Tag Archives: writer: george mann

The Revenant Express, by George Mann

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

All those years hearing talk of hellfire and brimstone on a Sunday morning, the vicar preaching that a life of sin and misdemeanour would lead to condemnation and torment in the next life—at no point had the young Clarence imagined the waking Hell he might first be forced to endure as a working adult. None of it had prepared him for this.

I wasn’t expecting to like this much, and I didn’t. Steampunk and zombies, neither of which are my favourite things, along with Mann’s usual leaden prose and historical inaccuracies. Did not finish. You can get The Revenant Express here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2020, and the sf book that had lain longest unread on my bookshelves. Next on those piles are Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume I, ed. Marie Hodgkinson, and Tides of the Titans, by Thoraiya Dyer.

A Matter of Life and Death, by George Mann, Emma Vieceli and Hi Fi

Posted on by

Second frame of third part:

Continuing my journey through my substantial backlog of Doctor Who comics, I’m now at this Eighth Doctor collection from 2016. I have generally rated George Mann poorly as a writer, and so I am glad to say that I really enjoyed these five linked stories, in which the Eighth Doctor finds a young artist squatting in his country house and takes her on a series of adventures. The third, in which sinister entities emerge from mirrors, is particularly good.

My one complaint is that artist Emma Vieceli’s depiction of the Eighth Doctor doesn’t look a lot like Paul McGann. (The cover is by someone else, I think.)

But otherwise this came as a pleasant surprise and I will give George Mann’s work at least a second glance in future. You can get it here.

Next up: the Ninth Doctor in Weapons of Past Destruction.