ARC courtesy Blackstone Publishing (via NetGalley) – release date 21 September 2021. Humanity by and large is not a fan of things that go bump in the night. Or for that matter the creatures we imagine dwell in the shadows or which don’t conform to our idea of what is Continue Reading
Mini-mass of movie trailers: Lapsis, Atlantis, Supernova, The Wanting Mare, Bliss
There is utterly beguiling about falling into a cinematic story, letting its long and winding narrative settled over you, immerse you and take you deep into its storytelling wonder. Given the fact that the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in ways big and small across the globe, we need this Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #42: Jean Dawson, beabadoobee, Big Freedia, YDE, Baby Queen + Eurovision 2021 update
Honesty. Truthfulness. Authenticity. They’re all powerful words and they describe powerful states of being where all the artifice and pointless detritus of the world falls away and you are just yourself. Unapologetically, gloriously yourself. All five of the artists in this selection know exactly what that feels like and their Continue Reading
Book review: Mount Pleasant by Adam Byatt
Humanity, it must be said, loves a bit of personal PR. It’s not necessarily a deliberate thing; we don’t step out the door each day, or in these COVID-blighted times, appear on a Zoom call, with the deliberate intention of making ourselves look as good as possible. But our inadvertent Continue Reading
Movie review: Penguin Bloom
If you were to be given a description of the basic premise of Penguin Bloom in broad, top level brushstrokes, you could well be forgiven for thinking that it’s another in a long line on sweetly inspirational, sentimentality run amuck cinematic stories that tug mightily at the heartstrings, rip your Continue Reading
Comics review: Pretty Violent by Derek Hunter + Jason Young + Spencer Holt
Ya gotta hand it to Gamma Rae – she likes to dream big! Superhero big, in fact, and she’s not going to let a pesky thing like a family stacked to the corrupt rafters with zombie-creating, thieving, murderous criminals out her off achieving her lofty goals. But even the protagonist Continue Reading
The world is broken: New poster + trailer for Raya and the Last Dragon
SNAPSHOTRaya and the Last Dragon takes us on an exciting, epic journey to the fantasy world of Kumandra, where humans and dragons lived together long ago in harmony. But when an evil force threatened the land, the dragons sacrificed themselves to save humanity. Now, 500 years later, that same evil Continue Reading
Book review: The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
There is a giddy escapist loveliness to people falling in love, a reassuring sense that the world night be cruel and quite nasty at times but good things still dwell within its blighted surrounds. Usually when two people are falling in love, however, it’s because they’ve met in one of Continue Reading