Ian Hutson

Grumpy, and living on my narrowboat on what remains of England's canals.

Website: http://www.dieselelectricelephant.com
Twitter: @dieselelephants
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Blog: http://www.dieselelectricelephant.com

http://www.amazon.com/Ian-Hutson/e/B00C6XFRBG

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• Stonebridge Manor on Aug. 18, 2013
  
  I think that reading a good book is a bit like being a ghost haunting people and places that you previously didn't know existed - being blown like mist, from scene to scene, hoping to stay longer in some, catching just enough detail in others, but all the time with the author's hand guiding you carefully to show you what you need to know about events to make you content in your hauntings. Stonebridge Manor is one such. The author provided a framework and just enough detail for my imagination to dress the scenes my way, like a play on a private stage with an audience of one. The action flowed well, so much so that I read the book at one long sitting. I had to read the whole thing because it was the only way to get to the other side and be able to continue with my own life without worrying about the characters. Like life, the story irked at some points, tugged at my sensibilities at others, made me care, made me not care - just like the real lives of strangers do when you catch glimpses. The butler element is delicious, the English country home settings as comfortable as a well-stuffed armchair and I was happy, in my unbalanced non-PC way, for the murder to proceed as it did. There are no plot-holes. There are maybe half a dozen editing punctuation blips (which I only noticed because of my undiagnosed English language-OCD) and they do not detract from the story one iota. I can't write a description of sex for love or toffee and since I am, at age fifty-three, not yet halfway through English puberty I cannot vouch for their authenticity or detail and so can only comment that I had merely to shut my eyes for one or two lines, three or four times. A splendid romp with elements of a very modern Downton Abbey, wisps of Tom Sharpe in his more serious moments and a soaking splash of light murder-detection that had me visualise the policemen involved as a gestalt of all of my favourite television coppers. I recommend this book; it's great entertainment.
  
• The Edge on Feb. 03, 2014
  
  I hugely enjoyed 'The Edge' and want more - if the sequel can't be found soon then I'll start a small riot. The author has that knack of raising the reader's hopes and then dashing them and then raising them again. The text conveys just enough detail to allow the reader to picture the scene themselves and the characters are all likeable enough for the demise of almost any of them to be emotional. The settings range from the claustrophobic right up to full space-opera; from a small boy trapped in a subterranean hell-hole through to fleets of giant spaceships manoeuvring around planets and hyperspace. The main protagonist's character contains elements that we can all empathise with (of being both trapped by and formed by our past) and also has areas where I couldn't decide whether he was a gobsmackingly pragmatic hero or the scariest kind of sociopath (mass killing). How do you develop from a small boy hiding in a wardrobe to a military man making a gun barrel glow hot? The same we that we all do, I suppose. Great "hard" scifi and a great story. Not many places where you can find that and an emotional, playful 50' industrial robot. Seriously, splendid stuff.
  
• The Wound on Feb. 25, 2014
  
  'The Wound' follows on from 'The Edge', and you will need to have read the earlier book to fully appreciate this one. Both books feature solid, well-developed characters underpinned with flash-backs of their lives, and both books feature epic peril and epic space-based science fiction action. I read the earlier 'The Edge' as military sci-fi adventure where the focus seemed to me to be at the level of the humans and aliens involved, but all acted out in the course of enormous events. 'The Wound' kept that spotlight on the individual characters but also opened the focus more onto wider themes, bigger threats and dangers. From reading within the confines of my "pod" or my crew bunk or place on the bridge 'The Wound' led me more around other worlds, new worlds, wider space and bigger timescales. From enormous events affecting thousands we have been moved on to vast events affecting entire species. Splendid stuff. My psyche includes trypophobia and an automatic physical recoil and pain reaction at anything squelchy or crunchy in the line of living tissue so a couple of points of the action had me pausing in my reading (to give me time to think about bunny rabbits and summer meadows, and to stop my own limbs from aching in sympathy and my flesh from itching on the inside). Even if you're not a mal-adjusted wuss like me these brief points will leave you with after-images. 'The Wound' includes the same neatly-described elements of space-opera as the earlier book, and it adds to those a talent for world-building and the description of alien daily domestic life. As I read these I couldn't help but skip back to my favourite Heinlein alien worlds, and the similar ways that the old Grand Master handled his human-alien interactions. Highly recommended, and I'm very pleased to hear that there is to be a third book.