M. John Harrison's Viriconium

[Eddie Chang]

I'm about half way through M. John Harrison's "The Pastel City," the first of his novels set in the fantastic city of Viriconium.

It's my first exposure to Harrison's work, having picked this volume up because Neil Gaiman speaks highly of him.

Harrison's writing is beautiful. The economical prose rich with ideas reminds me a lot of Michael Moorcock's best work. Its blend of far-future s.f. and fantasy and its avoidance (so far) of Tolkienesque cliches also seems to echo some of Mike's writing ("Winds of Limbo" and "Breakfast in the Ruins" for example).

Incidentally, outside of Viriconium is a wasteland called Rust that's chock full of salvageable mechanical artifacts. Much like the planet Rust from Pete's campaign. Fun coincidence.

Can't wait to see where it goes from here. Looks like the book I bought has two more of the Viriconium novels compiled inside it.

[Náriël Telemnar]

That sounds good...maybe you can pass it along when you are finished. I'm now four 'chapters' in to the book that Todd foisted on me Sunday: Bone The One Volume Edition by Jeff Smith. It is a collection of 55 issues of the Bone comic book. It's a good fantasy story so far. The title character is very cartoony looking and the others range from human to scary, but the whole thing is fun and more engaging than I expected.

[Loken]

I've got several of the Bone comics, that's fun stuff. It's kinda all ages so it's cute but there is a lot of character and story for adults.