I guess I ought to make at least one post this month. I read a bunch of books recently. "King of Foxes," "Exile's Return," and "Flight of the Nighthawks" continued Raymond Feist's bland fantasy series. Orson Scott Card wrote one classic 20 years ago with "Ender's Game," and tries to milk that success with "Shadow of the Giant." Sadly, this book, like the others in the so-called Shadow Quartet, isn't very good. The writing is pedestrian and dull, the characters cardboard cutouts, and Card displays the geopolitical acumen of a 9-year old Risk fanatic, or possibly a neoconservative.
With "The Mission Song," John LeCarré continues the examination of Africa he began in "The Constant Gardener." It's a fine effort; think of it as "Zaire-iana." James Clemens hits a lot of the fantasy epic clichés in "Shadowfall," but writes well and introduces some neat variations.
Cintra Wilson's "A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations" is quite possibly the angriest torrent of vitriol I have ever read. The title explains it all. It's good, but not great. Then I read M. John Harrison's "Light," a kind of bizarre science fiction story that I'm pretty sure I didn't entirely get, but was pretty good in spite of that. Finally, there was "Let's Put the Future Behind Us," Jack Womack's dark comedy about the crazy criminality of Yeltsin's post-Soviet Russia. I liked it, though I thought the ending was a little improbable.