Book Reviews
Review: “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” by J. K. Rowling
A million people pre-ordered Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I guess that makes me one in a million! (Thank you, I’ll be here all week.)
Honestly, though, you can’t imagine how I felt when I opened my door mid-Saturday morning, and found the box from Amazon.com sitting there. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. For the next two days, I didn’t turn on the TV, didn’t shave, barely bathed, and left the house only once or twice to get a couple of snacks (and didn’t bother to brush, my teeth look nasty).
Review: “Earthcore” by Scott Sigler
I’m not even really sure where to begin with this review. I, along with 6,000 of Sigler’s closest friends, let Scott Sigler pull me around like fish on on an angler’s line for 20 some-odd weeks as he released this fast-paced, bloody mosh-pit of a book in audio form, one chapter at a time.
So yeah, I wanted to kill him on a weekly basis. But back to the story.
Review: “Five Seasons of Angel”
You know that a pop culture staple has gone far beyond the normal range of fandom and reached saturation when serious academic studies relating to the psychology, philosophy, and morality of show and of its characters are being published.
To my knowledge, only Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with two academic conferences dedicated to it so far) and Godzilla fall into that category, but Buffy’s spinoff, Angel, should be right beside them.
Review: “Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories”
I’d never read Pohl before dipping into Platinum Pohl, but now I find myself eager to expand my Pohl-ian horizons. This is Grand Master science fiction at its finest. Each one of the stories in here is a gem, a well-crafted little machine.
Review: “Nexus” by Ramez Naam
Nexus is a thriller for the post-human age, Ramez Naam does a phenomenal job of taking modern cutting edge science and building a realistic world of the near future. In Nexus, Naam asks the question, “what if?”.
Review: “Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void” by Mary Roach
Science fiction movies and novels dealing with long exploration missions to deep space rarely deal with the complexities of our bodies surviving during the long journey through space.
Review: “Crater County” by Jonathan Miller
So there I am at Ice Escape, and a young man starts chatting me up about his book, Crater County: A Legal Thriller of New Mexico. It’s a slightly supernatural legal thriller, he says. And I says, “A slightly supernatural legal thriller? I don’t think I’ve ever read something like that.” And he says, “How’d you like to review the book?” I says, “Sure, why not?”
We said a lot.
Review: “Haunted” by Kelley Armstrong
When she was alive, you didn’t fuck with Eve Levine. A half-demon witch and master of the black arts, she didn’t exactly seek opportunities to dole out pain and death, they just presented themselves on a regular basis. An unfortunate consequence of the life she chose. But she never flinched from what she had to do. Yup, in life, Eve was the biggest badass around.
In death, not so much.
