Fantasy
A Story of Christmas
In the earliest dawn of time, before history, when the first man awakened to himself, to awareness, he brought with him out of the sleep of the animals, out of that thoughtless, constant present of raw instinct, devoid of consciousness, a female companion, and together they observed the world and knew that it had been…
Read MoreTravel by Star
I read Travel by Star, by Paul Scott Grill, and I’m giving it my first five-star review. Now, what does that mean, “five stars?” For our purposes here, the scale is this: Three stars is a book you could miss and not miss anything. Four is a book you should read. Five is a book…
Read MoreAutonomous Weapons Division: Intrusion Protocol
I read “Intrusion Protocol,” the first book in the “Autonomous Weapons Division” series by B. R. Keid, and I’ll be honest: I slammed it. Read it in one day, stayed up late to finish. Now, there are a number of ways, as an author, that you can work your way into making up a great…
Read MoreAfter Moses
I read “After Moses” by Michael Kane, and it was a delight. This is a good novel, and I expect a good series, to share with your teen boy. The author calls it space western, in the vein of Firefly, but I also got distinct Cowboy Bebop vibes. However, the hero is a very welcome…
Read MoreThe Novel as the Foundation of All Art
Check out the new article on Hollywood in Toto on the importance of reading novels in the popular culture to such wide-ranging cultural artefacts as movies and music.
Read MoreThe Sapphire Prince
I read “The Sapphire Prince” by Casey West, and it was cute. It also gives me a chance to talk about two subjects which have been on my mind lately. First, the story itself. Book 1 of the “Loyalty Fallen” series (everything’s a series, these days, and I’m just as guilty), here we have a…
Read MoreJustified
I read Justified by @jondelarroz, and I enjoyed it. Mr. Del Arroz has taken an interesting approach: Crusaders vs Jihadis in Space, and he does not pull his punches, nor adulterate his characters or plot with any anachronistic cultural self-castigation or other idiosyncrasies of our real modern West. The protagonist does suffer a crisis of…
Read MoreThe Water War
I read The Water War (Episode 1) by @ShirleyJwriter, and I enjoyed it. Ms. Johnson’s approach to the peri-apocalypse/fall-of-America genre is delightfully character-centered, and tightly focused on its ordinary folk. Rather than spending any time on the big movers and shakers, any reasons behind the events in question or powerful people exerting any influence over…
Read MoreReliquary of the Dead
I read Reliquary of the Dead by @DrDavidAFalk. Overall a delightful novel, and also one that gives me an excuse to talk about two potential pitfalls in fiction writing. The first is that specialists in any field other than fiction writing tend not to make very good fiction writers. They tend to be didactic regarding…
Read MoreThe Healing Stone
I read “The Healing Stone” by John Newton, and it is excellent. I have confession to rant: I hate “Young Adult” fiction. More generally, I dislike any fiction that centers on young people. I hated it when I was a young person. I once read of a YA author asked how YA fiction is made,…
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