Sam Kates's Blog

The annual Christmas blog post. Short and sweet this year.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

https://samkates.co.uk/2024/12/23/a-v...

First blog post in quite some time, but I have a big milestone approaching and felt I had to mark it in some way: https://samkates.co.uk/2024/11/01/on-...

There's a sale going on at Kobo until the end of March: https://www.kobo.com/p/science-fictio...

Wishing everyone the merriest Christmas (or whatever you celebrate).

https://samkates.co.uk/2023/12/18/ho-...

Concerning book covers: https://samkates.co.uk/2023/10/13/cov...

Concerning a recent jaunt around the Med by ship... https://samkates.co.uk/2023/08/11/med...

Well, we're back from our jaunt around the Med, but I returned with an unwanted companion. Covid has struck me down for the second time and it's as debilitating as the first time I had it in April last year. I dread to think how I'd feel if I hadn't been vaccinated.

I came back chomping at the bit to get on with my work-in-progress, the epic/dark fantasy novel I've already taken too long over, but it'll have to stay on the backburner for a little while longer until I can face staring at a screen for more than a few minutes at a time.

Stay safe out there, peeps. Till later...

First blog post in a while. It's the third, and final, part of an interview from 2019. It was posted originally in its entirety and I wonder how many people would have ploughed through the whole thing. Not many, I suspect.
https://samkates.co.uk/2023/04/27/mus...

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


If ever a novel didn’t need a sequel, it’s Ready Player One. That story came to a full and satisfying ending, leaving no loose threads needing to be tied. It was with a measure of foreboding and reluctance that I read the sequel.
The sense of foreboding was well justified. Where the first book is fresh and fun and original and exciting, the sequel is forced and turgid and contrived and so, so disappointing. Oh, and the protagonist is now a complete jerk.
I forced myself to slog through it, never caring about the characters or the outcome of their struggles, though perhaps ‘struggles’ is overstating it a little—I never felt they were in any jeopardy that a handy deus ex machina wouldn’t get them out of.




View all my reviews

Second part of an interview from January 2019: https://samkates.co.uk/2023/01/13/mus...