Day: February 13, 2020

Book review: The Walking Dead Compendium 3

The Walking Dead Compendium 3.The Walking Dead Compendium 3 by Robert Kirkman.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Another volume of blood, guts and inter-community negotiation.

Quite the statesman.

Yep, it’s time for another tranche of The Walking Dead.

This compendium gathers together issues 97 – 144 of the comic series, and for the first time the stakes seem a lot higher, at least to me. There’s a sense of community throughout this volume, a feeling that there’s a world beyond just surviving. It also takes place at a period long enough after the outbreak of whatever it was that caused the dead to walk, so you know that anyone who’s bad at this point is going to be really fucking bad. (more…)

Book review: The Ritual

The Ritual.The Ritual by Adam Nevill.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

I saw the film adaptation of this novel before I read it, so I was slightly wrongfooted coming into it. I wasn’t, for example, prepared for how metal as fuck the original is.

Yes, it’s still a story about middle-aged guys having a failed bromance in forests so offputting they should be marked HERE BE DRAGONS on the topo map they’re using to get around. But the film adaptation – which was just fine, and plenty creepy on its own – lacks a certain corpsepaint madness that makes the novel so appealing.
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