Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
By what act does someone rule? Is it through force, by common consent, by noble succession or through unworldly power and legend? It is the theme of power and how it is employed that forms the basis of the Una McCormack’s Doctor Who novel Royal Blood.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It was once claimed that a piece of vital evidence would one day come forward that it would prove without doubt the identity of the man who brought the East End of London to its knees during the latter half of 1888 and the answer would not be shocking. It would not have the world reaching for all the hundreds of books written on the subject once more and be leafed through with the luxury of zealot like gratification on deciding who was right or wrong, but in fact would leave armchair Detectives and Ripperologists scratching their head and going, “Who”?
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There are times when all you want to do is get hold of Bill Willingham’s phone number and phone the writer to tell him in no uncertain terms just how grateful you are as a reader that he came up with the idea for the Fables books, which has to be seen as up there with Joe Hill’s Locke & Key series in terms of originality and continuing brilliance. The 15th in the series of combined Graphic Novels, Rose Red, is no exception to the rule.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
It is so often the way that a new writer at the helm of what has become a genuine contender in the realm of graphic novel fiction can somehow be seen as a setback in the character’s development or in the way that it is perceived to be heading.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The poet is always looking for new things to write about, new boundaries in which to cross, divide and focus a pin prick in time upon; for to challenge the muse is perhaps the main reason for getting up in the morning and putting the best possible foot forward. This can be quite a challenge when placed against the sometimes firm, sometimes loose under the weight of introspection, of testing yourself against walking from Minehead to Land’s End and doing a poetry performance every night along the way; there surely are better muses than making sure you don’t walk into something unsightly in Devon.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If righteousness and treachery can be seen as going hand in hand, then for the team that has usurped the positions and members of The Justice League, the havoc they are wrecking upon the East Coast cities of America is one that is out of control. They are on the verge of destroying all that is good in the alternative universe they have found, to some they may be death itself but to themselves the thought must be that they will be Forever Heroes.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It somehow feels kind of dirty, somehow unclean that deep in the heart of the crime fiction world lays the name Stephen King, the undisputed master of 20th and early 21st Century Horror. Yet for all the dirt, for all the feelings that must be overcome as any rational book reader must do, his second novel in the life of Ex-Cop and now Private Detective, Kermit Hodges is one that takes the idea of obsession down a very different route that plagued the writer during the days when Misery was such an enormous literary hit.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The legend behind the Fables of The Farm and those displaced from both their natural worlds and Bullfinch Street in New York might end up relying upon the actions of two of the great witches that reside on the side of the greater community. For in Frau Totenkinder and the young but powerful Ozma, all the fighting for survival so far has been one in which their true selves have managed to keep out of the limelight, all that now is over and the real war begins.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Every tale of heroism has a beginning, every superhero a back story in which the reality of their true nature shines through and the grip on the reader’s imagination starts to take hold.
The one huge problem with graphic novels and comic books is how time outstrips the development of the character. One Fantastic Four reader wrote to Marvel in the 1970s and explained how one year in time in their Universe was worth three to four in the real world, by which logic the average reader has moved on and only leaving the dedicated to follow the story line on ad-infinitum.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Life is but a tale in which we are the masters of our own sharpened pencil and in which higher powers will always have an eraser, a bottle of correction fluid and a redaction machine handily placed in which to make us disappear if need be, or at the very least make our lives seem worthless and out of control. It is in this action that words and deeds become heroic or they become creatures in which the under fire find a kindred spirit; either way words are power, in whichever hands they are handled.