No Middle Name

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Another backlog of books to review in one go. Chronological order, let's get on with it. "30 Days Of Night" by Steve Niles, with art by Ben Templesmith. Good story of vampires on a chomping holiday in Alaska, with a neat twist at the end. Templesmith's art makes this really special though. Awesome work. If you've read "Fell" or "Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse", you'll know what he's capable of. "Worlds' End" , volume 8 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman epic (only two more to go, yay!). Usual high quality of Gaiman's writing coupled with some excellently varied artwork for the stories-within-stories concept. There's a reason Sandman is still selling so nearly 15 years after these stories were written. "The Physiognomy" by Jeffrey Ford, won the World Fantasy Award in 1996. He also wrote the synaesthesia-love-story "The Empire Of Ice Cream" which won a couple of awards too. A great writer; in this book he...

cheese sardine set Originally uploaded by No Middle Name awesome. truly awesome. found in the salvos.

China Mieville's first novel, "King Rat" , is another story of an alternative London. Like "Neverwhere", or Mieville's own "Un Lun Dun", it concerns normal people dragged into a fantastic underworld of magic and myth. I'd say it is Mieville's best; a leaner, sleeker novel than his later New Crobuzon books. It scurries along at a hell of a pace, terrifying and exciting. Excellent stuff.

jack johnson Originally uploaded by No Middle Name he's tiny

I followed that nice Mr. Vandermeer's advice on writing: read the things you don't like , and work out why you don't like them. I bravely battled my way as far as halfway through chapter four of " The Outstretched Shadow " by Mercedes Lackey and That Other Guy. One thing I forgot to add to the list of advantages that ebooks have is that I couldn't hurl the book into the bin, mainly due to it also being my phone. Maybe that should go on the disadvantages list. Some books need a good hurling. The embarrassing infodumps didn't stop after chapter one, nor did the book become any better. I've come up with a new rule for classifying fantasy novels: those that use the word "magicks" (with a fucking "k", because then it shows the author once saw a sample of faux-olde-englishe from way back before they invented spelling) and those that don't. The first set is a subset of bad books, the other set can also be, but that's not guarantee...

mmm... nutty Originally uploaded by No Middle Name that doesn't look like an egg to me. it does look like something else, though...

Tor are currently giving away free ebooks as part of a promotion for their new website. Just sign up for their newsletter and once a week they'll email you a link to download it in html, pdf, or mobi format. They're on their third book at the moment: " The Outstretched Shadow " by Mercedes Lackey and Someone Else Whose Name Isn't As Distinctive. The previous two were " Old Man's War " by that nice Mr. Scalzi, and " Spin " by Robert Wilson. I have a decent-sized screen on my PDA-phone-thing, and reading "Spin" was quite comfortable. There were advantages over the paper version (reading in the dark; not as heavy; easier to read one-handed while swaying on the commuter meat wagon; I always have my phone with me so I've always got a book too), and disadvantages (could not read at the beach; or anywhere in bright light; not as high contrast as print on paper which did give me a slight headache after an hour or so; my book now depe...

chemical brothers Originally uploaded by No Middle Name weeee!

A new Culture novel. Fuck, yeah! (Review ends here for geeks, non-geeks read on.) Iain M. Banks writes hard SF, most of it set in his Culture universe, where humanity has evolved into a free-thinking, free-loving, do-gooding society of people, machines, aliens and anything else that wants to join in. Imagine someone took the Star Trek ideals of no money, peace, and happiness and removed all the po-faced, father-knows-best overtones. And then added in free drugs and fun for everyone. Yay! Let's move there! The stories usually involve Special Circumstances, the section of the Culture tasked with ass-kickery and general meddling in the other galactic societies. Imagine Star Trek's starfleet but replace the uniforms, plot holes, what-is-this-earth-thing-you-call-love, we-must-not-violate-the-prime-directive with a shitload of weapons, ships that think, and plots that are thoughtful, exciting and funny. " Matter " is no exception to this. A great read. My only complaint w...

qv fashion show Originally uploaded by No Middle Name ooh, the exciting things you get to see from our office.

Got the blues Originally uploaded by No Middle Name Liveblogging the Wilson Botanical Park Blues Night. Stuff yer $6000 TED conference.