Review This Online

You may have noticed that a new set of books has appeared at the top of Omnivoracious (and no, there's not a Kindle to be found...yet). After a few introductory weeks of featuring our own shelves, we're glad to welcome our first outside contributor, Omnivoracious reader Bob Lock, who lives in Wales and also is a new author (his first novel, Flames of Herakleitos, came out this spring). We asked Bob to write a short note about his collection:

Hi,

My name is Bob Lock and I have the honour of being the first non-Amazonian to have his bookshelf posted as an Omnivoracious banner. One glance at the tomes nestling on my shelf will show you that my taste in literature tends to be on the science fiction, fantasy side with a soupcon of adventure and horror blended in (however, no cookbooks, those are on my wife’s shelf). Starting from the left you’ll see a number of Terry Pratchett novels. I discovered Terry’s work back in 1983 when he wrote The Colour of Magic. It had me giggling like an idiot whilst on a train, and my fellow passengers prudently distanced themselves from me, just in case. I’m pleased to say his writing still has the ability to make me laugh over forty books later. Above Terry’s work, and elsewhere, you’ll spot Dean Koontz, a writer who I greatly admire for his characterisation and the ability to blend in elements from various genres, namely, the ones I have a soft spot for. I particularly like his Odd Thomas series which I heartily recommend as a story which crosses genres, thriller, science fiction and fantasy. Then we come to the science fiction books and of the ones I have perhaps you can only see Richard Morgan and Neal Asher but I have many, many more. Richard Morgan’s first book Altered Carbon, came out in 2002 and I was blown away by it. It’s a cyberpunk/detective story set some five hundred years in the future when Humankind is able to digitally store personalities in ‘stacks’ attached to their spines, therefore when the body dies the personality can be downloaded into another body. The main protagonist is Takeshi Kovacs, an ex-Envoy who was trained to survive being digitally transmitted across to space to inhabit new bodies and fight for the United Nations. Now retired he finds himself embroiled in investigating the murder or suicide of a ‘Methuselah,’ a long-lived and extremely wealthy man. It works well on both the detective side of the story and the science fiction one and is the first of a series of three. Now we come to Neal Asher, who delights readers with his hard SF of androids, aliens, hive minds, world ruling artificial intelligences, time travel and space opera, which is usually bloody and violent. Neal’s writing is fast-paced and the type of thing which will keep you reading bleary-eyed through the night, unable to put the book away and wanting more when you’ve finally finished it. Well, I could write more but I’ve been told to keep to a paragraph (that’s one damn long paragraph you’re thinking eh?). If you look carefully you’ll spot some small-press books amongst the giants and look even closer and you’ll see my own little offering, which I’m pleased to say is stocked by Amazon and doing quite well. Thanks for visiting my bookshelf, happy reading!

Bob Lock

Thanks, Bob. Remember, to submit your own bookshelf photo for a future turn at the top, send it as a .jpg to banner@omnivoracious.com. --Tom