A curmudgeon writes.
A twofer, this post. I’ve recently finished playing both the games mentioned here – a trip to a hellish future and a dip into alternate-history London, respectively – and I figured I didn’t have enough to say about ’em individually. So I’ve lumped them together here, in some kind of ungodly union.
So, I hope you’re prepared for some half-arsed critique, because I’ve got that in spades.
Continue reading “Darksiders (2010) and The Order: 1886 (2015)”
Powers of Darkness: The lost version of Dracula by Bram Stoker and Valdimar Ásmundsson.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
This book serves as a re-translation of an early Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker’s bitey classic, Dracula. The Icelandic version of the Count’s tale dropped in 1900, only two years after the first translation (into Hungarian), and is notable because there’s evidence – lovingly detailed in forewords, afterwords and footnotes – that Stoker was in touch with the Icelandic translator of the work, Valdimar Ásmundsson, founder of the newspaper Fjallkonan, providing information from draft versions of the English text to work with.
Continue reading “Book review: Powers of Darkness”
I spent some time back in London over the past week or so. It’s been 20 years since I’d been in the Great Wen, but I visited its 1860s facsimile to carry out a bit of neck-stabbing along with the sightseeing.
It’s been a reasonable break since I last visited the Assassin’s Creed universe. Last time I played an AC game, I was kind of underwhelmed with the experience. This time, though? A different story.
Well, mostly. Continue reading “Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (2015)”
Dracula in Istanbul by Ali Rıza Seyfioğlu.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
I know what you’ve always wanted: a version of Dracula with cars in it, set in Istanbul. And where the head vein-drainer is a military coward instead of a great warlord. And where there’s lots of reference to God, and the steadfast nature of a good Turkish gent is the highest achievement one can have.
Right?
Dracula by Bram Stoker.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
So it seems I’m on another Gothic Lit jag. And where better to continue with the granddaddy of fanged fiction: Dracula?
You know this novel, though, right? It’s pretty much the ur-text for how we conceive of vampires, and throws a long shadow. (Though not, presumably, in a mirror.) It’s overwritten and can flip between boredom and action in a moment. I always find it a drag to read until about halfway – I am almost always of a mind to give it away – but then it snaps back in and I’m pulled through to the end.
Soviet Bus Stops by Christopher Herwig.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
A great example of a book that does exactly what you’d expect, Soviet Bus Stops is the outcome of years spent travelling through the former Soviet Union by Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig.
Continue reading “Book review: Soviet Bus Stops”
So it’s been a bit quiet here for a while. A lull, you might say.
I guess it’s time to wake up.
Awake? good.
Continue reading “Going slow, now with added eldritch terrors and necromorph kerb-stomps”
While Kingdom Come: Deliverance was downloading 27-odd gigs of first-day patch, I was stuck for something to play. So I figured I might get into the backlog and blow through the somewhat short Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a game I’d heard good things about, largely for its approach to mental health.
(That sounds like a ball-tearer of a reason to play something, right? Right.) Continue reading “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2017)”
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
So I finally read it.
You know, the brick. The thing. The book. The enormous tome. The encyclopaedic novel of encyclopaedic novels. The objet d’enthousiasme I’ve been lugging across the world since 1999, a brick-sized chunk of narrative excess that I’d promised my then-partner – a DFW army footsoldier for life – that I would read, such was their enthusiasm for the wordy luggage-filler.
So, this.
Secondly, the secret.
It’s not really that difficult. Continue reading “Book review: Infinite Jest”
So.
I had just finished playing the three Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games on PS3 in an attempt to catch up with a franchise I’m about 200 entries behind in – TLDR: surprisingly short, still look good even on last-gen hardware, still kind of shocking and completely popcorn in a large set-piece YEAH MAN kind of way that I’m vaguely embarrassed about – and I figured I needed something short and sweet to break up the testosterone. Something completely different.
So of course I picked the Japanese-designed game where you’re a cheerleader who fights zombies with the aid of her boyfriend’s decapitated head.
Pretty standard, I guess.
Yeah nah. 