Reviews by Alan

Eeek! It’s Joe Ledger time! Please allow me a moment to geek out… Thanks, I needed that. Here we have EXTINCTION MACHINE (Amazon), the fifth Joe Ledger Novel by Jonathan Maberry. I’ll admit, I was a little panicked going into EXTINCTION MACHINE because I saw some rumor online declaring it the last Joe Ledger Novel. The good news is: this rumor was pure speculation, there is a sixth book in the works. The great news is: it will be called CODE Z, and it is a direct sequel to the debut Joe Ledger Novel – PATIENT ZERO (EBR Review). So with that dreary cloud of depression safely behind us, let’s get on with the show!
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This is easily the most difficult review I have had the opportunity write.  I start it off much the same I way wrote the review for the previous WoT book.  It’s difficult to write a review solely on A MEMORY OF LIGHT (Amazon), without considering all that has come before.  Opening the cover of this book, and reading those first words, all the way to finishing the last words and closing the book, has been been an inevitability hurtling (sometimes crawling) at me for 17 years or so.
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DOWN THE ROAD (Amazon) is one more entry into Zombie-genre novels that we wound up reading, even after we swore off of them. Gallery Books has been good to us, and for the most part we like what they give us, so we couldn’t deny this little guy a read. This is Bowie Ibarra‘s debut (and only, so far) novel.

It’s pretty obvious right from the start that this book isn’t reinventing the wheel, and that Ibarra is an extreme amateur at writing. Transitions are rushed, descriptions (except for the gore…holy crap) were minimal, and character development was only nominal. All of this can be somewhat expected though when you see the page count total at just over 200, and then see that the print is very large. This book took a whole 40 minutes to read. Seriously.
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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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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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Dave Duncan is one of those guys that has been improving his trade for years. From this experienced writer comes SPEAK TO THE DEVIL (Amazon). Duncan’s offering here is set in an alternate historical version of 15th-century Europe. It has all that you would expect from that time period; knights, feudalism, oppression and religion, all with the addition of magic and a fake country.
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Sometimes it is difficult to review a novel. In fact, this isn’t even the original review we had written for TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT (Amazon). There are so many variables that come into play that we have to take an accounting of, that we wonder where we should even begin. ToM, obviously, is one of these types of novels. There is the matter of the book itself; the story, the characters and the progression in the novel have to be considered. But then so does the rest of the series in one as large as The Wheel of Time. And to be objective when you all know we like our fantasy in the non-Jordan fashion. Yeah. It’s all sorts of difficult to put a review of this type of novel together in a way that makes sense to you lovely readers.
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THE DIGITAL PLAGUE (Amazon) is the second book in the Avery Cates Series by Jeff Somers. We’ve already reviewed the previous book, THE ELECTRIC CHURCH (EBR Review, and I highly encourage you to read that review because everything said in it could apply equally well to this volume.
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We know Lou Anders, and we know his style and what he is capable of. So when we picked up MASKED (Amazon), a superhero story anthology, we already knew we were going to have to reevaluate our appreciation for the genre. Superheroes, to us, have only ever been as interesting as their villains. Villains, in actuality, are the driving force behind the superhero tale. The reasons for this can be boiled down to the fact that the Heroes are almost always reactionary, waiting around for something bad to happen, and the Villains are the ones who have the grand plan or scheme.

It’s because of this that neither of us are big comic book gurus, or even fans. Did the two of us, a couple of hard-sells in the genre, enjoy the anthology? You bet your Bat-Mobile!
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Because we are the benevolent Book Gods that you have to know, love, and worship, we have a treat for you today. A review AND an interview. Without further ado, we present JC Marino, author of Dante’s Journey.
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