1983 / Audiobook / 192 pages / UK
*****
Such a perfect pastiche of the best Gothic novels that it comes out definitive, without the serialised padding that puts me off bothering with most of the authentic classics. If you can't tell your story in under 200 pages, not interested.
2007 / Audiobook / 400 pages / Lebanon
**
A thought-provoking essay padded out to book proportions because that sells better, the takeaways are to expect the unexpected and not trust experts. Apart from this expert who can't get over how maverick he's being.
Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
2007 / Ebook / 208 pages / UK
****
I'm not sure why I skipped over this integral installment in the League timeline before. Maybe I took a peek and was intimidated. Taking its cues from vintage annuals, this patchwork of comic, prose, play and metatextual miscellany is overwhelmingly dense even by Alan Moore standards, catching up on half a century's worth of literary and pop culture references and cameos and reverentially adopting styles from Shakespeare to Wodehouse to porn with much more attention to detail than was strictly necessary. It's extremely heavy-going, but you're allowed to skip bits.
2016 / Audiobook / 149 pages / USA
***
Salvaging one of Lovecraft's most infamous stories to make the daft racist spin in his grave is all in good fun, but while this ends up being a decently horrific tale in the Clive Barker mould, it doesn't touch Alan Moore's Providence.
