williamjm

A bit of a moment of madness there from France. Jamie Ritchie probably very happy that he's managed to wind them up so much. Scotland need to win now that that they have a 7 point and 1 man advantage going into the second half.

I wonder how long Townsend is going to be in the job. There have been some high points, but overall I don't think we could say that Scotland have really made progress since the Vern Cotter era. If Scotland only end up with a win over Italy in this year's Six Nations then it might be someone else's turn.

I think this year's Calcutta Cup match is very different to last year's, which is probably inevitable given the weather. It does feel like England have been dominating but they're only 3-0 up at half time, Scotland still have a chance but they need to play better in the second half.

It did seem a bit reminiscent. I wonder which of those teams will manage to sort this out for the Calcutta Cup match.

The previous GGK thread ending is a bit of an end of an era, it has somehow managed to persist without being locked for over a decade. I think he's definitely been moving away from traditional epic fantasy plot structures in his recent books, having started off with the very traditional Fionavar Tapestry. I do still tend to find them compelling even if the storyline can sometimes meander a bit. ETA - obviously I spoke too soon with my first comment, the thread has risen again.

Aside from the sequel it's not set in the same world as his other books. It would have been easy to make it about the "Chinese" part of the Al-Rassan/Sarantium/etc. world but Kay seemed to decide against that.

It's happened a few times in Formula 1 as well, perhaps most infamously when Ayrton Senna was denied his first win after the Monaco GP was ended early due to rain with Senna hunting down Alain Prost.

I remember it has been optioned in the past (I think the movie rights may have been sold shortly around the time the first book came out), but I don't remember hearing much about it recently.

I did like the flashbacks where we did see that gang in their younger days, although I had mixed feelings about the modern-day portion of the story.

This incarnation of the board began in 2005. It was a bit of a surprise that a thread has lasted this long, they usually get closed when they're either inactive for too long or pass 20 pages so this must have just had the right rate of posting to avoid those two. I liked them both. Under Heaven started off strongly but I was starting to lose interest towards the end, while River of Stars started slowly and finished strongly. The "Chinese" setting does give them a different feel to Kay's other books.

When I saw the notification about a reply to a post in this thread, I wasn't expecting it to be quoting something I said almost 10 years ago. I haven't really changed my mind on it since then, but I will say that I do still remember clearly some of the scenes in the book despite it being over a decade since I read it, so it must be doing something right. It isn't a bad book, I enjoyed it but I wouldn't rank it among his best books. There did seem something disconcerting about Kay writing a modern teenager, although he does still manage to throw in plenty of history as well to form the backstory.

It's a pity you couldn't make it here, I did buy a copy of your book yesterday.

Just saw this linked on Facebook, it's cleverly constructed and I also liked the enthusiasm of the Japanese commentator.

I think it is one of his weaker books, but I still enjoyed reading it. It perhaps doesn't have quite the same depth as some of his other books. The most obvious difference is that it is set in the present day (although history and mythology play a big role in it), there was something slightly disconcerting about pop-culture references in a GGK book.

It seems a pity that there isn't an e-book edition (which could hopefully be at a more reasonable price).

That's Last Light of the Sun you are thinking of. I agree with you that the plot lacked focus (even ignoring Kay's determination to tell the life story of every minor character we meet), it's not a bad book and I did enjoy reading it but I'd say one of his weaker novels.

I'd say A Song For Arbonne is closer in style to Lions than the Fionavar books. It does get a bit overshadowed by Tigana and Lions among Kay's 90s work, but I think if you're a fan of Kay's writing then it is worth reading.

Speaking of Children of Earth and Sky I saw link on Goodreads to this painting, it was suggested this was one of Kay's inspirations for the story.

I finished Children of Earth and Sky earlier today. I really liked it, I think the obvious comparison out of his other books is the Sarantine Mosaic (which I also liked a lot), not just for the many references to the earlier series but also for the structure of how it interweaves the lives of the characters with some major events of that world's history but keeps the focus more on the individuals than on the world-shaking events. I think my only major criticism might be that it took over a hundred pages to really get going, there are a lot of introductions to various characters going on but once the plot did pick up momentum I thought it became a very compelling story. It doesn't have a huge number of action scenes in it but when action is required there were some very tense scenes, and Kay does a good job of showing how suddenly violent incidents could occur in their world. I particularly liked...

There seems to be a significantly higher level of magic in those (particularly Tigana) than in the Sarantine world. They're also less based on European history, while a lot of events and characters from history appear in the Sarantine books (in slightly disguised form), there's no direct historical equivalent of a sorcerer/Emperor casting a spell to wipe a country's name from memory.

I believe the Campbell award is for an author not an individual piece of work.

You should probably also try the Sailing to Sarantium/Lord of Emperors duology that's set at the court of that world's equivalent of Justinian I.

I think Ysabel would take that title fairly comfortably (it did seem odd to see Kay mentioning iPods and Coldplay in his work).

That seems a bit surprising, although looking at Goodreads over twice as many people have read [i]Tigana[/i] as Lions, so it's definitely a long way behind that in terms of readership (not that I have any idea how well the number of readers on Goodreads would correlate to overall sale figures). It does have the third-highest number of readers out of his work being slightly behind [i]The Summer Tree[/i].