nigellicus's reviews
1566 reviews

Elfslayer by Nathan Long

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense

5.0

IT'S TIME TO KILL SOME ELFS!

There's quite a good bit in this where they have to escape from a treasure-tomb under the sea and Gotrek engineers/scrapyard-challenges the shit out of it. Then evil sharks attack, of course. 

Polostan by Neal Stephenson

adventurous funny mysterious tense

5.0

 I'm still pretty mad at Stephenson for the deeply bad approach to climate change in Termination Shock, but since this is just about cowboys and bandits and reds and Russians all back in the 1930s, I'll grudgingly allow it. 

Orcslayer by Nathan Long

dark funny tense

5.0

So fucking Donald fucking Trump got fucking re-elected by a bunch of fucking idiots and I decided I wanted a light read about a grumpy human and an even grumpier dwarf killing the absolute shit out of waves of nasty evil monsters. Wonder why. 

Karla's Choice: A John Le Carre Novel by Nick Harkaway

adventurous mysterious tense

5.0

John LeCarre's son does John LeCarre. I'm irresistably reminded of the extended family of crooks that surrounded the larger-than-life father in A Perfect Spy, for some reason. Jarkaway is an accomplished writer in his own right, and this ends up being a kindof improvised variatio on a theme. All the recognisable elements are here, and hadled deftly and confidently, but there are subtle differences in emphasis and focus. Smiley gets to do a bit more hands-on espionage adventuring than he's normally associated with. It's really good, but it's a Nick Harkaway novel, however much it homages his father and his creations. Which is as it should be. 

Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense

5.0

The story before the story. It's all here - the machinatins of an obscure agency that doesn;t even seem to know itself, surreal sights and transformations, queasy horror and deep weirdness, and also the final section's Joycean stream-of-conscious that Joyce himself could only applaud. What's it all about then? Good question. Very good question. Excellent question. 

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 23 by John Higgins, Pat Mills, John Burns, John Wagner, Nick Percival, Chris Weston, Gordon Rennie, Robbie Morrison, Garth Ennis, Carlos Ezquerra, Mick McMahon, Trevor Hairsine

adventurous dark funny lighthearted mysterious tense

3.0

These are mostly ok. The Three Amigos story works way better than it has any right to. Funny how satire about Bill Clinton falls flat, though. Bill's a horndog! Hilary's a shrew! Meh. I can't even remember if there's supposed to be something clever about Box Clinton?

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 20 by Mark Millar, John Wagner, Grant Morrison, John Smith, Alan McKenzie, Gordon Rennie

adventurous dark funny lighthearted mysterious tense

2.0

Quite spectacularly racist in places, and rather dull, despite some great art. The John Smith story at the start is solid, as are some of the Wagner ones later. Millar's stuff is embarrasing.

The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry

adventurous emotional mysterious tense

5.0

Somehow, all the names vanished from the world. Now, centuries later, names are still being sought and divined and delivered by people like the nameless Courier. Dreams can bring forth Monsters and the world is full of ghosts, who perform labour and fuel machines. But the Nameless are lurking at the edges of the Named World and seem determined to destroy it if they can. The Courier, left nameless by her father for obscure reasons, her life is purposeful, but she is herself an outsider, protected by a mentor but disdained by her fellow Namers. A series of events forces her to flee in search of her sister, accompanied by a monster, a ghost and a stowaway. What follows is a journey of discovery and adventure as she uncovers conspiracies and betrayals and unexpected friends and races to prevent a terrible war. 

A fantastic book, a terrific fantasy of language and loneliness as well as a thrilling adventure, exploring it core concept in fascinating and ultimately moving ways. It also gets unexpectedly and unashamedly epic before the end. 

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense

5.0

A father tries to protect his son from their family, which is steeped in the occult, in Aregntina, before, during and in the aaftermeth of a deadly coup. Epic and engrossing.

Feed by Mira Grant

adventurous dark funny tense

2.0

I didn't finish this, but it's interesting. If I'd read it at the right time it would definitely have been the best thing since sliced bread. Has a real Millennial Wheedonesque fanfic feel to it, and I certainly was around at the heyday of that particular vibe, but it lands way differently now, and the characters are insufferable and the story is uninteresting while the core part of the book, the ironic, smart-alec style, just seems to have aged out along with the blogging it valorises, and the cool tech definitely strikes an off note. Zombies versus Buffy's Scooby Gang? Noooooo. That isn't entirely the author's fault, of course, it was the zeitgeist, and she caught it, but I am anti-nostalgic for it, so that's on me.