Although set in Florida, this Sax Rohmer mystery novel reads quite British - Florida is largely a backdrop for various European characters and character types. The plot involves someone murdering red-haired women and an escaped gorilla is the prime suspect - meaning, it can't be him. Contains about 25% romance, 75% of the police interrogating people. Not as effective as Rohmer's adventure-thrillers, but not a bad book.

Another excellent selection of Carl Barks stories, including some of my own personal favourites like "the Gilded Man." The stories are as absolutely wonderful and timeless as I remembered!

An excellent collection of poems and essays with scores of quotable remarks, such as: "But I am not sure that even sensible people are always right; and this has been my principal reason for deciding to be silly--a decision that is now irrevocable."

This is the first full collection of Hughes' works I've read; strange that I should find his last collection first. There are some excellent poems, mostly inspired by the civil rights issues of the time. Some of the context is lost on me and I'd probably benefit from a critical edition with footnotes.

I was elated to have helped fund this publication via Kickstarter, if only so I could hold a copy in my hands! This is another typically fantastic collection of humourous legal misadventures starring Alanna Wolff & Jeff Byrd. Amidst the monsters, comedy and soap opera is Batton Lash's fine artwork, which often tries out different styles to mimick various other comic book & comic strip properties. It's great to see how this project has helped raise Supernatural Law's profile.

When I started out reading this series of reprints, it was mainly to gain a historical appreciation for the strip and admire Caniff's art, but I gradually came to care about the massive cast of characters and the never-ending plots. This is easily my favourite volume so far, even though Pat & Terry spend most of these years separated. Burma's return to the series - cued when a voice is heard singing "St. Louis Blues" - was perfectly timed and the showdown between Captain Judas and Raven Sherman is gripping. I'm eager to continue with volume 5!

This is a terrific collection of sometimes-racy comic strips, an excellent addition to the Terry & the Pirates collections. Some of the strips are actually very affecting, such as those where Miss Lace or other soldiers defend a one-armed veteran, a blind veteran or a veteran mistaken as a non-combatant.

It's been far too long since I read Fire Upon the Deep and this novel isn't constructed in a way to quickly refresh your memory of who the characters are and what their predicament is. My biggest problem with the book is the entire concept of the Blight; I can't recall the details behind the Blight from the previous book and they're the driving force behind the split in the humans' ranks. Each side has an opinion about the Blight, but I'll be damned if I can recall the facts about the Blight.

This was an engaging read, even though not much changes in the course of its 600+ pages: one enemy is dispatched, one enemy becomes an ally and another enemy becomes mostly irrelevant.

This was a decent collection of Rohmer's fiction, although a few of the stories have been reprinted in other volumes (if you own the Wrath of Fu Manchu, you've already seen several of the tales). However, the opening story "the Black Mandarin" is an excellent Paul Harley tale (perhaps the best Harley story?); a second Harley tale, "At the Palace da Nostra" even ties him to Gaston Max! Plus, the ever-lovable Nayland Smith turns up with Shan Greville in tow for "Turkish Yataghan." This is a must-have for Rohmer enthusiasts... no one else will understand this.

She Who Sleeps is a fairly engaging book for most of its length, telling the story of an expedition to determine whether a 3,000 year old Egyptian princess might still be alive. It's a fine setup, but there's also a mystery at the heart of the story and once the mystery was resolved, I was left wishing it hadn't been started to begin with. Only Sax Rohmer completists (like me) will read this book, which is probably as it should be.

As a fan of older literature which have fallen into the public domain and yet are not readily available, I've made a few Amazon purchases to try and complete my collections of authors such as John Buchan and Sax Rohmer. Unfortunately, I soon discovered some of the public domain publishers were very fly-by-night - generic covers, spelling errors, punctuation errors, pages out-of-sequence; amongst these are a few samplings by the publisher Blackmask.

But! I chanced to notice Blackmask had a copy of Sax Rohmer's Bimbashi Baruk of Egypt and its cover certainly demonstrated a superior sense of design. Clearly if some effort had been put into the cover, surely this would be reflected in the contents as well? Look at the cover!

I was so pleased by the effort Blackmask made at being creative that I missed a certain unforgiveable typo. Bimbashi Baruk of... "Eygpt?!" Does no one at Blackmask have a copy of Word they could use to run spellcheck?

Needless to say, I'm done with buying public domain books from shady publishers like these.