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Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley


Calibandar

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My Christmas present orders to myself from the Fantasy & SF Book Club!!! Winterbirth among them. And there's a special offer on top of it: You pay nothing until 1st Febraury 2007 for the 5 for 3 books!

Dreamsongs (George R R Martin) - Hardback £7.99

Hinterland (James Clemens) - Special Hardback Edition - This title is part of our 5 for 3 promotion. £8.99 1 Free

Briar King (Greg Keyes) - Paperback - This title is part of our 5 for 3 promotion. £5.99 1 Free

The Blood Knight (Greg Keyes) - Hardback - This title is part of our 5 for 3 promotion. £10.99 1 £10.99

Charnel Prince (Greg Keyes) - Hardback - This title is part of our 5 for 3 promotion. £8.99 1 £8.99

The Stormcaller/The Blade Itself/The Lies of Locke Lamora/Scar Night/Winterbirth - Hardback - This title is part of our 5 for 3 promotion. £24.95 1 £24.95

Total Saving £108.02

Postage & Packing £0.00

Total Price £52.92

I mean, flippin' 'eck!

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I have a question:

If you have to chose two of the following three, which would you chose: Scar Night, Winterbirth or Stormcaller?

Unfortunately, I'm not in UK, so I must purchase them through amazon.co.uk...

You can go to these sites to purchase these books from a U.S. reseller. I've had VERY good luck with them.

http://www.abebooks.com

http://www.alibris.com

Both have resellers that import UK books. :)

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You can go to these sites to purchase these books from a U.S. reseller. I've had VERY good luck with them.

http://www.abebooks.com

http://www.alibris.com

Both have resellers that import UK books. :)

Thanks for the tip.

However, I'm in Europe. What I meant is that I cannot, unfortunately, use this nice offer of Fantasy & SF Book Club... :(

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  • 4 weeks later...

I agree with Calibandar.

WINTERBIRTH is a fine fantasy debut, one of the best of 2006. I liked it a lot! :) Thanks for bringing this one to my attention!

Check out the blog for my review.

Patrick

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I have a question:

If you have to chose two of the following three, which would you chose: Scar Night, Winterbirth or Stormcaller?

Unfortunately, I'm not in UK, so I must purchase them through amazon.co.uk...

I haven't read Winterbirth, but Scar Night was a very good, imaginative debut, while Stormcaller was just incredibly dull. I'd leave out Stormcaller, because you don't really gain anything from reading it, it just takes a long time. It's not a really awful book, but it's just lacking anything original or entertaining and the writing is mediocre at best. It's one of the worst books I've read this year, because I've tended to read books that were above average or excellent. Stormcaller was just entirely mediocre.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've just finished this one today.

Good stuff IMO. Ruckley's world-building is pretty good and the way the first volume has ended means that this is shaping up as a fair trilogy. I have to agree with Calibandar as to the tone of the story - not much humour. This is an unapologetic dark story with what seems to be little in the way of happy endings in this volume.

The Aeglyss character is worth watching, for a somewhat different POV.

The tagline on the cover that I got was "The greatest tales are written in blood..." Its a fair summary of this one.

Cheers,

Stubby

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  • 1 month later...

Just got done with this and i really enjoyed it, as have been mentioned already not much light, but i do dig the dark, i liked the history of the world unfolding and look forward to learning more about characters and places that have only been mentioned in passing. Was good to see how the female warriors of the Black Road bloods and Inkallim were presented in a natural and unforced way.

Good characters, decent prose and a interesting world, makes for pretty good reading.

Got the impression that the Shared (magic system in the book) was kinda similar to the Skill thats in hobbs farseer books, anyone else struck bty the similarity?

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Hi all. This might be the most delayed working of the Summon Author effect yet, but (thanks to Calibandar, who snuck up on me on another message board and pointed me in this direction) I thought I'd put in an appearance - better late than never, right? - to say all the (mostly) positive comments are much appreciated. Us debut authors would just curl up and die in a corner if no one anywhere ever mentioned that they liked our stuff.

I see a few comments about 'dark', 'serious', 'no happy endings', 'gritty'. Can't really deny it - that's the way it came out onto the page. I think I was a bit despondent about the state of the real world when I came up with the original idea for Winterbirth, and it kind of shows, I guess. I'm honestly not an inherently gloomy person - not all the time, anyway - so, despite the fact the real world's not exactly turned into a place of boundless merriment recently, with any luck at least a glimmer of light and optimism might creep in by the end of Book 3. Maybe. Can't necessarily promise a 100% happy ending, though ...

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  • 2 weeks later...

senseichow: appreciate the positive review - and the fact that you've got the biggest damn picture of the Winterbirth cover I've seen anywhere on the web! You like blood on snow, or something? To be honest, I'm still not 100% certain what Book Two's going to be called. If I was threatened with violence and generally forced to reveal a provisional title, I'd say 'The Broken Man'. But I'd say it really quietly, ask you not to spread it around and tell you not to be surprised if it changed.

pat5150: book 2 (whatever it's called) is written (which might not be exactly the same thing as 'finished', since some further editorial fiddling may yet occur) - I'm currently trying to beat the plot of book 3 into submission (only the details, I should probably add - I do actually know what happens in the end. Honest.)

maltaran: Saolin don't have a near-humanoid form, so the mechanics of them producing mixed-race offspring with humans would be both challenging and disturbing. So no. Of the other races - the Anain don't really 'breed' in a way humans would recognise as such. As far as the Whreinin are concerned - they've been extinct for so long, and the world has changed so much, that no one can be entirely sure exactly what went on when they were around ... Incidentally, there is a bit on my website called the 'Gazetteer' where I put up odds and ends of background info on the world/races etc every so often, for those who like that kind of stuff.

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  • 1 month later...

I am a third into Winterbirth and I am not too sure about this one yet. Don't get me wrong, it is not bad, not in the least, but it hasn't really grabbed hold of me yet. It does have a lot of interesting possibilities though so I am sure to continue reading!

Another author on the board? Who cast that summon spell? :P (and welcome, fellow Edinburghian, well, that is what the cover flap says anyway :P )

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