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More trees would survive and there'd be a bit less mind rotting pap floating around.

Zoomar- what do I want from an adventure story (using the term in its widest sense)? I want to be stuck on the edge of my seat, wondering what's going to happen next. I want Porthos in the grotto, Gandalf on the bridge, Parker in the closed down funfair, Allan and Umslopogas's desperate ride to...

Dave- but the point is that Bastable is a middle class Victorian and so given by nature to earnestness. Or perhaps I should say Edwardian. I can't remember when Nesbit did the Bastable series.

Flocc- suspension of disbelief is one thing- hanging, drawing, and quartering is another. It passed the time, and is certainly superior to HT's IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES and RULED BRITANNIA but it's still vastly inferior to his trilogies.

The first vol is easily the best.

Flocc- it's more than simply "lifting names". It has the same power to destroy illusion as far as I'm concerned as the presence of "Hook" in ISOT.

No contest- for all its faults (one fucking coastguard boat has two military geniuses and a Stasi agent!), ISOT wins hands down. 1632 has all the deficiencies of a group effort. The series has been going steadily downhill (though admittedly THE CANNON LAW was slightly better than THE RAM...

Sorry, but I just don't think THE PESHAWAR LANCERS worked. I enjoy literary jokes (I love Newman's ANNO DRACULA series) and I enjoy adventure yarns but the LANCERS fell in between. Stirling made enough use of literary allusion to spoil the adventure but not enough to make a fresh creation. I...

To be brutal, I think much of the popularity of THE PESHAWAR LANCERS (Stirling's solo effort I could most easily dispense with) springs from the fact that a lot of people on this site don't read very widely. LANCERS is an uneasy mixture of homage to the adventure fiction which Stirling obviously...

Gary Jennings combines thorough research (my better half, who did Hebrew and Arabic at SOAS, expressed doubt at the use of a word in THE JOURNEYER. She pulled down her old Arabic dictionary and discovered that the term was used in this context in the 13th century), great wit, obscenity (the...

A much more interesting variant is in Kim Newman's THE MACCARTHY WITCHHUNT (in his THE ORIGINAL DR SHADE collection) where Mrs Samantha Stevens is under investigation in a world where Joe McCarthy really is a witchhunter.

Tocomocho- it's many, many, years since I read about this but (IIRC) it was all to do with a new head of the Knights of Malta and Paul took umbrage when the Spanish nominated one without his permission- for some reason he felt that he had this prerogative. But this could all be a booze induced...

Yes, I noticed. Willie who ran the pub and had been in the Foreign Legion... Knew this "bint" who went on about the "flux". And the SAS (or at least the retired ones) tend more towards writing rather embellished memoirs, going mad, and murdering their wives. It's a curious fact that for such a...

IIRC, in the late 18th century Tsar Paul I of Russia declared war on Spain (something to do with Malta). Since the rest of Europe was in between, no fighting took place. On the other hand, since there was not a single casualty, this may make it the most rational of wars.

Well, basically for reasons of internal politics, the American Government cobbled together a phoney casus belli and invaded another country... But there are far too many variables. For starters- 1. The circumstances of the war. Has the other country invaded because you attacked first? 2...

"Curmudgeon", IIRC, is a phrase denoting " a churlish, miserly, fellow" dating from the late 16th century. I myself am happy to be a cheerful drunk who thoroughly enjoyed the DTF sequence.

I quote from memory but look at Donan Coyle's THE FREE COMPANIONS, SIR GUILLIAME and THE WEST COUNTRY RISING. Or to put it another way, Conan Doyle's THE WHITE COMPANY, SIR NIGEL, and MICAH CLARKE. Not to mention (as I have pointed out before) Nigel and Maud Loring, John Hordle, Samkin Aylward...

There comes a time when I give up. One of them is when WIKIPEDIA is cited as a source.

Thande- in my not especially humble opinion (I don't do humble well, it doesn't become me) the DTF sequence so far from being "dire" is the best thing Stirling's ever done. There's also a nice couple of hints which I suspect most readers won't pick up that the world of 1998 in which the Change...

England survives (if you call losing 99% of the pop survival) because Nigel Loring (SAS and the Life Guards) pulls his troops out of London, gets the Royal Family, and fortifies the Isle of Wight. He sends trusted officers by sailing ship to the other British islands and they also are fortified...