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Meanwhile, in the grimdark universe of the far future…

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There is only war, of course there is. That’s what you get for starting a sentence like that… ;o) And to be honest, that was just what I needed yesterday. Roadworks outside my flat, until about half three in the morning, is one of the worse ways to start the day; feeling all nauseous from my chemo medication was a pretty shitty way to round the day off. Fingers crossed for a better day today! Anyway… I fancied some reading that would wake me up a little and a spot of Warhammer 40K is always good for that. I wasn’t in the place to take on a full length novel though so one browse through Amazon later, I had three short stories all lined up on the Kindle app, ready to go. Just some quick thoughts today, mainly because these are all particularly short stories (not that I’m moaning this time round, ‘quick reads’ were the order of the day). Lets take a look, shall we…? ‘The Tithe’ – Ben Counter (Black Library) Brother Scoiven of the Imperial Fists brings death to the foe in his primarch’s n...
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‘Aliens: Genocide’ – David Bischoff (Titan Books)

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  Page Count: 291 Pages Another day, another ‘Aliens Omnibus’… Well, half an ‘Aliens Omnibus’ ;o) It’s not quite how I saw this years reading going (although I did buy the books so I really should have seen it coming at some point) but I’m enjoying it nonetheless. That love of ‘sci-fi horror’ has never really left me and the xenomorphs do it so well. And if that wasn’t enough, it always fun to watch dysfunctional groups of Colonial Marines pour ridiculous amounts of bullets etc into the Aliens, reducing them to acid drenched chunks of… Well, whatever they’re made of. What are the Aliens made of? Anyone? Anyway… Yesterday was a ‘commuting day’ and that led me to go looking for a book that would wake me up, in the morning, but would also be something that I could relax with on the bus home. Sounded like just the right time to pick up an ‘Aliens’ tie-in novel… ;o) The Alien Queen is dead, the hive mind left to flounder… and on a world bereft of its leader, two strains of Alien divide ...
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‘Doctor Who: The Satan Pit’ – Matt Jones (BBC Books)

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  Page Count: 206 Pages Regular visitors to the blog (and casual visitors too, this blog has been around for a little while now…) will know that this ‘Doctor Who’ fan loves the show even more when things suddenly veer into horror territory. It’s not ‘cosmic horror’ in the truest sense of the word but definitely a reminder of just how alien aliens can be when you’re discovering them for the first time. ‘Image of the Fendahl’ , ‘Full Circle’ and ‘The Curse of Fenric’ spring to mind. Anyway… It’s no surprise then that ‘The Impossible Planet’ and ‘The Satan Pit’ were two early favourites in the new series (although I say that, how old are those episodes now?) and when I realised that they were getting their own novelization? I settled down to wait, not for that long as it turned out ;o) Again, regular visitors will know that I’m always keen to settle down with one of the new ‘Doctor Who’ novelizations; books that are happy to expand on things rather than just relay what happened on t...
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‘Night Shoot: A Horror Novel’ – David Sodergren

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  Page Count: 230 Pages I normally open these posts with a little ramble about how a book came to my attention, this time though? The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur, what with one thing and another, and honestly, it’s like ‘Night Shoot’ just turned up on my doorstep, demanding to be read. Rationally, I know that I must have ordered it. I just can’t remember when or why. Anyway… I had some free time on my hands yesterday (finally!) and wanted something that I could just dive into and let the plot ‘happen at me’ (well, that was an awkward phrase but, you know what I mean). The blurb describes ‘Night Shoot’ as ‘a delirious homage to the slasher movies of the 1980s’ so I figured it could very well be the book I was looking for. And you know what? My eyebrows invariably raise when a blurb gets all cocky and full of itself but on this occasion, the blurb was telling the truth… A group of desperate student film makers break into Crawford Manor for an unauthorized night sho...
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A Tale of Stalled Reading...

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Well, not really ;o) This blog tends to do better when I talk about books, not so much when the focus is more on my having a moan. Lets just say that the last couple of days have been pretty hectic (with a fairly equal split between fun stuff and... not so fun) and my reading has hit a bit of a wall as a result. There's a small pile of books, all of which I've managed to get a few pages into but no further. You know the story... ;o) Well, today is looking like a quiet one so the plan is to do something about that small pile of books. I'm not going to finish them all but hopefully, I'll get a couple under my belt and go into this week with a few things to write about. Fingers crossed... Anyway, lets take a look at that TBR Pile, Right now, it's looking like 'The Satan Pit' and 'Night Shoot' will be what I sit down with today, possibly 'The Boys' Omnibus (Vol 1.) as well, lets see. I've got no other plans at the moment. The other books are ...
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‘Low Town’/’The Straight Razor Cure’ – Daniel Polansky (Doubleday/Hodder & Stoughton)

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I'll be honest... I'm shattered and last night's episode of 'The Boys' hit pretty hard, for me anyway; no spoilers here but... Damn those final scenes were hard to watch, not all heroes have superpowers... :o( Off the back of that, I wasn't really up for writing a post, but didn't want an empty space here, so... 'Past Me' gave me a nudge and offered me the use of an old post from an older blog. I need a little break so I was happy to accept ;o) One of the things that I enjoy about this blog, in particular, is being able to highlight books that were great, back in the day, but have fallen off everyone's radar over the years. Genre fiction is always looking forward (and that's natural) but you're always guaranteed to find a few gems if you have one eye on the rear view mirror at the same time. And that's where 'Low Town' comes in, a book that I read about fifteen years ago but is still worth a look today. If you fancy paying a v...
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‘Aliens: The Female War’ – Steve Perry & Stephani Perry (Titan Books)

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  Page Count: 261 Pages When I picked up ‘The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 1’ last week, the plan was to read the three books in between, well… All the other books that are waiting ‘patiently’ in the TBR pile. No urgency, just another way of adding a tiny bit of variety to my reading diet ;o) And now here I am, a few days later, having just finished off what I can only describe as an ‘Aliens Reading Frenzy’. What happened? Well, my posts on ‘Earth Hive’ and ‘Nightmare Asylum’ can speak for themselves but the bottom line is that fun was in short supply until I found it here. That’s what led me into ‘The Female War’, in record time, let me tell you about it… Ellen Ripley is back! Waking from a long journey in space with a mysterious hole in her memory, Ripley finds her way to the Gateway station and a meeting with Wilks and Billie. Ripley has the beginnings of a plan, a plan that might help humanity take the Earth back from the Aliens. Ripley also has a secret though, one that s...
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