I can finally say it: I don’t like hard science fiction.  I’ve tried the best.  I even love Stross’s Laundry Files, but I can’t fucking stand the space stuff.  It is not for me.  It is entirely my failing.  If someone were to tell me this is their favorite novel, I wouldn’t even bat an eye.  But while I dig the space opera, and the Star Wars-ian stuff, I just can’t get into the actual practical sci-fi.  I accept my failing.

A dystopian novel set in an alternate universe post-Katrina, where a hurricane devastated the Gulf Coast and then endless storms ravage the region.  The US Government offered sanctuary to the survivors and then drew a line and gave up the region below it.  It’s a ponderous, morose novel in the vein of McCarthy, and while it’s not as explosive or engaging as the Walking Dead or Hunger Games, it’s more mature and dreary.  If you walked The Road and dug that, give this a gander.

I sort of read the Discworld novels on whim, coasting through what really feels like five or six interwoven quilt blocks of a series.  The Tiffany Aching stories are the young adult Discworlds, and as such are my least favorite tales.  That’s not to say they aren’t good — it’s like picking the Kids in the Hall member I like the least (Kevin).  I still dig the hell out of them — especially the Nac Mac Feegles — but of all the stories, these are […]

Time has shown I loves me some Wendig.  But technothriller erode over time.  Come five, ten, fifteen years, this will all be laughable as we revisit the series on the NetGoogz stream beaming directly into our visual cortex from the implants.  Despite the language, this X-Men meets Hackers mashup  feels like a young adult book at times, especially with the broad stroke character interactions and terribly hackneyed love interest.  Wendig can and has done better.

Jack Reacher is one part tumbleweed and two parts brick shithouse.  If you told me I’d be captivated by an ex-military policeman who wanders the continental US dispensing his own brand of justice, I’d kick you in your concealed carry permits.  And yet, each time, Child delivers a captivating mystery and a hell of a hero in Jack Reacher.  He’s brains and brawn, and he fucks up enough to make each book worth watching him get to the end.

Oscar Wilde says there are two great tragedies in this world: the first, not getting what you want, and the second, getting what you want.  I’ve been hungering for more Millennium since the rumors of a Larsson laptop containing notes on a fourth and fifth novel sprung up a decade ago.  Sadly, a cash grab scam gave us a biographical ghost writer farting out a poor man’s version of Lisbeth Salander.  It’s a mediocrely decent-enough thriller, but it’s not a goddamn Millennium book.  And so […]