Descender, Vol. 2: Machine Moon
9.0
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Young Robot boy TIM-21 and his companions struggle to stay alive in a universe where all androids...
robots space future
The Turquoise
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Santa Fe Cameron was named for the town where she was born, because her Scottish father and a...
Extreme Metaphors
J.G. Ballard, Simon Sellers and Dan O'Hara
10.0
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A startling and at times unsettlingly prescient collection of J. G. Ballard’s greatest interviews....
Star Wars Omnibus: Shadows of the Empire
Steve Perry and Michael A. Stackpole
8.0
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In the time between the events in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Princess Leia,...
David McK (3906 KP) rated Ready Player One in Books
Sep 19, 2021
Have also seen the movie mentioned below. It was just OK; not great.
<original 2016 review>
Prior to reading this, I'd heard good things about it, and was aware that - like seemingly nearly all of the current Young Adult Dystopian novels - there was a movie for it in the pipeline, by none other than Spielberg himself.
Set in the near-future, I found this to be like a cross between the Bruce Willis movie Surrogates (in that nearly everybody seems to live their life vicariously through other means), The Matrix (cyber reality) and maybe even a bit of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the MacGuffin that gets the plot rolling). it probably helps that - unlike the characters - I actually *was* a kid in the 80s, and so get plenty of the various pop-culture references made.
Plenty, but not all - this, remember, is set in America, so leans more towards the American or Japanese spectrum of popular culture than European.
David McK (3906 KP) rated Star Wars: Darth Vader, Volume 2: Into the Fire in Books
Oct 3, 2021
Both legs chopped off.
Only one arm.
Left on the lave beds of Mustafar.
No, we're not talking about the end of 'Revenge of the Sith' here, but about part of what happens to Vader in this, the second compilation of Greg Pak's run on the Darth Vader series of graphic novels (here, comprising issues 6 through 11), at the behest of The Emperor, who has found out about Vader's previous 'failings' from Volume 1 (Star Wars: Darth Vader by Greg Pak, Vol. 1: Dark Heart of the Sith in which he allowed his personal feelings to get the better of him.
This run also introduces Ochi of Bestoon - who The Emperor has sent to kill Vader - and actaulyl makes a better attempt at tying together the Original Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy (with Vader discovering about, and travelling to Exegol and encountering the Sith Eternal) than any of those latter movies did!
ClareR (6256 KP) rated The Whispering Muse in Books
Apr 15, 2024
Jenny is persuaded to work in the Mercury Theatre as a dresser to the leading lady - and to spy on her for the owners wife. Jenny has little choice but to do as she’s asked, and initially she just gets on with it. But soon she begins to actually like the woman she’s supposed to be spying on, which leaves her in a bit of a tricky predicament.
This was a really atmospheric, gloomy and unnerving read. If I’d been able to see the setting, I would have seen shadows in every corner. My skin was crawling just reading about it!
Laura Purcell has become an insta-buy author for me - historical fiction with a touch of threatening, unexplainable atmosphere would appear to be right up my street!
Echoes of the Great Song
7.0
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The Great Bear will descend from the skies, and with his paw, lash at the ocean. He will devour all...
David McK (3906 KP) rated The Fourth Rule (Riley Wolfe #4) in Books
Sep 7, 2025
The type of - largely disposable - novels you pick up and read whilst in an airport, waiting on a flight, or actually on said flight itself.
Which is exactly when and where I read this, without knowing it is actually the 4th in a series!
Thankfully, however, it is written in such a way that you do not *need* to have read the previous, although - and I'm guessing here - I suspect it may help to provide some wider context if you do so.
Anyway, in this the master thief Riley Wolfe gets involved in a plot to steal the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum, with the help of a new partner, whilst a ruthless new criminal collector has a vendetta against him for stealing from their collection.
Plot twist, if you can call it that, you can see coming from a mile off.
May read more; wouldn't be in a hurry to do so.
David McK (3906 KP) rated Three Cheers for Me (The Bandy Papers, #1) in Books
Jan 30, 2019 (Updated Aug 10, 2025)
Mainly because I found myself stifling full-blown belly laughs sitting on a bus on the way home from work reading it.
Which happened again here.
For those not in the know, in these early novels the protagonist is a Canadian air war ace, one Bartholomew ('Bart') Bandy, who seems to constantly find himself getting into scrapes, especially where it concerns the top brass of the time, and then - somehow - coming out of them smelling of roses, as the saying goes.
I have since went on and read the entire series, but - I have to say - I found these earlier instalments, set amongst the horrors of the First World War - to be the better of the books.