Smorgasbord Fantasia

As the first superhero Marvel Cinematic Universe movie of 2018, there was a lot riding on Black Panther . And then there was this racist group that tried to sabotage the movie on RT through discriminatory messages on FB and other social media. The furor perhaps just added fuel to that brightly burning fire. At 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes , boy - does Black Panther deliver! After having watched this movie twice last weekend ( That is how much I LOVED it!) I now think about whether, this indeed is the greatest of all the series of superhero movies produced in the recent times. Sure - It is part of the burgeoning universe of Marvel Superheroes. And we first saw Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War, where the character T'Challa watches his father, T'Chaka die in the bombing of the UN Assembly in Berlin. We watched his pursuit of a speeding car in a bullet-proof catsuit and wondered whether this guy can actually stand up to the cool factor and the might of the rest...

So the first WoW meme on my blog [ Picking up on the themes originally started at Breaking The Spine blog, we feature the second installment of The Band, the sequel to the wildly popular debut that hit the charts on the top ten world over last year, Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. Described often as George RR Martin meets Terry Pratchet - I am currently half way through book one and I cannot put into words, the indescribably warm and fuzzy feeling I get as I read the same. It's absolutely nuts, cracks me up every few pages and is a quest of old men, banding together for that one last adventure before kicking the bucket. It's just such a riot of a read that I cannot stop blubbering. But hark back to the book on hand, we present Bloody Rose, Band# 2 by Nicholas Eames . Live fast, die young. Tam Hashford has always dreamed of living through glory days of her own. With a renowned mercenary for a mother and an illustrious bard for a father, battles and adventure see...

I had completely given John Gwynne a miss the last few years - Despite Malice , the first book in his previous series ( The Faithful and the Fallen ) winning the best debut, Gemmell Award in 2013. He wrapped that one up with Wrath last year and this year, starts off a brand new epic series in the same world as that of the Banished Lands, set one hundred thirty years later. Call it a selfish wish, But I always have this thing about being among the first few. (Anything! reading, sports whatever!) And so, with A Time of Dread (ATOD) I knew, I was jumping in on a brand new series. But from what I could gather in my first few minutes of the read, the entire previous series forms the history to what transpires in ATOD. How cool is that . That mammoth berg buried under the sea, I knew I had to dig under and find out more about Corban and his friends. But it could wait. Because before I knew it, I was nose-deep, nose to the grinding-wheel find out what is causing A time of dread in the Ban...

I recently finished binge-watching  the vastly popular and extremely thrilling Stranger Things on Netflix - Set in the cozy nostalgic 80's, in a small town in Pennsylvania, US in late Nov'83, the series explores the themes of supernatural horror and the amazing endurance power of the human spirit. Paying homage to the nerdy pop-culture of the 80's ( Hell, the series-premiere starts off with the eleven-year old boys playing Dungeons and Dragons in full earnest!) Stranger Things is one of the most original series, from the Netflix stables ever, I think. A gripping mystery that blows up into creepy horror that really fucks with your mind with a propulsive story-telling that is almost pitch-perfect. Notice, I said almost ? So I went absolutely  nuts over the first season. Blowing through the eight episodes in less than a week, I felt like Netflix finally got over this habit of hooking us in, with an irresistible opening bait and premise, that ultimately leads to dis...