Tony’s Comments (group member since Dec 19, 2018)

Tony’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

The completion of The Last TechShack fills my second Bingo for the year - first column N, now row 1. However, I only have 6 slots left to fill, so I expect most books will complete a row or column

I have finished The Last TechShack. The book has an interesting premise but was ultimately disappointing. It drags on a bit and the author really needs to pay attention to his continuity. Still, it features a portal, so it fills that Bingo slot.

Andrea wrote: "Wasn't that Winston Smith's job in 1984? Changing already published material? Scary sometimes."

There are entirely too many people treating 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale as blueprints rather than cautionary tales.

Andrea wrote: "Constantine's Hellblazer is another one that crosses over with The Sandman (he shows up fairly frequently actually). I actually like the movie, so of course I've got this image of Constantine looking like Keanu Reeves. Anyway will get into that series once I wrap up one of the others I'm in the middle of."

I think the Constantine movie was probably better appreciated by people who hadn't already read the Hellblazer comics from the late 80s / early 90s, which was the first time Constantine got his own title. Prior to that he had just appeared as a guest in other titles, mostly in DC comics that dealt with supernatural issues, and often in the Swamp Thing title - which also had a TV series based on it, but it was nowhere near as good as Sandman.

I don't definitively know that there was an update applied to the book, I just can't think of anything else that would have caused the change I noticed. Although I guess it is possible that the change was just reformatting, and the text didn't change, or only had some grammatical errors fixed. But without rereading, I'm not going to know.

Andrea wrote: "So I'd been going through a lot of the Sandman spinoff/tie-ins like Lucifer (there is a LOT of that, I'm only part way through) when I decided to take a break and look at [book:Locke & Key, Vol. 1:..."

I enjoyed volume 1 of Locke & Key. I have 6 volumes plus some spin-offs that I picked up in a Humble Bundle deal some time ago, but I haven't read past volume 1 yet. I agree that I don't think there is a Lovecraft connection beyond the town name, but it was enjoyably creepy. Joe Hill also wrote Horns, about the half-human son of the Devil. Given his parentage, his ability to write deeply unsettling books is not a surprise.

It's not until volume 7 of Locke & Key that he ties it in with the Sandman.

The font definitely didn't change and you're right - that is a lot of extra pages. I had been noticing some parts of the book that needed an editor, but not that much. And I thought updates didn't apply once the book was downloaded unless I chose to apply it - but Amazon could well have changed that policy.

So, a rather bizarre thing happened while I was reading The Last TechShack. When I finished reading last night, I noted the Kindle app said I was on page 165 of 333 (49%). I read some more this morning and suddenly I was on page 211 of 411. I didn't change the font size, so I wonder where those extra 80 pages came from? My best guess is that the author released an updated version and the Kindle app took me to the same spot in the current version - which would be very irritating if that is what happened, as I have no way of knowing what changes were applied to the portion of the book I have already read - unless I choose to go back and start again, which I'm not going to do. Has anyone else had this happen?

I should point out, because it wasn't obvious in my earlier post, that The Prisoner: Shattered Visage is a graphic novel, not a prose novel. I realise I didn't comment on the artwork, which was quite good, and did a decent job of replicating some of the setting on the TV show.

I'm nearly halfway through The Last TechShack. It has the feel of an early Stephen King, or Ramsey Campbell novel - although it's not horror. It's moving at a slow pace, and it has started to be a little slow in progressing the plot, but I'm still enjoying it.

I have finished The Prisoner: Shattered Visage which is the authorised sequel to the British TV show of the late 60s. It started well, but did not reach the quality of writing of the TV show, and the ending seemed rushed. I would also recommend that the reader should be at least somewhat familiar with the show, or they're likely to have a lot of questions.

Anything similar in style to Alice in Wonderland or books set in Lovecraft's Dreamlands, whether written by Lovecraft or others, would class as examples of dreampunk IMO.

I rarely DNF a book, I tend to try and push through or, somewhat more commonly, I put the book aside to have a break and intend to resume at a later date - and never do. I have a few books in my Goodreads Currently Reading shelf that I haven't made any progress on in years.

I have finished Return To Wonderland Vol. 1, a graphic novel from Zenescope. Zenescope are perhaps best known for their Grimm Fairy Tales comic series, which are dark (sometimes even darker than the originals) retellings of classic fairy tales. The Return to Wonderland series (the graphic novel collects issues 0-6) is way, way darker. The final issue does reveal the backstory behind this, and it is intriguing, and sets up plenty of opportunities for future stories. This is not recommended for anyone who loves the whimsical nature of Carroll's original stories.

I have started reading The Last TechShack which, from the blurb, looks to be a sci-ft thriller featuring a portal.

18 books in and I finally have my first completion - the N column. 7 books to go.

I have finished Hidden Blade. It's a story of the Egyptian Gods living in modern day New York. I had planned to use it to fill the Urban Fantasy slot in my Bingo, but it's a really dark story, so I will use it for the Dark SF/F slot. This also, with the 18th book, provides the first completed row or column - the N column.

Welcome to July. Over halfway through the year.

I have started reading Hidden Blade, which could fill either the Urban Fantasy or Dark SF/F slot in my Bingo.

I finished Swordsmistress of Chaos. I have always enjoyed this series, while recognising that it's not the best quality writing and the characters are a little cliched, the lead character being a woman notwithstanding (which was pretty unusual for a sword & sorcery novel in the 70s).

It fills the Swords(wo)man slot in my Bingo. I have now completed 17 of the 25 slots, but no bingo yet.

I finished another short story - Navy Day by Harry Harrison. It was pretty silly and far from his best work.

I have started reading Swordsmistress of Chaos, or rather re-reading - I have read this series several times over the nearly 50 years since they were first published. It will fill the Features a Swordsman (or Swordswoman in this case) slot in my Bingo

I have finished Spores: A Sci-Fi Horror Novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a sci-fi medical horror in the same vein as a number of books that dealt with the scenario of a pandemic with a more deadly virus, only this uses the nightmare fuel fungus cordyceps. It was also released this year, so it fills the 2025 slot in my Bingo.