nigellicus's reviews
1566 reviews

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense

5.0

Bloody hell, Mitchell pick a novel and stick to it, don't go writing five or six of them all in one go. Sheesh. 

The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

dark mysterious tense

5.0

An American reader seems like an odd choice, unless it's a wry comment on the Americanisation of the film. Still, he doesn't even attempt any British accents, so just pretend Northampton is a suburb of Philadelphia, or whatever. Read this first in the old Night Visions collection - it made an impression. 

A Shadow on the Wall by Jonathan Aycliffe

dark mysterious tense

5.0

Pleasingly spooky take on the MR James ghost story - in this one the stuffy college don has a passionate romance - based around an old tomb and some medieval devilry released to plague anyone within reach. Lots of atmosphere and dusty records and ecclesiastical trappings. 

Soldier of Arete: Latro, Book 2 by Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe

adventurous mysterious

5.0

The adventures of the absent-minded hero continue as he tries to find his way home but the gods keep complicating things. 

Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe

adventurous mysterious

5.0

Latro has taken a head injury in battle, which has the effect of making him forget everything about a day after it happens. Writing daily on a scroll, which he must read to tell him who he is, who his freinds are and what he's doing, he journeys across the ancient world in search of a cure at the hands of whatever deity he has offended. Wonderfully strange and eerie. 

Flesh: The Dino Files by Studio Giolitti, Pat Mills, Geoffrey Miller, Kelvin Gosnell

adventurous dark funny fast-paced

5.0

 | Jurassic Park eat your heart out, or have your heart eaten, and the rest of you, and anyone in the immediate vicinity. Charming children's educational entertainment series from the 70s featuting fun adventures between cowboys and their dinosaur pals. Every week taught a valuable moral lesson about friendship and honesty. What will those scallywags get up to next?

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 22 by Mark Millar, John Wagner, Grant Morrison

adventurous dark funny

5.0

Some good Wagner stories. The Morrison/Millar one is kind of dreadful? Judges against judges, fine, but every one of them is an idiot and yells a lot and, also, racial stereotypes - I think it was cool at the time to be ironically racist just to prove you weren't PC. The message from god maguffin is ridiculously Vertigo and so there's some ridiculous Vertigo writing to go with it, completely at odds with the dumb action of the rest, and obviously that set-up is never going to deliver anyway. Some very murky art later on, too. Mixed bag.

Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty by Avram Davidson

adventurous funny mysterious tense

5.0

Fun fantasy adventure in the East with Marco Polo and his father and uncle dispatched by Kubla Khan to find the legendary Sleeping Beauty. Erudite and witty and quite charming. 

The Examiner by Janice Hallett

dark funny mysterious tense

5.0

Another terrific puzzle-box mystery, intricate, meticulous, dark but also funny and constantly surprising. 

Crimes and Chaos by Avram Davidson

adventurous dark emotional funny sad tense

5.0

Collection of Davidson's magazine articles, where he employs his storytelling chops to a series of historical episdoes, ranging from the career of Al Capone to the career of Jack The Ripper, taking in assorted disasters, catastrophes and wartime adventures along the way. Wonderful writing, often lurid and sensational subject matter, but also at times movingly tragic and selflessy heroic. Marc LeVesseur, you're my man, but if a Welsh person ever hears how you give Dr Llewellyn a Scottish accent, you're in for it, boyo.