Nick!

An easy read for an impatient as hell reader., 18 July 2011

I picked this book up because, though I've read Elmore Leonard occasionally before, I really took to the character of Raylan Givens in the TV series Justified, which is based on his appearances in two or three of Leonard's stories.

Here, Givens plays support to the bigger story of a bookie called Harry Arno, ready to retire but pulled into conflict with his Mafia employers by the FBI in the hope that he'll turn snitch.

Leonard can write this sort of story in his sleep. My biggest problem with a lot of novels is that they're often over-written, but here Leonard gets into each character, and into their stories, with the barest minimum of exposition, spare description,… Read more

I'm a fool..., 18 July 2011

...and got so excited about the pricing that I failed to adequately read the product description. It's probably obvious to anyone else, but this isn't actually two well-balanced pre-designed playable decks for the game Magic The Gathering, it's actually a set of plastic deck-holders made to be a bit more durable than the card packs that the decks themselves come in.

When you buy them. In a different sales item than this one.

As such, it isn't really a toy - it's a carry-case for a toy. In that sense, it feels pretty durable, and the presentation of it - using the beautiful box art from the Knights & Dragons expansion of the game - is perfectly lovely. Though if I had… Read more

A beautiful, evocative period romance in comic form., 18 July 2011

I've enjoyed a lot of Andi Watson's work in the past, and was a little sad to see him producing comics that were only written by him, because his sequential art has a language and tempo to it that is as individual and smart and simple as his writing. However, this is the first example of Simon Gane's art I have seen, and any knee-jerk disappointment I felt before reading vanished once I saw his art.

Less clean and more frenetic than Watson's linework, Gane's art on this book is perfect for the setting - bohemian Paris in the early 50s - and his locations and styles are instantly recognisable as that place, and that time.

If anything, the love story that Watson is… Read more