You gonna come at the king, you probably gonna wear a crown.  In the world of teen dystopia, the Hunger Games and Twilight are king.  So naturally there are gonna be copycats.  And while I genuinely like the genre, and this one isn’t terrible, it just feels like a Dr. Thunder version of Hunger Games.  Plus too much time is spent mooning between the two lead characters.

I never intended to become a dog person, until my future wife decided she’d prefer to have a puppy in lieu of an engagement ring.  And now I can’t imagine my life without my little sonofabitchbastard.  So maybe I was a little more suckered in by this procedural of a damaged patrolman and a damaged Marine dog healing one another’s scars as they solve a murder.  It’s a better version of James Rollins’ Tucker Wayne series, but not quite as amazing as Michael Connelly’s Harry […]

I love superhero mythology where it’s less about the superhero and more about the world surrounding them.  And Lexie Dunne hit the mark.  While it certainly isn’t about “purple-headed codpieces” entering her “velour womancowl,” this definitely focuses more on the relationship aspect that the action, at least to my tastes.  But it is a fascinating concept — imagine if Lois Lane got dumped by Clark and Superman, only to get injected with a superserum and suddenly find herself becoming Supergirl.  Really imaginative and with a […]

This was my favorite story of the Laundry Files, with my least favorite execution.  While the Laundry Files are presumably a larger memoir, the narrative structure felt really goony, and seemed to detract from the adventure.  Which was awesome.  An evangelist preacher is using a modified version of the bible to bring back Jesus Christ, by forcing followers to swallow mouth centipedes that control their minds and enable them to awaken the Sleeper Under The Pyramid.

Goodkind opens his book with a quote from prophecy which essentially whines, “Haters gonna hate hate hate.”  You’re goddamn tooting I’m gonna hate, you hack from Hackistan. With a shitty poorly assembled downer ending setting up that penultimate (maybe?) book, I was more outraged by that fact that Goodkind essentially ret-conned his entire goddamn narrative to suit his mad needs.  He’s like fucking George Lucas cutting out the real Darth Vader and digitally inserting Hayden Christiansen.  BOOOOOOOOO.

Stross sets up a nice, almost Third Man-style spy story for us with his Elder Gods battling Laundry Files series.  This one delves deeper into the relationship between Bob and his now wife Mo as they cope with being two spies in love. What’s nice about this series is, even when it goes totally off the rails — mystic death violins and a huge zombie horde — it’s ground in Stross’s quality writing.