The third and final part of the Dark City Girls trilogy by Michael Dalton and Adam Lance was published today (29th January 2026) for the Amazon kindle ebook reader. Dark City Girls is a noir fantasy combat story blending romantic and magical elements and either directly includes the main characters from, or references, more than half-a dozen other series written by the authors in what they call the "Fateforged Universe." It is a "gamelit" story, e,g, it reads like a novelised version of a fantasy roleplay combat adventure game, complete with character sheets with ability lists and combat stats for the main characters and occasionally some of their antagonists. The central character "General Zane" had been a major leading a cavalry troop during and immediately after the American Civil War. In 1867 he and some of his men accidentally passed through a gap between worlds and found themselves in the "Fae Wilds" e.g. a place where dreams and creations ...

Eighty one years ago today, on 27th January 1945, at about 9am, the first Soviet soldier from a reconnaissance unit of the 100th Infantry Division appeared on the grounds of the prisoners' infirmary in Monowitz. The entire division arrived half an hour later. The same day a military doctor arrived and began to organize assistance. In the afternoon soldiers of the Red Army entered the vicinity of the Auschwitz main camp and Birkenau. Near the main camp, they met resistance from retreating German units. 231 Red Army soldiers died in close combat for the liberation of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monowitz. Two of them died in front of the gates of Auschwitz main camp. One of them was Lieutenant Gilmudin Badryjewicz Baszirow. The first Red Army troops arrived in Birkenau and Auschwitz at around 3 p.m. and were joyfully greeted by the liberated prisoners. After the removal of mines from the surrounding area, soldiers of the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front marched into the camp and broug...

 

A reboot of the 1970's British Space Opera cult classic "Blakes Seven" is officially in development. Blakes Seven was set in  a dystopian future, in which a band of rebels opposed the totalitarian Terran Federation. It ran for four seasons each of thirteen fifty-minute episodes. Initially conceived as "the dirty dozen in space" if has much the same feel of a small group of flawed heroes opposition a huge, powerful and tyrannical state as the much more recent Star Wars project, Andor. There were some brilliant acting performances, particularly from Gareth Thomas as the eponymous hero Roj Blake, an idealist who leads the crusade against the evil Federation for the first two seasons, Paul Darrow as Kerr Avon, an apparently cynical and coldly rational computer genius who takes over from Blake as leader of the rebels for the third and fourth seasons, and Jacqueline Pearce as Supreme Commander (later President) Servalan, the show's main antagonist. According to De...

This video is a fascinating account of the production of the ITV television version of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels. It also brings out some of the real historical events and characters which inspired both the books and the TV series. The Horatio Hornblower books were, of course, one of the inspirations for David Weber's Honor Harrington novels, as David Weber has made quite clear. One thing which struck me on watching this video was that the duel at the climax of the fourth Honorverse novel, "Field of dishonour" has some significant similarities, although the plot is not identical, to the ITV version rather than Forester's original version of the duel in "The Even Chance." The video ends with a comparison between the Hornblower books and TV series, and the Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell and the TV series made of those books. The comparison is well done but misses one significant trick. C.S. Forester, the author of the Hornblower novels, ...

Christmas is not celebrated in the galaxy far far away, though "Life day" has some similarities. For anyone reading this who does celebrate Christmas, today is "Twelfth Night" which is the last day of Christmas 2025/6. So remember to take all your Christmas decorations down!

The original book, "Thrawn: Alliances" by Timothy Zahn is a novel set in the current Disney Canon version of the "Star Wars" universe. I reviewed that novel in the post immediately before this one: this is a companion review of the four part graphic novel (or comic book) adaptation which credits Timothy Zahn and Jody Houser as the writers, Pat Olliffe and Andrea Di Vito as the artists and Rachelle Rosenberg as the colorist. (A number of other contributors are listed on the credits page.) Like the written novel on which is is based, these graphic novels are reasonably consistent with and form part of what is at January 2026 the approved Disney "canon." It is perhaps worth making clear at the start that the four existing graphic novels published in 2024 only cover about the first two thirds of the original book.  The original Timothy Zahn novel has a two-part prologue, twenty chapters, and a two-part epilogue, and 345 pages. The graphic novels essentially co...

"Thrawn: Alliances" by Timothy Zahn is a novel set in the current Disney Canon version of the "Star Wars" universe. The novel sits in the middle of Timothy Zahn's second trilogy of works about the Chiss Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nurodo or "Thrawn" consisting of "Star Wars: Thrawn" (2017) "Thrawn: Alliances" (2018) "Thrawn: Treason" (2019.) These novels are reasonably consistent with and form part of what is at January 2026 the approved Disney "canon" as do the three books of the "Thrawn Ascendancy" prequel trilogy set during Thrawn's youth and while he was an officer of the Chiss Ascendancy. Thrawn: Alliances tells two stories set a little less than twenty years apart, alternating between the two. The first story arc takes place in 20-19 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin) during the latter part of the Clone Wars (e.g. between the action of the two Star Wars prequel films  "Episode II: Attac...