A ‘Did Not Finish’… ‘Wilful Child’ – Steven Erikson (Tor)

 


I did a lot of reading while the blog was on hiatus and on the whole, I loved it; it was great to feel like I was reading for pure pleasure again and you’ll hear all about it over the next few weeks. At the same time though, it really struck me how little mileage there is in sticking with a book that’s really not working for you. I mean yeah, there are times when you have to stick with it (says the man with an exam in a week) but the whole point about reading for fun is that you enjoy it, especially if life is throwing stuff at you at the same time.

What does that mean for this blog? Well, you’ll see a lot more of me being enthusiastic about my reading and every now and then, you’ll see a post like this where I stopped reading a book and moved onto to something that I’d enjoy. This time round, I didn’t finish reading Steven Erikson’s ‘Wilful Child’.

These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through ‘the infinite vastness of interstellar space’...

Being a fan of the ‘Malazan’ books (well, the ones that I’ve managed to read’), I’d always meant to give ‘Wilful Child’ a go and see how it matched up. I can’t really tell you much as far as that goes, only making it through about 50-60 (ish) pages before giving up. In certain of the ‘Malazan’ books, Erikson can show a keen eye for a well placed humorous moment but here, the humour felt really laboured and not hitting any of the targets that it was aiming for. To be fair, that may well be down to my not being much of a ‘Star Trek’ fan (it’s ok but it never grabbed me like Star Wars did…) and not getting the references. If you’re the opposite then ‘Wilful Child’ may be just your thing but I couldn’t see myself working through another three hundred odd pages of that so… I didn’t :o)

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who finished the book (leave a comment etc) but I think I’ll stick with the ‘Malazan’ books thank you very much ;o) ‘The God is Not Willing’ is another dense read but with loads to recommend it. That’s a post for another time though...

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