Author Archive: NealeMonks
Collected Essays Volume 3: Science by H.P. Lovecraft edited by S.T. Joshi (book review).
One of the things that isn’t well known about H.P. Lovecraft is that the first thing he ever had published wasn’t a story or even a poem but a letter to the editor of the ‘Providence Sunday Journal’ pointing out the scientific impossibility of the ‘transit of Mars’ that had been described by an astrologer […]
The King In Yellow by Robert W Chambers and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (graphic novel review).
The original ‘The King In Yellow’ was published in 1895 as a collection of ten short stories, of which the first four are loosely connected examples of weird fiction. They share a number of motifs, including references to a play, the eponymous ‘The King In Yellow’, that causes anyone to read the second act to […]
Dune: The Duke Of Caladan (The Caladan Trilogy book 1) by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson (book review).
To paraphrase Liet-Kynes, ‘Against all better judgement, I liked book.’ Put another way, there’s a fair deal of antipathy directed at Messrs Herbert and Anderson for the way they’ve plundered Herbert Sr’s universe for the material needed to pump out, on a literally industrial scale, one pot-boiler scifi novel after another. Where the original ‘Dune’ […]
The Ankh-Morpork Archives by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs (book review).
If you’ve ever read one of those books about some exotic country filled with photos and essays about the lives of the people living there, you’ll have some idea of what ‘The Ankh-Morpork Archives’ is all about. The central conceit, if you will, is that the inhabitants of the city of Ankh-Morpork are worth reading […]
The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (graphic novel review).
Alongside the simultaneous re-releases of ‘The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath’ and ‘The Shadow Out Of Time’, SelfMadeHero have republished another of the I.N.J. Culbard graphic novels in a slightly smaller paperback format. Again, the adaptation is basically sound but having read through all three of them now, the quirks, if not quite limitations, of […]
The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (graphic novel review).
Because ‘The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath’ was never finished in his lifetime, many fans of H.P. Lovecraft have tended to pass over this novella in favour of his more polished and accessible works. In doing so, they miss out on some of Lovecraft’s most intense imagery and exotic ideas. It tells the story of a […]
The Shadow Out Of Time by H.P. Lovecraft and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (book review).
One of Lovecraft’s final works, ‘The Shadow Out Of Time’ is widely considered a masterpiece of the genre. It tells the story of an economics professor, Nathaniel Peaslee, trying to reconstruct the missing years of his life of which he has no memory. Half-way through giving a lecture in 1908 he passed out and, so […]
Brave New World: A BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation by Aldous Huxley (audio book review).
If there’s one thing the BBC does well, it’s radio drama. ‘Brave New World’ is no exception, carefully adapted to bring the themes up-to-date without detracting from the original qualities of the book that have ensured its consistent popularity over the last 90 odd years. The basic premise is a dystopian future world that divides […]
The Magic Of Terry Pratchett by Marc Burrows (book review).
Few authors are held in such affection as Terry Pratchett, but in some ways his image of trimmed beard, black hat and almost hippy-like dress sense is rather better known than the man himself. ‘The Magic Of Terry Pratchett’ aims to put that right, but in an appropriately affectionate sort of way. After all, while […]
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore (book review).
While the idea of likeable personifications of death aren’t new, American author Christopher Moore has a knack of turning simple ideas into witting and sophisticated novels. ‘A Dirty Job’ takes place in the shared universe Moore has created in such comic novels as ‘Bloodsucking Fiends’ and ‘Bite Me’. As such, it’s our world, but with […]
