Reviews by Steven

THE NEW DEAD (Amazon) is a zombie anthology (surprised?) edited by Christopher Golden, and it goes by the title ZOMBIE in the UK. Included in this collection are stories by Tad Williams (the guy’s is everywhere lately), Jonathan Maberry, Max Brooks, Mike Carey, John Connolly, Joe Hill, Kelly Armstrong, and a bajillion others. This was one of the few short-fiction collections that really had us excited, and we were lucky enough to get a copy sent to us by Jonathan Maberry’s publicist for review purposes.

The short version? This was an excellent collection. Long version? OK fine, we’ll give you that too.
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From the beginning, David Louis Edelman‘s Jump 225 Trilogy has been a pleasant surprise and change from the typical books we read. It shouldn’t really be a shocker to anyone when we say we don’t generally care for the SF genre. Authors in SF seem to take themselves too seriously. Or they really have no interest in telling a story, but they love to show how much smarter they are than the reader. Thankfully, Edelman isn’t of that pretentious school of thought.

We first heard of Edelman back in 2006 at the WorldCon in Los Angeles. His first novel, INFOQUAKE was being pushed by Pyr Editor-extraordinaire Lou Anders. Admittedly, the series didn’t seem that interesting right away. After all, who wants to read Business Cyberpunk?

After starting the series (and now having finished it), the answer was really quite simple: we want to read Business Cyberpunk, and so should you.
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NIGHTCHILD (Amazon). So here we are, the third and final novel of The Chronicles of the Raven series by our friend James Barclay. So does it stay true to the prior novels? Does it elevate the series to new heights?

Easily. This is by far the best of the trilogy.
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How about a requested review from one of our readers, Dan Burton. See, we really do listen to your requests.

MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL (Amazon), on the surface, seems to fit the need that most of us have for mindless, gunfire-laden fiction. We all need it at times. Larry Correia, the author, gives us all the ingredients that a book of this style might typically have, yet somehow makes them more than the sum of their parts. In all honesty, we were surprised by how much we enjoyed this novel, and how much we are now looking forward to the sequel.
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STARSHIP: FLAGSHIP (Amazon) is the fifth, and concluding, book in the STARSHIP series, which is an entry in the Birthright Universe. If you are not familiar with Mike Resnick, and his Birthright Universe, we’ll give you a quick lesson. Resnick is as decorated as an author can be with almost 60 published novels, a couple hundred short stories, 30 or so Hugo nominations, and 5 of those which he has won. The guy knows his writing.

The Birthright Universe is a 20,000 year long story that encompasses Man’s rise to Galactic adventures, and his subsequent fall. Ambitious doesn’t even begin to describe the project Mr. Resnick is working on.
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During our adventures at World Fantasy in October, we had a chance to meet and chat with Campbell Award winner, Mary Robinette Kowal. If any of you are listeners of Writing Excuses (and if you aren’t, you really should be), then you may remember Mary from her guest appearances on the podcast. They were some of the most entertaining and insightful episodes that the podcast has put together.

As it turns out, Mary has a short story collection being published through Subterranean Press (we love them). Needless to say, we were excited to read a review copy of the collection.
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Scott Westerfeld is perhaps currently best known for his YA SF novels. He recently decided to try his hand at Steampunk in an alternate version of World War I. LEVIATHAN is a good entry into the genre, but it isn’t without drawbacks (depending on your point of view, of course).

LEVIATHAN (Amazon) follows the PoV of Alek, the son of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand (in case you didn’t know before, now you know where the band gets its name–that’s your useless piece of trivia for the day). In Westerfeld’s story, the assassination of the Archduke and his wife incites World War I, just like in actual history. This differences are the Steampunk and Biopunk (this term will make more sense in a moment) settings. The two major factions are the Clankers (the Austrians, Germans and such), and the Darwinists (England and other “Allies”). The Clankers are based in machinery, and lend to the Steampunk stylings that the book promotes. The Darwinists, frankly, are much cooler. They manipulate biological creatures into war machines, ships, and anything else they have need of. As a counterpoint to young Alek’s “Clanker” PoV, we have the PoV of Deryn Sharp. She is a fifteen year-old girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service aboard the Leviathan–a huge biologically created ship that resembles a flying whale.
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There are beliefs, of sorts, in the writing business. A good author can take the most cliché, horrible idea, and make it work. A bad author, however, could have the most amazing idea, and make it seem second-rate drivel. SANDMAN SLIM, by Richard Kadrey, takes a little of both of those. Poorly written, clichéd drivel. Awesome huh? (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

There is a blatant attempt in this novel to have a Harry Dresden-style character be super dark and gritty. The main PoV, James Stark (a magician, of course), was sent to Hell by his “friends.” He fought demons “Downtown,” (as the character calls it) Gladiator style for eleven years, and then managed to escape. This is where the book picks up–Stark waking up in a graveyard in L.A. after escaping Hell. Stark wants revenge on the people that sent him down to Hell. Oh, and there is a war between Heaven and Hell that Stark is in the middle of (GASP!). Were there enough clichéd archetypes and motifs in that paragraph for you? That’s just scratching the surface. Oh, and the title? It comes in randomly a little over half-way through the book.
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Yes, we have read the full Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. Short stories included. Call it a not-so-secret guilty pleasure. The fact of the matter is that Harris makes us laugh, and we enjoy it when an author intentionally makes us laugh through comedy rather than the alternative…

DEAD AND GONE (Amazon), is the latest entry into the Sookie Stackhouse series about a girl (Sookie) who can read minds, and vampires who have come out of the coffin (Harris’ pun, not ours) and have announced themselves to the world. You may not have read the books, but we can almost be positive that you have at least heard of the HBO series, True Blood. It’s the adaptation of the novels. Unlike our recent discussion about Dexter, True Blood has yet to come close to surpassing the novels in terms of quality. The comedy that makes Harris’ novels so enjoyable is all but omitted from the TV show.

Anyways. The book. DEAD AND GONE.
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Have you ever had that burning sensation in your chest? No, not heart-burn. More deadly (if possible) than that. We mean the feeling when you are reading a novel, watching a movie, or playing a video game and you get SO impatient for it to move along. You start clenching your jaw. You crack your knuckles again, even though you just cracked them two minutes earlier. And the feeling that is the perfect mix of annoyance and impatience burns in you. That’s what reading THE LOST SYMBOL is like. It is excruciating. Yes. Excruciating…that is the word of choice to explain Dan Brown’s latest “novel.” (Dear Dan Brown: Thank you for kindly putting the words, “A Novel” on the front cover of your book. Without them, we would have mistaken this book for a slush-pile reject.)

What a terrible, terrible book.
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