1978 / Ebook / 160 pages / UK
**
'You stupid over sexed wench!' he hissed. 'You never seen anything like what's going on out there, and all you can think of doing is tossing yourself off!'
This didn't tickle me as much as the other Guy N. Smith horror porn I've read. Maybe it was the fetishised rape scene that rubbed me the wrong way, or the exotic sunny setting that made it too easy to visualise as a legitimate off-Hollywood B-movie. He sets up the foreboding menace well, I'll give him that.
This didn't tickle me as much as the other Guy N. Smith horror porn I've read. Maybe it was the fetishised rape scene that rubbed me the wrong way, or the exotic sunny setting that made it too easy to visualise as a legitimate off-Hollywood B-movie. He sets up the foreboding menace well, I'll give him that.
Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson's Sorcery!: Kharé – Cityport of Traps
1984 / Ebook / 288 pages / UK***
It didn't take long for my measly progress from the first book to be wiped out unsportingly, but it's not like I wasn't warned by the title. This wretched hive of scum and villainy is a more depressing setting than the forests and plains of the first book, and some of the more convoluted battles are as fun as a maths lesson, so I lost enthusiasm by the time I'd used up a standard video game batch of lives. It's a good series if you're prepared to put in the trial and error needed to commit a route to memory, or failing that, cheat.
Adele J. Haft, Jane G. White and Robert J. White, The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages
**
Academics at the Department of Classical and Oriental Studies combine their respective powers to guide us through the semiotic labyrinth. The general introduction and conclusion are good, and the translations probably useful footnotes if you're reading along rather than picking this up eight years later in the over-optimistic hope that it might rekindle the musty magic, but spending most of the book reconstructing the author's historical research as a dull A-Z is just a waste of paper.
2006 / Audiobook / 280 pages / UK
**
The mallsoft version of High-Rise is less entertaining in its heavy-handed satire. It's no Dawn of the Dead.
2010 / Ebook / 149 pages / USA
***
It's a Radiohead fan writing about post-1995 Radiohead, so a straight making-of or track-by-track musical analysis are off the cards as we explore the loftier philosophical ramifications of some musicians mucking about with technology.
