Esperando al Diluvio (Awaiting the flood) by Dolores Redondo.

Super fun, gripping, and addictive read. Could not stop. Literally. It is not a perfect story. I had to suspend my disbelief, but I enjoyed it. I found some incongruencies and some corny scenes but kept reading cos I wanted to know what was going to happen. The novel is very immersive. I was transported to Glasgow and then Bilbao. I forgot I was reading a book!! I guess Redondo is really good with (gross/brutal) crime, suspense, and thriller, but I don't think romance is her thing.

Exterminator 17 written by Dionnet, drawn by Bilal and Baranko

There are 4 stories in the book. The original Exterminator 17 by Dionnet and Bilal and the sequel trilogy by Dionnet and Baranko. I liked the first story, charged with philosophical themes like the meaning/nature of life, mortality and the ethics of the use of technologies. Amazing artwork. Interesting read, but the ending was unsatisfactory. Actually it didn't feel like an ending. The trilogy was a bit of a let down. Not much food for thought but the Exterminator 17 in a boring gangster plot. The art was OK, but not at the level of Bilal's.

Human Society. How Evolution and Psychology shaped our world. New Scientist. Essential Guide No 14.

Includes a variety of articles looking at civilisation and our societies from different perspectives. My favourites were the ones about evolution, social hierarchies, and religion. I'd like to read more about religion. I want to understand why humans tend to and need to belief. Was religion the catalyst for the formation of big societies and our current civilisation? As Steven Pinker says, "belief in God is a kind of belief you hold for its moral benefits, not for its factual accuracy." Three theories explain why we believe: Cognitive by-product theory: "religious belief is a side effect of cognitive skills that evolved for other reasons." Someone who believes that (all) events are caused by agents have more chances of survival than someone who doesn't. Theory of Mind: a mechanism which "evolved so that we could infer the mental states and intentions of others, even if they aren't physically present." This is extended to assign mental states and intentions to inanimate objects or invisible entities. Existential Insecurity - fear of death, randomness, and loss of control can be soothed if we belief there is someone looking after us and that death isn't the end.

Choice of Gods by Clifford Simak.

A good read with philosophical food for thought. It's a critique of our worship and dependency on technology and the neglect for everything in nature. Those who were taken were technology worshipers and continued to be in the planet's they were sent to. The ones who stayed developed a strong connection with nature, especially the Indians. While white people had strong roots on earth, they relied on the robots for all their household and farming work. This seemed to me a contradiction, but after thinking a bit, I realised this is how many of us live, in love with nature and with our dishwashers, cars, and smartphones. Anyways the ending was a bit unclear to me, but I guess it was well worth the ride.

Immoderate Greatness. Why civilisations fail by William Ophuls.

This is a great short book that explains why and how civilisations collapse. Apparently, the problem is in their very nature. In their magnitude, in their Greatness. A comment by Thomas Homer-Dixon in the back of the book says, "Ophuls superbly synthesises a huge amount of literature and presents the synthesis in an easy accessible format with beautiful clear prose." It's true. The book is charged with a lot of analysis, but it is not a difficult read. You just need to be interested in the topic. Homer-Dixon continues, "There is no false optimism here. The patient (modern human civilisation) is critically and perhaps terminally ill," yeah, from Ophuls explanation, it seems that's the case. The book is divided in two big sections Biophysical limits (including ecological exhaustion, exponential growth, expedited entropy and excessive complexity) and Human Error (moral decay and practical failure). Each issue is explained in a separate chapter. But the book is not only about problems. Ophuls shares more of his wisdom at the end, and alternative to a solution in the very last paragraph.

The Beak of the Finch: a story of evolution in our time by Jonathan Weiner.

This is about empirical studies proving some of Darwin’s most important concepts. Weiner tells the story of Rosemary and Peter Grant, evolutionary biologists, who spent years in the Galápagos islands observing Finches. Their objective was to observe, witness evolution in real time. And they did. The book explains what and how they did their observations and most importantly how they came to their conclusions. One aspect I liked about the book is that the author takes its time going back to Darwin’s original ideas providing historical and scientific context. I particularly liked some segments where Weiner explains Darwin’s conflicting ideas, having been a religious person, and following Milton’s ideas and then realising about the reality of evolution. The Grant’s studied the shape, and sizes of the finches' beaks in all their varieties. Compared their eating and mating habits with their beaks and were able to draw connections. They found out that the islands have so many finch varieties so every variety could have different food sources, usually seeds. The kinds of seeds a finch can eat depends on the shape, size and strength of their beaks. The Grant’s noted that during the wet seasons all finches feasted on all kinds of seeds (the ones they could eat), but during dry seasons each variety would focus on their speciality. Finches would die when their special seeds were scarce. Just a tiny variation in the length of a beak would make a bird unable to open a seed and eat it. In hard times (draughts) hundreds of birds would die and the ones who survive would reproduce more. You can call this natural selection. This way finches would adapt to the kind of foods which are available at some point in time. This and sexual selection, females selecting males with particular characteristics (e.g. with long or deep beaks) would determine how variations happen. So variations -> natural selection + sexual selection.

Explore, Expand, Escape by Guillaume Singelin

B E A U T I F U L. 

A science fiction, part space opera, part intimate character focused story, dealing with themes of capitalism, corporate greed, and the effects on common people. Common people of the future, that is, who are born in space or who have lived in space most of their lives. Spacers living in precarious, claustrophobic conditions, working their lives for corporations who exploit them. The art is astounding. Loved the colour pallet and original character design.

A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick

I just finished this book. Liked it a lot, so much it is now my favourite PKD (I've read Ubik, Do androis, and the 3 Stigmata). I might change my mind later, who knows, but the impact it's had on me won't change. It's a story of colonisation. It got me hooked on the third page when it introduced religious themes, particularly a character reading this from a religious book: "God is not supernatural. His existence was the first and most natural mode of being to form itself." The story is not about religion, but religion is part of some sort of guiding principle the characters follow or believe in. That, and the final twist, which transforms the story in a different kind of story and leaves you having existential thoughts.

Los Locos del Gekiga by Masahiko Matsumoto. (Crazy for Gekiga or Gekiga Fanatics).

Unfortunately, there is no English version of this manga. 

A nice read for anyone interested in manga. It follows the three mangaka, (Yoshihiro Matsumoto, Takao Saitô and Masahiko Matsumoto) in their late teens, for a couple of years. Working in Osaka, creating short stories for a detective series. It's not only about that. There is more to their lives. A nice dive into mid-20th century Japan, their hopes and hardships. 

Osaka, late 50s, a city that faces its future with the scars of war still visible, three young, unknown creators fight for a dream to become mangaka. Full of passion, new ideas, and unseen perspectives, this trio will try to break through in the complicated and sometimes sordid world of manga. Without realising it, they revolutionise manga forever. Matsumoto, Tatsumi and Saitô, three partners, three friends, three geniuses.

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson

A nice surprise. I read Brain Wave by the same author some years ago and didn't like it. The worst part for me was the cardboard characters. Thought the author wasn't for me, but a few weeks ago, I decided to read Tau Zero only because I liked the synopsis. This story is much better. I found the idea of an Interstellar trip reaching near light speed without the ability to stop, interesting, and original. A spaceship with broken brakes. Liked the depiction of the crew, the interactions, the worries, and the passing of time, not months or years, but hundreds of thousands, millions of years. Found the ending a bit rushed but still good, in terms of the physical, astronomical, and philosophical concepts used to create the resolution. A quote I liked: "This Leonora Christine, seventh and youngest of her class. Her outward simplicity was required by the naof her mission and was as deceptive as a human skin; inside, she was very nearly as complex and subtle. The time since the basic idea of her was first conceived, in the middle twentieth century, had included perhaps a million-man years of thought and work directed toward achieving the reality; and some of those men had possessed intellects equal to any that had ever existed. Though practical experience and essential tools had already been gotten when construction was begun upon her, and though technological civilisation had reached its fantastic flowering (and finally, for a while, was not burdened by war or the threat of war) - nevertheless, her cost was by no means negligible, had indeed provoked widespread complaint. All this, to send fifty people to one practically next-door star?"

The First Signs. Unlocking the mysteries of the world's oldest symbols by Genevieve von Petzinger

In Dec 2024, I read the New Scientist Essential Guide N4 where they highlighted von Petzinger's work. I made a note to read her book as I found this thing about signs so fascinating. The book is good. Some bits were a bit boring, to be honest, but overall, I liked it. The author tells her story about how she goes to all ice age caves in Europe, to inventory not cave art, but cave signs. She identified 32 signs that are repeated consistently across place and time. She explains a bit of evolutionary history, a bit of language, linguistics, and writing, as well as the difference between spoken language - ephemeral - and written language - permanent. She makes a case of how human beings might have been more than capable of abstract thinking and therefore writing, way before current beliefs. Finally she proposes a few ideas of what some of the signs could mean. Von Petzinger does not provide a Rosetta stone for cave signs but presents a very interesting view of prehistoric life. Hopefully, after more research is done, we'll have a better idea of what these signs mean. A couple of nice quotes: "There is no permanence to spoken language. It is very much anchored in the moment, in the exchange, after which it becomes only a memory, one that we may or may not remember accurately, and even the memory itself will soon fade into oblivion." "The first instance of making an intentional graphic mark was one of the most profoundly important moments in our species’ history – right up there with the invention of tools, the control of fire, and the development of spoken language. Whatever this mark may have been, even if it was just a single line, doesn’t matter. What matter is that, for the first time, someone purposefully made a mark on a physical surface with the intent to communicate meaning. That message had the power to survive beyond that specific place and moment, and language had officially taken on a life of its own – another life beyond that of its maker."

Don't let go by Didier Cassegrain and Fred Duval based on a novel by Michel Bussi

A so-so read. Nice art and gripping throughout until the ending, which I found a bit rushed and anticlimactic. I'd say I was pretty hooked during the first 2/3s of the book, and maybe my expectations for an amazing ending were too big. Anyways, I still want to read more from this team of authors. Previously, I'd read Black Water Lilies (Nenúfares Negros in spanish)and loved it.

Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh

I really struggled to read this book at the beginning. It's kind of dense and grim. It is the opposite of a quick, gripping read. I was interested in the subject story and insisted. Left it for a few days and then came back to it, reading 10 to 15 pages per night. Slowly, I got engaged with the story and the characters until the end, when I binged the last 30 pages or so. This book is about politics, power and control between human factions. A space station and a planet, so far from earth, it is easier to think they are their own system, with no attachments to 'home'. A military fleet from earth, rebels, and merchants. Live in the space station is depicted brilliantly. Claustrophobic, breathing recycled air, people living lives which are totally alien to what we have now.

Expired. Covid. The Untold Story by Clare Craig

Superb read. My third book on Covid. This one focuses on myths and false beliefs, which led governments, authorities, 'experts', and the general public to make harmful mistakes. To transform the somewhat mild threat of an airborne virus into a catastrophic threat to modern civilisation and humanity. A threat coming from made up rules, with no scientific grounding, designed to make people fear an almost non-existent threat and comply. This book lists 12 FALSE BELIEFS and explains why they are wrong. I liked how Craig delves deep into science (biology, Virology, statistics) and highlights the ethical and moral issues of some decisions as well as showcasing the harms caused to all of us, especially children. 1. Covid only spreads through close contact. 2. Everyone is susceptible. 3. Covid would likely kill me. 4. Death certificates are never wrong. 5. A new variant spells doom. 6. If you test positive you have covid. 7. People with covid spread it while asymptomatic. 8. Lockdown saved lives. 9. Lock Lockdowns are not harmful. 10. Masks reduce transmission. 11. Children are resilient. 12. Zero covid is achievable. Key thing to know: covid is an airborne virus. It spreads through droplets in sneezing and coughing but mostly through aerosols from talking and breathing. The virus in aerosols can be in the air for long periods of time and cannot be stopped by face masks, social distancing, or lockdowns. Asymptomatic spread is a myth and an excuse to cover for the assumption that covid spreads only through close contact. When so many people got covid without having close contact with infected people, the assumption was that it should have been through contact with asymptomatic people.

The Collected Toppi. Volume Nine: The Old World

Obviously, love the stories, love the art. "... tales of mystery and folklore set in Tuscany, Portugal, and elsewhere during the age of exploration."

Light by M. John Harrison

Confusing at points, near zero exposition (no info dumping), and some nice prose. Light is character driven, I think. I didn't manage to see an actual plot but maybe an exploration of concepts like how little we understand our universe. It's thriller, space opera, and cyberpunk packed together like lasagna. A read that I enjoyed at points and suffered at others, and which I kept reading because I wanted to understand what I was reading. The ending did not answer all of my questions, but it felt somewhat satisfying.

Reality + Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy by David J. Chalmers

We create simulations in this reality, computer simulations made up of 0s and 1s. Now imagine some entity at a higher level, which simulates us using atoms, quarks, and whatever. Atoms, quarks as well as 0s and 1s are building blocks that create different kinds of realities. They are different, but they are realities non the less. So, even if we live in a simulation, this is still our reality, not an illusion. In a few decades/centuries, technology could be so advanced to make perfect digital copies of our brains. And if the brain copies are so perfect, they could potentially be conscious. We could build simulations inhabited by conscious Sims (simulated people). Since they are conscious, they posses moral status. It follows then that the creation of simulations would need ethical considerations, to not violate Sims's rights. There is so much on this book, a good chunk of which goes beyond me, I can not summarise, so I included a synopsis below.

Nuclear War. A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen

Annie Jacobsen creates a hair-raising scenario which most people, I guess, would think as taken from science fiction or apocalyptic literature. The thing is, this scenario is based on interviews with people who were or are involved in the nuclear sector for decades, on declassified documentation showing the actual plans, mainly in the USA (& elsewhere) to respond to a nuclear attack. To start a nuclear war. The problem is, as this books reveals, any nuclear war will end with the annihilation of our civilisation. To me, the actual idea of responding to a nuclear attack with more nuclear attacks is irrational. It will end the world. The more missiles you launch the more you will get back. These nuclear nutters think life and the world are a video game, where you can restart if you lose. But you can't.

Zaha Hadid by Philip Jodidio

Nice short book, with insights into the architect's work and inspiration. Excellent read. Amazing photos. Spent more time looking at the photos than reading the text.

Incandescence by Greg Egan

Two storylines in alternating chapters. Liked the characters and the stories. But I loved this book because of its hard science fiction concepts! From panspermia to a mysterious civilisation inhabiting the galactic core. Immortal digital beings, originally dna-based, looking for challenges to make their lives worth living. Mortal beings who live in a vegetative/automatic pilot state with their interests and curiosity turn off, until smth happens which compels them to try to understand their universe using mathematics and physics. There's a lot of Einstein's and who knows what else. I tried to follow the details but couldn't sometimes, but it didn't matter. The story is tops and the ending too!

The Bomb. The Weapon that changed the world by Didier Alcatel-Lucent, LF Bollée and Denis Rodier

This book is about "The incredible story of the most disastrous weapon ever invented." This is a non-fiction French comic. Superbly written and drawn. The story, seems to me, structured as a supply chain of intellectual and material contributions that delivered the first atomic bomb. It presents many of the involved scientists, politicians, the military, and more. However, I'd say there is a strong focus on Leo Szilard, a Hungarian American scientist, who developed the concept of nuclear chain reaction. The story is told mainly via a graphic narrative and dialogue but bits of it is narrated by (Mr) Uranium himself. Enjoyed its sarcastic humour. It isn't dense with data but I think it covers the most relevant issues and events.

The Blank Slate. The Modern denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

I admire people who can write books like the Blank Slate. Dense with knowledge, from a variety of disciplines, written and explained so people like me (with no science background) can understand. This book took me a few weeks to read. Yeah. 

The book explains the concept of the Blank Slate, basically the believe (coming from the 17th century more or less) that human beings are born with no knowledge, no innate skills, no mental framework, nothing in our minds. Everything we learn and become is acquired throughout our interactions with the environment: society, culture, etc. Pinker goes to explain all the philosophical, societal, economic implications of that belief. 

After that Pinker goes to explain, biology, evolution, psychology, and other areas of scientific knowledge to dissect tiny bit by tiny bit our brains, our minds, our behaviour how and to what extent we could be “programmed” to survive in this world. Human Nature actually exists. How come can we learn a language (any language depending on where we are born), its basic rules and vocabulary just by listening to adults? Our brains must have evolved to master a language. Brains must have some sort of mechanism that makes us learn languages. But we are not born knowing them. There are dozens of examples better than the language one in the book which explain how we are not born empty. 

The book ends with discussions on 5 Moral Debates which are rooted on the Blank Slate – Human Nature debate: Politics, Violence Gender, Children and The Arts. This last one with a critique of Postmodernism and references to 1984, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and more. A nice quote: "education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn how to walk, talk, recognise objects or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding or remembering dates in history." 

Great Read. Long but great!

Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke

My favourite Clarke so far. Compelling story, and characters. Thought provoking. Whenever you go out at night and see the sky, do you think about what's there? The cosmos is so vast and complex. It's beyond our comprehension. This book is about an alien invasion. But the aliens are not evil or hostile. They come with a purpose. A purpose they don't understand themselves. At the end Clarke reveals the mystery. The revelation is fulfilling I guess but left me with so many questions, wondering how life would be if the ending was real. 🤔 There are 2 or 3 instances in which I got shocked by Clarke's prodigious imagination. Descriptions of the fictitious 21st century society which resemble our reality of the 21st century. And the book was written 70 years ago. 🤔 That's it. Read the book.

The Collected Toppi. Volume Three: South America by Sergio Toppi

5 stories in this volume. Not sure why it's called South America as only 1 of the 5 stories takes place in South America. The other 4 take place in Mexico or thereabouts. Regardless, all the stories are great. A mixture of folklore, myths, traditions and superb art.

Toulouse-Lautrec by Matthias Arnold

When I was in my teens, I read a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec. I don't remember it having illustrations but I don't think I cared. T-L had such and interesting and intense life. I loved the book and I still remember it. Now I got this beautiful book with samples of his work 🙂 A summary of the life and work of Toulouse-Lautrec. Beautiful art.

Invincible by Stanisław Lem

 Short but thought-provoking. Philosophical, powerful story telling. Discusses automatons and inanimate evolution: this last idea blew my mind. It means, more or less, evolution of mechanical devices/ of self-organising metal systems. (Pseudo) Brains, non sentient mechanical things. The alien in this novel is one of my favourites not because of what it does but because of what it is. Halfway through the book there is a mindblowing conversation between the commander of spaceship The Invincible and a scientist in which the latter explains his theory about the origin of the alien they find on planet Regis III. This was the big revelation of the book to me and there is not much more in terms of twist, climax or another epic revelation until the end. But it didn't matter because the story was so good I couldn't stop reading. Another interesting point to me was the main character's reflection about the need to defeat and conquer. He couldn't understand why they had to fight the aliens and not leave them alone.

The Real Anthony Fauci. Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

My previous read was a classic of the dystopian literature: Brave New Worlds. Excellent read. So much food for thought on how ideologies, politics, etc. can go so bad without people noticing it! My last thought after finishing it was, uff it was only fiction.

Now I just finished The Real Anthony Fauci and I cannot say the same. It’s really excellent, superb, but it isn’t fiction. It is scarier than Huxley’s book because it is real. It tells us about corrupt people and institutions who for decades haven’t done anything else but manipulate entire countries for their own (economic) benefit and lust for power. These delinquents are part of a system of mafia systems. A global system with tentacles all over the world, which took decades to build.

In this book, Kennedy Jr. tells us several stories about how these systems were formed and how they work. Dozens of names are mentioned, but the main ones are obviously Fauci and Gates. The book also includes hundreds, if not thousands, of notes with supporting evidence from peer-reviewed academic papers to newspaper articles, books, and even YouTube videos. My main takeaways are:

A chapter on the COVID-19 pandemic and how Fauci and company obstructed early COVID treatments (repurposing well known, safe medicines,,with hundreds of academic papers supporting their efficacy), threatened doctors who tried to apply early treatments, how people were never told that they could booster their immune systems with diet, vitamins, etc. How Fauci and company designed smear campaigns to silence and threaten scientists and anyone who would go against their “official” narrative. How they manipulated media, falsified data and papers, used their political influences to spread lies so everyone would comply to their single vaccine solution. A solution which did not work and which injured hundreds of thousands of people. A solution designed against an inflated threat because most of the deadly covid narrative was a lie.

A couple chapters on HIV explain how Fauci, developed his coercive methods in the 1980s pushing another single drug solution. To start this story about HIV causing AIDS seems to be an invention by Fauci and Robert Gallo. At best it is only a hypothesis and has never been proven true by any serious peer reviewed study. Fauci needed a “virus” to be the cause of AIDs so he could get millions of government funding. Kennedy discusses a series of positions on how AIDS cannot be caused by HIV some are convincing, for example how there are so many cases of AIDS on people who are not HIV positive, or how HIV could not cause illness because it is a retrovirus (the book explains how retroviruses cannot cause disease). There is a theory explaining the possibility that the AIDS epidemic was caused by excessive drug use which kind of sounds plausible. Also the book goes deep into Fauci’s criminal activities falsifying reports to get AZT approved. A drug known (way before AIDS) to be extremely toxic. A drug he distributed across the States and Africa.

The case of Africa is disturbing as Fauci, with the help of Bill Gates, uses African people to test his poisons. There is a lot of documentation showing experiments on children as well. A lot of them were forced to take the drugs by having pipes surgically inserted into their tummies. The results of these experiments are more shocking. Not only these HIV drugs did not work but they killed thousands of patients. Fauci used all these deaths to instill more fear in people to believe HIV was deadly At the end of the book there is more evidence of Fauci, Gates and others planning pandemics (so they can sell their vaccines). They made up/exaggerated catastrophes to scare populations, examples are the 1976 Swine flu, 2005 Bird Flu, 2016 Zika, 2016 Dengue. There are also stories about Fauci’s and others involvement in biosecurity: bioweapons, research and production. There is a discussion on a series of simulations, orchestrated (by the CIA, and other health organisations) to predict catastrophic results after bio attacks and used to convince governments to invest more on this.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Eons ago I watched the TV version (from the 80s or 70s, not sure) of this novel and it shocked me so much I still remember that feeling. This is why I waited so long to read the book because I didn't want spoilers. And of course, the book is much much better. Loved the writing and obviously the story. The concepts are genius and relevant still to the 21st century.

Sedated. How Modern Capitalism created our Mental Health Crisis by James Davies.

👍👍👍👍👍 

Psychiatric drugs, particularly long-term, aren't good. There are so many negative side effects to our overall health, especially mental health. According to the author, there are so many "conditions" that are being medicalised, which shouldn't. Normal reactions to the stress of our lives do not need drugs, especially not long-term. Take work stress for example. The book explores several systems in the UK designed to "help" people.back to their "productive" and "normal" selves. Systems designed to help workers deal with stressful situations at work, systems designed to help unemployed people (who assume they have mental issues) back to work, systems designed to help kids at school reach their "potential" so they can develop into productive workers. All these systems put the blame on the person, assuming there is something wrong in them, in their brains (chemical imbalance). None of these systems look into the actual conditions in which we work, study and live. These conditions created by the capitalist system, according to James Davies, are the actual cause of our distress. The book offers an interesting criticism of Capitalism, starting from Thatcher's reforms. Pills and drugs will do nothing to improve anything, just make our health worse.

Ringworld by Larry Niven

⭐⭐⭐💫 

 The Ringworld is a great concept, ancient mega structure hundreds of lightyears from earth. An expedition is sent to find what it is and who built it. Good world building, interesting and intriguing. Lots of physics. Characters, two aliens (great concepts both) and two humans, man and woman, who felt like cardboard. The woman an object and kind of dumb. Anyway, enjoyable read if you don't mind bad female characters.

Breath. The New Science Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor.

👍👍👍👍👍🫁 A wonderful read. Everything about breathing ordinary people, like you and me, need to know. From how bad mouth-breathing is to skull shape, orthodontics and chewing habits. Oh and how praying can help to achieve the claiming, relaxing, healthier, optimum breathing. A reading I'd recommend to everyone.

Velvet by Ed Brubaker, Steve Epsting and Elizabeth Breitweiser.

Beautiful, action-packed, gripping spy story. Second Brubaker story that I read and I want more. The story is superb, and the main character, Velvet, a forty something woman spy, is tops. I loved the art and in particular the colours (those dark purple night colours!). Loved the noir atmosphere and the Cold War, spy setting.