Mike Futcher (Author of Void Station One)

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
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
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (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
Honestly, I make it hard for myself sometimes. I'm always on the lookout for hidden gems, obscure literary books of forgotten worth, and while this sometimes pays off I can never escape the reality that some of my most enjoyable reading experiences o ...more
Feb 12, 2026 02:33PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it The Airman and the Carpenter: The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Richard Hauptmann by Ludovic Kennedy	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 meticulous and well-written book, Ludovic Kennedy's The Airman and the Carpenter is a fine introduction for those wishing to learn more about the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping of 1932. Charles Lindbergh was one of the most famous men in the world at th ...more
Jan 30, 2026 04:21PM · 1 like · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair (Texas Pentagraph #1) 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
Since picking up my first Raymond St. Elmo book a few years ago, I've steadily worked my way through nearly a dozen of the self-published writer's weird, literary, idiosyncratic novels. Odd, really, because I usually have no truck with magical realis ...more
Jan 17, 2026 04:31PM · 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 As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair by Raymond St. Elmo. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair by Raymond St. Elmo <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing The Rosetta Key (Ethan Gage, #2) by William Dietrich (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 The Rosetta Key lacked the novelty that I encountered with the previous Ethan Gage book, Napoleon's Pyramids, it is at least heartening to know that the first book wasn't a flash in the pan, and that it likely won't be a mistake for me to inves ...more
Jan 06, 2026 03:09PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki (I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki, #1) by Baek Se-hee	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 still remain someone who is unable to love herself. But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don't g ...more
Dec 31, 2025 02:10PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok Maskerade (Discworld, #18) by Terry Pratchett	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 disappointingly bland entry into the Discworld after my flagging interest in the series had been restored by the easy joys of Interesting Times, the previous book. Maskerade is one of those iterations of the Discworld that I've never really enjoyed ...more
Dec 28, 2025 10:57AM · 6 likes · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan	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
Small Things Like These is a tolerable, well-written short novella, but it is nevertheless hard to shake the feeling that author Claire Keegan has mishandled her topic. Not mishandled it badly, for the book does move the reader slightly, but the topi ...more
Dec 24, 2025 02:41PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok A Better Paradise — Volume One: An Aftermath by Dan Houser	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 Better Paradise was bleeping on my radar because Dan Houser was the lead writer on Red Dead Redemption 2, which I consider one of the finest novels of the last decade – even though it was a video game. Perhaps then my expectations were a tad high f ...more
Dec 23, 2025 03:56PM · 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 A Better Paradise — Volume One by Dan Houser. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A Better Paradise — Volume One by Dan Houser <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok

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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Project Hail Mary
by Andy Weir (Goodreads Author)

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Honestly, I make it hard for myself sometimes. I'm always on the lookout for hidden gems, obscure literary books of forgotten worth, and while this sometimes pays off I can never escape the reality that some of my most enjoyable reading experiences o Honestly, I make it hard for myself sometimes. I'm always on the lookout for hidden gems, obscure literary books of forgotten worth, and while this sometimes pays off I can never escape the reality that some of my most enjoyable reading experiences over the years have been the obvious, well-known books of entertainment (The Lord of the Rings, Sherlock Holmes, Lonesome Dove, Jurassic Park and A Game of Thrones, to name a few). So when Project Hail Mary was published and quickly became known by word-of-mouth as a great, fast, entertaining read I added it to my list. Later, I bought it. I then immediately shelved it, and left it there unread as I continued my pursuit of the obscure.

It was only because I went to see the 25th anniversary re-release of The Lord of the Rings in cinemas a few weeks ago that I finally pulled it down from the shelf. One of the trailers before the Extended Editions was for the new film adaptation of Project Hail Mary starring Ryan Gosling, due out next month. I decided it was now-or-never to read the book with a clean slate.

And, of course, it's great. Just as everyone said it was. In many ways it's even better than The Martian, author Andy Weir's breakout crowd-pleaser. He's toned down some of the chipper know-it-all narration from that book, while still retaining the robust hard science that gave it its authenticity. Project Hail Mary is more outlandish than The Martian, taking in a dying sun, alien germs, unexpected character meetings and interstellar travel, but all of it is reasoned out cleverly. Weir earns your trust, and it's very rewarding to see his characters face original, well-thought-out challenges, respond to them scientifically, and reach logical solutions and face logical setbacks.

On top of this, it's a great piece of entertainment. The narration is friendly without being grating and the characters – surprisingly, given the nature of one of them – are quite convincing and endearing. The twists are interesting and the result of logical progression rather than the pursuit of shallow thrills, while still zipping along with the pace of a good thriller. It's an excellent example of reading as entertainment. Don't dismiss that praise as I almost did. When they say it's great – well, it is. Just because it's an obvious conclusion doesn't mean it's an inaccurate one. ...more

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The Airman and the Carpenter by Ludovic Kennedy

The Airman and the Carpenter: The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Richard Hauptmann
by Ludovic Kennedy

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A meticulous and well-written book, Ludovic Kennedy's The Airman and the Carpenter is a fine introduction for those wishing to learn more about the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping of 1932. Charles Lindbergh was one of the most famous men in the world at th A meticulous and well-written book, Ludovic Kennedy's The Airman and the Carpenter is a fine introduction for those wishing to learn more about the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping of 1932. Charles Lindbergh was one of the most famous men in the world at the time and the kidnapping of his son from his crib generated a media circus, a headline-grabbing ransom demand and, eventually, the tragic discovery of the body of poor young Charlie Jr. not far from where he went missing.

All this is well-told by Kennedy, but the raison d'être of his true-crime book is what followed: the arrest of one Richard Hauptmann and his trial for what was dubbed the 'Crime of the Century'. Kennedy's conviction, for which he brings receipts, is that Hauptmann was completely innocent of the crime and was railroaded by a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances. Much of what is low in America is on display in these events: the media circus and the preening, grasping fame of even the case's bit-part players, the greed, pigheadedness and unreflective ruthlessness of both law enforcement and the lawyers, and the same sort of public thirst for celebrity, blood and mob outrage that has made 'true-crime' an often unedifying genre and the justice system an insular self-mockery, with the courtroom a bloodsport between two implacable 'sides', a game to be won at all costs rather than a process by which truth is arrived at.

Kennedy is an ideal guide through this shoddy terrain, for being a British journalist he stands apart from some of the American craziness on display and shows restraint even when some of the behaviour on display is unforgivably contemptible. I knew a bit of surface-level knowledge of the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping prior to reading Kennedy's book, but I had never got into the weeds of it. I had never known that it was so shamefully inept.

One much acknowledge, of course, that this is Kennedy's take on it, and no doubt I could read other books which reach a different conclusion, or present the same evidence with a different emphasis. But the interpretation Kennedy builds is compelling, convincing and detailed. In fact, if there is a drawback in reading the book it's that Kennedy is almost too earnest, too sober in his depiction of the case. There's little to nothing on who might have committed the crime if not Hauptmann, for Kennedy deals in facts, and his estimation of the facts, rather than speculation. Whatever evidence and leads there might have been were squandered – and sometimes actively extinguished – by the ineptitude and corruption of the police at the time, and cannot be revived decades later. Who killed the baby will almost certainly never be known, and because of the lack of any solid knowledge Kennedy does not indulge hypotheticals.

Those looking for such titillating speculations will have to look elsewhere. (I believe there's a non-zero chance that Lindbergh Senior – a deeply shady character behind his mask – did it himself, perhaps one of his cruel pranks gone wrong, and was arrogantly willing to let an innocent stranger get the chair to cover it up. It fits the known facts, survives an encounter with Occam's Razor, and the fact that the family dog did not bark on the night-time of the 'intrusion' (pg. 113) is surely a 'curious incident' that would've made Sherlock Holmes raise an eyebrow.)

Instead, the conspiracies Kennedy relates here are not those of the unknown kidnapping gang or of any inside-job cover-up, but the very real and provable ones that saw law enforcement, reporters and prosecuting lawyers plant fake evidence, hide exculpatory evidence, beat and intimidate Hauptmann and witnesses, and just all around make a mockery of 'justice' under that extremely dangerous logical fallacy that they 'knew' Hauptmann was guilty and were therefore willing to do anything and everything to ensure he was executed for it, never once stopping to consider they might be wrong and being too prideful to admit it when others stopped them and asked them to reconsider. One hopes that when they too eventually passed from this life and found themselves facing Judgement, that St. Peter stood aside and allowed Hauptmann to be the face that greeted them at heaven's gate, their entry to be weighed by his hands.

While it is long and detailed and takes a good while to get going, Ludovic Kennedy's The Airman and the Carpenter is a great introduction to a case that proved even more tragic than I had thought it was. As Governor Hoffman recognises at the time (he was one of the few to believe in Hauptmann's innocence, and did what he could to temporarily grant the man a reprieve – for which the mob tried to impeach him), the injustice is not only in the taking of the life of the child and the anguish of his mother, and not even in adding the injustice of condemning an innocent man, but in allowing those who actually did commit the crime to escape punishment (pg. 383). The real killer, or killers, got away with it. All that was achieved in the Crime of the Century, aside from some false catharsis for the mob and some base copy for the media, was unnecessary misery. As Hauptmann himself said while on Death Row (pg. 394), the case is not solved; all they did was add one more dead. ...more

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As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair by Raymond St. Elmo

As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair (Texas Pentagraph #1)
by Raymond St. Elmo (Goodreads Author)

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Since picking up my first Raymond St. Elmo book a few years ago, I've steadily worked my way through nearly a dozen of the self-published writer's weird, literary, idiosyncratic novels. Odd, really, because I usually have no truck with magical realis Since picking up my first Raymond St. Elmo book a few years ago, I've steadily worked my way through nearly a dozen of the self-published writer's weird, literary, idiosyncratic novels. Odd, really, because I usually have no truck with magical realism, but the simple truth is that I'm yet to find another writer today writing as well as him, let alone so prolifically – and so here I stand.

That said, As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair was the first St. Elmo book I've read that I didn't warm to, even though it is the first in a loosely-connected Texas Pentagraph series that I've already read a few instalments of. (One, Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts , I found particularly remarkable.) It tells the story of a man and a woman who meet at a Renaissance Fair, though told in a richly-baked, shapeshifting magical realist structure that I struggled with. It's all engineered with an astute intelligence and a gift for language and wordplay – like all St. Elmo books – but I quickly lost the thread and never regained it. Perhaps I should have stopped and turned back, worked harder to find it again, but having lost the thread in the current I remembered that they say you never step into the same river twice.

But while this meant Strawberry Fair and I were never likely to fall into step, I did find a lot of worth and enjoyment in just surrendering to it. I decided to just get lost in the delirious phantasm of its language and its mechanics, like a spinning fairground ride. And while, like such rides, I felt a bit queasy at times, I could still enjoy the whirligig nature of it all.

"We came to the balcony of the chapel and stared down at the dancers, and if you had asked me what is real? I must have stumbled, because all I could have answered was beauty was real, fire was real. Music, magic, the heart's desire and the turning of the dancers. Which is no answer; just shards of colored words tumbled randomly to make a pretty pattern." (pg. 340)

It reminded me in some ways of Shakespeare's comedies, and while it is of course not of their calibre, I did find myself, as a reader, navigating through Strawberry Fair with the same technique and muscle-memory that I used to successfully make my way through A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It . Whether his characters are engaged in a mundane fantasy role-play or something more genuinely fantastical, St. Elmo's titular Strawberry Fair stands in place of Shakespeare's Forest of Arden, with the same approach of clever wordplay, disguised identities and bonny confusion, and star-crossed lovers and cosplay rather than cross-dressing. It says a lot that even in a book that I didn't fully connect with, I still end up garlanding the author with praise by considering his work analogous to Shakespeare.

That said, St. Elmo fails to provide the reader with the key to the maze he has created – something which Shakespeare was so great at doing with a single phrase in his comedies – although St. Elmo's "you shall become what you pretend" (pp131-2) comes closest to unlocking the story for the reader. If Strawberry Fair had been able to really get its hooks into me, it would have been magnificent. It was inevitable that I would eventually come across a book by Raymond St. Elmo that I didn't jive with. The impressive thing is that it took until the eleventh title I read to encounter it, with – at time of writing – five more still to go. ...more

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The Rosetta Key (Ethan Gage, #2)
by William Dietrich (Goodreads Author)

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While The Rosetta Key lacked the novelty that I encountered with the previous Ethan Gage book, Napoleon's Pyramids, it is at least heartening to know that the first book wasn't a flash in the pan, and that it likely won't be a mistake for me to inves ...more

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I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee

I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki (I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki, #1)
by Baek Se-hee

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"I still remain someone who is unable to love herself. But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don't g "I still remain someone who is unable to love herself. But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don't give up, surely I will keep having moments of tears and laughter." (pp153-4)

I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a book that becomes much more difficult to assess in light of its young author's death just a couple of months ago, in what we can reasonably assume was suicide. Baek Sehee's memoir, transcribing conversations she had with her psychiatrist about depression, suicide ideation and her various self-perceived character flaws, is rightly lauded for its bracing emotional bravery and for sparking a more open conversation, particularly in her native South Korea, about mental health.

While I did not love the book, I think if I had read it before the news about the author in October I would still have spoken well of it. While not a great feat of writing, it is a compelling insight into its author's mind – Sehee writes honestly and with clarity, and reaches some astute insights into her own psychology and way of living. The most compelling of these inspired her book title, namely recognising that light and darkness, happiness and sadness, good moments and bad, are not opposites with one to be 'cured' in favour of the other, but things that must exist alongside one another, and our ability to reason this out and make peace with it is the most promising pathway forward. Sehee wants to die, but she also wants to enjoy life, such as eating tteokbokki, her favourite food. Coming to this realisation is emotionally mature, and a cut above the usual unreflective commentaries on suicide and mental health which seek to 'cure' or right what is 'wrong' in the person feeling depressed. I suspect that often people in those situations are seeing more clearly than we are, seeing past the defences and fictions that we blithely place around us.

And it's because of this astuteness, this open-hearted honesty which Sehee expresses throughout the short book, that it's even more tinged with sadness now that she decided, for however long she held the thought in her mind, that the effort to maintain the balance between dark and light, to keep the ever-shifting plates aligned, was too much – and decided to leave. Whereas those who read the book until October 2025 would have rooted for the author to pull through and thanked her for sharing her continuing journey, those of us who read it since her death do so with regret, and a sincere, deeply human pity, knowing that the journey ended at a destination none of us would have willed. The fact that both sets of readers would be reading the same words from the same person only shows how that perception can shift, how intimidatingly complex such feelings can become, and how we struggle to even know ourselves, let alone those around us. Writing this review on New Year's Eve, I will let the final words of the year 2025 be those of an unfairly troubled soul who did not see its end:

"We are so far, and yet so near to so many people." (pg. 179) ...more

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Maskerade (Discworld, #18)
by Terry Pratchett

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A disappointingly bland entry into the Discworld after my flagging interest in the series had been restored by the easy joys of Interesting Times, the previous book. Maskerade is one of those iterations of the Discworld that I've never really enjoyed ...more

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Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan

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Small Things Like These is a tolerable, well-written short novella, but it is nevertheless hard to shake the feeling that author Claire Keegan has mishandled her topic. Not mishandled it badly, for the book does move the reader slightly, but the topi Small Things Like These is a tolerable, well-written short novella, but it is nevertheless hard to shake the feeling that author Claire Keegan has mishandled her topic. Not mishandled it badly, for the book does move the reader slightly, but the topic of the depraved, abuse-riddled 'Magdalene laundries' which existed in Ireland until the 1990s has much more to it than Keegan delivers – and deserved something more substantial.

Her short novella is told from the perspective of an unassuming man who encounters an abused young girl at one of these convents, and then must wrestle with his conscience as he encounters implicit social pressure to forget what he has seen. Keegan traces this rather well, in a subtle, understated way that is rather effective, and also draws analogues to the man's own struggles to be recognised and accepted by his community.

Nevertheless, one is left with a slightly bitter taste when the book's end quickly arrives (it can be read in a single sitting). We are left with no knowledge or insight into what the Magdalene laundries were, and the dynamics between the abuses there and the complicity of the wider society is barely even hinted at, let alone explored. The topic demanded a full novel, unpacking the story and leaving the society uncomfortable and the perpetrators skewered and with nowhere to hide. Instead Keegan provides a misdirected fancy, a sketch rather than a story, that turns this massive, multi-generational suffering into a slight – and slightly twee – Christmas fable that keeps the victims hidden and unheard, its perpetrators unnamed and in the shadows, while seeking to absolve Irish society for its long complicity by giving them a rough Atticus Finch copy who does in the story what they did not do in reality.

The book relies on a reader's foreknowledge of the controversy (which no one outside of Ireland will have) and records none for posterity. And with its story of a quietly courageous citizen speaking up, it provides a comforting fiction for Irish society to draw a line under the atrocities while keeping them at a safe, sanitised distance. It is a book insubstantial enough that it will be forgotten in time, but with its false narrative catharsis and absolution having performed the sin of short-circuiting a true cultural reckoning in favour of its own few underwhelming sparks. ...more

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A Better Paradise — Volume One by Dan Houser

A Better Paradise — Volume One: An Aftermath
by Dan Houser

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A Better Paradise was bleeping on my radar because Dan Houser was the lead writer on Red Dead Redemption 2, which I consider one of the finest novels of the last decade – even though it was a video game. Perhaps then my expectations were a tad high f ...more

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