And so it came to pass, I now have reached a place where I am rereading The Lord Of The Rings every few years. Impossible though it may be to recapture the aching longing of the first time, I am at least better able to appreciate the writing and the thematic concerns and the evocation of the world and landscape. Or at least I flatter myself that I am. Strangest of all on this reread was finding myself as an outpatient at a clinic in Limerick's Regional Hospital for a few hours - my very first read of the trilogy coincided with a teenage trip to the Regional to have my appendix removed. Roughly the same time of the year as well.

Oh well. Our youthfulness has sailed on into the West, never to return and we stand now in the Middle Age of Man. It's nice that this thing that excited our childish mind now consoles our more wearied adulthood, on occasion. It's not a bad ambition, to want to turn more hobbity, and enjoy the finer things in life, like food and dink and good friends and family. Teeangers can go off and be Aragorn. The rest of us can take our ease in the Green Dragon for awhile.

Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie and droids attack an imperial weapons factory. it all seems to be going splendidly. Then Darth Vader shows up. All sith breaks loose. Fast-paced, wide-screen action, spot-on characterisation (love it when Leia tells Chewie to heck with the mission, kill Vader) terrific group dynamic and lots of familiar faces knocking around being generally bad-ass. Ties in with the Darth Vader series quite seamlessly, too. More fun than some of the films.

A short story presented in a beautiful little illustrated volume, this is a handsome edition for Murakami fans. The story itself is a surreal, dreamlike fairy tale about a boy who becomes trapped in a library, very much Murakami's style writ small. It's strange and haunting and ends on a note of loss and loneliness and foreboding, like a starker, less lush Nail Gaiman story. I liked it, but then it's a bit of a collector's item and I got a loan of it to read, so there's that.

A re-read, to mark the imminent arrival of the next book in the series. Noooo! Marrrtin! Don't kill theeeemmmm!
But he did. And that's why it's great.

What better way to recover from the the horrors and traumas and PTSDs, or 'nerves' as they so quaintly called it back before they invented PTSD, of the First World War, than a nice quiet stay in Ireland, circa 1920? The peaceful countryside, clement weather and charming locals are like soothing balm for a troubled soul. HAHAHAHA no really the British Empire is crumbling into a shattered morass of blood and resentment and sectarian grudge fights, a bit like the hotel the Major goes to because he may or may not have proposed to the owner's daughter, a bit like Ireland in 1920 when savage Irish leprechauns began chewing at the ankles of the snotty British toffs.

Anyway, the Major's maybe-intended proves weirdly difficult to pin down before abruptly departing from the picture, leaving the Major more confused than begrieved, but a weird fascination and attraction has begun and he finds it difficult to depart, so he finds himself part of the hotel's long slow slide from decrepitude to utter ruination, and cleverly enough, the Irish War of Independence serves as an acute metaphor for this haunting portrait of the severe difficulties in the hotel trade and the Anglo-Irish tourism industry at this time.

A sprawling, dense, vivid and colourful epic, charting the rise and fall of three key figures in the French Revolution, their early lives and connections, their intertwining or contrasting domestic affairs, their ideals and physical and intellectual prowess, their vanities and corruptions and charisma, driving one of the great epochal historical changes. Lively and fractious and ascerbic and witty and bitter, they chart a course through the overthrow of the old regime and the dawning savagery of the new. Intense, driving, bewildering, exhausting right until the devastating end. Brilliant.

I've read a few blurbs about this that tried to play up the bruising Athene versus Sparta war action, but though the war shapes the course of much of this novel, it is first and foremost a romantic epic with a pair of lovers who find each other while their world is on the brink of falling apart. The two lovers are men, or rather and man and youth, embodiments of Greek ideals in terms of physical prowess, intellectual ability, honour and commitment to the defence of their city. Alexias, the youth entering the first flower of manhood, and Lysis, the older, who held back from approaching young Alexias too soon lest he mold him into something lesser than he would have become on his own, heeding sage advice from on Sokrates, who is their teacher and friend.

Competing in Games, fighting frontier wars, managing family and friends, learning to think, striving for goodness as the fortunes of war ebb and flow and the politics of their beloved city turn deadly, Alexias and Lysis grow and mature and strive to stay true to themselves and each other.

Meanwhile, women are a bit of an afterthought. It's not even really polite to talk about them at all, so they don't come up often and they certainly aren't romantic figures, let alone influential or significant outside of domestic matters. Even as one reads the beautiful prose, falls in love with the young heroes and their hopes and dreams, their piety, their intellectual strivings, their heroism in battle, their ethical rightness, one has a sense that this is only an ideal and egalitarian society for some. Alexias never considers even for a moment that things should be other than they are, but why should he? Sokrates doesn't either.

A brilliant, beautiful, vivid, sweeping epic that will make you fall in love with Anceint Greece all over again, for all its shortcomings.

An airship crash which wipes out an Emperor and his immediate heirs propels an unprepared and uneducated and largely despised half-goblin onto the throne of the Elflands. Luck and decisive action secure his position, barely, but he is alone and ignorant and has had to survive years of abuse at the hands of a resentful guardian. Nonetheless Maia struggles to put aside thoughts of hatred and revenge and strive to to do the right thing and take control of his life and his new, thankless, role, assuming he can survive.
This is, I think, the best epic fantasy novel I've read in a long time. A cross between CJ Cherryh and Lois McMaster Bujold, with the sudden immersion into a alien and hostile world of language and protocol and politics of the former, and the slow battle of a despised and powerless but decent person to forge relationships with those around him as a bulwark against the actions of the cruel and malicious of the latter. It's a terrific, delightful, heartfelt, and at times bewildering read. There's a glossary of names at the back, you should definitely consider skipping ahead to use it when another confusing name pops up out of seemingly nowhere.

Continuing the story of Theseus after his return from Crete, ascending to the throne of Athens upon his father's death, this is the tale of an heroic life lived large and bold and self-assured. A model of manly behaviour, balancing the duties of kingship and an inerrant sense of fair play and justice with a desire for adventure that takes him on pirating voyages with his friend, Pirithoos. He carefully forges a stable kingdom and yet roams near and far in search of glory and plunder. One such voyage brings him the true love of his life, won in single combat, the Amazon warrior priestess, Hippolyta. The tragedy of Hippolyta lays the seeds for the tragedies of his later years, as their son grows to manhood, and the bull from the sea waits to strike.

The writing is simply superb. Utterly beautiful. Sensuous and earthy yet redolent with unquestioning belief in the supernatural forces that control their lives. There is simply no division between the natural and the supernatural, and Renault's success in conveying this makes her books magical and thrilling and gorgeous and filled with mystery.

Epic in scope but fully informed by Lansdale's down-home story-telling values, Paradise Sky is the life story, or part thereof, of Nat Loving, born a slave, but a free man when almost lynched for looking at a white woman. The attempted lynching leaves his Pa dead and his home burned and Nat on the run. Taken in by a white farmer who teaches him how to shoot and ride, Nat is as equipped as he can hope to be for life in an unfriendly world. Unfriendly, but not without friends. A stint in the army and a trek to Deadwood see Nat acquire friends and companions even as he is pursued by a resentful enemy. Glorious triumph and horrific tragedy mark Nat's life indelibly and shape his future.

With an endearing and likeable hero, Lansdale tells a broad and wide story in his own inimitable fashion. In fact, through there is plenty of action and violence - though not at quite the level of grue Lansdale normally lets rip with - this doesn't feel like a western thriller, though it has thrills, or an adventure, though there adventures a-plenty, or even a yarn, though it contains many. Paradise Sky feels like Lansdale has gone and written a Novel, and with his usual skill and aplomb, made it look easy. This is as entertaining and rewarding as literature gets, and I genuinely hope there are more Nat Loving novels in our future.