China Miéville is one of those writers who tends to be incredibly polarizing. People tend to either love his work or absolutely despise it, with a very few people falling in the in-between. Railsea, his latest offering, strikes me as Miéville’s most accessible novel since Perdido Street Station, though you’ll still find his trademark vocabulary and diction … Read More …
Tag Archives: Books
Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi
Let’s face it: there’s a lot of bad science fiction out there. Some of it we hate, some of it we love, some of it we love to hate. And some of it is so much a part of us that we love it despite–or even because of–the things that make it terrible. For John … Read More …
Phoenix Rising, by Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris
These are dark days indeed in Victoria’s England. Londoners are vanishing, then reappearing, washing up as corpses on the banks of the river Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences- the Crown’s clandestine organisation whose baliwick is the strange and unsettling- will not allow its agents to investigate. Fearless and … Read More …
Embedded, by Dan Abnett
The colony planet of Eighty-Six looks as dull as all its fellow new worlds to veteran journalist Lex Falk, but when a local squabble starts to turn violent, and the media start getting the runaround from the military high command, his interest is seriously piqued. Forbidden from approaching the battlezone, he gets himself chipped inside … Read More …
Review: GRR Martin’s ‘A Dance with Dragons’
I’ve found that, while trying to write this review, that keeping things spoiler-free when you’re covering a series well into its lifespan is not so much easy. Nonetheless, I want to share my thoughts of A Dance With Dragons, which I managed to finish last Wednesday. I think I can sum up the experience of reading … Read More …
Unfinished: Stacks of Shame
What do Stephen King’s The Stand, Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book, Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity, Jim Butcher’s Fool Moon and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley all have in common? I haven’t finished them. I have dozens of books at home that I’ve never even begun reading for one reason or another,1 but these are … Read More …
The Secret Lair Episode 0010: What makes a good…ohh, shiny!
This episode of The Secret Lair was recorded in an unnamed coffeeshop somewhere in an eastern suburb of the largest city in northeastern Ohio. No baristas were harmed during the recording of this episode, but Kris did some serious damage to a blueberry muffin. Your Overlords are Old Men or “Infirmateam Assemble!” Decaffeinated coffee? Non-dairy … Read More …
Memo from The Secret Librarian
Greetings, hapless victim and/or loyal minion! You are being afforded a rare opportunity to provide feedback to your evil overlords with little or no fear of retributive disintegration. In just over a week, we will be recording a new episode of The Secret Lair in which we will discuss the novel Fatherland, by Robert Harris. … Read More …
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