Omnivoracious: Jonathan Wood's Smoking-Hot Debut Novel "No Hero"

Omnivoracious: Jonathan Wood's Smoking-Hot Debut Novel "No Hero":

"Sometimes sheer bravado and break-neck pacing can lift up a potential cliche into something more. In the case of Jonathan Wood’s first novel, No Hero, the author has created a riff on supernatural noir that’s rollicking good fun and acknowledges its debts with good humor. It also one-ups its influences with some excellent action scenes. What’s the set up? The main character, a cop, asks himself one question a lot: 'What would Kurt Russell do?' It’s not a question he’s had to answer a lot—until a secret government agency recruits him to fight the Progeny, be-tentacled horrors from another dimension. Omni checked in with Wood to find out more…"

Fantasy Book Critic: "The Clockwork Rocket" by Greg Egan (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Fantasy Book Critic: "The Clockwork Rocket" by Greg Egan (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu):

"So when I read about his planned new series that takes place in a 'Riemannian universe', one where the metric - the math concept that encodes the basic physics of the universe - is positive definite and symmetric in space and time as opposed to the indefinite antisymmetric metric in the Einsteinian universe we seemingly inhabit, I was truly intrigued and indeed The Clockwork Rocket was what I expected and more and so far it is my all around top novel of the year for the combination of sense of wonder, great world building, characters and general 'human interest' - the shape-shifting, weird biology aliens of The Clockwork Rocket are both strange and familiar and the story of the main character Yalda is as emotional as any I've read this year..."

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: Embassytown

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: Embassytown:

"Well, this one was a chore, no question about it. Had I not been reading this during my trip through the Southern Balkans and had access to my collection, I would never have finished reading this novel. It's been a while since I've been this underwhelmed by the work of a quality author."

A decent review (I mostly agree) but more disappointed than I was.

I thought this was more of a return to Perdido Street Station and Scar. I think there may be some disappointment after Kraken, which I thought was a great book. I thought this was much more interesting then The City and the City.

Another list of books.

Another list of books.:

"Our main criteria selection were books that were strong in: Worldbuilding, Characterization, and Language. (As those are areas where Pratchett excels).

We tried with somewhat less success to bring up titles that focused on other things we liked about Prattchett’s writing: the inclusion of humor, careful handling of ethical issues, and a “feel-good” quality to the books themselves. This was somewhat less successful, as these are more ephemeral things, and harder to point at in a book.

What to read after you’ve read all available Pratchett books:"

No Robert Asprin? Tom Holt? Robert Rankin?

Fantasy Book Critic: “Prince of Thorns” by Mark Lawrence (Reviewed by Robert Thompson)

Fantasy Book Critic: “Prince of Thorns” by Mark Lawrence (Reviewed by Robert Thompson):

"PLOT SUMMARY: When he was nine years old, Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath saw his mother and younger brother murdered before his eyes. By thirteen, he commanded a band of bloodthirsty mercenaries. By the time he is fifteen, he intends to be king."

Judge and jury - Writers and Writing - Salon.com

Judge and jury - Writers and Writing - Salon.com:

"But Grossman, the chief book reviewer for Time, has softened over the years, and he admits that has something to do with his own success as a novelist. 'The Magicians,' his dark fantasy novel set in a universe part J.K. Rowling and part C.S. Lewis, became a 2009 best seller. A second installment, 'The Magician King,' arrives next week. And suddenly Grossman is thinking about hanging up his literary judge's robe."

Sigil has a new caretaker - The Digital Reader

Sigil has a new caretaker - The Digital Reader:

"As of today, the official maintainer for both Sigil and FlightCrew is John Schember (“user_none” on MobileRead). He’s a very bright and competent guy. He’s got what it takes, trust me. As a community, please give him the same consideration and respect you gave me. It will take him many weeks (if not a few months) to get fully up to speed with the codebase, so patience and a warm welcome from the community will make sure things go smoothly."

Why ebooks are riddled with typos | TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics

Why ebooks are riddled with typos | TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics:

"The short (somewhat obvious) answer, aside from errors introduced by OCR: because publishers cut corners by laying off proofreaders and copy editors, then rush the manuscripts out too quickly for their skeleton crews to catch gaffes. At least that’s what one editor confessed to Virginia Heffernan at the New York Times. Another editor, however, says in the era of word processors authors have gotten lazier and stupider: “It is amazing how little review seems to have occurred before the text is sent to the editor. Seriously, you have no idea how sloppy some of these things are.”"

Lazier and stupider authors? What a steaming pile of crap. The (huge) majority of the errors I've found in ebooks has been OCR related. Awkward grammar and (word-processor generated or original) misspellings are much more rare.

Unfortunately I think that the mess that is the current state of ebook publishing is lowering the standards of writing. It it not surprising that writers are cashing in on the lowered standards. We can only hope that the craft of writing benefits those who pursue quality over quantity. Frankly only time will tell. Talented writers will always be able to get their message out there and discerning readers will always be able to find talent.

We can only hope that the (rvolving) infrastructure rewards talent.

In Search of the Semicolon - The Digital Reader

In Search of the Semicolon - The Digital Reader:

"I recently edited a book in which I made consistent use of the semicolon — only to receive instruction from the client to replace the semicolons with commas. When I asked why, the response was that neither the particular inhouse editor nor the author approves of semicolons and thus they wanted use of semicolons minimized."

Kobo Touch Firmware 1.9.6 released - use dictionary with ANY ebook

Kobo Touch Firmware 1.9.6 released | Good E-Reader Blog - ebook Reader and Tablet PC News:

"First of all one of the new changes allows users to access the dictionary with books that you have loaded in yourself (sideloaded.)"

These days you can't try to force users to buy from your store. Fixing this feature has made the Kobo Touch (and the Kobo line of readers) more attractive.