Book Review: Red Side Story - Jasper Fforde


Book cover - a red land with a spoon in the foreground.

Fourteen years ago, I read Fforde's Shades of Grey and my life hasn't been quite the same since. It was a magical tale, almost totally devoid of exposition, building in an fantasy world like no other. Fans have been clamouring for a sequel ever since. The first few chapters of the sequel do an excellent […]

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Book Review: The Constant Rabbit - Jasper Fforde


A human-sized rabbit wearing a suit.

I love Fforde's provincial epics. They are dystopias set in the endless wastelands of suburban England. Whole new worlds brought to life in sleepy villages. The Constant Rabbit isn't exactly subtle in its politics - fears that "the Rabbits" might out-breed us leads to a rise in an anti-rabbit dictatorship. But it is the way […]

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Rejected Sci-Fi Ramblings from my MSc


VR view of a room. A graph floats in midair.

It was only after I started editing my MSc down to its prescribed word-count, that I finally understood the phrase Kill Your Darlings. I spent ages writing florid prose, only to realise it was needless verbiage. The delete key was hammered mercilessly. But... As all fans of Jasper Fforde know - there is a "Well […]

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Book Review: Darkwood by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch


An armoured Kniwght looks out over a forest. A friendly spider sits on their shoulder.

Magic is forbidden in Myrsina, along with various other abominations, such as girls doing maths. This is bad news for Gretel Mudd, who doesn’t perform magic, but does know a lot of maths. When the sinister masked Huntsmen accuse Gretel of witchcraft, she is forced to flee into the neighbouring Darkwood, where witches and monsters […]

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Book Review: Jennifer Government - Max Berry


A human eye, beneath it is a barcode tattoo.

The world is run by American corporations; there are no taxes; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; the Police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms; the government can only investigate crimes it can bill for. Billy NRA is finding out that life in a private army isn't all snappy uniforms & code names. Jennifer Government, a legendary agent with a barcode tattoo, is a consumer watchdog with a gun.

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Week Notes 2


Terence Eden standing outside Number 10 Downing Street.

Covering 2 weeks of holiday and 1 week of work. This is how I've spent my time... Talks The lovely folk at JS Oxford invited me to talk about my recent experiments with SVG. Headlining the bill was the brilliant Nicky Thompson with her talk about CSS shapes. Work Mostly deleting emails, as is appropriate […]

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How Do You Upgrade An eBook?


As I've mentioned before, Jasper Fforde is one of my favourite authors. His latest book "One of Our Thursdays is Missing" is a brilliant work of fiction - but contains a rather worrying flaw. Well, I say a "worrying flaw" - I mean an error. All books contain errata - I think that's a given […]

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Holiday Reading


Thanks for all the suggestions on which eBooks I should read on holiday. I didn't get through as many as I would have liked (crappy flights and too many pre-lunch cocktails!) - but here's what I did read and what I thought of them. Anathem Neal Stephenson's Anathem By rights, I should have loved this […]

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Holiday Book Reviews


Book cover for Jasper Fforde's "Shades of Grey". The title is covered in multicoloured paint.

I'm a manic book reader. When I'm on holiday, I like to try and read a book a day. So, my recent two weeks off was the perfect time to indulge. Here, for those of you that care, are what I read and what I thought. In no particular order... Shades of Grey - Jasper […]

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Redefining The Book


A Kindle hidden in a hollowed out paper book.

Jasper Fforde releases upgrade patches for his books. If he has made an error of fact, created a plot hole or missspelt a word - you can download an upgrade for your book.  How cool is that? He also has a "cut scenes" repository where you can see the chapters which were cruelly cut by […]

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