Reviews by Writer Dan

Writers of the Future is quite easily one of, if not the, most prestigious contests in the world for speculative short fiction. The contest runs each quarter of the year, with the top three stories in the bunch being awarded with publication in the anthology, a place-dependent cash prize, royalties on the anthology they are published in (I believe), and a free week-long writing retreat with all of the new authors published in the anthology being taught by a large cadre of impressive, published authors. It’s no small thing, this “little” contest. If you’re a new writer, you should absolutely be starting off by sending your short stories there. Start at the top, I always say. Don’t short-change yourself by starting anywhere else. If you’re not a new writer though, and you find yourself picking this anthology up, you can be sure to find lots of interesting Science Fiction to satiate your palette.
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This book is a gem.

No, seriously, I mean it. Don’t be rolling your eyes at me. Although… I must admit that if I were to leave this review at that, and not elaborate at all, then I’d very much expect you to roll your eyes, blow me a raspberry, and click on to the next review. How many times have you read a comment like that about a book and been like, “What the freak does that even mean?” So don’t worry. This book is so worth talking about. In fact, I’m getting kinda giddy just thinking about it all.
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I like surprises. At least, I like some kinds of surprises. Those like finding twenty bucks in an old pair of pants, or running into a long-lost high school friend while on vacation. There are some surprises though that I don’t particularly care for. Say, the sharp end of a tack poking up through my chair *after* hearing my pants rip open. Or that I’ve run out of gas ten minutes after passing the last gas station for fifty miles. So, I suppose it’s surprises I like that… er… I like. 🙂 Go figure. And after having read the first book in this series, I was considerably less than happy at what I found in this second and final book of the series. An unpleasant surprise to be sure.
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I recently had a conversation with a member of my extended family about the current tech surrounding virtual reality. He’s a game developer (his team did a lot of work for the F.E.A.R. games, if you’re familiar with them) and is neck deep in pushing the boundaries of what’s currently realizable. During our discussion, I was reminded of this series (Poseidon’s Children) and its “Augmented Reality” layer of vision. It was cool to talk about, in reality, the budding technology and current understanding that could very well lead to a fully realized human enhancement that I’d experienced in this series. Granted, Alastair Reynolds isn’t the first to use such a concept in his stories, but he did it in such an amazing way that it made an impact on my own life, and that’s just really cool stuff.
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Sometimes it’s easy to get into the rhythm of reviewing and forget that there’s more going on in conjunction with the books I cycle through. Read, ponder, review, repeat — the mantra of the book reviewer. Occasionally though I like to shake things up and go looking for more, be it details about the author, story inspiration, sequels, interviews, bonus dealings — stuff like that. I happened to do a little homework on this one because for some reason or another the curiosity bug bit me once I’d read it. After very little time, I came across an article about this particular book that made me hesitate and think on my opinions. The article I found talked about a movie deal, and it had a name attached to it: Ridley Scott.
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Ian Tregillis is a name that has been on the watch-list of EBR for quite some time now. The Milkweed Triptych was an amazing and impressive ride, especially for having been his first published works. Pretty much solidified his place in our hearts. And so when I saw the arc for this book in my most recent box of goodness, I pretty much wanted to sit down and ignore everyone and everything else for the next several days. Didn’t quite work out that way, but I did end up putting in a couple extra hours each day toward reading it because, honestly, I just couldn’t put the dang thing down. Seriously good stuff.
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Mike Resnick has had a pretty good deal going here with these Weird West tales. Short books released once a year and bought like clockwork by Pyr. From what I understand, he’s moved on from this series to another Science Fiction-based one now, but still has the team from Pyr standing at the front of the queue for the next story he pumps out. In a way, I’m glad to see Resnick move on from this series; it hasn’t been my favorite, to say the least. And yet there’s a part of me that wishes that since this was possibly the last tale torn from the might-have-been lifebook of the man Doc Holliday, that it had gone out with more of a bang.
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This one was a while in coming. I picked it up after reading Tobias Buckell’s short story compilation, Nascence, on my own because he was an author that I had often heard good things about but had never taken the opportunity to read, and because the compilation was aimed toward authors in training. The collection worked for about the first two-thirds.  The rest was reserved for different iterations of the same story that wasn’t so short and honestly kinda boring. But it was pretty decent up until that point, and I decided to give him another go.
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There’s something wrong with the world. Don’t you think? There’s so much garbage out there that could just be better. Like more sword fights would be nice. And massive dragonmen with bad tempers. And belly-grown demons that rip their way up through your gullet and out your mouth. And… and… and… ah, who am I kidding? What would a world like that be like? Mass chaos, I tell you. Mass chaos. And I know it all too well. For I have read it, and that world is the brilliance of Sam Sykes.
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Burton and Swinburne, huzzah! Can I tell you how excited I was to read this novel? Ridiculously. These novels have been part of my staple, my core, my life-blood’s source for brilliant storytelling. Each time I return to them, they never fail to impress and entertain me. Hilarity, imagination, and excitement all wrapped up with a neat little bow.
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