The man who gave us Conan is back in print

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Robert E. Howard Robert E Howard was born and died in Texas 70 years ago by his own hand. A sort of Ian Curtis of fantasy, Howard crafted thrilling doom laden stories, featuring a variety of characters across different times and lands, from ancient Atlantis to war torn Afghanistan. Howard was Mickey Spillane to JRR Tolkien’s Agatha Christie, hard boiled horror and action as opposed to endless babblings about magic ring, trees and cakes. Imagine an HP Lovecraft where the hero is more inclined to reach for a sword than a book of spells and you have a slight measure of Howard’s style. Of course Howard is best remembered for Conan, but thanks to films and comic interpretations, many are unaware of the original stories which are the epitome of red blooded adventure stories, set in a glorious world of swords and spells and old sleeping monsters. But there was more than Conan, there was his fore runner, the moody dream like tales of Kull. Howard’s Kull stories are far more...

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China Miéville writes fantasy for people who don't like fantasy. With Bas-Lag he has created a world filled with powerful magic and bizarre creatures without once falling back on genre clichés. Dwarves? Trolls? Talking trees? Evil wizards? Muscle-bound, oiled heroes with enchanted swords? Fuck right off. Miéville's fantasy-steampunk resonates with new ideas in such numbers as to leave you breathless, often designed with far more than simple background colour in mind. The Remade, for example, are criminals whose punishment has been to have their bodies altered through a combination of thaumaturgy, engineering and surgery, usually to make them suitable for heavy industrial forced labour, but often in cruel, whimsical manners designed to fit their crimes. It would be easy to get carried away with descriptions of men fused with animal bodies and machinery, powerful creatures whose 'punishment' sounds almost desirable, but Miéville never fails to express the horror of the...

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Bridget Jones -- along with Harry Potter, Big Brother and various others -- is one of those bizarre modern crazes I'd always intended to look into, but never quite got around to. The film was pretty good, my friends reckoned the book was hilarious, and the general consensus is that it's the definitive 'chick' novel. Prelim exam-leave provided me with a lot of spare time (and I was desperate for any activity that might enable me to procrastinate revision) so -- only having the sequel in the house -- I read Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in a mere few hours. It's amusing, it's absorbing and (providing you're of the female persuasion and have a fair few hours to waste) chances are you'll finish it in the space of a day or two. But is it "a good book"? I'd have to answer that one with an emphatic no. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it, but it was that uneasy "I know I really shouldn't" enjoyment that you get when watching trashily sexist romance films, and...