The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton
Thessaly ; book 2 From acclaimed, award-winning author Jo Walton: Philosopher Kings, a tale of gods and humans, and the surprising things …
The Revenant dir. by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Inspired by the novel which was inspired by the true story of Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), a fur trapper who was attacked by …
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Part of my RIP reading Carolyn is a librarian. Or at least that is word her Father uses. That is the term …
John Wick dir. by Chad Stahelski, David Leitch
John Wick’s wife has just died. But its okay, she’s left him the gift of a puppy so that he’ll still have …
A walk among the tombstones [based on the book] by Lawrence Block dir. by Scott Frank
In 1991 three men robbed a bar that was known not to charge police officers for their drinks. Matthew Scudder was off …
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway
Lester Ferris has seen a lot and done a lot in his life. A sergeant in the British Army he has more …
Address Unknown by Katherine Kressman Taylor
Reread for my book club. And on second read it is just as powerful, if not more so than on first reading. …
Sorry by Zoran Drvenkar
translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside. Seeing a couple break-up in public Kris goes over to apologise to the woman. He …
Black Hills by Dan Simmons
Author: Dan Simmons
I’d never read any of Dan Simmons work before picking this one up. I’d heard good things about Drood but that’s about it. So picking this up was a total impulse decision. I hadn’t heard anything about the book, and I don’t really trust blurbs.
In the opening sentence we meet our main protagonist, Paha Sapa, a young Lakota boy who has raced into the middle of the Battle of Little Big Horn in order to go counting coup, there he touches the dying George Custer, the infamous Long Hair, and from then on shares his mind with Custer’s ghost. The book shifts in time, usually within Paha Sapa’s life, but occasionally we get to hear from Custer. He usually talks about his wife, Libby, and the sex they had. To be totally honest this was the one bit I wasn’t that interested in. Okay, so he and his wife have a great sex life, and so…
The rest of the book though, well, it is one I recommend you take a look at.
War dir. by Philip G. Atwell
Supposedly this is a martial-arts action film about an FBI agent hunting down an assassin because he killed the cop’s partner. But in reality there isn’t enough plot for that. Which is very surprising because there is a LOT of story and very little martial arts. There is a fair amount of action, but it is all things we’ve seen before.
The Bourne Ultimatum [based on the book] by Robert Ludlum dir. by Paul Greengrass
Bourne is back. Or maybe it’d be more accurate to say that he never really went away, as this film picks up even before the second in the series, The Bourne Supremacy, has finished. So it is worth your while making sure you’ve seen that before you take a look at this one. That being said it isn’t vital, you’ll pick up on a main plot soon enough, and while what you miss out on does add to the film it isn’t totally necessary as there is plenty of back story floating around in this film.
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
It began on a train, heading north through England, although I was soon to discover that the story had really begun more than a hundred years earlier.
The Prestige is a book that covers three different generations of two families, told by a number of different narrators, all in the first person, as they tell their stories in their diaries. Those of you who have seen the film version will be aware that the prestige of the title is the payoff to a magic trick. What you might not know is that this term was invented by Priest but has since come into common usage among practising magicians.