GangstaFam said:

What are ya reading?

HamsterHuey said:

Nothing at the moment other than some mags. But I have been reunited with my book collection after digging them all out of storage, and I'm very excited to dig into the many that I've never gotten around to reading.

GangstaFam said:

I am RE-reading.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Pashazade, the first book out of the Arabesk series,which I totally adore. So many layers in that story. I cannot even classify those books.

HamsterHuey said:

:wayovermyhead:

GangstaFam said:

Whaddayamean?

Checked it out? Amazon.co.uk says this about the first two books;

Pashazade
Ashraf Bey is not who he seems--a rich Ottoman aristocrat to whom the Iskandryia of a rather different 21st century is more or less his oyster--nor is he simply what he thinks he is--a minor street criminal shipped off to North Africa when he fell foul of his employers. Accused yet again of murders he did not commit, he finds out on the run that he is better than he thinks he is--smarter and more capable and also someone whom people trust and love.

Set in a mildly different alternate world, Pashazade is a thriller with a solidly imagined mystery at its core; it is also a novel about a man finally and belatedly growing up. Ashraf's sense of responsibility for an orphaned girl and for the woman with whom he has refused an arranged marriage are part of what makes him admirable; he has learned the hard way not to treat people as disposable. The details of this alternate near future--an Arab world that remained Turkish after a 1914 war that never quite became important, and into which some slick cybertechnology and genetic gadgetry have slotted without changing anything fundamental--are effectively imagined, but never more important than the people.

Effendi
Effendi is as impressive as Pashazade, Jon Courtenay Grimwood's first novel of crime and punishment in an alternate-world Alexandria. Now the chief of police of El Iskandryia rather than a hunted fugitive seeking refuge there, the electronically and otherwise augmented Ashraf finds himself investigating both terror attacks against tourists and charges of long-ago crimes against humanity levelled against Hamzah, the man whose daughter he might have married. With the help of his equally odd and talented niece, the child Hani, Ashraf pursues his own unorthodox investigatory methods and his own social and political agendas; he is sympathetic neither to the elite who suck the blood of his city nor to the fanatics who seek to replace them. His and Grimwood's city is a place where past and future meet--where mediaeval barbarism and high-tech go hand in hand and every so often the reader is brought face to face with the ways in which this world is both the same as our own and radically different. Grimwood effortlessly plays by several sets of rules at once and is as accomplished a thriller writer--doing noir as well as he does courtrooms--as he is as a writer of his own, sometimes quite strange, brand of commercial SF

HamsterHuey said:

Too many names and references I don't know.

Sounds intriguing though.

fantasyislander said:

Excuse me????

Spats said:

you heard me.


btw- i restrained myself on this post.

Imago said:

Don't let this Angel Face fool you. She has sharp teeth and she sinks them into my ass every chance she gets.

Spats said:

what can i say? you bring out the best in me.




jerkoff.

Spats said:

fantasy... i think he has a thing for you

fantasyislander said:

you beat me to it... my thoughts exactly.

emm said:

oh god no.

emm said:

which? the or the ??

fantasyislander said:

both!! it's a fantastic picture!

fantasyislander said:

Again.

emm said:

i AM going to meet herman one day! and we'll have lots of fun, there will no doubt be booze involved, maybe chips and dip, and i'll end up sitting on his lap. then he'll remind me he's gay, but i'll kiss him anyway. pictures will be taken and used for blackmail. after which i will have to sell all my worldly goods to keep said pics from being posted on the org. i will end up impoverished and on the streets, all because i met herman.

maybe it's not such a good idea.

Spats said:

you're actually beginning to amuse me now!!



but i still think you're an ass.

fantasyislander said:

lol sometimes the cracks in the facade start to show

just sometimes

Spats said:

LOL

fantasyislander said:

The only way a woman ever swayed me.

Keep thinking it that direction.

Imago said:

Hey!! My son made that picture of Herman!

We need some Fauxie up in here...

fantasyislander said: