Book 21 - Afterlife and a ... fair few semi random things

Book 21 !

Cracking through them still, although I sense a slowing in the summer with the heat we have now. Car was reporting 30 degrees C in the covered car park at the Mall earlier.

Book ?

It's Blake's 7, Afterlife written by Tony Attwood who compiled the Programme Guide. The book was publised in 1984, following up on the series which ran from 1978 to 1981. It was one of the classic 70s/80s sci fi series. Good stories, little bit (often very) weird, minimal budget to support it but keeping it all about the characters who were an edgy bunch for this one.

This one only has 5 characters returning from the series and concentrates on a much smaller cast. It picks up on and explains what happened at the end of season 4 (spoilers!) and then carries on a story from there.

The good parts of this book were that the characters were instantly recognisable. From ruthless Avon, to cowardly Vila and then tyrannical Servalan (plus 2 more!). When reading the dialogue, I had that minds eye picture of the original actors playing out the scenes. And I haven't watched Blake's 7 in years.

The bad part was that it felt like a miniseries worth of episodic sections, all pretty separate from each other with tenuous linkages between them. It felt like the author didn't really know what to do with the great characters or where he wanted to take them.

That said though ... this is a far superior book to Lucifer which didn't belong in the Blake's 7 universe. Oh - I remembered what the other thing I labelled like that was : Alien Covenant, although that was a decent movie (unlike Lucifer) that shouldn't have had the Alien tag on it.

Next book ?

XWing Wraith Squadron - Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston. Enjoying it so far after 63 of 414 pages. I didn't want to put it down to go to bed last night. Honest ! More later.

Random stuff ?

Washing machine - need a new one. It's been wearing down for quite some time now but on Saturday it went the WHAM of a probable failed bearing and the drum doesn't really want to turn any more. So I'll buy one of those and get it in over the next fortnight. I got away with it on the wash ... there was only about 2 minutes to go before WHAM occurred.
Music buying - tonight's Mall run saw cds from Jack White, Chvrches, Snow Patrol and Banks appear. Looking forward to listening to those.
Waiting for music buying - Kasey Musgrave's album is wanted and listening to Gorillaz Humans yesterday has changed my mind on getting their next. (Still not getting Arctic Monkey's new one though). Still waiting for Ed Sheeran's latest to go cheaper. It's taking a while !
Not cable buying - Jessops guy didn't want to know. I found them a tad rude and I won't be going back any time soon. Besides, there's a camera shop in town who were very helpful when I acquired my camera.
Not laptop buying - no issues, the John Lewis lady who has answered my questions a few times is very helpful. They just don't have what I want. Although the Dell XPS reduced to £880 in clearance was VERY shiny. Too expensive.

What else ?

It's warm out at the moment. Looks like we'll have this for a week until it breaks into rain. In the meantime, pass the ice cubes !

Right - too hot to play the games at the moment (and I'm wary that opening Stellaris now will lead to closing it at 1.30am. Or later). Book plus videos, possible stream watching if an interesting person comes online !

Oh and ... sneak preview of a later post :

Could that be part of Book 22 ?