Locke and Key vol. 4 - Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

Still excellent. Still not hufely keen on this style of art but I can see that it's done well, with lots of details and highly expressive faces. The story is moving forward too, and reading this one made me retrospectively realise that vol. 3 was mostly padding. It's a common thing in TV and comics that try and tell a definite story in an indefinite episodic format. Once you've noticed it you can't unnotice it and not many things are more off-putting in a work of fiction. But this is one story that seems to be back on track.

Dark Tower Comics vol. 3-4 - Robin Furth & Jae Lee

Honestly, disappointing. I'm getting sick of Jae Lee's refusal to draw backgrounds. His characters are quite good realisations of the original characters, but they act everything out in front of a big blur of smoke and colours and the occasional table. Given that these are fantasy stories set in a richly imagined and (in King's prose) deeply detailed world, Lee's style is completely wrong for this project. And the writing is underwhelming, and the story is unnecessarily different from the one established in the novel. Bit of a shame, really.

The Wind Through the Keyhole - Stephen King

Wonderful to return to Midworld. It's a good book even by King's standards and I like the story within a story within a story format. Also nice to see more of Gilead-that-was and get to know some characters from those days - like taciturn badass-in-training Jamie DeCurry. The central story dragged a bit during the quest section, I thought, and as always with fantasy some of the conceits appealed to me more than others. But good fun. Latest on the film and/or TV adaptation is that they want Russel Crowe as Roland. Please no.

How I Escaped My Certain Fate - Stewart Lee

A very entertaining and thought-provoking book. As well as autobiographical chapters it contains transcripts of some of his stand-up shows, annotated with thousands of words of footnotes where he explains all the jokes and analyses himself, sometimes very critically. His views on comedy and art are interesting and he's obviously very intelligent, but fairly arrogant too, and his repeated admissions of and apologies for this arrogance don't help. The fact that he has made a career on such a narrow, non-mainstream, intellectual approach in an industry full of bullshit and greed (like any other) is very encouraging.

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness

A kids' or "young adults'" book about a boy whose mum is dying of cancer and a Swamp Thing-style tree monster. It's very powerful and mostly well-written, except for the annoying habit of breaking up lines for emphasis.
Like this.
Which is a cheap trick.
Even when used sparingly - and here it isn't. Also feels a little... not didactic, exactly, but a bit messagey. A bit "here's the answer, kids!" But a well-crafted, tightly structured bit of fiction, definitely.

River Out of Eden - Richard Dawkins

Enlightening and brilliantly written as always. It got a bit technical in places and I had some trouble understanding bit of it, but as usual the emphasis is on principles and concepts, not details and numbers. He's a master of making science exciting and  inspirational; one or two early passages about how we're all descended from the tiny minority of the most successful ancestors really affected me. One thing I can't understand is how he hasn't devoted a book to the evolution of the human brain, and thus of ideals and values and ways of transcending the pitiless dumb indifference of natural selection (something he talks about a lot). This strikes me as almost as momentous an event as the origin of life itself.

Leviathan - Paul Auster

To be honest, a bit disappointing compared to his others. A bit of a slog. The intricacy and complexity of the story is impressive, but another word for "intricate and complex" would be "convoluted". Excellent characters though, and some interesting ideas. Also, the entire story, almost, is told in "wide angle" mode - summaries covering lots of time rather than moment-by-moment scenes. Despite the book's other faults, this works perfectly well. Auster is yet another great writer you have to denounce if you believe totally in the "show don't tell" rule.