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books

(book) Stephen King – Revival: King´s return to cosmic horror concept

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When I saw the tagline that said vintage King and read a couple of reviews that said about this one King returned to horror, it was mandatory for me to check out this piece of novel for myself.

Jamie Morton grew up with his family in a small village in Maine, one day a preacher called Charlie Jacobs came into his life and life of other people there. Charlie cured Jamie´s brother Conn with electricity experiments when Conn was left without his voice. Everything was fine and idyllic till one day tragedy struck, Charlie changed and horror spread through coming decades leaving Morton, now drug addicted musician to find Charlie again and stop the madness.

I am sorry but I can´t discover more about story of this novel because that would be spoiler for all those who want to read this beauty. Yes, they were right, King returned to horror with this one, and did it big time. This one is a total homage to old school Universal Frankenstein movies, also, and more being homage to late great Lovecraft and his concept of cosmic horror and what lies behind our world. This one kinda starts slow, like we are used to in many of King´s opus, but evolves into one hell of a tense novel and the ending is such bleak and eerie couple of chapters that leave you depressed and in awe what you just finished. So, first half of the book is Americana King style, with some supernatural signs, but other half of the book is awesome horror for us fiends craving for such work. Because of slowness, the book is not perfect but damn close to highest ranks.

8/10

books, Reviews

(book) Star Wars: Phasma

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Besides punk hardcore, my all time love is Star Wars. Besides movies and tv shows, there is whole world of expanded universe through books that I discovered as I started reading and collecting those books.

I must say that I am more of a fan regarding books and SW timeline that came out before Disney took over SW universum. Those books are now regarded as Star Wars Legends and books that are now out as Disney took over are called New Canon. As movie, books that come out are inferior to old ones. I don´t say that as grizzled fart which only mutters to himself, I am a fan who has also all new movies originals dvds in my collection proudly besides old ones and gave them many chances, but I must say, only Rogue One is in my opinion worth SW greatness of all new movies.

Captain Phasma is one of not enough explored characters of First Order and this book is a novel about her, how she came to be Captain Phasma, from her life as Skyre on nuclear devastated wasteland planet, to meeting General Hux Senior and trying to survive the wasteland to go to space and fulfill her destiny. This book has the same problem as all SW newer books. Parts of it are interesting and make you wanna read more and more and then comes last third which is too confusing, too fast like author wanted to finish it by all means as soon as possible. Characters are too shallow, too little explained and explored. Action scenes are okay, but could have been better and the ending leaves more open questions for sequel and explanations of some missing parts. Unfortunately, this one could have been so much better.

4/10

books, Reviews, Various

(book) Cult Never Dies: Megazine

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Good people at Cult Never Dies never cease to amaze with quality books and zines that they release. After Cult Never Dies trilogy, this is the fourth installment which can be read separately, no matter if you read the first three or not. As the title says, this is a book length zine formatted original work, with beautiful layout and totally reminding me of nineties and a time when we did all those cut and paste zines with master copy being taken to photocopy shop and distributed via mail with tape trading and flyers coming all the way late for gig announcements hehe.

If you read any of previous works you will know that this book contains interviews with many bands and individuals, mainly from black metal side of things, but also from some other aspects of extreme music. For me personally, best interviews in this book are with artist Gareth Elliot. whose work is just fantastic. Also, I love the interview with photographer Ester Segarra who does such perfect job with photos of extreme metal personalities and bands. Jon Metalion from Head Not Found label is also an interesting read. From the bunch of bands, my highlights are Ancient and Mysticum interviews. This one is a worthy read done as love for zines and extreme music. Go check this one out, also other three books from the series.