Well this kind of blunted the momentum of the series so far. An extended novel-length flashback to when Jant was a young wee immortal not yet hooked on drugs and jumping in and out of the Shift. An Awian colony has been plonked down on the flank of a glacier on the edge of Jant's old home mountain range, but they're killing all the game and starving the local nomadic hunters who don't really have money and don't have borders and who tend to take what they need when they need it. A Rhydanne woman goes to the Castle to petition the Emperor himself, and the Emperor sends Jant to mediate. The Awian governor is the exiled brother of a King, and he's secretly plotting a new coup and not happy for an Immortal to arrive on the eve of his big invasion, nor does he need the distraction of a Rhydanne uprising.

This should be good. It's well-written and the characters are great there's a lot going on, but honestly, it somehow feels stretched out and not terribly interesting. The stakes aren't as high as in the previous books, where big world-threatening Insect invasions were balanced with smaller concerns and there were some big epic battles to keep things lively. Swainston is a superb action writer, and there's one blistering running battle between Awian horseman and Rhydanne hunters, and honestly the book could have done with a bit more of that. There's far more character stuff, and some works better than others. Jant is fairly unlikeable, vain and self-absorbed and often very stupid, getting by on good looks and charisma. His chapters are wearying.

I dunno, maybe if I wasn't ploughing through all the books together I'd like this more, but I didn't want a long flashback, I wanted to find out what happened next after the end of The Modern World. Perhaps if I'd skipped this and gone straight to Fair Rebel?

After the death and betrayal at the end of the last volume, we get six stories based around supporting characters and the new horrific antagonist, all drawing various plot strands along, if not together. A soldier joins an elite team, parents decide to resist, two lazarii are told to murder each other, a reporter searches for a story and a monster is undefeated. It's not quite the pure rush of Rucka/Lark Lazarus, but it's a satisfying little tour of their dystopian world.

I feckin loved Johnny Red, the tough British fighter pilot in the Russian squadron at mauling edge of the Eastern Front, fighting every day to survive the best efforts of both the Germans and the Russian armies to kill them, a classic war comic set-up of plucky warriors surviving the guns of the enemy and the schemes of their own officers with ingenuity and determination. If there was a wish list for the writers you'd want to get to handle the loving restoration of an old war-horse like that, it was probably exactly one name long, and they got him: Garth Ennis, none better with his in-depth knowledge and over-riding affection for grunts doing their best to get through the grim brutality and horror of it all with body and soul intact. So Johnny Red takes to the sky once more, irrepressible and unbeatable, with all the stalwarts of Falcon Squadron bringing death to the Nazis.

Grim n' gritty.

Grimmer and grittier, this time with closure.

I read this back in the day when it was serialised in 2000AD, having no familiarity with superheroes or crossovers so I had no way of knowing it was a kind of Crisis On Infinite British Comics, drawing as it does on a host of forgotten stalwarts from the pages of forgotten weeklies to get slaughtered in the war with the Lloigor as Zenith and Co try to prevent the alignment that will allow them to take over the multiverse. Exciting stuff, and atmospheric as all get-out, and it paid off plot points and character points and set-ups and foreshadowing from across the previous two books that had been so thrilling and tantalising. There's more than a touch of Miracleman in the dark vision of worlds ravaged by superhumans. The story moves fast and the pieces fit together like clockwork, even the betrayal, but it ends on a nasty little transphobic note that when I first read it I was at least able to attribute to Zenith being such a dick, but now, bad form, Morrisson.

A writer of hokum for a disreputable New York publication teams up with Captain Ahab who has returned home after wrestling with Moby Dick to find himself the subject of a novel which has cast him as a figure of myth, to find Ahab's missing son. Gabriel is is a member of an army of child criminals kept loyal to their master, the strange and horrible Malbaster, through the administration of opium. Aided by a motley assortment of allies, Harrow and Ahab do battle with Malbaster and his terrible assassin and pet monster on the streets of 18th century New York.

Oh I came across the desert on a man with no name, he was a Yakuza gang member and he was sent to kidnap a has-been wrestler, but bad thing start happening and strange powers are at work and violence and horror are unleashed. It felt good to get out of the rain.

Kicky splodey stuff, Avengers for people with personality problems and attention deficit disorder and virulent strains of ebonic plague.

The Johnson Johnson mysteries are witty, intelligent thrillers in glamorous settings amongst the global jet-set and wealthy elite narrated by young professional women drawn into the dangerous affairs of the Intelligence trouble-shooter, and usually feature at least one jaw-dropping and/or incredibly tense set-piece murder attempt. This is no exception, and yet it is also the most weirdly alien one, as the doctor bird of the (other) title, a cool, detached medical practitioner with an extremely trying father who is also chief of a Scottish clan helps a victim of food poisoning only to discover that it was actually a deliberate poisoning and has her life threatened for her efforts. There are three murder suspects running around and at least two of them are seen as marriage prospects for the Doc, even though she doesn't want to get married, unless it's to the Japanese businessman, to spite her hugely racist father, to whom the chieftainship will pass if the Doc doesn't have any issue.

There's a whole weird romantic comedy running through the darker suspense aspect, something Dunnett herself has no problem in accomplishing, but I can't tell if everyone's attitudes are just old-fashioned - this was published in 1970 - or these people - wealthy modern vestiges of crumbled aristocracy - are truly an alien race, particularly in a setting as modern as the latter part of the twentieth century. Everyone seems to think it's perfectly fine and proper to pressure her into marriage for her own good. She admits herself she is emotionally stunted, and at least JJ concedes that if she doesn't need to marry she at least needs a few healthy relationships in her life, which is solid advice. But that's a rare moment of restraint when it comes to interference, and JJ's the worst when it comes to subterfuge and interference anyway. Some of the stuff her father's mistress gets up to is frankly appalling and the real mystery is why a strong-willed young woman like the doctor doesn't frankly kick the crap out of some of them and have them arrested into the bargain. But no, everyone's way too sophisticated for anything as common and mundane as that. Weird.

Or, possibly, it was written using fictional conventions that are indistinguishable from certain behaviours that women were obliged to endure as part of the price of being a woman, even more so as an independent professional woman, and which had to present as comedy because the only alternative was endless rage.