Book Reviews
Review: “Discount Armageddon” by Seanan McGuire
The world is a fairly orderly place, talking mice, gorgons, Chupacabra… these are things of fairy tales, mythology and supermarket tabloids. Not so in Seanan McGuire’s new novel Discount Armageddon, the first book in her new “InCryptid” series.
Review: “The Magicians and Mrs. Quent” by Galen Beckett
I began reading this book with a question of my own: would infusing magic into a novel of manners produce a book that I would enjoy reading? Because in all honesty, although I have read Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights, I didn’t enjoy either.
Review: “The Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark” by Ridley Pearson
What I will remember about this book is how the kids worked together to find the answer to what is going on in the part at night, and how they all became friends. I loved the sci-fi part a lot! How they made the holograms work and how it couldn’t do some things, and even though I don’t like young adult books too much, I really liked this one.
Review: “The Ghost Brigades” by John Scalzi
Ghost Brigades is a pageturner with surprising emotional rewards, but I’m hoping that Scalzi plans to write more books in this universe, because as it is there are too many ideas here for his own good.
Review: “Happily Ever After” edited by John Klima
Happily Ever After is an anthology edited by John Klima, in which each story was in some way inspired by a fairy tale. I am an absolute sucker for any kind of fairy tale retelling, but good ones are few and can be difficult to find. So this particular anthology was right up my alley. Plus any editor who was inspired to make an anthology by Neil Gaiman’s “The Troll Bridge” is guaranteed to have fantastic taste in stories.
Review: “Ilium” by Dan Simmons
This is an odd book. Simmons envisions a solar system several thousand years in the future. Earth is practically uninhabited—a few hundred thousand “old-style” humans are all that is left of us. So-called “post-humans” left the planet long ago for cities built on asteroids in orbit. The “old-style” humans are each allotted one hundred years of life, at which point they are faxed (quantum teleported) to the rings to live forever with the post-humans. Or so the ordinary humans believe.
Review: “Ysabel” by Guy Gavriel Kay
Ysabel is my first Guy Gavriel Kay book. He’s one of those authors that I’ve always heard about. Maybe it’s the memorable name, I don’t know. But he was always just kind of out there as one of those authors that I knew I was supposed to read and simply hadn’t.
In case I was wondering, I guess, if he was worth the hype, Kay opens Ysabel with a 3-page prologue that was, simply, stunning.
Review: “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” Graphic Novel
This graphic novel is perfect for anyone that has seen the movie or read the books, and wants to remember this great story. But more than that, this would be perfect if you have young kids that would be bored with the movie, but you want to share this with them. They would love this book and could act as a gateway to get them to read the novels.
