RogerBW's Blog

Mulholland Drive (2001) 31 July 2022

2001 unclassifiable, dir. David Lynch, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring; IMDb / allmovie. The dame is trouble.

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Dust, Elizabeth Bear 30 July 2022

2007 SF, first of a trilogy. Rien is a castle servant, told off to look after the prisoner Perceval. Only it's all much more real than that.

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A Royal Pain, Rhys Bowen 29 July 2022

2008 mystery/thriller, second in its series. It's still 1932, and Queen Mary is determined to separate her son Edward from That Simpson Woman. Enter Georgiana, 34th in line to the throne, who can be invited to host a Bavarian princess, eighteen and just out of the convent, and throw her into the path of the prince…

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The Mirror Prince, Violette Malan 28 July 2022

Max Ravenhill is a history professor, or so he thinks: but then a strange woman tells him that he's really an exile from the lands of the Fae…

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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, Jodi Taylor 27 July 2022

2015 science fiction, sixth in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). In an effort to rebuild the History department, Max is put in charge of a new batch of trainees.

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The Weekly Challenge 175: Perfect Sunday 26 July 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved date calculations and number theory. (Note that this is open until 31 July 2022.)

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Hidden River, Adrian McKinty 25 July 2022

2004 crime. Alexander Lawson was a rising star in the RUC, until he joined the drugs squad and got hooked on heroin. But in 1995, when his first girlfriend is murdered in Denver, her father encourages him to go and look into it.

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Traffic 24 July 2022

2000 crime, dir. Steven Soderbergh, Michael Douglas, Don Cheadle: IMDb / allmovie. Maybe after a hundred years of throwing more police at the drug problem we might try something different?

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Some Golden Harbor, David Drake 23 July 2022

2006 military SF, fifth of this ongoing series. Dunbar's World is being invaded from Pellegrino, and the RCN is called on by their allies to help. But they don't really care that much, so they send one underarmed ship and Daniel Leary.

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Shadow of the Vampire 22 July 2022 - 2 comments

2000 horror, dir. E. Elias Merhige, John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe; IMDb / allmovie. In 1921, Murnau travels from Berlin to make a film about the mysterious Count Orlock.

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The Victoria Vanishes, Christopher Fowler 21 July 2022 - 1 comment

2008 police procedural mystery/horror, sixth in the Bryant and May series. Women are being murdered in pubs, in a weird way. Bryant saw one of them before she died, but even the pub she went into isn't there any more…

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The Weekly Challenge 174: The Rank Smell of Disarium 20 July 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved disarium numbers and ranked permutations. (Note that this is open until 24 July 2022.)

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Dropping the Dime, Ellie Ashe 19 July 2022

2015 action/mystery, second in the Miranda Vaughn series. Disgraced (but found not guilty) former commercial banker Miranda is helping a whistleblower whose boss is making some very dubious-looking payments.

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Nosferatu 18 July 2022 - 2 comments

1922 horror, dir. F. W. Murnau, Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim; IMDb / allmovie. Hutter travels from his coastal German home to sell a house to the mysterious Orlock.

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Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree 17 July 2022

2022 fantasy. Viv the orc settles down after a life of adventuring… to open a coffee shop.

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Dogma 16 July 2022

1999 religious comedy, dir. Kevin Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Ben Affleck: IMDb / allmovie. A brief revival of the plenary indulgence gives two banished angels the chance to get back into heaven… but that might be really quite a bad thing.

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The Iron Khan, Liz Williams 15 July 2022 - 2 comments

2010 urban fantasy. The Book that created the universe is missing, and may be getting Ideas; Detective Inspector Chen investigates. Meanwhile Zhu Irzh is finding himself drawn to the Great Khan.

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The Weekly Challenge 173: The Aesthetics of Sylvester 14 July 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved more mathematical tests. (Note that this is open until 17 July 2022.)

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Summer Stabcon 2022 13 July 2022 - 3 comments

Well, the convention restarted a while ago, but this time I actually felt reasonably happy about going.

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Murder Fantastical, Patricia Moyes 12 July 2022

1967 mystery, seventh in the series about Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett. The self-made man who wants to be County is found shot; nobody much regrets it, but Tibbett still gets called in to the house full of daft and self-interested people…

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Magnolia (1999) 11 July 2022

1999 drama, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, and a large cast; IMDb / allmovie. Stuff happens.

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The Language of Power, Rosemary Kirstein 10 July 2022

2004 fantasy/SF, fourth of its series. Rowan the Steerswoman returns to the port town of Donner, to try to learn more about the fallen Guidestar and the wizard who made it fall.

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Paul Temple and the Spencer Affair 09 July 2022

1957 audio thriller by Francis Durbridge, in 8 parts. Paul is asked by a theatrical impresario to look into the death of his daughter, who was training as an actor.

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Chaos Reigning, Jessie Mihalik 08 July 2022

2020 SF/romance, last of a trilogy. Catarina von Hasenberg, the youngest of the heirs to one of the three Great Houses, has a public persona as a partying idiot… and some of the time even she believes it. But she'll still go undercover at a rival House's summer retreat to try to get proof relating to the kidnapping of her brother.

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The Weekly Challenge 172: Partition of Five 07 July 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved prime partitioning and some basic statistics. (Note that this is open until 10 July 2022.)

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The Corinthian, Georgette Heyer 06 July 2022

1940 Regency romance. Sir Richard Wyndham, contemplating the loveless but respectable marriage everyone's been badgering him to make for years and with no particular reason or excuse to put it off any longer, celebrates his last night before engagement by getting monstrously drunk. As he stumbles homewards, he spots a lad climbing down from a window on knotted sheets… early US vt Beau Wyndham.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 20 June 2022 05 July 2022

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet twice a month. (But the pub has started to have a quiz every Monday night, so we're moving to a new venue nearby.)

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Nowhere to Run, James Oswald 04 July 2022

2021 contemporary thriller with fantastic elements. DC Constance Fairchild was taking time off in rural Wales to recover, when the plague happened and she decided to wait it out. But as usual, trouble comes looking for her.

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Dark City (1998) 03 July 2022 - 1 comment

1999 SF noir, dir. Alex Proyas, Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland,; IMDb / allmovie. When you wake up a bath with no memories and a murdered hooker, you don't stop to ask questions.

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Happily Never After, Jeaniene Frost 02 July 2022

2008 urban fantasy novella, side story in the Night Huntress (Cat and Bones) series. Isabella Spaga the restaurateur has caught the eye of a minor-league mobster looking to move up in the world, he insists on marrying her, and her ne'er-do-well brother tells her to go along with it then drops out of contact. But help is on the way.

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June 2022 Trailers 01 July 2022 - 3 comments

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I want a trailer to tell me what's different about this film; the marketers want it to tell me why it's like all the others…)

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