So says Voldemort in the final duel with Harry Potter in the seventh and last book (reviewed in this issue). I really identified with that, since I didn't understand the business with the wands. But it might have been a epitaph for the whole phenomenon...
Moves, mergers, and all the rest of the industry news.
Longlists, shortlists and announcements of winners.
Dragon Dreamer: The life of Douglas Hill by Mary Hoffman
It is with great sadness that Armadillo records the death of Siobhan Dowd, who won this year's Branford Boase Award with A Swift, Pure Cry (David Fickling Books). She was only 47 and died rapidly, from breast cancer, only weeks after that triumph. Her second novel, The London Eye Mystery, is reviewed in this issue and there are two more books to be released.
Because so many people have had trouble with PayPal, we have decided to make some changes at Armadillo.
From this issue onwards, we are moving to a system of donations rather than subscriptions.If you have had no trouble with subscribing through PayPal, you can continue to make an annual donation of the suggested amount of £5, using this system. If PayPal is a problem for you, then you can send a cheque made out to Rhiannon Lassiter, to Armadillo, c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White, 20, Powis Mews, London, W11 1JN, England.
We hope that publishers will make a more generous donation in return for free access to current editions. The number of reviews we carry in each issue will depend on the level of donations. We shall try this method for a year and if the situation doesn't improve, will have to consider commercial advertisements, something we have avoided for nine years.
Rhiannon Lassiter's Bad Blood was published by Oxford University Press in August. We do not review Rhiannon's or Mary Hoffman's books in Armadillo. If you would like to see reviews or links, please go to their websites: www.rhiannonlassiter.com and www.maryhoffman.co.uk
We omitted to mention what was Armadillo's Book of the Season in the Summer issue. It was Philip Reeve's Here Lies Arthur.
As of this issue Armadillo is cataloguing books using the new ISBN 13 standard. When submitting reviews, please remember to fill in the thirteen digit ISBN but without dashes or spaces.
Writer mother and publisher daughter Gillian and Liz Cross took part in a fascinating dialogue in Oxford in the summer as part of a day conference of CWIG. They had not conferred beforehand but this is what each decided that authors want from editors and vice versa.
Armadillo is edited by Mary Hoffman, written by a host of generous reviewers and web-edited by Rhiannon Lassiter. The original Armadillo image was created and donated by Jane Ray. Armadillo acknowledges The Bookseller as its principle source of Book World and Award News.