I’ve never read any Carmody except The Gathering, which I didn’t really like. I got Obernewtyn from school, and read it… in a day or so. I called my friend Krick, who has been bugging me to read them since, oh, college. She has also been complaining about the last not having been written, but I forgot that part when I started reading them. Anyway, she has given me the next three, and I am a third of the way through the fourth. I am, obviously, loving it. I had never realised it was post-apocalyptic; if I had, I would have read them long ago.

Then again, since the fifth – and God willing, final – was rumoured to be coming out the end of this year and Penguin now tells me (through Readers Feast) that it will be out in July ’07, there is less time for me to pull my hair out waiting.

Hanging out for this and Garth Nix may be the death of me.

I started this… Monday I think. Read more last night. Took it to school because we had a lesson in the library: read a bit before school, then in the library period, then a little at recess, then a bit at lunch, then a little in my one period off… and then I had to finish it before I came home, because I couldn’t bear to think of it sitting there unfinished.

I haven’t felt like that about a book in a while. It was fantastic. I’ll do a better review of it sometime soon… I’ll be writing a review for both VATE and ASif!

Not the movie – big fan though I am – but the book, by Kate Mosse. Another Grail story… this one a time-slip idea, with Alice the amateur archaeologist in 2006 and Alais, possibly a Cathar or at least a sympathiser in 13th century France. Overall, I think it was a good book. Not a reat one; just good, quite enjoyable, moderately engrossing. There were a few bits I found clunky – some of the dialogue, and some of the descriptions, particularly of Alice (I really don’t care that she’s tanned and wearing cut offs, sorry), but mostly the story goes along at a reasonable pace. I think that writing two different narratives is quite a skill, and Mosse generally manages it, although in a few bits I think she left a character too early or too late. But, I think I would recommend it to people who aren’t totally over the whole Grail thing – this one doesn’t make a huge thing of the Grail itself, which I think is an advantage.