Mike Futcher (Author of Void Station One)

Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing The Cauldron (PB Original) by Zeno	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Cauldron, a novel of the Battle of Arnhem written by a former paratrooper who was actually there, is aptly named. It takes the ingredients of war and confines them in rough cast-iron and brings it to a punishing boil. As far as pure combat goes, ...more
1 hour, 32 min ago · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Cauldron by Zeno. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Cauldron by Zeno <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Russian literature has a reputation for being overly long, dense and something of a great labour, but Demons, the fourth major work by Fyodor Dostoevsky that I've read, was the first time where, unfortunately, I felt that to be true. I had found Crim ...more
Apr 29, 2026 03:05PM · 3 likes · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it The Scaled Tartan (Quest of the Five Clans #5) by Raymond St. Elmo (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
While I confess that I've never quite had a handle on this series, I finished The Scaled Tartan, the fifth and final book of the Quest of the Five Clans, with a sense of satisfaction and warmth. Amidst the warped mayhem and outsized, flamboyant warpr ...more
Apr 16, 2026 02:24PM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Scaled Tartan by Raymond St. Elmo. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Scaled Tartan by Raymond St. Elmo <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers by Tom Petty	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A wonderful coffee-table companion to the excellent 2007 Tom Petty documentary Runnin' Down a Dream. Unlike Conversations with Tom Petty by Paul Zollo and Petty, written by this same book's editor Warren Zanes, the Runnin' Down a Dream book can't rea ...more
Apr 06, 2026 02:05PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Runnin' Down a Dream by Tom Petty. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Runnin' Down a Dream by Tom Petty <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing The Best of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A collection of the 'best' Sherlock Holmes is, by its very existence, a self-evident delight. Anyone who has read Arthur Conan Doyle's creation knows its charm, and it will not surprise you to learn that I bought my copy of The Best of Sherlock Holme ...more
Apr 02, 2026 04:03PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Best of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Best of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
To say that, bar the occasional collaboration or piece of miscellany out there, Christopher Hitchens' first published book is my last is to utter the sort of superficial kismet that the man himself would no doubt dislike. Hostage to History, an essay ...more
Mar 24, 2026 04:38PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it Journal of the Gun Years by Richard Matheson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Journal of the Gun Years, which is otherwise a passable Western potboiler, is made slightly brittle by author Richard Matheson's attempts to stretch it into a more ambitious form without ever really committing to it. It tells the story of a rather cl ...more
Mar 19, 2026 03:32PM · 2 likes · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
"Remain human despite it all." (pg. 318) The main strength of Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth's recent cultured jeremiad against modern technological civilisation, is that while the arguments and opinions will be broadly familiar and will strike ...more
Mar 10, 2026 03:59PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok The Castle in the Forest: A Novel by Norman Mailer	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
In The Castle in the Forest, author Norman Mailer stumbles across some murky and potentially interesting terrain, but doesn't seem to know what to do with the discovery. The novel – for that is what it is, scarcely – is set in the childhood of one Ad ...more
Feb 27, 2026 03:09PM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare by Chris Smith	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I've been on a bit of a Lord of the Rings kick recently, instigated by watching the extended trilogy once again on their 25th anniversary re-release in cinemas last month. To that end, I remembered a book I still had somewhere from around the time of ...more
Feb 18, 2026 02:01PM · like · see review

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The Cauldron, a novel of the Battle of Arnhem written by a former paratrooper who was actually there, is aptly named. It takes the ingredients of war and confines them in rough cast-iron and brings it to a punishing boil. As far as pure combat goes, The Cauldron, a novel of the Battle of Arnhem written by a former paratrooper who was actually there, is aptly named. It takes the ingredients of war and confines them in rough cast-iron and brings it to a punishing boil. As far as pure combat goes, I have scarcely seen it written so well: exhaustive, unsentimental, fast and chaotic and yet impressing upon the green reader just how much conscious thought must go into every movement; the negotiation of a house or ditch or defensive position; when to move and for how long; what position to take; how to maintain a picture of what's going on around you; whether to stand or crawl or run; whether to engage or not and from what angle; and, increasingly over the seven days of relentless battle, the mental exhaustion of all of these steps taking their toll.

Even after all that negotiation it might not matter due to a moment of bad luck, or the conscious movement of an opposing soldier (or even an ally); the men in The Cauldron die matter-of-factly or in the background or even just mentioned in passing, no matter if you have spent the previous 20 or 30 pages invested in their point-of-view. The opening of Chapter 13, which shows a full roster of the company with the names of those who have died crossed out, is sobering in its stark simplicity. What's more, the book contains one of the most apt metaphors for negotiating a combat zone that I've ever read, and over 300 pages evokes it in exemplary fashion:

"It was like being struck blind at a Cup-tie, and only being able to guess what was happening from the unintelligible roar of the crowd." (pg. 109)

And yet, while the punishment of relentless combat is brought to the reader without prejudice, this is not to say that The Cauldron is excessively bleak or a chore just because it is ungentle. The writing is of a high calibre, even if Zeno (the pseudonym chosen by the author) does occasionally force the issue in a writerly way by having his characters converse about their opinions on the soldier's psychology of death or the wider strategic failings of Operation Market Garden.

Zeno himself appears to have been an interesting man as authors go; his real name, so the Introduction to this new Penguin edition tells us, was Gerald Lamarque (although some knew him as Kenneth Allerton) and after fighting at Arnhem he wrote this novel in the 1960s while in prison for murdering his ex-girlfriend's new beau. While his writing is fittingly unsentimental for such a man, his book is thankfully not sour or dogmatic enough to be pushing an iconoclastic or counter-cultural message. If The Cauldron is ungentle it is only because the hell of Arnhem was, and if Zeno proved an ideal conduit for recording that hell for posterity it may well be because the war followed him home. ...more

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Demons
by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Russian literature has a reputation for being overly long, dense and something of a great labour, but Demons, the fourth major work by Fyodor Dostoevsky that I've read, was the first time where, unfortunately, I felt that to be true. I had found Crim Russian literature has a reputation for being overly long, dense and something of a great labour, but Demons, the fourth major work by Fyodor Dostoevsky that I've read, was the first time where, unfortunately, I felt that to be true. I had found Crime and Punishment tough but compelling when I read it a decade ago; Notes from Underground lean and restless, bursting with ideas; and The Brothers Karamazov exacting and illuminating, a seminal work of both literature and philosophy.

Imagine my disappointment then, as I made my way through the highly-regarded Demons with a growing realisation both that the pages were remaining a chore and that there would be scant reward at the end of the journey. Only my steadfast commitment to finish every book I start kept me from exorcising Demons after the first two hundred pages of nothing, and even with that iron-clad personal rule it was hard to keep track of what was going on in the burdensome mass of words.

Because the opinion I reached is that, for much of its 700 pages, Demons spins its wheels. It purports to tell the story of a group of political radicals who decide to kill one of their own, fearing he may become a snitch, with Dostoevsky weaving the various characters towards this fateful end in a commentary on the various political ideas that were capturing and corrupting society at that time. Demons was not a novel of the occult or the supernatural or of religion (at least, for the latter, not on the surface), and no demons or devils appear. As one of the translators, Richard Pevear, puts it in his Foreword to my Vintage Classics edition (as ever, the P&V translation is peerless):

"The demons, then, are ideas, that legion of isms that came to Russia from the West: idealism, rationalism, empiricism, materialism, utilitarianism, positivism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism, and, underlying them all, atheism." (pg. xix)

An interesting concept for a literary novel, you would agree, and one that would remain timely in our own era, with Western society, or at least its public discourse, arguably pulled apart by the various isms that the two sides of the culture war continue to blame for our ills (capitalism, feminism, racism, post-modernism, and back and forth it goes…).

The problem is that any concept Dostoevsky had in Demons is washed out by the unnecessary length of the narrative. The author spends 600 pages on a hard-to-follow noodling of his various characters in uninteresting social scenarios, lacking narrative thrust, believable dialogue, thematic coherence or even a tangible worthy literary thread. And yet – fatally – it proves to be replete with exhausting melodrama.

And yet, after said histrionics, when the book does finally reach its end with the murder of one of their own by the group of political radicals, there is no drama to it – not even the melodrama that had characterised the book until that point. It is dealt with passively, in a sort of summary, which is not only scant reward for a reader who has persevered through the long and unrewarding narrative but also robs the deed of any narrative weight or thematic profundity. It is remarkable that when labouring through Demons I kept returning to the same thought: this 700-page tome would have been much more effective as a short story. ...more

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The Scaled Tartan (Quest of the Five Clans #5)
by Raymond St. Elmo (Goodreads Author)

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While I confess that I've never quite had a handle on this series, I finished The Scaled Tartan, the fifth and final book of the Quest of the Five Clans, with a sense of satisfaction and warmth. Amidst the warped mayhem and outsized, flamboyant warpr ...more

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Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
by Tom Petty

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A wonderful coffee-table companion to the excellent 2007 Tom Petty documentary Runnin' Down a Dream. Unlike Conversations with Tom Petty by Paul Zollo and Petty, written by this same book's editor Warren Zanes, the Runnin' Down a Dream book can't rea ...more

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The Best of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle

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A collection of the 'best' Sherlock Holmes is, by its very existence, a self-evident delight. Anyone who has read Arthur Conan Doyle's creation knows its charm, and it will not surprise you to learn that I bought my copy of The Best of Sherlock Holme A collection of the 'best' Sherlock Holmes is, by its very existence, a self-evident delight. Anyone who has read Arthur Conan Doyle's creation knows its charm, and it will not surprise you to learn that I bought my copy of The Best of Sherlock Holmes from the museum gift shop at 221b Baker Street itself, on a trip to London last summer. There's just something about these adventures that inspires warmth and adoration from even the most jaded reader; an ease and excitement where even the formula itself becomes rather moreish. They are the very definition of comfort-reading and, as Watson remarks in 'The Man with the Twisted Lip', included in this book, "I could not wish anything better than to be associated with my friend in one of those singular adventures which were the normal condition of his existence" (pg. 126).

The only question with such a collection then becomes whether it has truly provided the 'best' of Sherlock Holmes. This will always be disputed, as David Stuart Davies notes in his Afterword to this Macmillan Collector's Library edition, but there are few quibbles to be had. Davies states that he chose the stories which he believes best example Sherlock Holmes' abilities as a detective (pg. 532), and while this means there's no 'Final Problem' or 'Empty House' (and therefore no Moriarty), the decision is an understandable one.

If the goal were to abridge all of the mythos of Sherlock Holmes, then The Best of Sherlock Holmes would need to do more; it would be impossible to cover all the best parts of the Sherlock Holmes mythos without including the novel A Study in Scarlet, in which Holmes and Watson first meet, nor, The Hound of the Baskervilles and the afore-mentioned 'Final Problem' and 'Empty House'. But when the stated goal is to focus exclusively on the short stories, and selectively on those which show the best displays of crime detection, there's no quarrel to be had with this collection, for it carries it off well. You'll be left wanting more, but then again perhaps that's just the nature of the Sherlock Holmes stories. We always want more: the next line, the next page, the next story. ...more

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Hostage to History by Christopher Hitchens

Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger
by Christopher Hitchens

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To say that, bar the occasional collaboration or piece of miscellany out there, Christopher Hitchens' first published book is my last is to utter the sort of superficial kismet that the man himself would no doubt dislike. Hostage to History, an essay To say that, bar the occasional collaboration or piece of miscellany out there, Christopher Hitchens' first published book is my last is to utter the sort of superficial kismet that the man himself would no doubt dislike. Hostage to History, an essayistic commentary on the crisis occurring in Cyprus at the time it was published in 1984, possesses for me not only the sadness of learning about the sorry lot of the Cypriot people as Greece, Turkey, Britain and the United States treat their island as a "strategic pawn rather than as a country with a complex individuality" (pg. 163), but also the sadness of knowing that after more than a decade of enjoying his various books, my experience of reading Hitchens (at least for the first time) is at an end.

And Hostage to History is a good book to end it on. Hitchens is on fine form from the start, beginning in his very first line by pointing out how Cyprus, a European island and member of NATO, had been attacked by two other NATO countries (pg. 9). Hitchens has never been shy of casting light on hypocrisy and cant, and this is in evidence in this debut effort, with some fine turns of phrase, some principled and emphatic condemnation of political behaviour, and some well-chosen and judiciously-deployed hard evidence.

What is even more commendable is that Hitchens' astuteness, beyond his mere writing skill, is also on display. One of his stated goals in Hostage to History is in refuting the lazy claim that Cyprus has problems because of intercommunal tensions between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. Hitchens instead shows how the crises, particularly the 1974 invasion, arose out of the policies and designs of Greece, Turkey, Britain and the USA, with any "weaknesses or errors of Cypriots… exploited and compounded by external intervention" (pg. 159). Hitchens' always-charming way of calling a spade a spade would be fine enough, but he also makes some pertinent conclusions; the most compelling of which is to call on Cypriots to remember "the blows [Cyprus] has been dealt" by "distant, uncaring enemies" and to use this common memory to work together to overcome whatever sectarian grievances do indeed remain (pg. 164). In Hitchens' first work we find the Hitchens we love already fully formed.

If I had read Hostage to History at any other point over my Hitchens journey of the last decade or so, it might have registered only as a curiosity. But that kismet I mentioned at the start of this review has also conspired to ensure Cyprus is in the news as I write, with the frankly strange spectacle of a British Prime Minister awkwardly negotiating the use of British military bases on this distant island for the American bull's latest foray into the geopolitical china shop that is its (and Israel's) assault on Iran. And, as President Johnson's foul-mouthed retort quoted on page 61 of Hitchens' book tells us, American crudity on such matters is nothing new. Empathy for the Cypriots is deepened by the uncomfortable realisation that perhaps we are all hostages of history. ...more

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Journal of the Gun Years
by Richard Matheson

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Journal of the Gun Years, which is otherwise a passable Western potboiler, is made slightly brittle by author Richard Matheson's attempts to stretch it into a more ambitious form without ever really committing to it. It tells the story of a rather cl ...more

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Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity
by Paul Kingsnorth

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"Remain human despite it all." (pg. 318)

The main strength of Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth's recent cultured jeremiad against modern technological civilisation, is that while the arguments and opinions will be broadly familiar and will strike "Remain human despite it all." (pg. 318)

The main strength of Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth's recent cultured jeremiad against modern technological civilisation, is that while the arguments and opinions will be broadly familiar and will strike a chord with the sort of readers who are already drawn to this book (and consequently, to this review), the book itself remain bracing and original.

One can readily identify many of the main topics Kingsnorth laments: the prevalence of smartphones and algorithms and social media and relentless technological interconnectivity in general; the decline of organic human connections and authentic local culture; the breakdown of norms and standards under what is more commonly ringfenced as 'late stage capitalism' (although Kingsnorth isn't dogmatic enough to use that term) – all of which can be diagnosed as aspects of the insatiable 'Machine' which has comprehensively uprooted all that was good in our culture.

Kingsnorth's approach to all of this is never as tired or as hackneyed as one might expect; this is no idle rant or lament for the 'good old days'. The author is inquisitive, searching out alternate angles to all of the above topics, making his Against the Machine both a compelling synthesis of the current aversions to the zeitgeist and, in itself, a fresh contribution to the debate. But its real value is that it is the work of an independent mind. Kingsnorth is not a sly Marxist trying to slip his ideology in by the back door, nor is he a militant Green blocking traffic on motorways – though he was, interestingly, one of the latter in his youth.

Nowadays he describes himself as a "former green" (pg. 181) and a current Orthodox Christian; his book is no regurgitated two-minute-hate against all the ready-made targets you recognise from mainstream discourse, but is instead nuanced and unique to his own intellectual journey. Technological culture and 'the West', which birthed and cultivates the 'Machine', are his targets, which might lead you to label him as just another 'leftie', but then he criticises – in no uncertain terms – leftie shibboleths like identity politics, the trans agenda and Covid lockdowns. When Kingsnorth gives his opinions, you know they are his own.

Because of this, the reader gains a confidence in the author. The topics are made fresh and interesting through the lens of an author who is treating them honestly rather than with a ready-made ideological lens; even when they are political (and, rest assured, they are not always political) they do not repel. Because of this honesty and originality, I found myself enjoying the book even when I disagreed with some (though certainly not all) of Kingsnorth's points. Contrary to the author, I think Western civilisation contains within itself the seeds to save itself from its decline, and what's more it will do so. I am also not as dismissive of space travel, which I think provides the opportunity and impetus to reinvent our culture that Kingsnorth (elsewhere in the book) explicitly says we need.

Even when you disagree with some of the particulars – and Kingsnorth can get pretty out there sometimes – the book is never less than rewarding for those readers who want something intelligent and different to chew on. It is very well-written, even if Kingsnorth is more of a steady hand than an engrossing polemicist, and regardless of how far you agree with his comprehensive, almost doom-laden and yet hopeful diagnosis of the world we live in, one must respect the achievement here. It will always be interesting and worthwhile for a reader to roam amongst words of integrity. And, pleasingly, in writing them and disseminating them Paul Kingsnorth has made his own small victory against the Machine. ...more

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The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

The Castle in the Forest: A Novel
by Norman Mailer

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In The Castle in the Forest, author Norman Mailer stumbles across some murky and potentially interesting terrain, but doesn't seem to know what to do with the discovery. The novel – for that is what it is, scarcely – is set in the childhood of one Ad In The Castle in the Forest, author Norman Mailer stumbles across some murky and potentially interesting terrain, but doesn't seem to know what to do with the discovery. The novel – for that is what it is, scarcely – is set in the childhood of one Adolf Hitler, bringing his hard-headed father and submissive mother to life and seemingly attempting to show us how the boy was set on his dark path. It is quite well-researched – almost to a fault, in fact, because often Mailer just seems to be recreating the family rather than providing them with a narrative, or even compelling drama.

When he does provide individual scenes rather than docudrama regurgitation of what you could find in a history book, his choices are strange: not least a fixation on sex. For a reader, it's always uncomfortable to find a writer fixated on this as they drag us reluctantly through cringeworthy, overly-descriptive scenes of mounting entries and gasping breaths and spurting fluids, but this skin-crawling reader experience is even more unbearable when its Hitler and his family. To be frank, I don't want to be a fly on the wall as Hitler's dad goes down on his mum, nor in a pubescent Adolf's mind as he conjures up fantasies for a bout of masturbation. Nor, I would hope, do you.

Mailer's other deployments of artistic licence are more palatable, but still failures. The narrator of the novel is a demon tasked by Satan (called the 'Maestro' here) to watch over the promising young Hitler and his family, corrupting and subtly manipulating the boy towards a darker path. This can be interesting as Mailer shows us how small moments can compound into big diversions in the development of a young life: an abrupt criticism here, a lack of encouragement there, a sense of isolation or unexamined ego allowed to fester. Nothing big or dramatic, just mundane daily omissions and choices, and one day the boy is not what he was.

However, the frame of the demon narrator leaves the reader scratching their head, for it's never clear what purpose Mailer intends this to serve. There does not seem to be any deeper theme being attempted consistently, whether nature vs. nurture, fate vs. free will, or even the various forking paths of evil, but nor does the author really seem to be investing in character-based storytelling to compensate. To be honest, I struggled to pull much of real worth out of Mailer's morass, even though I could see the author wouldn't be knee-deep in it all if there wasn't some worth to be found. The Castle in the Forest is a peculiar book: it reads quite well and there's clearly a writer of some capability there. It's just that he's slurring his thoughts rather than his words. ...more

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The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare
by Chris Smith

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I've been on a bit of a Lord of the Rings kick recently, instigated by watching the extended trilogy once again on their 25th anniversary re-release in cinemas last month. To that end, I remembered a book I still had somewhere from around the time of ...more

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