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The Long War: Searching the High Meggers for a plot

The Long War by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

The Long War, the second installment in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s five-book LONG EARTH series, is more tedious than the first one, probably because I have already seen the inside of their bag of tricks and I am no longer impressed.

This sequel happens about 12 years after the events of The Long Earth. Joshua, now married and with a son, has been summoned by his old friend, Lobsang (the AI reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman) to go on another journey through the Long Earth,

The Broken Land: Surreal visions of the horrors of civil war

The Broken Land by Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald’s The Broken Land (Hearts, Hands and Voices in the UK) is a book I admired more than I loved. It’s an allegorical look at the horrors of civil war caused by religious zeal and division. The story is set in a fictional country that feels like it could be in a future Africa where biotechnology has led to the development of mechanical infrastructure that is part organic and part artificial intelligence. The citizens are divided by their religious affiliation — some are Proclaimers and some are Confessors.

The Face in the Abyss: Another fine fantasy from Abraham Merritt

The Face in the Abyss by Abraham Merritt

Abraham Merritt’s The Face in the Abyss first appeared as a short story in a 1923 issue of Argosy magazine. It would be another seven years before its sequel, “The Snake Mother,” appeared in Argosy, and yet another year before the book-length version combined these two tales, in 1931. It is easy to detect the book’s provenance as two shorter stories, as the first third of the novel is pretty straightforward treasure-hunting fare, while the remainder of the book takes a sharp turn into lost-world fantasy,

Day: June 24, 2014

The Long War: Searching the High Meggers for a plot

The Broken Land: Surreal visions of the horrors of civil war

The Face in the Abyss: Another fine fantasy from Abraham Merritt

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