Tree Weasel Weekly

How not to win ebook friends and influence people

I have been reading ebooks for nearly 10 years now, and have amassed a large (perhaps very large) library. After being locked out of some of my early MS Reader purchases I have endeavoured to only buy formats that I can clean the DRM wrapper off for future proofing. This has worked well, and I have been able to bring my books to PDA, Windows Mobile phones, iPhones, Sony Reader and iPad. This is a familiar path to many ebook veterans, but I present this as a bit of background to my current tale.

One of my favourite set of books, and one that I have been waiting to arrive in ebook format, is the Patrick O'Brian series of tales about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. I have these in battered paperbacks, and also in audio book from Audible. Nevertheless I would be happy to buy them again in ebook format for convenience. So I was delighted to discover that they have just been released, with the joy slightly tempered by the fact that their publisher has a pretty indifferent record with ebooks, being by far the worst offender in my library for error-strewn titles. I downloaded a sample through iBooks and it looked clean, the opening ship diagram was reasonably sized, viewable on 10" screen without obvious pixellation. No OCR errors were visible. The only wrinkle was that the cover was missing - a fairly frequent problem with eBooks, and one easy enough to remedy.

So I purchased the book from Kobo, where I have purchased many titles. I don't like, or use, their reader software, but the titles are standard ADE ePub files, easily liberated and sideloaded into iBooks or Bluefire Reader. However, this title is grievously polluted with custom CSS and Javascript so that it only displays nicely in the Kobo app. In Bluefire Reader  it displays in a monstrous font size, even at the smallest setting that BF Reader allows. This is worse than DRM. This is embedding metadata into the book, presumably after it was supplied by the publisher, that ties it to a vendors software. It may be a mistake, and they haven't checked to see that the CSS/JS combo they use degrades satisfactorily in readers that don't understand it. However it arose, this renders this title unusable in the reader of my choice, even though that reader fully supports ADE DRM. The ebook has been damaged by the vendor.

Unless there is some way to detect books that have been Kobo-ised I can no longer buy from them. I have a ticket open with them, but doubt that they will be able to supply a clean copy. I hope this isn't the start of a trend.

A Feast for Crows

It is time to revisit Westeros again, after a gap of several years. The 4th book in George R.R. Martin's monunental series has just been published, just about a year after it was originally due. He can be forgiven for the delay as the book features so many characters, storylines, subplots and locations that it must have taken an age to assemble them into a nearly coherent book!

It is certainly something that is good to have as an e-book because it is only otherwise available here in the U.K. as a doortop sized hardback. Maybe there is room in the market for a wheely-book, like the wheely bags that people drag behind themselves everywhere, especially designed to trip you up!

But what of the book? Initially I was struggling to recall what had happened in the previous installments, but I think I am back up to speed, and hooked. The book plays out in over a dozen threads, not always at the same time, and it is always exciting on finishing a chapter to turn the e-page and find where and who you are with now. It doesn't pay to get too attached to characters however, the body count (of major characters) is quite astonishing.

In many ways these are quite savage books, fantasy shorn of any romantic notions,  firmly rooted in human ambition and greed. Yet they are compelling, and not all the characters are totally self-serving. Another factor that operates mostly in the background is that fantasy staple, magic. Here it seldom plays a major part, and it usually exacts an appalling cost on its wielder, rather like the books of Tim Powers, where magical power always took a terrible toll on everyone. This means that its infrequent appearance is all the more shocking and powerful, even now, after 3 books,  you don't really know what powers acolytes of some of the more obscure gods can wield.

If you haven't tried this series, because it looked like yet another Swords and Sorcery epic, it is well worth a look. If you can make it half way through the first book (where I felt he was feeling his way a little) the story settles down and you have a feast of reading ahead of you. Even if, like me, you struggle to remember names, things move along so rapidly that it often doesn't matter!

Recommended...

Thud!

I recently finished reading Thud! by Terry Pratchett. Now Pratchett is something of an acquired taste, and even then works best in small doses. However, he does hit the mark more often than not and Thud was very enjoyable, especially as the Night Watch characters have become very well known over a number of books. What was curious about the book was that it featured the boardgame, "Thud!", as a central plot mechanism. I'm not sure if he wrote the book because the game was created, and felt inspired to work it into a story, or vice versa. The game has been around for a while now, but they may have been created at the same time, the publishing world does move very slowly. Thud was good fun, and featured some topical creations, including the "Gooseberry" Dis-Organiser, the latest in the line of such devices to plague Sam Vimes! Worth a look if you are familiar with Discworld.

Shaman

I finished reading "Shaman's Crossing" by Robin Hobb. I had really enjoyed her Assassin series, which ran to 6 books in the end. The main character in these stories, Fitz, often made you grind your teeth in frustration at his choices, but you did get thoroughly involved.

The new book is set in a world moving from a traditional fantasy setting of magic and medieval technology to a gunpowder age where magic is being superseded by technology and rational thought. The book is written in the first person and is, I guess, meant to be the journal of the main character who is 18 or 19 (I can't recall which) when he writes. Whether it is intentional or not, the book does come across as one written by a teen-ager! It never really gets going, but does offer tantalising glimpses of an interesting world. Ultimately it wasn't very satisfying (sadly).

Wolves eat Dogs

I just finished reading "Wolves eat Dogs"  by Martin Cruz Smith. Anyone familiar with Arkady Renko will know that you are in for a harrowing read, but this one was more sinister than his previous adventures. As usual Arkady has a torrid time and the book is extremely tense and gripping. Highly recommended.

The Sabre's Edge

I have just finished reading The Sabre's Edge by Allan Mallinson, the 5th of his books about Matthew Hervey. It is 1824 and the 6th Light Dragoons are in India, where Hervey gets embroiled in an ill advised campaign in Burma, and finishes with a siege of an enormous fortress. Cracks are appearing in the normally squeaky clean Hervey as he copes with problems in the officers mess. By no means a swashbuckling tale, nevertheless these books present a fascinating view of cavalry life in a mostly peaceful post Waterloo world.

Will Hervey make it through to Crimea?

P.S. It was a real tangible hard cover book, not an e-Book!

The Cloud of Unknowing

My marathon session of Patrick O'Brian listening continues, following on from "The Nutmeg of Consolation" with

Clarissa Oakes
The Wine Dark Sea
The Commodore
The Yellow Admiral
The Hundred Days

I have just started "Blue at the Mizzen" which is the book I am the least familiar with.

Books actually read during this time have been fewer, though I have enjoyed a couple of Jeffrey Deaver's novels, and have "The System of the World" to look forward to...

Confusion and Delight

I have completed the enormous sequel to Quicksilver ("The Confusion") and thoroughly enjoyed it. Many threads from Quicksilver were resolved, others were left dangling for later resolution. Many dreadful things happen to the main characters in these two books, but the narrative is wry and detached, and the characters themselves seem to accept setbacks and troubles with equanimity, so you don't really become emotionally attached to them.

What a difference in "The last light of the sun", by Guy Gavriel Kay, where you become intimately involved with the motivations, beliefs and actions of the main characters. It feels strange to finish a book in a couple of days, after the weeks of Confusion, but "The last light of the sun" was very satisfying. Nowhere near as complex as his Sarantine Mosaic, but set in the same alternate history, which is very well established now. He is not a prolific author, so it will be a while before another story. Maybe his older books will be released as e-books so I can re-read them easily.

Escape

Having finished the first Inspector Rebus book, and becoming disenchanted with the number of typos in the sequel "Hide and Seek" I started instead on "Sharpe's Escape" by Bernard Cornwell. The first few retrospective Sharpe novels were a bit lack-lustre, but with Sharpe's Prey he returned to form, and the subsequent Sharpe's Havoc was equally good. I am happy to say that Escape is even better!

I read most of it in one go (while stuck on the Jubilee Line for 90 minutes) and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next up is "Confusion", the massive sequel to "Quicksilver". I expect that this will take some time, even with the collapsing transport system here...

Not so Quicksilver

I finally finished Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. A curious book, part faux-history lesson and part picaresque novel, it worked for me. It is the first of a giant 3 volume series, the second part has just been published as a hardcover doorstop. I am very glad that mine weighed less than a gram (if an e-book could be said to have any weight).

For a change of scene and pace I am now reading "Knots and Crosses" by Ian Rankin.

13 Guns

I finished listening to "The Thirteen Gun Salute" yesterday, and I particularly enjoyed the second half of the book. The immersion in the time and place is even more convincing when read so expertly. I also forgot what a cliff-hanger of an ending it had.

Now to start "The Nutmeg of Consolation", the splendidly titled continuation of the story (for the moment Quicksilver is being read in short bursts when the iPod is not available, or the background noise too great).

More Quicksilver

Quicksilver has its own website, with material contributed by the author, Neal Stephenson, and various others. I have only just begun reading the book, but have already encountered many interesting ideas and discoveries that prompted me to ask, "Did that really happen?". There are many annotations and cross references here that indicate that many of them really did!

There is also useful material for Genevieve who is working on a project loosely based on 16th and 17th century medicine.

So for the moment, the "Thirteen Gun Salute" is on hold while I digest Quicksilver.

Quicksilver

Quicksilver was released today as an ebook, a good thing as the printed volume (even in paperback) weighs several kilos.

I am looking forward to meeting Enoch Root and the ancestors of other characters that appeared in Cryptonomicon.

Spectacularly Disagreeable Emulsion

Towards the end of "The Letter of Marque", Stephen Maturin is obliged to be dosed with a "spectacularly disagreeable emulsion". When I read this for the first time I was struck by how splendidly it described many medicines. Having now completed listening to the book, I encountered the phrase again and derived much amusement from it all over again.

I have now started listening to "The Thirteen Gun Salute" a book which is followed by the wonderfully named "Nutmeg of Consolation"...

Surprise

I have been listening to Patrick Tull read "The Letter of Marque" by Patrick O'Brian. I have read this wonderful series of books several times myself, but I was interested to see what they were like as an audiobook. I must say that Tull does a marvellous job, a variety of voices and pacing makes for a dramatic performance. I am now tempted to use my monthly Audible book subscription (I get one a month) on acquiring and listening to the whole series (now that I have figured out how to get around their geographical restrictions).

The new CD by Norah Jones has been getting some time as well, and it is a beautifully crafted and very satisfying album.

Otherwise it has been an over busy week, and I am looking forward to a (slightly) less busy weekend!

Murder Room

I finally finished listening to "The Murder Room" by P.D. James. I had been listening on and off for several weeks, but as there was a huge delay to the trains yesterday I got to the end. It was a curious book, the main character, Adam Dalgliesh, was only peripherally involved. The majority of the book was taken up with detailed descriptions of the lives and backgrounds of the people involved with the Dupayne Museum where several deaths take place.

Also this week I have been reading Blue World by Jack Vance, a book I haven't read for a long while. It is full of typical Vance characters, with a rigid, arbitary hierachical class structure, and an implacable villian in the form of a giant sea creature.

Finished

I finished Fool's Fate this morning - a worthy culmination of 9 books in 3 separate trilogies. Unusually Robin Hobb allows you to become emotionally attached to her characters, as well as telling a good story! In a genre not noted for emotional depth this is an author worth following.

My next book will probably be Abhorsen, the final book by Garth Nix in the series he started with Sabriel and Lirael.