READING REPORT: Back On Track... Hopefully!

Two bits of great news on the reading front this week: I've finally resumed Draugr after too long a break and my copy of the Deathstalker novelisation has arrived, shipped all the way from the U.S. of A.

I can't believed I put Draugr aside in the middle of such a tense sequence, and now I'm back in the deep, dark, scary forest I'm pleased to report the book is still incredibly atmospheric and creepy.

With Deathstalker turning up there's been yet more jiggery-pokery with my "to be read" list, meaning that this movie adaptation is now the next thing I intend to read, once I wrap up Draugr, 

While all this excitement was going on, I did get another of my fortnightly comic book shipments up from Paradox Comics in Poole, which means another nine comics to also slip in the "immediate" reading pile.

This week's comics

As long as I can be disciplined about it, I'm hopeful that I can somehow alternate between Draugr and the comics, rather than putting the novel aside again to make way for comic books.

I'm feeling surprisingly confident that I'll be able to do this. To paraphrase Madonna, I reckon I'm getting "into the groove" with this whole "reading" malarky again after years of dithering because of my poor concentration.

Of course, I also really need to start reading some roleplaying game rules books as well if I want to prove to the Tuesday Knights that I'm ready to run a campaign for them without bottling it after a couple of sessions.

Meanwhile, as we stand. the top titles in my reading list to follow Draugr are: Deathstalker; The Hammer Horror Omnibus, Volume One; and Ghosts, Trolls and The Hidden People: An Anthology of Icelandic Folk Legends.

READING REPORT: Still More Buying Than Consuming

I have to confess I haven't gotten any further in my reading of the brilliant Viking horror Draugr since last week, through no fault of the book (it's been really, really gripping so far) but because I'm still trying to catch up on my recent deliveries of new comic books from Paradox Comics.

But, of course, this hasn't stopped me picking up a few more second-hand and new books to add to be reading list.

Due to my recent discovery of Reacher (the Prime Video modern pulp action serial) I was tempted to give one of the books the show's based on a crack. But they're like 500 pages long, which seems a ridiculous length for such a style of story. 

However, this led me off on a tangent, given that Reacher is clearly inspired by the Mack Bolan books of my youth I grabbed a random Mack Bolan book from 1975, for a paltry sum, on eBay to add to my reading list instead.
 

Mack Bolan The Executioner no. 24: Canadian Crisis is a much more sensible 181 pages of decent-sized print, in which Mack is still killing off members of The Mob. This time in Quebec, for a change of scenery.

I wonder if The Executioner books will generate the same frisson of excitement that they did when I read them as a schoolboy? 

Another recent eBay purchase was the vintage Marvel "giant-size" comic teaming Spider-Man with Doc Savage.

I've been reading comics pretty much all my life but I'm still continuing to be educated on what's out there. I knew there had been Doc Savage comic book adventures, but I never knew he'd teamed up with Spider-Man!

I can't remember exactly how I came across this title, but I'm pretty sure it was either a Facebook post by author Charles R Rutledge or a Booktube video from Michael K Vaughan.

My big pre-order of the week, however, was a new, clothbound edition of A Dance With Dragons, the 'most recent' (i.e. 2011) volume in George RR Martin's epic A Song of Ice and Fire.

As you can see on my "Westeros shelf" below, I now own all the books in the series he has penned to date, but all in different editions. This was a deliberate choice as I wanted my collection to have a particular quirk about it.

Given that my "simple" PROJECT 60 is in a state of disarray, I'm now renaming it PROJECT BUCKET (as in "bucket list") and adding to it a goal of reading all the books of A Song of Ice and Fire before I kick the bucket.

Perhaps by the time I've finished these volumes George might have completed the next book, The Winds of Winter, or even wrapped up the saga with A Dream of Spring!

As it stands, I've only actually read the first volume, A Game of Thrones, and that was 15 years ago.

I'll repost my review (written just as the HBO adaptation was taking off and A Dance With Dragons was published) of A Game of Thrones at the bottom of this piece. Check out the ironic comment at the end of the review.

I regard Michael Moorcock as one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time - which is why I established my "Moorcock Rule" for choosing, and buying, fantasy literature.

With his first run of Elric books, Moorcock created - for me - a perfect set of standalone novels that sculpted out an incredible fantasy world and detailed a complex anti-hero in the albino prince.

Each of these books ran to around 150 pages (stretching to about 200 by the end) and so I reasoned, for future comparisons, that massive, door-stop sized fantasy novels were probably not my thing and were best avoided.

And anyway they would take an age to read, during which time I could have read several shorter - and possibly better - books.

But A Game Of Thrones shattered my Moorcock Rule with a vengeance.

Enticed by the prospect - at the time - of the impending television series I found a copy of A Game Of Thrones in our local Oxfam charity store and began to read.

It took two extended bursts to finish this 800-page epic (which is only the first segment of the as-yet unfinished Song Of Ice And Fire saga) - the first couple of hundred pages up until the HBO show aired on Sky Atlantic and then once it had finished I returned to the land of Westeros to devour the rest of the book.

The power and genius of the television show certainly influenced my enjoyment of the book, as I could easily visualise the actors from the series speaking the lines in the book - and, in turn, the show turned out to be an incredibly faithful, if naturally streamlined, adaptation of the book.

George RR Martin has a very visceral style of writing that likes to describe the food people are eating and the clothes they are wearing (which reminded me in part of Brett Easton Ellis' name-dropping technique in American Psycho) as well as what they thinking and doing.

Along with these visual motifs, Martin takes the unusual - to me anyway - step of focusing each chapter on a different character's point-of-view, which helps introduce different methods of describing certain swords-and-sorcery standards, such as the "mass battle": in one chapter we'll hear of a battle from the POV of someone participating, in another it's being described by someone watching from afar, and in a third it will be a report from a messenger - who survived the conflict - to his lord.

The world of Westeros is very rich in detail, customs and history and this is drip-fed to the reader as it becomes necessary to the plot, rarely feeling like a massive info-dump of exposition (as the TV show suffered some on a couple of minor occasions).

Finally, A Game Of Thrones - and, I suspect the entire saga, - is dreadfully addictive reading. I've always loved reading and getting stuck into fascinating books, but I found myself more and more drawn back to A Game Of Thrones in preference to watching TV or pootling about the Internet, which are my two usual default settings.

I really didn't mind that it was an 800-page tome, because I was totally invested in the characters, their machinations and the world of Westeros. The entire book is shot through with a sense of foreboding and the feeling that something major is on the verge of occurring... as the central Stark family say: "Winter is coming!"

And, like the first season of the HBO series, A Game Of Thrones ends on a massive series of cliffhangers that pretty much guarantees I'll be reading the next book - A Clash Of Kings - as soon as I get my hands on it (it's at the top of my birthday list!)

No Reading, Just Reacher

 

My reading plans for this week took a bit of a hit after I (belatedly) started watching Reacher on Prime Video and was instantly hooked.

I've now binged the first three series and the available episodes of the current season, which started 10 days ago.

Jack Reacher is a former special investigator for the military police who now wanders America getting drawn into resolving sticky situations. Built like a brick outhouse, in Dungeons & Dragons terms Reacher has no dump stat.

Essentially a superhero (antihero?) without a costume or powers, Reacher is played by Alan Ritchson, who has form in that genre having portrayed Aquaman in Smallville and Hawk in Titans.

Reacher's - usually ultraviolent - extralegal solutions to problems are a cross between Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan, Robert E Howard's Conan The Barbarian, and The Punisher, aided by the investigative chops of Batman.

Occasionally cheesy, but more often darkly humorous (thanks in large part to Ritchson's deadpan performance) or simply dark (it can go places some people might be uncomfortable with), the show has turned out to be of a modern pulp masterpiece, an engrossing thriller with a highly charismatic lead and well-structured mysteries.

The creation of author Lee Child, there are over 30 novels (and counting) in the series. Given that each season of the Prime Video show is based on a single book, that's a lot of material to keep this show going.

For those, as I was, not au fait with Reacher, here's the trailer for the first season:

And, coincidentally, just as I've binged every episode of Reacher, Prime Video has dropped a trailer for a spin-off show, focussing on the amazing character, Neagly, Reacher's only real friend and former army buddy who now occasionally helps him out as a private investigator.

I can't think of a better way to expand this "universe" as Maria Sten's hypercool performance as Frances Neagley stands shoulder-to-shoulder (not literally) with Ritchson's Reacher whenever she makes a welcome appearance in the mother show.

Neagley debuts on Prime Video on September 16 on ‪Prime Video‬.

Now that I've caught up with Reacher, I can resume my reading regime. I'm still only half-way through the excellent Viking horror Draugr and I have a stack of new comics that were delivered from Paradox the other day.

Latest shipment of new comic books

READING REPORT: New Additions

Latest acquisitions for the "to be read" pile

I am currently about halfway through the magnificent Draugr, the thrilling novelisation of the low-budget Swedish historical horror Draug.

It's a swords-and-sorcery yarn, set in the 11th Century, with a definite Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now bent to its narrative, as a rough-and-ready rescue party ventures into a 'never-ending' ancient Swedish forest to hunt for a lost missionary expedition.

Tense, atmospheric and graphically violent (it is certainly no glorification of Viking era hand-to-hand combat), Draugr is shaping up to be my favourite book of the year so far.

Along similar 'creature feature' lines I've also picked up a copy of Ghosts, Trolls and The Hidden People: An Anthology of Icelandic Folk Legends.

I heard the book's editor, Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir, on an episode of the Gone Medieval podcast the other day and just knew immediately that this was the sort of book I needed to read.

Via eBay I acquired another vintage Michael Moorcock book, The Singing Citadel, for my collection of his work. It contains four supplementary stories for the Saga of Elric, although I believe he only appears in the first, the title story.

And, finally, Rachel, Alice, and I were in town the other day and popped into one of Tonbridge's two great second-hand (charity) bookshops: Teppa Books.

It's very dog-friendly - which is always a big plus in my mind - and Alice not only got a couple of treats but also a lot of cuddles and attention from other customers.

Rachel treated herself to her first Jackie Collins novel, Deadly Embrace, and got me A Quest-Lover's Treasury of The Fantastic.

This is an anthology, edited and introduced by Margaret Weis of Dragonlance fame, and features an Elric story by Michael Moorcock. Other pieces in the book include tales from Karl Edward Wagner, Poul Anderson, Mercedes Lackey and C.J. Cherryh.

The "to be read" list is getting ever longer, but I think once I've finished - if I survive - Draugr, I'll probably plump for something shorter next, such as The Corpse Priest or Warriors of The Boundless, which have been on the list for a while.

The Draugr Has Arrived!

You didn't think I'd get all excited about the novelisation of the great horror movie, Draug, without wanting to pick up my own copy?

Well, here it is in all its glory. 

I can't wait to see how writer/director Klas Persson has brought his terrifying and atmospheric tale to the written page as Draugr: A Viking Folk-Horror Saga.

As happens, this 350-page paperback has leapt into second place on my "to be read" list, meaning once I've finished the brain-scrambling, cosmic horrors of Jean Ray's Cruise of Shadows then I'll be picking up Draugr and plunging into the dark creepy, Swedish forests of a thousand years ago.

For those wondering about the change in spelling: as far as I can figure it, Draugr is Old Norse whereas Draug is more modern, but both words mean 'stinking, superhumanly strong, vengeful, reanimated corpses'.

Anyway, I've got one final tale to go in the Cruise of Shadows anthology, The Mainz Psalter, the yarn covered on the Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast several weeks ago that lured me in to the writings of Jean Ray.

As long as my sanity holds up, I hope to finish it this weekend. 

As well as the rulebook for Dragonbane, I also have some comics and magazines that 'need' reading, but I'm so delighted with this current spell of actually reading novels and anthologies that I want to keep it up. It feels like so long since I've had such a burst of reading.

And that makes me feel very positive (for a change).

TBR: My immediate "to be read" selection

Vikings Versus The Undead In New Film Novelisation

"Smartly scripted and dripping with local folklore, Draug dishes up some unexpected moments of deliberate laugh-out-loud humour in early scenes that soon give way to screaming, insanity and dying as the adventuring party plunges deeper in to the legendary forest of Ödmården."

- my review of Draug

The unnerving, low-budget, Swedish swords-and-sorcery/horror film Draug has transformed into a novel, Draugr: A Viking Folk-Horror Saga, by the film's writer/director Klas Persson.

Published last week, the 351-page paperback (which is also available in hardback or as an e-book) is available from Amazon.

Set around a millennia ago, this is Klas Persson's debut novel, telling the story of a group of warriors searching the wilderness for a lost missionary, but instead discover they are being hunted by a supernatural terror.

There was a time when the pagan gods clashed against the new religion of Christ.

There was a time when the seid crones performed heathen sorcery inside their dusty hovels.

There was a time when the dark beings of ancient horrors still stalked the night.

In Viking age Sweden, a missionary bishop goes missing somewhere deep inside Eyeskogamörk, a vast forest that made a natural border between the South and the still pagan North.

To find him, or his murderers, they send Hakon Grettirson—famed warrior and lord of Sigtuna.

With him, he brings his troubled foster daughter, Nanna. Born in the dark North and plagued with visions and dreams of her pagan past.

This is the first time any of them will have entered these dark parts since the harsh Christinization attempts made years earlier during the reign of Anund Jakob the Coalburner.

Inside the darkness of Eyskógamörk they will both encounter the demons of their past. But also an ancient evil, lurking in the shadows.

The aptrganga

The walking dead

The DRAUGR

Meanwhile, the film's soundtrack is available to stream on a variety of sources, to give you the right atmospheric reading backdrop.

Draug (2018)

In 11th Century Sweden, a party escorting a missionary goes missing when travelling through the enormous forest of Ödmården, which divides the north from the south.

A rescue party sets out, led by Hakon (Ralf Beck) and his foster daughter, Nanna (Elna Karlsson), on her first real mission and her first visit back to the region where she was born.

Entering the forest, the initial problems the group encounters are all-to-human bandits, but after that things take a darker, more supernatural turn, as they uncover the true fate of the missing Christian emissary and his escorts.

"Ödmården is an ancient forest on Sweden's east coast, traditionally dividing the north from the south.

It used to take several days to pass through. Outlaws formed bands inside the forest where they resorted to pillaging any travellers daring to pass the long dark.

Also beasts and bears and wolves were growling and howling inside the vastness of Ödmården, frightening the people living outside its borders and soon stories of occult and darksome origin arose from the area.

And they still do."

- from the film's official website

A low-budget Swedish film, the trailer and poster for Draughad led me to expect a cocktail of History's Vikings and The Blair Witch Project... and it was that, but more.

There was a definite element of Apocalypse Now/Heart Of Darkness - a theme addressed similarly in 2009's bigger budgeted Valhalla Rising - but also traces of The Descent and a splash of J-horror ghost stories.

The movie's small budget means there are moments when Draug resembles a high-quality LARP or a Nordic cosplay, but the actors and scenery bring a gritty verisimilitude that soon dispels those random thoughts.

Shot on location, the film is tense and atmospheric, and only occasionally confusing when there's a variety of things kicking off in the shadows of the dark trees.

While not overly gruesome, this isn't one for the faint of heart as it dabbles in some taboo subjects (such as casual torture and infanticide) and one character has a nickname that makes Preacher's Arseface seem socially acceptable.

Smartly scripted and dripping with local folklore, Draug dishes up some unexpected moments of deliberate laugh-out-loud humour in early scenes that soon give way to screaming, insanity and dying as the adventuring party plunges deeper in to the legendary forest of Ödmården.