100 books challenge

  • The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman is the first of a trilogy following the life of Thomas Cale, a strange boy with a dent in his head and the uncanny ability to anticipate an opponent’s moves. We meet Cale in the Sanctuary, a sort of monastery/training school for boys who are to become…

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  • I’ve become fed up of reading short books in order to hit my 100 books for the year target and was feeling the need to get into something more substantial. The Girl who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson is the second in the Millenium trilogy and is a 650 page brick. Lisbeth Salander is…

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  • 100 Books in 2011: New Moon

    The second book of the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer is New Moon. In this part Edward leaves Bella, for her own good natch, and she goes into a big funk for months. Then she discovers that if she engages in activities that could kill her, her subconscious provides an hallucination of Edward being all…

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  • 100 Books in 2011: Sword Song

    Book 4 in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories is Sword Song. Cornwell is one of my favourite authors and I am really enjoying the Saxon Stories. Uhtred is nowhere nearer Bebbanburg. He’s busy building forts to protect Wessex from the Danes and raising a family. Then some Danes invade London, try to convince Uhtred to join…

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  • 100 Books in 2011: Pig Island

    I’m getting pretty good at judging whether what I’ve got left of a book will last me to the end of my commute. Unless, of course, the train dies at an obscure little station that I normally never see because my train goes through it so quickly. Which is what happened a couple of weeks…

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  • 100 Books in 2011: Winter Song

    Winter Song by Colin Harvey is the third book I’ve read from small press Angry Robot. As I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of them and have paid for none of them (they’ve all been freebies from conferences or joining the British Fantasy Society), I’m feeling a bit uneasy. I think I might have to make a…

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  • I picked up Irons in the Fire by Juliet E. McKenna at Alt.com a couple of years ago. Juliet McKenna does quite a few writing conferences and I’d heard a lot of what she has to say about writing and the writing life. I thought I ought to read one of her books. McKenna is…

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  • All the Windwracked Stars by Elizabeth Bear is a bit genre-busting. It is heavily grounded in Norse mythology with liberal sprinklings of sci-fi, steampunk and high fantasy. After Ragnarok, of which there are and will be many, one Valkyrie survives because she ran away. Her name is Muire. When she comes back after the battle,…

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  • More short books! Bride of the Solway by Joanna Maitland is a Mills & Boon (and yes, I still have more of them on book mountain). Our heroine, Cassie, is the prisoner of her step-brother, the Laird of Langrigg. He has gambling debts and plans to marry his sister to a wealthy but weak husband, just as soon…

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  • I’m way behind on the 100 books in 2011 challenge, so I’m picking short, easy reads to try to catch up. Robert Crais is an easy read, and Voodoo River comes in at less than 300 pages. Elvis Cole is hired to find out about the birth parents of an adopted woman, who is a TV star…

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