Thunder City First Impressions

Thunder City has been out in the world for a week now. Here's a nice review by Sam Creighton. And here's another from Through the Bookshelf. If you've read the book and like it, please do add a review on Amazon or whichever social media site you prefer. (If you've read the book and didn't like it, please don't!)

Meanwhile, I've been on the Adventuremice trail with Sarah McIntyre, who has blogged about our adventures in Marlborough and Bath.

Comments

Santiago Villalba said…

I can't believe it. I read Mortal Engines quartet like seven years ago when they were published in spanish and I absolutely LOVED THEM. Now I just finished rewatching Mortal Engines movie after a long time since its release, and I thought 'let's see what's become of my dear Philip Reeve these last few years'. And I found THIS. I hadn't heard anything about this new book and now I'm super excited to return to the Mortal Engines world once again 🤩.
Thank you for this wonderful gift ❤️

12 January 2025 at 03:56

Merlin (1998)

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Lord of the Rings 7: Minas Tirith

'This is not a work which many adults will read through more than once,' claimed the historical novelist Alfred Duggan, reviewing The Lord of the Rings when it was published. But I've read it through LOADS of times and now I'm blogging my latest re-read, so what did he know? And so we come to Minas Tirith, Tower of Guard, citadel of Gondor, seven tiers of fancy white fortifications built against a buttress of Mount Mindolluin, with the Tower of Ecthelion rising a thousand feet above the plain. It seems to me the template on which a whole genre of knock-off fantasy cities has been based - I guess Robert E Howard and people wrote about such places before Tolkien, and perhaps there were cities of equal grandeur on Barsoom, but when concept art threads on Instagram throw up unlikely gold and marble castles built on mountaintops and over waterfalls they always look distinctly Minas Tirithy to me. I'm wondering now if London in Mortal Engines was subconsciously echoin...

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

One of the reasons the Arthurian Legends appeal so much to writers and film makers is that there is no single original version. If there ever was, it was a tale told by some Romano-British storyteller, sitting by a fire in a damp hall, perhaps expounding on the great deeds of a local ruler or late Roman general, and spicing up the action with some motifs borrowed from old Celtic myths. In the centuries that followed, the story grew, and changed. Lots of legends about other heroes got tacked on to it. French and German poets got hold of it and added Camelot, the Grail, and Courtly Love: Malory borrowed from them all in his Morte D’Arthur . Later, everyone from Tennyson to TH White to Rick Wakeman to little me retold the stories, altering them to fit our own vision and reflect our own times. So you can do whatever you like with King Arthur: everyone else has. At least, that’s the theory. Now here's Guy Ritchie’s 2017 box office catastrophe King Arthur, Legend of the Sword to destru...

Station Zero

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