Miscellaneous > The Sallyport

anything else?

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Sir William:
Sir Ian, my thanks- I'm currently re-reading The Red Knight for like the 4th time (I'm still wrapping my head around how the magic works in this book, very intriguing to me); having burned through A Song of Ice and Fire (again) and a number of other medieval-themed books, I'm wanting something new.

How does it stack up to Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt?  That was the book I'd read thru most recently before TRK; Cornwell is probably my favorite author for medieval fiction, followed closely by Elizabeth Chadwick, Tolkien, Martin and others...aside from the Sharpe series, of which I've only read a couple some 15 years ago, I've read pretty much everything else he's written that has a medieval flair to it.  I love his style of writing and the depth of the characters...his take on the Arthurian Legend was probably my favorite of all the ones I've read thus far.

Let me ask you something- what's your take on the cover image?  Is that armor historical in origin?  Just wondering...

Ian:
I wouldn't compare it to any big name authors.  It's got it's quirks and things, but it's an entertaining read so far.  The armor on the cover doesn't appear historical at all, but I'm guessing the artwork was commissioned by the publisher.  The author clearly has a good working knowledge of arms and armor in period, so it's cool to see that in there.  This book isn't really about the history of the events, but more about the individual characters that just happen to be living at the time of those events.  It's worth the 3 or 4 bucks it costs on Amazon.

Sir William:
Great; added it to my wishlist to pick up on my Kindle as soon as I finish Dance of Dragons (and TRK upstairs lol).

Ian:
The further I get in the book, the more I'm getting annoyed by the typos and silly things like using the wrong 'to' and even character's names are spelled differently in different paragraphs.  The author also seems to think the word 'cannon' refers to the religious contextual word 'canon' but I digress.  The story's holding my interest, but this needed to be proofread a couple more times.  A published author should have command of the language he writes in.

My other favorite is the word ordnance and ordinance.  I haven't come across that in this book, but I giggle when I see people use the word ordinance to mean explosives and artillery ammunition... that's ordnance.  Unless of course you fire city ordinances at people, but I don't think it would be as effective in war to get hit by a piece of paper with laws on it.

Sir William:
Ah, a grammar-phile...I'm similarly afflicted; typos, misspellings and grammatical errors are all like fiery pin pricks on my subconscious- it actually hurts the immersive effect books normally have on me.

But, if you take into consideration that its probably a debut, and the publisher did it on the cheap (which means rudimentary copy-editing, if at all) then it isn't so bad.  You might be surprised at how many books available on the Kindle suffer from similar maladies.

For example, the hard copy of The Red Knight doesn't have those issues, but the Kindle copy does to a certain extent.  It can be very vexing.

LOL @ ordnance...I never gave it much thought really, but you've a good point.  The misuse of 'their' and 'there' gets to me as well.  'Irregardless' is like Kryptonite to me.  lol

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