Alan Baxter's Blog, page 137

The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks - Review

I’ve just finished reading this series of books and thought I might write a brief review of it. I’m going to try to review all the books I read and movies I see from now on, with a view to sharing stories with you all.

The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks is a set of three (obviously) quite hefty books: The Way Of Shadows, Shadow’s Edge and Beyond The Shadows.

This is the first fantasy series that I’ve read in a long time and it was something I picked up completely on a whim. I was in a mall w

Wolverine explained

After my recent review of the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine film, which upset a few Wolverine fans, I thought I might set the record straight a bit with this short video. It does an excellent job of reviewing the movie:

Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Man, I’m still laughing at this one.

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Short fiction submissions - the ongoing saga

I was talking here last month about the burden of rejection. I thought I might follow up a bit on that with a quick roundup of what I have out there in the slush piles at the moment and keep you all updated on the rejections and sales as they come along.

I love writing short stories and I love reading them. I’m always going to write them and try to get them published, regardless of my actual success rate. But on going through my list today to see what was where, I thought I might start sharing so

Star Trek - The Reboot - Review

I am a total nerd for Star Trek. There, I said it and I’m not ashamed of it. I’ve loved every incarnation of Star Trek since I was a little pup and even the crappy ones are enjoyable on some level. (I also love Star Wars and don’t believe in all that “You’re either a Star Wars fan or a Star Trek fan” bollocks. I dig them both equally.)

So I was full of nerdy excitement and trepidation about this new movie. They planned to reboot the entire franchise and start the story anew, from James T Kirk’s f

Palindrome poem

A little while back I posted this video, which plays a very clever game with words. Reading that caused regular reader and all round IT guru here at The Word, James Frost, to seek out others like it. He came up with this, which is, quite frankly, a brilliant example of wordsmithery.

Doppelganger by James A. Lindon (copied from Hunting The Muse)

Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush –
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A mom

Online Book Tour - Shadows by Joan De La Haye

I’m very pleased to be a part of this event. Online book tours are becoming a very popular method of getting the word out about new books. (I’ll be organising one myself soon for RealmShift and MageSign.)

However, this particular tour is all about the book Shadows by Joan De La Haye. Joan is stopping by a variety of blogs, which is what makes it a book tour, talking about all sorts of things relevant to herself and her writing. For her stop here, Joan and I decided to have a conversation about de

May The 4th Be With You

Happy Star Wars Day everybody - May The 4th Be With You.

(International time zone disclaimer: Due to US software and international time zones, this post will probably be dated May 3rd, but it’s the morning of May 4th here in Sydney as I write this.)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Review

I got around to going to the movies yesterday and saw the new Wolverine flick. I have to say, I’m getting more and more disappointed with Hollywood. There seems to be a real tendency for spectacle over substance in recent releases, and Wolverine is good example.

Hugh Jackman does a stand up job playing the lead again. He’s certainly made that role his own. The trouble with the movie for me was that they just crammed it full of so much action and special effects that they forgot to work on the sto

Books You’d Like To Read Again, For The First Time

This is another little gem that I picked up from S F Signal. I thought it was a really interesting idea.

What if you could read a book again for the first time?

Some books are just outstanding achievements and they can be the sort of thing that you can read again and again. But no subsequent reading is ever going to be as good as that first time around, when the book truly surprised you and dragged you along, desperate to know what was going to happen next. Rereading a book is often a very rewardi

Guess what? It’s another book meme

I picked this up from Scribe, who picked it up from Benjamin Solah, who grabbed it from Bites… You can follow it back further yourself if you’re really interested.

I thought it was worth a look as it’s a bit different from the others I’ve put on here up till now. Consider yourself tagged if you want to have a go. Drop a comment here if you do reproduce it yourself, with a link so I can come and have a look at your answers.

Hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback?

I’m not especially fusse