How to Train Your Dragon is the first in Cressida Cowell’s series of books about Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, a young Viking destined to be a great hero – the greatest Viking hero that ever lived – not that you can tell from his inauspicious beginnings. It’s also a film by Dreamworks that bears a… Read More
reviews
The Great Galloon is an enormous galleon suspended from a huge balloon – a skygoing vessel the size of a small town, captained by the larger-than-life, heroic, but melancholic Captain Meredith Anstruther, a giant of a man who commands supreme loyalty from his bizarre crew. Chief amongst the inhabitants of the galloon is Stanley Crumplehorn,… Read More
The first book I read by Michelle Paver was the Arctic spine-tingler Dark Matter – a stunning work, creepy and claustrophobic, a modern entry in the long and illustrious tradition of ghost stories. Wolf Brother is a completely different beast – both in terms of subject matter, and in terms of audience. Dark Matter is… Read More
The Quarry is Iain Banks’ last novel. It is a story of a man dying of cancer, and when Banks was 87,000 words into the first draft he discovered that, in some sort of cosmic joke, he, too, was dying of cancer. His publishers brought the publication date of the book forward, but he died… Read More
12-year-old Lettie Peppercorn lives in an inn on stilts in the land of Albion; her best friends are a pigeon and the wind that whistles through the gaps in the walls; her mother disappeared years ago leaving behind only a cryptic note; and her father is a drinker and a gambler who leaves her in… Read More
Neverwhere
Over the past week, the BBC has been broadcasting a dramatisation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, making this the third format in which the story has been told. First it was a 1996 TV series, from the days before the BBC had such a thing as a special effects budget; then it was a book, adapted… Read More