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Stunning, a really great book

Advantages: Everything about it
Disadvantages: none

...about an exploration into the Congo Rain Forest in Zaire. The company sending in the operation, ERTS, are in search of valuable blue diamonds, which are believed to be located in the lost city of Zinj, untouched and unexplored for five hundred years. Their rivals the Euro-Japanese seem to be winning and when they reach Zinj the end is far ahead and, at times, out of sight. ERTS on Peter Elliot and Amy to aid their party in the field, Amy is a gorilla! ...

mintboy 27.07.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Congo - Michael Crichton

The sparrow has landed...

Advantages: Continuation of great plot and characters
Disadvantages: -

The book ‘Children of God is the sequel to Mary Doria Russell's award winning first novel, ‘The Sparrow’. In this we take up once again with Father Emilio Sandoz, the only survivor of a doomed expedition to a nearby planet, set in the not-to-distant future. In that first novel, a team of Jesuits and others set sail to the nearby star system of Alpha Centauri to discover the source of unexplained radio transmissions which sounded quite a lot like ...
...disastrously for the expedition team, and the only survivor of that group was Sandoz, brought back to earth. Most of the characters from the first novel have died (in this novel we discover how a few of the missing people from the first expedition met their fates), and due to the effects of near-light-speed travel, many decades have passed on earth while Father Emilio is still relatively young. There are political crises on earth, including a crisis ...

frkurt 04.11.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Children of God - Mary Doria Russell

Ghosts of the living and ghosts of the dead ...

Advantages: Eternal Champion novel, Can be read and enjoyed by any age group
Disadvantages: Makes some assumptions that the 'Runestaff' books have been read

Count Brass is the opening book from the second Hawkmoon set, entitled 'The Chronicles of Castle Brass', and takes place around 5 years after the events depicted in the 'Runestaff' series. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For those of you not familiar with Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion, I will take a short time to explain the character in general. The Eternal Champion is a warrior destined ...
...on the subject. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Count Brass is a continuation of the story of Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke Von Koln who, in the first set of books (The History of the Runestaff) was chosen as the champion of the Runestaff (one of the main 3 artifacts that exists throughout the multiverse) to fight against the insane empire of Granbretan, and who despite a handicap (which I cannot ...

Gendibal 04.07.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Count Brass - Michael Moorcock

Closer to Heaven

Advantages: Great character building
Disadvantages: A little slow paced for my taste

Fantasy and science fiction are genres that mesh well together. Some authors have written successfully across both genres, but not usually in the same story. Jaine Fenn has managed to combine both in one book and it's an interesting read. One night, a stranger is found lying unconscious in a bog just outside the village of Dangwern. He appears to have come from nowhere and, apart from a strange piece of cloth lying near his naked body, there is nothing ...
...Unfortunately, this includes the stranger himself, as he is suffering from amnesia and has no idea even where he is, much less how he came to be there. Fortunately for Sais, as he is nicknamed, the boy who finds him is "sky touched". This means he is soon to travel to the City of Lights to be tested to see if he is worthy of being a consort of the goddesses. The village elders permit Sais and the boy's mother Kerin to accompany him to see if anyone ...

Soho_Black 19.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Consorts of Heaven - Jaine Fenn

It is not just about football!

Advantages: It's very funny, and oh so true!
Disadvantages: None

The Disc, for those who don't know, continues to float in space, supported by the elephants who ride the back of the great swimming turtle A'tuin. The Hub about which the planet spins is a centre of great magic, and best avoided if you want to live a happy and contented life. At the outer perimeter is the great circle sea which unendingly streams over the rim into the void, which is best avoided if you want to continue to live at all. Most Discians ...
...Smeems, for instance, is the Candle Nave at the Unseen University. He has to worry about keeping the candles not just alight, but properly melted, artistically, gothicly, dribbled, as it were. Of course, there's Trevor to help. And there's Nutt. With two t's. Trevor Likely has a tendency to skive off work whenever possible, and to kick a tin can around. His dad was a legend. Nutt is… well, no-one's quite sure what Nutt is, even him. Goblin isn't ...

hiker 07.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett