Frankenstorm

Have you ever seen the movie 28 Days Later? It's the one where an environmental group frees some chimps that are infected with a rage virus and soon everybody's turned into crazy killers. Ray Garton's Frankenstorm is kind of like that, but there are differences.

For one thing the book takes place during the release of the infected instead of 28 days later. For another thing, the test subjects are homeless people instead of chimps. On top of that, the story is set in California during a hurricane.

This means that instead of being a zombie-esque horror tale, Frankenstorm is more of a horror/sci-fi/thriller. It's a good story with a great deal of conflict involving infected people, a militia, a mad scientist, a secret government black-ops organization, drug dealers, and a sheriff's deputy who's insane before being exposed to the virus.

The book also includes a bonus short story called "The Guy Down the Street." It's a disturbing little tale that I didn't find as enjoyable as the novel.

This book is just good fun, if you idea of fun involves lots of gore and violence.

Doctor Who in Space and Time

I might as well start off by saying that I've been a fan of Doctor Who for about 30 years. It's been my favorite TV show for much of that time, so while you might think Doctor Who in Time and Space: Essays on Themes, Characters, History and Fandom, 1963-2012 (Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy) would be a good match for me, you'd be wrong. Sure, a collection of essays about my favorite TV show sounds interesting, but the book isn't.

Don't get me wrong, Doctor Who in Time and Space isn't a bad book, though it does have it's flaws. The main problem I had is that the style of the essays is a bit too dry. The book seems more suited for a more academic class of Whovian. Don't get me wrong; the essays are interesting, but they're not really for the casual fan.

Plus, as I said, there are flaws. Firstly, the book spends far more time on the new series than on the classic version, despite there being more than three times as much classic Doctor Who as new Who.

Another problem is that the book is already dated. This isn't surprising since there is no possible way the book could include essays on the most recent season. However, the final essay "Chasing Amy," which is a study of companion Amy Pond, seems a bit odd as it only includes information from her first season.

If you're a Whovian who would like to read a collection of academic essays on the show, then pick this up, but if you're just a casual fan, you might as well pass on it.

Greenbeard

While it sounds like an interesting book, I found Richard James Bentley's  Greenbeard to be disappointing. I blame this on the book's description, which makes it sound weirder and funnier than it actually is.  Don't get me wrong, it's not bad; it's just not as good as I was expecting.

The titular Greenbeard, aka Sylvestere de Greybagges, is a lawyer turned pirate captain who used to have a normal bear until he was enslaved by an alien being who gave him a green beard so he could serve it better. Being a pirate, he naturally managed to escape and vowed revenge. Most of the book deals with him turning his pirate ship into a space ship, and only the final few pages deal with his actual battle against alien forces.

He has plenty of adventures along the way. He manages to rescue a "Frank Banjamin" from Barbary pirates who had enslaved him, and as you might guess, Mr. Benjamin seems to be Ben Franklin with his name changed for no apparent reason since other historical figures appear with their real names. He also meets Solomon Kane, whose name is changed Solomon Pole, even including a parody of "Solomon Kane's Homecoming," despite the fact that Robert E. Howard wouldn't have written it for more than a century after this book's time period. The book does involve time travel, though, so I suppose that might explain this particular anachronism, though I personally found it annoying.

I also found the Lovecraftian name dropping annoying. The alien who kidnapped Greenbeard is apparently one of the Great Old Ones, and Cthulhu is mentioned--as is Mrs. Cthulhu and their daughter Lulu Cthulhu--but these seem to be Great Old Ones and Cthulhu in name only. They lack any of the cosmic terror of Lovecraft, and are just kind of lame.

Obviously the Mrs. Cthulhu and Lulu Cthulhu are intended to be humorous, but it just kind of falls flat. In fact much of the book seems to be intended to be witty, with references to philosophy, and many bad puns. At times it almost felt like I's wandered into a Xanth novel.

This just really isn't for me. It's not weird enough for weird fiction. It's no where near funny enough for humorous fiction. The plot is a bit too slow for action fiction. Even the science fiction aspects are kind of lame.

Shadow Show

I always find that I have a little trouble when writing reviews of anthologies. If I write about each story, the review ends up being way too long. If I only talk about the stories that stood out the most to me, then I feel like I've slighted the writers I don't mention. If I don't go into detail on any of the stories, then I feel like I'm not doing my job, even if it is a job that I'm not getting paid for. In the case of Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, I think I'm going to fall somewhere between option 2 and option 3.

I suppose I should start off by saying that this is a really great collection. Usually when I read an anthology, there's at least one story where I wonder what the editors where thinking when they included it. Not this time, though. I enjoyed all the stories in this anthology.

Ray Bradbury was a genius. He was one of the best writers of the 20th century. I think that this book isn't great just because it's a collection of great stories inspired by Bradbury. It's also great because it shows how much Bradbury influenced the great writers who came after him, (and Harlan Ellison® who was a contemporary). It's also great to see that while Bradbury is most often thought of a science fiction writer, this book also includes stories by fantasy, horror, and more mainstream writers.


This book is a fitting to one of our best writers. Anyone who is a fan of Ray Bradbury should give it a try. Anyone who isn't a fan of Ray Bradbury, should pick up some of his books and become a fan.

The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction

I've met the Drunken Comic Book Monkeys twice, and each time I did, I bought a book from them. They run a local small press, and show up at the local HorrorFind convention and at some of the events at the York Emporium. This time, since I was at the Emporium's Sci-Fi Saturday, I picked up the Monkey's Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction, which is a sequel to their previous book, Scary Tales of Scariness.

Since I've only met them twice, I have no idea if the Drunken Comic Book Monkies are as drunken, clueless, and obnoxious in real life as there counterparts are in the stories that make up this book, but I doubt it. The plots of all the stories revolve around how Brian Chris, the aforementioned Monkeys, keep getting in and out of  trouble while being as obnoxious, idiotic, and drunken as possible. This leads to a lot of funny stuff.

They meet clones. They get shrunk. They battle robots. They go to the Earth's core and to the moon. They meet an invisible fan. They travel to an alternate reality. They find a time machine. They take part in parodies of The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Island of Doctor Moreau. They drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of chicken wings.

These are a bunch of absurd science fiction stories. While I wouldn't rank it with the works of Douglas Adams, it's a good choice for fans of science fiction and humor.

Doom Magnetic!

It's time to review a book that I think would make a good introduction to bizarro. Why do I think it would be a good introduction to bizarro? Because it's free (on the Kindle). I'm talking about DOOM MAGNETIC! by William Pauley III. It's the first book of his Doom Magnetic Trilogy, and I certainly expect to get the rest of the volumes, probably in the omnibus edition.

I'm not really sure how to explain it. It's a sort of bizarro/western/sci-fi story about a cowboy sort of guy who stole a purple television from the Japanese government, which apparently rules the world or something. There are assassins, monsters, weird villains, and a lot of strange stuff.

It's creepy and gory and disgusting and makes little sense. That makes it a good read.

Bizarro Fiction Month Day 5: The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island

Well now it's day 5 of Bizarro Fiction Moth here, an it's time to review another book. As with the other authors I've done so far, this one has another book that I'll be reviewing later on in the month, but in this case I've actually also reviewed one of his books previously. It's Cameron Pierce,  whose Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom I reviewed back in January. Later on in the month, I'll post my review of Ass Goblins of Auschwitz, but for now, I'm reviewing The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island.

This is one of the weirder bizarro books I've read. There's a world called Pancake Island, which is inhabited by sentient pancakes. Everyone is happy there, presumably because of the maple syrup. There's another planet that's inhabited by sentient pickles where everyone is miserable and unhappy, presumably because of the brine.  One day, a pickle called Gaston Glew builds a rocket ship to escape his life of misery, and ends up crashing on Pancake Island, where his briny nature threatens to bring about the titular "Pickled Apocalypse."

This story is just goofy. The pickles are all so whiny and miserably and the pancakes are so mindlessly happy, that it just makes me laugh. Also, if you've ever wondered what pickle/pancake sex would be like, this book will tell you. There is a surprising amount of violence for a book whose main characters are all animated foods. I really enjoyed it, and I'm certainly going to be picking up the rest of Pierce's books sooner or later.

Star Wars: Darth Plagueis

I managed to get  a copy of Star Wars: Darth Plagueis from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. Mind you, it wasn't all that early a review since the book didn't arrive until March and was published in December. In any case, I haven't really read a whole lot of the Star Wars novels. I have seen the movies though, and I do like science fiction, so this wasn't totally out of my usual area of reading. Really, it was a pretty good book.

For one thing, after reading this, I found that the prequel movie trilogy made a lot more sense to me. The novel is basically a prequel to the prequels. It is mostly the story of the rise to power of Darth Sidious, aka Palpatine aka the Emperor in the original movie trilogy.

This book explains a lot. We see why the Trade Federation attacked Naboo. We see why there is an army of clones conveniently waiting for the Jedi. We see where Darth Maul came from and why Dooku went over to the dark side. We see how a young girl got elected queen of a planet. We even find the probable reason for why the Force caused Anakin Skywalker to be born with no father.

This was a good book, and it even made me want to go back and read some of the Star Wars novels set even farther in the past so I can get a better grasp of the bigger back story.

The Spy Who Drank Blood by Gordon Linzer

The Spy Who Drank Blood is an interesting fantasy/horror/mystery type book from the mid-80s. As you can probably guess from the title, it's about a secret agent who is also a vampire. Since the book is from the 80s, it isn't one of those lame sparkly vampires, or a tragic, brooding antihero, or the love interest of some woman who secretly battles the forces of darkness. Being the protagonist means he isn't a crazed monster either, but he is more interesting than these pathetic vampires that infest the genre today.

Blood, as the hero is called, is a vampire mostly in the traditional mold; he drinks blood, casts no reflection, can turn into mist or a bat or a wolf, can control certain animals, has hypnotic eyes, and can't cross running water.  He works for a secret government agency called the Office.

His boss's daughter is a reporter for a supermarket tabloid and is in Florida investigating skunk ape sightings. She gets kidnapped by some domestic terrorists, and then kidnapped from them by the skunk ape. Blood gets sent in to sort the whole thing out.

This book combines action, humor, horror, and a little science fiction very well.  If you can dis up a copy of this out-of-print book, you should do so.

Iron Man 2 (the novelization, not the movie)

I got an advance  copy of the Iron Man 2novelization by Alexander Irvine.  I really didn't expect too much from this book; it's the novelization of a superhero movie, and novelizations generally suck. This one doesn't quite suck, but it isn't exactly a great book either.

I'm going to guess that most of this isn't Irvine's fault. I mean he is pretty much stuck with the plot and dialogue from the movie, so he can't really take much in the way of creative liberties with that stuff. He is essentially stuck with whatever crap the studio churned out, and believe me, much of this is crap.

The plot itself is OK. It moves pretty fast, and didn't have many gapingly obvious holes. There's plenty of fight scenes and explosions, and all the sort of things that makes the movie seem guaranteed to be a blockbuster. It also tends to make the book fairly exciting.

The dialogue is another matter entirely. Even Irvine seemed to realize this, as he refers to the very lame attempts at humor as frat boy style jokes. Here's a prime example, "So you're telling me you're proud of the fact that Hammer filled your vacuum?" Ha ha, isn't that funny? Assuming you're either really drunk or high, it is. Otherwise, it's lame, as is most of the dialogue.

The characters all come across as lame and two dimensional, except Tony Stark. He comes across as lame, two-dimensional, and an unlikeable jerk. I kept hoping the bad guy would kick his ass, but was sadly disappointed.

I Am a Dalek, by Gareth Roberts

I've been a fan of Doctor Who since I was in elementary school. It's probably been about twenty years now since I first watched the series. I loved the Tom Baker episodes. I started watching the new series as soon as it was downloadable via bit torrent (once it was broadcast in the US, I started watching on SciFi).

I was always a fan of the Doctor Who books too. I have a largish selection of the novelizations. I have (what I believe is) a complete set of the Virgin Missing Adventures. I have a few of the Virgin New Adventures too, but I never liked that series as much. When the BBC started publishing the books themselves, I picked up one novel, didn't like it very much, and stopped reading the books.

Flash forward to January, 2007. I got about $80 worth of Borders gift cards for Christmas, and was having some trouble finding $80 worth of books. So, when I saw I Am A Dalek for only $5.99, I decided to give it a chance. I thought the author's name was familiar, and after a quick search through my collection, I found that he wrote three of the Virgin Missing Adventures.

The book is pretty well written, though I thought the opening was a bit off. The plot is original, but true to the series. The characters seem like their TV counterparts. Style-wise, it's everything I'd expect from a Doctor Who novel, and it's a good book.

Sadly, I have to give it a mediocre rating because of the price. $5.99 is cheap for a book, but I think it's a bit much for a hundred-page book that I read in about an hour. I couldn't recommend a book of this size unless it was at least a dollar cheaper in price. So, with it being no reflection on Mr. Roberts' writing, I can only give I Am a Dalek three yo-yos.

You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison

I ordered You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat a few weeks ago, and I finally got around to looking at it. I love the Stainless Steel Rat series (all except Circus, which I haven't read yet, but still probably wouldn't like much judging by the reviews). Unlike the rest of the series, this isn't a regular novel; it's a Choose Your Own Adventure type of thing. You know with stuff like "If you want to pick that guys pocket go to 65."

Unlike other books of this type--at least as far as I recall, since I haven't read any since elementary school--there is no way to lose this one. If you make a wrong choice, the book just tells you to go to the right choice. In fact, all the coices ultimately lead to the same path, which means there is little or no value in rereading it to try some alternate choices.

This book does have some good humor in spots. It also has a dragon two singing porcuswine, and a Robin hood wannabee. Since It's a Stainless Steel Rat book, I'm tempted to give it a good review, so it gets four yo-yos.

Kino No Tabi, by Keiichi Sigsawa

The Beautiful World 1: Kino No Tabi is a very strange book. It's about a girl named Kino and her talking motorcycle, Hermes. The two travel around visiting these weird city-states, where aspects of the world are taken to strange extremes.

The first story, "Grownup Country," is set in Kino's homeland, where all 12 year olds are required to undergo an operation to become grownups. Then there's "The Land of Shared Pain" where everyone has become an empath, which causes everyone to become hermits, because people don't want to know each other's emotions. There's "The Land of Majority Rule," where democracy is taken to a frightening extreme that leaves only one survivor. "Three Men on the Rails" is a story about three elderly men and their futile and pointless jobs. "the Land of Peace" is about a very horrible place full of awful, awful people. "Coliseum" is about a country where people are required to fight for citizenship.

While this book may be strange, it's very compelling. I'm definitely going to try and read the rest of the books in the series, and maybe find the anime. I give this one five yo-yos.

Hal Spacejock, by Simon Haynes

The only bad thing I have to say about Hal Spacejock is that it's going to cost me $18 to pick up the second volume in the series. I'll still do it though, because this was a great book.

It's very funny. I laughed out loud several times while reading (so it's probably a good thing I didn't bring it with me to read at the doctor's office the other day, because who knows what they would have thought). It's also a great adventure story with lots of action and adventure and explosions, and a few fires, and some radioactive gunk, and a lots of other cool stuff. I'm going to go ahead and say that I agree with Tom Holt's blurb on the front cover; This is better that Red Dwarf.

Sure, the main character's kind of a jerk and a total incompetent, but that's okay, because he's a lovable incompetent jerk. Hal Spacejock kind of like Homer Simpson in space, only funnier and way more macho. I give this book the full five yo-yos.

Deathworld, by Harry Harrison

I like Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series, so when I saw Deathworld, I decided to pick it up. It's an omnibus edition containing the first three Deathworld novels and a short story (there are apparently four other novels in the series, but they were written for the Russian market and have never been translated into English). Sadly, this book was kind of disappointing. The first novel was great. The second was terrible. The third was mediocre.

The first novel, tells how Jason dinAlt came to the planet Pyrrus, where every living creature is against humanity. Jason is a professional gambler, and he goes to Pyrrus after helping win the Pyrrans a billion bucks, so they can buy weapons. He goes to Pyrrus to prove how manly he is and ends up helping to solve their problems through reason.

In the second novel, Jason is kidnapped by a moralistic do-gooder. The guy's spaceship crashes on a primitive world and the two are taken into slavery. Somehow--despite the fact that he was raised in a feudal world, had little or no formal education, never learned to read until he was 15, and spent his adult life as a gambler--Jason has an unbelievable grasp of science and technology. He improves on the local cars, builds a radio transmitter and receiver, knows how to make sulfuric acid, improves the local metallurgy, and shows a basic knowledge of electrical generators and oil refineries. Jason also proves to be a bit of a dick when he starts a war to try and "civilize" the planet.

He's an even bigger dick in the third novel. There he starts a war, resulting in the loss of many innocent lives, so he can start a mining operation on another primitive planet. I'm sorry, but by the third novel I hated this guys guts.

Sure, the book has lots of action, which is always good. Unfortunately, I found parts of the book to unbelievable, even for SF, and I couldn't stand the main character. Still, since novel number one was so good, I'll give Deathworld an above average rating. It gets a barely above average three and a half yo-yos.

Hal Spacejock Support Crew

I always like trying to get free stuff, and the Hal Spacejock books actually look interesting. Unfortunately they don't seem to be available in the US (okay, Amazon has used copies, buy $25 for the first one and $18 for the second is a bit more than I want to pay). Anyway, without further ado I present the meme:


I joined Hal Spacejock's Support Crew

I didn't pay anything,
I didn't sign anything,
and I didn't read the fine print.
Just like Hal!

No space pilot can exist in a vacuum (hah!), and behind every successful pilot there's a talented and dedicated support crew.

Hal Spacejock is one of the least successful space pilots in the history of the galaxy, and a worldwide support crew is needed just to get him off the ground.

Join now for free Hal Spacejock goodies!
| Join the team | - - - - - - - - - | Hal who? |

Hal Spacejock ... Après moi le wreckage

Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls

I like Jane Lindskold's books. Her Child of a Rainless Year contained a preview of Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls, one of her early works which has just been reprinted. I liked the excerpt so much I decided to pick it up.

It's kind of a strange story. It's about a girl named Sarah who is released from a mental hospital after some budget cuts. She can't talk except through quotations, but she does have a mysterious power; she can talk to inanimate objects. Sure I can talk to inanimate objects too, but she can understand what the objects are saying.

After her release Sarah joins a sort of street gang based on the wolf pack from The Jungle Books. Then an evil organization starts looking for her. It turns out they were responsible for creating her, and now they want her back.

I thought this was a really cool book with some great ideas behind it. I really liked the characters, too--especially Sarah. There's adventure and mystery. There are some nasty villains. There's a two-headed dragon. Really, I don't see how I could not like this book. I have to give Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls five yo-yos.

K-PAX

Have you ever seen the movie K-PAX? I remember seeing part of it once and thinking it was OK. I picked up Gene Brewer's novel K-Pax, which the movie is based on, because it was only $6.99.

It was certainly a very good purchase. This is a very different and interesting book. For one thing, there are no definite science fiction elements. Sure, the main character, called prot, claims to be an alien, but seeing as how he's a mental patient, he might just be insane. While prot does show remarkable insight and abilities--some superhuman or based on information that no human could possess--we can never say for certain whether he's an alien or a madman. His strange abilities and inhuman knowledge of astronomy point to his being an alien, but his world, K-PAX, seems to conform with the supposed insanity of Robert, the human he is believed to be. I just love the ambiguity.

I also like the way the novel was set up. Instead of using a standard chapter based format, Gene Brewer tells the story in a series of sixteen sessions between prot and his psychiatrist, Dr. Brewer. Yes, the author is a character in his own story. I told you' it's a bit different.

Prot is a very different sort of alien, too. He looks human, but inside he's not. The sort of things that humans value--love, family, religion, sex, etc.--are all foreign to his nature. I don't know that I personally would like to go to his K-PAX, but it sounds like an interesting place.

This book is one that I can't recommend enough. I give K-PAX five yo-yos.

Samurai (Repairman) Jack

I've finally read Repairman Jack #2, Legacies (Repairman Jack Novels (Paperback)). It's a damn good book.

This one takes place shortly after The Tomb, and well before Jack begins to be constantly involved with the Otherness. The plot of this one actually kept me guessing until very close to the end. A woman has been willed a house, and there's some sort of mystery inside. I didn't figure out what the mystery was until just before the characters figured it out, which is pretty rare for me. This might be because, based on the other Repairman Jack books, I expected a supernatural secret, but it was in fact super science.

Anyway, the Repairman Jack books are great. This is no exception. I give Legacies five yo-yos. If you wondered about the Samurai Jack reference in the title, it's because Jack is referred to as a ronin a couple of times in this book.

An Old Book

A few years ago, I used to live near a store that sold used paperbacks for half the cover price. I picked up quite a few good books there, like my collection of Fu Manchu books. I also picked up a few pieces of total crap, like Planet of the GAWFS, which is one of the worst books I've ever read, or The Monodyne Catastrophe, which I couldn't get any farther into that the first chapter before I got bored. There are a few others though, that for one reason or another I just never got around to reading. One of those was Found Wanting by Lin Carter.

This is one very strange book. There's this guy named Kyon who wakes up in the futuristic city of Urbs. He can't remember anything about his past. He had all kinds of strange adventures: getting rescued by squid like things, nearly eaten by severed stone heads, becoming a magician's assistant, getting arrested for breaking and entering, etc.

While that may sound interesting--and it is--the over all plot is somewhat predictable. For instance, all of the characters are referred to as "he." Eventually, Kyon meets someone named Auren. For some reason, nobody else seems to like "him." Not surprisingly, it turns out that Aruen is female, and every male has been programmed to not like females. This, along with ensuring no one goes through puberty, is to prevent over crowding. I had it figured out as soon as Auren was introduced.

All in all, while the overall plot is a bit predictable, this is still a good book, but since it's out of print, it might be hard to get. Still, Amazon has a few used copies for sale, and I give it 4 yo-yos.