Books

Judges Wanted for SPSFC 4

The spaceship has been moved to the launch pad and gantries shifted into place. Final preparations are underway for the fourth Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC), a contest where a large group of enthusiastic volunteer readers chooses the best work of self-published SF out of hundreds of entries. Because some of our judges are returning to their own writing and others are taking a break, we need some new recruits to help us pick the book that will join S.A. Tholin's Iron ... (read more)

2024/08/27

The Guardians: John Grisham Tackles Wrongful Convictions

I recently finished John Grisham's The Guardians, a 2020 novel about an Innocence Project-type attorney and Episcopal minister working to free a man wrongly convicted of killing his former attorney in Florida. This is the first Grisham novel I've read since his early novels The Firm and The Client made him a household name. I once took a flight where I saw a dozen passengers with copies of The Firm. That book was everywhere in 1991. Thirty-three books later, Grisham is still able to write a ... (read more)

2023/07/08

Dark Descendant: Urban Fantasy Jack Kirby Could Have Drawn

I picked up Jenna Black's urban fantasy novel Dark Descendant at a Louisiana gas station that still sells paperbacks on a spin rack, reminding me of childhood trips on my 10-speed down the hill in Burleson, Texas, to look for books at the Stop-n-Go. Dark Descendant is about Nikki Glass, a detective whose case takes her to the compound of a creepy cult outside D.C. on a night where snow and sleet make driving dangerous. This point is demonstrated when she strikes and kills her client, a ... (read more)

2023/06/22

Review: Rebecca Crunden's A History of Madness

One of my favorite books as a judge in the first Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC) was Rebecca Crunden's A Touch of Death, the first book in a post-apocalyptic series where the non-mutated humans who emerge from underground long after a nuclear conflagration end up in a totalitarian monarchy where freedom and history are outlawed. I reviewed A Touch of Death for File 770's SPSFC team last May and just read book two, A History of Madness, of my own free will. It's the first ... (read more)

2023/02/14

How to Declare Your Conflicts of Interest

The book blogger Edward Champion has written one of the greatest conflict of interest declarations of all time: I have no connection with any of these authors. The only conflict of interest here involves one of the books being edited by a loathsome liar and rumormongering backstabber whom I strongly detest. He has pushed many kind heads beneath the undertow for careerist purposes and, despite leading a smear campaign accusing bloggers of unethical journalism many years ago, he has evinced pure ... (read more)

2022/10/21

Sarah Chorn's Of Honey and Wildfires

Though the novel has three compelling protagonists, my favorite character in Sarah Chorn's Of Honey and Wildfires is a wonder substance called shine. This gaslamp fantasy is set in a frontier territory where shine is discovered reminiscent of 19th century Colorado, and it becomes everyone's medicine, energy source, food additive, weapon, border wall, long-distance communications medium, and devastatingly addictive stimulant. It even colors their skin and hair each shade in the spectrum, ... (read more)

2021/06/28

Rereading The Sword of Shannara

I've been dealing with pandemic stress by wrapping nostalgia around me like a Snuggie. I just finished reading Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara, a book I loved as a teen that I haven't reread since. I didn't expect to have so much affection for the main characters, but I recalled each one's name and traits as their first appearances neared. The novel has terrific epic battles and tense heroic moments, like Flick sneaking into the camp of the Warlock Lord's army. The fantasy novel held up ... (read more)

2021/04/10

Jasper Scott's First Encounter: A First Contact Nightmare

I love old paperbacks but am beginning to think I'm allergic to them. While I was recovering from a Defcon 1 sinus attack that might have been caused by a yellowing 1993 Francesca Lia Block fantasy novel, I dusted off my Kindle Oasis and read Jasper T. Scott's First Encounter, a science fiction novel about humanity's first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. The book begins with the sunny utopian optimism of early Star Trek and then proceeds to crush the hopes and dreams of the ... (read more)

2020/07/16

Review: 'Dead Street' by Mickey Spillane

This Mickey Spillane novel was finished after his death by his friend and fellow crime novelist Max Alan Collins. It was part of the early rollout of Hard Case Crime, a fun imprint of pulp mysteries and hard-boiled crime fiction with charmingly lurid cover art. The story's a brisk read with the cynicism and Chandleresque patter one expects from a writer like Spillane, but the plot feels like something that wasn't fully baked yet. Retired New York police detective Jack Stang moves to Florida, ... (read more)

2020/01/05

Review: 'Quag Keep' by Andre Norton

This 1978 novel, the first ever written for a role-playing game, may still be one of the worst four decades later. The esteemed SF/F author Andre Norton was introduced to the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons by co-creator Gary Gygax. After a play session, she wrote a novel from her limited understanding of the rules about characters who don't know their lives and world are a game. That sounds intriguing but the novel isn't. It devotes less than 20 pages at the beginning and end to exploring ... (read more)

2019/09/14

Read More Entries