Until his untimely death in 2006, my favourite author was David Gemmell. By that point I had read everything that he had written, or so I thought. (After that point, I had three favourite authors: Terry Pratchett, Conn Iggulden, and Bernard Cornwell. I'm now down to two.) So it was something of a surprise, late last year, when I learned that there were not one but two 'new' books by Gemmell coming out this year!
The truth is that one of these two is actually a reprint - "White Knight/Black Swan" was originally published under a pseudonym and has recently been republished under Gemmell's own name. The other, "Rhyming Rings", was recently discovered having never been published.
I read the latter book on the way back from the US, and it was good. It clearly wasn't his best work, and also was a murder mystery rather than my preferred fantasy, but still...
(That said, it does have one huge weakness, and it's very similar to Rowling's "The Cuckoo's Calling" in that regard - the revelation of the person who was responsible for the murders just doesn't work. More than that I can't really say without spoilers, and I'm inclined to think the book is worth reading even with that flaw. Which, actually, is also true of "The Cuckoo's Calling".)
Anyway, it was really good to revisit an old favourite, and equally good to find that the writing still holds up. Bring on the next book!
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