It is time for another review of a book that I’ve read for the Sword & Laser Book Club Podcast – in this case, Aurora Rising, by Alastair Reynolds (previously released as The Prefect) – currently my first step into his Chasm City/Revelation Space setting.
Continue reading “Aurora Rising: Book Review”
Today I’m reviewing the actual first installment in The Culture Series, by chronological order of publication, which I read in this past year for the Sword & Laser Book Club.
Continue reading “Consider Phlebas: Book Video Review”
Consider Phlebas was a Sword & Laser book pick I got a late start on. Now, while this isn’t my first Culture novel (that would be Matter) it was the first Culture novel, so I was interested in reading it and seeing where the series started.
Continue reading “Consider Phlebas: Book Review”
Today I’m reviewing the first installment in The Culture Series that I’ve read – not the first one in the series (that’s next week), but my introduction to the series.
Continue reading “Matter: Book Video Review”
I’ve read few Stephen King books – Bag of Bones, the Dark Tower, Skeleton Crew, It – before, but never anything from Joe Hill, King’s son. I was aware of Locke & Key as it was coming out, but I had never really gotten around to reading any of it. So, when the Sword & Laser Podcast chose NOS4A2 as its October pick, I figured this was as good a time as any to get started with Hill’s work.
Continue reading “NOS4A2: Book Review”
This week I’m starting off my Halloween horror reviews with a review of a nonfiction book about horror fiction.
Continue reading “Paperbacks From Hell: Book Review”
It’s time for a review of another Sword & Laser Book Club pick.
Continue reading “Book Review: Piranesi”
This time I have a book review of a novel about making anime.
Continue reading “Anime Supremacy: Book Review”
I haven’t done a book review in a while, so this week I’m taking a look at February’s Sword & Laser Book Club pick. Also, on top of the earlier review, I do get into some spoilers regarding the plot’s reveals in the second half of the video, if you want something more in-depth.
Continue reading “The Fold: Book (Vlog) Review”
I’ve been following the Sword & Laser podcast for a while, but I never really had gotten around to reading along with any of their book picks until this year, with The Fold.
Continue reading “The Fold: Book Review”
There are some YA novels that I have read that feel like I’m reading an anime. This is, in part, because some of the light novels that have been adapted to anime were aimed for YA audiences. The Epic Crush of Genie Lo is an YA novel that definitely fits that concept, though one with some very different and unique narrative hooks because of the point of view character and setting that make it really worth your while (and makes me wish it would get turned into an animated series).
Continue reading “The Epic Crush of Genie Lo: Book Review”
I like cookbooks. They are the fusion of my love for cooking and food, and my background in technical writing. I also love fantasy fiction & roleplaying games, with The Elder Scrolls series in particular. So, when I first played Skyrim and found there was cooking in the game, one of my first thoughts was “Man, an Elder Scrolls cookbook would be neat!” So, when one finally came out, I knew that I needed to check it out. Much as with the second Von Bek novel, I should have been looking at the Monkey’s Paw.
Continue reading “The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook: Book Review”
In my review of The Warhound and the World’s Pain, I lamented that the book felt too short, and that the sexual assault sequence served no purpose. I should have noticed the finger curl on the monkey’s paw.
Continue reading “City in Autumn Stars: Novel Review”
Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series is interesting to discuss. Some stories have direct analogies to and inversions of Robert E. Howard’s work, like Elric. Others, like Hawkmoon, go in radically different directions. The first Von Bek novel probably falls more into the former camp – feeling like something of an inversion of Solomon Kaine, in multiple respects.
Continue reading “The Warhound and the World’s Pain: Book Review”
After covering Count Brass, this time I’m taking a look at how best to read the Elric novels.
Continue reading “Best Reading Order for The Elric Series”
After much deliberation on this point, I’ve decided to talk about why I’m not doing a standard review of the Count Brass Trilogy, by getting to the series excess baggage through what is basically a review.
Continue reading “Vlog: Why I’m Not (Exactly) Reviewing Count Brass”
Matter is my first step into the world of The Culture. I’ve heard bits and pieces about it through a variety of other sources, from the absurd ship names, to the concept of Outside Context Problems, to the absurdly high tech level – but I’ve never actually read a novel in the universe. While Matter is not the first book in the series, it is a pretty good jumping on point to the series.
Continue reading “Matter: Book Review”
This week I’m covering a non-fiction book on the history of Dungeons & Dragons, and the various influences that fueled it.
Continue reading “Playing at the World: Book Review”
Virgin Books’ Doctor Who: New Adventures series was, back in the day, meant to provide fans of Doctor Who the thing they wanted after the show was put on indefinite hiatus after the serial Survival. Time’s Crucible is the 6th book in the series, part of a pair of thematically linked stories under the heading of “Cat’s Cradle”.
Continue reading “Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle – Time’s Crucible Book Review”
Histories of the computer industry tend to have a focus on the West Coast in general and California and Silicon Valley in particular. It’s where Apple and Microsoft came from, along with Atari. Occasionally, histories will head to Texas (because Texas Instruments) or New Mexico (because Microsoft was based there in a while, and that’s where MITS operated). However, the Midwest tends to get brushed over. So, when a book about the PLATO system, which came out of the University of Illinois, came up on my radar, touting about how much of modern cyber-culture came about on the system, I decided to check it out.
Continue reading “The Friendly Orange Glow: Book Review”
This week, since we’re probably not getting GenCon this year, I’m going right ahead with the Dragonlance Chronicles, with book two – Dragons of Winter Night
Continue reading “Dragons of Winter Night: Video Book Review”
When I finished reading Lies Sleeping, the seventh book in the Rivers of London series, I kind of wondered where the series would go from there. I had thought The October Man might point out the direction of the story’s progression, but I wasn’t exactly sure. Well, I was part right – in that the direction of the story’s progression was going to get into more international practitioners, just not those in Germany.
False Value involves Peter Grant getting involved in the tech sector. Earlier books had set up an idea where technology and magic couldn’t get along – this book sets up a situation where the two can coexist, though parasitically if not symbiotically. Spoilers will be below the cut.
Continue reading “False Value: Book Review”
Dragons of Winter Night, as a novel, runs into the problem of adapting what was we think of it into just a trilogy of books – a bunch of material has to be skipped over. We start off after the retrieval of the Hammer of Karass and the re-unification of Dwarven society (which would later be covered in Dragons of the Dwarven Depths), with that kind of setting the tone somewhat for how the show comes out.
Continue reading “Dragons of Winter Night: Book Review”Almost a year after the film adaptation finished, and almost 35 years after the book came out, I have read IT. Time to give my thoughts.
Continue reading “IT: Book Review”