Review of Kharne, Eater of Worlds

I used to buy a great number of GW fiction, going right back to the novels by excellent writers like Kim Newman and Ian Watson. But I kinda tailed off as they became a bit samey. All the quirky, interesting characters disappeared and there are only so many ways you can describe battle scenes.

Nevertheless, I still buy the odd one when I fancy a bit of pulp action blood and guts.

My latest purchase was Kharn, Eater of Worlds, by Anthony Reynolds. I like Reynolds' work. He writes a good adventure tale.

Now I don't normally review other writers' work and I don't intend to start now beyond saying that Reynolds does a good, solid writing job and I was really getting in to the story when: it stopped!!!

The eBook I had just paid £8.99 for was incredibly short. How many words I can't extract from my Kindle Reader but Amazon lists the paperback scheduled for next year as 240 pages. That's about half the size of a normal SF novel and £8.99 is a premium price for an eBook.

I kinda feel ripped off. Now you don't buy a novel by the word but an author needs space to develop the characters and the plot, especially with epic multi-POVed space operas. I felt Reynolds was just getting into his stride when his tale was chopped.

I noticed something else recently when I was browsing in Waterstones at Thanet. GW books were relegated  to one tiny section on the bottom shelf. And they consisted mostly of bundled omnibuses of already published material. Not sure what this portends, if anything.