Latest book received

[Helen]

All four Blue Steel Books (scroll down to the bottom of the page):

http://www.blue-steel.info/

Great books,

Helen

[answer_is_42]

I bought this from a secondhand book stall yesterday; Balloons and Airships 1783 – 1973. Contains full colour drawings of around 80 different balloons and airships.




Published in 1973. I bought it for £2.

[Adam]

I just ordered this new one about the Great War in the Middle East. I had a quick flick through it in Waterstones today and it looks quite readable and it seems to include the whole war in the Middle East including the Russians in the Caucasus. £30 RRP, but if you're interested in getting it I got it for just under £20 off of WH Smith's website.

[Aaron]

My copy of French Infantry Flags From 1786 to the End of the First Empire by Ludovic Letrun arrived yesterday. It only has about 25 pages of text, but there are over 125 of nothing but flags! The title is a bit misleading since it also include flags of the Royal Army at the outbreak of the revolution which I believe means it is also useful for the SYW and possibly earlier.

Now I just need to settle on an order of battle so I know which flags to paint for my Eureka French.

[Prof.Witchheimer]

[white knight]

Tell us more. 

[Prof.Witchheimer]

Tell us more. 

a Mignola comic though only the cover is by him. But artwork is amazing and creepy. A story with Lovecraft and Jack the Ripper elements, bits of Inssmouth and Victorian London I'd say. An odd little girl Jenny Finn, a tough guy, some people with tentacles and lots of horror. What more could one want? I like it.

[white knight]

Sounds cool.

Does Mignola draw anything at all these days (besides covers)? Even Hellboy isn't by him anymore.

[Prof.Witchheimer]

Does Mignola draw anything at all these days (besides covers)?

Not really. Since "The Island" he didn't draw any full comics, only the covers. He continued writing of Hellboy and BPRD comics a while, the last one he did was Lobster Johnson two years ago (got to buy it). No idea what he does at the moment. Covers and more covers..

Btw, Jenny Finn is an older one (1999).

[Hammers]

Not really. 

A crying shame. And I'd like to see the return of Hellboy to the BPRD.

[white knight]

Well, in the last hellboy book, the BPRD got a card from him at the end of the book, with a surprise twist revelation, which might hint at them appearing in the next one.

I don't expect a full return though, as the BPRD have their own ongoing series now and a new story-arc has just begon.

[Mancha]

I am about four-fifths of the way through “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. 



Initially I was sort of tickled that the contemporary writer, Seth Grahame-Smith, had given co-author credits to Jane Austen, who penned the original “Pride and Prejudice”, on which the book is based.  By the end of the first chapter it was abundantly clear that Jane Austen is mentioned as a writer, as opposed to merely a source of inspiration, because all the new author has done is edit the original work, replacing words like ‘honor’, ‘manners’ and ‘scruples’, with words like ‘bloodthirstiness’, ‘combat’ and ‘brains’.  I would hazard a guess that at least 50% of this work is actually in Jane Austen’s exact words. 

This makes for a pretty boring work of fiction. (In fact, I find myself wishing the publishers had been considerate enough to underline the new words, so that I might progress much faster to the book's conclusion.)  And while I have great hopes that the end of the book will be substantively different from the original “Pride and Prejudice”, I haven’t noted enough differences between the versions yet to justify this updated novel.  All of the same things happen, although embedded within each chapter is some amount of zombie-killing action.  However, the zombie story doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.  Nor have the zombies materially altered the course of the story.  For example, only one main character is infected, but this character ends up much as did the parallel character in the original book.  Tidbits of information are thrown to the reader intimating an interesting backstory about the zombie menace, but no real attempt to follow up has yet presented itself.  (Although, again, I’m not yet done with the book.)

What is interesting about Jane Austen’s books is that although the Napoleonic Wars were raging while she wrote them, there is no mention of these wars in any of her novels.  Jane seemed to recognize that adding a war theme would dilute her story.  One wishes that Seth Grahame-Smith had borne this in mind as well.  This ends up being a not-quite-Jane-Austen novel and a not-quite-zombie-mayhem novel at the same time. 

[Helen]

Tank Battles of the Mid-East Wars (2) The Wars of 1973 to the Present. Concord Publication

[Mancha]

I’m four chapters into “The Kingdom Beyond The Waves”, by Stephen Hunt, which I found among the new releases at Barnes & Noble:



I picked this up to look over while sipping my morning coffee, and was thoroughly hooked by the end of Chapter 1.  If I had to classify this book I suppose I would lump it into a steampunk genre, although there are interesting elements of sorcery and fantasy mixed in.  The book is filled with u-boats, airships, semi-sentient automatons, clockwork-driven machines, and other interesting and imaginative inventions, alongside darker, more primitive lands where dwell misshapen sorcery abominations, and yet other countries where something like France’s “terror” holds sway.  Set in a Victorian-like, England-like land, it’s hard to decide if this is supposed to be a parallel universe or if, in fact, it is far in the future, in an alternately rebuilt society after some type of disaster.  As if this weren’t enough, there are additional elements of archeology and myth that have me thoroughly hooked.  There is a mystery to be solved here, and the mystery is not only the discovery of the title’s “kingdom beyond the waves”, but also when and where this book takes place.  I thoroughly recommend this book.

[OSHIROmodels]

Maybe it's set on Atlantis and the 'Kingdom beyond the waves' is our very own world.

Maybe 

cheers

James