Tonight I decided to cheat, just a little – or at least make things a little easer on myself – by abandoning my usual tactic of searching recent releases in particular genres and going straight for the most popular lists, the people who’ve already had some stars flung their way. Quite a lot of stars, in some cases, but d’you know what? That didn’t make it anything like so much easier to find something to my taste as I expected.
I did, however, eventually hit upon Ghost in the Ashes. Once again I seem to have launched myself into a series midway, but that’s not getting in the way of enjoying it so far, and that’s quite an impressive trick – I’ve read plenty of fantasy that drowns the reader in unfamiliar terms from the first page, even when it’s the first installment of something quite new. This, on the other hand, has catapulted me directly into a new world and into caring about the leads in the first couple of pages.
It may be, just possibly, just a teeny bit overdone (and I honestly mean that in the nicest possible way) but I’ve always been a sucker for a teeny bit overdone.
Alex Brightsmith 