Category: Reviews

The President was shot. While the surgeons at Luther Terry Memorial Hospital fought to save the President’s life, a bomb at the White House went off. The White House and the hospital are only a mile apart and the explosion caused a brief power outage at the hospital. The outage messed up some of the hospital’s equipment, including a piece of equipment that one doctor was using to treat a soldier with PTSD. Now several people at the hospital can read the memories of another person. This becomes a national security issue because someone is reading the President’s memories.

Triggers, by Robert J. Sawyer, has clear and easy to understand prose. The story just kind of flowed to me. It was a fun read. The characters were believable, to the point where some of them made me so mad I wanted to smack them. There were times when I couldn’t help comparing Agent Susan Dawson to Cersei Lannister.

All of the characters were well done, but my favorite was Kadeem Adams. Kadeem stole the scene every time he was on stage. Although he was a point-of-view character, the spotlight wasn’t on him that much. But whenever the spotlight was on Kadeem, his performance was impressive as hell. I loved the things he said, the way he said them, the actions he took and how his personality really shined through.

I have seen the movie, but that was back when there were still things you could fit a VHS into. Remember those? Well, that was a long time ago and I don’t remember the movie so well. I was curious about the story, so I decided to read the book. What a fine read it was. If you saw the movie and thought it was good, you ought to read the book. The book takes “good” to a whole new level. Walter Mosley‘s Devil in a Blue Dress is one of those easy to pick up and hard to put down books.

It’s 1948 in Los Angeles. Easy Rawlins is down on his luck. He just lost his job and his mortgage bill needs to be paid or he will lose his house. While drinking at a friend’s bar, Easy meets DeWitt Albright who hires him to find a girl. No one bothers to tell Easy how much trouble this girl is. Easy finds out that he’s not the only person looking for the girl, but by then several people have been murdered and Easy is a suspect. But it’s not only the cops he has to worry about

In Jay Lake‘s Escapement Paolina Barthes is a girl of fifteen born and raised in Praia Nova, a small coastal village in the shadows a Muralha, or the Wall. Women in Poalina’s village never amount to much in the world where men see themselves as superior to women. But Paolina is an exception. She has a gift unlike any other. Not only does she understand machinery to the degree that she can repair things that her village depends on, she also figures out how to invent something more powerful than any weapon known to man. Realizing Praia Nova has so little to offer her, Paolina sets out for England where she believes she will find wizards who can teach her more than she already knows. But she never makes it to England. Trouble meets her along the way and she finds herself hunted by the British Empire and the Celestial Empire, as well as two secret societies, the White Birds and the Silent Order. All of them want her gleam, which is the instrument she invented that can do the work of God.

Lucy A. Snyder, along with Kaysee Renee Robichaud, mixes science fiction, fantasy and erotica in the recently released  collection Orchid Carousals.

These are erotica stories, but don’t confuse them with outright porn. Most of them have something built around the scenes where sex happens. To me, they are more like romantic stories with sexual scenes that are stronger than what is in most romantic stories. I have no complaints.

I have seen The Lord of the Rings movies, but I haven’t read the books yet. Because I know The Lord of the Rings story began with The Hobbit, I decided to read that first. The Hobbit is a children’s book, but it’s quite fine for adults. Adventurous and entertaining. Bilbo Baggins is the star character. In The Hobbit he is much younger than he was in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is there too.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo meets Gandalf for the first time, along with a group of dwarves. Gandalf and the dwarves talk Bilbo into leaving his quiet, peaceful home and coming with them on an adventure through the wild lands to the mountain where the dwarves’ ancestors once lived. There is a dragon guarding a heap of gold that the dwarves want to reclaim and they promise to give Bilbo a share. The journey is long and dangerous. Along the way they encounter trolls, goblins, giant spiders, things like that.

It’s a strange world and there’s lots of singing. Most important, we find out how Bilbo came by the magic ring that is the cause of so much trouble in The Lord of the Rings. So, if you ever wondered about that, The Hobbit is the book to read.

I’ve been pacing back and forth for a while now, trying to come up with the right thing to say about Cory Doctorow‘s Pirate Cinema. While reading the book, I had one idea after another about what I would say, but now that I’m done I’m at loss. I suppose it has something to do with the ending, which left me feeling slightly numb. To Doctorow, I say: Jeez, man, you sure know how to twist a happy ending.

Set in the United Kingdom, in a time when Internet access is more of a necessity. But rich movie makers in Hollywood and thereabouts have the means to force the government to pass copyright laws that are ridiculous and unjust. When Trent McCauley’s family loses their Internet service due to him downloading copyright material, his father can’t do his job, his sister can’t study for her classes, and his mother can’t get her medicine and disability benefits, because everything is done over the Internet. No longer able to face his family, Trent leaves his hometown in northern England and resettles in London where he becomes a member of the Jammie-Dodgers, a group of homeless young people living in an abandoned pub in a rundown section of the city. There Trent gets involved in the fight against the unjust laws.

I finished reading A Song for Lya, by George R. R. Martin. This book had been in my bookcase for years, unread. I love Martin’s work, I just hadn’t gotten around to this book until recently. A Song for Lya is a collection of short stories and novellas that Martin wrote in the late 60s and early 70s. They are all very good. I have no complaints.

I also read these books by George R. R. Martin: Windhaven (Co-authored with Lisa Tuttle), A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, Shadow Twin (Co-authored with Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham).

I finished reading the fourth book of George R. R. Martin‘s Ice & Fire series. It’s been about ten years since I read the third book, A Storm of Swords, but I remember the story well and there was no need to reread the first three books before starting A Feast for Crows.

Cersei Lannister is still the character who pisses me off the most. Oft times I want to reach into the pages a strangle that golden haired bitch. That ego of hers is unbelievable. Though, I confess, at the end of Feast I found myself feeling bad for Cersei in her current situation, though I can’t deny that she deserved what she got.

Jaime Lannister became one of my favorite characters in the earlier books and he still is.

Catelyn Stark, what the fuck? I’m very disappointed in you. You think Brienne betrayed you? No, Lady Stark, you betrayed Brienne. I can’t think of anyone in Westeros who is more loyal than the Maid of Tarth.