The Violent Century

I picked up this superhero novel in the hopes that it would be like a book version of the Watchmen movie. Unfortunately it never played out like that. The Watchman movie had an interesting and captivating narrator in the form of Rorschach and a whole bunch of interesting secondary characters. The pr......more

What makes a man? What makes a hero? A tall, pale, aristocratic-looking man walks into a pub in London. The pub is almost impossible to find, hidden under a railway arch, lost in thick fog. There is only one patron at the bar. “The Old Man wants to have a word with you,” the tall, aristocratic man tell......more

For me, there were only two masterpieces in the superheroes genre: Alan Moore's Watchmen and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight. The Violent Century is certainly the third one. There is so much to be impressed with in this novel: the structure, the characters, the prose and alternate history, that is s......more

Another review describes this book as a mash-up of “X-Men” and “Inglorious Basterds” (to which I had also compared “A Man Lies Dreaming” in a previous review), as if I wasn’t already totally in love with Lavie Tidhar’s work, that would have sold this book to me just as much as the blurb on the cover......more

This is my second read by the author, following his latest book. This one is actually a rerelease from years ago. And I’m thinking Tidhar is an author best appreciated from a rear view mirror perspective. Or, is that doesn’t come across as flatteringly as it’s meant to, his work is the forest not th......more