Rob Gregson

I... don't know. Total confusion through most of the story - Cathy was _less_ confused than I was, if only because of her obsession with getting home. I'm pretty sure I missed a bunch of references, too - "Beware of the Leopard", for one. Even the way things worked out... I'm not sure _why_ they worked, or how, or... Happy ending - several happy endings, in several different forms. And I want to read the stories about the squirrel - all of them, old and new. But overall, while I'm glad I read it I doubt I'll reread.… (plus d'informations)

Turtles all the way up

We all loved the idea of "The Eyre Affair" (2001), "Inkheart" (2003), and the other early stories which read characters out of fiction we know and used them in new ways. Since then, lots of people have tried it. Last year H. G. Parry gave us the excellent "The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep" that I liked a lot.

The problem is that there is little left in this subgenre to be explored. This new book by Rob Gregson works in a multiverse in which some characters are aware that they are fictions and are trying to discover – or not discover, every higher level of author.

To me it isn't a particularly interesting idea and I find the execution to be messy and hard to follow. We learn that characters are pulled from their death scenes using elaborate, expensive, and energy devouring portals, but whatever for?

I did not find the story or the characters compelling, and don't recommend this very average book very highly.

I received a review copy of "Shelf Life" by Rob Gregson from Mirror World Publishing through LibraryThing.com.… (plus d'informations)

I was provided this novel by the publisher for review.

Shelf Life is certainly a unique novel, and whilst I ordinarily am not a big science fiction/fantasy reader I found the idea of a story set around a protagonist who's not a real person but rather finds out they're merely a character within another book themselves to be a quirky and interesting idea.

Maybe it's due to the fact this isn't a genre I'd typically read, yet I found the beginning to be quite slow and not at all enthralling. Things improved as the story unfolded but largely I can say at no point did I particularly care about any of the characters nor feel particularly compelled to return to the story beyond the desire to complete it so I could move on to the next book.

If you're after a unique story in a unique setting, are in to science fiction/fantasy and the blurb piques your interest then this may very well be a book you enjoy, however for me personally it missed the mark.… (plus d'informations)