erm, yes. Finished 560 pages of Charles Stross’ The Bloodline Feud one long Saturday of reading. Lucky I have more! Not the remaining two of the Merchant Princes Omnibus, they shall have to wait till next month. Instead I have the beginning of newness, courtesy Saladin Ahmed.

First I read his Throne of the Crescent Moon, which I loved very much and is high on my list for book of the year, then discovering he had nothing else published except in an anthology decided to buy that: Fearsome Journeys, which I read last week. And there I discovered some utterly brilliant stories that made me head to the internets to see what else they’d written, do a bit of rummaging to find something I’d like. Fantasy writers have a habit of penning series, cycles, trilogies, sequences, and so on, which I don’t like starting mid-way. I also don’t have much patience for stuff older than 10 or so years, so sometimes it takes much said rummaging to find something that fits which also has received at least reasonable reviews.

Short stories are a very good way to find new authors, though not an infallible method. But considering most of what I’m buying in the way of skiffy or fantasy is approximately the cost of a couple of coffees, it tends to not be such a loss if the experience turns sour.

So, Scott Lynch, partner of Elizabeth Bear who was also in the anthology and is also vaguely on my list, was one of the first to arrive, so is what I’m now reading. It’s the first of The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, which I like just for the title. The cover suffers from a pox of embossing and gilding (or perhaps coppering), but otherwise isn’t horribly embarrassing. But today is the German elections, so I am mostly distracted with that and probably won’t finish this today. Possibly good if I restrain myself.