READING REPORT: Not Much To Report

Honestly, I don't know where this week has gone. Have I been so under a cloud and distracted that it has slipped by me?

I know we had games night, I binged the excellent Reacher spin-off Neagley on Prime Video, and Rachel and I have been to the gym a couple of times, but beyond that it's all a bit of a blur.

Somehow I don't think I read a thing this week: no books, no comics... that can't be right, can it?

However, one definite thing I have "achieved" this week is the acquisition - or should I say "reacquisition" - of the Ace edition of the first volume of the epic shared world series Thieves' World, edited by Robert Aspirin.

In recent years I have been able to corral the subsequent four volumes, but this edition (shown above) was a right bugger to track down, especially when operating on a tight budget.

I owned, and read, this edition when it first appeared over here in the UK, almost 50 years ago, and, as much as I enjoyed the roguish, old school Dungeons & Dragons-style adventures within, it was the cover I was besotted with.

It was no surprise that it was also used on the cover of the roleplaying box set based on the book series, and its central city of Sanctuary, that statted up most of the main characters for a multitude of rules systems.

To my simple tastes, this cover painting is - and always will be - the definitive "you begin in a tavern" illustration. If I could start a campaign, or even an adventure, that gave me the same chills as this book cover I'd be a very happy gamesmaster.

Anyway, I came across this well-read but still in magnificent condition, book on eBay the other day and was delighted to see it listed as a "buy it now". You can imagine how quickly I slammed that button when I realised that even with postage this was going to cost me less than a tenner.

It arrived a couple of days later, well packed and ready to be shelved next to my other Thieves' World books (see below).

I'd been holding off trying to read these latter books because I wanted to start at the beginning of the franchise.

Now I can.

A snapshot of one of my sword-and-sorcery shelves

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: 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.

READING REPORT: Sailor Tom & Reconcile

 

I had a pretty impressive - for me, anyway - weekend of reading. I finished two books (one cover-to-cover in a handful of hours) and started a third.

First up was Mark Finn's homage to Robert E Howard's Sailor Steve Costigan: The Adventures of Sailor Tom Sharkey. 

One of the big differences between Sharkey and Costigan is that Sharkey was a real professional boxer in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Finn has simply given him, via the use of "tall tales", a pulpy life outside the ring and past his retirement.

Another big difference is that Sharkey's two-fisted adventures are much wilder and weirder than Costigan's, this collection includes weird science, ghost stories, battling robots, dinosaurs, and monsters (of several stripes). 

Because of his time in the ring, Sharkey is also a celebrity and is often recognised on his various travels, freely giving out autographs to his admirers.

Each story is short and succinct, but told with great gusto by Finn channelling Sharkey's voice.

My next read - which thankfully only took a couple of hours - was far less inspiring: Bruce Campbell's Western novella Reconcile. 

I hoped the A.I. art of the cover was just a glitch, a slight error of judgement. But the more I read of this short work the more I began to wonder if A.I. hadn't also infected the text within as well.

The adventure is set in Oregon in 1866 and within a few pages we meet a tribe of Northern Paiute Indians... playing (American) football!

If it had been kickabout proper football it wouldn't have stuck out so much like a sore thumb.

So I had to stop and check: American Football was first played between two college teams in November, 1869.

From there, it just kind of went downhill. There's no sense of place and direction for all the scenes that unfold, so when some crash into others it strains credibility.

If only there had been a map included, I might have had a better grasp of how close everyone was supposed to be, and what directions headed where. 

After his family is 'accidentally' massacred by an enraged Paiute, elderly engineer, George (who I think is who Campbell is portraying on the cover) teams up with an ex-army scout Joe (half-Paiute/half-white).

Togther, they seek to thwart the impending war between the natives and the real bad guys, the US Government forces who have just erected a new fort in Paiute land and want to corral the original inhabitants of the land into a reservation (or simply kill them).

The plot is pretty pedestrian, but I couldn't help wondering if the story (which gets quite gung-ho in its finale) wasn't recycled from an old Xena, Brisco County Jnr, or Jack Of All Trades script, because it can't decide if it's cartoon craziness or deadly serious (for instance, the brutal slaying of George's family is quite horrific, but the ultimate fate of the fort's commander almost comes with built-in Looney Tunes sound effects).

A disappointment in the wake of Campbell's excellent series of memoirs, nevertheless Reconcile was a quick read and that freed me up to start Cruise of Shadows.

This is an anthology of weird fiction by Jean Ray, an author I only recently learned about from the Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast.

I'm two-and-a-half stories in... and it's very weird. But in a good, Lovecraftian way.