F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 2
September 30, 2019
Doctor Who Reviews (Extra) – Destiny of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks
I
owned dozens of novelisations of DOCTOR WHO as a child. They were a regular
gift I asked for both Christmases and birthdays. The show was rarely repeated
and, in the absence of VHS/DVD releases, these were the only way to experience
the old stories. I can remember reading them back to back and since the now
late Terrence Dicks wrote so many, it might be the case – thinking about it – that
he’s the author I’ve read more books by than anyone else.
In tribute on his passing, the only novelisation I could easily lay my hands on (years ago, l let my mother give them away) was DESTINY OF THE DALEKS. This actually wasn’t a bad choice. In essence it does still remain the same off mix of the limited imagination of Terry Nation (derring-do and nothing else) and Douglas Adams (so much else). But filtered through the breezy prose style of Dicks, I have to say i enjoyed it a lot more than the TV version. The Daleks still aren’t quite the Daleks you’d want them to be, but the rougher elements have been smoothed over and this is a more coherent adventure than was broadcast on telly.
It’s The Doctor vs The Daleks vs The Movellans on a distant plant in a fast moving adventure that’s perfect for reading in a single sitting.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
September 25, 2019
Death at the Seaside
A lovely review of my novella, Death at the Seaside
“Nothing was going to ruin Castle’s holiday.
Except for the mocking laughter of the dead.
Castle was anticipating a lovely break at the seaside. His glamorous film star mistress was even joining him.
However, an unexpected encounter leaves Castle reeling. There’s a chance that someone knows his darkest secret and no matter what, he’s going to have to deal with it.
All his life, Castle has been the luckiest bloke he knew.
That luck might be about to run out”
I got an ARC of this book.
This book gives the perfect example of a main character that just deserves everything bad that could possibly happen to him. From the very first page, Castle was just this awful character. He was a cheat, slimy, misogynistic, and worse. There was just so much about him to hate. I LOVED HATING HIM. There were no mixed feelings, there were no redeeming qualities…
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September 23, 2019
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (read by Stephen Fry)
THE SIGN OF FOUR is a more
sensationalist novel than A STUDY IN SCARLET. Maybe that wasn’t always the
case. Possibly in 1890, the whole notion of Mormonism was just as exotic as
India and holy jewels. That each were mysteries in London which centred on far
off places and different cultures. However, the Utah stuff in A STUDY IN SCARLET
now means that that’s a book with a very western feel (quite literally). This
however reads like the worst of colonialism. All fears of other peoples and the
assertion that there are some non-British types out there who are literal
monsters.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s only towards
the end of the short stories – when Conan Doyle is in “I don’t care anymore,
show me the money” mode – that I start finding his version of Sherlock Holmes
difficult to read. This is for the most part a compulsive mystery/adventure
story. But it is one that makes me feel a bit queasy for the amount of
allowances I have to give it.
Stephen Fry gives another wonderful reading of it here. And the introduction has particularly marvelous detail that this was commissioned at the literary lunch that THE PORTRAIT OF DORIAN GRAY was commissioned. Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde having lunch together! What’s more Rudyard Kipling was supposed to be there too, but couldn’t attend…
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
September 21, 2019
Call of the Mandrake
A lovely review of Call of the Mandrake!
“What terrible secrets are the town’s women hiding?
Beddnic, on the South Wales coast, has shut itself off from the outside world. Days after a number of its men were reported missing, the road in was closed and all communications ceased. No strangers are welcome there anymore.
Now, two agents – Ludo and Garris – are venturing across the water, anxious to know what’s going on and desperate to help. And no amount of threats or horrors will make them turn back. The awful curse which has befallen this town is about to be revealed, and the dead shall walk…
But in this cruel place by the sea, will these two men really be able to help?”
I got an ARC of this book.
When the author offered me a copy of this book, I wasn’t so sure. Detectives really aren’t my thing. I just don’t see why…
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September 16, 2019
Fool’s Quest by Robin Hobb
I told
myself going in that the last one was a blip.
In FOOL’S ASSASIN I actually had a book in this wonderful series (or serieses I guess, as it’s three trilogies) that I didn’t actually enjoy that much. It was an anomaly though, right? Just a smudge on the record. There have been minor missteps before (I remember grouching about the other the top John Lithgow-ness of a certain villainous character) but never a volume that I could take or leave. So yes, I held my breath on picking up this one, but I needn’t have fretted as here we’re back on surer ground. A book that’s a full blown charge of pain and vengeance and guilt – as well as the importance of people.
It’s a
challenge to review though, as saying what actually happens in it could give
away what happened in the last volume and I would be loathe to ruin it for
anyone. Suffice to say that when news of events reaches Fitz he heads down a
very dark path laden with doom.
What I really like – as always – about Hobb’s writing is how humane it is. All the characters are recognisably human – of course, that’s what great authors do – but all of them, no matter how flawed, are all given the chance to take a road to redemption. And it’s that compassion and the belief that they can all be saved (even Regal probably back in the day if he’d just made other choices) that make these books such a wonder,
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
September 9, 2019
Doctor Who reviews (extra) – The Good Doctor by Juno Dawson
The last series of DOCTOR WHO was the one I liked the least since it’s return. That’s in many ways sad as I was not only so looking forward to it, but it had so many great elements. Jodie was superb as The Doctor, the companions were great (if too numerous; poor Yaz was frequently given too little to do) and yet the whole thing didn’t come together, There were some highlights: the historicals; and the bizarreness of ‘It Takes You Away’. But too often the scripts didn’t quite work or outright fell flat on their face,
So, it was with relief that I hugged ‘The Good Doctor’ by Juno
Dawson to my chest when I finished it, as here is the 13th Doctor as
she actually should be. With proper subplots for the companions, proper Doctor
moments, proper villains, proper peril and everything you would want DOCTOR WHO
to be.
The Doctor arrives on a world where human settlers and the
planet’s original doglike inhabitants are at war with each other. She stops
this conflict but, when she accidentally returns six hundred years later,
discovers that her words and actions have been turned into a twisted religion.
What’s more, Graham is this religion’s God -The Good Doctor.
With obvious roots in the Tom Baker story ‘The Face of Evil’,
this is fantastic DOCTOR WHO, with a story that races along, proper and obvious
danger and The Doctor solving everything by being the most brilliant person in
the room. I just wish we had more 13th Doctor stories like it.
Also, we discover that, like me, The Doctor loathes olives. I really didn’t think I could like the character any more…
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
September 1, 2019
Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne
This is a wonderful novel!
Lawrence Osborne (a writer, I confess, I’d never
read before) has taken Philip Marlowe and done something really interesting
with him. He isn’t here trying to sort our loose ends from THE BIG SLEEP or THE
LONG GOODBYE, which – however diverting – really do fall into the trap of
retreading old ground. Instead he’s investigating a case in Mexico in the 1980s!
This isn’t then a Marlowe sealed in a Noir aspic, this isn’t Marlowe fixed at a
point where Bogart could still play him – but a much older and yet still
vibrant version of him.
And it works!
The character of Marlowe was always a man out of
time. An Arthurian knight forced to walk the mean streets of L.A. So, pulling him
further out of time doesn’t do the damage to the character that I thought it
might. There was always an elegiac quality to Marlowe, always a sadness there,
and as the man finds himself closer to the end than the beginning, that
melancholy is now fully at the fore. He’s still going to do his duty, he still
retains his dry wit and descriptive powers, this is still the highly moral
Philip Marlowe we know – but now he’s an old man looking back as much as he is forward.
In a way the plot is incidental, which was always the way with Chandler’s books. Marlowe is brought out of retirement by an insurance company wanting to investigate the death of a real estate developer. (And a corrupt American real estate developer in the 1980s can’t but make you think of you know who – he even has the first name ‘Donald’). What matters is the characters and the dialogues and the sense of place and the atmosphere, all of which are beautifully evoked and brilliant.
I wouldn’t have said this about the other post Chandler attempts to do Marlowe, but for all fans, this is a genuine must read.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
August 26, 2019
Alien: Out of the Shadows by Tim Lebbon (An Audible Original Drama)
Much like STAR WARS needs to tell tales that don’t involve The
Skywalker family, so ALIEN needs to find a way to thrive beyond Ellen Ripley.
Now, I quite enjoyed ALIEN: OUT OF THE SHADOWS, but that did require
me to get over that it rather incredibly and improbably slots between ALIEN and
ALIENS. No, Ripley didn’t sleep uninterrupted for all those years, instead her pod
– steered by the A.I. consciousness of Ash – battling more Xenomophs. Of course
then, the cynic within me spent a lot of it waiting for the scene where Ripley
loses her memory, so as not to disrupt what we see in ALIENS. And because of
that, I did spend most of running time wondering whether we really needed
Ripley there at all.
This free Audible dramatisations of the Tim Lebbon novel is –
narrative contrivance apart – quite a fun listen. Bringing together elements
from ALIEN, ALIENS and even PROMETHEUS. Of course, all those things we’ve seen
before and it’s undoubtedly a bit of a re-tread, but the different medium helps
in not making this feel utterly redundant.
The cast is great, with Laura Lefkow in particular evoking Ripley
perfectly, and the production is top notch. I just wish it had created a
completely original group of characters so that the ending wouldn’t have to fit
in uncomfortably with what we’d already seen in 1986.
Is it essential? Hell no. Is it fun? Actually, it is.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
August 19, 2019
Helltown by Jeremy Bates
There’s a lot of fun to be had here for horror fans.
Jeremy Bates has taken a big blood-stained pot and mixed together a load of familiar horror tropes. So, we have the young people lost in the haunted wood, satanists, rednecks, giant snakes and ghastly, brutal murder. The 1980’s setting even lets him throw a traumatised soldier (a la Rambo) into the mix. This might sound like it’s a roll of clichés, but such is the number of them that it moves beyond cliché and ends up somewhere else altogether. A blood splattered compendium of 1980’s US horror movies. A white-knuckle ride with an incredible death toll. There are even forwards and epilogues where people completely incidental to the plot get offed. It’s a dark read then – and completely lacking in a Stephen King-esque faith in the goodness of people – but one which will undoubtedly appeal to any horror fan of my vintage.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
August 12, 2019
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (read by Stephen Fry)
Listening to Stephen Fry’s superb reading of THE
STUDY IN SCARLET, I realised that I have never properly read the Mormon second
half of the story. At best I can be said to have skim-read it, and I’m sure
there were times when I just skipped it out completely. Moving straight – and without
guilt – to more Holmes at the end.
I’m surely not alone in this. Sherlock Holmes is
already a compulsive character from the first chapter we meet him. There is no
embryonic phase where he isn’t quite himself. And the mystery Holmes and Watson
are presented with here is so compulsive and crackling, that to leave it and
head off on a long digression with a bunch of people far less interesting is an
annoying diversion. I guarantee that I’m not the only reader who has never
given it my full attention.
Listening to it, however, I did pay attention and
– no matter how good a job Stephen Fry does with it (and he does a damn good
job) – there’s no avoiding that it really is a melodramatic slog. A tale of
evil Mormons, a beautiful young virgin and a love story snuffed out by death.
It manages to combine being both overwrought and dull. Of course, what went
before was so brilliant that virtually anything is going to suffer in
comparison, but the change here is particularly jarring.
We can perhaps see already the ambivalent tone
Conan-Doyle would cultivate towards his most famous creation. He creates
something brilliant, but would rather spend a large portion of the book writing
about something completely different. As if he didn’t really know what he had,
or didn’t really care.
Still, Sherlock Holmes is fantastic in this inaugural tale and Stephen Fry does do a great job narrating it. Without a doubt, this is a five star book, even with the longueurs.
My debut novel, THE WANNABES – which has been out of print for a little while – is now available for free. A supernatural thriller of beautiful actresses and deadly ambition in London town, it’s well worth your time. You can get your copy here!
