-
A packed day / first book of the year
This morning we went to my least favourite cafe in Ballard, bought some pastries and took the kids to one of the nearby parks. Destroyer has learned how to play on the swings independent of being pushed, and La Serpiente was demonstrated feats of strength and bravery by riding up and down a small hill […]
-
Thin Air
Thin Air was Richard K Morgan’s return to science fiction, after his fantasy Land Fit For Heroes series, which I could never get into. It’s another scifi noir (see also: Altered Carbon) but without people about to upload their consciousness into USB sticks, and set on Mars.
-
A God In Ruins
My wife gave me this book after we inadvertently used it to teach Destroyer to swear on a car journey. It’s the story of Teddy Todd, an RAF airman in the second world War, flying bombers to raid Germany. But perhaps really its an achingly sad, beautifully written meditation on death, kindness, and failed hope.
-
The Secrets Of Drearcliff Grange School
To confuse myself, I read the sequel (The Haunting Of Drearcliff Grange) first, but then devoured The Secrets on my way to Singapore. It’s amusing that what I took from the sequel to be the big story of the first book, turns out to be something that doesn’t happen in the first book at all; […]
-
Anno Dracula – One Thousand Monsters
A long time ago, Kim Newman wrote Drachenfels, which was a novel with a vampire, Genevieve Dieudonne, who wasn’t a generic villain, and that did so well for him that he couldn’t give her up. She showed up in several more Games Workshop novels before ending up in Anno Dracula, Newman’s alternate history where Queen […]
-
The Damnation Of Pythos
It’s been a little while since last I read a book about Space Marines, but finally I got around to this, the last in the sixth anthology of Horus Heresy books. This one was pretty bleak; a bunch of very angry, traumatised Space Marines who really want to be robots instead of men, get haunted […]
-
The Light Brigade
I found The Light Birgade on my Kindle the other week, but couldn’t for the life of me remember buying this book. Eager for a break from Space Marines, I picked this up… Only to find it was more Space Marines, just this time Heinlein style starship troopers instead of Games Workshop licensees.
-
The Haunting Of Drearcliff Grange School
The Haunting Of Drearcliff Grange School is the second book Kim Newman has written about a fictional girls school, a cross between St Trinians and either Hogwarts or Professor X’s Academy For Gifted Mutants. Like all Newman’s work, it’s a glorious mashup of B movies, comic books and characters like Dr Shade that Newman made […]
-
Double Eagle
Last weekend Games Workshop rereleased Aeronautica Imperialias, their fighter combat game, and to persuade people to buy it they also reissued Dan Abnett’s novel about fighter pilots in the grimdark future. To distract myself from Blood Bowl, or the fact that I was on a plane in turbulent skies, I read it.
-
Celestine
This was a very strange book to read. Half of it is the usual boilerplate Imperial soldiers vs Evil Forces of Chaos story that Games Workshop assume will sell more toy soldiers, and the rest is a wander through what feels vaguely Moorcockian landscapes as an amnesiac wakes on a mound of her own bones, […]
