Monday, 14 December 2015

Review of Kharne, Eater of Worlds

I used to buy a great number of GW fiction, going right back to the novels by excellent writers like Kim Newman and Ian Watson. But I kinda tailed off as they became a bit samey. All the quirky, interesting characters disappeared and there are only so many ways you can describe battle scenes.

Nevertheless, I still buy the odd one when I fancy a bit of pulp action blood and guts.

My latest purchase was Kharn, Eater of Worlds, by Anthony Reynolds. I like Reynolds' work. He writes a good adventure tale.

Now I don't normally review other writers' work and I don't intend to start now beyond saying that Reynolds does a good, solid writing job and I was really getting in to the story when: it stopped!!!

The eBook I had just paid £8.99 for was incredibly short. How many words I can't extract from my Kindle Reader but Amazon lists the paperback scheduled for next year as 240 pages. That's about half the size of a normal SF novel and £8.99 is a premium price for an eBook.

I kinda feel ripped off. Now you don't buy a novel by the word but an author needs space to develop the characters and the plot, especially with epic multi-POVed space operas. I felt Reynolds was just getting into his stride when his tale was chopped.

I noticed something else recently when I was browsing in Waterstones at Thanet. GW books were relegated  to one tiny section on the bottom shelf. And they consisted mostly of bundled omnibuses of already published material. Not sure what this portends, if anything.


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5 comments:

  1. Da Masta Cheef15 December 2015 at 02:36

    Last time I was at the local book store, I noticed that the GW section had gone from 3+ shelves, to less than one, and all the way at the bottom...so yes, kinda ominous.

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    1. John Lambshead15 December 2015 at 09:33

      I believe their primary sales were in the USA so it may be that the British experience is misleading. Who knows.

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  2. Zzzzzz15 December 2015 at 20:07

    Also it might be the manner in which their 'core audience' consumes the product - ie mostly e-bokz with old farts picking up the omnibus' and anthologies.

    There's loads of stuff they have done (with Garro, for instance) which I would snap up in a second if it were in B&W on dead tree, papyrus or velum. But it's "Spoken Wurdz" so I'm remotely interested.

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    1. Zzzzzz15 December 2015 at 20:08

      "NOT" remotely interested. But you kinda got that.

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    2. John Lambshead16 December 2015 at 17:37

      Well, yes but you can't get their Ebooks from Amazon. That makes them a real hassle to get on A kindle reader.

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