Ian Irvine

Hi as you know I've read all of Ian's books and consider him the best OZ fantasy author. The prose isn't the greatest you've ever read but the books are real page turners with plenty of thrills and spills. I also like the way he goes into pseudo-engineering aspects of his mechanical gadgets that feature in the stories and the world building and plot does build quite nicely with each book. My fav is the original The Shadow On The Glass quartet.

Over and out... :D
 
Re - Ian Irvine
Hey, another West Australian, wow!

I'm another fan of Ian Irvine. I like the way he has with world-building, his characters are rather interesting too. He also seems to have put in the right amount of emotions and suspense which I think is often underdone by some of the newer authors. However mechanical gadgets are not quite my scene!

Glad to hear you are enjoying his writing, Braddockery.
 
Has Anyone read his book The Last Albatros? I`ve went through The Shadow On The Glass And Well Of Echoes and was just wondering if anybody has read anything else he has written.
 
braddockery said:
Has Anyone read his book The Last Albatros? I`ve went through The Shadow On The Glass And Well Of Echoes and was just wondering if anybody has read anything else he has written.
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Yep read this one too.

It's a page turner like all of Ian's books but the first of an eco-thriller trilogy called The Human Rites trilogy. I enjoyed it as it is certainly thought provoking BUT not as good for me as the fantasy books as this is what I'm mainly into. Worth a punt if you're an Irvine fan already I'd say and written from a particular character's narrative.

Human Rites Trilogy is as follows:

The Last Albatross (November 2000).
Terminator Gene (April 2003)
The Life Lottery (August 2004)


Here's a Synoposis for The last Albatross:

Ian Irvine's brilliant new novel creates an all too familiar society that is surrounded by escalating environmental terrorism, extreme global climate change and violent technological upheaval. In the 1950s the British carried out atomic bomb testing at Maralinga. Afterwards they blew up 23 kilograms of plutonium with explosives, then left the fragments lying around in the desert. Thirty years later, two students, Ryn and Hercus, decide to steal a huge piece of plutonium, one of the deadliest substances on the planet, and bury it in the backyard. It is 2010, twenty years after the prank. Hercus is a middle-aged failure obsessed with the continuing destruction of the environment. In a desperate attempt to redeem himself he digs up the plutonium and blackmails his friend, Ryn, to help him achieve the ultimate act of terrorism. Jemma, Ryn's wife, narrates the story as the couple try to stop Hercus without incriminating Ryn. Set against the backdrop of technological wizardry, political intrigue and environmental lobby group battling for control of society, Jemma and Ryn race against time to stop Hercus from fulfilling his deadly dream.


***MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS****

Here's a synopsis for the last 2 books that I've also read.

Synopsis of Terminator Gene

Security knocks at the door and Irith Hardey's world is torn apart. When her mother is arrested for an unspecified crime and disappears, Irith is thrown onto the streets. With nothing but the clothes on her back, Irith fights to survive in a cruel and predatory world and struggles to crack the secret virus that threatens to wipe out all humanity.


Synopsis Of The Life Lottery

The world's climate is in chaos. Rising seas have flooded out half a billion people. Hundreds of millions of refugees are pouring into the west, the global economy is collapsing and democracies are being crushed... and an ice age coming. The Great Powers have agreed to embark on a monumental gamble - 100 Days to Save the World. Climate scientist Irith Hardey is sure this will not save the world, but ruin it. But will she uncover the ghastly secret of the Life Lottery before 100 days is up?

Hope this helps....... :cool:
 
heylo everybody, i may not be from Oz but i sure love Ian Irvine, im re-reading A Shadow On The Glass at the moment and i still love his style of writing. I agree that the best was the orig. quartet as the follow up was completely different and seemed to discredit the first quartet as being lies.
 
i have just started my own fan site for Ian Irvine, you sould check it out. I have my own forum like this mainly to sci fi, but dedicated to ian irvine.

forums.thewellofechoes.com
 
I read Geomancer, which had some interesting ideas, but the prose was absolutely terrible. Some of the worst I've read (only just ahead of Goodkind and Paolini). It was a shame because there was potential for a decent epic fantasy behind it, as the setting was a lot more original than in most, and the characters and plot were at least reasonable. I wanted to like Irvine's books, but unfortunately they just weren't able to compete with all of the other epic fantasy out there. (Especially after this year, with the impressive debuts from Abercromie, Abraham and Lynch).
 
I've just started reading Geomancer. It flows nicely, and I'm interested in learning more about his world and characters. We'll see if I reach the end still happy :)
 
I have read both his earlier series, View from the Mirror and Well of Echoes, and think they are good enough. His recent book, The Fate of the Fallen, though, I did not like at all. It was one of the first books in a long time I put down halfway through.
 
I read "View From The Mirror" a few years ago, wasn't too impressed with it. I thought there were some nice ideas in the premise and some fairly original world-building but the plot was a bit dull, the characters were irritating and the prose mediocre. It wouldn't say it was bad, but it wasn't good enough for me to want to read any more books in the series.
 
Agreed. Good worldbuilding and the semi-steampunk setting is pretty good. However, Irvine went to such enormous efforts to make the characters grey, he drained them all of colour and passion. The last two books of View from the Mirror in particular were dull slogs. The series was overlong as well. Given most of Books 2 and 3 had the main characters trudging around a desert, repeatedly, it could have been half the length easily.
 
im reading Fate of the Fallen now and it it seems he wrote it because he was forced to. it looks like he ran out of ideas so he is writing anything that comes to mind.
 
I read about half of View From The Mirror a while back, and had to put it down because it was dire. Bad plotting, bad characters, dull prose.
 
I actually have the well of echos series in my to read list. by to read I mean I have it stacked in a cupboard waiting to be read :D.
 
Rosemary said:
Re - Ian Irvine

I'm another fan of Ian Irvine. I like the way he has with world-building, his characters are rather interesting too. He also seems to have put in the right amount of emotions and suspense which I think is often underdone by some of the newer authors. However mechanical gadgets are not quite my scene!.
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Well since I posted the above, I have re-read the first volume of Ian Irvine's Song of the Tears. What a boring story! I got to the stage where I was commenting 'for goodness sake, stop complaining!' It seemed to me that was mostly what was happening in the book, just characters moaning and complaining!
 
I'm still going to read his books because of the writing style. I've gone through all the well of echoes and the the fate of the fallen, and I enjoy the change of pace between Irvine and Salvatore.
 
Afraid I agree with Rosemary, they are far from bad, I mean they are far from unreadable – and I have read them all to-date (Not saying much, I read most things, and I hate leaving books half read), but the characters do go off on one most of the time – Which is a pet hate. The other is that one event can and will take up one hell of a sizable chunk of one of the books – Can we have a near minute-by-minute account at table 7 please. Really annoying.
 
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