Book 18 of the Books 2010 Initiative is yet another out-of-copyright Kindle book. Did you ever wonder what happens when you take one of the most famous stories of deception, lust and betrayal and sterilize it for a Victorian mindset? You get Sir James Knowles version of the Arthurian legends.
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The big news from this week’s comic is a major Hong Kong studio is making a movie about the Egyptian Gods.
Onward to the fourth installment of the Temeraire series! It’s tough to discuss the plot of this without giving major spoilers, so I’m going to just gloss over the major events and try to address some of the overarching themes without ruining any surprises.
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Another Nero Wolfe mystery, this one from the 1950’s. Even though this is obviously much later in Rex Stout’s career, he made a conscious decision to not have his characters age over time. Archie has still worked for Wolfe for about ten years. Archie is still in his late 20’s, early 30’s, Wolfe is in his mid-to-late 50’s. The only changes to the brownstone and the rest of the environment is the presence of a television set which Wolfe never watches for more than a minute or two at a time before he turns it off in disgust.
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And a half-off special! What more could you want?
And it’s back to the Nero Wolfe mysteries for the 15th book of the season. This one gets its title from The Rubiayat of Omar Khayyam, specifically the line “I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled” – although in this case the Caesar in question is a prizewinning bull named Hickory Caesar Grindon.
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This is book three of the Temeraire series, and book 14 of the Books 2010 project. This installment sees Captain Laurence and Temeraire recalled from their diplomatic mission to China. They are to stop in Istanbul and receive three dragon’s eggs that the British have purchased from the Sultan after years of negotiation. The details are scanty, but the wording of their orders is clear and urgent – they are to depart at once. Unfortunately, the dragon carrier that brought them to China has been damaged, and won’t be seaworthy for months. Laurence and Temeraire decide to emulate Marco Polo and make the journey to Europe over land.
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Lucky book thirteen of the Books 2010 project, and reviewed on the 13th as well… Not that there’s any significance to that, of course.
This is the sequel to Charles Stross’ book The Atrocity Archive, and it continues to follow the life of Bob Howard. Bob is a computer geek, a systems administrator, a civil servant and a member of a highly secret British government agency tasked with preventing incursions of brain-devouring Creatures from Beyond. Stross does a masterful job combining Lovecraftian horrors, computer geekery, spy adventure and government bureaucracy into a fun universe.
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This week’s comic was a complete accident.
Iron Chef Leyden
When you get a chef’s hat, you’ve just got to accessorize to match…