Book Reviews
Review: “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”
Let me start off by admitting that I love both Zombies and Regency novels. So, naturally, when I saw a zombified portrait of Jane Austen on the cover of a book, I was intrigued. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a parody (or as the back cover describes it, “an expanded edition”) of Jane Austin’s classic regency novel Pride and Prejudice.
Review: “The Devil You Know” by Mike Carey
This is a great read. It starts as a slow meandering walk but eventually becomes a frantic run towards the finish line. The twists and turns kept me guessing, I had some of the pieces of the puzzle but there were a lot that didn’t fall into place until the last few chapters. I loved how even the smaller characters had a depth to them.
Review: “The Dark Path” by Walter H. Hunt
Reviewing books, especially when you’re trying to write your own, makes you a bit self-conscious. When you’re asked for an opinion, you have to approach each title as a reader who is looking for a good escape. That self-conscious feeling only gets worse when I review works written by people I know. I want to give an honest opinion–but if I don’t like it, the friendship is irrevocably marred.
Review: “Pandemic” by Scott Sigler
Podcast novelist (and self-proclaimed future dark overlord) Scott Sigler burst onto the horror scene a couple of years ago Infected. If you’ve read (or listened to) Sigler’s original novel, I need only say two words to make you shudder involuntarily — chicken scissors.
Review: “Reiffen’s Choice” by S. C. Butler
I really enjoyed the writing style. While the book is targeted for the young adult, descriptions and dialogue do not blatantly point it out. Readers who enjoy writers like Raymond E. Feist and J. K. Rowling will not be disappointed by Reiffen’s Choice.
Review: “Steampunk!” edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
I do enjoy a good short story anthology and Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories really fits the bill. It offers 14 terrific stories all in the steampunk genre (although some of them are pretty loosely connected — I’m looking at you Garth Nix!). And the quality of the stories are uniformly good.
Review: “The Dragon DelaSangre” by Alan F. Troop
Alan F. Troop writes well. His prose has a nice, tight style, and he tells a well constructed, if somewhat convoluted, story. I enjoyed large portions of the book. But the story suffers from two miscalculations that makes the book unfulfilling overall.
Review: The Neanderthal Parallax by Robert J. Sawyer
I find it very difficult to write about these books without gushing. As much as I’ve given you in the synopses, there is more that I left out. What I found in Sawyer’s “Neanderthal” reality is a world society that is fundamentally different from our own.
And, unlike much science fiction that is based on a “really cool” idea, Sawyer also manages to write complex characters that I grew to care about deeply. The books ripped my heart out at times, made me laugh at times, and kept me at the edge of my seat till the very end. Very little science fiction out there can do all that.
