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Drachenfels
Drachenfels was, I think, the first novel Games Workshop published, and the first I read. It also led me to read a lot of Kim Newman’s work, such as The Quorum. Drachenfels was written under his pen-name, Jack Yeovil, to distinguish it from his non-corporate IP work. I think when Games Workshop first commissioned writers […]
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The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward
For all his fame and influence on horror in the 20th century and beyond, it was always peculiar how dreadful a writer H. P. Lovecraft was. I suppose it fitted well with what a terrible person he was. But despite this, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward is actually really quite good, and certainly my […]
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The Talon Of Horus
As is normal on Sundays, I got woke up by La Serpiente refusing to sleep in and had to take her out for pancakes to prevent the maelstrom that would ensue if she woke her sister up by banging around the apartment. And then when I got back, I read another Games Workshop novel about […]
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The Necromancer’s House
I finished reading The Necromancer’s House just after midnight. It’s a book of many chapters, where almost every chapter is incredibly short, the start is great, there are two or three good chapters and then the end is disappointing and there’s too much groping for a happy ending that renders what goes before meaningless.
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The Grey Knights Omnibus
I finished The Grey Knights Omnibus, a bible-sized paperback containing three different novels about the Grey Knights, the super elite daemon-hunters among the super elite super soldiers of the Imperium, that strange Gothic/Roman/whatever you want to call it background to a table top game of plastic soldiers, that has driven massive profits for Games Workshop. […]
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Lovecraft Country
This week I read Lovecraft Country, a book with a Lovecraftian bent, although it was more the Lovecraft of The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, crossed with the Horror at Red Hook, than The Call Of Cthulhu or The Colour Out Of Space. I picked it up at random from the “fresh returns” section at […]
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The Ballad Of Black Tom
I finished The Ballad Of Black Tom this evening, after putting the kids to bed. It’s a rare Lovecraftian story that has a happy ending, and the most positive we can say of this one is that the protagonist defenestrates himself, rather than having his mind eaten by eldritch horrors.
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Alien: Covenant
Last night I sneaked out to watch Alien: Covenant, the nth Alien film. (Seriously, I’ve lost track how many there are now. Do you count the Alien Vs Predator films, or are they just too embarrassing? Does Prometheus count? Was there a film after Alien 3, or did I just imagine that?) This time around, […]
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Diamond Dogs
I can’t remember quite why I was recommended to read Diamond Dogs, but I think it was somewhere on Charles Stross’ blog, and I bookmarked it and then didn’t get round to downloading it until I was on my way to Bangkok last week. It’s one of two stories (the other, Turquoise Days, I find […]
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It
After her usual hullabaloo tonight (howling that she was too tired and wanted to sleep, before we’d even bathed her), La Serpiente went to sleep in less than five minutes, and I retired to my bed to read the last quarter of It. That was two and a half hours of my life spent working […]
