h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I very rarely stick my head out and recommend books these days. I bought my sister Neil Gaiman's Coraline for her birthday last year and she didn't like it at all, despite the fact that I think it's n amazing book.

However, it does seem to me that kids books just keep getting better and better. In recent months I've read the aforementioned Coraline, which is scarier and funnier than any adult horror novel published in years, Terry Pratchetts miraculous 'Maurice...' which just blew me away with it's complexity, and at the moment I'm readin Garth Nix's Sabriel, which may well be the best book I've read since Carter Beats the Devil last summer.

if 'adult' fantasy was this clever, well written, exciting and just plain toothsome, then I'd read a lot of more of it...

(BTW, feel free to enthuse about Sabriel all you like. but please don't mention how it ends - I'm only about a third of the way through it!

I heard good things about Sabriel, but never read it.

I was beginning to think I was the only person who'd read Carter, fabulous wasn't it. Although those twists and turns, and the detail. I don't suppose you'd help contribute to a review on it for the post column?

I thought 'Carter...' was just fantastic. A wonderful evocation of a bygone era, and a great mystery, and a great romance and...and...and, well, just great everything.

I'd be more than happy to help with a review for the post, though my copy is presently at my brother's, via my mum...

Fabulous!! It needs to be posted on the correct page, than I'll come along and add my comments, plus a synopsis of the story if you don't feel like writing one!! Then, all our comments get put together on one page to be put in the review.

Ok, might not be for a couple of days though - internet at access at home kaput and work not likley to take kindly to me writing a book review during office hours, as it were...

Oh to be payed to mess about on h2g2, what fun!!

I'm going to start the Carter the Great review ready for next Monday's submission. I'll tell you the link so you can add your own comments.

Ok, that sounds like a definite idea.

I managed to write a couple of paragraphs outlining the basic plot yesterday, and totally forgot about the presidential death.

Kinda central to the plot...

Can you go to page called Rough Writing at A1044631 which is the holding bay/work area for reviews. Read the review, then come back to this thread and post your comments, which I'll add, then submit to shazz. Please don't post at Rough Writing, as that's purely for drafting the articles.

will do. I'll get on it tonight as soon as I can get to the pc...

Thankyou. As long as it's done by Monday, because somewhen then I have to submit it to shazz.

Oops, , didn'y get to it last night at all...

Ok, here goes. I've copied and pasted the entire thing here and added and altered as I think appropriate - it's easier to do that than to go through the rigmarole of 'After this sentence blah blah blah'. I hope.

'Charles Carter, known to his audiences as Carter the Great was one of the best magicians of the 1920's, generally regarded by most as the Golden Age of Magic. The book tells his life story, from escaping from a brank after misbehaving, to finally confronting his rival, the evil magician Mysterioso. On the way, he meets a host of characters, from Houdini, to a scientist who has invented a magical wonder, television. Can Carter save the world of magic, slowly being taken over by cinema? And, most importantly...did he kill the President?

For, as if Carter's life wasn't complicated enough, he has an FBI agent trailing him to try and arrest him for the murder of President Harding, who died shortly after attending one of Carter's shows and performing in the finale. The reader is kept guessing right until the end, making 'Carter' a lengthy and weighty read.

But don't let the size of the novel put you off. I guarantee you'll be gripped from the start. What sets 'Carter' apart from other books with a similar attention to detail is that, while most of the events are pure fiction, Carter the Great is a real 1920's magician. And by writing of his interactions with famous characters from history, as well as the vividly portrayed fictional ones, 'Carter' has the added benefit of realism. Gold's evocation of a forgotten age of Magic is tone perfect, and Carter's triumphs (and occasional failures) leap from the page in vivid detail, thrilling the reader just as Carter must have electrified audiences in the 1920's.

There is just one disappointment. While Gold gives lengthy descriptions of magic tricks, it is generally from the audience's perspective. He mentions a couple of levitating devices, but anyone hoping to learn the secrets of a truly great magician will have to look elsewhere. Still, think of it as like this, you wouldn't want me to tell you the book's ending, would you? Like any great magician, Gold clings jealously to his secrets, and it is bad form to give away endings, not to mention all the twists and turns in what is an astonishing debut novel.'

I've taken the liberty of correcting a few typos and the like, and you should feel free to do likewise or generally tinker with the thing in any you feel like. I will try and log on tomorrow at some point, so if yoy have any questions/amendments/ideas, I'll try and deal withthem then.

Now that's a novel way of doing it. Before I've had the writer's name, and then they're comments, followed by the next persons etc. But that looks far more professional, I'll put that up on the page and submit it to shazz.

Luv Pearl

Why can I never put the correct forms of words up? Naturally, I meant their.

Ah, well, that would be a different way of doing it, but not the one i'd choose...This appeals to me more in an aesthetic way, I don't know about professional...

Well, shazz liked it and it has been 'lifted' so your we'll be in Thursday. Now I have to think of another book to review...

She asked me what a brank was, and I gave a very loose description. I don't suppose you'd have a better idea of what they look like and were used for, my memory of the description in the book was a bit hazy.

It's a medievil device for use on nagging wives. The one in the book is steel if I recall correctly?. It's basically a cage for the head which holds the jaw immobile, thus preventing the nagging or scolding wife from speaking...