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In Cases of Murder is the fourth Bunch Courtney novel by Jan Edwards, though the first I have read. As such, I approached it with a little bit of trepidation. I needn’t have worried about the backstory though; each book stands alone in terms of its central mystery. The characterisation is clear, the dialogue snappy, …
It’s been a while since I’ve played anything other than Blood Bowl 2, but when my Steam Deck arrived, I felt a powerful itch to get gaming once more. Coveted but previously unplayable titles like Control, Jedi: Fallen Order, and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves were suddenly within reach, and I had a little bit of …
‘If you go down to The Woods today, you’d better not go alone, It’s lovely down in The Woods today, but safer to stay at home…’ Hersham Horror has developed a modest range of short fiction and novellas over the last decade, always with an eye for quality, drawing upon fresh and upcoming talent. I’d …
There is a discomfort to Lovecraftian fiction that continues to fascinate readers and writers alike, a century after H.P. Lovecraft published his first story. The sense of cosmic horror he engendered through his writing brought him fame, but it’s the Mythos formed from his dread *pantheon that embodies his literary legacy. It has proven to …
Fantasy fans will be more than familiar with the Witches from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, but on the off chance you’re not a big reader – or simply haven’t gotten around to them yet – let me fill you in on the relevant bits. Pratchett’s witches may look like your stereotypical black-clad hags, but Granny …
I’ve played stacks of table top games over the past few years, ranging from the simplest piss-around to the most mind-bendingly complex time-sinks. I’ve enjoyed a hell of a lot of them, but the experience is almost always intellectual rather than visceral. Like video games, most table-tops employ a narrative structure of some kind, but …
Last year I set up a Blood Bowl competition with seven pals via Steam. This weekend saw the final round of The Smash ’n’ Grab Classic, and it has been a glorious success—so much so, we want to expand our group and start a brand new tournament. (More on that later.) If you are already …
The last time I took proper stock of The Fine-toothed Comb was way back in March. It was supposed to be the first of my Quarterly Reviews but, as it turned out, it was also the last. The longer I spent bobbing about in the ocean of self-employment, the harder I found it to tread …
In a post-apocalyptic future, Mankind has been devastated by disease, our species reduced to a mere 2 million souls, sightless and crawling on the face of the Earth. Generations later, society has reformed into tribes and developed new modes of survival, of communication, of battle and of culture to circumvent their blindness. Vision has become …
Foundation is one of the Apple’s tent-pole tv series and, frankly, the only reason I thought it might be worth the free trial. I’d heard good things about For All Mankind and Ted Lasso, but nothing caught my attention like Foundation when the project was first announced. Pretty strange, considering I’ve only read the first …
Mythic Quest is an American sitcom about the creation and running of the titular computer game. It’s not the first time MMORPGs has been brought into the realm of comedy, but this does something a little different. Where The Guild and Dead Pixels both focused on the *consumers, Mythic Quest takes us behind the scenes, …
It’s always awesome when a friend recommends something new, but there’s a special joy to be had when a: you’d never heard of it before, b: it’s not the kind of thing you’d usually buy, and c: it turns out you frigging *love it. So it was for me and Little Nightmares, a cute yet …
Anna is a dystopian novel, set a few short years from now. War has devastated us to the point of societal collapse. It’s a lawless, bleak and wretched place out there, but our protagonist has managed to survive it, picking her way through the Unlands and trying where possible to avoid the remnants of humanity. …
Invincible is an 8-part animated superhero show based on a *long-running comic series by Robert Kirkman, famed for creating The Walking Dead—and if that doesn’t give you a big enough clue, I’m going to say this flat out: this is not one to plop your kids in front of while you sit on a Zoom …
I first came across Telltale Games through their Walking Dead adaptation – an original story that played out like some kind of orgy-sparked bastard between a graphic novel, a choose-your-own-adventure book, and a point-and-click game, complete with hot-button action scenes. I remember it being pretty awesome, so I was excited to see more output following, …
Here’s a good one for folks out there looking for something new and engaging to play. You don’t need to be a board-game geek or master of strategy to have fun with this family game, nor do you need to worry about the fear factor for youngsters. This is what I like to think of …
“A Nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.” Dean William Ralph Inge There are people with certain attitudes, events that unfold around us almost daily, where you almost have to laugh or you’d cry: where tragedy cleaves so close to comedy they become all …
I was in my teens when the number of books arriving on my shelves began to outstrip the number of books I could read. I must have given away something like 30 boxes of the things over time but the bookstack keeps growing. Go figure. Sadly, since starting to work as an editor, I’ve found …
It’s been a while since I found myself able to *read for pleasure, and the purchases I make at conventions have (perhaps) become emblems of support for people I like and admire, more than an active pursuit of new and exciting work. It’s not that I don’t genuinely want to read them, more that the …
My urge towards fatherhood kicked in about a year after we got married. The emotional high of that (truly spectacular) day had gradually faded, settling back into the warp and weft of history, and the comparative mundanity of a day-to-day existence stretched before us. Was that it, then? The game of life complete? Hm. A …