Tuesday, February 17
Book Review: What Ifs? of American History
What Ifs? of American History is an interesting if uneven collection of opinions, predictions, and history lessons about America. Worth reading, but you might want to keep a history textbook nearby. [MORE]
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11:39 AM
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Monday, January 12
Book Review: My Tank is Fight!
Ultimately, My Tank is Fight is a breezy, entertaining read. I kept thinking, "this would be fantastic for a game!" - be it a role-playing game or a first-person shooter set in World War II, wherein the boss battles feature these preposterous super weapons. If you have an interest in alternate history World War II history but are too lazy to do any actual research, this is the book for you. [MORE]
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6:51 AM
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Sunday, November 30
Book Review: How To Survive a Robot Uprising
HTSARU awkwardly straddles the real and imaginary worlds of robots and tries to be humorous to boot. Because it never focuses on a particular kind of robot uprising, HTSARU has difficulty explaining what to do except in the most general terms. This makes the book only kinda-useful as a survival guide and only kinda-amusing as a humorous flight of fancy. I am still woefully unprepared for when Red enacts his revenge. [MORE]
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3:28 PM
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Book Review: Mask of the Sorcerer
Ultimately, this is a tale of a boy becoming a man becoming a sorcerer becoming a god. It is the rare fantasy tale that casts divine aspiration in a different context from the typical Greek god mode. It never feels forced or false. While it occasionally wanders into incomprehensibility at times, Mask of the Sorcerer is a breath of fresh air in a genre crowded by typical fantasy conventions with trite cosmologies. [MORE]
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1:56 PM
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Friday, November 7
Book Review: Yokai Attack!
Ever since the Worst-Case Survival Guide came out, there has been a series of "pocket guides" of every sort, from detailing how to hunt vampires to surviving a zombie attack to how to be a superhero. There are very few worthy of more than a single read. In Yokai Attack's case, it's an excellent combination of graphic presentation and gentle humor that makes the book a worthy reference. For monster-philes tired of the same old ghosts and ghouls, Yokai Attack is a refreshingly accessible look at Japanese monsters. [MORE]
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11:24 PM
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Monday, August 25
Book Review: Where's My Jetpack?
Although the jokes sometimes fall flat, Where's My Jetpack? is a breezy, educational read. If you're still wondering why there's no robots serving you, why you can't fly to your neighbor's house in style, or why you still have to sleep a few hours each night, Where's My Jetpack will gleefully tell you why. [MORE]
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6:45 AM
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Friday, August 22
Book Review: Last Rites
Despite the first clunker of a scenario, the other scenarios are all suitably interesting and different enough to make for a memorable, quick game that will keep modern day investigators on their toes. [MORE]
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10:04 PM
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Wednesday, August 20
Book Review: Author Unknown
You won't find much detail on how Foster actually gets to the bottom of his mysteries. SHAXICON seems to do a lot of the work and Foster pieces together the rest. Sometimes Foster leads up to the Big Reveal, and other times he simply tells the reader who the culprit is and then backs into his argument. This makes the book wildly uneven, interesting in one chapter and very boring in the next. [MORE]
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3:37 PM
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Saturday, August 16
Book Review: Nickel and Dimed
Nickel and Dimed should be required reading for CEOs everywhere who are often responsible for the fates of thousands of peoples' livelihoods. I just wish Ehrenreich hadn't written it. [MORE]
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4:27 PM
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Book Review: Swan Song
Swan Song is also relentlessly grim: sodomy, rape, infanticide, patricide, matricide, disease, torture, suicide, drug use...it's all on ugly display here. After awhile, it gets so bad it's difficult to stick with the book. When McCammon skips forward in time, I had difficulty believing the characters survived in such a depressing land. But it does get better, eventually, and that's where the biggest problem lies... [MORE]
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3:15 PM
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Wednesday, July 16
Book Review: Influence
It's a bitter irony that marketers have turned a book about resisting marketing into yet another marketing tool. Now that I've read this book, there won't be another magazine subscription, car, or house I buy without a fight. Buy it today so you can start fighting back too. [MORE]
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3:52 PM
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Monday, June 23
Book Review: Eye in the Sky
In some ways, Dick was light years ahead of his time. Although the novel is obviously dated by references to McCarthyism, the challenges posed by each world couldn't be more apt for our modern times. The first world, created by Silvester, is a fundamentalist's dream, combining geocentric Christian and Islamic beliefs. Dick skewers both religions with one deft chapter, and the reference to Eye in the Sky has (among other parallels) a literal manifestation in Silvester's God. That's right, he's a big Eye of Sauron, so big that it looks like a gigantic lake. [MORE]
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8:12 PM
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Monday, March 3
Nick Ozment's Book Review: World War Z
That is the power Brooks wields, and in so doing he makes a contribution to gothic literature as powerful and as timely for the twenty first century as Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde was for the nineteenth or Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby was for the twentieth. By tapping into viable fears and present dangers, Brooks instills his imaginary bogeymen with real terror and menace. These are our worst fears given tangible form, dressed up in mythical drag: walking corpses bringing infection to our homes, invading our safe havens and reminding us viscerally with their dripping flesh and ravaged skulls that in the world we live in, there really is no such place: no haven is truly safe. [MORE]
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7:06 PM
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Monday, December 31
Book Review: Cold Print
Campbell's style of Lovecraft is breathtaking. He improves on Lovecraft's purple prose, with characters that react a bit more modern (understandable, given that Campbell's more recent) and yet retains the alien and strange nature of encounters with the Mythos. Almost unilaterally, his protagonists have difficulty thinking clearly; they are lonely outcasts who all suffer from headaches, migraines, bizarre hallucinations, and strained relationships. The monsters, when they appear, are more forces of nature than entities. When there are two or more protagonists together, one of them inevitably succumbs to the dark lure of the unknown. [MORE]
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4:57 PM
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Sunday, March 4
Book Review: Dragonfly
Don't let the title or the cover turn you off to this magnificent work. Fred's writing is on the level of Mervyn Peake's, only more approachable and less depressing. Any self-respecting fan of Halloween should give Dragonfly a chance. [MORE]
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8:41 PM
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Thursday, December 21
Book Review: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
Overall, it becomes very clear that Lovecraft wrote better horror than many of his imitators. The best of this collection find horror in the little things: a house, a child's terror, and the dark steeple of a church. In paying homage to Lovecraft, there was a fine line between paying tribute to his work and unintentionally parodying it. The authors that understood the difference wrote the most interesting stories. [MORE]
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8:24 AM
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Sunday, September 17
Book Review: T2: Infiltrator
Stirling takes time with everyone from the Dysons who deal with Miles' death to Sarah struggling with her nightmares and alcoholism to John just trying to be a teenager. This is a smart book with big ideas in a heavily commercialized genre. Don't let the fact that the book is selling for one cent fool you; it's certainly smarter than a lot of drek out there. [MORE]
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4:19 PM
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Wednesday, February 8
Book Review: Jack the Ripper: Portrait of a Killer
Cornwell doesn't mince words: Walter Sickert is the killer (you can find this out if you turn the first page of the book, so no, it's really not a spoiler). The book is less a true crime mystery than a non-stop attack on Sickert-physically, socially, mentally, philosophically, and artistically. And he's an excellent candidate too; Sickert was fascinated with Jack the Ripper, painted creepy art that involved threatening and dismembering women, and traveled in all the right places where Jack the Ripper skulked. So he must be the Ripper, right?
The biggest flaw in Portrait of a Killer is that it really is "case closed." Cornwell's work hands down a verdict before any evidence is presented, making the whole book an entertaining but ultimately flawed argument about who Jack the Ripper really was. [MORE]
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7:54 AM
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Tuesday, October 25
Book Review: The Mote in God's Eye
Despite occasionally straining credibility, The Mote in God's Eye is an excellent example of an alien culture. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle explore everything from the aliens' biology to their art, from their architecture to their social mores. It's a must read for anyone who likes their aliens alien. [MORE]
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3:21 PM
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Sunday, October 9
Book Review: The Hastur Cycle
Ultimately, The Hastur Cycle is an important but flawed survey of Hastur mythology. It's much less about Hastur than it is about Price's personal tastes on what stories influenced Lovecraft…as if the entire mythology's importance hinges upon Lovecraft's slim contribution. What's missing are other stories by Chambers, such as "The Mask" and the "The Court of the Dragon." Also missing are John Tynes' contributions, which have become part of the Hastur mythology mostly through Chaosium's support.
Did I mention it contains the majority of "The King in Yellow?" Read it, if you dare...[MORE]
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3:40 PM
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Sunday, September 11
Book Review: Bill the Galactic Hero
I imagine I would have appreciated this book much more if I was in the military or a teenager. In any case, it was certainly an educational experience for my inner writer. For anyone who wants to glorify war (Harrison's looking at you, Heinlein) in word, song or deed, Bill the Galactic Hero will shamelessly mock them until they change their mind.
And if not, well they were stupid bowbs anyway. [MORE]
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9:09 PM
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Sunday, June 19
Review: Galatea in 2-D
All in all, Galatea in 2-D is less about Galatea and more about the artist. For anyone who has ever been a freelancer, his frustration and aspirations make for entertaining (and sometimes painfully accurate) reading. If only we could all blame a Kevin Matthews for whenever a contract goes bad. [MORE]Labels: book reviews
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9:26 PM
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