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📚torstein📚

torstein@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 1 month ago

Too little time; sleeping when I should be reading and reading when I should sleep. Mostly English language SF/F, but I occasionally read other fare.

What it means when I rate something: ★★★★★ - This moved me in a way that changed my life. ★★★★☆ - I loved it. ★★★☆☆ - It was OK ★★☆☆☆ - Meh, it was entertaining at least ★☆☆☆☆ - Complete trash (if I dislike something, but it is well written I'd rather not give it any rating. The single star is reserved for the real trash). Addendum: I will not rate badly written stories by obvious first time writers. If you have managed to self publish your first story and people actually read it, I'm not going to piss on your parade. I'll reserve that single star for your next book (or the fifteenth one for that matter).

Note: I have heaps of books imported from another database where the rating used was 1-6 (dice), so some books are rated higher than I would normally. I'll be adjusting stuff as I work my way thru the list of books (once I have fixed the 300 or so books that didn't import automatically :P)

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reviewed H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth by Zack Davisson

Zack Davisson, Gou Tanabe: H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth (Paperback, Dark Horse Manga)

Another brilliant adaptation from Tanabe

As always, these adaptations by Tanabe Gō are a delight. In my minds eye I had a fairly fixed image of both Innsmouth and it's inhabitants, but this is now completely supplanted by Tanabe's vision.

My only complain about this Dark Horse edition is that it is too small to bring full justice to Tanabe's art.

reviewed Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome by Garth Marenghi

Garth Marenghi: Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome (2022, Hodder & Stoughton)

When horror writer Nick Steen gets sucked into a cursed typewriter by the terrifying Type-Face, …

Gimmicky, a bit repetitive, but sometimes real fun.

If you enjoyed Garth Margenghi's Darkplace, the odds are that you'll like this as well. There are times the joke grows thin, but there are also some really well written and truly clever parts in this horror parody. Matthew Holness knows how to write, and somehow he makes Garth Marenghi - the fictional horror writer writing a poorly camouflaged self-insert in a series of horror novellas riffing on horror writing - an almost believable character. Marenghi comes across as a at times brilliant idiot savant (granted, less the savant, more the idiot most of the time), his writing a sort of outsider art, mainly dross, but occasionally high prose. Especially some of the parts where he weaves into Lovecraftian prose shines, but other parts are flat out bad (the end of the Third Half). But it is hard to judge such meta-literature - because I have no problems believing this …