Demented and violent chase through a quasi-feudal dystopian secret offworld colony as an army scout from our world tries to reach his vehicle to get back home with the help of a fellow prisoner. Flying ships pursue and stuff explodes. Nominated for the Booker Prize this year, I believe. Probably.

It took me a while to finish this, largely because I'd read quite a few of the stories in other collections. There's a lot of Crofton Croker here, but there's a lot of other stuff too. It is rather a landmark collection, really, a key volume in the whole Celtic Revival, and it presents a nice variety of tales of various types and from various parts of the country. Included is the epic The Three Wishes, which drives one to have some sympathy for the devil, and the story of a bard's feud with the King Of The Cats which is outrageously funny, but the most hair-raising stories are the Christian fables, such as the one about the guy who has persuaded everyone that there's no such thing as a soul who has to beg a child to torture him to death with a small blunt knife to prove otherwise, and the daughters of the king converted by St Patrick who immediately elect to die and go to heaven. There's logic to it, and I'm pretty sure I heard stories like that growing up from teachers and priests and nuns and thoroughly approved of them. For anyone interested in Irish folklore, almost unquestionably the best place to start.

Young Francis Place, living in a cottage with his mother supported as poor relations to a Gloucester Lord, one night stumbles upon a vicious hanging. He rescues the intended victim and soon finds himself caught in a tngled take of justice and revenge that goes back to the harsh supression of Catholic insurrection in Ireland. Despite the man's roguish nature, Francis finds himself in fascinated sympathy with Scarf Jack, and takes against the would-be murderers, who happen to be guests at his Lord's manor, and decides to help him in his scheme to take revenge.

Apparently an unusual British book inasmuch as it attempted to take a sympathetic view of the Irish Catholics, though Lynch is careful to distinguish between the atrocity-loving irregular miulitia and the regular army who would generally prefer to avid that sort of thing, a divide he undercuts through Jak's own ruminations on the costs of a soldiering life. Still, it's a grand, thrlling, adventure, extremely well-written, and Francis wrestling with the thrill of it all versus the rather grim and terrifiying conseuqences, makes for a thoughtful and sensitive hero.

On the Adriatic coast after the Great War, a pirate utopia arises, full of poets and writers and one engineer, determined to power their way into the future in a hail of radio controlled torpedoes and huge biplanes, stealing everything in sight. A grand, romantic, fascistic vision of a technological world to come. An alternative history based on a real fledgling pirate state about politics and government increasingly unmoored from reality, driven by visionaries and raving madmen. This is obviously will be of no relevance to the present.

The grand finale as Meru and her rag-tag team try to enlist anyone to help in their cause while the Eraser continues to remain several steps ahead. But it ain't over til the inverted pyramid headquarters falls, amd Matt Kindts brilliant mind-bending epic of secret powers and secret histories and horrific guilt and redemption reaches a brilliant conlusion. A modern comics masterworks, but by God I'm coming to hate cursive script used in lettering, it's just too tough for my tired old eyes.

Matthew Corbett takes a slightly enforced trip to the south for what should be an easy but remunerative job. Unfortuntely, trouble and strife and peril are waiting. Trouble and peril and strife are running around getting everything ready and making sure everything is just right for young Corbett, preparing the murder, lining upnthe alligators and the arranging the teams for the game of kick-the-head, sharpening the arrows, filling the pits of quiksand, charming the snakes and putting the final preperations on the monster. Oh trouble and peril and strife are REALLY looking forward to having Matthew Corbett over for a visit.

It's New Year's Eve and I have some reviews to write before the year ends and my brain won't work. This is about two young people in Olde Englande who go to court and meet the king and become embroiled in a civil war and it is excellent, lovely writing and careful attention to the politics and personalities of the time.

I have read this before, but ut was a while ago, and when I read it I rewatched the TV series, which has aged remarkably well, and the radio dramatisation, which is a superb piece of work. the notion of a paralell London below regular old London above seems like the sort of idea that must have been bumping around in the brief few days when Urban Fantasy sort of meant fantasies set in cities, but here comes Neil Gaiman executing what SEEMS like a thoroughly obvious idea, underlining it by taking his cue from literal inventions based around placenames, as if nobody else could ever have thought of it or written it in quite this way. Probably right about that.

Surprised myself by diving head first into this anthology, since I don;t read as many short stories as I think I should. Lots of great, even classic takes on Lovecraft, whose own works I can take or leave, to be honest. Here we get gothic, noir, dark comedy, lyrical excess, violence, creepiness, creepy violence and oodles of nastiness. Not all the stories quite work out - The Doom That Came To Innsmouth goes south near the end after a promising start and I'm not a fan of John Langan's stuff, but a lot of the rest is spectacularly good, giving me new and old writers to check out. Happy New Year! Cthulu f'thagn!

Actually listened to the audio version of this. Drawlin' souther vampires kick the shit out of each other and wrestle with the angst f being a good vampire and goin' on down that lonesome road and not riding off into the sunset because that would kill him he's a vampire, puddin'.