Imagine humanity has expanded through the stars, to hundreds of worlds spread out in a rough sphere light years out from Earth. This hasn't been done via some grand space fleet of interstellar vessels, but via the creation of wormholes to distance worlds. Trains travel through these wormholes connecting the planets of the Commonwealth via an efficient rail network. In effect, it becomes easier to travel between worlds than it is to travel across them.

Then 100 of lightyears from the edge of Commonwealth space two planets are enshrouded in a Dyson Sphere of some sort within seconds. What technologically advanced race could do such a thing and why? Naturally, the theories revolve around protection from without or containment of what's within. Neither is good.

The Commonwealth builds an interstellar starship to investigate....

Warning: While I think the following only includes reference to things that are pretty obvious from the premise, it does get a spoiler warning.

Pandora's Star is a space opera written like a grand 'historical epic', a bit like North and South, but instead of dealing with the American Civil War it deals with a vast interstellar Commonwealth's first encounter with hostile aliens (I like to think I'm not giving much away on that front). In a similar vein it has lots of characters in all sorts of different positions all allowing the story to be told from different perspectives, most intertwine with others at some point. It also details the time, the place and the society that the drama takes place in, again like a 'historical epic'. It's an approach that works really well.

While the book isn't hard science fiction, it's not space opera like Star Wars, Farscape or Flash Gorden either, it puts a large foot into semi-realism and this makes the whole thing a lot more exciting. This tends to show up in exploratory elements of the 'science' within the fiction and it's interesting. It's a bit odd I like them as it could be argued these sections are the science fiction equivalent of the songs or lengthy travelogues in Lord of the Rings, and I can't read those books because of those sections. The political set-up was also interesting with the concept of the concept of Grand Families of Earth and Inter-solar Dynasties, etc. The material on how the Commonwealth expands via wormholes, the effects on society of rejuvenation and storing memories and people hundreds of years old running around in seventeen year old bodies all fascinating stuff that adds of the mosiac of the story. I also liked the more realistic takes on time and distances, which gave the story an epic scope and worked very well within the grand drama rather than ignoring such issues. It created a lot more mystery and a feeling of the exotic.

The characters are also great, some of them pretty unique, especially Ozzie who was one of the inventors of the wormhole technology who now lives the life that involves travelling the galaxy via his own private wormhole generator complete with isolated base and everything. It's true the characters fight for space amongst the 'epic history' feel of the book, but then this is true of most books of this style. It's also true to say some are more interesting than others, but this is probably a personal thing.

Ultimately uou get space battles, epic personal quests, a different society, while still being very human, and some great aliens. It's epic stuff. The aliens deserve a good bit of credit, as while the invading alien threat in the book is of a style that has been seen in many other works of fiction, they are done particularly well in Pandora's Star. There are a number of sections written from the viewpoint of the aliens and they work really well to establish their views of the universe and it effectively positions them as very scary.

The final bit of brilliance is the concluding chapters, when the shit finally hits the fan it manages to paint a picture of catastrophic events. It's not a series of epic conflicts. No flashing lasers or blaster battles across exotic landscapes. It's catastrophic destruction writ large and you're really drawn into the human drama of it, and a level of destruction that is almost uncomprehendable. I'm not sure if the book does something different or whether it's just a sign of the times that we react to such things differently.

It's a great book, and I enjoyed it a lot more than the 2 out of 3 books I read of the Night's Dawn Trilogy, which was a bit laborious. Now I have to read the sequel, as in great space opera style it finishes on a cliffhanger.

I've probably mentioned it before at some point, but I pretty much stopped reading fiction circa 1990 after I had an eye operation on my right eye. It's not an issue with my sight really, it must have been something psychological, as my reading collapsed at a faster rate than the recent GDP figures.

Amazingly, I recently read Outlaw by Angus Donald in about half a day, back to my usual ridiculous speed. I've read the odd novel since 1990, but the majority of them I didn't finish or it took an age for me to get to the final page.

Outlaw is great in that 'great for your holiday sort of way'. It's doesn't pretend to be high brow, nor does it try to be a historical treatise. The overall story is a pretty typical Robin Hood tale. All the usual names are present and Robin Hood gets a pardon and the hand of Marion when King Richard comes to the throne. While these general beats are typical, the detail is quite different. The story is told from the perspective of Alan Dale who is now an old man which lends a slant to the narrative. The best element is how Robin Hood is positioned, he truly is like a Mafia boss of the region. Essentially a Crime Lord who offers protection and aid to the locals. In this way his existence seems more plausible, as he's woven into the fabric of the setting with support (rather inexplicably in some cases) This is different to the more romantic tales that have him separate from his environment yet never captured. He has is bowmen, but he also has infantry and mounted men in his cohort, and as such the battles in the book are more realistically accurate. It's a good take on the story.

While this helps in terms of me finishing the book I'm not sure it's the complete reason why. It's just like something has changed. Not sure how long it's going to last, but I get a sense it wasn't a complete one off. I'm currently fascinated by the Peter F Hamilton books in Waterstones at Northallerton. A part of this is because it's somewhere to walk to when the sun is out at work, but the other reason is I'm hankering for some intelligent, but awesome space opera. I've got two thirds of the way through the Night's Dawn Trilogy some time back, and I'm inclined to avoid that for now, but I really like the sound of Pandora's Star.

We shall see.

I was browsing around my usual web haunts today and I came across this article on Time. Very interesting. What's interesting to me is I never really thought much about podcasting a novel you'd written. Stupid really, as you get audio books of best selling novels all the time. What is happening here though is novelists who haven't had much success or who aren't published at all are podcasting their novels. This is another way to get your work out there along with self-publishing, which isn't the 'no go area' it used to be due to the costs being perfectly manageable and reasonable through services like Lulu.

As is usually the case the article is keen to point out those who started podcasting their unpublished novels and then got publishing deals.

As is typical there is plenty of people criticising this approach, usually successful novelists, or people with publishing deals, and those invested heavily in the industry. The trouble is, while I'm sure every novelist still yearns to see their book on a shelf being picked up by people, this is probably becoming an ever shrinking prospect due to book sales dropping. I also can't help but think those sticking to the value in the traditional approach are missing one key concept: millenials.

Take the argument that the podcast actually involves a bigger time commitment than the novel, one of the 'big problems' thrown at the idea by a detractor. This is true, it may well take longer to listen to the podcast of a novel than to read it. This hinges on how fast you read, as some people read pretty slowly, the other very important factor is this: it assumes you're only listening to the podcast. This is the one critical point that the detractor misses. It is very unlikely the typical millenial, with their relatively short attention span and propensity to multi-task is only listening to the podcast. He's probably doing a couple of other things as well. It's much harder to do that when reading a book. I rarely listen to a podcast exclusively, I'm almost certainly doing something else at the same time.

As I've talked to younger colleagues in the IT industry they learn differently. They'll rarely read a book on something, but they will watch videos or listen to audio. That's because they do this all the time because they're never off YouTube.

The whole idea seems less preposterous in this context, in fact, to some extent you start seeing the large novel as a bit of a dinosaur. I'm not wanting it to disappear any time soon but the traditional approach is assuredly going to come under increased pressure as the generations turn.

Well, not literally everything, as that would be beyond a blog post, and deep down we already know the answer is 42. It's a micro-theory to everything, with it's own boundaries, and those boundaries roughly equate to things like role-playing games, fiction, other hobbies and careers. What? Heh?

Okay, I've discussed approaches to role-playing games I favour numerous times here. I've also discussed what other people seem to like and the degree to which I understand them, enjoy them or don't get them at all. Away from this blog the role-playing group has also done the same to one degree or another and it certainly manifests in the games we play and they way they are delivered and the degree to which each of us enjoys them. That's been on-going for a while, but then comes a trigger event, or two trigger events. The first one was one of my responses to a member of the gaming group when commenting on the Building and Crafting Shit entry and the second trigger was my current MBA studies.

Basically, before the second trigger, which happened today, I wrote how the way I approached role-playing games is influenced or dictated by almost every other aspect of my life. The core element being a love of fiction and dramatic stories. I find meaning and enjoyment in them due to the choices people make and the relationships they form. I tend to favour life affirming or choice affirming stories. I tend to see life as a story with it's own dramatic decisions, consequences and ups and downs. I very much see elements of my job as dramatic fiction. It's not that I live in a fantasy world, I'm not insane and I'm well grounded, but major business change, how organisations work and projects are to me moments or constructs of great drama with their own architects and decisions that can, in big or small ways, swing success. The common element of all this is people, with their own influences and stories, all making decisions. I see it this way and I think it helps me manage such things significantly, as it leads to understanding, a great willingness to listen, a healthy dose of foresight in terms of what issues are going to come up, concerns people will have and leading it all through to a conclusion. The fact I believe I can influence, change and lead in such circumstances is also an influence. Hence I see my role-playing games as grand dramas in which people make meaningful, and fateful choices, the joy of the role-playing game is I can succeed or fail and both are good (which isn't often the same in your career).

The second indicator was fascinating, as up until now I thought my way of viewing such things wasn't so much unique, but possibly something that would seem slightly deluded if ever mentioned among my contemporaries (or as an answer to a work / life question in an interview). I've read numerous things on Organisational Behaviour recently, one of those was the opening sections of Organisational Behaviour by Andrzej A. Hyczynski and David A Buchanan. In the opening section it defends their approach to naming pieces of fiction to read for information on organisational behaviour. That was excellent, as while it put in other ideas, it was to a great degree, an affirmation of my thoughts that I've gone through my career with.

All this has sort of been discussed by the role-playing group before, though in my experience more the ex-Iron DM and myself, though it may well have been more rampant I just wasn't involved. As an example, the individual careers of the role-playing group and how that influences or has influenced the delivery of role-playing games? As an example, the Call of Cthulhu game at Cottage Con II had some elements of a training session, some elements got stolen to be used again even. The Iron DM's games have in the past tended to be broad stroke, big picture, grand scheme affairs potentially related to his marketing background.

Another has an amazing eye for detail (be it rules, setting colour or potential conflicts), and being able to use that detail even when he's being spontaneous, it has been suggested this is linked to his career as a lawyer, which involves incredible amounts of detail and being able to apply that detail even in unplanned situations. I believe we are all moving on and changing how we do things, so these things move, but the influences are true.

A similar case can be made for how different people approached the MMO experience. As an example, one member of the role-playing group is always focused on conflict avoidance, and it's suspected this is related to his team leader and training career. This makes him interested in the social and guild building element of the MMO genre, it also means when faced with a dramatic choice in a role-playing game he'll seek the road of least conflict and most compromise, even if this can be an effective avoidance of the decision. In difference, I'll choose one conflict laden option or other based on often having to make decisions that can't please everyone at work and the fact in a role-playing game I can't lose (while at work I could) and it makes good fiction either way. Different stokes.

Personally, I can see my career influencing how I approach things. I tend to feel the need to have a model in my head for how the session might go. This isn't necessarily a highly structure plot, but more a model of what the overall point is and what might happen. Until I have this model and purpose it hasn't clicked. I need to understand. Then in actual delivery I can take on the mantle of grand presentation, in terms of setting scenes and trying to sell the grand, action-based, dramatic nature of it all. Whether I do it well is another question and depends on a number of factors, some unique to the day. This is no doubt related to my job, which is part sales, whether products, strategies or ideas and change. It sounds bad here, like some mad sales man at the gaming table, it's not that bad, it's just you can see how the concepts are shared. The fact my job is often a mad mixture of the detail (project management, business analsis) and sales, concept and change (project management, relationships and change, etc) probably also explains some of my gaming preparation dichotomies.

In a way this was the point of the Building and Crafting Shit blog entry, as I'm constantly fascinated with the reason why people like the things they do, do things in the way they do, etc. As understanding that is always interesting, and useful, even if you sometimes don't like the answer.

In closing I'd like to say I've always thought my hobbies have been directly applicable to my career, and I still thank they are. I've always thought my career had a direct influence on my hobbies, and I still think they do. They are reflections and share a philosophy of life in a way. This in turn is a product of my fiction-focused life from a young age (be it novels or TV shows). What's interesting is to find it affirmed in an MBA text, as now this will be one of numerous ways in which my attitude to things has already been changed in a number of small ways.

I apologise now if I've mis-represented anyone who recognises themselves in this post. No offence was intended.

I started reading Streams of Silver three months ago, in truth I read about the first three chapters and then stopped. As is usually the case with my reading these days, I'm only in the mood for it sparingly. The mood never took me again until a few days ago and now I'm finished the second book in the Icewindale Trilogy.

It's safe to say the book is very similar to the first. It's probably about the same quality, not better or worse. I was expecting Dirzz't to have become the uber-character by this point but he hasn't. What's surprising about the book upon reading it again is how spread out the focus is, with serious time being given to both Cattie-brie and Artemis Entreri. It's hard to see Drizz't as the obvious main protagonist, and even if that argument can be made, it's pretty much impossible to label him as the character who has all the others dancing in his shadow. This was surprising.

Like The Crystal Shard, the book has its boring bits, usually based around the times you feel like you are seeing some extended Dungeons and Dragons battle described in a novel. The best example of this in Streams of Silver is the sequence through the Trollmoors and an extended battle with a load of Trolls. Not only that, just when you think the stakes couldn't be raised any further they face a giant worm!

There is some good stuff in the book though, particularly the extended end sequence within Mithril Hall (it's a bit like Moria). We have the beginnings of the epic battle between Drizz't Do'Urden and Artemis Entreri. The great conflicts between Bok, the golem, and everyone else. The confrontation with the Dragon from the shadow realm (a bit like the Balrog). Don't get me wrong, it's all over the top, heroic melodrama, but that's what makes it fantastic. It made me want to play a damn fine game of heroic fantasy in which I get to do this shit. Even if it was Dungeons and Dragons. Who doesn't want to be a barbarian who goes one-on-one with a Golem in a bear hug to the death...and wins! Or a dwarf who sacrifices himself to save his friend and kill the Dragon that killed his people by strapping himself to a keg of oil and jumping on the Dragon's back like a fantasy suicide bomber! Well, that one possibly not so much. The end scene was also really great, with the heroes on one side of the chasm, and Artemis Entreri on the other, thus setting the scene for the third book...the chase is a afoot!

One of the most surprising parts of the book, and it was something I'd totally forgotten, is that Bruenor dies. I suspect he may not be 'dead' for long, as I'm sure I remember him being in the third book, but I'd forgotten he 'died' at all. It was this that made me realise that Drizz't possibly doesn't become the uber-character I'm expecting him to become in this series, and that his 'legend of cheese' is born in other books. You see it seems obvious to me now how the trilogy is being structured. In many ways The Crystal Shard was Wulgar's book, just as Streams of Silver was Bruenor's and undoubtedly The Halfing's Gem, despite the title, may well bring the focus around to Drizz't and his battle with his dark twin Artemis Entreri. We shall see.

I've started reading The Halfing's Gem today, we'll see if it's three months before I finish it.

Orlando airport has a fantastic range of shops, which offer quite the distraction as you're waiting to go to your gate. One of the shops is an excellent book shop. Looking for ways to spend the last few bits of the holiday budget I splurged out on some books I'd probably not normally buy, but if you've got money set aside, it's different.

Yes, as the observant can see I have purchased the Icewindale Trilogy, the infamous books that began the adventures of Drizz't Do'Urden, the Dark Elf who spurned his people and came to the surface world to be a hero. I couldn't resist them. I've wanted to read them again for a while, and the shiny new covers just called to me.

I've only read The Crystal Shard so far, and I have to admit I enjoyed it. The strange thing is you can't help feeling that you're reading a novelised version of someone's D&D campaign. It's exactly like that. The setting is the Forgotten Realms which I have a passing familiarity with even though I've never played a game in the place (I don't think so anyway), it just sort of sinks into the consciousness as part of gaming culture. The characters are very much like the sort of characters you'd get among the D&D crowd, indeed, I think I saw a core of them during my Neverwinter Nights phase. The bad boy turned good and 'only one of his kind' Drizz't Do'Urden. The dwarf who can't show his emotions, and is looking for his ancient home Mithril Hall and speaks with an almost Scottish accent. The noble Barbarian, and to a degree savage, from the snowy waste seeking to change his people. The city-wise Halfling, who is the coward trying to be a hero - he'd be the one played by the annoying player who equated role-playing with chatting all the time about minutia.

The whole plot of the book also takes influences from the general fabric of fantasy culture, or possibly just Lord of the Rings? As I've mentioned one of the driving aims of the Dwarf is that he wants to find his clans ancient home of Moria..sorry, Mithril Hall. The central plot of The Crystal Shard has the eponymous shard act a bit like the one ring, finding a lowly Wizard's apprentice and corrupting his lust for power to turn him into a villain seeking to take over the whole of the Icewindale region. It speaks to him, nudges his goals to get him to do what it wants, etc. You then get the D&D influence, in that it is a D&D book, so the monsters act like the D&D monsters, Drizz't has abilities associated with the Drow, like the globe of darkness he can create, etc. The overall result is a trashy novel of action and adventure, which isn't a bad thing in my opinion.

I'm never going to say it's a great book, but I enjoyed reading it. At times the battle scenes can get a bit much, I'm particularly thinking about some of the bits in the middle of the book when they hunt down some giants, but other than that it was good. The final sequences were heroic and got a bit of an emotional response. What more could you want?

I am left wondering if Drizz't Do'Urden was one of the author's player characters at one point? Or if it was always the player character he wanted to play but the DM wouldn't let him? As I've noted, all the characters pretty much play as player characters, and the the depth of their dramatisations is basically at that level. Drizz't has a big draw as a player character, as he is phenomenally skilled, he has the whole outcast thing going on, and he gets to do cool stuff due to his Dark Elf heritage, such as walk up to bad guys and fool them he is on their side, etc. He also has that glint in his eye due to knowing he's very good and he enjoys what he does.

I can't knock the Drizz't Do'Urden character, as while he may be a particularly cheesy and potentially extreme case, he does conform to a number of mythical archetypes which tend to be found in a lot of characters from commercial fiction. It's probably safe to say most of my characters follow this mythologised, commercial fiction model - as in the wider, heroic model, not specifically the Drizz't example. To look at it another way, my character in Pulsars and Privateers has some similarities to Drizz't Do'Urden. Let's see, she is essentially one of the ruling family of one the principal bad guys, one of the daughters of their despicable ruler? It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the essential truth of it. She's also incredibly good at what she does, essentially a gunfighter in a space opera setting. She does have a bit of the Drizz't Do'Urden archetype at her core. Hell, she's even done the obligatory walk up to the important bad guy holding all the cards and pull the shit out of the fan due to being an ex-bad guy scene. So, yeah, I'm the last to knock it.

I am reading the second book now, which introduced the character Artemis Enterei, who is another work of trash fantasy genius. Not only that, he is the dark reflection of Drizz't Do'Urden, thus introducing the ultimate irony of two excellently skilled swordsman, but it's the human who is the bad guy not the Dark Elf. Queue lots of brilliant and desperate sword battles against very skilled equals. Now, why does that remind me of Waylan and his arch-nemesis come ex and/or potential lover Hellaina in the Crescent Sea campaign? And their desperate fight on the roof tops of a burning city being invaded by the enemy? Hell, they even both dual-wielded. While I used the Batman and Catwoman analogy at the time, I can see similarities to this, just without the lovers part, obviously. In a way the whole of the Crescent Sea campaign was one big mash-up of commercial fantasy concepts, and I don't meant that in a derogatory way. Hmmmmm.....

As I say, some of these archetypes are a killer.

In many ways The Deathly Hallows was a sort of mission impossible, write a conclusion to a series of books that has literally million of fans, and make sure it delivers. Conclusions to these mythical stories are incredibly hard to write, as it's all too easy to end up with something that just doesn't seem impressive enough, or is really impressive in terms of scale but seems to lack something on the personal level.

Stop worrying: The Deathly Hallows delivers. Big style.

The Deathly Hallows is the Harry Potter book that comes closest to starting in media res, as it runs straight into the situation of Harry Potter needing to be removed from his home with the Dursley's as all the protection he had their will fail when he's seventeen. We instantly have betrayal and death as Harry, his friends and a team of Auror's make a dramatic attempt to get Harry to a new safe location. Once this is done, the book by and large, with the odd exception we'll discuss later, goes along at a heck of a pace.

The best way to describe The Deathly Hallows, is it does feel like an epic Harry Potter version of Mission Impossible, mixed in with the mythical Star Wars style stuff.. I'm mad? Possibly, but that's the feel I got from it. The world is falling apart as Voldemort rapidly gains control, and even takes over the Ministry of Magic. As this is happening, team HHR (Harry, Hermione and Ron, just in case you're slow), are forced to go it alone to hunt down the Horcuxes and decode what Machiavellian plan Dumbledore is playing from beyond the grave regarding the three mythical items known as the Deathly Hallows. What this amounts to is a number of great Mission Impossible set-pieces as the heroes break into the Ministry of Magic (the enemy stronghold), visit Godric's Hollow (the home that the enemy expect the hero to return to), visit Xenophilius Lovegood (the editor of the resistance newspaper who betrays them because his daughter is being held prisoner, allowing them be captured and escape), the infiltration of Gringotts (the formidable fortress holding an essential McGuffin) and last, but finally not least, the return to Hogwarts the dramatic location in which the heroes and the enemy combine for the final battle. It's obviously more detailed than this, and each set-piece is used to reveal a lot, deepen the overall fabric and establish the usual drama and tension. It does have a super spy drama feel, with the heroes using a myriad of established tricks from previous books to pull everything off.

The book delivers in the same way that Star Wars delivers, in that the author realises that heroes are only as good as the enemies they face, and as such people die, and the fight isn't a bloodless one. The book manages to successfully portray team HHR's endeavours as desperate, heroic, important and above all dangerous as people are lost along the way, and the world is turning into a truly grim place.

The conclusion of the book is about 25% of the story, as the heroes end up back at Hogwarts, with Voldemort having realised Harry's plan, thus bringing the few remaining Horcuxes to Hogwarts and the scene is set. The whole last 25% of the book is pure brilliance, and even if the rest of the book was a waste of the pages it was printed on, I think The Deathly Hallows would have carried itself through on the strength of this final section alone. The Battle of Hogwarts is pure gold, and is a near perfect of example of writing a final conclusion to a mythical series, and delivering, and this deserves praise even if people think nothing else does. It has death, heroism, sadness and too many great scenes to mention. It misses the odd note, like Lupin and Tonks dying 'off camera', unless I missed something, but it is near perfect.

As for the confrontation between Harry and Voldemort? I thought it was spot on. These are also things that can go wrong amazingly easily, leaving the reader with a feeling that one or the other characters got short-changed, usually the villain. It didn't happen in this case, and the battle, more a battle of wits than wands, had me enthralled. It was right to go for the higher ground, in the majority of these clashes between mythical hero and villain, it rarely comes down to a basic, physical fight, even if one happens, but is more often a battle of mental strength, philosophical differences and essential strengths in the hero and weaknesses in the villain that allow the hero to obtain victory, and this is what happens in The Deathly Hallows.

Does the book have any weaknesses? It has a couple, largely because familiarity breads contempt. The book looses a bit of pace, though only for a short while, as the heroes do the obligatory discussion of how to move forward while appearing lost as to what to do. This then gets mixed in with the obligatory disagreement with a couple of them and it all just seemed unnecessary, or left you with the impression it went on a bit too long. It did allow for Ron and Harmione to to kiss passionately out of nowhere on the eve of the great battle at Hogwarts, so it may have been worth it for that, but I just thought this element of the story could have been woven better into the whole, rather than seeming to pause it and slow it down. I also thought the fact Harry was seeing into the mind of Voldemort again came across as a bit weak. Even though this has been established in other books, it felt it was just a weak plot contrivance in this one to allow cut scenes to the bad guy to happen for explanation and tension purposes without having to break the established structure of no scenes being written without Harry featuring.

Overall though, The Deathly Hallows was a great conclusion to the series. It had it's weak points, but they are few and far between, and they are overshadowed by the fact J K Rowling delivers where it matters. When you have a series of seven books that has been building to this point since the very first scene in the very first book, it would have been all too easy for it not to work, for it to fall short of expectations. It doesn't, and that in itself is a stroke of genius.

One final thing, and this doesn't take anything away from the book, it's going to make a bloody fantastic film.

This week has basically been Harry Potter Week. On Monday I started reading The Order of the Pheonix again, and on Wednesday I finished that (just before seeing the film) and moved on to The Half-Blood Prince, also a second reading. All this was in preparation for the release of The Deathly Hallows which I shall go to ASDA at midnight to collect. I know, it'll be their on Saturday morning, but you sort of have to, it's part of the experience.

One thing I'll say about The Order of the Phoenix is when I first read it I seemed to think it was seriously lacking, after reading it again, I've come to the conclusion I must have been in some strange mood when I originally read it because the book is fantastic. It has everything, a brilliant theme of media spin set during the opening moves to a war, and an excellent cast of villains and is one truly brilliant heroic tale, with a conclusion to die for. Indeed, it's sort of strange that the central three books, numbers 3-5, represent such a strong trio, as the middle parts of any series are often hard to do, as you've not got the fantastic opening or the run to a conclusion.

The Half-Blood Prince is a different book to The Order of the Phoenix, in that it's what I'd call an interesting and necessary book, but as a dramatic entity in its own right it's a bit weak when compared with books three to five. It's basically one big set-up and prologue to the final instalment. The central plot of the book is weak, though again the conclusion is strong, and the main interesting elements of the book are the flashbacks that help establish various characters, not least of all Voldemort, ahead of the final conclusion.

Now I just await the couple of hours until I collect the final instalment. What is amazing is the book is being sold for 5 GBP, which is ridiculously cheap. I have a feeling that while JK Rowling and the publishers may be making a fortune, there isn't going to be much money in it for anyone selling it. In fact, I think The Deathly Hallows is going to be the biggest loss leading 'strategy' ever undertaken by the majority of stores.

Over a month ago, I mentioned I was reading a mysterious novel, primarily because it was influencing my thoughts on Thrilling Tales. It's taken me a while, primarily because my thoughts drifted on to other things and I stopped reading it. I got through about 60% that Easter Weekend, then it had a bit of a hiatus.

The novel is The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, and I found it while looking around York. I'd done my usual thing off deciding to buy a few books and then hopelessly wondering around failing to find anything inspiring. Then my eyes fell upon this excellent, pulp-inspired cover, done in the classic style of the original pulps, complete with lurid title. I read the back, and it had me hooked. This was a pulp story in which Walter Gibson, the writer of The Shadow, and Lester Dent, the writer of Doc Savage, get embroiled in a pulp story, and become the heroes themselves. I was sold on that idea, but what you actually find when you read the book is it is much cleverer than you originally give it credit for.

Basically, the novel is a work of fiction, obviously, but it is a work of fiction that has something to say about the time in which the pulps were written, the people who wrote them, and how changing times heralded the end of the pulps and the next generation of writers. It does this by involving Walter Gibson, Lester Dent and L. Ron Hubbard in a suitably pulp mystery. This then allows the nature of pulps to be woven into the story, as the writers who created the top two pulp characters of the time become pulp characters themselves. It is a very good book, it has something to say about a specific time, place and medium, as well as being an exciting story with enthralling characters. As the characters ask themselves: what is real and what is pulp?

I mean, who else wouldn't want to read a book in which the central protagonists get pulled into the story due to going to the funeral of Howard Lovecraft, a second class pulp writer, who knows some sinister secret? It was interesting, exciting, intriguing in terms of the period elements woven through it,and an excellent re-imaging of the pulp concept for the modern audience. An excellent book.

Imagine a war has just happened, say the invasion of Iraq, it's then not hard to imagine that a number of books might come out, say from embedded reporters, telling the story of the war from personal interviews with the people who were actually involved. Now, imagine a book like that, which is all personal talks, interviews and stories of those involved in the war, or who lived through it, but the 'war' is actually a zombie plague and the story of the outbreak, humanities resulting fight back and the world post-war.

That is the book World War Z.

The unique element of the book is that it is written like a non-fiction book, constructed from personal accounts of those involved in the war, from principle players, to the doctor that treated patient zero and just normal people, caught up in the struggle. It works really well, and it is a fascinating book. It works really well because, as is the case with this sort of structure in books about real historical events, you can get both the sweeping impact of the historical event, and the personal nature of it at the same time. You now get this about a zombie outbreak with global consequences.

If you are a fan of zombie movies, you have to read this book, as it does what most zombie movies don't do. Due to a movie only having about 120 minutes to tell its story you tend to get a narrowly focused story focusing on a group of survivors on an island, or a group trying to survive in a shopping mall, or a person who thinks he's the last surviving man on Earth. World War Z covers it from the global perspective as well as the personal, so you get all sorts of information on how it spread, the horror of different outbreak points, the difficulties of waging war against an enemy that is dead, knows no fear and does not get tired. This was fascinating actually, the story of how they fought back, as all the principles of injuring and not killing an opponent, cutting off supply lines and the difficult fact that every colleague the enemy killed swelled their numbers, was really good. As was the whole story of people trying to survive in such a situation, people moving underground, running to the north so the Zombies froze (but only re-animated in the summer), ran to ships creating whole towns of floating ships doomed to run out of food. Then you have the whole master plan to survive, involving letting millions of people die to protect millions in defensible locations. It was very good, and not dry and scientific since these facts and historical 'events' were told through the eyes of those who had to make the decisions or suffer at the hands of the decisions.

This brings us to the more personal side of the book, which is just as strong. You get the stories of the military commanders who had to give the order to retreat away from cities, or even tell refugees to move to certain cities, and to their certain death, as those people had been designated as decoys for the ever hungry zombies. The story of the Chinese doctor who attended to patient zero in a remote village was horrifying. The individual incidents of the first outbreaks for each country are also intense and visceral, and have you turning the page all the time. The tales of the heroic fight back, the long slog against the enemy and the unique way the battle was fought (it was like the final moments of Zulu, but with an enemy that didn't run), and how humanity pulled together and the individual heroic stories within that framework. I particularly remember the interview with a man who was part of a K-9 unit and how important the work of these 'one man and his dog' units became critical in the war, and the bond formed and the psychological effects of that. Then you have unique stories like the Chinese nuclear submarine crew who decided their country was done and made a break for it, and how they survived, the sea fleets they met, and the island civilizations. It was very good.

Overall, the book really managed to hit home how scary the zombies are, and these are even slow moving zombies, which many movies ditch now because of the humour value. Not in World War Z. These zombies may move slow but they just do not stop, as long as they have a head and a limb to drag themselves with they will keep on coming and they only have to bite and break the skin. This makes almost all modern weapons useless as they are built on injuring, which does no good on a zombie, not killing, and they kill via applying effects to a living body, not a walking corpse. Then you have the zombie moan, one of them spots you and moans loudly, another hears that and moans and then another, it's not long before they move towards you in great numbers. What if ten heard? Then ten heard them?

It is an excellent book, as it contains all the personal sadness and historical context of a book about a real historical war or disaster, it just happens to be a fictional one about a zombie outbreak.

The author David Gemmell died today, at the early age of 57. This is sad because a lot of people enjoyed his books, but it's mainly sad because he wrote one of my favourite ever novels: Legend. In truth, I'm not sure David Gemmell was that good an author. Don't get me wrong, he had his fans, and entertained a lot of people, and on one valuable level, that's what it's all about. I've not read all of his books, but I've read quite a lot of them, and to be honest, a lot of them are very similar in terms of theme, content, the central protagonists and the type of story being told. It's probably true to say that David Gemmell was in the unfortunate position of his enduring work being his first novel. Still, this doesn't reduce the power of Legend at all, it's brilliant in it's simplicity, and enthralling in it's depth.

The plot of Legend is quite simple. A nation state, I forget the details, is holding back a horde of barbarians at a great wall built for this purpose, but the warlord leading the horde has managed to unite all the tribes, and there is an inevitability of the defences falling. In response, a number of people come to aid the effort, the most important is the great hero, Druss The Legend, who is now an old, barrel chested bear of a man who just wants to live out his remaining years on his farm. Instead, he picks up his massive axe and goes to the wall, to act as a rallying figure for the young soldiers dying each night as the barbarian horde assails the wall. A few other people rally around the prince who is beset on all sides by politics, his own fears and the impending falling of the defences.

Legend is pure heroic fantasy in the best sense. I don't mean in terms of cheap sword and sorcery with enemies being chopped down by epic heroes, but in the true sense, with people standing up to be counted despite their fears, the fact death seems inevitable and despite the fact they are past their prime. It's a story about the ability of legends to inspire people, specifically living legends. In order to understand the depth of emotion and feeling in the book, which does come through, you have to understand that Druss is essentially David Gemmell's father, his own living legend, a strong and heroic figure in his life it would seem, and the barbarian horde at the gate represents the cancer that befell him. It's a very good book. Like many books, as very few are totally original, the idea has been done before, a group of heroes defending the gate, an aged hero returning from retirement and an enemy represented by an endless horde that will ultimately win through force of numbers. What's important is Legend does it well.

While it can't be said I'm a fan of David Gemmell's whole catalogue of work really, I am passionate about the novel Legend (and have soft spot for Winter Warriors), and if I put any thought into these things it may actually register as one of my favourites. If I wrote one novel in my life, and that novel happened to be Legend, then I'd be a happy man.

I've not read it for ages, it may be time to change that.

Last time it was maniacal Russian Presidents with a Plan of Attack to bomb the USA into oblivion with enhanced Backfire bombers as part of a Machiavellian plan to get revenge on one USA pilot, the eponymous Patrick MacClanahan. Luckily the country was saved by MacClanahan's heroic bunch of pilots and their hi-tech gadgets. This time, it's terrorists committing an Act of War by bombing the USA with stolen Nuclear weapons so two people can get revenge on a global industrialist, but again the country of freedom and liberty is saved by a hotshot anti-terrorist group made up of sexy FBI agents, military bad asses and, of course, a brilliant scientist with some hi-tech gadgets: namely mecha. The fight for freedom is a battle without limits according to the tag line, aren't you excited?

It's time for the yearly look into the world of Dale Brown. He's had a book out every year since 1990!

The star of the show this time is Brigadier General Jason Richter of the US Army Research Laboratory Infantry Transformation BattleLab, ITB for short, and his project has been the development of the Cybernetic Infantry Device, a CID, which is a man and a half sized robot that someone climbs into an operates via a load of technical gobbledegook interfaces that allows him to run, jump and operate all sorts of weapons like a mechanical superman. It has the strength of ten men, it can have a host of weapons in its backpack which fire over the shoulder, it's immune to all small arms fire, has global communication up the whazzoo and it can do all this stuff while being deadly silent.. Its a mecha, given a boys own adventure, political thriller spin. Needless to say, when a nuclear weapon goes off on US soil, and Richter rescues a load of people within the effected area, the only course of action is to create Task Force TALON, a combined force of FBI and military personal with the CID units as the secret weapon to kick the ass of the terrorists.

Needless to say, not everything goes to plan. Richter is a paranoid scientist, putting faith in his technology, but can't lead. The FBI and the military don't get along, but despite that it's not long before the sexy FBI agent begins to form Task Force Talon along traditional lines leaving the CID units out. Meanwhile, we have all sorts of right wing propaganda about how the US should respond to the terrorist threat which you just know is what Dale Brown would like to tell the President of the US if he just give him time to air his views. An act of war declared on terrorism is what's needed, dammit! Complete with civilian population mobilisation just like in World War II!

Obviously, Richter finally comes into his own and saves the day, and does this all in a very rushed final few chapters, which seems to be coming a fault of every Dale Brown book these days. It's like he purposefully doesn't leave a enough room for the conclusion despite labouring over his political theory earlier in the text. To be honest, the whole thing is a bit confused. The back of the book says the terrorists attacks are by the sinister group DOOM, Defenders of the Oppressed Milita, but they never appear in the book. Instead we have Gamma, a South American environmental terrorist group, subverted by evil terrorists, who are bit like the resistance in Star Wars, they're 'good guys' who blow shit up and kill hundreds if not thousands of people. The whole plot with the National Security Advisor, and a Russian guy, being the force behind the attacks, just doesn't make sense, as it was the National Security Advisor espousing Dale Brown's veiled political beliefs, and he set-up Task Force TALON. Even if you follow the Task Force Talon was set-up to fail argument, it still makes little sense.

Still, as usual, it's a fun read, featuring another character, that no matter what trappings he has, is still just a modern cowboy who he takes the reckless actions that always get results.

Soon we will have the delights of Edge of Battle, the next mission for Task Force TALON, and Major Jason Richter. It would seem Patrick Maclanahan, his pilots and his SkyMasters geeks have been mothballed. I'm not sure what to call the Dale Brown books, it's sort of like a right wing, military pulp experience. Fun. Disposable.

As part of my goal to start reading more often, I picked up the book Moon Dust, by Andrew Smith, and despite it being a non-fiction book I devoured it. It is one of those books that manages to impart some level of emotion or experience, about a time, a place, a set of individuals and an endeavour that took place between 1969 and 1972 that will probably never be repeated.

Only 12 men have walked on the moon, and only 9 of them are alive today.

The book is fascinating in two ways: the discussions with the various astronauts and the endeavour itself. Each of the astronauts has had radically different experiences. The most extreme is probably Edgar Mitchell, who performed his own 'low grade psychics experiment' on the way back, and who had such a transformational experience while looking at the Earth from deep space that he formed the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS), an organisation looking into various different spiritual and mystical philosophies at the point in which they merge with science. You also have the sad image of Dick Gordon, at a science fiction convention, an old man, sat at a lonely autograph desk being ignored by the masses more willing to queue for hours to see Mark Goddard, Major Don West from Lost in Space, or an individual described as a 'bad guy from Babylon 5, who reeks of alcohol and hits on the girls' and who is later described as 'looking like Bruce Willis'. I don't think it takes much to guess who he is talking about, and just to make it clearer, he wasn't a bad guy in the series. All of them have dealt with returning to Earth differently, some have continued their NASA careers, others have become artists, albeit slightly obsessed with painting space images and some just see themselves as part of the history of aeronautics, and find it hard to verbalise anything but facts about the moon landing. They are all fascinating.

They all walked on the moon, and are part of are a select few who've seen the Earth from deep space, everything since the Apollo missions has been orbital.

The whole Apollo endeavour itself also seems to represent a fascinating point in time that is hard to imagine will be repeated. The USA was on one of it's biggest growth periods, coming out of the World War II as an economic superpower. A combination of factors combined to create an utterly ridiculous idea of going to the moon, and a combination of US, British and ex-Nazi genius delivered on it. Born out of political agenda based on self interest, one of the greatest moments of human history was astoundingly self-destructive due to it being a race with deadlines. The projects to make space planes, which had been running for some time, the X-15 was part of this project, was dropped in favour of rockets. The idea of creating a facility in Earth orbit was dropped for similar reasons. Both of these ideas would have created concepts with longevity out of the project, instead the Apollo project achieved so much but consumed all else in its path, destroying its own future.

It's also amazing how reckless the plan was, there is no way anything so reckless would get any sort of official signature today. It was amazing it all actually worked, and was really done with a high chance of failure. It's no wonder people believe it didn't actually happen. And many people do, which is the saddest element of it. I sometimes wonder if more people who think about it, if they think about it at all, come to the conclusion it was faked. Rampant cynicism and conspiracy theories seem to be the order of the day. I find it continually amazing people will adopt the most ridiculous of conspiracy theories in an attempt to put 'order to things'. In truth, things come about because disparate different agendas and circumstances combine. Rarely is there a single overriding explanation, or a single Machiavellian figure pulling the strings.

Will something like it happen again? Probably not, but then you never know. When you look back at it now, it seems ridiculous it happened then. People say glib things now like the political will not existing? Or that it would cost too much? You do know that the option of developing the Space Shuttle was chosen purely on what state got the most jobs, don't you? Actually, I didn't, but the point is such short sighted decisions got made throughout the whole of the Apollo project but it still happened. You also look at the costs of Apollo, and it sounds a lot, but it pales in comparison to the cost of the Vietnam war, to the point it looks positively cheap. So yeah, the chances are it will never happen again, but the first time was pure random happenstance, and an amazing convergence of politics and economics. You sort of never say never to that happening again, while acknowledging that it's unlikely.

Fascinating book though, and it surely was The Greatest Show on Earth. Well, on the moon...you know what I mean.

Since I don't really read much now, and at some point I made a transition from a devoted reader to someone more likely to enjoy visual media, I got thinking to how I actually started reading. The strange thing is, I wasn't naturally a good reader, there was a time when I was struggling in my reading. I would be working my way through the Red Pirate while other people had moved on to the adventures of the Green Pirate. At some point this changed, and it's a long time ago so it's hard to remember specifically, but I do recall a few details.

One of the first memories I have is that the junior school I went to had its own library, it wasn't too small if I remember correctly as well. The school also had some sort of token system, though my memory of it is vague. You somehow collected tokens and they could be redeemed for books. I'm not sure how you got the tokens, but I remember the first book I got under the system was about some teenage boy who'd been kidnapped. It didn't really work for me, and I didn't really follow it, so I'd obviously picked one up that was a bit too advanced. We'll come back to the book token system though.

Another junior school memory I have is of one of the teachers reading The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe to us in class. It was a regular slot, and each session he read a chapter or so of the book. I can't remember much of it, but I must have enjoyed it as I figured out there was more than one Narnia book and my book tokens started to get used to get hold of the other Narnia books. I'm pretty sure, the Narnia books, along with the Famous Five make-up the first books I read. I'm not saying the teacher dutifully reading that book to us transformed my view of reading, but it probably helped and it was around that time I started reading myself. If I remember correctly, my reading issues were mostly around the time of infant school.

The next set of books I remember reading is The Belgariad, though I was in the first half of comprehensive school at the time. We'd gone to Butlins on holiday, back in the day when it wasn't such a ridiculous proposition, and the on-site newsagents didn't have a half bad book collection. It had one of those paperback racks you can spin around. He had the first four Belgariad books, I snapped them up and read them all, finishing the fourth one pretty much as we got home. I had to wait a while to see the fifth one in paperback, but I got it as soon as I could. In many ways, The Belgariad was my Lord of the Rings, this is not to say I'm comparing them in quality, but I never could read the Lord of the Rings novels, and to be honest I still can't. I still insist they're not actually that well written, unless you like your fiction to be like a treatise on languages, history and different cultures.

I used to go to the library, I think it was almost an every weekend affair. I'd trawl through the science fiction and fantasy section, which was surprisingly large considering the library was quite small. I later found why this was the case, one of the staff members was a science fiction fan and actually went on to run a local Star Trek club. The local library had a better science fiction section than the much larger central library, so something was certainly going on. It annoys me that I can't remember any of the vast volume of books I must have read over this period. I literally picked 3-5 books up at a time, so I must have got through loads.

I do know when I started reading a lot less, it was pretty much around the time I had two eye operations on my right eye. I'm convinced that it was a psychological reaction because, while it didn't literally happen over night, it was a matter of months. I just stopped reading. I think months of not being able to read for long before seeing double just did me in. I went from consuming books in a day, multiple books in a week, to virtually reading nothing. Instead I became a creature of visual media, as it was around then I became totally dedicated to TV shows, something I'd been interested in before, but not as my main source of fictional media. To be honest, I've tried to get back into reading regularly like I used to, but every time I've tried I've pretty much failed to find books that I want to read. I have authors that usually see the distance, but they are largely commercial fiction (not that there is anything wrong with that), and I tend to read when I go on holiday. This makes me think an element of it is to do with the relaxed state of my mind (or lack of it).

Anyway, the upshot of all this is I am endeavouring to start reading again, it's helping that you seem to be able to pick books up for really cheap these days. Hell, I picked up a Lincoln Child novel today and it was cheaper than all the magazines, even some of the Sunday papers. The issue will be time, as part of the problem when I do start reading is I should be doing something else. Not sure what half the time, but I still get that feeling.

...and it has Ape super-soldiers. Yes, you've got it, I've just took another journey into the hi-octane world of Matthew Reilly, and had a small injection of super-pulp goodness. In 2005, Matthew Reilly wrote a short story for the Books Alive campaign in Australia, and the result was Hell Island.

Captain Shane Schofield and a team of elite marines, along with three other teams from different special forces units perform a HALO drop down to a remote island, as all communications with a United States Aircraft Carrier has been lost, and important people want to know why. What's interesting about the mission is it takes place shortly after Scarecrow, the last Shane Schofield novel, and the eponymous marine is still suffering from the death of key comrades in the book. This gives it an interesting spin, and adds a bit more for those who read his novels.

It's obviously not long before the shit hits the fan and the other teams are taken out by a mysterious force on the Aircraft Carrier. Schofield's on the ball though, and his team survive the initial attack. An initial attack by Apes trained to be super-soldiers. They wear body armour, hi-tech helmets, have microchips in their heads, they charge, climb stuff and they can even use guns. They also have no fear and no regard for their own lives. It's not long before numerous exciting action set-pieces take place on the Aircraft Carrier that has become a tomb, only for Schofield's team to figure out what's going on and take the fight to the island itself.

Over the top? Yes. Slightly ridiculous? Yes. A really fun way to spend an hour? For sure. Ape super-soldiers? Did I hear you correctly? Yes, you did. Only Matthew Reilly is brave enough or stupid enough. He has a writing career out of it, so I plumb for the former.

In the last two weeks I've read five books, and I'm halfway through the sixth. This is a return to my reading form, the speed at which I used to burn through books before my eye operation over a decade ago. I've been really enjoying it as well. Not sure what the change is. It's got something to do with migrating and coming back, I'm not the same person. It may just be because my comfort zone got thrown about. Not sure. Whatever the reason, I'm reading and I've enjoyed it.

The first book I picked up was The Last Gunslinger, by Stephen King, the first in the epic, or just long, Dark Tower series. Over the years I've looked at this novel on the shelves and never picked it up, but it's been getting placed prominently on the shelves lately due to the series actually having been finished. Brand new covers. The sort of thing that makes you want to pick it up. Plus the whole premise appeals, the idea of western sensibilities mixed up with an epic fantasy sort of theme is something that appeals to me. The problem is the book left me a bit nonplussed. The whole novel reads like you are in someone's dream, in that you see all the imagery and the words but you always feel like there is something in the dream-like quality that you are not getting or missing out on. I suppose I didn't find the central character that interesting either. The problem seemed to be more questioned were raised by the book than answered, the point maybe they are answered in the next six books, but The Last Gunslinger gave me severe reservations about trying to set of on the epic path of reading the next six. The core concept still appeals, so I'm hoping it will move into territory I prefer, but I'm left wondering how many books I read before I give up and accept it's not going to give the 'money shot' for me. It didn't grab me, I suspect I'll not pick up the others unless I'm desperate and they're the only books in the shop and I've got days by the pool ahead of me or a long flight. We shall see.

The core books I've been reading consist of Dan Brown's back catalogue. I know, everyone on the planet seems to be reading The Da Vinci Code, but the temptation to see what everyone is going on about was just too much. I tried to read The Da Vinci Code a while back, but it was during the time I rarely finished any book I tried to read. In all honesty, I found The Da Vinci Code a bit boring. It had a great opening, but it soon sort of lapsed into nothing exciting and it seemed to have a hard to read quality. Louise was wanting to read it though, and in her usual way her collecting gene then kicked in and we are suddenly buying all four. I decided to give Deception Point a go as this was more technothriller territory rather than the symbols and fantasy conspiracies of The Da Vinci Code. I liked Deception Point. So I read Angels and Demons, and even though this is a similar book to The Da Vinci Code I really liked that was well (it's my favourite actually). I then read Digital Fortress and I liked that to. I'm writing an article on Dan Brown's novels so I really need to read The Da Vinci Code, but I've tried twice since and I can't bring myself to do it. I'm going to have to swallow the bitter pill and finish the book eventually. Not sure what it is about that one novel, but it just reads differently to the others I think.

I'm currently reading The Time Traveler's Wife, which is really good. I'm about halfway through and it is enthralling. The central premise is there is a guy called Henry who can travel backwards and forwards in time, he can't control it and it has various limitations but that's really beside the point. The focus of the story is on his relationship with a girl called Clare. You see he first meets Clare when she is six. He meets Clare for the first time in the present when she is twenty. In the future he will travel back and form a relationship with her when she is a child and in her teens. So, it is like a circular loop, Clare fell in love with Henry because he forged a relationship with her from his future to her past, but he only did that because she came to him when he was 28 (and Clare 20), and she did that because she met him in her past. At the moment it's a very interesting read, and an excellent book for putting time travel well and truly in the context of human relationships.

I'm hoping this return to literary pleasures doesn't wane.

I used to read. A lot. I used to read a book in a day or so. I remember once going to Butlins for a family holiday, something we did quite a lot way back when, and I found the David Edding's books in the newsagents. I read all four in less than a week, I then had to wait for the fifth one to come out. To say that I liked reading was a massive understatement.

Then it all stopped. I didn't stop reading all together, but I stopped constantly reading as if my life depended on it. I would read the odd book, and I'd read when I was on holiday but the majority of the time I'd not read, or I'd start a book and get bored and not finish it. At first this was due to two operations I had on my right eye, something subconscious after that meant I didn't read as much. Eventually I started to wonder whether I'd become some sort of delayed member of the MTV generation as I started to get my thirst for dramatic stories from TV shows and movies. In all honesty, even though it was probably the psychological issues over my eye that triggered it all, I think I just got bored with reading a lot of crap, and when you read a lot, you do read a lot of rubbish.

Anyway, I'm trying to ramp up my reading again in the interest of writing fiction. If you're going to write fiction you should be reading it, right? I think so. I found Prey, by Michael Crighton, for a 1.50 GBP a few days ago and I read it to completion. This was a good sign, both because I read it through to completion, and because it proved to be the sort of book I'd have probably put down two-thirds of the way through because it lost any sense of excitement. I like the kind of books Michael Crighton writes, I'm a fan of commercial fiction and I'll defend it to the ends of the Earth. A book just has to tell a good story and tell it competently.

The problem with Prey was it became less of a story and really more a book theorising on nanotechnology and different paradigms of programming - in this case agent programs working as a swarm. The book starts off well as it is told from the perspective of a man working in Silicon Valley (on agents using swarm programming) who has lost his job and has become a house husband. His wife meanwhile has become a success at her job working for a company producing new, cutting edge nanotechnology. The mystery starts very small scale and remains focused on the man and his relationship with his wife and kids. At this point the book is good. The main character thinks his wife is having an affair, but little things keep happening to hint it is probably something more sinister than that. Even at this point though I'm conscious that the characters are pretty vacant, and the book may be resonating with me because I'm also jobless while my wife works. So I may have been sympathising with the situation rather than the characters I suspect.

Once the book moves to the installation in the Nevada desert you are introduced to a load of characters you certainly don't care about, and the main character stops dealing with his wife issues and solving the problem of the rogue nanotechnology swarms in the desert. It is just a by the numbers thriller at this point, played out with cut and paste characters. Even the twist at the end was signalled from way back and isn't really a surprise, you just get annoyed that the main character hasn't figured it out. Isn't it strange how most characters in novels have to act like they've actually read no novels? Anyone in the world who had a read some books or seen the odd movie would have seen the twist coming a mile off, or at least suspected it. It's ironic that, at times, the theorising on the technology was more interesting that the actual story itself.

At the end of the day it was a very average book. It probably sold a ton of copies.

I was glancing through The Sun newspaper today in a moment of boredom, and along with the scare story about an undercover reporter getting a 'bomb' on a plane, they had a small item tucked away on some obscure page about how reading Harry Potter makes you unattractive to women. I'm always interested in gross generalisations so I read on. Apparently a book publisher, I forget which one, has done a survey of what books make men attractive to women. Apparently, the book you are reading by the pool can make or break your chances. Well, I suspect, if your less than six pack stomach hasn't put them off first, then the book you're reading might do it.

The survey says that a number of book types, including fantasy, science fiction and books related to sport, all put women off. I can't remember all the 'turn off' books, but the only types that seemed to guarantee you their romantic attentions was the genre of thrillers and novels by Nick Hornby. It would seem my endless reading of Harry Potter in Florida (I've bought all the hardbacks there) wasn't doing much for the females. To think I was putting off all those gorgeous, college cheerleaders during the National Cheerleading Championships, just because I was reading the wrong book.

I find the Nick Hornby entry funny though, as he is on the list because of his image as the quintessential modern man, the sort of guy who writes books about men who suddenly realise they've been a typical male, or a bastard, and go through a transformation that makes them more appealing to women. Don't get me wrong, I like Nick Hornby's books, but I do find it quite humorous they obviously match some sort of female ideal in terms of men and hence they are on the list because any man reading them must be sound.

As for the sexual potency of males reading thrillers? Well, that's because anyone reading a thriller is fearless. I kid you not.

I've come to the conclusion that the Lord of the Rings novels (or novel, depending on how you view it) are pretty much like the Bible - you have people who view it almost like a religious text, and all these people seem to take different things from it. More importantly, they will use points of reference, support texts, letters written by the author, various appendices to argue their points. It is like a debate about religious doctrine and philosophy.

Personally, I've always lost patience with the Lord of the Rings novels, I always get to the battle of Helm's Deep and then I give up, and usually some time before that I've started skipping things like songs and pages of scenery descriptions. So I don't actually rate the novels, I recognise that they are worthy works, but they are worthy for reasons I don't really value. I don't want a book that is primarily about building a world, or writing something in different languages or choosing to reveal numerous key scenes off camera. So it's suffice to say I prefer the movies, and they are a faithful adaptation of what I took away from the book, which probably is not saying much since I've never got to the end.

What the movies have taught me is never to get into a debate with a serious Lord of the Rings fan about the nature of the movies, in fact I've added this to a list of topics to avoid, as I soon fail to realise the point of it all.

As I mentioned a while back, I was looking forward to the next Harry Potter book, and as usual I arranged our Holiday in Florida around the release date so I could buy the US edition (as the covers are much better). I never actually mentioned it again, so here goes.

In the beginning it sounded great, a book for every school year, taking Harry potter from 11 to 18, a mythical story, following similar principles to Star Wars, which is in turn based on myth-based storytelling as presented in books like a A Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. It worked really well until book five, each one building on the first. The third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, is probably the best, but the fourth, The Goblet Fire, works on a grand scale. Indeed, The Goblet of Fire is very much the Empire Strikes Back novel of the series, leaving the reader begging for more as everything changes.

I was waiting for the fifth book like everyone. In reality, we should have seen a weaker book coming. Why? Well, the main reason was the fourth book set-up things so the whole narrative structure of the books was a weakness. What is the point of having the world open up, and have a plethora of characters having to do really dramatic things, when everything has to be told through the eyes of Harry, and he is at school. He's not with Hagrid trying to persuade the Giants to help, or with Professor Snape working with the enemy. As a result, a lot of the really dramatic tale took place off screen leaving us with the boring bits, and a very petulant teenager.

The book also exhibits another problem, often seen in TV shows. In TV shows with plots that run through the season a danger always exists that the plot will peak too early, but you cannot run into the conclusion as that has to take place in the final two episodes. So what do you do? The answer is the holding episode, the episode that furthers little, but keeps the viewer in a holding pattern until the writers are ready to get you to the conclusion. In many ways The Order of the Phoenix feels the same, as if the book realises it sits after some really dramatic events, and really wants to run with that, but it cannot because there are two books left after it. As a result, it puts you in a holding pattern, telling you events second hand, and not really moving the serious dramatics on.

I'm still a Harry Potter fan, but my ardour has probably waned slightly, my secret hope is now, with only two books being left, the books will regain the excitement and immediacy of the first four, since the conclusion can be brought to the fore.

21st June 2002, book this day in your diary as this is when Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hits the shelves. It was officially announced yesterday. Since I'm a bit of a Harry Potter fanatic I tend to buy the US hardback editions as I think they are aesthetically the best, so that might mean a trip to the states in the second half of 2003.

And last night, due to an unfortunate incident with a pet cat, we played Lord of the Rings Risk rather than the latest episode in our Buffy campaign. For those who are interested, the evil Orcs laid waste to all that is good in Middle Earth.