Posts

More ‘Tides of the Tyrant King’ and a ‘Savage Sword, Reforged’…

Image
I actually picked these comics up last week with a view to reading them over the weekend but… You know what this blog is like… I make a vague promise about how I’ll definitely pick a book soon and at the same time I’m making it, I’m adding at least a week to the ‘wait time’, I’m nothing if not consistent ;o) Anyway… I’ve been making a weekly trip to Forbidden Planet to pick up a comic or two; just to give myself a little routine/something to look forward to while I’m out of work. This time round I came home with a couple of ‘Conan’ comics; ‘Tides of the Tyrant King’ was a no-brainer and while I don’t normally pick up ‘The Savage Sword of Conan – Reforged’, ‘Tides’ looked a little lonely by itself so I thought, why not? All of which leads me to this post, just a quick one today for a couple of short(ish) reads. Let me tell you all about them… ‘Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King #2’ – Zub, Merino (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures) CONAN OF CIMMERIA believed that THULSA DOOM’s evil had been b...
2 comments
Read more

‘Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment’ – Ian Marter (Target)

Image
  Page Count: 127 Pages Saturday was a busy one (a lot of fun but, busy…), with my youngest daughter, and so yesterday was a day where I dragged myself out of bed and went straight to the comfy chair, there to stay until I realised I’d forgotten to pick some stuff up from the shop :o) I got a couple more movies under my belt but that’s a post for another day. In what seems to be becoming a habit at the moment, we’re all about old ‘Doctor Who’ novelisations, today, and it’s the turn of ‘The Sontaran Experiment’. Here’s a story that I only watched, for the first time, back in 2021 ; but I’d never read the book until yesterday… Landing on Earth, now a barren, desolate planet, Sarah, Harry and the Doctor are unaware of the large watching robot. The robot is the work of Styre, a Sontaran warrior, who uses all humans landing here for his experimental programmes. What has happened to the other space explorers who have come here? Why is the Sontaran scout so interested in Earth and in brut...
2 comments
Read more

‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ and ‘One for the Road’ – Stephen King.

Image
  You can find these stories in Kings ‘Night Shift’ collection and they also have a habit of turning up in various editions of ‘Salem’s Lot’. I love ‘Night Shift’ (I always make sure that I have a copy on my shelves) and that’s where I read them this time. I was watching ‘Salem’s Lot’, last night; the more recent one and… Well, by ‘watching’, I should say that I dozed for chunks of it; only during the bits that weren’t worth keeping my eyes open for though ;o) No great loss, I’d always rank the book over both film adaptations. Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah :o) While I was watching ‘Salem’s Lot’, it got me thinking of a couple of King’s short stories that book-end the main event, these two. I thought that reading these stories would be a decent way to round off October and so, one quick search through the shelves later, here we are. Let me tell you about ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ and ‘One for the Road’. ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ Page Count: 35 Pages In which Charles Boone takes up residence in the Bo...
2 comments
Read more

‘Strange Eons’ – Robert Bloch (Valancourt Books)

Image
  Page Count: 190 Pages Most people go through phases of reading books by a particular author. Because I have to be different, I go through phases of ‘buying books by a particular author, leaving them on a shelf until I’ve forgotten I have them, and then reading them… eventually’. I wish I was like other people… ;o) Anyway… I was looking for some books to keep me company, while looking after the cats, and came across ‘Strange Eons’, doing a great job of being the ‘forgotten book at the bottom of a pile of slightly less forgotten books’. I’m always up for seeing what other writers make of Lovecraft’s Mythos, and I’ve enjoyed a large chunk of what I’ve read of Bloch, so it felt like just the right time to pick up ‘Strange Eons’ and finally give it a go, especially with Halloween right around the corner. And… When Albert Keith comes across a dusty old painting of a hideous, red-eyed, sharp-clawed creature in a dingy junk shop, he falls in love with it at first sight and buys it at a b...
2 comments
Read more

‘The Boys Omnibus – Volume 4 & Volume 5’ (Dynamite)

Image
I’ve been in and out of the ‘Boys’ omnibus editions, over the last few months, and what I’ve found is that if I leave it too long, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to stay on top of the story. That’s partly on me (chemo-brain…) but I’m also going to out on a limb and say that sometimes, it’s feels like Ennis is having so much fun poking fun, at superheroes, that the actual plot gets shunted to the sidelines and left to wonder just what it did wrong. Either way, the number of times I’ve found myself thinking, ‘this is cool, but why is it happening…’ I’ve had a little more time on my hands, this week, so thought I’d go for it and read Volumes 4 & 5, one after the other, and see if things made a little more sense. And… It did ;o) Vol 4. (Page Count: 328 Pages) So where are the real superheroes? The warriors for truth and justice, the defenders of the American way, the heroes who fight to make things right and ask for nothing in return? Hughie finds out when he meets the teenage ...
2 comments
Read more

‘Doctor Who: The Awakening’ – Eric Pringle (Target)

Image
  Page Count: 144 Pages Yesterday was one of those days where I briefly hit heady heights (prep for an interview happening later today), stopped to use the bathroom and found a dead pigeon on the floor. Seriously, screw you ‘little cat’… If that wasn’t bad enough, ‘little cat’ saw her prize headed to the bin and we had a ‘moment’ where I had to stop her taking it under the bath. The sooner my ex-partner, and kids, come back from their week away, ‘little cat’ can be their problem again :o) Not a day for really getting to grips with the TBR pile then but that’s okay; once I’ve got the interview out of the way, maybe tonight will be a little easier. I did fancy a little reading time though (just nothing too heavy on the eyes) so settled for one of the ‘Doctor Who’ books that I’ve picked up recently. I actually watched ‘The Awakening’ last year and while it was okay, it wasn’t a story that I saw myself revisiting this soon. Not until I saw the cover art anyway, that changed my mind pr...
2 comments
Read more

‘The Farm (Paperbacks from Hell)’ – Richard Haigh (Valancourt Books)

Image
  Page Count: 183 Pages I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘Animal Horror’ so when I saw mention of ‘The Farm’ in ‘Paperbacks From Hell’ , I resolved to keep my eyes open for what I was reliably informed was a standout work. And then I saw how much second hand copies were selling for… I decided that I couldn’t spare both eyes for the search and kept just the one eye open instead ;o) Time went on and I’ll be honest, that eye started to droop a little. And then all of a sudden, some ‘behind the scenes’ rights negotiations concluded and ‘The Farm’ was available at a much more affordable price. I didn’t hang around grabbing a copy and once it arrived, I didn’t hang around getting stuck into it. The lethal, body-pulping pile-up on the winding Welsh mountain road was sickening enough. But the spillage of chemicals from the wrecked lorry, leaking through the hidden channels of the earth to contaminate the pond at Hobb’s Farm, miles away, produced an unimaginably more horrific effect. As the ...
2 comments
Read more