I have a weakness for epic fantasy, borne of my mother’s decision to read the hobbit and then the entire lord of the rings trilogy to my sister and I over the course of our childhood. George RR Martin’s ‘A Song of Fire and Ice’ series is along with Steven Erikson’s Malazan series about as good as it gets these days in terms of this genre, and after a 5 year wait the latest volume in Martin’s series , A Feast for Crows, is out. Early reviews are sadly mixed, observing that the book is overlong and demonstrating a lack of good editorial advice, but I’m buying it nonetheless. Fortunately for fans, the next volume shouldn’t take nearly as long to arrive – Martin basically wrote himself into a 1000+ page corner and decided to re-edit and cut the massive tome into two volumes, so the 6th book in the series will supposedly come out this spring. We’ll see about that, but in the meantime there’s the current volume to enjoy. I’ll post a review once I’ve read it, though it will be a while. I’m currently wading through the latest Malazan book from Erikson (House of Chains) and my bet is I won’t touch another epic fantasy for a while. Don’t get me wrong, Erikson is great, but a single 1k page epic is enough for me for a while.

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