Posts from 2011 :: Page 3

We were worried that STONEWIELDER (Amazon) wouldn’t quite live up to (or build upon) the greatness of RETURN OF THE CRIMSON GUARD. Ian C. Esslemont had set his own bar pretty high, so we kept our level of optimism well in check. Turns out it was all needless. STONEWIELDER is awesome.
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I grew up a John Wayne fan; I readily and unashamedly admit it. For whatever reason I absolutely loved his movies–The Longest Day, McLintock! and El Dorado being among my favorites. My grandparents owned a video rental store, so when I wasn’t watching Transformers, Voltron or G.I. Joe, I was watching John Wayne movies. It was with mixed emotions that I first saw the trailer for the Coen Bros. remake of John Wayne’s True Grit. Honestly I originally planned on sitting this movie out. You just don’t remake John Wayne. Right?
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The Wild West. Dusty towns. Empty streets. Tumbleweed rollin’ ‘cross the prairie. Tombstone, Arizona. Ain’t nothin that better describes it. But this ain’t no normal town. No. It’s got electric cars. Magic Indians. Undead and vicious monsters alike. Read em all and weep, people, cause Resnick’s come to town.

THE BUNTLINE SPECIAL (Amazon) is a weird Wild West tale stripped out of the historical annals of the region and twisted to decent effect by the master of science fiction, Mike Resnick. Think “electro-punk western” and you won’t be far off.
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Bob Fingerman’s PARIAH (Amazon) has been sitting on our to-review list for a while now. We were just so thoroughly bummed out by it that after finishing it we were just too depressed to get any momentum going on a review.

Let’s get the introduction out of the way. PARIAH is a zombie book. Another one. Now that alone should tell you that there were conflicting opinions on the book. Steve loves zombies and Nick thinks they have been played out. However the book didn’t really satisfy either of us.
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Morwenna is an odd girl. At least that’s how she perceives herself. And it may very well be true since the other girls at the English boarding school have confirmed the points against her: she reads endless stacks of SF, she uses a cane as the result of a lame leg, she’s from Wales so doesn’t have a posh accent, and her mother is a witch.

This oddity means that the girls leave her alone, which is fine with Mor, but it also leaves her lonely. And she has many reasons to feel lonely. Her parents divorced when she was young, so she barely knows the father just recently come into her life. She ran away from home to get away from her evil mother, leaving behind a beloved grandfather. And her twin sister died mere months ago.
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Buzz, buzz, buzz. Can you hear it? Bees? you wonder, but no. Not bees. Did someone leave the stereo speakers on? No. Not that. Huh. Then what? I’ll tell you what. It’s the buzz of advertisement. Every once in a while we see it pop up. There’s some new book or author that gets people talking and soon it’s all over the place and everyone wants to know more. There was a bundle for NAME OF THE WIND, a grip for TOME OF THE UNDERGATES, and yes there was enough for this book that I got caught up by it. Thus.
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CAN YOU SURVIVE THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? (Amazon) by Max Brallier has managed to break us out of our staunch anti-zombie book stance. It is a choose-your-own-adventure book for an adult, with a setting of… you guessed it, a zombie apocalypse. We figured it was different enough we could relent on our anti-zombie attitude for one more book.

We are glad we did. This book is a riot!
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One of the lessons we have learned during our time reading and reviewing novels is that it is hard just to get a book published. Making that first novel solid? Even harder. But you know what’s even MORE difficult than that? Writing a series where every novel gets better and better.

Dan Wells‘s horror series staring John Cleaver—a teenager who has all the early tendencies of a serial killer—comes to a conclusion (just for now hopefully) with I DON’T WANT TO KILL YOU (Amazon). The novel is fantastic, even better than last year’s terrific MR. MONSTER (EBR Review).
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I found this book in the most unusual way. I went to the bookstore and saw it on the shelf. I know, weird right? I didn’t see it on some blog, or see it in some random post from another site. It wasn’t recommended to me by a friend or any of that. Nope, I was just at Barnes & Noble one day and thought I would check out what was new and what looked interesting–and there it was, calling to me. I then did the only sensible thing and I went home and ordered it off of Amazon.

I’m glad I did.
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Hypothetical situation for you. You live in the US, and one day you get a phone call from a doctor that tells you your father has just suffered two major heart attacks, possibly received some brain damage as a result, and that he has consequently sunk into a deep coma. Naturally you rush to his bedside, forget about your life entirely, and fret over every blink and shift until finally, several weeks later, he wakes up. When he does, he starts rambling about how he’s traveled forty years into the future to a little village in South America where he made enemies with some bad ghosties, and that he needs to get back there to figure things out. Then he leaps out of the bed, grabs the lamp, and proceeds to smash it into the wall, stating that one of the ghosties has come to get him. Again, naturally, the doctors at the hospital throw him in the psych ward.

What do you do?
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