Iscariot, by S.M. Vidaurri (Archaia) | review by Stephen Theaker

Four hundred years ago, a boy called Iscariot took part in a ritual which granted him magical powers. Now, in a relatively modern-seeming world, his mentor is on the verge of death, and he chooses a student of his own: Carson, a very poorly girl. Usually a sacrifice is required to grant the power, and that’s what his fellows in the Empyr want to do. Iscariot hopes to find a different way. It’s a beautiful book, but I had to flip through it all again to remind myself that things did actually happen in it. Stephen Theaker ***

#OcTBRChallenge: the first 33 books

I've been trying this month to read a hundred books as part of the #OcTBRChallenge, which is where people try to reduce the size of their TBR (to-be-read) lists, or get stuck into the books they've been putting off too long. Obviously there's nothing special about reading a hundred books – almost anyone could do it in a single day if the books chosen were short enough! – but it has been good fun to really burrow through my collection. Plus, knowing that I was going to go all out with the short books in October encouraged me to be a bit more patient with longer books the rest of the year. Anyway, here are my short reviews of the first 33 books of the month.

Exo, Vol. 1, Jerry Frissen and Philippe Scoffoni (Humanoids): Aliens come to Earth and the Moon to proactively prevent the colonisation of their own planet. Decent enough, but unremarkable, and it's very much one chapter rather than a story in itself. ***

Giant Days, Vol. 13, John Allison (BOOM! Box): Good fun. Some real wisdom. I'll be sad to read the last volume but it feels like it's coming to a natural end. ****

The Lydia Steptoe Stories, Djuna Barnes (Faber & Faber): Three short stories in diary form about sexual stereotypes and the people they suffocate. I loved this book. I would get the end of a sentence, realise it hadn't said what I was expecting it to say from its shape, then double back and realise how funny it was. *****

My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism, Titania McGrath (Hachette Audio): Hilarious. I nearly fell off my chair during some chapters. You can tell how carefully the (left-wing) writer has been paying attention to the wilder reaches of Twitter, where racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying and authoritarianism thrive in what are supposed to be progressive communities. Many of Titania's most outlandishly offensive statements are things I've seen people say for real, and receive thousands of likes for doing so. Satire often involves exaggeration; here it's more a concatenation. Alice Marshall's reading is perfect. I'd love a sitcom about the character. She's like a modern-day version of Nathan Barley or Rik from The Young Ones. ****

Shaky Kane: Elephantmen and Monsters, Richard Starkings and Shaky Kane (Image): Three short stories about traumatized ex-soldiers investigating crime and horror in the big city, all drawn with verve by Shaky Kane. ***

Robert Sax Tome 01 : Nucleon 58, Rodolphe and Louis Alloing (Delcourt): A dapper Belgian garage owner finds himself drawn into international espionage. It's 1957 and Eastern bloc operatives are after the plans for a nuclear-powered car. I adored the art – it's a bit like Paul Grist drawing Tintin, if that makes sense? – and how tall panels were used throughout to showcase the architecture of Brussels. ****

The Four Horsemen: The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel C. Dennett, foreword by Stephen Fry (Transworld Digital): Fascinating discussion between four prominent atheist thinkers. It's not as if I needed to be persuaded to their point of view – I don't remember ever believing in any of the gods, except Santa Claus – but I was constantly impressed by how well they put things. I suppose that by the time of this discussion they had had a lot of practice. I thought it was interesting how often they interrupted each other, and how often they disagreed, and agreed to disagree without flying off the handle. I also liked Richard Dawkins' shout-out to The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle – I loved that novel too. If I'd read this a few years ago, I'd have been glad that in the UK religious thinking had been in retreat since their discussion took place, on the whole. Reading it now, long stretches of it could have been, with barely a word changed, a discussion between feminists on how to deal with extremists pushing the idea that the female sex doesn't exist and thus requires no protection in law from the male sex. It feels like that kind of thinking never really goes away, especially when it gives men an excuse to control women. Sam Harris makes an interesting point towards the end, that it's easier to find shared ground when focusing on specific problems rather than the broad strokes. ****

Cosmopolitan, Akhil Sharma (Faber & Faber): The attractive neighbour of a lonely retiree asks to borrow his lawnmower. He makes a grab for her in the garage but is fortunate in that she is receptive rather than outraged. A relationship develops between them, and the question is whether it's the kind of relationship he thinks he wants. He is not the most sympathetic of protagonists, but it's a well-written story that reveals his character, and develops it, in a variety of subtle ways. ****

Terres Lointaines, episode 1, Leo and Icar (Dargaud): A young man searching for his father is taken under the claw of an intelligent crustacean, Stepanerk (the chap on the cover). To reach the right continent, they join an archaeological expedition, the goal of which is to discover what happened to the previous inhabitants of this planet. Stepanerk was the character who made this book for me: he considers everything in terms of whether it is interesting or annoying, which was often amusing, and his spidey-sense was a fine way of creating tension, by letting the reader know something bad was about to happen without telling us what it was. ***

Dalek Attack: Blockade and Other Stories, Terry Nation et al. (BBC Audio): Five stories about people who get into trouble with the Daleks, on Earth and elsewhere, plus some other bits and bobs about the trundling terrors. The stories aren't terribly good, but the readings are, and I enjoyed listening to it. Matthew Waterhouse sounds uncannily like Colin Baker, and it was a surprise to learn that Davros can read minds! ***

John Wick, Vol. 1, Greg Pak and Giovanni Valletta (Dynamite Comics): Decent prequel to the films, showing John Wick's introduction to the world of the Continental. ***

Monsieur Jean, Part 1: The Singles Theory, Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian (Humanoids): Imagine Friends, set in Paris, and drawn in the style of H.A. Rey. I thought it was charming. ****

An Elegy for Easterly, Petina Gappah (Faber & Faber): A sad story about the last days of a Zimbabwean shanty town, very well told. ****

Child of the Storm, Vol. 1: Blood Stones, Manuel Bichebois and Didier Poli (Humanoids Inc): A newborn child is found in the forest, still attached by the umbilical cord to his dead mother, who had apparently been struck by lightning. Raised by the hunter who found him, Laith's peculiar reaction to storms draws attention, and once his abilities reveal themselves powerful people beyond the village begin to pay attention. A decent enough book, without being at all remarkable. ***

The Art of the Boys, Darick Robertson (Dynamite Entertainment): The covers for all the issues of The Boys, plus those of the mini-series that came out during the original run, with preliminary sketches for each cover and brief plot synopses. Probably makes more sense as a physical object; with a digital copy you might as well be browsing the covers on Comixology. Interesting to read that Adam McKay was trying to make it into a film but all the studios turned him down. Wonder if they regret that now it's the biggest thing on television? ***

Do Not Pass Go, Joel Lane (Nine Arches Press): Five short stories, all featuring a crime or two, and set in and around Birmingham. They're all pretty short, so there isn't much mystery, it's more about mood, and overall it makes a pretty good argument for staying at home after bedtime. ***

James Bond: Hammerhead, Andy Diggle and Luca Casalanguida (Dynamite Entertainment): A straightforward but reasonably entertaining adventure for a ruthlessly violent Bond, with him getting into bother at an arms fair. ***

The Dynamite Art of Alex Ross, Alex Ross (Dynamite Entertainment): Lots of amazing artwork, some from comics I've read and loved, like Kirby Genesis, others from comics I didn't even know existed. His style is as stunning as ever, and his talent for revitalising old characters is as remarkable as Alan Moore's, but by the end you do wish he would do fewer covers and more interiors. It's as if the world's greatest actor just appeared on film posters rather than appearing in the films. ****

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television, Koren Shadmi (Life Drawn): An excellent biography of the man who created... The Twilight Zone. Shows us his experiences in World War II, his battles with the network censors, and how unfaithful he was to his wife. Brilliantly drawn. ****

The Fantastic Voyage of Lady Rozenbilt, Vol. 1: The Baxendale Cruise, Pierre Gabus and Romuald Reutimann (Humanoids): A book about the people on an airship, some very rich, others very poor, some human, others not. It's weirdly short, apparently due to it being from a French album that has been sliced in two, and entirely unsatisfying to read on its own. ***

Drifting Dragons, Vol. 1, Taku Kuwabara (Kodansha Comics Digital-First!): A crew hunts dragons in their airship; the similarities to whaling make it a rather uncomfortable read. Some of the characters are quite engaging and the art offers some impressive views of the sky and the dragons that live there – at least until our heroes slaughter them without mercy, even the babies. ***

Black Widow, Volume 1: S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Most Wanted, Mark Waid and Chris Samnee (Marvel): Someone knows Black Widow's secrets and blackmails her into stealing intelligence from SHIELD. A pretty good action adventure that seems (from the trailer) to be the inspiration for Black Widow's first solo film. ***

Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery, Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece (Dark Horse Books): A light-skinned black journalist goes undercover in the American South to gather evidence of lynchings. It's getting too dangerous now people know he's out there, but just as he's getting ready to take a desk job his own brother is thrown in jail for a crime he didn't commit, and a mob is gathering outside. It's a very good book, surprisingly funny in places, that burns with its purpose: making sure those crimes against humanity are never forgotten. ****

Without Feathers, Woody Allen (Audible): A very funny audiobook collecting various humorous pieces by Woody Allen, which begins by announcing that it was to "be published posthumously or after his death, whichever comes first", and continues in a similar vein. A striking feature was how often I would be in the middle of a sentence laughing at one thing, and then a twist at the end of the sentence would send me laughing in a different direction. Terrific. I'm so glad Audible got him to record these audiobooks. ****

Moon Face, Vol. 1: The Wave Tamer, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Francois Boucq (Humanoids): Gigantic waves hit the coastline regularly and various groups of lunatics handle it in different ways. Into this situation comes a young man with a flat face and the ability to heal from bullet wounds. It's okay, but I do get tired of how pretty much every Jodorowsky book features sexual violence against women. ***

Living with the Dead: A Zombie Bromance, Mike Richardson and Ben Stenbeck (Dark Horse Books): Two blokey blokes who survived the zombie apocalypse find their friendship tested when they encounter an attractive and boisterous woman. Quite entertaining but I wasn't sure what to make of the ending. ***

What Is Existentialism? Simone de Beauvoir (Penguin Classics): Felt like a bait and switch given that "What Is Existentialism?" was only six pages long and basically said it's too hard to explain in so little space. The rest of it was interesting but reminded me of reading a Camille Paglia book a while back – the snappy individual sentences tended towards the aphoristic, but I couldn't tell what they were supposed to add up to. In several places it asserted things that were blatantly untrue in the course of a making an argument. ***

The Arrest, Jonathan Lethem (Ecco): A pleasant post-apocalyptic enclave is disturbed by the arrival of a blowhard in his supercar. Full review to follow. ****

Ms Ice Sandwich, Mieko Kawakami (Pushkin Press): A Japanese boy is fascinated by the ice-cool woman who sells sandwiches in a supermarket. When he becomes friendly with a girl in his class (one so cool she can act out the entire gunfight from Heat) his fascination with Ms Ice Sandwich becomes at first a roadblock and then a joint endeavour. A very sweet and tender portrait of a child who feels adrift. ****

The Originals, Dave Gibbons (Dark Horse): I can't see the art of Dave Gibbons without being six years old again and wowed by his work in Doctor Who Weekly. This story of sci-fi mods and rockers looks as good as his work always does, and if it isn't one of his all-time classic works it's still well worth reading. ***

Brussli: Way of the Dragon Boy, Vol. 1: The Conqueror, Jean-Louis Fonteneau and J. Etienne (Humanoids): A little boy found in an egg is raised by a kindly couple as if he were their own. He's a bit funny-looking and gets teased a lot, but when the village faces danger he will show his bravery. The art is gorgeous, like cells from a hand-drawn animated film, and Brussli and the friends he makes are very charming to read about. ***

The Last Ones, Vol. 1: Exodus, David Munoz and Manuel Garcia (Humanoids): A children's book illustrator found herself in charge of a bunch of children when the apocalypse and then the vampires struck. As they try to reach safety a new ally offers his help, but he's a bit long in the tooth, if you get my meaning. Kind of like The Walking Dead but with vampires, this didn't blow me away but it was a decent start. ***

The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark (Canongate Books): A wonderful book, full of humour and character, about the women living together in a London hostel in the period after World War II. I did not expect such a nerve-wracking ending! It is read to perfection by Juliet Stevenson, who even sings at one point, something I always love in audiobooks. *****

Deadly Class, Vol. 1: Reagan Youth, by Rick Remender and Wes Craig (Image Comics) | review by Stephen Theaker

Despite the skeletons on the cover, not a fantasy or horror book. A homeless young man is given a place at a school for assassins. His classmates are the scions of murderers, gangsters and intelligence operatives, and he makes friends with some, enemies of others. The rules are strict and the penalties for not obeying them are terminal. It looks very good and moves at a fair old lick, and it’s hard not to be moved when the writer talks in an afterword about how it reflects his miserable time at high school. Stephen Theaker ***

Shards of the Nightmare, by Joel Cornah (Kristell Ink) | review by Stephen Theaker

The Shards of the Nightmare are magical items; what they are shards of remains a mystery. The title also reflects the book’s structure, which throws fragments of a nightmarish life at the reader and hopes we’ll piece it together. It begins by telling us that Sininen – raised as a (somewhat stereotypical) girl on the advice of a seer named Sear the Seer – was born with blue skin and lived for centuries. Then we’re snapped back to when Sini was fifteen, still living in the fortress of Dun Coille, and the least-loved scion of an expansionist king and queen who come into possession of a magical sea-sword. A personal bodyguard, Merri, offers some friendship, before we are thrown ten years into the Sea King’s reign of terror. Confusingly Sini is still only sixteen, but perhaps I misunderstood. At this point Sini and Merri are on a quest for the shards and major developments have occurred off-screen. It feels like the reader has skipped the film and watched only the deleted scenes, but to be fair there’s zero chance I would have read a five-hundred-page version that took us step by step through each moment. It’s just too run-of-the-mill, in story, prose and ideas. The positives: Sini’s mad mum might have been interesting, if we had spent more than a few pages with her, and Merri the bodyguard was likeable, at least until she confessed to having fallen in love with a child. The conclusion, where the Sea King is effectively stabbed until he stops calling Sini his son, was also rather discomfiting. Not recommended. Stephen Theaker **

Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries & Lore, ed. by Paula Guran | review by Stephen Theaker

This highly entertaining book (Prime Books pb, 384pp, £14.50) is the forty-second anthology edited by Paula Guran, who gathers twenty-three tales of mysterious libraries, courageous librarians, and the awesome books they protect from us (or protect us from). The stories come from twenty-two different sources, and all but three were first published this century. The twentieth century is represented by Ray Bradbury’s “Exchange”, Esther M. Friesner’s “Death and the Librarian”, and Jack McDevitt’s “The Fort Moxie Branch”, all of which fit the theme so perfectly that it’s easy to see why they were included.

Westworld, Season 3 | review by Stephen Theaker

Caleb Nichols is a former soldier making a living on the fringe of a society that doesn’t give him any other options. Meeting Dolores Abernathy in the park, a beautiful woman who has just survived an attempted abduction (for which he supplied the car and drugs), will lead him into an adventure that will turn his life upside down. That’s sort of what it’s about, anyway.

Susurrus on Mars, by Hal Duncan (Lethe Press) | review by Stephen Theaker

An experimental, gay, fantastical book that one could easily imagine as a Penguin Modern Classic, described by the publisher as a “novella-length collection of ... idylls”. It’s the densely allusive (to myths, legends and botany) story of two chaps who meet on a Mars where plants seem to be conscious of their history back on Earth, and where people can change their own sexuality with a quick mindhack. I was glad to be reading it on Kindle, so that I could look up all the words I didn’t know. *****

A Song for Quiet, by Cassandra Khaw (Tor.com) | review by Stephen Theaker

A bluesman in the sixties has a seed in his head, which, if he lets it grow, will let a being from a nearby dimension annihilate or reshape the world. A girl who is also infected finds that quite tempting, because the world she knows is so terrible. This was very good: what you might get if Philip K. Dick and James Baldwin collaborated on a Lovecraftian horror story. I particularly appreciated how it got across the kind of altered mental states that playing or listening to music can produce. ****

Castle Rock, Season 2 | review by Stephen Theaker

Season one of Castle Rock was one of my favourite shows of 2019. It told the story of a weird young man found in a prison basement, whose presence distorted the world around him. Though it ended with hints that we might next be taken to the Overlook Hotel, season two instead puts a thirty-something Annie Wilkes, travelling under an assumed name with her daughter Joy, in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot.

Athena Voltaire and the Sorcerer Pope, by Steve Bryant and Ismael Canales (Action Lab) | review by Stephen Theaker

Two British Special Intelligence agents are assigned missions in 1936. One agent is to assist a pair of archaelogists and Athena Voltaire in their quest for a relic, while the other will operate behind the scenes and try to nab the treasure first. Both are hindered by Nazis. It’s an Indiana Jones adventure with decent art, though it’s hard to tell some of the men apart. Sadly, the sorcerer pope of the title is the creator of the relic, rather than (so far as we know) an active character in this story. Stephen Theaker ***

A Rainy Day in New York | review by Stephen Theaker

This is effectively an English-language remake of the To Rome With Love storyline about a young couple who get separated for the day, the woman meeting a film star, the man inadvertently meeting an escort. And it does for New York and its tourist board what To Rome With Love did for that city, giving those of us in lockdown a vicarious holiday in the process.

Strange Weather, by Joe Hill (William Morrow) | Review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Lightning strikes repeatedly in quartet of tales rich in character and sensory details.

In Strange Weather, a thunderstorm does not just get you wet – it gets you torn apart by crystal nails. And a photograph doesn’t simply capture your image – it steals your memories. 

Each of the four short novels in this collection not only testifies to Joe Hill’s inventiveness, but also ratchets up the tension while nimbly doling out character and setting details that firmly root the reader in the action. Whether a scene involves a botched shooting at a mall jewellery store or a man who’s about to jump out of a plane despite a paralyzing fear of heights, the reader will be fully immersed in the experience thanks to Hill’s mastery of the senses. 

Five Feathered Tales by Alison Littlewood and Daniele Serra | review by Stephen Theaker

Five Feathered Tales (Short, Scary Tales Publications) is a collaboration between Alison Littlewood and the award-winning artist Daniele Serra. A luxurious picture book for adults, rather like the Dave McKean edition of Ray Bradbury’s The Homecoming, it publishes five of Littlewood’s excellent short stories with over two dozen fully-painted illustrations by Serra. What’s more, there is also an introduction by the highly esteemed Peter Tennant, a name perhaps familiar to Black Static readers.

The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again, by A.C. Wise (Lethe Press) | review by Stephen Theaker

The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron is a glamorous superhero/secret agent team, which includes a mixture of women, drag queens, trans women, the mysterious M (described as an animate slab of leather) and their leader Bunny, the superheroic alter-ego of Phillip Howard Craft the Third, who like Kid Miracleman prefers to live as the alter-ego full-time. It’s not entirely fair to judge a book against the expectations you had for it, but here I was expecting something rather like the Senor 105 or Iris Wildthyme books, and while it has a similar tone and sensibility, I was disappointed by how little of this book saw the team in action, most of it being side stories or flashbacks or recruitments. Nevertheless, the stories it does tell are sensitive and moving. It doesn’t present joining the team as a cure-all for the personal problems everyone faces, but it gives them a supportive place to work things out. The final story does give us a fully-fledged adventure for the team as a whole, but it’s a bit of a let-down, being a perfunctory fight against a pair of mad scientists who have created giant insects. Overall, though, I thought it was a good book. Stephen Theaker ***

The Walking Dead, Vol. 32: Rest in Peace, by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard (Image Comics) | review by Stephen Theaker

And so this astonishing comic comes to an end, having inspired multiple hit games and tv shows, and no doubt hit films to come. It is a difficult to discuss the content of the book, since pretty much anything I could say – including the names of the characters involved in it – would be a spoiler for the previous thirty-one volumes and their constant twists and turns. Even knowing that it is the last book is a mild spoiler, given that when the final issue was published, no one knew it was all over till they read it. Essentially, though, this book is about a possible civil war in the largest settlement we’ve seen to date, and then we get a lengthy epilogue showing what the future holds for the survivors. I found it to be a satisfying and moving end to the saga.

The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager) | review by Stephen Theaker

Rin, a girl living in a horribly sexist society, realises that she only has one way out of the marriage arranged by her drug-dealing foster parents: painful sacrifice and round-the-clock study to get into a prestigious military academy. She succeeds, but further sacrifice will be required and war is on the horizon. It won’t wait for her to finish her studies. This was quite slow and long-winded, and none of it felt at all new, but I enjoyed it. Rin reminded me of Jack Vance’s capable heroes. Stephen Theaker ***

Space Bandits, by Mark Millar and Matteo Scalera (Image Comics) | review by Stephen Theaker

Cody is an Orcadian space bandit. She has a telepathic link to a Nibiruan White Lizard, which will no doubt come in handy, and she has led her gang on ten successful jobs in twelve months, without killing a single person. Unfortunately, when the time comes to split up the money, the four men in her gang decide that they would be better off not splitting it with her. They shoot her and leave her for dead. This all happens in the first ten pages. Over the five issues collected in this volume she will team up with Thena Kole, a con artist who has suffered a betrayal of her own, and they will have their revenge.

The Lost Child of Lychford, by Paul Cornell (Tor.com) | review by Stephen Theaker

Three women – a vicar annoyed with her flock, a magic shop owner, and a grumpy old lady who lives with a ghost – try to protect their village from supernatural intrusion in the run-up to Christmas. I always thought of myself as a fan of this author, but reading this and The Four Doctors made me realise that while I loved Love and War and Human Nature, five star books both, I haven’t been quite as keen on anything I've read since. This felt like Brenda and Effie without the sparkle. Stephen Theaker **

The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, Volume I, by Mike Butterworth and Don Lawrence (Rebellion) | review by Stephen Theaker

This book collects stories of the Trigan Empire which appeared in Ranger from September 1965 to June 1966, and then Look and Learn from June 1966 to May 1967. Although Look and Learn and the strip continued to run till 1982, I first encountered it in the 1978 Hamlyn collection, lent to me for one glorious night only. As with many classic British comics, the copyright is now held by Rebellion, publishers of 2000 AD and the Sniper Elite games, who have published this chunky collection as part of their Treasury of British Comics.

Atalante, la Legende, Tome 1: Le Pacte, by Crisse (Soleil) | review by Stephen Theaker

French-language graphic novel about a young woman who is trying to earn her place among Jason’s argonauts. Artemis has blessed her with strength, and Aphrodite has blessed her with beauty, but jealous Hera has cursed her to be struck by divine lightning if she ever takes a lover, so Hecate blesses her with a personality which will put off potential suitors. To get on the ship of heroes she has to rescue Jason’s mentor, the centaur Chiron. It’s okay. Art is a bit like Elfquest. Stephen Theaker ***