The Hunt for Red October – Tom Clancy

Okay, so I work in I.T. As a result of this, I know more than my fair share of acronyms – both three-letter and otherwise. This notwithstanding, I found this book bewildering in the extreme. Not because it reads like stereo instructions (it does) and not because of the acronyms (after all, they are spelled

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I love it when this happens.

It started out with a short, funny, story about a seance, written by a very talented bloke at my writer’s group. “I’ve never written a story about a seance,” I thought. Then I started thinking “What if…” and before I knew what had happened, I had a 2,000 word short which I was quite proud

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Exodus – Julie bertagna

I haven’t finished this, and I’m not going to. There are two compelling (for me) reasons why this is the case. Firstly, it’s written in the present tense and that irritates the hell out of me. I have no justification for this – it just does. The irritation of the tense is simply greater than

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I can’t write.

My head is full of the characters, plot and setting of the Twilight series. This is not good. I thought reading Exodus would act as an antidote, but I just can’t get into it because it’s written in the present tense and Twilight is just too close to what I was originally working on. So,

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Twilight Saga – Stephenie Meyer

I make no apologies. I really enjoyed these books. I’m also glad I decided to split my mini-reviews as well, although I should have just covered all four at once. So, we know the plot – human girl meets vampire boy, romance ensues, strife arises and is resolved. The End. As far as the plot goes,

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Enemy of God – Bernard Cornwell

My recently awakened inner teenager has been effectively slapped down by a quick and brutal application of mud, steel, mud, murder, mud, betrayal, mud, sinister priests, mud, torture and mud. Once again, Mr Cornwell’s prose lurches between exhilirating drama and tedious history lectures, but to a lesser degree than in Winter King. In other words,

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New Moon – Stephenie Meyer

Cringe. Ahem. I really really enjoyed this book 🙂 It’s pretty lightweight and can be read in two days (as I did) but I’d really recommend reading it over three. It’s the middle-third that does it. It’s so reeking with love-lorn teenage angst (put it this way – it quotes Romeo & Juliet) that if you

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Edit

Oh! That was unexpected! When it comes to editor wars, I’m in the vi camp. Everyone knows that. But I’m not just a UNIX geek – I’m also a writer, and I’m not masochistic enough to think that writing using vi is something done by sane, well adjusted, people. So I tend to cop out

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Twilight – Stephenie Meyer

OMG I’m like SO TOTALLY emo! Ahem. Alright, so this is clearly written specifically for confused young girls, but really – it’s extremely likeable. Yeah, so you have to keep wringing it out to get rid of the dripping angst, the whole thing is utterley implausable, and there are plot gaps you could drive Saturn

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