So, I ran across this today on Google…
The first book in a new fantasy blockbuster trilogy, set in his renowned and bestselling First Law world, from New York Times bestselling author Joe Abercrombie. … Google Books
Expected on: April 16, 2019
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Of course it’s a year away but I am looking forward to it.
Me too. First Law was some of the finest fantasy I’ve read. Really great stuff.
Joe – I still recall reading “Red Country” and thinking: This guy has his westerns down.
Yeah, and in a good way. The rest of First Law is gritty fantasy, though. He’s a great writer.
It’s an oddly unexplored genre: fantasy westerns. There’s China Mieville’s Iron Council, and Kelly Sue DeConnick’s comic book series Pretty Deadly, but I can’t think of any others. Red Council is definitely the best of Abercrombie’s Circle of the World books. He just got better and better the more he wrote.
There’s the comic series Jonah Hex (no idea if it’s ever been any good, haven’t read it and it’s been around for ages), Cherie Priest has done several Steampunk westerns, there’s John Hornor Jacobs’ Incorruptibles series, Lila Bowen’s series starting with Wake of Vultures, the middle trilogy of Mistborn books by Brandon Sanderson, Laura Anne Gilman’s got a series starting with Silver on the Road, there’s Deadlands licensed fiction, Patricia C. Wrede’s Frontier Magic books, arguably parts of Stephen King’s Dark Tower books are, there’s R.S. Belcher’s Golgotha books, Gemma Files’ Hexslinger series, the Sixth Gun comic series, Felix Gilman’s The Half-Made World…
So after rereading all of the Peter Watts books, I’m looking for other intense stuff to read. I went to my Amazon wishlist and saw that the most recent book there is
We shall see…
I’ve only read Blindsight and Echopraxia, what other Watts books should I check out?
I just finished this novel a couple of days ago. It takes some patience, even more than Harkaway’s other novels. It is nearly 700 pages long (not obvious when you’re reading on Kindle) and it has Harkaway’s characteristic not-quite-magical-maybe? realism baked in. It ends up telling a coherent story, but there are certainly moments where it feels like it’s just descending into surrealism for its own sake. (It’s actually not–the surrealism has a point.) The book is more like 4 or 5 novelettes kind of folded and pressed into each other like pastry dough (or a sword made from tamagahane steel.) They’re all fairly compelling, especially the Ethiopian painter and the Roman chemist. The denouement is pretty spectacular and worth sticking with the novel through its more turgid sections to get to.
As far as intensity goes, I’d say Gnomon isn’t it. It’s a slow build and its moments of violence are far between, kind of antiseptic, and characterized by the same hazy sense of reality that pervades the novel. If you’ve never read Harkaway, I’d recommend Angelmaker to start with before tackling this monster. That said, Gnomon is a good, but challenging read.
Thanks for the info. Good to know.
The Rifter Trilogy is pretty good. Not, IMHO, as good as the ones you read. But still a great ride. It’s also free on his website. http://www.rifters.com/
He also has a new book out
Have it, but haven’t read it yet.
Huh, reviews talk about this book as being “short” and some reviewers say it’s just a novella, how many pages is it?
If you click on the “Paperback” edition and scroll down to the product details, it shows 192 pages. I like short novels. This now has my interest.
What? That’s not short! Jeez, is everything supposed to be War and Peace?
I agree. I appreciate when authors can make their point and tell a good story in less than 400 pages.
I thought a good author had to describe every meal in detail.
I enjoyed it. Worth the preorder. I hope he’s working on the sequel to Echopraxia now.
I mean, the shortest book I would call a novel that I have read in the past 20+ years came in around 280 pages.
I’m not too hung up on the semantics of how we define books but what the heck, I opened this can of worms, might as well see it through.
I am not an expert on the matter but Wikipedia suggests that a novel is generally considered over 40,000 words. Word Counter Blog tells me that 20,000 words will work out to about 40 pages single spaced, 80 pages double spaced. So, a novel would need to be at least 80 pages single spaced or 160 pages double, and as @Matt_W points out, Freeze Frame Revolution is 192 and should meet that criteria.
But, in the interest of needlessly complicating things, the Writers Relief Inc. blog says these things are not set in stone and a novella could be defined as being between 30,000 and 60,000 words, or (I guess) between 50/100 pages to 120/240 pages, which would capture this book in its range.
I’ll leave it to the pedants on Amazon’s comments page to work that one out. I’ll only say that, as with movies, songs and video games, I do not equate a longer book with being a better book.
I think it may be a novel, but it’s sure as hell a short one if it is.