Which one do you prefer? Both have been on my TBR list for ages and I’m finally going to dig into one or the other!
Panacea is the 1st in a trilogy and I discovered it by accident. I picked up book #3 at a bookstore not knowing it was the final book!
After seeing many references to in-universe events, I Googled the author and discovered the trilogy!
Panacea is a brilliant read, a bit hyperbolic at times but that's easily outweighed by the way the book grips you. I finished it in about a day of sporadic reading!
Thriller, sci-fi, detective work, religion, paganism and saving the world all in one!
I highly recommend it.
>Paul George on players struggling shooting with the new Wilson basketball:
>"Not to make an excuse or anything, it's just a different basketball. It doesn't have the same touch or softness as the Spalding ball had. You'll see this year, there's going to be a lot of bad misses."
https://twitter.com/Farbod_E/status/1455408677465165825
>Asked Paul George about his theory behind the league-wide shooting drops and he said he didn't want to use it as an excuse but the new Wilson basketball "is a different basketball. ... It doesn't have the same touch and softness that the Spalding ball had."
https://twitter.com/AndrewGreif/status/1455408612109537283
I recently listened to Cold City written by F. Paul Wilson and narrated by Alexander Cendese.
Cold City is supposedly a precursor novel to a series with a dashing character known as, 'Repairman Jack.' I am unfamiliar with the series as a whole, thus my knowledge of these novels is confined to this book. There is no way to review a book that's this bad, without getting into some spoilers. If this is an issue, I suggest you stop reading.
Jack seems to be a mostly amoral male 'Mary Sue,' sort of character. He has a tragic backstory tinged with nightmarish violence, mainly on his part. He seems to be unable to control his anger and, oddly, is an expert at physical violence, despite a lack of training.
While he does have a few scruples, they aren't many and even as the book progresses you see them quickly eroding away. He is, apparently, an expert at everything from lockpicking to car theft. He assaults or kills others with only minimal hesitation and with the barest of justifications.
The tale itself is clearly designed to be an adventure tale where you watch him stumble through his action packed world. He maims coworkers, buys illegal weapons, and joins a smuggling operation, all in the opening chapters. It's also made clear, in the same opening chapters, that he will be facing off with the mob, Muslim terrorists, and a shadowy organization, known as the "Order," who only desires to sow chaos throughout the world.
He does all of this with aplomb and the depth of character of a piece of single ply cardboard. Oddly enough most of the secondary characters are far better developed and fleshed out than he is. I found myself actually enjoying them, despite the relatively consistent use of a wide variety of racist terms that are thrown about with the narrow aim of an unspayed cat that's not been housetrained.
The narrator, Alexander Cendese, actually does a fairly good job with his material. I think he subconsciously recognized how interesting the secondary characters were and he made each of them live.
Conclusion: The main character is simply unbelievable. I think he is intended to be a hero of sorts. He comes across as a slightly psychotic madman with more luck than an Irish leprechaun.
There is no serious plot and, with one exception, the best possible moments for tension or story are destroyed by the author revealing the bad guy's plans, and their flaws, long before they could build real tension.
I can't really recommend this book to anyone. I sug
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Paul Wilson's firing has understandably not been discussed as much the other two names. As head of communications and PR, he had little to do with the on-ice results that led to the decision to let go of Bergy and Timmins. But what these 3 men have in common is the fiasco of the Logan Mailloux selection.
Wonder if Gorton will be asked to find a "resolution" to that saga by either trading or releasing the player.
On 10th December Kscope will release ‘Omega Man’, acclaimed songwriter and former Mansun frontman Paul Draper’s collaboration with Steven Wilson. Today XS Noize is pleased to exclusively premiere the video for ‘Omega Man’ - Watch below.
‘Omega Man’ was written and recorded remotely by Paul and Steven during the Covid 19 lockdown without ever meeting, which is conveyed in the accompanying video. They exchanged ideas, lyrics and music from their home studios to articulate what they were experiencing as a piece of music. The song’s lyrics reflect the isolation and fears of lockdown, with Paul singing about his fear of losing a loved one without being able to see them before they are gone.
With both Paul and Steven feeling the lockdown experience was like being in the film The Omega Man, the post-apocalyptic 1971 film based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 book I Am Legend, the title of the song was born.
https://www.xsnoize.com/video-premiere-paul-draper-omega-man-feat-steven-wilson/
We know from the film about the making of Smile that he attended one of the shows Brian performed in London. Did he ever comment to say what he thought about it?
2 HoF Players, a very good starting LB in Bruce Irvin, an Above average CB, making a trade for the key RB, all in one draft. Graded a F which has to be one of the funniest Draft Day r/agedlikemilk moments.
One of the best part:
>Pete Carroll is proving why he didn’t make it in the NFL the first time. Not only was Bruce Irvin a reach at No. 15, the Seahawks proved they were oblivious to their madness by celebrating their selection.
>
>As if the day wasn’t bad enough, Seattle selecting Russell Wilson, a QB that doesn’t fit their offense at all, was by far the worst move of the draft. With the two worst moves of the draft, Seattle is the only team that received an F on draft day.
I read The Tomb by him and feel sort of disinterested. It had creatures, sure, but not much happening in way of action and the shocking parts felt forced in to satisfy the occasional horror reader (it reads more like a mainstream thriller). Which other books by him are good to read, especially for a fan of creature/supernatural horror? I'm looking for some of his older 90s, 80s stuff only.
I just finished The Keep and would love something similar in the horror/sci-fi genre or any of his other books that are recommended. Thank you!
Horror story about a keep in Romania that the Nazis use as a base during WWII, when something starts mysteriously killing them. There are four chapters of them trying to figure out/stop it, when we're introduced to the only female character (and the daughter of the professor who can stop it). This is the opening of chapter five (Bold is added by me, because it's pretty subtle).
>Bucharest, Romania
>
>Wednesday, 23 April
>
>0455 hours
>
>
>
>It did not occur to Magda to question her actions until she heard her father's voice calling her.
>
>"Magda!"
>
>She looked up and saw her face in the mirror over her dresser. Her hair was down, a glossy cascade of dark brown that splashed against her shoulders and flowed down her back. She was unaccustomed to seeing herself so. Usually, her hair was tightly coiled up under her kerchief, all but a few stubborn strands tucked safely out of sight. She never let it down during the day.
>
>An instant's confusion: What day was it? And what time? Magda glanced at the clock. Five minutes to five. Impossible! She had already been up for fifteen or twenty minutes. It must have stopped during the night. Yet when she picked it up she could feel the mechanism ticking away within. Strange...
>
>Two quick steps took her to the window on the other side of the dresser. A peek behind the heavy shade revealed a dark and quiet Bucharest, still asleep.
>
>Magda looked down at herself and saw she was still in her nightgown, the blue flannel one, tight at the throat and sleeves and loose all the way down to the floor. Her breasts, although not large, jutted out shamelessly under the soft, warm, heavy fabric, free of the tight undergarments that imprisoned them during the day. She quickly folded her arms over them.
>
>Magda was a mystery to the community. Despite her soft, even features, her smooth, pale skin and wide brown eyes, at thirty-one she remained unmarried. Magda the scholar, the devoted daughter, the nursemaid. Magda the spinster. Yet many a younger woman who was married would have envied the shape and texture of those breasts: fresh, unmarred, unsuckled, untouched by any hand but her own. Magda felt no desire to alter that.
>
>
>
>Her father's voice broke through her reverie.
I’m trying to nail down the genre I am writing in. It’s not horror and it’s not urban fantasy. I’m writing crime fiction but with supernatural elements, similar to F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack series. How would you classify the three authors above if they did not have the same name recognition they have now? As if you were recommending their body of work as a whole.
On 10th December Kscope will release ‘Omega Man’, acclaimed songwriter and former Mansun frontman Paul Draper’s collaboration with Steven Wilson. Today XS Noize is pleased to exclusively premiere the video for ‘Omega Man’ - Watch below.
‘Omega Man’ was written and recorded remotely by Paul and Steven during the Covid 19 lockdown without ever meeting, which is conveyed in the accompanying video. They exchanged ideas, lyrics and music from their home studios to articulate what they were experiencing as a piece of music. The song’s lyrics reflect the isolation and fears of lockdown, with Paul singing about his fear of losing a loved one without being able to see them before they are gone.
With both Paul and Steven feeling the lockdown experience was like being in the film The Omega Man, the post-apocalyptic 1971 film based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 book I Am Legend, the title of the song was born.
The accompanying video captures this desolation. Filmed and set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, video director George Laycock (Blacktide Phonic/Visual: www.black-tide.co.uk) and Paul wanted a suitable location to convey and illustrate the lyrics and meaning of the song. The city of Pripyat where the video was filmed, was evacuated the day after the Chernobyl disaster and is abandoned to this day.
All the footage had to be cleared by the Ukranian military, especially as the end scenes were filmed next to a nuclear missile early warning radar detector, which was abandoned after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
https://www.xsnoize.com/video-premiere-paul-draper-omega-man-feat-steven-wilson/
