Joe Abercrombie on 'The Steel Remains'

Someone else has been granted an early sneak-peek at Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains. And it just so happens to be one of the authors of the sort of dark, intriguing, fantasy fiction that I was talking about in my own review, Joe Abercrombie, who concludes:

"I hesitate to say, 'if you like the works of x, y, or z, then give The Steel Remains a try,' because really it's pretty much unlike anything else, and that's why you should give it a try. You might love it, you might loathe it, but you'll certainly find it difficult to ignore..."

Read the full review over at Joe's blog.

March 14, 2008 | Filed Under Books, Reviewing | 2 Comments

Son of Scalpel rising from the ashes..?

I'm very glad to see that following the recent and rather ignominious collapse of what looked to be an exceedingly promising review outlet, one half of the Scalpel editorial team - Jonathan McCalmont - has declared that he's contemplating starting over and trying again with a similar concept and framework.

This information should be filed under Good News, and I for one welcome our new online genre fiction reviewing overlords.

And on a similar, review-related note, Paul Raven points anyone interested in the subject in the direction of Paul Kincaid's thoughts on the topic. Well worth a read if you're a reviewer, a reviews editor, or rely on book reviews when contemplating your book purchases.

July 26, 2007 | Filed Under Reviewing | Leave a Comment

Chouinard & McCalmont's Scalpel launches

Gabe Chouinard & Jonathan McCalmont's brand new genre review 'zine Scalpel officially launches today. Their Reviewerfesto proclaims that the 'zine is aiming "to serve as an outlet for what they have come to term 'street-level criticism', a style of reviewing that serves to bridge the gap between academic criticism and standardized reviews."

This sounds, to me, like a Good Idea. In these days of Amazon-fuelled review-lite, in which pretty much anyone, anywhere, can dash off a poorly-considered opinion in but a few moments and yet still be granted a public forum to air their half-baked views - what's more, a public forum that very directly and immediately affects a potential book-buyer's decision-making process - I think it's going to become increasingly important to develop increasingly sophisticated, trusted filters to help tune out the crap.

Come to think of it, this is pretty much what always I vaguely aimed to do with the old Alien Online project; admittedly with mixed results and without anything like Scalpel's explicit statement of intent. The problem with the TAO project was that it was just too broad-brushed, too admin-heavy, far too time- (and life-) consuming. Hopefully by focusing in on a specific content stream - reviews - the Scalpel boys will be able to avoid many of the pitfalls that put paid to the original TAO (although the process did result in a more tightly news-focused UK SF Book News site instead, so all's well etc.)

Anyway, here's hoping that Scalpel will quickly become one of those aforementioned trusted filters and do much to help lovers of the more refined arc of the genre fiction spectrum pluck the titles with true potential from amidst the dross of the same-old, same-old.

Launch-day content includes an editorial by Pat Cadigan, reviews of Adam Roberts' Gradisil, Hal Duncan's Ink and The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate by Ted Chiang, as well as a wide-ranging interview with Charlie Stross. So that should give you a pretty good idea of the tone they're keen to develop.