Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines

When I had first heard about Girl in the Arena, I had dismissed it as a take-off of The Hunger Games, due to the similar sounding themes. But after reading a couple of positive reviews, my interest was piqued and I bought myself a copy of the book.Girl in the Arena opens up with a summary of how neo-gladiator sports were first introduced in America, In 1969, by the grieving father of a Vietnam soldier. Over the years, gladiator games became a professional...

Guess who won The Desert Spear....

For those of you who have been following my blog, you'll know that I entered Peter Brett's contest for an ARC copy of his upcoming book The Desert Spear, the sequel to The Warded Man (aka The Painted Man). This was a photo contest that you entered by sending in a picture of someone holding a copy of The Warded Man, with extra points awarded for pictures taken in an interesting setting.And though I've never gone beyond filling out my name and email address in an effort to win a book, this time I actually really got into it. I visited a nearby Bedouin...

Jasper Fforde interviewed by The Independent

There was an interview with Jasper Fforde on The Independent website, a few days ago, that I really liked, in which Fforde talks about his writing, his relationship with his readers and some of his future book characters.I had actually contacted Fforde a couple months ago about an email interview and he had agreed, as long as I could find some questions to ask him that have not already been asked, and he directed me to a list of 500 + previously answered questions on his website. And so I went through the list of questions, and every question...

Mistborn the Movie: Don't Do It!

I just saw, on SciFi Fan Letter, that Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn has been optioned for film by Paloppa Pictures. Frankly, this seems to be to be a horrible idea and I really can't understand why any author would want their book made into a movie. It's rare that a movie is ever as good as the book on which it is based on and what ends up happening is that people watch the movie first and then they never read the book because they didn't like the...

Guest Author; Lavie Tidhar

I'm excited to start off the week with my very first guest post, from Lavie Tidhar. Lavie is a science fiction author who is originally from Israel but has been living the life of a nomad since he was a teenager, traveling across the world and visiting a variety of interesting and exotic locations.Lavie's works include The Tel Aviv Dossier, which he co-wrote with Nir Yaniv and The Apex Book of World SF, a collection of science fiction short stories...

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

When eleven year old Daniel wakes up crying one night because he can no longer recall his deceased mother’s face, his father takes him by the hand and brings him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. In this immense building of winding passageways and rows of bookshelves, Daniel is invited by his father to choose for himself one book from the vast selection; a book that will be his to guard. After wandering through the isles of books, Daniel finds...