Only the city is real, but this is no one’s idea of an ode. The Wolf and the Watchman, Niklas Natt Och Dag’s historical crime novel set in eighteenth-century Stockholm, is grotesque, nightmarish, brilliant and far and away the most disgusting book I’ve read since The North Water. Mickel Cardell is a shell-shocked amputee and…
‘Game of Thrones’ S8E6 ‘The Iron Throne’ (Analysis).
I am too upset and enraged to string a coherent sentence together. Last week, Jaime and Cersei Lannister departed for the Night Lands with a whimper as opposed to a roar. This week, Game of Thrones goes out with a fart instead of a whimper while its audience stands aghast at the bottom of an abyss,…
‘Game of Thrones’ S8E5 : ‘The Bells’ (Analysis).
This week on the shitstorm currently masquerading as Game of Thrones Season 8, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss decide to pay tribute to the scene in Interview with the Vampire in which Louis burns the house down because he feels sad. Enter Lestat with frilly cuffs, screaming: Political status quo. King’s Landing. The soldiers trained by Tywin Lannister conduct…
‘Game of Thrones’ S8E4: ‘The Last of the Starks’ (Analysis).
This week’s episode of Game of Thrones presents some of the most striking what-the-fuckery that this series has ever seen. I don’t know whether to be pissed off, or just confused. Political status quo. What in the actual fuck? To be honest, I haven’t got the foggiest idea what’s going on here. The forces that survived…
‘Game of Thrones’ S8E3: ‘The Long Night’ (Analysis).
In the ranks of Game of Thrones battle sequences, The Long Night far outstrips the battles of the Blackwater, Hardhome and the Bastards with its magnificent, ferocious dance of death and its sadistic refusal to make us feel remotely better when the dawn comes.
‘Game of Thrones’ S8E2: ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ (Analysis).
A horribly sad episode that doesn’t seem to serve much purpose besides torturing the viewer into insensibility, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms effectively consists of a large number of beloved characters asking us ‘will you follow me one last time?’ Please bear in mind that this review will contain spoilers. Political Status Quo. Winterfell. This…
‘Game of Thrones’ S8E1: ‘Winterfell’ (Analysis).
Winterfell is the best first episode of any season of Game of Thrones since the first. While it does demonstrate some symptoms of Game of Thrones First Episode Syndrome (too much touching base, too little action), the action itself is so moving and and so emotionally charged that one easily forgets the bits that drag. As Daenerys arrives…
‘The Glass Woman’ by Caroline Lea (Book Review).
Not only is Caroline Lea’s The Glass Woman the best book I have read this year; it also marks the first occasion in a really long time that a novel’s ending has left me crying hysterically into my pillowcase about the brutal, cruel unfairness of this world, and the devastating shortness of happy endings. In this novel…
‘House of Glass’ by Susan Fletcher (Book Review).
A lyrical, beautifully-written novel, House of Glass pays tribute to the ‘isolated country house’ gothic while bringing refreshing new things to the genre as well. Clara Waterfield suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease. Though she has led a sheltered, confined life in a house of padded furniture and rounded edges, Clara’s entire existence…
‘The Monsters We Deserve’ by Marcus Sedgwick (Book Review)
It started off so well and went downhill so quickly. Marcus Sedgwick’s stunningly bound and illustrated The Monsters We Deserve starts out as a good, atmospheric gothic novel and ends up as…well, I’m still not sure what it ends up as. The Monsters We Deserve (admittedly an awesome title) opens in a remote chalet in the Swiss…
LADYGILRAEN 