Only the cynical survive in post-war Germany as various groups search for a Jewish assassin murdering hidden Nazis, mostly so they can get him to come and kill for them. Leading the charge is an ex-OSS man and his treacherous friend the Romanian dwarf. Thomas writes slick, fast, twisty thrillers.

A boy grows up in a graveyard, raised by ghosts, guarded by a vampire, taught by a werwolf, friends with a witch, hunted by a Jack. This is way better than I remembered. Why are some books better on rereading and why do they tturn out to be my favourites? I dunno, I just work here.

Anderson magically spins up a mid-grade fairy-tale adventure set during covid that recalls Alan Garner, utterly aloive with atmosphere and character, funny, exciting, moving, mysterious and uplifting. A small but perfect masterpiece. The reader is great, and sounds so charmingly excited when he announces each new chapter even after the darkest cliffhanger, as if he can't wait to find out what happens next.

Gritty, dystopian sci-fi western set on a desert planet/moon, but not desrt like Dune, desert like a cross between Mad Max and Sam Peckinpah, as a wandering medic trying to atone for her deeds during the just-finished war rescues a young girl from a crashed ship only to discover she's a child-general bred and altered and trained as a super-soldier. Dodging scavengers, haunted by weird probablistic things that feed off violence, beset by bandits and betrayal, they carve a path through the planet looking for safety. It's not bad, a touch over-wrought, though whether that's the writing or the reader or both it's hard to say.

| Arguably one of the least best covers this series has had, why oh why. Severian the Torturer exiled for letting the woman he loved commit suicide earlier than she was supposed to meanders across Urth taking in the sights and sounds and people, occasionally executing some of them. It's extremely readable and the story has a logic all its own that's far more literary than the usual plot-heavy genre stuff we love so well, and yet under it all it's still a fantasy-type adventure in a Dying Earth setting, it just happens to use symbolism and archaic language a lot and is occasionally ambiguous, which certainly add to the texture of the experience, yet there's a sense that the plot is there, it's just hidden via sleight-of-hand, albeit that could just be the absence of plot-tokens, or rather the plot-tokens are there, their plot significance is left unstated. Anyway, it's great and weird and frustrating and sometimes quite disturbing. I've never had the sense that it's some great puzzle waiting to be solved, and analysis of the symbolism and imagery isn't the same, but it is a sort of exploration of language and imagery and symbolism, which are puzzles of a sort. Do I contradict myself? Perhaps. Or do I? No. Or do I?

A shipwreck, an attack by pirates, a new ship and a chase resumed - the ups and downs and ins and outs of Aubrey and Maturin's continuing adventures, including lost fortune, a visit to a brutal penal colony and an encounter with a platypus. 

I like that it takes its Cold War no-good-guys-really setup for granted, and its exploration of a vaguely Bondian grounded super-spy-assassin makes him as profoundly broken as it's possible to get while still actually functioning, but the Brits are so awful in this - why are we on the side of these people, whay are we supposed to be rooting for someone who works for these people? While also getting thrills from the way he kills lots of people? Charlie's lovely, though, the bits with him are great. 

When I first started reading Kim Newman stories, the best part was always the initial shock of an incredibly cool, clever concept, twisting and rearranging things out of popular culture and the real world into a kind of thesis to be explored through to its logical conclusion, often unexpected, yet completely thriling and satisfying. I've gotten so used to the high concept of his Anno Dracula saga that it was a joy to be reminded of that thrill here, as Raymond Chandler narrates a hard-boiled investigation into Hollywood mad-science in Hollywood with Boris Karloff. Newman uses the characters' biographies and their works to bring them to life and make them a lovable, compelling pair working a strange case together of rich people out to make movies and live forever in the literal sense not the artistic sense, but nonetheless using move magic to make it happen. Terrific. 

Sorry, RoL is copaganda. Fun novella about an FBI agent being chased by an ice whirlwind, though. 

Gothic story with a spooky turn as Matthew is hired to talk death out of deathing a rich man so he can reconcile with his daughter. There's a section towards the end that relies a tad on everyone being oblique, but it works as a comic turn, I think?