Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
May18

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Who Killed the World? Mad Max:  Fury Road (2015)     “Who Killed the World?”  The graffiti just jumps out at you, when you see it on the wall of the Citadel’s awful Harem Chamber. “Who Killed the World?”  Indeed.  Later it is asked by one of the female Breeders who are on the run from Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), the ruler of the Citadel. And maybe it’s even somewhere else in here, buried under the screaming insanity and outright...

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The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse
May15

The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse   The timing couldn’t have been better for ‘an old- fashioned ghost story’. I had heard this described perfectly Kate Mosse’s short 2009 novel, The Winter Ghosts.  It was a torrentially wet Saturday night, with Sunday morning promised to be the same; and I had both free.  On top of that, Ms. Mosse has described herself as a fan of the classic ghost stories of authors such as Henry James, Algernon...

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Low Moon by Jason
May15

Low Moon by Jason

Putting the Dead in Deadpan: Low Moon by Jason   My God, what a find!  If ever you needed just one reason (in my case it’s yet another reason) to haunt second-hand bookshops, then it is the unadulterated pleasure of coming across something like this! I picked up Low Moon by someone called Jason simply because I noticed that it was published by Fantagraphics Books; and back in the day when I really collected this kind of stuff,...

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The Chronicles of Conan – Volume 8 – Brothers of the Blade
May11

The Chronicles of Conan – Volume 8 – Brothers of the Blade

The Chronicles of Conan Volume 8 Brothers of the Blade And Other Stories   It was with great relief that I gave a cry of ‘Get thee behind me, Great God Set’ to the previous volume of writer Roy Thomas’s Conan adventures, which almost signaled the end of my love affair with this series. With this volume we are back on track. Issue #52, The Altar and the Scorpion, is a minor classic.  As a drifting mercenary Conan has come south to...

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Playing on the Black Keys: The Castle in the Forest (Norman Mailer, 2007)
May11

Playing on the Black Keys: The Castle in the Forest (Norman Mailer, 2007)

Playing on the Black Keys: The Castle in the Forest     By the time [Hitler’s] political career began, he was in command of an artwork of lies elaborate enough to support his smallest need.  He could shave the truth by a hair or subvert it altogether… ‘There is no better way to usurp the services of a high political leader’, [The Maestro] would tell us, ‘than by this method.  They must not be able to distinguish certain lies from the...

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