You know a book's amazing when...

... you absolutely can NOT put it down. Last Tuesday, I decided to pick up Conn Iggulden's latest book, Wolf of the Plains.
'Tis a fine tale of the greatest Mongol of them all - Genghis Khan, lord of the grass (there's a lot of it in Mongolia). If you're not familiar with this excellent author, he did a tetralogy on Julius Caesar called Emperor (look it up on Amazon) as well as an awesome book with his brother called The Dangerous Book for Boys. Bet you're curious about what's in it already.

How kickass is this book? Ok I started it on a whim: to keep me company for dinner on Tuesday. Pages turn and turn... and it's 6am. I sleep till 11am, haul ass and get back to reading. I finish the book by 5pm. Every bloody chapter ends with a "ok one more chapter". Great stuff. It's exciting, it's enthralling, it's escapism at its finest - when you are completely taken to another world on a colourful tour with sights and sound foreign, yet you are so drawn in with the characters that the foreign becomes the norm. And when emotions are evoked by the reading, ah that's storytelling at its best.

I mean, take a nice, civilised, urban, educated man (yes, that would be me). Describe a battle where the fighter gets into 'the zone'. Adrenaline. Focus. Alertness. Heightened-ness. Bloodlust. You expect that man to relate? What the hell does a modern city-dweller know about bloodlust, about that gloriously short moment where your life hangs in the balance, subject to the whim of the falling arrow, the unseen dagger, the scything sword?

But I felt it. That need to assert my stand to life. That need to fight my side of the age-old equation of 'kill or be killed'. That call to my basest instincts.


I reached for the nearest weapon to hand. My meal ignored, I tested its balance, its weight, its feel. I allowed it to be an extension of my hand, allowed it to blend into my body, my mind, seamless. It became an extension to my will; and I willed death.

My hand dealt it all around me - accurate, swift, ruthless.

Quickly, the moment was over. I lay my weapon down, picked up my chopsticks and resumed eating.




Damned flies never stood a chance.