And so this is Christmas, and what have you done…?
About to sign off for the festivities, and I wish everyone a splendid holiday in good company. There are a few things I particularly want to note my thankfulness for.
- Thank you to pretty much everyone I'm in contact with on social media for not in any way spoiling The Force Awakens. I am similarly not going to spoil it, but I enjoyed it, I thought it was a worthy sequel. There are criticisms that are valid (and by now all over the internet), but for me they don't outweigh the overall quality and experience of the thing. As someone for whom Star Wars was The Thing when I was growing up, this was a sequel that made me very happy. If you are up for spoilers I can endorse the opinions expressed by Mr Cornell here.
- This is the season of best-ofs, and I did my own round up here. I am extremely gratified to discover one or other of my books have turned up on a few elsewhere, which isn't
something that's happened much before (any other considerations aside, it is hard to plug, say, book 8 of a series in that context). I have almost certainly missed a few, but thank you to: Books by Proxy, SFFworld, Paul Cornell, The Fictional Hangout Site, The Book Plank, Geek Syndicate, Fantasy Faction and especially For Winter Nights for whom Children was best SF book of the year, Also flagging up a wonderful recent review of Guns of the Dawn from Book Frivolity here and Civilian Reader here, and here is For Winter Nights' review of Children of Time. Looking back over the year, both Guns and Children of Time have received some extremely positive critical attention and I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to review either on blogs, Goodreads, Amazon or anywhere, really. And at the same time, new readers continue to discover and recommend Shadows of the Apt, which keeps me wanting to go back and write some more kinden (and there will be at least kinden short fiction out next year). It all helps. - Emma and Latimer finally received my present, although like last year's it didn't go down quite as anticipated — this is the Tea and Jeopardy podcast's advent calendar, a series of 4–5 minute pieces across the festive season, and I strongly recommend it, and am happy to have been a small part of it.
I have also been a small part of Paul Cornell's 12 Blogs of Christmas this year, on the topic of mishead song lyrics — check it out here, it's a very funny post.
It's been a good year in the realm of fantasy, whilst frankly having been a horrific year both at home and abroad in the greatly overrated real world. Here's hoping that in 2016 the real world catches up.
© 2008-2024 Pan Macmillan
RE: The Force Awakens — I understand the criticisms that people have, but I find that, on the whole, I disagree with them as the film plays into the Star Wars mythological cycle perfectly. It does a fantastic job of bringing the new characters to the forefront while treating the old guard with the respect they deserve.
And the scene where Jar Jar and Anakin fight Lando is the greatest.