Just the start of it all

So, one of my New Year's Resolutions is to keep up with IZ. (Keeping up is the flipside of my acknowledgement that I'm never going to catch up -- the last one I read all of was back in the Pringle era.)

( My thoughts on the stories; cut for length and spoilers )

ETA: High quality non-fiction too. The Banks interview has me even more squeeful for Matter than I already was and the reviews are as entertainingly idiosyncratic as always (though, really, calling Heroes a mixture of Unbreakable and the X-Men films seems to rather ignore its debts to Watchmen in particular and the comics medium in general). Nick Lowe's declaration-of-interest intro about how he knows Neil Gaiman (both Bewoulf and Stardust were under review) was an entertaining tale in its own right, but I did think it interesting that the big addition to Beowulf's plot got a huge pass, given that it seems to be his biggest pet peeve under normal circumstances.