How to begin? I have wanted to read books by Octavia Butler for years and somehow never picked one up until now. Wild Seed wasn’t’ an easy read, although the language is beautiful, the characters are compelling and change over time (in many ways!), and the plot is complex and interesting. The story takes place over several hundred years and the characters mostly live day-to-day having children, falling sick, getting married, eating food – with powerful ancient beings living day-to-day next to more “ordinary” psychic […]
Sacrifices understanding for looking real smart. Mistakes complexity for depth.
What it comes down to with this book is that the barriers to entry were too high. (I shouldn’t have to add the “for me” to that statement, but I will because other people are losing their mind over this book and it was nominated for a bunch of awards, so clearly SOMEONE gets it.) With science fiction and fantasy as a genre, certain barriers to entry are expected, even looked forward to. I always relish that feeling of confusion and displacement I get when […]
More space than fantasy is not as much my thing
I loved Ready Player One, so when I saw another book by Ernest Cline, I grabbed it. Armada is very similar, but not quite as great. It’s got the fun mix of characters, a good geeky premise, and adventure, but it just doesn’t quite have the sparkle that the other story does. I wonder if maybe I didn’t love Armada as much because I was comparing it to its predecessor, and the significant parallels between the books make that really easy to do. Both books […]
Hilarious, quirky science fiction fun
If you haven’t picked up anything by A. Lee Martinez and you’re a fan of humor-laced horror or science fiction (aka Douglas Adams type stuff), you’re missing out. This book was the third or fourth by him I’ve read, and each one has been a delight. As the title should indicate, this novel is ridiculous. It’s about an alien from Neptune (who looks like a giant mollusk) who is a super genius. In his quest to understand “science” he’s constantly conquering worlds and creating […]
Second Time Around
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (2011) – It’s terrible getting halfway through a 750-page book and realizing you’ve read it before. The good news is that the story is so good that I didn’t care. I like a good spaceship crew story and this one combines space opera with a good mystery and a love story. The story is told by the two strong male protagonists, Miller, an alcoholic policeman on Ceres, and Holden, an executive officer aboard an ice mover. When Holden’s ship […]
Hot Off the Presses
Crimson Son 2 by Russ Linten (2017) – It’s not often I have the opportunity to review a book before it’s published, but I was a Beta reader for this book, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and give the author this review since it’s officially out there now. In the first book, Crimson Son, we’re introduced to the world of Crimson Mask. It’s a world very similar to ours except that governments have created super-powered heroes called Augments. But we’re […]
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