Government overview and Government competition cause them more hurt than the monsters. As our hero to be throws his boss out of the thirteenth floor window we know something is wrong here. If you enjoy a tale that is mindlessly entertaining, a heavily action based urban fantasy, with an accountant who is built like an outhouse and talented fighter and shootist then this is the book for you.

The Sworn has a typical Martin dark opening as plague and famine scourge the Winter Kingdoms, a vast invasion force is mustering from beyond the Northern Sea.

At its heart, a dark spirit mage wields the blood magic of ancient, vanquished gods. Summoner-King Martris Drayke must attempt to meet this threat. Neighbouring countrys reel toward anarchy while plague decimates their leaders.

Drayke must seek new allies from among the living – and the dead – as an untested generation of rulers face their first battle. All fine so far but then someone disturbs the legendary Dread as they rest in a millennia-long slumber beneath sacred barrows.

Their warrior guardians, the Sworn, know the Dread could be pivotal as a force for great good or evil. But if it’s the latter, could even the Summoner-King’s sorcery prevail?

Well I’m about half way thru at the moment and things look definately difficult dark dank and dodgy to me!

The Dread
To finish of this Fallen Kings duology ( an exuberant adventure of swordsmanship, sorcery and a new terror threatening a kingdom in crisis). Our Hero King Tris Drayke takes what remains of the Margolan army north to fight a war Margolan is ill-prepared to fight.

As spies confirm Tris’ worst fear a new threat rises across the sea: a dark summoner who intends to make the most of the Winter Kingdoms’ weakness.

In Isencroft, King Donelan is assassinated and Tris’s wife, Kiara, his daughter, will now have no choice except to return and claim the crown. The rogue mage’s agents will go to any length to prevent her from reaching her goal.

Despite all this Kiara and Tris must discover the truth behind the dark summoner, the mysterious power surrounding their infant son, and face the awesome power of the Dread as they rise from their barrows for the first time in over a millennium.

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This book is a story of: a girl; an accordionist; some fanatical Germans; a Jewish fist

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Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder – and that the killer is a member of his own

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Thirty-six years after publication this much-loved classic is still as popular as ever. Ingenious die-cut holes bring this much-loved nursery rhyme to life, and Pam Adams’s illustrations lend humour and vibrancy to the

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Even tho my copy had been double double discounted (and this on its first day!!) I had value for money worries. This was not Mr Smith at his prime. Far from it in fact. Since the Tata novels he has been spending more and more time talking about action in the bedroom than the boardroom. We soon got the idea with this one. Without giving too much away it goes very much as standard. Boy and girl meet – girl dislikes boy – heoric handsome boy performs service only he could – - girl changes mind and demonstrates this change all over the rest of the book. Even his friend finds girl etc.

The story and its theme are tried and tested and a world leading wordsmith like er Mr Smith should have no problem with it but it just does not gell. I can see there being a geed number of comments about this one.

Excerts etc

Another outstanding adventure from one of the world’s best loved storytellers

Hazel Bannock is the heir to the Bannock Oil Corp, one of the major oil producers with global reach. While cruising in the Indian Ocean, Hazel’s private yacht is hijacked by African pirates. Hazel is not on board at the time, but her nineteen year old daughter, Cayla, is kidnapped and held to ransom. The pirates demand a crippling twenty billion dollar ransom for her release. Complicated political and diplomatic considerations render the civilized major powers incapable of intervening.

When Hazel is given evidence of the horrific torture which Cayla is being subjected to, she calls on Hector Cross to help her rescue her daughter. Hector is the owner and operator of Cross Bow Security, the company which is contracted to Bannock Oil to provide all their security. He is a formidable fighting man. Between them Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands.

Cayla was not certain what had awakened her. She thought she must have heard something. She sat up sleepily on the rumpled bed and listened with her head on one side.

You give it a read and let me know.
Philip
http://singlesseeksingles.com

Last Argument of Kings

” Last Argument Of Kings: The First Law: Book Three:” as Amazon refers to it is not the end of our journey with Joe Abercrombie I’m already halfway thru Best Served Cold but more of that at a later date.

Last Argument Of Kings is difficult to review without giving away too much of what could be described as an apocalyptic ending.

An author should always end with the best and with Last Argument of Kings this theory is put into practice. The last of Joe Abercrombie’s debut fantasy collection, The First Law, demonstrates everything a finale should: gives some answers, and ties together the loose ends from a variety of plots. This series was always a swords and some small sorcerytale that used a wry dialogue with interleafed plotlines. Its not a comedy there is a large amount of tounge in cheek humour.

Its probably worthwile plagarising a paragraph from Colin P Linsey who puts it rather well:

“I’d hazard a guess though that there will be some readers who may not like how this series ended…because it isn’t necessarily pretty and it certainly isn’t a fairy tale ending. Unlike those tidier fantasy stories, Abercrombie doesn’t forget that battlefield corpses don’t just magically disappear and besieged cities aren’t magically made whole at the end of the day. His is a dirty, gritty world every bit as nasty as medieval Europe and the story and the endings reflect this adherence to realism. As Logen Nine-Fingers often says, you have to be realistic. Abercrombie definitely is realistic and the story reflects it. Wounds come at the price of disfigurement and death, people will do awful things to accomplish their goals, and people aren’t charitably motivated. The weak get squashed, soldiers get maimed, the powerful do horrendous evil to hang onto their power and the more things change, the more they stay the same. You have to be realistic about these things dear reader, and that realism is what sets this trilogy apart and makes it such a great read. ”

So last its over. The dead are dead and most of the living seem so. The rich are rich and the poor are er… poor. It remind me of tales of medieval England during the times of the 100yr war. My verdict thirteen out of ten. Not at all what I expected and after all my years this takes some doing. Well done Joe Abercrombie long may you entertain me!

Philip

Poor old Glokta plays a major part in this episode. Sent by Arch Lector Sult on an independant command to hold a distant city at all costs. Without money supplies or reinforment Glokta must muddle thru no matter the opposition. The Gurkish come North. The Northmen come South. In the middle nothing but treachery and the usual backstabbing. Can Glokta survive his latest promotion. It comes as no surprise when he does but it’s the way it happens that maintains interest in the story.

Amazon (A. Whitehead “Werthead” (Colchester, Essex United Kingdom) ) has this to say about Before They Are Hanged

Before They Are Hanged is the second book in The First Law Trilogy and the sequel to The Blade Itself. In this middle volume of the sequence, Before They Are Hanged picks up the storylines left dangling from the first novel and develops them further. As with the first book, this volume often feels like a ‘standard’ fantasy novel with lots of standard tropes in use, but Abercrombie successfully continues to put a subversive spin on events which keeps things fresh and interesting.

There are three main plot threads in the book. In the Northlands, the Union Army prepares to face the forces under Beothed. They have enlisted the aid of Threetrees and his band of cutthroats and warriors, but Marshal Burr and Colonel West find their hands full with just keeping their feuding generals from each others throats and babysitting the preening, useless Prince Ladisla.

Meanwhile, in the South, the city of Dagoska falls under siege from the army of the Gurkhal Empire. Inquisitor Glokta, in the city to investigate the disappearance of his predecessor, finds himself orchestrating the defence of the city against a vast and powerful foe, but is also forced into making alliances with suspect agents in order to ensure the city’s survival.

In the West, Bayaz and his band of unlikely companions continue their journey to the edge of the Circle of the World, to recover a weapon of tremendous power. Their journey will take them through the fallen remnants of the Old Empire, an ancient city and a towering mountain range before their goal can be achieved.

Abercrombie’s story rattles along at a fair old pace. With the characters introduced, there is no more need for scene-setting and the plot explodes with vigour. More happens in this 450-page novel than some writers struggle to squeeze into an 800-page tome, and it’s all invigorating, page-turning stuff. There’s a lightness of touch and plenty of humour in the writing which makes reading the book all the more pleasurable. The characters become more interesting, with Glokta particularly becoming a morally ambiguous person whom the author gives real character to, his decisive ruthlessness coming as quite a shock in some parts of the book. Meanwhile, in other parts of the story other characters undertake unexpected transformations. Meeting other people who know Bayaz from earlier in the world’s history forces the reader to reconsider their opinion of him, whilst another character undergoes a startling personality transformation which is kept quietly in the background, hinting at some darker force moving in the storyline which will be explored further in the final book of the series.

All in all a trilogy to live for:
The Blade Itself
Before They Are Hanged
and the last of this series
Last Argument Of Kingsmore on that next

Philip
P.S. Don’t forget to have a look at Singles Seek Singles

Divine Justice – David Baldacci

We pinched this from From Booklist

*Starred Review* Readers who have been holding their breath since the end of Stone Cold (2007), the previous Camel Club novel, can inhale: Oliver Stone did survive his plunge into the water. For the uninitiated, Baldacci’s Oliver Stone isn’t the noted film director; he’s a former government assassin who has made a risky living foiling government conspiracies. Now, having eluded capture after committing a pair of necessary assassinations, Stone (or John Carr, if you prefer to use his real name) is on the run, hiding out in rural America, where he discovers that small-town intrigue is at least as intricate and dangerous as anything he’s come up against previously. Combining the Camel Club series’ wit and fast pace with a Fugitive-like story (casting Stone as Richard Kimble, the man on the run who risks his life to protect the lives of strangers), Baldacci shows once again that he is a sort of thriller Renaissance man: a master of plot, dialogue, and character. It’s fascinating to observe how Stone operates when he’s entirely on his own, too. Not only is he evading his pursuers, especially Macklin Hayes, whose obsessive determination to capture Stone may be based more on personal reasons than professional ones, but he’s also cast himself adrift from his comrades, who are working feverishly behind the scenes to find him and keep him safe. A rousing success, although this should come as no surprise to faithful Baldacci readers. –David Pitt –

and this from from – Publishers Weekly

Near the start of bestseller Baldacci’s less than compelling fourth Camel Club thriller (after Stone Cold), former CIA assassin Oliver Stone (aka John Carr) boards a New Orleans–bound train at Washington’s Union Station after shooting to death a well-known U.S. senator and the nation’s intelligence chief, the two men responsible for his wife’s murder. Ever the Good Samaritan, Stone intervenes in a fight on the train, but when the Amtrak conductor asks to see his ID, he gets off at the next station, knowing his fake ID won’t withstand scrutiny. So much for Stone’s vaunted ability as a resourceful planner. This sudden detour takes Stone to Divine, Va., a mining town where he becomes enmeshed in corruption and intrigue—and falls, in just one of several clichéd situations, for an attractive if beleaguered widow. Series fans should be satisfied, but this effort lacks the imagination that distinguished Baldacci’s debut, Absolute Power (1996). (Nov.)
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Philip Jubb
http://www.109b.com et al (40 odd)