dogpoet

The Middleton is getting weirder as well as grimmer and darker. Any detailed discussion would be massively spoilery (and just how difficult must it be to put surprises into an Arthurian story?) but there's a shitload of rebirth imagery and hints that the whole trilogy is building up to everything starting over from scratch.

If such a term was part of my vocabulary, I'd certainly have used it repeatedly watching that...

This is rather good.

I had a short story rejected by 2000AD where a UN emergency response military unit formed to deal with extraterrestial problems found out that their scientific advisor was arranging alien invasions and then sneaking the human casualties away to a meat packing plant on his homeworld.

I much prefer Tigger's version.

Book two of the Middleton is just as grimdark. It's being made pretty obvious in this one that the ladies of the lake are up to no good, and now he's writing Morgan as a victim as well as Mordred.

Both are working okay for me. There's some very nice art on the website indeed, so it's a pity if Seventh can't take a look at that.

You're not confident that book three will have appeared in paperback by the time you've read the first two then?

The Hayden Middleton I mentioned in the other thread is good, but is possibly overdoing the whole thing with Mordred's childhood as a sinister and ugly parody of The Sword In The Stone just as much as he's going to town on the grimdark.

That's what happens when Dominatrices break the dress code: wouldn't have happened if she'd been wearing leather or rubber rather than red velvet.

Just started in on The King's Evil (book one of Hayden Middleton's Mordred cycle) last night, and unless the tone lightens seriously further into the book this may well be the grimmest (and amusingly, self consciously and deliberately grim: I have an image of Middleton looking through his first draft saying "this bit isn't dour enough, how can I grim it up a bit more?") Arthurian novel I've ever seen. It makes Monaco's Parsival and TH White's The Great captains look like something new age-y full of fluffy wiccan druids by comparison. You know that the author isn't messing about with his grimdark when he starts his tale with a prologue about the May babies that climaxes with one of Arthur's heavies nastily murdering a priest who objects to these sorts of going on.

The segue thereafter into Mordred's miserable childhood looks almost like light relief by comparison....

Quite. There's a fair bit of fiction about that chunk of history besides the Lee and the Parry, isn't there? Some have even suggested that it inspired Dickens' best novel.

That is a nice twist, no question.

Did you know there's a non-fantasy historical novel by Tanith Lee about the Terror that concentrates on Camille Desmoullins? I did find myself wondering if HG Parry had read that one...

Finished this last night. I'm a bit ambivalent about the terror being the work of a sinister offstage vampire wrecking France so that he can step in and take over, but that aside, it's great. The only sticking point is that you'd expect eighteenth century politicians and revolutionaries to have more florid diction, but that's a very minor quibble.

And Tigger wasn't wrong. Excellent book. I'm detecting traces of Paula Volsky in here, which is a lot more fun than the obvious whiff of Susanna Clarke, and rather surprising. John Wilkes is thus far entirely absent, but that aside, the mash up of eighteenth century political figures and a ripping yarn about magic use being pasted over everything from slavery to free assembly is working very well indeed. Parry even manages to make the historical figures as approachable as the cast members she's created herself, which is a lot easier said than done.

I have an idea that things might end badly for a few of the characters, though, particularly this Robspierre chap...

Tigger, that HG parry arrived in the post this morning, so thanks again. Looks great, and I'll start in on it as soon as I've finished Giles Goat Boy.

I'm sure. Probably the perfect weather for that now it's stopped raining, in fact.

Are the lakes a bit cheaper during the bleak midwinter?

When did Nightcrawler go all samurai? I thought his thing was fencing...

Ouch. Small wonder McGee had to do a couple of books for a big score every year if insurance and berth rental are that pricey.

Don't know if I mentioned this already, but I sat down with the full set of Immortal Hulk collections the other weekend, and was astonished to find that it reads even better when you go through the whole thing in one go than it does taken a slice at a time. Well worth setting aside three or four hours for, imo.

It has not been a vintage year, so I'm looking forwards to seeing the back of it.

Hope everybody has a much better 2022...

What a dickhead.

Any progress with the boat thing you were talking about yet? I can see why you were taken with that idea after dealing with this oaf.

Aaaawwww.

Nice to hear from you, and I hope you're having a good Christmas. Take care.

Good to hear, Tigger.

And Merry Christmas.