This was a behemoth of a book that took me the better part of a year to read (as an aside, I am very glad I have multiple books on the go these days, rather than just one, like when I read Ulysses) and during that time, I had very mixed feelings. Sometimes I’d read a chapter and think “Wow, this did a really good job of capturing the bonds of friendship, what a good book”, other times I’d read a chapter and think “gosh, this is boring, why is this description of a river so long?” and sometimes I’d even think “oh my goodness, what is wrong with Stephen King, why did he write in a child orgy?”

So, for those who don’t know, It tells the story of a small, rural American town in which an otherworldly entity manifests and wrecks havoc on the population for its own satisfaction/survival… except nobody in the world, even the town’s citizens, ever seem to realise that there have been so many violent and horrific incident taking place there. Most iconically, ‘It’ takes the form of Pennywise the clown, who comes after the main group of characters (seven kids who call themselves The Losers Club). The story jumps around in time, and we see them learning about It and getting ready to face It as children, as well as returning to their hometown as wary adults because It seems to have returned.

There are some bits about how friendships grow and change after childhood, but how they remain important into adulthood which I thought were quite beautiful. Indeed, many of the bits about them becoming friends and whiling away their time in childish ways were so appealing to me, that I sometimes thought it didn’t need the supernatural horror at all. The human drama was well-written and I felt invested in all of their relationships – by far, this was my favourite thing about It.

Something that was more hit and miss, was the story’s side-steps. There were various flashbacks and scenes of horrific events caused by It, which weren’t directly connected to the main storyline. Some were quite interesting, others were quite bland, and some felt needlessly gratuitous. What I didn’t like, for example, were stories about homophobic or racial violence, which was attributed to the presence of It. The thing is, such awful things don’t need to be attributed to a supernatural evil, because they happen all the time in the real world, and using them to heighten the sense of horror surrounding the titular monster just feels a little bit too exploitive – putting violence against minority groups in there just for the shock factor.

Having said that, I don’t mean to accuse Stephen King of being racist or homophobic himself. Generally speaking, I would say the book is fairly progressive in that regard, because those violent acts of prejudice are always condemned – along with domestic violence too. So while I am glad to see these things being rightly criticised, even in a slightly older piece of writing, I’d still question using such awful real world horrors to primarily reinforce the evil of Pennywise. I am not against writers tackling these subjects by any means, but it felt just a little tasteless.

As for the horror itself – it was a little too in-your-face for me. The descriptions of the terrifying forms that It took were never particularly creepy in my mind. Some people, I’m sure, will get the shivers when they read descriptions of scary monsters and lots of gore, but I prefer horror that doesn’t show too much. Creepiness that only becomes apparent when you read between the lines. Having said that, I still felt some degree of tension during these scenes, because I cared about the characters and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.

I should also mention the infamous “child orgy” scene, which was really uncomfortable to read and completely unnecessary. I won’t spoil the full context as it’s near the end, but basically, the one female character in the main group of friends has sex with all the male characters, one after the other, and they’re all around ten or eleven years old. There’s a really loose story reason for all this, which felt very forced, and I don’t think this should have been included. The ‘reason’ that it was included, which I won’t spoil, kind of conveys a rather old fashioned (and in my mind, harmful) attitude about sex.

Overall, I am glad that I read this book. There are several aspects of it that I really admire Stephen King for. There are also, however, several aspects that are irritating – long tangents and things that we know about in far too much detail (the whole history of a river, loads of details on the contents of one character’s medicine cabinet, etc). It can often feel annoying when you want the story to move on, but you’re stuck reading about some historic event. I think what Stephen King wanted to do, was make Derry (the book’s setting) really feel like a real location, but in the process, gave us far too much information, which pads the book out significantly. There are some nuggets in here, for sure, but mining through to find them will sometimes feel like a chore.

Rating: 6.9/10

This is the first volume of Sixth Doctor comic strips that were originally published in Doctor Who Magazine. Significantly, these stories introduce Frobisher, the Doctor’s shapeshifting companion who spends most of his time in the form of a penguin. Frobisher is absolutely delightful, and I enjoyed the adventures of the two of them. Here’s an overview of each story in the collection.

The Shape Shifter by Steve Parkhouse

The first story in the collection sees Frobisher tracking down the Doctor because of a bounty on him – naturally, the two of them end up working together. It’s a tongue-in-cheek detective style story and it’s good fun seeing Frobisher using his powers to mess with the Doctor. One panel shows him pretending to be a bath while the Doctor gets in him – hilarious. A bit bare-bones, but a good introduction.

Voyager by Steve Parkhouse

This was a really interesting and trippy story. Here the Doctor and Frobisher encounter a man named Astrolabus, a mysterious individual in possession of a collection of ancient star charts. The Doctor has nightmares about a bizarre entity named Voyager, and it seems Astrolabus has some connection to him. I won’t say much, but it gets into the lore of the Doctor Who universe really nicely.

Polly the Glot by Steve Parkhouse

Here the Doctor and Frobisher get involved in a movement to protect an alien species known as Zyglots. Not bad by any means, but less interesting than most of the others in the collection – though it does keep the previous storyline about Astrolabus going.

Once Upon a Time-Lord by Steve Parkhouse

The start of this story was a little bit confusing, because it felt like it was continuing after another story that should have gone between this and Polly the Glot, but it didn’t. But, that aside, this was a fun story that sees the Doctor and Frobisher entering the word of fairy tales. Another very trippy one, and a nice example of a story that could really only work on the comic format (with some panels kind of morphing into a storybook). This also brings a close to the story arc about Astrolabus, in an unexpectedly dark and twisted way.

War-Game by Alan McKenzie

This story sees the Doctor and Frobisher getting sold into slavery on a planet that feels a bit like a generic fantasy setting. Things pick up a little bit when a Draconian character is introduced, as I have always liked that species. All-in-all though, this was one of the less notable stories in the collection.

Funhouse by Alan McKenzie

Another mind-bending story that sees the Doctor and Frobisher inside a strange inter-dimensional funhouse. I don’t want to spoil any of the unexpected surprises, but there are lots of fun references to the past in this one. Definitely one of my favourites in this volume.

Kane’s/Abel’s/The Warrior’s/Frobisher’s Story by Alan McKenzie

This final story is a grand finale that sees the Doctor working together with old friends from previous stories in this volume, as well as reuniting with Peri, in order to help combat the Skeletoids – an evil race so powerful that even the Daleks and the Cybermen have fallen to their might. It’s a really cool story to round off the collection with and I was pleased to see Peri added to the mix (even if her presence is a headache for the timeline).

I think fans of the Sixth Doctor will definitely get a lot of this volume, and really I think any Doctor Who fan with an interest in the expanded universe should give it a try so that they can get to know Frobisher. He’s such an iconic character and I love that the Doctor travelled with a penguin for a while. The stories are weird and quite unlike anything that would have been on TV in this era, and I think that’s exactly what Doctor Who comics should be.

Rating: 8.1/10

This is one of Shakespeare’s historic plays and tells the story of the ill-fated love affair between Mark Antony and Cleopatra. It’s actually quite a rare instance where I have very little to say in my review. I wasn’t bored when I read it by any means, but ultimately, all I can really say is that it is what it is.

Perhaps the biggest talking point of the book is Cleopatra who, some argue is Shakespeare’s most well written/well developed female character. While I would personally say that Lady Macbeth is the character who holds that distinction, I will say this about Cleopatra – she’s alright. Not an awful character, but not spectacular either. It’s nice to see a woman in a position of power in a Shakespeare play, rather than just as a fawning side-character… but then, the position of power that she has is owed to history, not to Shakespear’s mind… and she still spends an awful lot of time fawning over Mark Antony, to an extent that she seems almost infantilised at times.

I could just recount aspects of the storyline, but that wouldn’t really be much of a ‘review’ so, other than that, I guess the best way to describe it is as follows: it’s interesting and will give you what is (I imagine) a highly fictionalised account of the historic events between the two titular characters. Afterwards you’ll think “Huh, that was alright” and that’s it. It’s a sequence of events that are made more interesting by the fact that they’re based on history, but a sequence of events that will prompt very little food for thought. It all just kind of happens.

Fans of classical literature like me, or fans of Shakespeare at large, will definitely enjoy it, and I enjoyed it too… but, it just felt very middle of the road. Nothing amazing, nothing amazingly bad. I read it, it was okay, and then it was over, and unlike most things I read, it didn’t lead to any interesting conversions with fellow readers. Make of that what you will.

Five out of ten seems like the only appropriate score for this, but while I’ve given other books that score for having a huge amount of bad, and also an equal list of good things, this one has nothing egregious wrong with it – it’s just good in the mildest way.

Score: 5/10

Buy it here.

For years, I had heard things about the Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog series. People always spoke about how dark and edgy it was, and how it had overly complex storylines. I was very curious, particularly as I enjoy dark stories about light-hearted characters and am quite a Sonic fan. Recently, I finally got around to read it. Knowing there are so many of them, I read the first twenty-five in one chunk.

What was particularly surprising to me was the fact that, at first, it was very much one of the most slapstick interpretations of Sonic the Hedgehog that I’d come across. It was full off fourth wall-breaking joke, silly puns, and was generally just a series of very low stakes adventures for Sonic and his friends. I actually found a lot of them quite funny.

Generally speaking, they all deal with Sonic and friends (the Freedom Fighters) coming up against Robotnik in some form or another, but it slowly started to get more interesting – which is good, because it otherwise would have gotten old fast. One story showed countless different versions of Sonic from throughout the multiverse – one of which was an evil character called the Anti-Sonic (who become a recurring villain). Another saw Robotnik and the Freedom fighters somewhat on the same side as the came up against an alien foe.

Some of the comics are adaptations of the games too. Of course, back when this comic was coming out, the storylines of the Sonic the Hedgehog games were much more vaguely defined, meaning that they were still somewhat open to interpretation and it’s interesting to see how the writers on the comic interpreted things a differently to the mainstream interpretation you see in the modern games.

Speaking of which, I enjoyed the expanded cast of characters here, like Sally Acron as the leader of the Freedom fighters, Rotor as their tech guy, Bunnie a partially robotised rabbit character, and Antoine as a kind of stuck-up comic relief (who I think Sonic is actually kind of unfair too). Tails is also there, but he’s the only regular Sonic character that fans will recognised from the modern-day cast.

My absolute favourite aspect of the story, and the thing that was closest to being ‘dark’ or ‘edgy’ was the introduction of Sonic’s Uncle Chuck and his old dog. These characters were captured by Robotnik and turned into robots, which I thought was really sad and works well as a motivation for Sonic, while also serving to show that Robotnik really is capable of doing some pretty horrible things.

As a Sonic fan, I definitely enjoyed what I read of this comic and I will be reading more in future. I’m quite optimistic about the storylines I have yet to read and I think this is a pretty good start to the series. My only real criticism is that the fat jokes about Robotnik didn’t really age so well.

Rating: 8.2/10

Diving into the eleventh volume of Assassination Classroom, it was noticeable that this was something of a breather entry. That’s not to say that it wasn’t enjoyable or important to the overall storyline, but there were certainly fewer major developments in this one.

The first part of the storyline is about the student Isogai. We get a glimpse into his personal life and find that he has a part-time job outside of school… something which goes against the school’s policy and ultimately endangers his position their. Class A want to blackmail him and in order to protect their classmate, they end up doing battle in a competitive school event.

It’s fun to read, and it’s nice to get a little bit more character development for Isogai, but the school event feels like the kind of thing you’ve already seen before at this point. There’s slightly less focus on Koro-sensei too, which is a pity, because he’s the biggest start of the manga for me.

After that, the second half of this is about the students doing a bit of community service in order to repay an old man who they inadvertently injured during some out of school training. This then sees them looking after a group of younger children and learning a bit of responsibility. Fun, with some sweet moments, but again, nothing extraordinary – although I did love Koro-sensei’s interactions with the old man. His weird human disguise is funny.

A good volume, for sure, but nothing groundbreaking.

Rating: 8/10

Buy it here.

I love stories that are set in slightly spooky old estates out in the moors, and The Secret Garden is a perfect example of that kind of book. It starts out in India, but I won’t spoil exactly what happens, as it was very dark, and very unexpected, but once it gets into it, a girl named Mary Lennox is adjusting to a new life in a solitary home in the Yorkshire moors.

As you might have guessed, this home contains a secret garden, but I don’t want to say much about it, as there are lots of little twists and turns. At its heart, it’s really about the blossoming childhood friendship between Mary, a boy named Dickon, and another boy called Colin. They all change and grow from their relationship, and having that at the heart of the story is very wholesome.

Another aspect that was very appealing to me was the fact that the story has a fantastic atmosphere – the old house out in the moors comes across so clearly, and the aura of mystery pervades the whole thing. If you’re somebody who loves nature, and stories that capture its beauty, then that’s one aspect of The Secret Garden that will be particularly appealing.

Not only does this book do a good job of showing how untampered wilderness can actually be quite daunting, but it also shows how it can be something that’s very comforting. Dickon in particular was quite a likeable character, because he perfectly embodies the idea of being at one with nature – perhaps in a slightly over the top way, but then again, it is a novel for children. I was particularly pleased with his ethos of respect for animals, which seems quite rare in other work of the time.

One aspect that I didn’t so much enjoy was one that seemed to have the angle of “The chronically ill have willed themselves into that position”. It’s a complicated one though, because I know that there are instances of a person believing they’re unwell to the extent that it can make them unwell, but I also feel like because this is such a common narrative in stories like this, it’s actually quite harmful, because those who are genuinely unwell have people acting like this is the case. It’s of a time, and medical knowledge was much more limited back then, so I can forgive it, but in the grand scheme of things I don’t think it’s a helpful narrative.

My only other gripe with it, is that it seemed to end a little suddenly. I guess I’m used to books of that era giving loads of detail about the characters’ lives beyond the main events of the novel, but with this one, I was genuinely surprised that the last chapter was the last chapter (I was reading an ebook). This was particularly true for the character Martha (a servant who Mary befriends) who plays fairly important role in the book, but whose last appearance is so incidental, you’d never think that you wouldn’t see her again.

Nonetheless, I don’t want to end this review on a negative note, because it’s a sweet little book and I’m glad that I read it. It’s a delightful children’s novel that tells a moving story about crawling out of a pit of despair and isolation, and finding new happiness through the power of friendship and the majesty of nature.

Rating: 7.9/10

Buy it here.