I picked this up for my nine year old son, and found myself drawn to the wonderful art and intriguing story, so in the end I nicked it from him and read it myself. Walker Bean's beloved grandfather is horribly ill. He made the mistake of looking into the eyes of the pearl skull, stolen from the hoard of the hideous merwitches who destroyed Atlantis. The skull must be returned, but only young Walker is willing to do so. The skull is stolen! There's a sea-battle! Walker stows away on a pirate ship. Pursued by the mysterious Doctor, the Royal Navy and the merwitches themselves! Can his determination and the odd crazy invention hello him fight through to save his grandfather?
This is just so damn good. Writer artist is clearly influence by Tintin, Where's Wally and a host of others, he also reminded me of Richard Sala, especially with his willingness to go full on ghastly with the nightmarish merwitches. It's a cracking read, thrilling and fascinating, with brilliant characters and an ending that goes from a jaw-droppingly epic set-piece reversal to a quietly moving funeral at sea. Highly, highly recommended

And the fourth and, so far, final volume of Jack Staff (pleaselettherebeafifthpleaselettherebeafifth), and it all kicks off with the usual falling apart of time and space and reality itself and even the very page layouts. Mixed up realities, imaginary friends from the realm of dreams, John Smith robbing shops, new heroes and villains, all told with the customary dash, humour and brilliance one comes to expect from a Paul Grist comic. Barring the arrival of volume five, I'll be off now to order Mud Man and hope against hope that it finds an audience to keep it going.

Robert VS Riddick River Of Shadows. The Charthrand finally reaches the south only to find, well, all manner of horrible things. This is the third book in a fun, well written series that combines an epic scale with lots of pacey adventure and excitement and twists and setbacks and peril and darkest hours for our heroes. Seeing as we're obsessively comparing everything to Martin (I DO SWEAR THESE CORNFLAKES ARE FIT FOR A KING'S LANDING WEDDING FEAST), then the young age of the book's main protagonists gives the book a YA feel, though clearly aimed at an older audience (I suspect teen fantasy fans will eat this up, though) which, I think, is how both books maintain the sense of pacey adventure and epic scale. It does repeat one plot from the previous book, albeit reversed, and while it comes across as justified, one can see the author finessing things a bit to get his required outcome. It's weak, but it's over soon enough and doesn't detract inordinately.

Hap and Leonard unite the great cultural and political American divide, with Hap the white straight bleeding heart liberal and Leonard the black, gay hang-'em-high conservative, bonded together forever by a sense of friendship that encompasses love, duty, honour, justice, brotherhood and all that good shit. I think a fairly heavy case can be made that they deserve to be a lot more iconic. One day they'll make a TV series out of the books as good as Justified if not better and the dream will come true halleluia.

Investigating a double murder unsolved by the police, our heroes find out more that they want to about vampire cults, are reluctantly drawn back to the Dixie Mafia and become the target of a world-class professional assassin. Along the way, Leonard has to deal with a break-up and Hap has to cope with a sudden rush of PTSD. Then there's all the usual violence, mayhem, scatalogical humour and general smart-arsery that makes these books such a liberating shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. So damn good the damn good has to wear a coat and tie.

I'm a big Kim Newman fanboy and have been since I first read Anno Dracula and reveled in the mad skill with which he mingled fictional characters from every era into a brilliant, well-written story. Mysteries is set in a different milieu, but features his version of Conan Doyle's eponymous Club and their continuing efforts to keep England safe from the Bad Things, as well Charles Beauregard, the vampire Genevieve and other familiar characters. This collections features stories and novellas old and new, including a magical warfare version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the novel length epic Seven Stars. These are clever, sharp, conceptually witty, archly satiric and highly entertaining pulp tales. Fans of Newman won't mind taking the old with the new, and neophytes have a jolly good treat in store.

Top notch historical literary police procedural, although the proof-reading leaves a lot to be desired. The first in a trilogy, this is set in 1940s Bordeaux, during the fall of France. Superintendent Lannes, a veteran of the Great War and with a son on the front lines of the coming war, investigates the grisly murder of a homosexual. He is urged to close the case quickly, but the victim was known to him and he hangs on, doggedly pursuing the slender lines of inquiry. When Germany invades and France surrenders, he finds himself questioning his priorities and fearing for the future. His chief suspects become powerful and untouchable,his witnesses are in danger and he is vulnerable. In the end, the mystery might be solved and the culprits revealed, but is there any hope of justice being done?

Underneath the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors and typesetting disasters, this book is superbly written and sympathetically imagined, a portrait of a society about to compromise itself utterly while those within struggle to find ways to live with themselves and their conquerors. One senses that the other jackboots will well and truly drop in the next volume, and horrible choices about resistance and survival will have to be made and that both will come with heavy costs.

The second Sweet Tooth collection, every bit as good as the first. Poor old Gus is betrayed and imprisoned, and has nothing to look forward to but horrible experiments. Jeppers sinks into violence and self-loathing before realising that maybe he has one thing left to live for. we discover more about the plague and about the world that remains, following Jeppers through the aftermath. We also learn that Gus's Dad may have been less than sane and possibly even the cause of the whole mess.

Terrific. Exciting, thoughtful and engaging. Can't wait for the next volume.

The Outpost by Adam Baker: I got this from the library on a whim, and it is a cracking, taut, cinematic thriller. The prose is pared-down to the bone, making for a fast, furious read. A caretaker crew on an Arctic oil refinery are abandoned as the world comes to a end due to a mysterious plague. Winter closes in, food stores are too low and the plague itself makes an unexpected arrival. Though atmospheric and claustrophopic, Baker pulls off a few sepctacular set-pieces. The heroine is unusual - basically she's the Vicar of Dibley - and he avoids the obvious killed-off-one-by-one route, building instead a core of four characters for the reader to become totally invested in. I've come to respect the art of writing books that read like really cool films, mostly because when they're made into films they usually end up a mess. I blew through this in a day and a half. An unexpected treat.

A bit of a sequel to the previous Hackberry Holland book, Feast Day opens with a man digging up fossilised dinosaur eggs at night int he desert, only to witness a man being tortured to death. Another man goes on the run, hunted by bandits and gangsters and the US government, all making an unholy mess that Hackberry Holland has to clean up. The fugitive takes refuge with a Chinese woman who offers a way-station to illegal immigrants coming over the Mexican border, but ultimately ends up in the care of the deadly and insane Preacher Jack Collins, who cut a bloody swathe through the innocent and the guilty alike in Rain Gods with his Thompson sub-machine gun. The body count mounts, evil comes creeping in from all directions, bad men do bad things, other bad men seek redemption or spiritual purification, while the good just try to survive the storm.
Burke's books are instantly identifiable with their meditations on landscape and weather and reflections on the darker labyrinths of human morality. Mortality, too, looms large for his aging heroes as the struggle to understand and impart what, if any, wisdom they might have acquired over the years. Hackberry has lived a long and eventful life, with much to haunt him and much to regret and more than his share of nightmares from his time in Korea. He presides over his country and this novel like a cranky father figure who tries to hide his own demons from those he cares for. Anyway, it's another epic and poetic work of crime and passion and flawed humanity. Brilliant.

Micheal Swanwick's Dancing With Bears is just so damn good. It's a pure sci-fi romp, carving out some sort of indefinable territory between cyber and steampunk. Confidence tricksters Dargle and Surplus help wreak havoc in postutopian Moscow! Packed with ideas, told with the wit and expertise of a born writer, it's one of the best books of the year so far. I hope Swanwick has a wheelbarrow for al the awards this'll win, and deserves to have aother one full of money, too.