The Essex Serpent

Sarah Perry, 2016

(June 2017)

A drily amusing (and on occasion laugh-out-loud funny) historical novel from the author of After Me Comes the Flood. The Essex Serpent has been receiving plaudits left, right, and centre, and it’s certainly very readable (that most ambiguous word of praise); it’s a little over 400 pages and I got through it in a weekend. It’s not, on the surface, a hugely challenging book. Engaging, yes. Thoughtful, certainly. Erudite, even, but you don’t emerge at the end feeling as if you’ve been put through the wringer, emotionally or intellectually. This is, of course, not necessarily a bad thing at all.

Saga & Sex Criminals

Saga, Vol. 6

Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan, 2016

Sex Criminals, Vol. 3: The Hard Way

Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

(July 2016)

I continue to love Saga. It is, as befits its name, now a sprawling soap opera of a thing with supremely engaging characters and at least two or three genuinely laugh out loud moments in each volume. Ghüs remains a joy every time he appears on the page, and god help me but Prince Robot is somehow hilarious, despite having proven to be an utter bastard.

  

The Wicked + The Divine / Sex Criminals

Volume 2: Fandemonium

Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie ,et al, 2015

Volume 2: Two Worlds One Cop

Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky, 2015

(July 2015)

I really should stop pairing these two up when I read and write about them. It's not doing me or Sex Criminals any favours at all. Don't get me wrong; SC is pretty good, even if Jon continues to annoy the everloving shit out of me. WicDiv, however, is astonishing. I know I mentioned this last time, but it really does seem almost intentionally set up to push my personal buttons in the best possible ways. I can't recommend this one highly enough; if you're not reading it you should be.

The Wicked + The Divine / Sex Criminals

Volume 1: The Faust Act

Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie ,et al, 2014

Volume 1: One Weird Trick

Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky, et al, 2014

(January 2015)

A double header this time, featuring two of the more buzz-inducing new comics of recent months. It is, of course, grossly unfair to compare them to each other simply because they turned up in the same Amazon shipment, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do here. I am a fickle and capricious god, as all worthwhile ones are.

Rat Queens

Vol .1: Sass and Sorcery

Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch, 2014

(July 2014)

Now y’see sass is one of those words that rubs me up the wrong way. Just a little mind, more of a brief flick than a full on rub, but it undeniably goes against the grain and leads to what should be a very pleasant sensation feeling a little awkward for all concerned.

  

The Teleportation Accident

Ned Beauman, 2012

(June 2013)

Ned Beauman is an arsehole.

In Defence of The ALT V

Book Five – Larry Cotter and The Mercifully Truncated Dénouement

Right, what do we have left to cover? Unconvincing teenage angst? No, don’t need that. Vital plot elements that have somehow remained unmentioned for the previous five years? Nope. Idiotic controversy sparked by throwaway extratextual comment regarding secondary character’s sexual orientation? No way, hose.

The Harry Potter connection was always pretty tenuous anyway. Probably better to drop it now before I mention the physical impossibility of a seventeen-year-old boy spending weeks traipsing around the woods with only a similarly aged girl for company without sneaking off for at least one covert hand-shandy behind a bush. I can suspend my disbelief for the broomsticks and wizards and talking snakes, but a heterosexual teenage boy who’s never tugged himself off to the thought of his closet female acquaintance? You can push the unbelievability thing only so far.

Childish Things

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.

I Corinthians 13:11

My right wrist hurts. Seriously, it’s fucking wrecked. I really think I might have strained something. We got our first dial-up internet connection when I was 16-years-old, and even all the opportunities for self-abuse that presented didn’t result in my forearm hurting this much.

Shake The Bottle

It's orange, you see, and slightly dribbley. Which is all the excuse I need to post this -

On Efficiency and Redundancy in Information Transmission

Or, No Point Teaching Granny to Suck Eggs

The Helmet of Horror

Victor Pelevin, 2006

(December 2011)

This is a retelling of the Minotaur myth, something I (British) previously had a bit of a stab at myself. I chose to go down the ‘bitch about an airport’ route, Pelevin (Russian) has aimed slightly higher and opted for the ‘eight*-way solipsistic dialectic on ontology, memory, and perception’ path instead. You pays your money and you takes your choice, I suppose.