Smorgasbord Fantasia

X-men: Days of Future Past is one of the finest in the long list of prequels and sequels that have sprouted after the original trilogy that came in the last decade. There I said it. Bring on the brickbats, I dare you. I have to warn you that this is probably not a review but more of a franchise fanboy blubbering and cheering. Playing around with the time-travel that has a ripple-effect on the course of history can be beneficial. As Director Bryan Singer ( Firmly back in control of the series after he left off X-men and X2) has proven – by altering the course of history, he probably has widened the play-area now and has the scope to bring about a larger wider cast in the next X-men outing, possibly X-men: The Apocalypse .  But am getting ahead of myself here. Harking back to why I think Days of the Future Past is possibly one of the chief agents of revival of this franchise. This movie has got the uber-cool time travel concepts that Christopher Nolan would ha

Yaawn!! That has been my predominant waking state for like the past few days. and I been zombie-walking through so many books and movies that I thought I should be keeping a count. So what have I been reading for the past few days? I recently finished the decisively intriguing debut that rocked our world (ahem, meaning that of the SFF fans) in 2012 - a brutal, hard-hitting slim low-fantasy called Scourge of the Betrayer for which the sequel is just about to hit the stands. Jeff Salyards is a remarkable man. I loved the book but I felt the book with it's super-tight focus on this mysterious group of superbly trained soldiers led by this enigmatic captain called Braylar Killcoin ( I thought the name was such a hoot. KillCoin. I will kill for coin. I am KillCoin the mercenary?) slightly underwhelms - an inward focus, a naive scribe kept in the dark who forms our narrator and some gory bloodletting accompanied by Joe Abercrombiesque cussing and hints about a dark forbidding