Essay: On Publishers, Reviewers and Bloggers

This is a wonderful era for readers. Not only are more books being published than ever before, but online booksellers like Amazon have made them accessible to everyone with internet access at reasonable cost, and the ebook revolution has allowed aspiring authors to sidestep the stranglehold of the publishing industry altogether and sell directly to fans. Not everyone thinks this is such a great idea, but for readers there is now a vast amount of choice.

But that brings its own problems. No longer are genre fans limited by the shelf or two of big name authors at the local bookshop. Amazon.co.uk lists no fewer than 35,000 fantasy books in ebook format alone at the time of writing [June 2012]. How is it possible to sift through all those to find suitable books? Amazon, it has to be said, has a few tricks to help, such as lists of best-sellers, and links from one book to other similar books. It's fairly broad brush, but with enough time to hop around, a buyer can find some interesting prospects. But how to choose between them all? This is where reviews come in handy; online booksellers like Amazon allow readers to post reviews of books they've read.

There have always been book reviews, of course. It's a well-established arrangement; publishers send out advance copies of new books to newspapers and magazines, who assign someone to read those of most interest to their readers and print a review to coincide with the publication date. The posh Sunday newspapers will often recruit a famous author to write a review of a book in their own field. The reviewer is paid by the newspaper or magazine, not the publisher, so they are free to be as critical or downright rude as they like. Such reviews are often well-crafted pieces of writing in their own right, academic critiques with an air of authority and often not a little snobbery. It's a cosy arrangement; the publisher gets some publicity for their book at minimal cost, the newspaper or magazine fills its pages with interesting material and the reviewer gets a little money and a chance to exercise his/her wit. Even the occasional negative review isn't a problem for the publisher; it reassures Joe Public that the review wasn't bought, and a really vitriolic outburst will generate a buzz. Genre readers usually had to look to specialist magazines for similar provision, but it worked in the same way.

Online booksellers brought fresh air into this stuffy little cartel, by allowing any ordinary Joe to post a review. Needless to say, most of these amateur reviews were short, badly written and fairly useless. It also didn't take long for authors to realise that they could post glowing reviews of their own books under a pseudonym, and get all their friends and relations to do so too. But amidst all the dross were a few people who posted long, thoughtful reviews. Some of them stayed with Amazon and became Amazon Vine members, receiving free products supplied by companies wanting a review. Some of them, realising the value in their reviews, set up their own websites and blogs to host them. Gradually more amateur reviewers joined the blogging bandwagon, until sometimes it seems as if every book reader in the world has their own review blog.

It didn't take the publishers long to latch onto the blogging world, as an extension of their existing program of sending out advanced copies of new books. Any blogger who built up a following could, if they chose, receive a deluge of free books, with no pressure to review them or even to read them. More recently, some publishers have started to cut back, with one, William Morrow, causing an uproar in the blogosphere by suggesting online reviewers who receive free books should agree to a contract - committing to a certain number of reviews, and publishing in a timely manner. Bloggers were outraged: we decide what we review, and when, and how, they stated.

It's easy to see what motivates the publishers. They are businesses whose purpose is to sell books. Sending advance copies to reviewers is part of their marketing budget; it's advertising, in other words. A blogger with a large audience is a useful tool, informing potential purchasers of a book's existence and giving an opinion on it. Bloggers who regularly produce positive reviews around the time of publication and who help to build up the buzz about a forthcoming book by showing book covers or hosting author interviews are extremely useful to publishers. As with newspaper reviews, the occasional negative review is acceptable to demonstrate the reviewer's independence from the publishers. And, just like newspaper reviews, the effects of a blogger can be quantified to some extent. Numbers of followers and unique visitors and page hits can all be tracked, and although no one knows how much of that translates into product shifted (ie books sold), it measures the audience in the same way as magazine circulation numbers, and it would be strange if publishers failed to take note of such things.

But what about bloggers? What motivates them? Undoubtedly they all start off as enthusiasts, who enjoy reading and are willing to take the time and trouble to express their thoughts for the benefit of others. It takes a lot of time to construct and polish the sort of detailed, thoughtful review that the best sites specialise in, and, unlike published authors, they don't get paid for their efforts. But blogs tend to grow. What starts out as a low-key affair ends up with thousands of visitors each day and becomes a different game altogether.

Now there are many review blogs out there which stay focused on the original objective of reviewing books the blogger likes to read, and are not much concerned beyond that. But for many established bloggers, and nowadays for many startup bloggers too, the reviews become subsumed into the greater enterprise of maintaining and growing the blog. With a little advertising, paid-for content or tie-in marketing, it can even pay for itself and enable the blogger to give up the day job. Then the emphasis switches to aggressively selling the blog by linking to it from as many places as possible, guest blogging on other blogs, actively touting for author interviews and the like, or even deliberately provoking controversy to get a buzz going.

This is an extreme instance, of course, and there is a whole spectrum of variation in the blog world. Bloggers get started in a variety of ways, and there are innumerable different paths each one can take. There's no right or wrong way to run a book review blog, after all, and most never make money from it. But one thing they all have in common: they are all part of the book publishing industry to a greater or lesser extent. Every time I post a review of a book, whether on Goodreads or Amazon or on my blog, I am in practice encouraging people to buy that book. Even a negative review can have that effect: 'I hated this book, it's full of gross-out violence, endless battles and boringly detailed world-building' is going to have some people saying, 'Wait, that sounds right up my alley'. Of course, everyone reading reviews of fantasy books on Goodreads or a blog dedicated to them is already a committed purchaser, but then a review encourages them to buy one book rather than another. It may not be a deliberate choice, but every book reviewer is part of the publishing industry.

Now many review bloggers don't see things that way at all. Their relationship with publishers, they seem to think, consists solely of receiving material from them (free books, author interviews and so forth) and doing whatever they like with them. No obligations, no responsibilities. When publisher William Morrow said of free copies of books: 'Your job is simply to review the book within a month of receiving it and post your thoughts on your blog or site', bloggers were outraged. Here's what blogger Justin [1] had to say recently: 'It bothers me that those in the business of selling books would think of me that way. I consider myself to be an arbiter of taste. My role, as I see it, is to help readers make informed choices about how they spend their money. If I sell some books as a result, that's fine, but not my ultimate goal.'

No, but it's definitely the ultimate goal of the publishers, and every book reviewer is a tool, intentionally or not, of the industry. But it's an uneasy relationship. Publishers are prepared to dish out free books (and interviews and other stuff), and they don't want reviewers to be seen to be in their pockets, so keeping a certain distance is part of the game. Reviewers, on the other hand, want the free stuff, sure, they want the big-name authors, they want to be the first with the hot new book, because that's what their readers want, but they also value their independence, and don't want to be poodles for the industry. Or at least, some of them value their independence. Here's what Justin, the blogger quoted above, went on to say:

'Either way, the answer isn't creating some cockamamie bureaucracy to hold bloggers accountable, or codify some quid pro quo that will only serve to taint blogger integrity. The answer is increasing the publishers access to the community and the community's access to them. It doesn't mean spending more money, just spending it smarter. Rather than casting out wasted review copies that never get read, invest in getting to know reviewers and what they like. Give them exclusive coverage. Be pro-active. Don't expect free books to be a tool by which they can be controlled. In short, treat them like journalists.'

I'm not sure that journalism is quite the analogy he wants here; journalists are paid directly by their industry, do what they're told and write to precise order. But I take his point about more targeted material. The whole book world has grown and fragmented so fast that it's hard to keep up. The fantasy genre has exploded into scores of sub-genres, and a fan of paranormal romance isn't going to read dense epic fantasy, while the steampunk aficionado probably isn't interested in werewolves. But more precise targeting of advance copies will save publishers money and lead to a better ratio of reviews produced, so they'll work that out for themselves eventually.

But it is interesting that, while on the one hand backing away from a close relationship with publishers, he also wants more access to them. Getting the balance right is very difficult, and every blogger has to decide for themselves just how cosy they want to get with the industry. Every blogger is an individual, after all, and, to repeat, there's no right or wrong here. If bloggers want to take the free books, and have the publishers pay for a large part of their hobby, good for them. But they should also be aware of the consequences of that decision.

In a recent thread on the topic of reviewing at the Westeros forum [2], I argued that every reviewer's judgment is affected to some degree by the relationship they have with publishers. Reviewers were very defensive about that, and I certainly don't question their integrity; undoubtedly they write their honest opinion of every book they review. But (and it's a significant but) if they don't enjoy a book, or don't finish it, they generally don't review it. When they give ratings, they tend to use a skewed scale such that even a relatively poor review merits 6 or 7 out of 10. They tend to chase big name or hot books. They tend not to review self-published works. Now, there's nothing wrong with any of this, and it goes without saying that not all reviewers follow all of these practices, but it does rather fall into the publishers' gameplan, because what they get is largely positive reviews of the books they are most actively marketing. And of course every time a reviewer picks up a book he or she has been sent for free and decides to give it a go, that too is playing the publishers' game, even if it's done entirely unconsciously.

My own decision was different. The first time I was offered a free book to review, I decided that I wasn't going to do that - not for a beginning self-publisher I'd met on Goodreads, and not for a big-name mainstream author either. Every book I've reviewed, I have bought in the regular way, from Amazon or some other bookseller. Some of them were free, of course, but they were free to everyone who bought that day. Even if an author asks me to review their book, I will only agree if I buy it myself, and it's something I would have bought anyway. Now, I don't for one second claim any moral superiority by doing this, and you could argue that I'm making a virtue of necessity, since my bijou blog is well below the radar of any self-respecting publisher. The big cheese blogs attract hundreds or even thousands of unique visitors per day, I managed just five at the last count. But it does mean that I can guarantee my independence.

Another thing I insist on is to review everything I read - or attempt to read. Even if I don't finish a book, I give it 1 star and explain just why I abandoned it. If I hated it, I say why, because I think it's just as important to say what I didn't like as what I did like. That way, if I give a book 5 stars, it's because I thought it was something quite special (only 4% or so of the books I've read this year, in fact). There are some reviewers who give 5 stars to 75% of all the books they review. That's not so much a rating system as a whitewash. Even if they are incredibly selective, or incredibly easy to please, it's hard to see any value in such a system. Equally, reviewers who only write about books they liked, or books they finished, or who have a rating system where 6 or 7 is as low as any review goes, are distorting their opinions. If I see a review with a rating of 8 out of 10, that sounds pretty good, right? But not if it actually means it was just middling. Of course, the rating always has to be taken in conjunction with the review itself, but it's an instant guide - did the reviewer like it a lot, a little or not at all? If it doesn't tell a reader that, it's useless.

Then there are a great many review bloggers who won't touch self-published works. They say: I can get all the reading I want from the mainstream publishing houses, I know their books have been properly edited, I know they'll be of a professional standard, I'll probably enjoy them and besides, I don't have the time to trawl through a mountain of self-published dross to find the few gems. That's fine, no problem with any of that, but it does totally play into the hands of the publishers. Of course they don't want their tame reviewers looking at self-published books, they want them advertising their own catalogue, naturally.

As for those who say that all self-published books are rubbish - wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm only a sample of one, but in my experience the self-published books I've read have been virtually indistinguishable from traditionally published works in terms of quality, and can be far more original. However, I concede that my definition of quality may differ from another reviewer's, I'm ruthlessly selective in what I choose to read and I may also be biased towards self-publishers. I also came late to the pleasures of reading large amounts of fantasy, so I missed out on many of the classic works of the genre, which makes me less critical of derivative storylines (although even I roll my eyes when farm boys have to find a magic sword to fulfill a prophecy).

The best self-published books are as good as anything put out by the traditional publishing houses, but then many such authors strive to achieve the same level of presentation, by paying for the professional services a publisher would provide - editing and proof-reading, formatting, cover art and so on. Unfortunately not all self-published books are treated to this kind of polishing, and it's true that many feature numerous typos, grammatical errors, plot holes and dodgy formatting. Although a lot of readers actually don't much care about that, and are surprisingly tolerant of cardboard characters, hackneyed plotlines and implausible contrivances, many are put off by obvious amateurism. This means a lot of work evaluating potential reading material to eliminate everything below your personal threshold of readability.

This is where the blogs are an essential component of the whole publishing industry, both traditional and self-published. Bloggers put out their own opinion of whether a book is worth reading or not, and this is particularly useful for unknown authors. But - crucially - while bloggers who review only traditionally published books, particularly new releases, are serving the needs of the publishing industry, those who review both are addressing the needs of the reader. Most readers, I would suggest, don't care where a book comes from. Those who buy online or read mainly using ebook readers, as increasing numbers do, may not even know who published a particular book. The price is probably the only indication (self-published ebooks are typically half the price of mainstream books). Obviously, bloggers don't have to review self-published books, but those who do are providing a useful service for readers. Just as publishers who ignore the growth of self-publishing will eventually be sidelined, so too will bloggers.

The book world is changing at dizzying speed. The biggest publishers are behemoths locked into antiquated practices, with timescales measured in years, unable to respond quickly to the evolving marketplace, like giant oil tankers trying to slow down. Meanwhile millions of individual readers are making daily incremental adjustments to the new world - ordering online, buying ebook readers, downloading books when they want them, reading books on phones and tablets, effortlessly keeping up with the changes. Reviews have adjusted as well; the slow pace of newspaper and magazine reviewing has given way to instant online feedback via Amazon or Goodreads, and bloggers have taken that a stage further.

But for the reader, blogs are not the final answer. Each one is written by an individual, each has its own quirks and prejudices, its own selection and rating processes, its own blend of reviews, interviews, competitions and off-topic meanderings. Blogs by their nature make it hard to find older posts, and not all bloggers are good at maintaining an up-to-date index of reviews. But the Amazon-style free-for-all doesn't work either; for every thoughtful, detailed review there may be scores of less useful ones - too short, too glowing, too false, too paid for. The reader ends up spending increasing amounts of time trawling the online booksellers, reader sites and blogs to get an overview of opinions on books of interest. For me, as a reader, the gold standard is a detailed, honest, thoughtful review, which tells me both good and bad about a book; and if a reviewer found a book unreadable, I'd like to know that too.

In an ideal world, reviewers and readers would get their heads together and produce some central source of information - a repository of the best unbiased reviews, a super-blog, if you will. To be truly useful, it would have to be independent of the professional publishing houses, and also not subject to 'gaming' by clever self-publishers. That means that participating bloggers would need to disentangle themselves from the embrace of the big publishers and become fully autonomous. I fully understand why many long-established bloggers are reluctant to do that, and there's no doubt that their current relationship with the industry has worked well for some years now.

I'm not trying to change what bloggers do, or the decisions they make on what to review, how they write their reviews, or whether they should employ a rating system. My only objective here is to point out what seems to me to be obvious: that the choices of individual bloggers, made with the best of intentions and with perfectly good reasons, mostly work to the benefit of the publishing industry, and limit their usefulness to potential readers. Fortunately, readers are an astute bunch, and they're perfectly capable of judging the quality of the information presented to them, of checking multiple sources, of downloading samples to judge books directly, of getting together with other readers to exchange information. They also have the ability now to connect directly with authors, and cut out traditional publishers altogether.

Book review bloggers still have connections with both publishers and readers, but at present they are mostly facing the publishers, acting as unpaid advertising for the industry, whether they realise it or not. But it's book buyers who have the power now, and bloggers who realise that and realign themselves to serve the needs of readers first will undoubtedly survive the years of change better than those who resist.

[1] Justin's blog post is here.

[2] Westeros thread on Reviewers vs Honesty is here.

[Update] Ros Jackson of WarpcoreSF has a post about review ratings and context here. Because of her comments, I've added a 'Review Policy' page to this blog, and put my own ratings statistics therein.

[Further update] Justin has published a response to this essay here, to which many bloggers have added comments.

[Yet another update] Independently, Elly Zupko posted an open letter to book bloggers requesting a more open approach to self-published authors on her website here with a number of comments, plus a follow-up post.

Fantasy Review: 'Klondaeg the Monster Hunter' by Steve Thomas

Most fantasy takes itself very seriously, so it's always refreshing to come across something that's just light-hearted fun. I enjoyed the author's previous comedy outing, 'Smite Me, Oh Dark One', as well as both his full-length fantasy books to date, 'An Exercise in Futility' and 'Harbingers of Mortality', so this was a must-buy for me.

The story features the eponymous monster hunter, his two-headed talking axe, a shape-shifting gnome, a retired hero, an oracle and a god or three, as well as a whole galaxy of monsters, and... well, no, I don't think I'll spoil the surprise by saying any more about it. It's laugh out loud funny, and if some of the jokes fall a little flat, it's partly because they arrive so fast it's hard to keep up. Recommended for anyone depressed by reading too much of the grimdark and gritty realism which infests the genre these days. Four stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Daughter of Dragons' by Kathleen H Nelson

I really like the premise of this one - a human child is left as a sacrifice for a dragon who decides instead to raise her with her own brood. When eventually the dragon-girl is forced to return to the human world, the resulting collision of cultures is very funny. The author has clearly thought through all the ramifications of the situation - Lathmi eats raw meat, for instance, and is ultra-strong and scarred from growing up around creatures not only much bigger than her, but equipped with vicious claws and teeth. And she really thinks she IS a dragon!

The background world is the usual generic template - there are peasants grubbing around in the dirt, boorish and ignorant, and a sprinkling of cities, where the rich and powerful live in luxury, while the lower ranks live in abject poverty with a fairly easy-going attitude towards sanitation and the laws of property. So nothing very original there. It also leads to some fairly lazy plot devices - attacks by ruffians of one sort or another to create dramatic tension and push the story along. I've never understood quite why these fantasy worlds have to be so lawless - in reality, any world with so much corruption and violence would be unable to operate at all, or would devise means to deal with it. And outlaws would never fight to the death, as they so often do in books - they steal from those unable to fight back, and then retreat as soon as there's any real opposition.

Apart from all the outlaws, rogues and thieves, there is also a Big Bad, called the Dark One (now there's an original name), with a minion and a number of summoned demons as runarounds. I don't really see the attraction in world domination, myself, but it seems to be a popular ambition in fantasy. Fortunately there are some nice additional touches here - the demons are not just generic evil thingies, but actually have independent personalities and act on their own agendas.

The magic of this world isn't particularly original either. It's not clear to me whether magical ability has to be inborn, or can be acquired by anyone willing to learn, but there are various kinds of spells - the kind that involves drawing hexagrams on the floor, the kind that can be done just by mind-power and the kind that involves knowing the true name of things. There's a price to pay, too, so that spell-makers can use a great deal of energy, both mental and physical, and while using magic they are vulnerable to other sorcerers. This is fine. The problem with all this is that there seem to be few limits to what can be done, and sometimes it's all just too convenient. The plot requires the good guys to find out something about the bad guys? Let's have a dream-spell and go in disembodied form to his hide-out. Even though this was actually a lovely dramatic sequence, nicely done, it still felt like a bit of a cheat. And later on, when our heroes get into a bit of bother, they conveniently have a reason why they can't just whip up a spell or two and escape. This is always a problem with magic, though, but here I don't feel the author quite makes the constraints convincing enough.

Behind all this rather unoriginal surface, however, is an interesting story of two species, both intelligent and resourceful, with their own cultures, beliefs and lifestyles. The dragons in this book are not cute or anthropomorphic, they are fearsome creatures with a different way of looking at the world. The humans are not exactly civilised, and both sides have their share of aggression and intolerance. Lathmi is caught between the two worlds, neither one thing nor the other, and although she eats raw meat with her bare hands, she has her own measure of wisdom and is not the barbarian the humans mistake her for. This dichotomy raises all the difficult questions: how much of so-called civilisation really matters anyway? what's the good of table manners when it's not safe to walk the streets? and the ultimate question, what does it really mean to be human?

The author isn't afraid to address those questions head on, and she also has the courage to follow her characters and their difficulties to their logical conclusions. So sometimes they fail, they get hurt, they get angry and frustrated, they make stupid decisions or mistakes and sometimes, when faced with insuperable odds, they may die. So far, so good. Apart from Lathwi herself, the other main characters - Pieter the trapper, Liselle the sorcerer, Jamus the lady's man, and Pawl the swordsman - are all nicely drawn and sympathetic. And of course the dragons are terrific characters in their own right. The minor characters are less interesting, and the bad guys - well, I've never been a big fan of irredeemable evil. I also wasn't much fussed about the idea that all the ruffians, mercenaries and so on were 'Southerners', but it seemed logical that the uneducated peasants were a superstitious bunch, willing to sacrifice the odd virgin for good fortune.

There are quite a few minor typos and grammar issues, but nothing overwhelmingly awful, and on the whole the writing is fine. The final chapters were a bit of a muddle of dragons, demons, mercenaries and magic, so that it was hard sometimes to work out quite what was going on, but happily the author wasn't afraid to take difficult decisions and managed to avoid the sugar-sweet ending. Of course, the magic was a bit convenient, but I very much liked that the final confrontation was largely a question of female strength and spirit. The character of Lathmi was very well conceived and executed from beginning to end, and the dragons are wonderful, both endearing and also entirely alien. A very readable, entertaining story with plenty of action, let down only by an uninspired set of villains and a rather too unlimited version of magic. Three stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Children of Another God' by T C Southwell

This was one I picked up for free in my early days of Kindle enthusiasm, and, as always with free books, there's no knowing quite what you'll find when you open it up. This one has a fascinating premise - the Mujar, a race of demi-god-like people with vast powers, who have an uneasy and unfriendly relationship with the resident humans of their world. The humans despise them because they won't use their powers for good, and seem oblivious to the usual human emotions, although they sometimes form loose clan bonds with them, providing the 'comforts' the Mujar crave (although they don't need them) in exchange for work and occasional protection. They can't be killed, but humans trap them in pits from which they can't escape.

Talsy, an eighteen year old, forms a bond with one of the last free Mujar, Chanter, and uses him to escape from her dull life. They form a kind of clan bond, and travel through the landscape getting into and out of trouble, while Chanter attempts to fulfill a commitment acquired from an earlier encounter. And, as far as the plot goes, that's about it. There are two forms of plot device in use: Talsy wanders off by herself, some bloke attempts to rape her; and Chanter tries to rescue her, gets captured and the evil humans (which is almost all of them) try to inflict as much damage on him as they can. This gets tedious pretty quickly. It's a shame that the author's imagination can think of no better plot device than violence and (for women) sexual violence. Are humans really so devoid of any semblance of civilisation that violence is the first and last resort?

This book exemplifies everything that's good about self-published books, and at the same time a great deal that's less good. On the good side of the equation, the story is brimming with creativity. The concept of the Mujar is brilliant, and the author captures the 'otherness' of Chanter perfectly; not just by description, but by his actions and the way he speaks. There are some delightful interludes when he goes off to be his wild self for a while, changing form into a bird or a wolf or a dolphin, as the mood takes him. The living death of his captivity, trapped by accident or design, is very moving. The mysterious Black Riders, while having the world's least original name, are also intriguing, and the backstory, the history of this world, is touched on here and there, and there's obviously a detailed mythology behind the fairly simple upper levels. The scenario also raises some quite interesting questions about the nature of humanity.

But the negative is that the author doesn't quite seem to know what to do with these great ideas. The world-building is perfunctory, to put it mildly. There are vast expanses of nothing very much, and here and there the occasional city, depicted as a seething pit of corruption, violence and general nastiness. And Chanter and Talsy simply wander around, without much obvious purpose, and, quite frankly, without using any intelligence whatsoever. When they come to a city, Talsy decides to get fresh supplies. Well, that's fine. But why then walk right through the city, dangerous for both of them? There must be other ways to cross the river that divides it. There must also be other, safer ways of obtaining supplies - towns or villages or trading posts, for instance, or simply finding a farm and offering to work for a day or two. And Talsy is irritatingly helpless, swooning or falling over or getting lost or putting herself at the mercy of lecherous men at the most inconvenient moments. Chanter isn't exactly the best protector, either, since he always seems to disappear at crucial moments, leaving Talsy in peril and setting up another dramatic rescue.

Apart from the mysterious Chanter, none of the characters filling the landscape are at all compelling. Mostly they are cartoonish in their simplicity - brutish, ignorant louts, hell-bent on mindless destruction, and this goes for both the peasants and the more educated members of society. Very occasionally there will be an act of random kindness, but it seems to be more a matter of plot contrivance than anything else. None of the characters felt truly rounded or believable, they were all simply ciphers for good or evil behaviour. Talsy ought to be more realistic, but her behaviour is mostly irrational and her function is either to reveal information by asking naive questions, or to get herself into trouble and create a dramatic incident.

It never made sense to me that the local population was so united in its hatred of the Mujar. Given that the Mujar never harm them, and could, if treated well, bestow 'wishes' on them, it would seem more sensible to try to exploit that facility. And everyone, peasant and ruler alike, knew all about them and hated them equally; more likely, surely, that the uneducated would fear them, and have only a rudimentary idea of their powers, while the more educated would understand them better. But no, everyone hates them, to the point of mindless resentment even when Chanter uses his powers for their benefit. I found this really unbelievable, and unfortunately much of the tension at various dramatic moments hinges on this factor - oh no, Chanter's been captured again, the evil humans are going to beat him senseless and throw him in a pit, just because he's a Mujar. Can he escape? Can the helpless Talsy rescue him?

I found this a frustrating read. In many ways, it's an interesting story, filled with original ideas, but the author seems to be more interested in the mythology of the Mujar and admiring Chanter's beautiful body than in developing a coherent and absorbing story, or compelling characters. The plot is driven by the sheer stupidity of some characters, a ludicrous division into good and evil (the good are the 'chosen', everyone else is 'unworthy'), combined with the Mujar's largely unexplained rules which prohibit any kind of sensible relationship with the humans. There were moments of poetic mysticism, which then lurched into quite unbelievable contrivances, and occasionally became a simplistic lecture on environmentalism (let's all live in harmony with nature, people, and not kill anything or build machines or use oil or - heaven forfend - cut down trees). There was also a rather too heavy romantic element, which is clearly going to get more complicated in later books in the series. On the plus side, the writing is fine, and thankfully free of typos or clunkiness. For those who like this sort of thing, the author has written many more books in several different series, and the first of each is permanently free, so at least you can try it out. Unfortunately it's not for me. Two stars.

Sci-Fi Review: 'Caliban's War' by James S A Corey

I don't read a lot of scifi these days, although it was my drug of choice for a decade or more, but I love Daniel Abraham's fantasy works so this is a must-read for me. Written under a pseudonym with co-author Ty Franck, this is the second in the Expanse series. If the first had a sort of detective-noir feel to it, this one is much more classic space-opera, with space ships, inter-planetary alliances, zero-gravity battles, hi-tech weaponry and all the usual shenanigans, and although there is a bit of a mystery to solve, it's no more than backdrop for the action. I suppose a lot of scifi falls into the traditional grooves, and this one feels like it's made from the Firefly cookie cutter. Holden is the renegade captain (Mal), Alex the ace pilot (Wash without the dinosaurs), Naomi is Zoe and Amos is Jayne. There's even a Kaylee, Sam the red-headed pixie on Tycho, but thank all the gods, there's no lipsticky Inara.

Holden is the sole point of view character retained for this outing; Miller, the shoot first forget the questions cop, was.... hmm, eaten by? killed by? absorbed by? the alien monster thingy in part one. We have three new main characters; Avasarala is an elderly diplomat from Earth, Prax is the botanist from the moon Ganymede, and Bobbie is the marine from Mars (sorry, just can't say Martian marine, sounds too weird). These soon coalesce into two pairs and eventually overlap, and the authors manage to sweep the plot forward by deftly swapping from one to another. All four are interesting, well-drawn characters, and the minor characters are likeable too, especially Holden's crew. Prax comes in handy for the sciencey bits, while Avasarala is pulling the political strings of the complex tensions between Earth, Mars, big business and the outer planets. And Bobbie? She makes one hell of a warrior babe, that's all I can say.

The book seemed slow to get going, I thought. There was a lot of scene-setting and general background that wasn't exactly filler, but didn't seem to get very far, but to be fair, there are several new characters and a heap of backstory to get across. But almost imperceptibly the pace picks up and then we're off into the usual action-packed whirlwind. There were a few creaky moments, when the rationale for a character to do something obviously essential for the plot seemed a bit dubious, but really, it doesn't matter much. And just occasionally, when they do something completely and utterly in character, it feels absolutely punch-the-air glorious.

Although this is sci-fi, the technology is really not the point. It's obvious that a great deal of research has been done behind the scenes, but it very rarely breaks out into impenetrable jargon, and even when it does, there is usually another character there to say, on the reader's behalf, what does that mean, exactly? But none of it stretches credulity overmuch, and for me, as a fantasy fan, it's no problem to accept the high-tech 'magic' of instant wound-repairing medical equipment or fancy weaponry, in the same way I accept wizards with healing spells, or a magic sword. The nature of the setting also lends itself to some very atmospheric moments peculiar to space opera - the zero-gravity bounces, the weird moons, the outside-the-ship moments, the sheer scale of the universe - which the authors convey very well.

My biggest complaint would be that too much of the plot hinges on finding and recovering unharmed Prax's small daughter, Mei. Given the interstellar nature of the conflict and the countless unnamed minions who died along the way, it seems unrealistic to devote so much effort to one child. I appreciate the need to humanise the conflict, but it still seems excessive. There also seemed to be a lot of emphasis on individuals who got close to mental breakdown, either by highly stressed circumstances, or lack of sleep, or just personality. I'm not quite sure what purpose this served, except to ramp up the tension a bit. But these are small points.

The ending fell a little flat for me, seeming to be no more than a sequence of high tension encounters which were actually resolved very quickly, without any unexpected twists or great drama. The authors are very good at not spinning the action sequences out too far, but these felt almost abrupt. There were a few moments of near Galaxy-Quest-ness, but it's hard to write this kind of stuff without evoking parody, and the authors deftly sidestepped the worst of it. And the dramatic reveal in the final paragraphs was hardly unpredictable - well, if I could see it coming, anyone could.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed most of the book, up until the last few chapters, even more than the previous one in the series. I liked Bobbie the marine, I liked the little romance Holden had going, I liked seeing more of Amos, Alex and Naomi (who make a great team), and Avasarala had all the best lines. The writing is taut, the pacing is perfect, and the authors ping-pong the plot between points of view effortlessly. And no, I have no idea who wrote which characters. A good entertaining read with plenty of action and a few moments of real depth lurking beneath all the drama. Four stars.

Review: 'Building A Blog For Readers' by Nick Thacker

This is a free book that purports to help you become a successful blogger by asking 101 questions; when you have answered them all, you should be able to create and build that successful blog. What is a successful blog, you might ask? That's probably question 5, 'What do you hope to gain from your blog?'. So yes, you really do have to provide all the answers yourself. It's aimed squarely at those who want to start blogging in order to make money from it. I'd always thought people start blogging because they have thoughts or events or opinions or wisdom that they want to share with the world, but apparently quite a lot of them just want to get rich. So although the book pays lip-service to those who blog purely for fun or out of generosity, there's a lot of talk about growing and business plans and profits and the like.

I'm not exactly the target audience for this book. Although I have a blog, it exists solely so that I have somewhere to dump all my Goodreads reviews so I can easily access them. I don't do anything to advertise it, apart from putting the url on my profile page, and just once linking from a book review to a series review that was only on the blog. It's a constant source of amazement to me that people manage to find it and read it and post comments on it and even tweet about it, it seems. I check my stats every day and admire the (very small) numbers. But I'm not interested in 'growing' it, and I'm certainly not interested in making money from it.

Nevertheless, I thought this book might be interesting to me as a (sort of) blogger. First problem is that on Kindle for PC, the ink is green. Seriously. It's OK on the Android app, so I don't know what that's all about. Second problem is that there just isn't much content. Each page (or question) is just a few lines long, and really, it's not exactly earth shattering. Here's question 21, for example, 'What preparation does your ideal reader go through before they purchase?':

'What kinds of research does your ideal reader do before they purchase big-ticket items?
'Do they read Consumer Reports, other blogs, Amazon reviews, or ask their spouse? Do they have enough disposable income to buy whatever they want, whenever they want it?
'Answering this question can give you a few insights:
'It can help you understand your future readers better
'It can help you offer products that they need and want
'It can give you an idea of places to promote your website and blog'

And that's it, in its entirety. And then, towards the end of the book, there's an 'inspiration from other bloggers' section, where they say - pretty much the same things. Now, I can imagine that all this might just possibly be helpful to a few folks without any idea where to start, by focusing them on what matters to them and pointing out a few pitfalls. There are also a few tips about technical stuff which are slightly informative. There's nothing you couldn't find out from a couple of hours on Google (and reading a few blogs!), but it's free, so it just about scrapes two stars. But really, don't pay for this.

Review: 'The Kinshield Legacy' by K C May

At first glance this is a fairly standard fantasy story. There's the humble man destined to be king, there's a warrior babe (actually, a whole organisation of warrior babes), there's a villain bent on world domination, and there's a bit of a mystery: whatever happened to the previous king? What about the magic sword, I hear you say? And the prophecy? And there ought to be a wizard... Yep, got those too. There's probably nothing here that the average fantasy fan hasn't seen a hundred times before, and there are no prizes at all for guessing where things will end up, it's obvious right from the start.

But still, there's always room for a new take on the old stories, and this one has a fresh feel to it. The hero has a certain charm, for a start. It's very pleasant in these days of gritty realism and world-weary, cynical heroes to find one who actually behaves like a hero, and rescues damsels (or blokes) in distress; although, being of humble origins, he does all this while wiping his nose on his sleeve and scratching his balls. There's a certain amount of puking and shitting going on too. But - praise be! - no rape, no lovingly described disembowellings, a very minimal amount of torture and the fights are nicely done, realistic and not too long, without wallowing in it. And three cheers for a hero who is himself rescued from time to time. I do like proper teamwork on a quest (well, of course there's a quest, didn't I mention that?).

The setting is pretty traditional, too - a low-technology sort-of medieval world, with a clear class system and the usual array of merchants, craftsmen and the like. The towns have a grubby underbelly, with poverty, thievery and bad sanitation practices. There's some nice original terminology to spice things up: warriors are called battlers, for instance, mercenaries are warrant knights (and also serve as a rough and ready form of law and order) and the local chief of town Whatever is Lordover Whatever. None of it is hard to work out, but it gives the created world a feeling of otherness, as if it's not just another rehash of the medieval period.

Some grumbles. Firstly, the bad guy is just too much of a caricature. He's just evil incarnate, with no redeeming features whatsoever. And he has some very powerful magic, so everything just falls into his hands (with some nice exceptions; the magic sword, it turns out, has a mind of its own). Frankly, I've never quite understood the attraction of world domination myself. If you have all that magic at your disposal, why not use it to become unspeakably rich, or (as in one book I read) to win at gambling, or pull women. Sounds like far more fun than all that bothersome ruling. But there's a nice touch in all this; the villain, it turns out, has a plot-related reason for all that villainy, it's not something trite like being abandoned by his mother, or dropped on his head at birth, or (the usual reason) just because...

Secondly, the inevitable problem with rehashing the traditional tropes is that large parts of the plot are just too damn predictable. Yes, there are occasional minor twists, but basically anyone with some knowledge of the genre could map most of the story out way ahead of time. So although the plot builds up a nice head of steam and rattles along very pleasantly, every once in a while there's a real eye-rolling moment, and the magic is a very convenient device. Not quite deus ex machina, but slightly contrived, shall we say. In the middle things got quite complicated. There are a lot of characters, a lot of hopping about from one town to another, and a lot of pieces of information known by some characters but not by others, and I lost track of who was doing what where - and often why, as well. But the author was obviously on top of it, and it's not the sort of book where you absolutely have to keep up or you miss the point of the ending.

This is not a particularly deep book, so anyone looking for profound subtext should move right along. Nor is it wildly original, there were too many cliches and a certain amount of contrivance. The good characters are a little implausibly good, the bad guys are just a little too evil, and nothing terribly unexpected happens. Nevertheless, it's good solid entertainment, well written and well thought out and with enough freshness to make it palatable to all but the most jaded tastes. I liked the idea that the ex-peasant and future king has appalling table manners (well, he would, wouldn't he?), I liked that there were so many competent female characters, I liked the many minor characters who were well rounded and interesting, without hogging the limelight, I liked the little touches of humour. An enjoyable undemanding read. Three stars.

Review: 'If Walls Could Talk' by Lucy Worsley

This is a fairly lightweight and easy to read discussion of the history of the four main rooms of the house: living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. Starting with the medieval manor house with its single large room, the author describes the origins of each separate room, how they were used in the centuries since and what that says about the society of the time. This could have been very dull and dry, but actually it's a lively read, filled with anecdotes and stories of the people of the time, gleaned from contemporary writings. Occasionally the author resorts to the more speculative 'could have been', and if I have my suspicions that some of this is perpetuating popular myths, it's none the less entertaining, for all that.

For anyone interested in the medieval period, there's a lot of material here that doesn't usually find its way into history books. Most interesting to me are the fixed beliefs that people of earlier centuries held which affected not just their lifestyles but also their health and (ultimately) their life expectancy. And yet there was a curious logic to it. Not eating raw fruit and vegetables? Dangerous in the age before clean piped water. And almost anything might be feared without the knowledge of how diseases could be spread. Even today, when we have more scientists at work than ever before, there's still mystique surrounding what we should eat and drink, and how best to live our lives.

Anyone looking for the raw research data won't find it here, although there's a detailed bibliography. It's also got a very English feel to it. The rest of the UK gets an occasional mention, the rest of the world or recorded history before medieval times, hardly a word. This is a gentle overview of the subject, not inaccurate but sugar-coated and pre-formed for easy digestibility. It's also short; fully a third of the book on my Kindle is taken up with the bibliography, index and a whole series of pictures which should more properly have been in the body of the text, but presumably wouldn't fit. But as light background reading, it's useful enough and quite enjoyable. Three stars.

Review: 'Not A Gold Rush' by Dave Cornford and Steven Lewis

Self-publishing is very much the flavour of the month, but the whole industry is awash with rumour and speculation, with very few hard facts. This book attempts to fill the gap a little, if not with hard facts, then at least with a few statistics. In February 2012, the authors sent questionnaires to 1,007 self-publishing authors and this rather slim volume is the result: an assessment of what works and what doesn't for authors publishing and marketing their own books.

Of course, a certain amount of caution is in order. The respondents were self-selected, for one thing, although it's hard to know how else to choose - randomly pulling names from Amazon, perhaps. But it's possible that these particular authors were willing to participate because they were more successful, or simply more vocal or more committed to self-publishing.

For new authors looking to this survey for reassurance, it's not easy to find. Successful authors were more likely to be women, more likely to have a degree, had been writing for longer, wrote more per day, had more books for sale. None of these are things an individual can do much about. Romance was the most successful genre, but again, a committed fantasy writer is hardly likely to switch. But looking at the figures more closely shows just how misleading statistics can be. Almost half of romance writers in the survey had previously had a traditional publishing contract; in other words, they were professional writers with an established fan-base who simply switched to self-publishing to make more money (and perhaps to have more control over their writing).

In the detail of the report is quite a lot of meat about what might actually help to sell self-published books. Getting professional help with editing, proof-reading and cover art, for one thing, and also the fairly obvious one - get plenty of reviews (although paid reviews are not effective). Getting the word out, whether by blog or Twitter or via email, is also important. There are some useful ideas here, and although there's nothing wildly original, it's good to see some numbers rather than speculation or anecdote.

This is a very short book but for serious self-publishers it's a must read. There's a mass of useful information, and although some of it is discouraging (half the respondents earned less than $500 in the previous year), there are plenty of helpful tips, and the underlying message is simple: keep writing, be professional, build your fan base and you can earn money from your books. I would have liked more graphs and charts, and more raw data instead of analysis, and perhaps a lower price for such a modest volume. However, for those squinting at the graphs on a Kindle, they are all available in an easier-to-read format on the authors' website. Three stars.

Review: 'The Way of the Black Beast' by Stuart Jaffe

I'm not at all sure what to make of this book. On the one hand, it has a lot of elements that I normally find appealing: a post-apocalyptic setting, a kickass female protagonist, characters with a lot of history, an unpredictable world. But somehow, it didn't grab me, and I've been puzzling over why. There's nothing terrible about it, nothing that jumps out at me - it's well plotted, the characters have depth, the world is full of surprises (and I love to be surprised!), but for some odd reason it didn't resonate with me. Just a mood thing, I suppose.

One problem is that I often found it difficult to visualise the settings. Sometimes I would have to reread a section because I'd misunderstood where things were or what was going on. I'm still not very clear whether the setting is meant to be some real-world place, or if it's a created world. I kept seeing it in my mind as the southwestern US, but I could be completely wrong about that. Either way, the book failed to provide me with as much detail about the backdrop as I wanted, but another reader likely wouldn't find it a problem.

However, the world is filled with a whole heap of weirdness. The author has a stunning imagination to create so many odd beasties and devices and situations. There was almost too much creativity (and that's not a criticism that's often levelled at a fantasy work, let's be honest). But perhaps less of the bizarre and a bit more of the familiar would have helped me get into it. In some ways, the deluge of originality reminded me of my one attempt at a China Mièville book. It's not that I dislike weirdness, but I'm not too keen on the absolutely anything goes end of the spectrum.

The plot - well, what plot? Malja (the kickass female, who has a wicked curved blade called Viper) and her mute magician sidekick, Tommy, amble round the countryside trying to find information about two men who mistreated Malja, so that she can take her revenge. And that's about it. Along the way, they have some adventures, make some new friends, Malja (and Viper) kill a lot of people and mutant beasties, while she tries to prevent Tommy from killing anyone because killing is a Very Bad Thing. Now, it's not that any of this is uninteresting, but it's a fairly delicate thread on which to hang an entire book, and it was all a bit episodic. It just felt like a series of setpiece battles, interspersed with odd moments of introspection round the campfire, where Malja muses on the fact that killing is a Very Bad Thing. Sometimes the musings jumped about rather abruptly - Malja's childhood with the bad guys, her childhood with the good guy, her meeting with Tommy, and a few other odd events in her past - and it wasn't always easy to keep up.

Malja herself is a fairly standard issue Warrior Babe (tm), basically a killing machine, and somehow the odd doubts she feels don't quite work to make her a fully rounded character, at least not for me, although I did enjoy finding out where she came from, that was a fun reveal. The author has put a lot of effort into developing Malja - not just her history, but her feelings for Tommy and her interactions with the other characters, and if it didn't totally convince me, that's partly a side effect of her Warrior Babe role. The (almost) invincible warrior, whether male or female, is not one I find particularly compelling. Tommy - now, Tommy's interesting, but he would be much more interesting if we could either hear him speak or get a viewpoint from inside his head, but failing that he's no more than a blank.

The other characters are actually rather well-drawn, although in some cases it takes nearly the whole book to get to the point where we really understand them. This is partly because they pop in and out of the plot quite a bit, and partly also because most of them start off as bad guys, and it takes a while to shift loyalties and see them as good guys (that is, those who are on Malja's side). But the author deals with that, and their changing status is reflected in Malja's attitude to them - it takes a long time for her to trust them.

The magic system is rather nice - each spell is worked by a single tattoo on the magician's body, and they prepare the spell by focusing on the tattoo. So spells take time to be generated, and they also drain the body of energy, making the magician not just tired but also hungry. Now this is all quite neat. What I disliked is that there seem to be virtually no limits to the sort of spells that can be created. Energy fields, heat and light, levitation, physical changes to the body, creating artifacts, even huge buildings - all of this and much more can be done, and it has the inevitable result that in a sticky moment, a new spell will turn up to create a problem for our heroes or to rescue them. This is just too close to deus ex machina to be comfortable.

One aspect of magic that was quite cool was the association with music. The author is obviously a blues fan, because there's a troop of blues musicians who have a very clever and original role in the story. I also liked the implications of the 'frames' that play a pivotal role in the plot (I won't say any more, because I don't want to spoil the surprise). It does mean that in future books the author has a huge amount of scope to take the story wherever he wants to go.

The final quarter or so of the book builds to an action-packed climax. Actually, there's a bundle of action all the way through (Malja's a Warrior Babe, after all), making the whole book seem like a loosely connected series of escalating battles, separated by those introspective moments round the campfire. For those who enjoy lots of bloody fights against increasingly difficult opponents, this book will suit you very well. I found myself wondering from time to time just why they were all doing this (revenge? a flimsy excuse for putting your life on the line quite so many times). It was also rather convenient that nobody actually seemed to want to kill Malja. After a humungous battle, which our heroes survive by the skin of their teeth, the bad guys invite them into their headquarters and sit down to explain things. And this happened repeatedly. Either they want Malja dead (in which case fight to kill and don't talk about it) or else they don't (in which case, call off the aggressive minions). But maybe I'm looking too hard for a logical plot in this kind of book.

Now if this sounds quite negative, this is just how it took me. Maybe on a different day, under different circumstances, I'd have enjoyed it more. I had to keep stopping and starting, which was disruptive; on a long journey, where I could have got really into it, it would have worked better for me. On the plus side, it's well written, with just a few minor typos, it has good pacing and plenty of action, as well as an imaginative range of beasties, which added a degree of unpredictability to every encounter. The use of magic, both via tattoo or by music, is ingenious, and I like the idea that the misuse of magic caused the downfall of civilisation, so that magicians are now both feared and loathed (and often kept in slavery). The role of magic to provide power (in batteries, for instance) is a neat idea. The encounters with the remnants of civilisation were very cool. And I really like the implication that modern civilisation before the Devastation was driven by very powerful magic (like electricity, presumably). So although it didn't entirely work for me, I still enjoyed it. Three stars.

Review: 'The Duchess of the Shallows' by Neil McGarry and Daniel Ravipinto

Some books draw you in with some dramatic piece of action right at the start; a battle, perhaps, or something intriguing and unexplained. Some start off slow and gentle, and build up to the action later. This one starts with the characters, with Duchess and Lysander, a relationship, a little bit of history and yes, a bit of a mystery, too. And within a chapter, it's tugging at me, making me care about these people. Some books take their full length to do that, and some (quite a few actually) never do it, but these two authors have a sure touch for creating the emotional resonance that I look for in a book.

The heart of this book is Duchess, the sixteen year old orphan from a noble family, who was brought up in anonymity by a baker and has now been turfed out to make her way on the streets. This all sounds fairly ho-hum, but it's given a fresh and original twist here, and the mystery of what really happened to Duchess and her family underpins the whole book. Then there is Lysander, her sort-of-but-not-really boyfriend, who is, to be honest, more interesting than she is. Or maybe I'm just naturally drawn to roguish, amusing, charming men rather than to sixteen year old girls, who knows. But their relationship is lovely, most unusual, and beautifully revealed.

The world-building is, in one sense, limited, because all the action takes place within the city of Rodaas. However, the city is well described, with all its different districts, each with a very distinct feel. I'm not sure I find it totally credible that they would stay so separate (in real life they would blur at the edges and blend together, I would think), but I suppose it all happens by imperial edict. Still, it worked very well to give the city a believable feel, and the very nice map helped. I also liked the atmospheric fogs that roll in from the sea at regular intervals - that's a very evocative idea, which works well to give the place an other-worldly quality, mysterious and slightly creepy.

In some ways this is a conventional setting for a fantasy novel. There's an Empress and the nobility, where men rule the roost and women do what they're told; there are merchants and craftsmen and traders and guilds, and all the usual paraphernalia; and at the bottom of the heap are the thieves and street urchins and beggars. There is law and order (of a sort) but also corruption and a degree of brutality. And there are prostitutes (male and female) who tread an uneasy path between the classes, being low in the social standing themselves but taking their clientèle from the upper ranks. There's religion, too, three main ones, recognised by the empire, and numerous minor or unusual ones, and again there are intriguing but well delineated differences between them. Magic? Possibly, but it's not very clear.

Then there's the plot. The premise is that Duchess has been thrown out of the bakery (for unknown reasons) but has been given a special coin which might allow her to join one of the elite gangs of the city, the Greys. To do this she has to undertake an initiation test. Now, there's a long tradition in the same vein: the hero (or heroine, in this case) is called upon to undertake a seemingly impossible task, and this has certain advantages. It drives the plot, for one thing, and it ramps up the tension, by setting up the possibility that if she fails, she will die (or worse). I'm not a big fan of this kind of plot device. For one thing, it always seems so much more sensible to just say no, and settle for a nice respectable job, or at least guaranteed survival. And of course no one really believes she's going to fail. So it's all a bit artificial. But never mind.

Once the Impossible Task (tm) gets under way, there are a few contrivances to allow Duchess to get to where she needs to be, and to case the joint, as it were, and this part is all a bit predictable. But once things start moving, the story hits the turbo button and becomes a terrific page turner, and not predictable at all. In fact, there's a moment in the middle of the action where Duchess has to make a difficult decision. I expected the authors to opt for cheap sentimentality here and take the easy route, but no, not at all, and they faced up to the consequences too. This was a very nice piece of writing. Details: (see SPOILER below.)

The ending was neatly done, even if very slightly predictable (well, even I guessed bits of it), and it did seem sometimes as if things just worked out a little too conveniently, although partly that was just the complications of the various factions. I'm not sure that I've got them all clear in my head, even now (it was complicated), but even so I liked the way it all felt like a whole array of multi-layered games going on simultaneously, with only odd moves becoming visible here and there. To say that everyone's motives were questionable would be an understatement. But the authors managed to create a satisfying resolution for this book, while also laying the foundations for future books, not always easy to do.

I have a few minor quibbles: I would have liked to see something of the world outside Rodaas, for example. The city felt just slightly claustrophobic. And while I don't normally comment on cover images, this one, while it nicely depicts Duchess herself, is a bit too much the conventional fantasy-character-in-a-hood. I would have liked to see Lysander on there too (but maybe that's just me!), and also something of fog-bound Rodaas as well. Also, although the authors have attempted to create something of a past for Rodaas, the few snippets of events and stories we get don't really give the impression of a fully realised history.

On the plus side, the writing is excellent, drawing out the atmosphere of Rodaas and creating fully rounded characters. There are virtually no typos or clunky moments. I particularly liked the subtleties of the exchanges with Minette and Uncle Cornelius, with all their double meanings and innuendo, where the reader is given just enough information to work out what is really being said without being spoonfed. Duchess is a sympathetic main character right from the start, and did I mention that I really like Lysander? I think I may have... A really enjoyable read. Four stars.

SPOILER DETAILS:

I thought she would race to Lysander's rescue, for sure, when he was captured by the Brutes, and was pleasantly surprised when she turned away and left him to his fate. In a grittier book, he would have died or been maimed as a result, but this is not a gritty book and fate intervened to rescue him more or less unscathed. But it did damage their relationship, as it should (although this gets slurred over a bit later, sadly). It did cross my mind, however, that if the Brutes had dragged Lysander off to the underground chamber to be tortured, as they intended, they would have been there just as Duchess needed to make her escape that way. Which would have been interesting.

Review: 'High Wizardry' by Diane Duane

This is the third in the Young Wizards series. I quite enjoyed the first, but no more than that, and was prepared to abandon the series. However, I was persuaded to read the second, and after a mediocre first half it turned out to be wonderful - unexpectedly deep and moving for a young adult book. I bought this one at the same time, since it was about computers and therefore highly appropriate for geeky me.

Memo to all authors: technology moves on so fast that whatever current gadgets you include as part of your plot will undoubtedly be obsolete before the book hits the stores. All the references to green screens and MBasic and diskettes and ones and zeroes - they just don't age well. Much better to be vague about the details, rather than have your readers rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter only a few years later.

Rather than focus on Nita and Kit, the newbie wizards of the previous two books, this one is about younger sister Dairine, a paragon of intellect and self-taught knowledge, who becomes a wizard too, and sets off into the universe armed only with a magic computer and a frighteningly high level of self-confidence. This part of the story was quite dull, unless you like a lot of details about planets and moons and galaxies. I rather liked the inter-galactic travel terminal, though, although I rolled my eyes rather at the inexplicably helpful stranger who gets Dairine out of a jam. Even though the author explains it away with an airy handwave - sometimes people do help out strangers - it still feels like a plot cheat.

But eventually Dairine gets to somewhere more interesting, and Nita and Kit set off in pursuit and... no, honestly, this is not working for me. There a section where they're trying to think of the worst possible thing ever, and decide that, actually, burning dogs in cars is the worst, far worse than killing children or adults, and they would do absolutely anything to stop it. No, sorry, I can't subscribe to a philosophy like that. There are far worse things. Destroying entire planets, for one thing. Or stars, or galaxies, or whatever it is the Big Bad is supposed to be doing. Get a grip, people.

But then, eventually, Dairine gets to where she's going and starts doing stuff, and yes, it gets more interesting. There's a point where she's arguing logic and philosophy with a bunch of computers, essentially (not wanting to give away too much here), which is terrific and reaches the heights of 'Deep Wizardry'. But then it's back to hurling spells round, and the book lost me again. To be honest, by the time it got to the final confrontation with the Big Bad, it all got too easy. Dairine was just too powerful, and really, that's not interesting. She knows everything, she can do everything, she understands everything that's going on, and she can respond far quicker than anyone else. She didn't even have to learn how to do this stuff, she just knows, or else the computer tells her. And the whole parrot business... bleah.

I'm not really sure how this would play out for the target young adult demographic. There are some incredibly clever and imaginative ideas in here, and a lot of knowledge or research behind it. Unfortunately, I found there were just too many info-dumps explaining physics or computer theory, the magic was too easy, and the plot not interesting enough to compensate. Two stars.

Review: 'Killing Cupid' by Mark Edwards and Louise Voss

I don't quite know what to make of this. I wasn't much impressed with the only other book I've read by these authors, 'Catch Your Death', which had a great premise and some high-energy action, but suffered from poor characterisation and implausible plot devices. So it crossed my mind that this book might turn out to be a mistake. It's cheap, however, and the writing is competent enough, and on certain levels I found it enjoyable.

It's unusual to have two authors, but this book is perfect for it. The two characters, Siobhan and Alex, have alternate chapters, both written in the first person, and I presume that Mark Edwards wrote Alex and Louise Voss wrote Siobhan (although perhaps it would be more interesting if it were the other way round). Alex is perhaps the more convincing character. He comes across as a very believable young man of a certain type - socially inept, self-centred, arrogant but also insecure, and thinking about sex the whole time. Or perhaps I should say, he conforms to my idea of young men of a certain type; I don't really have a clue whether this is an accurate portrayal of the male psyche, but it seems convincing enough to me.

Siobhan is a little less believable. She's required to fulfil the role of self-confident older woman (in Alex's eyes), while also being quite timid and insecure, and it's an uneasy juxtaposition. In particular, when Alex starts stalking her, she is remarkably slow to realise what is going on. She is obsessively tidy, for example, yet she convinces herself that she left things scattered around her house, rather than remembering the missing key and realising straight away that someone had broken in. And you have to be peculiarly dense to imagine that you could order expensive lingerie online and not remember it. But it's a small point.

One thing makes me a little uncomfortable. Because we can see inside Alex's head, we know that he means Siobhan no harm. He is, in his twisted little way, courting her. He sends her flowers and lingerie and expensive clothes. OK, he breaks into her house and uses her credit card to do it, but still... She is freaked out but she also thinks - well, he's kind of cute. Wrong. There's nothing romantic or cute about a man stalking a woman. It's just creepy. Even if the point is that he's superficially normal and there's a psychotic nutter inside all of us (a fairly questionable premise, but never mind), it's still creepy, and no rational woman, surely, is going to be turned on by it. Well, not in real life, anyway, but this is fiction, and there does seem to be a huge demand for books with creepy stalker-type heroes, especially the blood-sucking type, so what do I know.

And oddly, as the plot burbles along, it actually begins to feel quite plausible. Alex's instant distraction by another woman (and sex!) is perfectly in character, and even Siobhan's slide from freaked out victim to angry obsession seems no more than mildly odd. She already has an obsessive personality after all. And each little step along the way seems, if not exactly natural, then at least not such a stretch from what went before. I would probably have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been constantly wondering - would a real person actually behave that way?

In the end, it never quite worked for me. I could admire the carefully thought out plot and the neat little twists and turns at just the right places, but the characters never quite came alive for me and the story was just a little too laboured at times. I see what the authors were trying to do and I admire the attempt to rationalise just how a couple of seemingly normal people can end up in that situation, but I'm not quite sure what position the reader is expected to take - sympathise? be horrified? be amused? or simply feel there but for the grace of God and all that? Are we really supposed to empathise with people who do this kind of stuff? I'm all for the anti-hero and likeable villains and so on, but these two are fairly charmless. An interesting idea, but for me, ultimately unsuccessful. Three stars.

Review: 'Draykon' by Charlotte E English

This is right on the very edge of my comfort zone. The main character, Llandry, is a diminutive humanoid with, erm, wings. Are we talking about a fairy here? I'm not sure I really DO fairies. And yet... There is enough here to intrigue. There are various different adjoining kingdoms, some with some kind of technology, which is interesting enough all by itself. And then some seem to live in permanent day, some in permanent night, and some in a kind of twilight zone, if I've understood correctly (which I probably haven't; it's complicated). Then there are the 'gates' to the Upper world and the Lower world, and various creatures can (and do) pop through from the other side, and that is another kind of interesting. There are sorcerers and summoners and all sorts of magic going on, and yes, I'm definitely intrigued. And this world is populated with people who have proper families and relationships and jobs and pets even (creatures from beyond the gates, but still...) and I have to say, I like it. And Llandry herself is not like any heroine I've ever come across before. She has panic attacks, for one thing. So it's different, but I really like it. Just don't mention the wings.

The opening is lovely; a little fey, rather strange but quite beautiful, in its way. And once the main story gets under way, it sucks you in and it's hard to put down. What is going on with these odd gems that Llandry has discovered? What are the creatures popping up here, there and everywhere? Why are random gates appearing? It's a rapid acceleration into a fairly breath-taking sequence of events, which I found very readable - one of those just-one-more-chapter type books.

I love the world-building in this book. I have absolutely zero idea how it all hangs together - there's an Upper World and a Middle World and a Lower World and... well, that's about it really. But I love the ideas - the sudden shifts and the strange plants and colours and wildlife. And the odd light. It's all slightly surreal, like a dream-world, and the author conveys that brilliantly. It would make a cracking film, actually.

The characters are all very likeable in realistic ways. I very much liked Llandry and her parents, and the mysterious Devary. The other main character is Eva, a Summoner (someone who has an empathic bond with various creatures, and can find them and bend them to her will). The various minor characters - sorcerers, summoners, Eva's fiancé - have their own quirky charm and feel realistic, with histories and emotions and relationships. And many of the odd creatures are very much characters in their own right.

Some quibbles: there are a lot of characters to keep track of, of various races, and the names are no help, being seemingly random collections of letters strung together. Without a map or some kind of guide, it's impossible to separate the various kingdoms (countries?), or work out what all the different plants and animals are (although, on the whole, it doesn't matter much). And I struggled to understand the whole business of Daylands and Darklands and the Night Cloak. At one point I was reduced to trying to draw a basic map, just to work out some of the journeys later in the story. The author is working on a proper map, so that will be a great help when it's available.

I have to confess that this is one of the most unpredictable books I've ever read. There was simply no knowing what was going to happen next, and none of it felt contrived at all (well - only a little, and not in an unbelievable way). And there's an event at the end which completely blew my mind; there was no way on earth I could ever have seen that coming. And, yes, I will definitely be reading the rest of the series, I absolutely have to find out what exactly is going on and how it all works out. This is not a book for everyone, it would be too quirky and fey for some tastes, but it's a nicely written, intriguing story and I really liked it. Even the wings stopped bothering me after a while. Four stars.

Review: 'The King's Blood' by Daniel Abraham

Daniel Abraham is one of my must-read authors. I reckon his Long Price Quartet to be the finest work of modern fantasy I've yet read, and his current sci-fi and urban fantasy series are coming along nicely too. Yes, he's prolific, and, even better, he writes fast - a new book a year for each series. No long waits. This book is the second in the Dagger And Coin Quintet, his first attempt at a more traditional form of fantasy, and as such is still settling in. The first book was promising, if a bit uneven. This one follows the same four characters, Cithrin, Geder, Dawson and Marcus, plus one extra, Dawson's wife Clara. Cithrin is the figurehead for her bank, but kept on a short leash by the bank's notary, Pyk, who has an unimaginative risk-averse strategy and a strong personal dislike of Cithrin. Marcus is still a guard with a history. Geder has accidentally reversed into a position of great influence. Dawson is still a traditionalist nobleman and friend of the king. Clara is still the smart woman behind the public figure of her husband. These last three are involved in the political machinations surrounding Aster, the king's son and heir, in Camnipol. Meanwhile, Master Kit, an apparently minor character in the previous book, is following his own agenda against the spider goddess.

Like most fantasy, this one takes a while to get going. The early chapters are reflective, and work well to set the scene as well as gently reminding the reader of the events of the previous book. I never felt at a loss, wondering who a character was or what was being referred to. The writing style is elegantly spare, with some nicely lyrical flourishes that never seem overblown. This is a writer at the very top of his game (did I mention I'm a big fan?). Even so, the slow pace early on is a bit of a turn-off. I'm not mad keen on the current fad for named point of view chapters; it's all too easy to turn the page and think: hmm, another chapter about X, and put the book down. But after the initial settling in phase, things begin to get going and the pace picks up nicely, and somewhere around the midpoint, the proverbial hits the whatsit and all hell breaks loose.

The world-building is a little less perfunctory in this book. For the first time, there seems to be some real depth and structure to the various nations, so that the few cities which have a role seem less like islands in the midst of vast expanses of nothing very much. There is some attempt, too, to expand on the various races (the original First Bloods, and the twelve races created by the dragons long ago to fulfil various roles). I still get them mixed up, mind you, but it doesn't seem to matter much, and it was nice to see the Drowned close up (I have a suspicion they're going to be important). There are some hints about the dragons themselves, too, and what happened to them. There is also plenty of description of places and little snippets of history, which work very well to illuminate the author's created world without becoming too heavy on the info-dump scale. We also get to see a little more of the religion (or cult, maybe?) of the spider goddess, and there are some moments here that are truly chilling.

I feel the slightest tinge of disappointment that Abraham, a man of infinitely fertile imagination, has plonked his characters into such a conventional world. Even though he set out from the start to create a more traditional form, this is very much the off-the-shelf fantasy world - a patriarchal society where men rule and plot and fight as kings and dukes and soldiers, women stay home and raise families and broker marriage deals, slaves do a lot of the work, and virginity is prized in a bride. Beyond the nobility and wealthy, fortunately, there is more variety, and the economic element (the coin of the series title) introduces a different perspective. Within the banking world, for instance, women can and do take an equal part in affairs (as Cithrin demonstrates). And it has to be said that so far the author has done a very good job of pointing out the deficiencies of a hereditary patriarchal system, which throws up a fair number of idiots and incompetents, thrusts unsuitable people into roles of great power, sometimes entirely by accident, and wastes fifty percent of its resources by leaving them sitting at home with their embroidery. It's also a system which doesn't seem to leave many options apart from war or not-war. There are three more books in the series for him to make his point (or not) on this, so I'll reserve judgment until it's done.

The characters always felt like real, rounded personalities, and that is even more true now. Geder, in particular, is one to ponder. I've no doubt readers will be arguing for years about his peculiar mix of naivité, insecurity and sudden bursts of vicious cruelty, but Cithrin and Marcus also have abrupt swings between common sense and reckless stupidity. Dawson I still find dull, and although Clara has her moments, she has too little to do here to really shine. Even the minor roles have great depth, and you really feel that they have lives outside the confines of the story, where they just get on with things until their arcs intersect with the main plotlines once more. Abraham has an amazing ability to show both the good and bad in people, so that even someone like Pyk, the notary, or the pirate, either of whom could have been made into a caricature mini-villain, are given complex motivation which brings them perilously close to being sympathetic. All the characters behave in believable ways, and if occasionally you feel the author's hand nudging them along so that they meet up at convenient times, that's acceptable, I think.

I found the politics of the first book quite confusing - so many odd names and titles and nations and shifting allegiances, and the difficulty of not knowing quite who's important and who is just passing through for a chapter or two. This one is much easier to follow, although whether this is the author's surer hand or just comes from greater familiarity with the story I can't say. But Abraham has an uncanny ability to toss up the difficult questions. Is a decision right just because it seems logical? Where exactly does (or should) loyalty lie? Who can you ever trust? Which is the greater power, military might or money (the fundamental question of the series)? The hazy boundaries between truth and faith and certainty. And then there's the matter of unintended consequences - in the last book, it was the events at Vanai that changed everything, this time it's Dawson's conscience that spirals out of control. And as always Abraham shows us both sides of every equation, so that there is no black or white, no good or evil, only people doing the best they can with whatever they have to work with, and trying to do what seems right at the time. Sometimes it turns out well, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it's impossible to tell, and sometimes you just wonder, what on earth were they thinking? (Cithrin, I'm looking at you here.) And yet in all sorts of ways it makes sense.

Abraham is often compared with George R R Martin, which is probably unfair to both authors, and I suspect arises largely because they are personal friends. In reality, they are very different writers. Martin has larger than life characters, a cast of thousands, a depressing hyper-medieval setting and a sprawling mess of tangled plotlines spilling over two continents and numerous doorstopper volumes. Abraham populates his books with believably realistic characters, a tightly woven plot and a deeply intelligent sub-text. If Martin were a painter, he would be hurling great sweeps of colour over the entire gallery wall; Abraham would be more of an oil on canvas man, painstakingly building the layers, every brushstroke placed with considered precision. I love them both in their different ways.

A better comparison for this series is with The Long Price Quartet, Abraham's much admired debut work, and no, this doesn't quite reach those heights of awesomeness. The Dragon's Path was a good, promising start to the series, and The King's Blood is better, an excellent next step, but not quite extraordinary. For me, fantasy is about the otherness of a world that is alien, not like ours, and where the differences emerge - the spider priests, the cunning men, the lost dragons, that tantalising glimpse of the Drowned - the book is spine-tinglingly good. There are moments, too, when the characters step outside the boundaries and do something quite unexpected (well, unexpected to me, anyway, although always within the parameters of their natures), and these too raise the book to a different level.

However, the conventional nature of the setting is too commonplace to be interesting; there's nothing surprising about men waving swords around while women stitch, and I do like to be surprised. Nor do the characters draw me in. Geder, of course, is fascinating, in a horrifying way, and Cithrin and Marcus are interesting too; Dawson and Clara not so much (I hope Clara has more to do in later books, since she has potential). But none of them really resonate with me (by which I mean, do I care what happens to them? and the answer is no, not a great deal, not yet). More worryingly, the book never pulled me into that desperate got-to-know-what-happens-next state; even at the height of the Camnipol mayhem, it was just too easy to put the book down (partly those pesky chapters named after characters, I suppose - it just breaks the tension). So no staying up till 3am to finish it. The final few chapters were a bit choppy, too, because of the need to tie up loose ends and set the pieces in place for the next book.

Having said all that, these are trivial complaints and this is still way better than the vast majority of fantasy around these days. It's not high on action, but what there is makes sense and has consequences that have to be dealt with. Abraham's elegant prose is a pleasure to read, the tight plotting is masterful, and the characters have a very human mixture of intelligence and idiocy, common sense and irrational impulse, completely believable. As always, there is a raft of thought-provoking ideas here for those who want them, particularly in the latter half of the book. I have every confidence that (as with The Long Price) each individual book in the series will be even better than the one before. A good four stars. Highly recommended.

Review: 'A Wizard of Earthsea' by Ursula le Guin

The is only the second of le Guin's books I've read, and the first fantasy (the other was the sci-fi 'The Left Hand of Darkness'), so it's hard to generalise but there are some similarities. The dense, even-toned prose works well here, turning a simple coming-of-age story into something more mythological, with all the necessary poetic and lyrical expressions which never become too flowery. This is not your average fantasy, and perhaps it's more suited to its age (it was first published in 1968) than the present, which specialises in faster, action-packed adventures, but it reminded me a little of the style of 'The Lord of the Rings' and I rather liked it.

The world is an archipelago, a mass of mostly small islands, some little more than rocks or sand bars, so that everything depends on boats and sea-faring, and that gives a very unusual feel right from the start. A great deal of the book is spent skimming the waves in one boat or another, sheltering for a day or two at this island or that, and then off again, and le Guin makes this seem perfectly normal. There are little two line descriptions of towns or ports or island communities, each one subtly different from the last, which effortlessly convey the variable nature of the world of Earthsea. So many fantasy writers forget that variability, so their worlds seem blandly uniform and therefore unreal, but here it is done exceptionally well.

The magic system is hard to describe. It depends on knowing the 'true' name of things, and calling upon the innate power of the world, but it comes at a price, and the use of magic is restricted by the need to keep all things in equilibrium. There is also an element of 'with great power comes great responsibility'. There are many people with some magical ability, but most become no more than informal village witches or sorcerers, and only a few become true mages.

The story centres around Ged, following his life from his tiny mountain village through a brief apprenticeship to a mage, and then to the island of Roke, to learn at the academy there (a wizard school, if you like), where his great ability is unleashed, but the flaws in his youthful personality lead to near disaster. Since we're told at the start of the book that Ged goes on to become famed in legend for his skills as a wizard, we never fear for him, but his journeyings to set right his mistake are no less interesting for that, and full of atmosphere and mystery. The ending, while quite easy to predict, was still very satisfying. Most of the characters are only lightly sketched, but they have a great deal of resonance for all that, especially Vetch, Ged's friend at the academy, and Ogion, his first mage tutor, who both have great wisdom, although in different ways.

This is a wonderful read, partly for the beautifully lyrical writing, partly for the simple but intriguing story, and partly for the underlying depth to much of it. There is a great deal here about power, about the nature of humanity, about the need for balance, about hubris and wisdom and faith and friendship, and many more such themes, which are very thought-provoking. While technically this is probably classed as young adult, it reads just fine for adults too. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys mythological tales or sagas. A good four stars.

Review: 'Daughter of the Empire' by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts

This book ought to have been right up my street; a non-medieval world, with limited magic, a slow pace driven by politics rather than endless battles, and a strong-minded female lead - what's not to like? In my case, the answer is: almost everything.

 The opening felt surprisingly clunky and uncertain.Many fantasy works start with a dramatic event to draw the reader in, and leave the details of the background to wait for a quieter moment, but this tries to do both at once, with unconvincing results. To some extent it's necessary to explain the unusually high levels of required etiquette, which is required to account for the protagonist's unnatural calmness in a crisis, but the authors simultaneously tried to convey her deep emotions, and this made for a very uneven few chapters. And somehow the situation felt rather forced to me. Are there really no other members of the family? This seems oddly shortsighted in a hereditary system (lots of babies, people; how hard is that to understand?).

The whole story rests on the shoulders of Mara, the seventeen year old protagonist. Given that the story opens with her about to take lifelong vows at a religious order, she seems initially unsuited for the leadership role thrust upon her, and perhaps that would have been a more interesting line to follow. However, it soon becomes clear that she is the conventional spirited and ambitious protagonist, quite prepared to be ruthless to achieve her political aims, and also prepared to take risks and break with tradition where she deems it necessary. Unfortunately, this very ruthlessness makes her something of an unsympathetic character. She has no qualms, it seems, about killing off slaves, rebellious soldiers or anyone else who gets in her way, or simply to send a message to her rivals. And considering that the concept of honour is deeply embedded in this society, she has (in fact, they all have) a very curious sense of honour which allows her to do (apparently) whatever the hell she wants.

The other main characters are all very black and white. Her family servants are the ultimate in loyal retainers, willing to die for her, but also intelligent, resourceful, competent... you get the picture. Her husband, carefully selected solely to create a protective alliance and give Mara an heir, is portrayed as an uncaring and violent brute. Some attempt is made to paint a more subtle picture of Buntokapi later on, but it's really too late by this time. Her enemies are no more than ciphers: the rival leader, driven by long-standing feuds whose origins are lost in time; the stupid men driven by lust; the vengeful woman. Only the Warlord has seems like a genuinely complex character. The rest are no more than lightly sketched background the better to illuminate Mara's perfection .

And here we come to the real problem with this book. [See SPOILER below]

So at this point I'm seriously disappointed. But then there's a seemingly trivial interaction between two supposedly minor characters, at the end of which there's a reveal which changes everything. All of a sudden the political shenanigans become much more complicated and very interesting indeed. For a moment the book gleams with possibilities. Sadly the rest of the book isn't like this. And in fact, immediately after this we're back to Mara being terribly clever and underhanded and devious. I would like her a bit better if she were not so downright nasty to people. Yes, I know she has reasons to be cautious of anyone approaching her, but surely the honour system would deny the sort of ritual humiliation she indulges in.

I was really looking forward to reading this. It presses all the right buttons for me. I like a world that's not a mud-bespattered caricature of the middle ages. I like the system of honour and the rigid protocol. I like a book which builds slowly without leaping from one set-piece battle to the next. I like a story built around characters. And yet none of it worked for me. The protocol and honour seemed to be no more than a clever plot device. The slowness of the book made it draggy at times - there were whole chapters devoted to seemingly trivial events which I lost interest in long before their purpose was revealed. And I hated Mara - really, really hated her. Are we actually supposed to root for a heroine who devises such unpleasant - no, downright evil schemes? There is nothing at all likeable, to my mind, about such a cruelly manipulative person. I can see the attraction in a woman facing up to adversity with spirit and determination and yes, even ruthlessness, so other readers may enjoy it much better, but it's not for me. So two stars for effort, I suppose, grudgingly.

***** SPOILER *****

Everything Mara does, no matter how dangerous or risky, turns out implausibly well. This really isn't much of a spoiler, actually, since it's obvious right from the start that she will ultimately triumph, but I expected her to have some setbacks along the way. But no, everything works out exactly as she planned it and, honestly, this simply isn't interesting. She needs more warriors, so she goes out to recruit outlaws. She needs the cho-ja, she gets them. She wants her husband dead, so he dies. This was the final straw, for me. There were only three possible outcomes to Mara's nasty little plot against Buntokapi: global war, family war or the brutish, stupid husband who beats up his own wife suddenly turns all honourable and commits ritual suicide. I mean, really? All at once, he's being noble? And this man who can't control his own temper comes back to the wife who set him up and says magnanimously, 'Well, that was very clever, wife, you beat me fair and square there.' If it were me, I'd have gutted her first, and honour be hanged. What an evil witch. Ugh.