked? If the planet is indeed freezing cold, how does the atmosphere not simply melt away? Various solutions to such questions present themselves but are ultimately left ambiguous.

The Family survive by clinging to one central belief - that a rescue ship will come from Earth to find them - and their entire existence revolves around it. They refuse to travel far from their ancestors' landing site, even though local food sources have been almost exhausted. They constantly tell stories about their ancestors and the founding of their society. But they are trapped into a mode of existence so all-consuming it is taken for granted. When John Redlantern is able to step back and point out the flaws in their blinkered worldview, it creates strife and discord. A serpent enters this Eden, but this time we are on the serpent's side, as the Family remaining where they will ultimately destroy them.

At the same time, John is motivated not just by a desire to save his people, but also to prove himself better than them, a visionary leader. Beckett's structure - he uses a rotating first-person POV, swapping characters every chapter - allows us to see events from John's perspective and also from that of both his friends and enemies, allowing a tremendous depth of character to be achieved (both of John and several other key characters). John's character is built up, deconstructed and reassessed with tremendous skill. Beckett is keen to avoid passing judgement: some of John's actions are admirable, others are loathsome, and the reader is invited to decide which is which.

At the same time the story moves forward, it also moves back. The story of how Tommy and Angela ended up on Eden is revealed in layers, as more and more stories and legends from the distant past of Eden are revealed, and the story that the people of Eden know may not be the whole truth. It's also a story that doesn't have an ending, as the fate of the three astronauts who left Eden in search of help is not known (in the novel's only possible misstep, Beckett eschews the ambiguity of the rest of the book to give as a fairly straightforward answer in the book's climax). The Family want to stay in their valley so the rescuers can find them, and the end of the story can be known, whilst John and his followers want to abandon such beliefs and strike out in search of their own destiny. Conflict follows and both sides' arguments have their merits.

Dark Eden (*****) is a superb novel about ideas, the struggle to survive and the dangers of blind faith. Beckett says little that is new, but makes his points with subtlety and intelligence, all against a well-realised, vividly-described backdrop. The novel is out now in the UK and is available on Kindle in the United States.

One thing to note that in Revenge of the Jedi... Luke Skywalker's fight against Darth Vader and his Emperor was of pretty much no significance as to how the battle came out. In that case it was all on Han and Leia and all the other non-Force users of the movie to deliver the happy ending.

I think someone pointed this out to Lucas. They retconned it in the novels that the Emperor was using the Force skill 'Battle Meditation' (which later plays a big role in the KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC computer game) to give the Imperial Fleet a huge boost against the Rebels, and as he got distracted by the Vader/Skywalker fight this allowed the Rebels to start winning the space battle and on the ground.

To put it mildly, I found this explanation unconvincing.

Some thoughts on books by one of the better-known 'classic' SF authors.

Childhood's End

Humanity is about to launch its first manned mission to another world. Finally, the human race is about to escape its cradle and take its first step towards the stars. But on the eve of the launch the skies over the Earth's major cities are blotted out by the appearance of huge, alien spacecraft. The Overlords have arrived, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most famous writers the science fiction field has ever produced, thanks to his work on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and his role as a popular science commentator (he covered several of the Apollo moon landings for American television and had several successful TV series in the 1980s). Clarke's work is notable for its straightforwardness (he was never a great prose stylist) but also its scientific rigour. With a few exceptions, Clarke had little truck with what he considered to be some of the more fantastical concepts of SF (such as faster-than-light travel and artificial gravity) and did not use them in his work. In his view, the universe is vast, timeless and unknowable. Much of Clarke's work is notable for a certain melancholic optimism: the human race can be much more than it is now, but even so is unlikely to challenge the vastness of the universe.

Childhood's End was published in 1953 and was his fourth novel, although his first published in the United States, where it immediately established him as a major voice in the field. In many ways it is atypical Clarke. The aliens are comprehensible and easily relate to human beings, unlike the enigmatic entities of say 2001 or Rendezvous with Rama. At the same time, his normal scientific vigour is a little slacker than normal, as concepts such as telepathy and group consciousnesses are explored (Clarke had a passing fascination with the supernatural at the time, though later firmly rejected such notions). Clarke's influences are clear, with the presence of Olaf Stapledon particularly hard to ignore.

The novel is extremely concise, with my paperback copy clocking in at 160 pages. For its short page count, the novel is fairly epic. It is split into three sections, each with a distinct cast, focus and storyline (unsurprising, as the first section was originally a stand-alone short story). In the first, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has to oversee the painful transformation of humanity from bickering nation-states to a single world government. In the second, a family 'escape' the Overlords' utopia to live in an island commune free of their influence, only to discover the real reason for the Overlords' arrival on Earth. In the final section, a lone human who stowed away aboard an Overlord ship returns to Earth eighty years later (though only a few months later by his count, due to time dilation) to find a world vastly changed from the one he left. Clarke doesn't waste a word as he lets the story unfold inexorably, moving to a conclusion that looms somewhere between awe-inspiring and horrific.

As a novelist, Clarke was much more interested in ideas (thematic, scientific or both) than people. His characterisation was often variable, although Childhood's End is actually one of his better books in that regard. Its major protagonists (even the Overlords) are clearly defined and sympathetic. In terms of structure, Childhood's End is unusual in that the entire story is pre-ordained, and nothing any of the characters do can change what is happening. They - and the reader - can only witness it and make their own minds up about whether it is something that can be called 'good' or not, and I suspect many will fall on the 'not' end of the spectrum.

As a result Childhood's End can be viewed as a colossal tragedy. The book has a tremendous emotional charge as it poses a simple question: how would we face it if our way of existing ended tomorrow? Clarke's answer is surprisingly bleak but, one suspects, one that would be close to the truth.

The novel has aged in some respects. The first edition opened with the USA and USSR battling to land a man on the moon, since Apollo 11 was still sixteen years in the future at the time it was published. Clarke also makes a very dated joke where he discusses how the Overlords have to force the rulers of South Africa to treat all their citizens equally regardless of skin colour. The 'joke' is that by this time majority rule in South Africa has been restored, and it's the white population that's being mistreated. An amusing aside in 1953 actually feels rather cynical today, assuming as it does that the African population would be as racist and authoritarian as the white one was. However, another point about how the people of Israel bitterly resist being absorbed into the Overlords' hegemony and giving up the freedom they have spent centuries fighting for, is more resonant. There's also a recurring problem in Clarke's work where he underestimates the power of religion, and the sequences where the Overlords' arrival causes the downfall of all world religions in a matter of months are rather unconvincing.

In most respects, Childhood's End (****½) has not aged badly at all, and its central themes of parenthood and the futility of railing against the night - but the effort nevertheless being laudable - remain interesting. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

R. Scott Bakker's SECOND APOCALYPSE series-of-series. To save the world from a race of alien space rapists intent on resurrecting a womb-destroying force of ultimate evil, humanity surrenders its rule to a Nietzschean superman whose superior intellect means that all humanity is as puppets dancing to his strings and he has no qualms on seeing millions die to ensure his aims are met.

It is not a laugh riot.

Good to know--my frequent buyer dollars are back up again!

As can see above, I loved The City and the City, but I'd still be interested in seeing what Mieville does with epic fantasy.

The Bas-Lag books aren't epic fantasy. Probably closer to steampunk than anything else, but even that doesn't get across their full strangeness.

I haven't noticed any instability in the saves. Then again I have most of my "fade" sliders set fairly low because of the lack of RAM under XP 32-bit. Body cleanup is fairly quick. The biggest and latest is 13.6 MB.

I believe the save-size issue is only critical on PS3, and annoying on X-Box 360 (on PS3 they start affecting that game at around 80 hours, while for 360 it's about 200 hours). On PC it shouldn't ever crop up, especially since the latest patch removed the 2 GB memory limitation.

A moot point now, but IRON COUNCIL isn't really the third book in a series. It's set in the same world as PERDIDO STREET STATION and THE SCAR, but thirty years or so further on with a new cast and a stand-alone storyline. There are some references back to the events of the two earlier novels that you'll get if you've read the earlier two books, but that's about it. It's definitely not a trilogy.

Mieville's next novel, RAILSEA, will be out in May 2012.

A new map showing southern Genabackis, from Ian Cameron Esslemont's new MALAZAN novel, ORB SCEPTRE THRONE, due out next month.

Steven Erikson's FORGE OF DARKNESS, the first book in the KHARKANAS TRILOGY, is out in August 2012, from the sound of it. Erikson has completed his first draft, although his plan to write a shorter novel than his core MALAZAN books has backfired a bit. Though shorter than most of the main series, FORGE OF DARKNESS is still longer than DEADHOUSE GATES and MIDNIGHT TIDES (which are about 700 pages in hardcover and 900 pages in paperback).

I'm really surprised that no one's mentioned Jack Vance's Dying Earth. It was good enough inspiration material for Gygax. I tend to think of it as a crossover between SF/Fantasy.

There's an actual DYING EARTH RPG (from Pelgrane Press), came out a decade or so ago. Was reasonably decent, that I vaguely recall.

However, it's more of a 'rationalised fantasy' (i.e. it's set so far in the future that there's all sorts of possible SF explanations for the magic and fantasy stuff that happens in the books) than an out-and-out SF series.

Paul McCarthy wrote:

R Scott Bakker's stuff. Some good ideas, but the books are just painful to read. Way too much philosophy pushed on the reader. Tried three times to read The Darkness That Comes Before, but gave up each time.

FWIW, I struggled a bit with TDTCB but pushed through it for some reason, and sometime through the second book I was hooked.

DARKNESS can be a tough book to get through. I managed it in one day as I was doing a job that required sitting at a post and not doing anything else, so I was able to plough through it in a single day without any distractions or having anything else to do.

THE WARRIOR-PROPHET is a much better book, and I'd argue that the most recently-released novel in the series, THE WHITE LUCK WARRIOR, is probably the strongest epic fantasy book released this year.

That's Gardens of the Moon for me: a thin novelization of someone's RPG campaign that probably seemed cool as hell to the people in it but doesn't have the same charm for me.

GARDENS OF THE MOON is a flawed novel. Amongst other things, it was written 10 years before the rest of the series when Erikson was a much less accomplished writer, and it was not written with an ongoing series in mind.

I always recommend that people try DEADHOUSE GATES, the second book in the series. It's set on a separate continent with an unrelated storyline with a (mostly) different cast, and requires no foreknowledge of the first book in the series. You can even start with it. It's more accessible, easier to read and shows Erikson's strengths in a much stronger way.

Graendal has magic sex slaves, doesn't she. It's not explicit or really dwelt on, but it's there.

Oh yeah, but as said most of them are men and it's part of Graendal's character (she's a bad guy and her behaviour is meant to be reprehensible). It's also a rather implied situation (i.e. Graendal is up to something unpleasant with her slaves but what that is is left up to the reader's imagination) rather than anything overt.

also raymond feist has written more than the rift war and empire trilogies. Prince of the blood, kings buccaneer and the krondor trilogy.

now granted the krondor books were written for a game or maybe t was the other way around, still good though

I think you've fallen afoul of the Raymond E. Feist Sarcasm Meme :-) There seems to be a general consensus that somewhere in the 1990s Feist's ability to write abruptly disappeared and he went from writing passable epic fantasy to churning out terrible work for money (to pay his alimony, as rather bitter blog entries from the time suggest).

When exactly this occurred seems to vary depending on the fan. DM Dan E is rather hardcore in suggesting that only the original trilogy and the EMPIRE books are worth reading. I'd add the first three SERPENTWAR books and KING'S BUCCANEER to the 'okay-to-good' category as well.

The reason I decided to post was that someone mentioned Guy Gavriel Kay; I simply could not finish The Summer Tree. I'm not sure what distinguished it from all the terrible books I've slogged through, but it stands alone as a book I don't plan to finish. He even meets the threshold for critically acclaimed according to the awards section of his Wikipedia article.

THE SUMMER TREE isn't very good, nor is his whole first trilogy (and the only trilogy he's ever written), which he wrote under the influence of working on Tolkien (he co-edited some of the latter parts of THE SILMARILLION alongside Christopher Tolkien). His critical reputation rests on his stand-alones, particularly THE LIONS OF AL-RASSAN and the recent UNDER HEAVEN (TIGANA also gets a lot of respect in some quarters). His most 'literary' effort was THE SARANTINE MOSAIC, a duology riffing on the history of Byzantium, though I think both AL-RASSAN and UNDER HEAVEN are better.

Spoiler:

Neither the murder of the Onion Knight nor the murder of the King Beyond the Wall had to occur to promote the plot in DwD.

Neither of those things happen in the novel.

Spoiler:

hang out across the sea when given the opportunity (13 vessels) to go home and reclaim her birthright.

This is addressed in some detail in the book:

Spoiler:

kills off K. Lannister. The character's appearance is not so much a dramatic plot twist as a "head scratcher." It completely destroys suspension of disbelief. Also, the character, who was previously portrayed as completely amoral if not actually evil, now "rides in on the white charger" as the savior of the Seven Kingdoms.

That's certainly one interpretation:

While I freely agree that Covenant is an ass, you ignore one of the main points of the whole series

Yup, Donaldson was not trying to replicate Tolkien and had zero interest in doing that. He was writing something different, designed to challenge and subvert expectations and ideas about what fantasy was. Given it was written in 1977, before even the epic fantasy genre as we know it existed, it was rather ahead of its time and its literary/artistic ambitions are generally laudable.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to read due to both its unrelenting darkness and also Donaldson's quite ridiculous love of using a thesaurus to substitute common words for obscure replacements. I'd agree this is a critically-acclaimed series that doesn't deserve its praise.

His SF series, THE GAP, is absolutely brilliant though.

I gave up on Perdido Street Station after a few chapters. Sex with bug-girls just isn't my thing.

In fairness, that's only a tiny part of the book. I enjoyed it, but after creating this stunningly original and vivid world Mieville then put a totally dull and predictable plot in it. I think THE SCAR is a superior book on every single level.

The Dresden Files #5: Death Masks

Harry Dresden has a lot on his plate: he's been challenged to a duel to the death to determine the outcome of the war between wizards and vampires; he's been hired to find the missing Shroud of Turin; his old girlfriend Susan is back in town for unknown purposes; and, just to round things off, thirty arch-demons are on the prowl in Chicago. And that's not even mentioning a pair of European art thieves hitting town and all three Knights of the Cross turning up to confront a mutual foe.

Death Masks, the fifth book in The Dresden Files, is the busiest book in the series to date. It sports at least four distinct plot threads (along with several related subplots) which interconnect with one another in a number of unexpected ways as the novel progresses. Each one of these plots would be enough to drive a novel by itself and Butcher seems to delight in upping the ante and complexity of the series to new heights. Combined with the ongoing, series-spanning storylines, this makes Death Masks the most epic book in the series to date.

That said, Butcher takes care to ensure the story is fully comprehensible at all times, and drives the narrative forward with his customary energy and vigour. He also finds time for some accomplished characterisation, with recurring crimelord Jonny Marcone being developed particularly well. It's also good to see some other characters like Susan and Michael returning, along with the introduction of some intriguing new characters like the Archive (a mystical repository of knowledge taking the form of a little girl) and Nicodemus (a potential new nemesis for Harry). The first appearance of the Order of Saint Giles and the Denarian sect of demons also expands the scope of Harry's world impressively.

Death Masks (****) is another very strong entry in the series. New readers will be lost (I recommend they start with the first book, Storm Front) but returning fans will find yet another page-turning and entertaining urban fantasy novel. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

I think about 90% of the books mentioned in the thread so far have never been 'critically-acclaimed' :-) Tolkien, Martin, Erikson, Donaldson, Peake, Moorcock, Howard, Pratchett, LeGuin and Jordan (to a much lesser extent) have been, but not really anyone else. Unless you count DRAGON MAGAZINE's comparison of Feist to Tolkien in 1982, that is ;-)

RA Salvatore has never been critically acclaimed. The best thing people have said about him is that he writes fun, fast-paced adventure novels. I enjoyed the first nine books or so (THE CRYSTAL SHARD through SIEGE OF DARKNESS) and then Salvatore's interest in the series died. He tried to quit, but the publishers threatened to take Drizzt off him and give him to another author. Another author even started writing a Drizzt novel, so Salvatore reluctantly came back. But you can tell his interest in the series was dead at that point and has never come back. But even at his best, he was never more than lightweight fun for teenagers anyway.

Probably the most critically-acclaimed fantasy series I've encountered and not enjoyed is M. John Harrison's VIRICONIUM sequence of novels and short stories. The first book, THE PASTEL CITY, just about passes muster (due to the dwarf-piloted power armour, which was an impressive creation for a mid-1970s fantasy novel) but later books are overwritten, full of purple prose and uninteresting characters. I've never really gotten on with Moorcock's ELRIC sequence either, though some of his other books are indeed excellent.

I've also never warmed to David Gemmell's LEGEND. I love some of his other books (particularly the Jon Shannow and TROY books), but that one's never worked for me, despite being one of the most acclaimed novels in the genre.

Did any critics praise The Sword of Truth?

No. THE SWORD OF TRUTH is widely-regarded as the laughing stock of the SFF genre (challenged only by the works of Kevin J. Anderson).

Here's something else: Mr. Game of Thrones guy could have just called himself "George Martin" and it would have been fine. But he went with "George R.R. Martin," kind of like "J.R.R. Tolkien." And I like him less for that. If I write an epic fantasy series as "K.R.R. Gersen," please shoot me.

This is a rather pedantic complaint, not to mention being totally invalid:

1) His middle names are 'Raymond Richard', so it's actually his name.
2) He started writing as 'George R.R. Martin' in 1964 in a letter published in THE AVENGERS. This was about two years before he read THE LORD OF THE RINGS (the dodgy Ace Books pirate edition) and had even heard of Tolkien.
3) He was told in 1968 that he couldn't publish as 'George Martin' because people would confuse him with the Beatles' record producer, a problem he'd already experienced whilst writing cheques ("George Martin? Hey, where's Ringo, HA!" apparently got a bit old).

I read Jordan's 1st book and thought it was a pretty close copy of LotR and stopped reading it.

A common complaint. The first version was very different (an old war veteran who'd already been through a lifetime of adventure turned out to be 'the chosen one' and a different set of events took place) but Jordan and his publisher decided to make it more traditional to hook in casual readers. The result is that the first half of the first book is very much like LotR, with analogues for the Shire, Gollum, Moria etc, but then it takes a different turn. From Book 2 onwards the series goes in a radically different direction.

There's at least four main characters with names beginning with E. If they aren't all blond, that right there should tell you how hard a time I had keeping them straight.

There's Egwene and Elayne (who is only a minor character in Book 1 and doesn't join the 'main cast' until the second novel) and that's it. Unless you're counting extremely minor characters like Egeanin in Book 2, which was probably a bit too close to Egwene for comfort.

No-one's mentioned Terry Pratchett yet? The entire WITCHES sequence of the DISCWORLD setting (starting with EQUAL RITES) has a very strong, mostly-female cast acting with agency. Some of the GUARDS books also feature strong female roles.

No. I only got a few books in, and bam there were magical slaves being sexually abused. Not the protagonists, but still not a good counterexample.

I'm pretty sure this never happens. Unless you're referring to the (somewhat over-simplistically but deliberately uncomfortable) trope-inverting sequence in Book 9 where one of the male characters is sexually harrassed and molested by a strong female character.

The WHEEL OF TIME has many problems and Robert Jordan's idea of 'feminism' is somewhat flawed and occasionally patronising (as arguably it usually is for any male writer trying to adopt a feminist approach, see also Joss Whedon), but his approach of only allowing women to use magic safely and this resulting in them being far more powerful than in the real medieval period does offer up some fresh spins and ideas on gender roles in fantasy.

The Alloy of Law

Three centuries have passed since a young woman named Vin and a band of assorted thieves used the powers of the Mistborn to save the world of Scadrial, dispersing the ash-clouds forever. Vin and her cohorts have become figures of myth or religious awe, but time has moved on. Great skyscrapers are racing for the sky whilst steam and electrical power are becoming more commonplace.

Out in the Roughs, Waxillium Ladrian has spent twenty years trying to bring peace and order to a rough, frontier land. Called home to the city of Elendel by the death of his uncle and forced to inherit his family's estate and business, Waxillium finds trading his six-shooters for cost ledgers to be harder than he'd expected. A spate of kidnappings and disappearance soon tempt him back to a life of law-enforcement, but Wax needs to face his own guilt before he can face down an old enemy.

The Alloy of Law is a (mostly) stand-alone novel set in the same world as Brandon Sanderson's earlier Mistborn Trilogy. Sanderson has previously announced that he plans three trilogies set in this world, one set in a medieval era, one in a contemporary setting and one in a futuristic milieu. The Alloy of Law is a side-story unrelated to these planned future works, though Sanderson layers some hints for the second trilogy into the narrative and also sets up a sequel (or potentially several sequels) for this book in its closing pages.

Written as a side-project to help the author stay fresh whilst bringing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time sequence to its long-awaited conclusion and coming in at barely a third the length of his last novel, The Way of Kings, it'd be easy to dismiss The Alloy of Law as a bit of fluffy filler to tide his publishers over for a year. This would be a mistake as The Alloy of Law is one of Sanderson's best novels to date.

Sanderson has always been a solid, entertaining author but his most laudable aspect has been the way he's grown and learned with each novel. Arguably his biggest problem has been the length of his books: the Mistborn volumes and certainly The Way of Kings, whilst good books, felt overlong for the amount of plot in them. With The Alloy of Law written as a short side-project, Sanderson has forced himself to write much more concisely, tightly and efficiently than normal, resulting in his most focused, page-turning novel to date. Sanderson has also learned a lot about how to deploy humour in a book (probably learning from his issues - eventually resolved - with handling Mat in the Wheel of Time books), with this book also being his funniest.

Although Sanderson's lightest and most humourous book to date, The Alloy of Law has its share of darker moments, opening with Wax accidentally killing an innocent person and being haunted by it through the book. It also touches upon more epic elements, with several potential references to upcoming storylines in the second Mistborn trilogy. The book also continues Sanderson's tradition of featuring minor links to his other fantasy novels with the appendix apparently being written by the world-hopping Hoid (and featuring a reference to the events of Elantris). The updated setting is another plus point, with the mixture of magic, steam trains, guns and electricity being unusual for a fantasy and blurring the lines between epic fantasy, steampunk and urban fantasy to create something that is more interesting than the norm. Action sequences - something Sanderson has handled quite well throughout his career - are also very strong, with some of his more colourful and memorable battles and duels being depicted here.

Sanderson delineates his main three characters - Waxillium, Wayne and Marasi - well, though the POV structure is a little distracting. The entire first half of the novel is from Wax's POV but suddenly switches over in the latter half to include Wayne, Marasi and the main villain. It feels that Sanderson could have found a more consistent structure to use than this. He also nicely inverts some cliches, such as when Wax finds himself betrothed to a woman who initially appears to be a severe harridan but becomes more well-rounded a character as the book proceeds.

On the negative side, some of the secondary characters aren't as well-defined as the three heroes. In addition, there are moments when it sounds like the lawless frontier would have been a more interesting setting than yet another fantasy city (albeit one that more resembles turn-of-the-century New York than a typical fantasy conurbation), though the culture clash between the two settings is something Sanderson handles well.

The Alloy of Law (****½) is a tight, well-written fantasy novel that uses traditional tropes and ideas but combines them with an unusual (for epic fantasy) setting to produce something fresh and engaging. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The Dresden Files #4: Summer Knight

Harry Dresden is in trouble. He's inadvertently started a war between the vampires and the wizards' White Council, his girlfriend has suffered an unplanned magical transformation and he's in danger of being booted out of his house and office. When a new paying job comes along it seems like a great opportunity for Harry to get on top of his troubles...until he finds himself in the middle of another magical war.

Summer Knight, the fourth novel in The Dresden Files, picks up some months after the events of Grave Peril and is the first book in the series to feature extensive continuity call-backs to previous volumes without a huge amount of exposition about what's been going on. Four books and twelve hundred pages into the series, I guess Butcher decided it was time to stop catering for newcomers and get on with business.

Having covered evil warlocks, werewolves, vampires and ghosts in the first three books, Butcher explores the faeries of his setting in this volume (though they showed up in the previous book, there's more revealed about them this time around). Making faeries work as threatening forces is tricky in supernatural fiction due to the cliches that come to mind when they show up, but Butcher does a good job here, defining the Sidhe of Dresden's world in some detail as threatening and sometimes malevolent beings who are dangerous and tricky to deal with. Their addition to the story, along with more information about Dresden's wizardly colleagues, expands the scope of the worldbuilding nicely.

Butcher's prose is as enjoyable as ever, with Butcher continuing a nice line in black humour. This book is notably lighter in tone than the dark Grave Peril, but things are still grimmer than in the first two, slighter novels in the series. The continuation of an over-arcing story arc from the third book (which still isn't resolved at the end of this volume) gives a more epic feel to events, with Harry's mission in the book having larger and more important ramifications in the wider conflict and world. It's good to see returning characters like Billy and his werewolf pack, the Alphas, whilst Karrin Murphy returns to the forefront of the action and, as she puts it, successfully kicks some major supernatural arse in one well-realised action sequence.

At this point The Dresden Files is becoming an enjoyable television series in novel form (which makes the failure of the TV version of the series more of a shame, though that may be down to how much they deviated from the source material). Each novel so far has had a satisfying self-contained narrative, but also added to the mythology and, in the third and fourth books, has brought in larger storylines spanning multiple volumes that bring a more epic feel to the series.

Summer Knight (****) is another well-written entry in a highly enjoyable fantasy series. It is available now in the UK and USA.

You know Butcher is, like, ten books past that now, right?

Indeed. However, posting reviews of the earlier books in the series seems a viable thing to do in a general thread about the series overall, and not just the latest book specifically.

The Dresden Files #3: Grave Peril

Harry Dresden, Chicago-based wizard for hire, finds himself drawn into a new case. A plea from a helpless young woman sets him on a course that will lead to a cataclysmic showdown with an old enemy, and may cost Dresden that which he cares about the most...

Grave Peril is the third novel in the Dresden Files series of urban fantasies and an important turning-point in the series. The first two novels, Storm Front and Fool Moon, were entertaining but little more than enjoyable fluff. Grave Peril is a considerably darker and more personal book, with Butcher's writing much more confident and assured as he puts Dresden through the emotional wringer. Whilst reading the book I was in put in mind of those 'gamechanger' episodes of Buffy and Angel when Joss Whedon would rip up the status quo by doing something to the characters that hurt them badly and established a new paradigm he would have fun setting up and exploring.

Grave Peril expands the cast of the Dresden Files with Michael Carpenter, a Christian knight armed with a magical sword, joining Dresden in his battle with the forces of evil. We also get a greater depth of worldbuilding, with both the vampire and Sidhe inhabitants of Dresden's world being fleshed out in a lot of detail. Whilst Butcher's approach does not stray too far from standard fantasy/horror depictions of these creatures, he succeeds in making them feel fresh and interesting, a near-impossible task given how ubiquitous these forces have become in recent supernatural fiction.

Butcher's writing is fun and enjoyable, with more of Dresden's attitude, character and humour bleeding through the first-person prose. His writing has definitely stepped up in quality from the first two books in the series and he effectively conveys the horror of several disturbing scenes in the book. He's become better at conveying emotion since the opening volumes of the series and several scenes are real gut-punches. There's also a more epic feeling to events, with ramifications from this book likely to extend over several books to come, opening up the story to something larger and more interesting in scale.

Some complaints remain. As with Fool Moon, Dresden is injured several times in the book and Butcher goes a bit overboard in his descriptions of how tired, hurt and helpless Dresden feels due to these injuries. There is the feeling that with each successive volume, Dresden's powers and abilities with magic are growing (along with those of his allies) and this requires Butcher to go to some lengths to 'nerf' Dresden's abilities to simply stop him using a hand-wave of magic to solve all of his problems. However, this is a minor issue, and Butcher's impressive improvement in the areas of prose and characterisation overcome it quite handily.

Grave Peril (****) is where The Dresden Files comes of age, and it does so with aplomb. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

An interesting piece of trivia. GRRM's first-ever published piece of writing, a letter published in FANTASTIC FOUR #20 in 1963 when he was 15 years old.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Thousands of years from now, the myriad colony worlds of Hain (including Earth) are being reunited under a new interstellar government, the Ekumen. Genly Ai is the First Envoy, who sets foot alone onto the surface of the frigid planet of Winter (Gethen to its inhabitants) to bring offers of trade, peace and alliance to the people of the planet. However, the genderless inhabitants (who only have sexual urges and genders for a brief period once a month) are sceptical of Ai's claims, and he soon finds himself a pawn of political factions in two neighbouring countries eager to use or discard him as they see fit.

The Left Hand of Darkness was originally published in 1969. It is set in a shared future history which Le Guin has used for several other novels and short stories, though foreknowledge of these other works is completely unnecessary to read this book. The novel also has a formidable reputation as one of the most critically-acclaimed science fiction novels in the history of the genre, noted for its complex themes and its use of metaphors to tackle a wide variety of literary ideas.

The novel spends a fair amount of time talking about the genderless inhabitants of Gethen, who have no sexual urges at all apart from a brief period called kemmer, when they are able to mate and reproduce. Le Guin has put a lot of thought into how not only this works biologically but also the impact it has on society and on the world. Her notions that a lack of sex drive for most of the month reduces the aggressiveness of humans (Gethen has never had a major war) seem obvious, but these ideas are constantly examined and re-examined during the course of the book and she steers away from trite answers.

Whilst the gender theme is notable and the most oft-discussed aspect of the novel, much is also made of the planet's cold climate and the challenges the people face in living in a world mostly covered by glaciers and icecaps where the warm seasons are perishingly short. The politics and divisions between the neighbouring countries of Karhide and Orgoreyn are also described in some detail. As a result Gethen, also called Winter, is as vivid and memorable as any of the human characters in the novel.

Amongst the individual characters, the dominant ones are Ai himself and Estraven, the Prime Minister of Karhide whose interest in Ai sees him suffer a fall from grace and having to travel a long road to try to redeem himself. The book is told from the first-person POV of both characters, moving between them with interludes taking in myths and legends from Gethen's past and also on matters such as the Gethenese calendar and sexual biology (there's also an appendix which handily collates this information into an easy-to-find collection). The two characters are compelling protagonists, with Ai's bafflement at his status as a man from another planet being considered incidental at best to the trivial politics of two nations leading him into difficulties, whilst Estraven's characterisation is subtle and compelling, with the reader constantly having to review his or her opinion of him based on new information as it comes to light.

The themes that the novel tackles extend far beyond the obvious ones of gender and climate. Duality (expressed in Ai's discussion of Taoism with Estraven), faith, the difficulties of communication even when language is shared and politics are also discussed and examined. But where The Left Hand of Darkness impresses is that these thematic discussions are woven into the narrative in a manner that is seamless and stands alongside a compelling plot. The book's climax, where the two main characters have to traverse a 700-mile-wide icecap with limited supplies, is a fantastic adventure narrative in its own right.

Complaints are few. Written in the 1960s, Le Guin presents a few outdated ideas on gender roles and sexuality that were common at the time, but these are minor issues at best.

Overall, The Left Hand of Darkness (*****) is a smart and intelligent read that has a lot to say and does so in a manner that is page-turning, compelling, relentlessly entertaining and refreshingly concise (the novel clocks in at a slim 250 pages in paperback). One of the all-time classics of the genre and a book that more than deserves its reputation. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Riyria Revelations #1: Theft of Swords

Hadrian and Royce are partners in crime, a mercenary and thief who make a living working for the various nobles who rule over the lands of Avryn but spend most of their time feuding with one another. One particular job ends with Hadrian and Royce being arrested and charged with regicide. Determined to prove their innocence and take revenge on those who framed them, they set out on a quest that could change the fate of Avryn and the whole world.

Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria Revelations series is already a proven success, with both small press and self-published editions of the books selling well. Orbit have picked up the series and recast the original six books as three omnibuses, bringing them to a wider audience. Whilst this laudably rewards the author's success, it also raises the stakes: standing out from the crowd in self-publishing is one thing, but how does Sullivan's work stack up compared to the current fantasy heavyweights?

The answer is...okay, actually. Sullivan's ambition with this series was to create a series that in a way beat against the current trend for adult, edgy, violent and explicit fantasy novels in favour of something more straightforward or 'classic'. Something that evoked the spirit of say Eddings or Brooks without being as dire. Sullivan lists Harry Potter as an inspiration, particularly the way it welded together accessibility and a classic structure with darker elements (such as major character deaths), and that's certainly a reasonable ambition.

Theft of Swords (which combines the first two novels in the series, The Crown Conspiracy and Avempartha) is a fast-paced, straightforward read with a fast-moving plot and easy-to-read writing. Sullivan's risk in aping the simpler form of fantasy fiction is that he might skirt towards blandness, and this is certainly a problem in the book. He has a fairly blank prose style which is effortless to read, but also somewhat forgettable. His skills with characterisation are somewhat stronger, but still not as great as might be wished. Particularly odd is that his central characters of Hadrian and Royce are not very well-developed at all, and many of the secondary characters are more interesting and better-drawn. The central duo do get a bit more fleshed out towards the end of the second half of the book and we also get a possible reason for why Sullivan had to hold back on certain revelations about them, but it is a bit of a challenge to read a book where the two heroes are so (apparently) shallow.

Other issues can be found in the worldbuilding, particularly the existence of apparently substantial kingdoms with walled cities in them that are only about 20 miles wide. Sullivan aims for some consistency here - a couple of hundred soldiers forms a large army in this world, presumably because populations are correspondingly tiny - but it's still a bit odd. On the racial front, things are fairly traditional: dwarves are geniuses for stonecarving whilst elves are long-lived, pointy-eared types. The only dwarf we meet is a grubby villain, whilst the elves are (in this first book anyway) kept firmly off-screen and are the enemies of humanity, but these are minor (and not particularly unprecedented) twists to the established formula. Naturally, the main storyline also revolves around prophecies, chosen ones whose arrival will signify the end of the world and so on, and it won't take a genius to guess who the chosen one is going to be.

The principle problem with the book is its very predictability. At first, reading an epic fantasy without blood spraying over people's faces every five seconds or two mandatory graphic (and usually badly-written) sex scenes per book is a refreshing change of pace, and feels like a valid direction to take at this time. However, the book's embracing of classic tropes without doing much (or, at times, anything) to subvert or challenge them eventually gets dull. Brandon Sanderson, for example, is also writing classic epic fantasy but remembers to put in plenty of interesting twists: a post-magic-apocalypse setting, a Wild West angle and, of course, lots of original magic systems. These flourishes are absent from Sullivan's debut work.

Theft of Swords (***) is an easy, relaxing read but also one that lacks depth or originality. It's fun enough to warrant reading on (and the series rep has it improving massively as it continues), but I do wonder if publishing these stories as 650-page omnibuses rather than their original 320-page, bite-sized chunks was a mistake. A fun popcorn read, but ultimately not much more. The omnibus is available now in the UK and USA.

The only time I put my party up against the tarrasque was actually in the only (at the time) canon appearance of the thing in FORGOTTEN REALMS, in the Arcane Age Netheril stuff. Of course, they didn't need to kill it forever, just disable it through the application of vast amounts of damage and then steal its pituitary gland (for Karsus' spell) before it regenerated. Also, they had access to the 11th level magic available in the Arcane Age setting, which made the task considerably easier than it would have been otherwise. If I recall, the 'plant lance' spell (which dealt out ridiculous amounts of damage) was reasonably effective.

There's a player in my group who has taken the art of looting to an art form. After defeating a dragon in combat, he was adamant he was going to skin the thing and sell its scales for colossal sums of gold. To this end, he utilised magical weapons to help in the skinning process, magical bags to store the scales, summoned creatures to help carry the bags and more. It was bonkers, and took up an entire playing session, but he was almost admirable in his single-minded determination to carry out this task.

RPS's take on the game so far. They are very impressed by it, far moreso than they were by OBLIVION.

Definitely check out the EISENHORN and RAVENOR trilogies from Dan Abnett, which seem to have been inspirations on the RPGs. They're primarily about an Inquisitor (actually, two different Inquisitors with rather different ways of operating) and his retinue and how they confront the forces of Chaos, but several different Rogue Traders show up as well with their ships and they are shown to vary a lot. Tons and tons of servitors (think of STAR WARS astromechs, but cyborgs with probably less individuality) make up most of the ship crews with notable human crewmembers somewhat few and far between.

Also, a few Deathwatch Space Marines show up at one point as well, so you actually get a taste for all three RPGs from the books. Plus they're pretty damn good as well :-)

I wasn't advocating that GW should have sued Blizzard (though people have done so and won in cases with less cause). WARCRAFT and STARCRAFT are fun and they've certainly developed over the years in very different (for example, panda-oriented) directions to the GW originals. I actually spent a long time trying to get my old gaming group to play the STARCRAFT RPG (the ALTERNITY-based one) as I thought it would be a lot of fun, and the relatively small scale and constrained setting of the franchise is a good contrast to 40K.

I didn't know about the optional rules for Imperial Guard and some of the alien races in the core books. I might look into picking them up, though it's been a while since I last gamed.

But, Werthed, where do the players fit into all this misery? If they don't play eight-foot-tall sex-starved death machines, who can they play?

Well, they can play the eight-foot-tall, sex-starved death machines (the Space Marines) and as mentioned upthread, that's the premise of DEATHWATCH.

Or they can play as the Inquisition (the mostly-human investigators/Gestapo, delete as appropriate, of the Imperium) or as rogue traders (civilian starship crew, or the closest equivalent). There does seem to be a gap in the RP market in that the Imperial Guard - the 'normal' human soldiers - don't have their own game yet and neither do the aliens (playing as Tyranids or Necrons is presumably impossible, but playing as Eldar or Tau would seem to be viable, or Orks for a bit of comedic variety), but I assume homebrew rules allowing people to play as those factions exist somewhere.

Interesting trivia...

Hah, I did know that but didn't want to get too far OT. And I am surprised that Games Workshop never took legal action. The 'taking your fantasy game and setting it in space' thing was very close to the knuckle, as were the Space Marine/Terran Marine, Eldar/Protoss, Tyranid/Zerg comparisons. I actually think STARCRAFT has done a reasonable job of taking the same very basic building blocks and forging a different kind of setting and story out of them, but certainly at the beginning things were very eyebrow-raisingly similar between the two franchises.

Have you read book five yet?

** spoiler omitted **

As for Ciaphas Cain, he's OK but really I'm not a fan of the "accidental hero who's really a coward" schtick. Terry Pratchett does it far better with Rincewind and even then he's one of my least favourite Discworld characters. Basically, it's been done. Rincewind, Flashman, Blackadder, they have all done it better. That said Cain isn't really high on my least favourite things from the 40k universe list so I'll give him a pass.

The cleverest thing about Cain is that he isn't just Flashman in space (which is a common shorthand for him). Cain is actually much more obsessed with his image and protecting it, even if it means charging into battle with a Chaos Space Marine solo. Flashman doesn't give that much of a toss about his image if it's a choice between that or his life. So, whilst it's not always for the most laudable of reasons, Cain is actually a much braver and far more capable character than most make him out to be.

If we want to give it a try, how knowlegeable do we need to be on the game world and it's story / history? Few, if any, of us have ever played Warhammer in any incarnation ...

It's basically the 18-rated, giga-DUNE-sized version of STARCRAFT (possibly a mistake to mention that in a WH40K thread, as the relationship between the two franchises can be a sore point for some fans).

Essentially, it's 38,000-odd years in the future, everything's pretty miserable and everyone's got a headache. The Emperor of Man is a semi-comatose cripple whose been kept alive by life-support tech for 10,000 years. His psychic essence allows human FTL travel. If he dies, the Imperium will fragment apart and be consumed by various ravenous dark gods, evil alien races or bored to death by sanctimonious space elves (who caused everything to screw up in the first place but are too stuck up to admit it). The Imperium is protected by a hundred-billions-strong standing army, the Imperial Guard, and a hundreds of thousands-strong army of genetically-engineered, eight-foot-tall superhuman Space Marines who are dedicated to wiping out the enemies of humanity with extreme prejudice. They're cranky all the time as they never get to have sex.

Humanity's principle enemies are green space cockneys (aka the Orks), the unrelenting forces of Chaos (who are pretty similar to the unrelenting forces of the Imperium, but have an unhealthy obsession with the colour purple, not the Whoopi Goldberg film), the Necrons (undead Borg) and the Tyranids (whom WH40K fans will tell you repeatedly are where Blizzard stole the idea for the Zerg from, whilst glossing over their debt to the ALIEN movies). There's also the Eldar (aforementioned Space Elves From Space) and the Tau (irritating aliens who have some cool mechs) who are frequently also at war with humanity, but have been known to form (very) brief alliances with the Imperium against their mutual foes (everyone else), though probably not as frequently as the DAWN OF WAR games would have you believe.

The best thing about the setting is its ludicrous and grandiose over-the-top, SF-if-it-was-written-by-Spinal Tap premise and the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink nature of the setting, which allows for everything from mech battles between war machines so huge that they could crush the entire BATTLETECH roster of merchs under one foot to very tense and claustraphobic, ALIEN-style bug-hunts on ancient derelict spacecraft and everything inbetween. This is also the worst thing about the setting; finding the part of it (either in fiction or gaming) that appeals best to your own tastes can be a tricky task.

The lack of truly powerful clerics is a different matter. Reading the entries, my feeling is that there is a very high-level cleric in each of most towns in the Realms, but I might be mistaken.

I think that's a slight exaggeration, though I recall a lot of small-ish towns and villages with clerics of around Level 8-9, which in itself is fairly excessive (and Level 15+ clerics are reasonably common in big cities). Presumably this was to put reasonably good healing never too far away from the PCs whilst having a handy explanation as to why the clerics can't sort out the problem ("Oghma's reasoning is not ours to question. Now give me gold so I can reset this arm with his magic,").

I've come across a similar one when running Dark Heresy (the Warhammer 40k RPG about working for the Inquisition).

Check out Dan Abnett's EISENHORN and RAVENOR books (or the BEQUIN series, starting next year), which are excellent showcases for how an Inquisitor and his retinue operates.

Put simply, there are political divisions within the Inquisition between the three main orders and between individual members of those orders. Some Inquistors are too proud to ask for help or backup, even if it means risking their lives or those of their aides, whilst others are paranoid that Chaos infiltrators may be amongst their fellow Inquistors so they must solve the problem by themselves or risk exposing themselves to the enemy.

More prosaically, the WH40K galaxy is a massive, massive place and the Inquisition is (relatively) numerically few in number. Sometimes an Inquisitor and his team may be fighting a threat on some planet weeks or even months (Warp Storms isolating the planet/system/sector are a handy stand-by in these situations) away from back-up.

Erevis Cale Trilogy #3: Midnight's Mask

Azriim and his slaadi allies have succeeded in tapping the magical mantle of Skullport, delivering tremendous power into the hands of their lord and master, the Sojourner. They now find themselves joined by Riven, who has betrayed Erevis Cale to choose the winners' side. As the Sojourner prepares to execute the final stage of his plan, Cale and his remaining allies must gather all their remaining resources to thwart him.

Midnight's Mask concludes the Erevis Cale Trilogy in fine form, tying up the trilogy's storylines and plot points in a satisfying and even surprising fashion. In the first two books the Sojourner's ultimate objective is not revealed, but in this finale Kemp executes one of the better surprise endings in the epic fantasy genre when it comes to his main villain's motivations.

Before we get to that ending, the story takes in a number of clashes between Cale and Azriim and their respective bands of heroes and villains, not to mention a brief but highly memorable interruption by a third faction. There's some impressive sea battles and the final showdown is appropriately epic, but Kemp gives more focus to his characters' internal struggles, particularly to Cale's development as he continues to try to keep his morality despite being the chosen servant of a dark god and his battle to retain his humanity after being transformed into a shade. As a parallel to Cale, Riven also develops nicely as he schemes to seize Cale's position as the First Chosen of Mask.

Whilst the book has an impressive ending, the explosions and magical exchanges are but a sideshow to a surprisingly emotional climax, as not all of our protagonists make it to the end and even the Sojourner is revealed to have a sense of the nostalgic (albeit a highly warped one). Ultimately, Kemp's success with the trilogy, after a somewhat rocky start, is to deliver a story where the focus is on the characters and their emotional journey as much as the somewhat expectation-defying narrative.

Problems remain. Kemp's prose and storytelling has improved a lot over these three books, but there's still the odd clunky line. His characterisation is solid, but he occasionally falls back on over-repetition of minor character details (we know Azriim is a fussy dresser already). The odd situation where D&D rules are blatantly being dramatised also still appears, such as characters making their saving throws or praying for spells in a rather mechanical fashion. However, these issues are less prevalent than in earlier volumes, and do not mar an otherwise fine book.

Midnight's Mask (****) brings the series to a successful conclusion, making the trilogy well worth the effort of checking out. The novel is available now in the UK and USA and also as part of the Erevis Cale Omnibus (UK, USA).

Yup, the 'lazy Greek' thing is just a stereotype and shouldn't be taken as any kind of explanation for what's going on. The Greek people are a mix of incredibly hard-working people, some hangers-on and a whole spectrum of types inbetween, the same as the USA or UK or anywhere else.

However, Greece's government mishandled the country's economy. Arguably, other EU countries did not look into the Greek situation with as much vigour as they should have done at the time, but generally speaking the fault lies with the Greek governments (past and present) for allowing the situation to get out of control and not fix the problems during the good years. To be fair, other governments (like the UK, Italy, Spain etc) did exactly the same thing, but in their case their economies were much more robust, much larger and better-able to absorb the impact of the financial crisis (though only just, in some cases, and with the jury still out in others).

The reason why it's having a worldwide impact is that a Greek default would cost the European banks vast sums of money (they'd have to write off billions upon billions of euros), which in turn affects the world economy. Greece leaving the euro or being booted out could start a chain reaction that could lead to the dissolution of the euro as a currency, which would create immense uncertainty in the world financial markets and - possibly - lead to countries leaving the European Union. Some of this is rather fanciful doom-mongering, but fear and uncertainty is enough these days to send the markets reeling.

HBO has added to its already impressive fantasy resume (GAME OF THRONES, TRUE BLOOD and the forthcoming AMERICAN GODS) by picking up the TV leg of the massive, multimedia DARK TOWER adaptation being masterminded by Ron Howard.

The project is set to encompass several theatrical movies and a TV series lasting for three or more seasons. Universal were developing the project but ditched it three months ago due to concerns over mounting costs. Ron Howard and fellow producer Brian Grazer have downgraded the budget of the movie project (the first movie's budget has been dropped by $45 million) but potentially upgraded that of the TV series by teaming up with HBO.

Javier Bardem is attached to the role of Roland Deschain, apparently for both the TV series and movies.

I agree that a lot of the problem is perception, in that because of the novels, and the way the Forgotten Realms books are laid out, it can feel like higher level characters dominate the whole world, but part of it is that while every world has it's share of high level characters specifically called out and fleshed out, Forgotten Realms does have more than most, suggesting that the higher level characters have more direct power than they might have in Greyhawk or Eberron.

That suggestion I think is a result of the FORGOTTEN REALMS setting having hugely more novels, rulebooks, adventures, box sets and sourcebooks than any other D&D setting (maybe any other RP world setting full stop). GREYHAWK has spent vast amounts of its 30-year history defunct with no new products coming out and EBERRON is nowhere near as old or as well-covered. If those two settings had 300+ novels apiece for them and hundreds more other products, I think we'd see a lot more characters (high-level or otherwise) for them.

OT, but has anyone heard about WotC doing anything for the Realms' 25th anniversary (in print as a D&D campaign setting, I know it was around for 20 years before that as Greenwood's personal project) next year? I'd assume they'd make a reasonably big deal out of it.

Book 3: The Iron Jackal

The crew of the Ketty Jay, fresh from defeating an incursion of the nefarious Manes, have been hailed as heroes and have become minor celebrities across the lands of Vardia. Avoiding notoriety and seeking their next job, Captain Frey and his crew have relocated to Samarla to undertake a train heist. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a straightforward caper turns into a major crisis, with Frey's life on the line and a supernatural force hunting the crew, known as the Iron Jackal...

The Iron Jackal is the third book in the Tales of the Ketty Jay series, following on from the excellent Retribution Falls and The Black Lung Captain. As before, the novel follows the crewmembers of the airship Ketty Jay as they get into various scrapes. Once again, Chris Wooding has delivered a tight narrative which mixes in humour, adventure, character development and worldbuilding in a near-perfect mix, but done it with even more flair and panache than the previous volumes.

The book is built around an escalating series of adventures: after the initial train heist, the crew have to take part in a dangerous aircraft race through a maze of canyons, break into the Archduke's palace and finally cross a burning desert to find an ancient city. The pace is fast and relentless, but Wooding finds time to give every character a moment to shine as each one faces his or her own challenges (internal or external). This also extends to some newcomers (the Ketty Jay acquires a new crewmember in this novel) and recurring characters as well. Frey himself ends up as the best-developed character in the book and manages to gain the reader's sympathy as his plight worsens with every passing chapter.

Wooding introduces a sense of weirdness and horror to the series that wasn't as prevalent in previous volumes. The Iron Jackal itself is a sinister, threatening creation, and the showdown in an ancient city is an appropriately nightmarish (though a titanic enemy introduced in the last few pages feels a little unnecessary). There are also intriguing hints about the distant past of the world that could fuel discussion on internet message boards for a while. At the same time, Wooding lightens things up with an appropriate level of humour (Pinn's decision to become an inventor and his attempts to experiment on the ship's psychotic cat provides a rich seam of comedic moments) and expertly maintains a precarious balance between the darker and lighter elements of the novel.

There's also the feeling of an expanding scope in this novel. A third war between Vardia and Samarla seems to be brewing and there's a sense of greater geopolitical events going on in the background which the crew of the Ketty Jay occasionally brush against the fringes of. Wooding also seems to be laying pipe for future novels, with mentions of distant, newly-discovered landmasses where colonisation efforts by Vardia seem to be going wrong. Intriguing stuff, which adds elements of depth and richness to the world not present in earlier books (though there isn't a map, as Wooding wants to retain the freedom to change things or add in new locations for future novels).

With near-perfect pacing, strong characterisation and an addictive mix of adventure, good humour and flashes of dark horror, The Iron Jackal (*****) will likely emerge as the most purely enjoyable, fun SFF novel of the year. Heavily recommended. The novel is available now in the UK and on import in the USA.

Having high level NPCs beyond level 6 is not by itself a bad thing, but level 6 or so is an important dividing line. 90% of the population should reside at or beneath that level for most worlds to make sense. 9% should fall between that and say 15th or 16th level, and 1%, or at the very most, 2%, should be higher than that. This is where FR tends to fall apart. It isn't that there are higher level npcs, it's that there so many of them that everything from the economy to "why didn't someone else take care of this already?" issues can become awkward very quickly. Greyhawk, Eberron, and Golarion do a better job in that there are higher level npcs, in some cases very high, but the total number of them is low enough that requiring the PCs to handle the task in front of them is not all that unbelievable.

EDIT: The exact percentages may vary from world to world slightly, but varying too much from the posted ones tends to cause issues.

Thanks to 3E and some of the population stats introduced in 2E, we know that the Forgotten Realms population is somewhere around 70 million, maybe considerably more. Now, I know there's a fair few high-level characters in the 3E FR books, but I don't recall there being almost a million and a half of them described ;-)

Part of the problem here I think is perception. If you actually went through the FR material and found every character over say Level 16 (who - importantly - survived the adventure and was still alive at the end of 3E), there'd probably be quite a few: dozens and maybe a few hundred. But in a world the size of Earth with the population of one continent (and not even the largest at that) in the tens of millions, there's really not that many.

And of course, if you are playing in the 4E Realms, almost all of them have been killed off by old age or the Spellplague anyway.