Something I may have neglected to mention in my About page was that myself and my partner currently live in England.

I say “currently” but given we bought a house here now, it’s probably gonna drag on for a while. Now obviously, it isn’t ideal for an Irish man to be living in the heart of his ancient enemy but it could be much worse, I could be living in Dublin.

Awful.

Anyways, one of the good things about living in England is they have good second hand bookshops. Thanks to the amazing resource that is The Book Guide, I get to plan trips based entirely around going to different bookshops. It’s great. Now, we were slightly spoiled by going Suffolk and Norfolk first and stumbling upon the greatest bookshops ever? Yes, yes we were. But our latest trip to Kent and Sussex was still pretty good! I promise to eventually get round to writing about the bookshops themselves but today it’s about some of the books I ended up getting.

The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud

I have already read the Bartimaeus Sequence books but since I didn’t have a paper copy I decided to get this. It’s hardback! I like hardback books because they always reminds me of a new Terry Pratchett coming out, Eason’s bookshop in Limerick buying too many, and then it being cheaper than the paperback in a few months time. So thank you for the four hardback Discworld books, Eason’s purchasing manager.

Anyway, the Bartimaeus books are great. Fun fact, that skeleton is a former Prime Minister. Not the one you’d hope though!

The Gypsy by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm

I have been very slowly making way through Brust’s Vlad Taltos books (The divorce book slowed me down) so this caught my eye. The my eye remained caught by everything else going on in this cover:

This is just Johnny Fives Aces with a confused owl. Why is the guy just… squatting on some girders? Also there’s a knife embedded in the presumably metal girder? This cover raises many questions but does answer the question “Who is Megan Lindholm?” by saying it’s Robin Hobb, an author I primarily know because they were near Terry Pratchett in the Eason’s shame corner of Sci Fi and Fantasy. I intend to read this but, even if I didn’t, it is too powerful an artefact to ignore.

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson

The Night Land is the worst good book I have ever tried to read. Here is an extract from a random page I opened:

And lo! in a moment, an echo to come out of the dark mountains to our backs; so that we lookt round very sudden; but whether the echo did be truly an echo, or some strangeness, or some unnatural call to come downward out of the gloom and horror of the Gorge, we did be all unsure; and indeed must run downward a while more, until that we did be all breathed, and to halt presently where we did feel to be utter free of the Gorge and of the strangeness that did seem to our minds, in that moment, to lie upward in the darkness of the great mountains.

The book was written in 1912 and, my understanding is, this is not why it’s written like this. This is a deliberate choice by William hope Hodgson. I don’t enjoy this style but the world of the Night Land is so compelling that I keep going back to it.

Fun fact about this copy I bought, it’s a part 2! When I picked it up in the bookshop I was warned of this, they had sold volume 1 the previous year without knowing it was in two parts. However, as this broadly lined up with where I’d gotten in my ebook version I decided to buy it anyway. Also, I think there’s fundamentally something very funny about just owning part 2 of The Night Land.

Also, after comparing it to the Project Gutenberg ebook, I learned that volume 2 begins at an arbitrary point, mid scene? Wild.

Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys

I’d never heard of this author or book so I was intrigued. The reviews at the back only made me more intrigued.

“A masterpiece… shows that a science fiction novel can be a fully realized work of art” James Blish

“A fine novel” Brian Aldiss

“Comes very close to realizing our ideal of science fiction” Alfred Bester, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Makes undeniably clever use of the dramatic potential of death and resurrection… designed to be enjoyed for its tension and savoured for its skill” Irish Times

“The cream of science fiction” Daily Telegraph

Well if it’s good enough for the Irish Times then who am I to say no? Arbitrarily, I decided this was the first book from the collection I’d read.

Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock

I’ll level with you, I originally got into the Elric books because I read a post on a forum that said they heavily influenced Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. Beyond the soul stealing sword, I don’t really think they did, but I still enjoyed the book. At home in Ireland I have my Elric omnibus and it’s good looking book.

However, this is not dissuade me from buying this little Stormbringer.

Behold the sky of teeth. I love it. Stormbringer is great and has really stayed with me over years, mostly because of it’s ending being very tragic but also very funny. So much so I immediately read out my favorite part of it to my wife and she was like “that’s awful” and I was like “hahah, yeah!”. It’s great.

Thieves World edited by Robert Asprin

When you start looking for funny fantasy books Asprin’s name comes up a lot. I read the first of his Myth Adventures series and it didn’t really click for me. Still, it was enough that when I saw his name I pulled the book from the shelf to be greeted by this:

There they are, the lads. From reading the back of the book, this seems to be a series of stories written in a shared universe. Apart from that, I know nothing about this and that’s how I want to go into this. As a veteran of online roleplaying, I love fantasy settings where different writers contribute and I look forward to seeing which hack tries to insert something that’s a rip off of an existing property and doesn’t fit at all. Like the guy who joins the forum and just adds Skyrim. Just straight up Skyrim.

Anyways, that’s it for now. Mostly because in previewing this post I realised the site is making all the pictures too big so I’m going to go edit that now. You don’t need to see the Stormbringer sky teeth in that much detail, believe me.