Good Reads - Jasper FForde

Another of my random bookstore purchase finds. He has a series of books about Thursday Next, literary detective. I actually started with the second and loved it. There was a series of people following Thursday like Lamb and Slaughter, Cannon and Fodder all of whom die very quickly after being introduced. And two henchmen, Chalk and Cheese who were indistinguishable from each other. I found it all funny, your mileage may vary.

Thursday Next books in order are:

• The Eyre Affair
• 
  Lost in a Good Book
• The Well of Lost Plots
• Something Rotten

Good Reads - Kim Harrison

Sometimes when in a large bookstore with lots of SF and fantasy, I'll buy a random new author. There are a lot of names I don't recognise, and I don't pay enough attention to any news group to have some idea of who is deemed good of the newest authors to hit the shelves. So I buy a book, and depending on my reaction, may buy more or never again with that author.

The randomly chosen book this time was Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison. Modern day trappings but witches, vampires, pixies and fairies live alongside humans. An excellent read and the other two books by the same author: The Good, The Bad, And The Undead and Every Which Way But Dead are on my 'to buy' list.

Good Reads - Garth Nix

I became aware of Garth Nix at AussieCon when he presented his new fantasy series at a panel about humour in SF/Fantasy. The presentation was hilarious, I've been waiting for him to get serious about writing full length humour but so far, no luck.

Since the convention, I've been regularly purchasing and reading his books. Sabriel was the first book of his I read. Since then, I've read most of the works listed on his site down to the chapter books for young readers. THE OLD KINGDOM TRILOGY and THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM I would recommend to anyone who wants to try this author's style.

I find that many fantasy books for younger readers are more entertaining than the bog standard epic fantasy so much in vogue for adults. There's more imagination used in many of these stories instead of mere variations on a theme.