Aurora – Sleeping Beauty.

My apologies for the lack of updates. I just started a new job, it managed to keep me occupied for days on end. But now that I’m starting to get into the groove of things I’m having more spare time to work on the comic. Expect updates within the week.

The Night Mayor

Kim Newman

The City, a hellish place dominated by perpetual night and a slew of clichés. The City isn’t real, it’s a dream. Truro Daine a notorious criminal has managed to escape his prison by creating the City, in this virtual landscape he reigns supreme. Daine has the Talent, but he’s not the only one capable of shaping dreams. Enter Susan Bishopric and Tom Tunney, two professional dreamers. They have been called in to put an end to Truro’s reign as Night Mayor, and to stop his dream world from spilling over into the most sophisticated Artificial Intelligence this side of the Grand Canyon. Once inside Truro’s dream the Susan and Tunney realize that this isn’t going to be an easy task.

The Night Mayor is a fun little book. Kim Newman’s style has a certain flair to it. He knows how to set a mood using vivid descriptions and iconic imagery. The City is a place based on the old Noir-movies from the thirties and forties. Using those movies as a backdrop, Newman creates a black-and-white world that has all the stylistic conventions of the genre, and then proceeds to mercilessly poke fun at them. Newman isn’t playing it all for laughs, as he takes his time to work in the various details and drops a multitude of names in the process, it becomes clear that this book is very much an ode to the old genre. It becomes clear early on that Newman really does have a heart for this sort of thing.

That also brings up the weakest point of the novel. At times it felt as if I was ploughing through a lengthy field of references I didn’t quite get. This is something that has popped up in Newman’s other novels, most notably his Anno Dracula series.

The difference here is that in Anno Dracula the references are part of the story and they don’t hinder the plot or the main characters. The Night Mayor actually manages to suffer under the weight of the references. Bogart is there, Rooney, Flynn, and countless others, not just the names of the actors, but also the names of the characters they played. They’re brought up as characters in the background, characters that are only there to hammer home the fact that the setting iss based on old movies. The City is a cliché and all the characters in it suffer the same fate of being clichés. It’s intentional, but it’s not quite working out the way they’re intended. Instead of adding to the scenery, they end up distracting, they break the flow of the story.

Other than that, the novel itself is pretty light reading. The pace is decent, the language flows from one page to the other, and there’s enough action and mystery to urge the reader to continue reading. There’s not a whole lot of depth to the characters or the story, but it’s not pretending that there is. The novel is aware of what it is, and it simply runs with that premise. No deeper meaning, no hidden message, just an enjoyable story with a very clear background and a couple of clever twists throughout the various action-scenes.

It’s a passionate love letter to the greats of a nearly dead cinematic genre, but with a definite wink and a subtle nudge. It’s a dynamic little book that isn’t ashamed of itself.

Recommended if you love Film Noir and Science Fiction.

7 out of 10

Yesterday I went out and bought a bunch of books. I love books, and I love second-hand books even more. Sure, I had to wade through tons of crap to find something worthwhile, but I found it. I wonder if people still go to second-hand bookstores. These days, with sites such as e-bay, you can just order in. You no longer  have to go through the hassle of rummaging through piles and piles of books, in which you know you have not a single shred of interest.

Still, there’s one thing people are more likely to do when they go to a second-hand bookstore, and that’s taking risks.

I went in with a list. A list of authors and titles to guide me through the whole experience. Sure enough, I found what I was looking for, hidden in a dark corner, but at the same time I came home with a couple of books I had never heard of. I took a risk. They were cheap, and they looked liked they might turn out to be fun. It’s not really a risk I’m taking, to be honest. They’re not doorstoppers, they come in at less than 200 pages, so I’m not going to waste an entire week reading one novel. They weren’t expensive, I would’ve paid more for a hamburger at McD. All in all, it was a pretty safe plan.

Here’s the list:

Frank Herbert:

• The Heaven Makers
• The God Makers
• The Worlds of Frank Herbert
• The Best of Frank Herbert 1965 – 1970

Kim Newman

• The Night Mayor

Arthur Sellings

• Telepath

Michel Houellebecq

• The Possibility of an Island

Expect reviews…

I just woke up, and it’s way too early for me to be running around doing stuff. I’m still dead tired, I don’t know what it is exactly, but I think I’m getting old. My back is killing me, like I’ve been sleeping on a slab of concrete in some damp little alleyway.

I want to go back to bed, but not my own bed, a real bed, a decent bed, a bed that you can drown in.