BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - FICTION

The Sandman: The Dream Country (Volume 3) (1990) American Gods (2001) Interworld (2007) - With Michael Reaves Neil Gaiman The Dream Country is third volume of the acclaimed The Sandman series but is stand-alone. This edition also contains the original script for the first of its four stories, Calliope, which might be of interest to students of illustration. Much of The Dream Country has been translated to film very effectively as part of a Sandman TV series shown on Netflix. If we are to be honest here, Neil Gaiman was engaged in a project to bring Tales from the Cryp t up the literary and artistic food chain. There is no doubt that he succeeds admirably in his task, aided by a series of excellent illustrators, but the stories, with the exception of his re-thinking of the origins of Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream', are not complex - poetic and suggestive perhaps but not complex. The first story, Calliop e, tells of a writer's abuse of an incar

Divine Endurance (1984) Spirit: or, The Princess of Bois Dormant (2008) Gwyneth Jones One of the themes of my reviews is the 'first novel' especially in genre fiction. Sometimes these show remarkable ability. Sometimes they demonstrate immaturity. Sometimes the immaturity lasts for several early novels (as in the case of Grahame Greene) before the genius breaks through with practice and experience. Gwyneth Jones is an interesting science fiction/fantasy cross-over writer (where what appears to be fantastic is grounded in future science). We can compare here an early with a mature work separated by a near quarter of century. In fact, Divine Endurance was something of a disappointment even allowing for it being a first attempt largely because it was self-indulgent experimentalism in high science fantasy by someone who was clearly intellectually way ahead of the bulk of genre writers but who missed the point about narrative - out there is a reader who must comprehend. In her

Tintin in Tibet (Tintin #20) (1959) Herge   Dream  Country (Sandman #3) (1990) Neil Gaiman/Kelley Jones/Charles Vess Blade of the Immortal: Volume 1 Blood of a Thousand (1994, Japan) Hiroaki Samura   The Invisibles: Volume 1 You Say You Want a Revolution (1994)  Grant Morrison/Steve Yeowell/Jill Thompson   Batman: Hush Volume 1 (2002) Jeph Loev/Scott Williams    Fables: Vol 1 Legends in Exile (2002)  Bill Willingham/Lan Medina/Steve Leialoha Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics (2004) Paul Gravett A Warning To Parents : Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics is a serious introduction to Manga and includes a few references to and examples of graphic sexual and violent works. It is almost certainly not suitable for children under the age of 15.   Alice in Sunderland (2007) Bryan Talbot   All-Star Superman Volume 1 (2007) Grant Morrison/Frank Quiteley   Batman: Noel (2011)   Lee Bermejo/Jim Lee Herge's Adventures of Tintin are classic 'ligne claire' comic books, representing a C

The Behemoth (2016)/The Behemoth 2 (2017)   Scotch (2016) Is There Anybody Out There (2018) Pixie (2018) In the relatively early days of the podcast boom, Rick Coste Productions produced some above average short 'weird fiction' narrative series geared largely to younger audiences but which are listenable for anyone else. The wierdness is often, although not always, explained in more realistic ways than usual but every series has been well written enough to carry that off. The Behemoth is the single voice (mostly) story of an unusual and weird road trip. A 'monster' (a mysterious stone man) arises out of the sea at Cape Cod and walks in a straight line across the United States. A lonely teenage girl, Maddy, makes her way to him and decides to walk with him. In the event she is a protective force for her silent friend as the usual suspects in a disturbed society insist on seeing the 'monster' as a problem rather than as a natural force to be respected and

The Anubis Gates (1983) Declare (2000) Three Days to Never (2006) My first reading of Tim Powers' classic The Anubis Gates was to enjoy a 'suspension of disbelief' romp through a quasi-steam punk literary time travel fantasy with Egyptian mythological themes. A second reading made me understand better why Powers can be frustrating as well as worth reading. The secret to Powers is (as he has articulated in an interview on his working methods) extremely dense plotting in advance of actual writing in which events that happen in one part of a book are flagged up indirectly in others. Everything is supposed to hang together logically and in detail by the end but this can be very demanding on the reader and possibly a little self-indulgent on the part of the author. One does not always have time to work out for oneself whether everything really does hang together but a second reading (with the basic story already loaded into the brain) permits the reader to

A Colder War (2000) The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1) (2004) The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files #2) (2006)   Halting State (Halting State #1) (2007)   Charles Stross   Keeping It Real (Quantum Gravity #1) (2006)   Justina Robson   The Devil You Know (Felix Castor, #1) (2006) Vicious Circle (Felix Castor #2) (2006) Dead Men's Boots (Felix Castor #3) (2007)  God Save The Queen (Graphic Novel: The Sandman Presents #32) (2008) Thicker Than Water (Felix Castor #4) (2009) The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor #5) (2009)  Mike Carey   The Execution Channel (2007) Ken Macleod  The Red Men (2008) Matthew De Abaitua  The Bastion Prosecutor (Kalahari #2) (2009) A. J Marshall The mid-2000s were quite a good period for British popular fantasy-horror-science fiction genre writing. These books should not be neglected simply because time passes. What is curious is how a sex demon appears in two of them (and elven eroticism in a third) which is either coincidence in the ca