As with my favourite pieces of music, I like any books that can successfully pull off a cross-genre story. Although my roots lie in science fiction and war stories, the books I have read over the last year have often mixed these with alternative history, fantasy and the odd touch of romance. One book I am particularly looking forward to continuing is the continuation of the ‘A Song Of Ice And Fire’ series (check out my book review category for those I have already read, and my huge thanks to Oleg for sourcing all the books I have read over the last 19 months here in Kazakhstan), though I need to check if the author has yet released the next instalment. George R R Martin managed to weave the stories together reasonably well, with aspects of Romance Novels in quite a few surprising places, vis a vis former enemies etc. Although the strong points of one book in the series are not consistently carried to the next, I still found myself drawn to find out what would happen next. Never spending too long on a particular aspect of the different genres he combines, I suppose he is popular because he draws on readers with a wide variety of tastes, that and his (occasionally updated) web site ensure that people can stay in touch and find out about the next book in the series.