Husband. Father of grown up kids. Labrador owner. Amateur artist. Rock and Jazz fan. Retired IT Engineer. English. Trying but mostly failing to learn French.
Reading mostly sci-fi and fantasy, but also hard boiled detectives, westerns, classics. Anything interesting
This link opens in a pop-up window
"The insidious doctor returns to Great Britain with his league of assassins, the dreaded Si-Fan. …
I didn’t enjoy this as much as the first one. The racism/xenophobia is still a big negative and this time Fu Manchu’s plots didn’t seem fiendish and inventive enough to be a positive. I mIght still read number three though, as it’s free on Project Gutenberg.
Apparently Moorcock only took three days to write this book, and I can well believe it. I thought it was derivitive juvenile escapist tosh. I absolutely loved it.
It's an affectionate homage to one of my favorite books, "A Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I understand it was one of Moorcock's first books but he'd obviously learned all he needed to from reading Burroughs.
The text has a lovely old fashioned ring to it but flows beautifully. The action and adventure are great. The plot is daft and the characters are completely one dimensional. Exactly what I was looking for.
You won't find anything challenging in this book but it is great fun.
The back cover says “comic talent” and “wild humour” but I didn’t get it. There was one hilarious seduction scene early on and the characters are quite amusing but I found the most of it rather dull.
The writing reminded me of the Ipcress File which I read earlier in the year and they were published 4 years apart n the 1960s so this post modern splurge of multi page paragraphs was obviously the thing back then. Now it reads like a NANOWRIMO project someone would churn out in one month.
The worst parts are the endless information dumps about the Courier’s Tragedy. I only finished it because it was mercifully short and I don’t think I’ll be trying any more Pynchon.
The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, …
This is the first Iain M Banks novel I've read and I really enjoyed it. It's big far future space opera, but the focus is on the characters (some of them AI drones). The pacing is great with peaceful sections interspersed with violence and threat building to a satisfying conclusion.
The Boys from Brazil
The Boys from Brazil is a 1976 thriller novel by American writer Ira Levin. It …
A well written thriller. A really easy read. I've seen the movie a few times and, from what I can remember, it follows the book really closely. I wish I had read the book first because it would be great to work out the twist at the same time as Leibermann.
In noir master Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe befriends a down on his …
I binged the Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye without any gaps. I loved them all but think I may have to take a break before moving on to the other Chandler novels.
By now I’ve picked up the tropes and structures of these stories. There’s always pleanty of gangsters, crooked cops and beautiful women. One of the beautiful women is a murderer (but not the only murderer). There’s often a rich old man with two spoiled daughters. There’s always a double case; one in the first half which you think is solved, then another in the second half which turns out to be linked to the first one. There’s always an unsettling early twentieth century undercurrent of racism and homophobia which you have to hold your nose through.
The Long Goodbye is probably my least favourite of the three so far but it’s still a great …
I binged the Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye without any gaps. I loved them all but think I may have to take a break before moving on to the other Chandler novels.
By now I’ve picked up the tropes and structures of these stories. There’s always pleanty of gangsters, crooked cops and beautiful women. One of the beautiful women is a murderer (but not the only murderer). There’s often a rich old man with two spoiled daughters. There’s always a double case; one in the first half which you think is solved, then another in the second half which turns out to be linked to the first one. There’s always an unsettling early twentieth century undercurrent of racism and homophobia which you have to hold your nose through.
The Long Goodbye is probably my least favourite of the three so far but it’s still a great read. The descriptions, dialogue and one liners are always wonderful. I found the switch between the two cases more jarring in this one as the second case wasn’t very interesting at first (it gets better). Also, after the second case is solved there is a lot of loose end tying which drags a bit, but the last chapter is great.
Philip Marlowe, a private eye who operates in Los Angeles's seamy underside during the 1930s, …
I love this book. It's fast paced, tense and exciting. The characters are great. The dialogue is amazing. The plot gets more and more convoluted and nastier and nastier all the way through, and the wry first person monologue is just delightful.
In this episode of "The Earthsea Cycle", the widowed Tenar finds and nurses her aging …
I enjoyed this book more than “Farthest Shore” but not as much as “Wizard of Earthsea” (one of my favourite books) and “Tombs of Atuan” (also very good). Le Gunn’s writing is as beautiful as ever but this one loses its way in the middle and the ending is satisfying but feels rushed. It was lovely to be reunited with Tenar and the dragons are always great.
Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly …
Totally ludicrous "boys own" adventure. The writing style flows nicely but the characters are all stereotypes, none of them have any common sense, and the plot is full of holes.
If a stranger comes to you and says, "I've disfigured a corpse and left it in my room so everyone will think I'm dead. Can I stay with you for a while?" What do you do? Of course you invite him in and become firm friends. After that things start to get less believable.
The new friend gets murdered so the hero goes on the run to scotland. There he happens to walk into the home of one of the murderers. Well I guess there were only 3 million people in scotland when this was written so the odds of that happening were shorter back then.
The baddy is no smarter than the hero. He locks him up in a …
Totally ludicrous "boys own" adventure. The writing style flows nicely but the characters are all stereotypes, none of them have any common sense, and the plot is full of holes.
If a stranger comes to you and says, "I've disfigured a corpse and left it in my room so everyone will think I'm dead. Can I stay with you for a while?" What do you do? Of course you invite him in and become firm friends. After that things start to get less believable.
The new friend gets murdered so the hero goes on the run to scotland. There he happens to walk into the home of one of the murderers. Well I guess there were only 3 million people in scotland when this was written so the odds of that happening were shorter back then.
The baddy is no smarter than the hero. He locks him up in a store room full of explosives so he' able to blow his way out.
All the way through the novel, the hero gets helped by people who trust him even though he's being hunted by the police. Finally, at the end of the book, the authorities seem perfectly happy to let him take charge of their anti terrorist operation even though he's just a civilian.
Nice and short. A flowing style. But completely daft and of it's time.
A collection of beautifully written short fantasy stories. Full of thieves, little gods, creepy creatures and the occasional dragon. They are a joy to read but really just mood pieces. My one criticism is that they all stop abruptly without satisfying endings. Still highly recommended for the poetic language
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, first published in the UK as The Mystery of Dr. …
Written over a century ago. Full of the open racism and misogyny of it’s time, but if you can get past that it’s a ripping yarn. Fu Manchu’s murderous plots are ingenious, bizarre and great fun. Some sections (like the fungus room) are genuinely horrifying
I love ERB's Mars books (including the ones he wrote after this), and I remember enjoying Tarzan and The Land That Time Forgot when I was young, but it feels like he just churned this one out in a weekend. The world isn't nearly as interesting as Barsoom, the characters are flat, the action is dull, and the plot lurches from silliness to silliness throughout (for example the heroes dress in dead monster skins to walk past the live monsters unnoticed, and at one point the hero doesnt notice the love of his life has been replaced with a monster).
There is a moment of weird horror in the middle (when a hypnotised character is slowly eaten limb by limb without reacting). The ending sticks closely to the Princess of Mars set-up-a-sequel formula. The whole thing is rushed, dull and daft and peppered with occasional bizarre moments. Oh, and plenty …
I love ERB's Mars books (including the ones he wrote after this), and I remember enjoying Tarzan and The Land That Time Forgot when I was young, but it feels like he just churned this one out in a weekend. The world isn't nearly as interesting as Barsoom, the characters are flat, the action is dull, and the plot lurches from silliness to silliness throughout (for example the heroes dress in dead monster skins to walk past the live monsters unnoticed, and at one point the hero doesnt notice the love of his life has been replaced with a monster).
There is a moment of weird horror in the middle (when a hypnotised character is slowly eaten limb by limb without reacting). The ending sticks closely to the Princess of Mars set-up-a-sequel formula. The whole thing is rushed, dull and daft and peppered with occasional bizarre moments. Oh, and plenty of casual misogyny and a dollop of racism for good measure.
Len Deighton's classic first novel, whoseprotagonist is a nameless spy – later christened Harry Palmer …
I enjoyed the light hearted tone. The book is full of wordy descriptions but they’re quite entertaining. On the down side; it is quite a confusing book and things just seem to happen to the protagonist without him having much agency until the end
A short, well written, easy read. Full of stereotypes but great fun anyway. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I’ve seen the movie many times; the learning to swim scene always makes me laugh and I’m glad it’s here in the book too. This is the first Louis Lamour I’ve read and I’ll certainly try some others.
A great mash up of hard boiled detective and science fiction, set in a future where human minds are digitised and can be uploaded to different bodies. The book is well written and full of great ideas. Be warned; it does contain an unpleasant torture scene