Reviews by Writer Dan

I have a kid that has a blanket.  Anyone with kids (or who can still remember their “blanket”) totally knows where I’m going with this.  This raggedy piece of purple stitching gets dragged around everywhere.  Actually, it only used to be a blanket–these days about 12 square inches in size–but it’s still the only source of comfort that works every time.

DOWN THE MYSTERLY RIVER (Amazon) is a novel written by Bill Willingham that contains an amalgam of other authors’ characters caught up in a young-adult adventure story right out of the storybooks.  The main character, Max the Wolf (originally written by Lawrence Swift) is a scout’s scout that teams up with a number of talking animals (from the minds and imaginations of several others) after waking up in a forest with little to no memory of how they got there.
Read the rest of this review »

I was pretty torn when I read WOLFSANGEL (EBR Review), the first in M. D. Lachlan’s historical fantasy series about the Norse god, Odin, and his eternal battle with the wolf, Fenrir. It had a whole lot that I loved and bundle more that really bothered me. Going into this book, I considered myself to be hopefully optimistic with a couple major concerns. Now that I’ve read Lachlan’s second offering, I again find myself torn but for completely different reasons. Because of this, I am going to do my best to give you my honest opinion.
Read the rest of this review »

Okay, so there are times when this job gets difficult, and this is one of those times. Writing stories and then putting them out into the world for people to either love to pieces or gnash between their teeth is not easy. As a reviewer though, I feel like it’s my responsibility to give an honest opinion. I always try to do that. That being said, I’m sure that Mrs. Cooper is a really nice person, but this book just wasn’t very good at all.
Read the rest of this review »

History, steam-punk, and the Wild Wild West. What’s not to love, right? I tell you, Lou Anders and Mike Resnick absolutely had an awesome brain-child of an idea when they decided to run with this one. There’s so much possibility with this mixup. So much real estate at your fingertips. And yet the first book was a bit iffy. Being fun and fast but not necessarily the awesome read I had hoped it would be.

THE DOCTOR AND THE KID (Amazon) is the second of those “Weird West” tales by Resnick and continues the story of Doc Holliday and his life in a Wild West twisted by the power of steam and electricity. The three main characters from the first story, THE BUNTLINE SPECIAL (EBR Review) — Doc, Ned Buntline, and Thomas Edison — have all moved to Leadville, Colorado where they hope to escape the after-effects of the OK Corral. Doc wants to set up shop as a dentist and drift into retirement/consumption-driven-death, and Ned and Tom follow him to have a quiet place to continue their research.
Read the rest of this review »

I know there are those that will disagree with me, but I believe that there are times when “the numbers” just flat-out lie. Everything in the publishing industry, as has been frequently stated, comes down to the numbers. Writing and selling books is a business, and if the author doesn’t make his/her publisher enough money, then the numbers will tell them that the best idea is to drop the author and move on. Sometimes though, as I said, the numbers will lie. Sometimes, sometimes, the best thing to do is to put the numbers away and just go with your instincts.
Read the rest of this review »

Anyone looking for some more Dresden-ish stuff? PI with a dark past stalking the urban fantastical with ghosties and ghoulies galore to entertain? Sound interesting? I’m sure to some of you it will. In all honesty, I’ve only ever read the first two Dresen novels–yes, you will probably throw things at me for this. Just please avoid tomatoes as I might be violently allergic–but I did enjoy them both, and although the Dresden books are a bit better, I think I can easily throw this book in with those without a second thought.

EYES TO SEE (Amazon) is by no means Joseph Nassise’s first novel–he has something like twelve others under his belt. This is, however, his first novel with Tor, and is a pretty good showing overall.
Read the rest of this review »

In my experience, history is a dry and rather boring subject that has made me more prone to “study by osmosis” than other, obviously more effective, methods of gray-matter absorption. There has been but one exception to that rule in my short lifetime, and that exception was my high school AP history teacher. History was not just another subject for her. History was LIFE. It had substance, it had breath; it had body and it had soul. Her passion for the stories of history and the people that populated those tales made me open my eyes and want to learn–not just to get a good grade in the class, or to see what I might glean from mistakes of the past, but to feel and know what it was like to be a part of that past. She made me love History, and no one else has ever had that same effect.

Until now.
Read the rest of this review »

Do you know what a cornucopia is? I’m not sure if this is the greatest analogy or not, but the imagery of a cornucopia is immediately what came to mind when I was reading this novel. Based on that single word, your impression of the book right now is probably dependent upon your own connotation of the word cornucopia. The idea of a cornucopia in my head is a pretty generic one, without any kind of preconception of the pieces contained by the… uh… aforementioned cornucopia. (How many times can I feasibly use that word in a single paragraph without having it ruin me? Best not to ask.) Anyhow, generic is pretty much where this book landed. Solidly in the land of mediocrity.
Read the rest of this review »

AWAKENINGS (Amazon) is Edward Lazellari’s debut novel and not a bad one at that. It’s not often that I come across one as good as this, in fact. It’s a story that struck a chord with me, landing somewhere smack in the middle of John Connelly, Mike Resnick, and a jaunt through the backless Wardrobe.
Read the rest of this review »

I had massive reservations about trying to review this one. Yes, I reviewed the first volume, and so it only makes sense that I should review the second… and yet… How does one go about reviewing a short-story anthology that includes the first authorial offering of one’s near-perfect boss? Or even how does one have the audacity to review such an anthology that is so closely connected to the review site itself? I mean it. How do you even start to tackle something like that? To tell you the truth, I have absolutely no idea. So, I’m just going to tell you what I thought about it–straight up–and hope that it comes across well.
Read the rest of this review »