Book Author :: Dan Wells
Zero G
I don’t read a lot of middle grade books. Last ones I got to were probably the Series of Unfortunate Events books by Lemony Snicket (Amazon), which are brilliant good fun, especially when they’re read aloud. I was trying to remember what books I was reading around that age and realized that at 11 I was pretty deep into the Dragonlance Chronicles series by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman (Amazon), thanks to my good friend Scot. It might be because of this, that I don’t remember reading an awful lot of funny, goofy, adventure romps like this one. There’s a part of me that thinks I might have missed out, but another that can’t help but remember how much I enjoyed reading back in those days. So I can’t have missed out on too much, can I?
Read the rest of this review »
Nothing Left To Lose
I can still remember reading I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER like it was just last week, though my rational brain tells me it was significantly longer ago than that. That book had a hook that hit me hard and deep. It was an easy setup to summarize, and so I told all my friends about it. Lots of them read it. Everyone liked it at first. About half of them decided they didn’t anymore when they found out it was a freaking “fantasy” book halfway through the thing. The other half, like me, crowed when the demon first made its appearance, and it was the appearance of that first demon that opened John Wayne Cleaver’s eyes to the wider world and what was out there. First one demon, and then another, and another, and soon he found out that there was a whole flock of them spread throughout the world. From that first view until now, I have loved every minute of this series and the story it’s brought me. But now the fear is finally setting in. The fear that this just might be the last time I get to ride this bike, and it’s scaring me half to death.
Read the rest of this review »
Over Your Dead Body
I have a confession to make. Is there a booth around here somewhere? No? Dang. Okay, so here it is: I sometimes end up relying on EBR to let me know about upcoming books by authors that I love. I know. It’s horrible. Please don’t throw tomatoes though. I’m allergic. I’m having a difficult time even approaching the possibility that I might have missed the release of a John Cleaver book. But, WHAM!, up comes our Best-Of post, and I find John Cleaver book six sitting on the list of our own “2017’s Most Anticipated”. What happened to five? I wasn’t exactly okay with that situation. So, I bought it, read it, and now I get to review it. Because apparently the review fairy is being kind this year and left me a blank space on her dance card. And also, somehow, no one else got to it before me. Praise.
Read the rest of this review »
Bluescreen
I don’t review enough of the books I read, and I don’t read enough books in certain genres or categories to really review them. On the Best of 2015 EBR list, I marked BLUESCREEN by Dan Wells as one I was looking forward to. I don’t really read YA as a category (I am neither young, nor an adult, so my wife says), and so I admit some bias, but I like cyberpunk and dystopia, and here we are.
Read the rest of this review »
Guest Post: Dan Wells
Dan Wells. You all know how much we love Dan around here. He’s been a great friend to Elitist Book Reviews, and he writes incredible novels. To cap off this week of all things Dan Wells–in celebration of the release of his new novel, THE DEVIL’S ONLY FRIEND (Amazon)–we leave you with a guest post from our good friend, and one of our favorite authors.
***
As you may have heard, because I talk about it ALL THE TIME, the first book in my John Cleaver series I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (EBR Review) is being made into a movie. It stars, Max Records, Laura Fraser, and Christopher Lloyd, and I’m super excited about it, and it’s going to be awesome–in festivals next year, and theaters soon after. I had the chance to spend about a week and a half on set with the cast and crew earlier this year, and it was great to meet them all and see their vision for the film and share their excitement for the story and the characters. But then I realized something: now that I’d met those characters, how could I continue to do such horrible things to them?
Read the rest of this post »
The Devil’s Only Friend
When it comes to author Dan Wells, people seem to point to his Dystopian YA Partials series. Those are good novels, no doubt about it. But the novels that won me over were those in his John Cleaver series. It’s no secret how much I love Horror, and Wells’ first novel, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (EBR Review), hit all the right notes for me. After three novels in that series, I wondered if I would ever again read a new John Cleaver story. I feared the worst…
…until Wells said he was writing a new John Cleaver trilogy.
Read the rest of this review »
Next of Kin
With THE DEVIL’S ONLY FRIEND (Amazon) releasing tomorrow, I figured I’d draw your attention to a must-have novella from Horror author, Dan Wells. Set in his John Cleaver series, and during the events of THE DEVIL’S ONLY FRIEND, we have the novella NEXT OF KIN (Amazon).
From the moment I first began reading the John Cleaver novels, I was arrested by my curiosity for the series’ villains, the Withered (or Gifted, as they call themselves). These god-like beings are known and identifiable by what they lack, and that simple idea became such a compelling one that I often (all the time) wondered how THEY were seeing this story unfold.
NEXT OF KIN does exactly that. It puts readers in the head of one of the Withered.
Read the rest of this review »
The Hollow City
Dan Wells has had quite the run. The John Cleaver series — starting with I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (EBR Review) — was a fantastic blend of Horror and Fantasy with a YA tone (although it wasn’t really marketed as YA in the US). His novel PARTIALS (EBR Review) has been getting some really strong reviews. So I was pretty excited when I got my hands on an ARC of his latest work, THE HOLLOW CITY (Amazon).
I’d heard him describe the basics: a story told from the point of view of a paranoid schizophrenic, Michael Shipman. A man who literally can’t tell what’s fantasy and what’s reality. He’s seeing faceless men, and is convinced they’re trying to kill him. But no one else can see them, and he hasn’t been taking his medication in months. To make things worse, there’s been a serial killer at work in the area. Someone’s been killing people and essentially destroying their faces, and Michael is a prime suspect.
Read the rest of this review »
Partials
I don’t often read YA, but when I do, I read Dan Wells. His writing is just so accessible to younger and older readers alike. So when he approached me a year ago about reading a draft of his newest novel, a dystopian SF titled PARTIALS (Amazon), I jumped at the chance.
Read the rest of this review »
I Don’t Want to Kill You
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).
Read the rest of this review »
