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David McK (3425 KP) rated Trapped (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #5) in Books

Jan 30, 2019

Book #5 in Kevin Hearne's 'Iron Druid Chronicles', this takes place 12 years after the events of [b:Tricked|106843|Tricked|Alex Robinson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347400465s/106843.jpg|102982], and thus 6 years after the in-between novella [b:Two Ravens and One Crow|15728721|Two Ravens and One Crow (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #4.5)|Kevin Hearne|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344336650s/15728721.jpg|21407171].

In this, Atticus's apprentice Granuaille has finally nearly finished her training, with a large part of the story dealing with Atticus's attempts to get some peace in order to do so: a peace that keeps getting interrupted by the gods and goddesses of various pantheons, a lot of whom bear a grudge against him for various reasons (with the end of the novel having Atticus trying to make amends for previous actions - personally, I felt this was a bit 'tacked on' - against the Norse pantheon)

Comic relief, as always, is provided by his Irish Wolfhound Oberon (who Atticus can mentally communicate with), providing a much needed dose of lightening to the proceedings.

Kudos

David McK (3425 KP) rated Excalibur: The Legend of King Arthur in Books

Jan 30, 2019

If I'm honest, I'm not really that much of a graphic novel/comic book kinda guy: I usually prefer to let my imagination do the work rather than have it 'shown' to me (which is also why I don't always like TV/movie adaptations).

Having said that, I thought I would give this one a go anyway. A retelling of the Arthurian legend, this takes in pretty much all the main characters and events of that legend, but not necessarily all how I was familiar with them (it involves the seelie/unseelie (i.e. faeries) which I don't remember ever having been part of the legend before).

Starting with Arthur's conception and ending with his 'death' at Badon Hill, the novel also glosses over some of the less savory actions that Arthur is supposed to have carried out (ref Tristan and Isolde).

An OK read, and while yes, I may pick up some of the others in the series, this failed to really change my perception of graphic novels as a whole.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Break of Dark in Books

Aug 2, 2019

Break of Dark

Robert Westall | 1982 | Horror, Science Fiction/Fantasy

9.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

I must have been 12 or 13 when I first read this, and back then part of the fun came from the sense that these actually felt like adult stories, for all the book is advertised as being basically YA fiction: quite apart from the substantial quantities of profanity and sex, many the characters aren't typical YA identification figures: middle-aged seaside policemen, earnest young vicars, suburban couples, and so on. These are still hugely readable and satisfying stories even now many decades later.

But what are they about? Well, there are two stories of ghosts (a haunted Wellington bomber during the second world war, and a rather stranger tale of an unwitting medium), two of very atypical alien visitations (a cautionary tale of a young hitch-hiker, and a blackly comic one concerning a spate of peculiar crimes in a small resort town), and one of an inner-city vicar who stumbles onto something very creepy in the crypt of his church. All of them are engagingly and skilfully written, and immaculately paced. Good reads for all ages.