STANDARD HOLLYWOOD DEPRAVITY – Adam Christopher

Posted by Daniel on August 23, 2017
Posted in: HUMOR, MYSTERY, SF/FANTASY, SHORT FICTION. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

While I wasn’t thrilled with author Adam Christopher’s book Hang Wire, I’m having a blast with his tongue-in-cheek mystery/detective series ‘Ray Electromatic Mysteries.’

Raymond Electromatic is a robot.  He’s the last of his kind … a programmed assassin created by the U.S. government.  But the program is what got killed and Ray is the only survivor.  He masquerades as a private detective, doing odd P.I. jobs in between assassinations.  He’s got a twenty-four hour memory tape limit, but he works with a room-sized computer named Ada who is connected to him wirelessly, often offering unwanted advice, and on occasion just a little bit pout-y (he can move around and she’s stuck in the office).

In this novella, Standard Hollywood Depravity, Ray is hired to put a hit on Honey … a go-go dancer in a Hollywood club.  Ray’s a robot and he doesn’t have any feelings about this one way or the other, and he certainly shouldn’t ever be questioning his directives, but when the club is filling up with gangsters serving different bosses from all around town, the hit becomes much harder and Ray can’t help but wonder if Honey is truly the target.

Ray and Ada have a busy night, full of danger and intrigue.

Christopher does a really splendid job of capturing the noir mystery mood.  The story feels like it’s set in the 1950’s but with a robot and wireless connectivity available.  And the guest characters and setting (such as a Hollywood club, complete with coat-check station) keep us in the noir-mystery mode.

I don’t always believe in the locations that Christopher describes, but there’s just the right balance between the characters, the mystery, and the humor, with the characters driving the story (which I prefer) that I don’t mind walking through a back alley or a visit to the Hollywood sign that doesn’t quite feel right.

This series is proving to be a lot of fun and I look forward to the next adventure (already on my Kindle).

Looking for a good book? Mix a little sci-fi, with some hard-boiled noir mystery, add a jigger of fun and you get Adam Christopher’s Standard Hollywood Depravity.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Standard Hollywood Depravity

author: Adam Christopher

series: Ray Electromatic Mysteries #1.5

publisher: Tor

ISBN: 076539183X

paperback, 144 pages

DOMINION – Peter McLean

Posted by Daniel on August 22, 2017
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I wasn’t particularly impressed with the first book in The Burned Man series by Peter McLean, but being behind in my ARC reading, I already had the second (and third) books on my Kindle for reading and review.  Dominion is the second book in the series.

There’s nothing particularly new here in the second book.  This is still an urban fantasy with a lot of the typical urban fantasy tropes.  And if Drake (the first book in the series) felt like a rehash of a lot of popular fantasy, then Dominion is even more so.

Don Drake, supernatural hitman, has a job to take care of Rotman, a being who is hunting down the Earth elementals.  But Rotman is really the archdemon Bianakith, which means that this is going to be a tougher job than Drake would like because Bianakith is “the foretold spirit of disease and decay whose aura corrupts everything it comes near.”

In my review of Drake I wrote: “Drake comes across as a Harry Dresden type – male, about the same age (?) with a talent for magic and putting demons in their place. But Don Drake isn’t quite as smooth as Harry Dresden. Drake is an alcoholic gambler who gets lucky more often than not.” This continues to hold true and if anything, he has become even less likable.  And when you are a mostly character-driven series, having an unlikable protagonist is not helpful.

Let’s talk a little bit about profanity….

I typically don’t mind profanity in the literature I read.  I work in professional theatre and anytime a company I work with gets a letter from a patron complaining about the profanity on stage, I tend to roll my eyes and say, “Get real.”  I use profanity in my own writing and in my everyday speech.  Not a lot, but more than my wife would like!  But this is all to say that I’m not against the use of swear words or curse words or however you might want to define some language (and the only reason I’m not giving examples is because Amazon will not let me post a review with profanity in it).

The use of profanity will go a long way in establishing what sort of character someone is and in this case, Don Drake’s use of profanity goes a very long way in making me not like him.  In particular, the use of the ‘C’ word (a vulgar term to describe a particular part of the female anatomy) was so off-putting that it took me out of the story.  I immediately wanted nothing more to do with these characters.

And this made me think about the use of profanity and I realized that in my everyday life, I would not sit around with people who speak this way.  I would not go out and have a drink with someone who talks about someone being a ‘c***ing b**ch”.  In fact, I would make excuses to leave if I were with someone who spoke this way.  And if I wouldn’t associate with people like this, why would I ever enjoy reading a book about people like this?  Perhaps, if the people in the book in question were SUPPOSED to be despicable and unlikable, then yes, but when they are the ‘heroes’ of the story … ?  No.

I get that there are plenty of readers out there who don’t mind this.  Possibly even relish it.  But I’m not one and this book just doesn’t appeal.

These characters don’t need to be my friends, but I do need to find a reason to get behind them and root for them if I am going to read about their adventures.

Looking for a good book? Dominion, by Peter McLean is the second book in the Burned Man series with an unlikable main character in a setting that struggles to stand apart from other urban fantasies.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Dominion

author: Peter McLean

series: The Burned Man #2

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857666126

paperback, 334 pages

THE MOTION OF PUPPETS – Keith Donohue

Posted by Daniel on August 21, 2017
Posted in: Dark Fantasy/Horror, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

I was venturing blind into new territory here.  I was not familiar with author Keith Donohue and I was not sure what genre of story this was going to be, though I suspected (by the cover, mostly) it would be dark fantasy/horror.  But it’s more than that, and not that at all.  It’s a sad, mysterious romance against a darkly magical backdrop.

Kay and Theo are newlyweds who have just moved to Quebec. Theo is a translator, currently translating the life story of photographer Eadward Muybridge. Kay had been an acrobat, in Quebec, and shortly after moving back, she visits the old theatre where she once worked. But one night she does not return home.  Leaving the theatre she was followed and she ducked into the Quatre Mains … a toy shop that never appears to be open. There she is taken by the shop owner and turned in to a puppet.

Theo is beside himself with worry for his bride and scours the city looking for her, checking the most obvious place – the theatre – first. Without much luck, Theo goes to the local police to report Kay missing. Theo, of course, is the prime suspect in Kay’s disappearance.

While Theo loses himself with fear and longing for Kay, Kay loses herself in the world of the puppets.  She has identified herself as one of the many puppets.  She has a faint memory of her life before, but she doesn’t long for it.  All of the puppets have a sad complacency about them, setting a troubled undercurrent of mood about the book.

I enjoyed Donohue’s writing.  He has a remarkable knack for mood and tone.  He can place the reader into a location and give us a real sense of what everyone is feeling. And this is what kept me going.  I could feel Theo’s sense of urgency and his losing control, and I could feel Kay’s confused complacency.

But what I couldn’t feel was a purpose. I stayed with the book because of the language, hoping it would take me somewhere, and I enjoyed the journey, but when it was done, I was left unsatisfied.

I will definitely be curious to read some of Donohue’s other works and hope that, instead of retelling an old story (you’ll see many other reviews refer to this as a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth), he’ll give us something completely new.

Looking for a good book? The Motion of Puppets by Keith Donohue is a mesmerizing story – a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth – that doesn’t quite satisfy.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

The Motion of Puppets

author: Keith Donohue

publisher: Picador

ISBN: 1250057183

hardcover, 272 pages

VINEGAR GIRL – Anne Tyler

Posted by Daniel on August 18, 2017
Posted in: OTHER. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

The Hogarth Shakespeare series is on an incredibly challenging task to get today’s writers retelling Shakespeare’s stories.  In some cases, such as here with Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler, we see how challenging this task is.

I’ve been a fan of Tyler’s since Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant first came out in the 1980’s, and I’ve read most of her work since then.  And as someone who works at a professional Shakespeare festival, I was doubly pleased to see Tyler involved with the Hogarth series.

But Tyler gets the task of retelling a terribly misogynistic story.  Can you do that — tell a story about a man who gives his daughter to another man who hopes to ‘tame’ her, and be relevant to modern audiences?  Perhaps, but Tyler struggles with it, it seems.  This doesn’t feel relevant and the characters come across flat, undeveloped.  I didn’t particularly care about Kate here, and if she’s going to be ‘vinegar’ or ‘shrewish’ or however we choose to title her, then there ought to be something about her that we are attracted to in order to root for her.  Is it enough to root for her because of her peevish father?

What I found interesting is that in modern productions I’ve seen (two or three), Kate in the play is a strong character, likeable, and though she’s ‘tamed’ at the end, we (the audience) gets the sense that Petruchio is as much tamed as she. That was not the case here for me.

While I wasn’t a fan of this book, it hasn’t shaken my appreciation for either Tyler or Shakespeare, but rather reminds me that not all of Shakespeare’s stories are easily relate-able to modern audiences.

Looking for a good book? Anne Tyler’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Vinegar Girl, struggles to remain relevant to a modern audience.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Vinegar Girl

author: Anne Tyler

series: Hogarth Shakespeare

publisher: Hogarth

ISBN: 1781090181

hardcover, 240 pages

FOREVER FREE – Joe Haldeman

Posted by Daniel on August 17, 2017
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

THROWBACK THURSDAY: REVIEWING A REISSUE

Although I had read Haldeman’s The Forever War when it was first published in the 1970’s, I had not read any of the sequels to the book.

Forever Free followers our ‘forever soldier,’ William Mandella,  who is a man without a country … without a world.  As he fought in the intergalactic wars, thousands of years passed on Earth and he no longer recognizes what it was he was fighting for. Mankind has now become a ‘hive mind’ simply called ‘Man” and Mandella and a few of his fellow soldiers now feel even more lost  than ever and so they go in to a self-imposed exile, hoping to settle on a planet known as Middle Finger.  The colonists struggle to survive despite carefully hand-picking the members who would join them for what they could bring to the group. But a surprise awaits Mandella and his fellow exiles.

I am glad I waited to read this as my disappointment is lessened because my expectations were low.  The book has been around for a while but I haven’t seen many lists proclaiming it a ‘must-read’ and so I expected it to fall short. And it does.

Haldeman does a nice job of building the story and bringing us back into the life of William Mandella and a great deal of time was spent following he and his wife and close associates making plans and embarking on a new life.

And then Haldeman cops out.

Perhaps, when this was written, Haldeman’s ending came as a surprise and was quite original, but the deus ex machina sensibility here rings hollow today. The ending comes completely out of nowhere as if the author had nothing more in mind for the telling of Mandella’s story and decided to just end it.

The first book, and even the first part of this book, had such strong parallels to the Vietnam vet coming home to a country they didn’t recognize that it proved to be a wonderful sci-fi social commentary, but then the sci-fi part took over and erased what had worked so nicely.

I graciously give this two stars because Haldeman starts out on a nice path, but let’s go of it at the end.

I cannot recommend this book.

Looking for a good book?  Read Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, but go no further and do not read Forever Free.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Forever Free

author: Joe Haldeman

series: The Forever War #3

publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy

ASIN: B01IX22W4S

Kindle Edition, 292 pages

AURORA MODEL KITS – Thomas Graham

Posted by Daniel on August 16, 2017
Posted in: NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Try as I might, I could never get any of my children interested in model kits.  I grew up in the 1970’s and I have fond memories of sitting in the living-room, at a card-table covered with newspapers, and gluing and then painting plastic model kits.  I didn’t spend much time looking at manufacturer names … a kit was a kit to me.  Was the design interesting?  Did the box cover art draw me to the model?  But as I read through this book I realize that most of the kits I worked on were Aurora model kits.

What drew me to this book was the cover and that picture of the Frankenstein monster model.  That particular model kit was a turning point for me … possibly the kit that got me most interested in doing models.  I also remember it being the winter of 1968/69 and I spent a lot of time getting it ‘just right.’  From there I went for the Dracula glow-in-the-dark kit, which I thought was just about the best thing I’d ever had a chance to make, and that led to a whole variety of model kits, from cars, to planes, to ships, and of course plenty of tv and pop-culture related kits (I loved that Beatles yellow submarine that you were supposed to put a coin in to help make it sink in the bathtub!).

And if you can’t tell by the above paragraph, reading through this book brought back a flood of fond memories.  I have a couple of un-opened model kits that I’d purchased (years ago) for my children, but when they didn’t show any interest in them I put them aside.  Reading through this book made me want to go open one of those kits and experience the joy of carefully removing the pieces from the plastic stem; file the excess plastic off, very carefully, and begin gluing the pieces together (and likely getting glue all over my fingers!) so that I could get something that I could then carefully paint.

The first portion of this book is a well-researched history of Aurora: their start-up plans, the people behind the company, and how they got in to model kit making, as well as how some of the kits were received and who designed them.  It’s a tremendous biography of a company and very interesting reading.

It also details the decline of the company and how other companies purchased some of these model kits.

The book is tremendously illustrated with photographs – not just of the model kits (though there is plenty of that), but also of the organization and the people who made Aurora what it was.

The second portion of the book is a comprehensive list of all of the models manufactured by Aurora, with kit numbers, and many of them with photographs of the boxes (and some of the completed models).  It’s a great checklist and a super trip down memory lane for some of us.

I loved going through this and thinking, “Oh, yeah, I had that one, too!”  I’d forgotten just how many different model kits I had put together through the years until I read this book.

All in all, this is a really remarkable history of a small business that had a big impact on popular culture and hobbies during its peak years.   It is worth reading.

Looking for a good book? Aurora Model Kits: With Polar Lights, Moebius, Atlantis by Thomas Graham is a tremendously researched and thorough book about Aurora model kits, and is a nice addition to any library.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Aurora Model Kits: With Polar Lights, Moebius, Atlantis

author: Thomas Graham

publisher: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd

ISBN: 0764352830

paperback, 192 pages

THE HIGHWAYMAN – Craig Johnson

Posted by Daniel on August 15, 2017
Posted in: MYSTERY, WESTERN. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Although I haven’t reviewed them here (yet), I’ve recently listened to the audio versions of the first three Longmire books by Craig Johnson. I started reading/listening to the books because of my enjoyment of the television series.  And while I look forward to the next (and final?) season to be airing this fall, I do find that I enjoy the books much more.

The Highwayman is billed as a Longmire story and Goodreads places it as number 11.5 in the series.  It is a little shorter than a full-length novel (a novella) but it is as filled with adventure and insight as any of the other Longmire books I have finished.

One of the things that I’ve really come to appreciate about these Longmire books is the surprising sense of mysticism – typically from the Native American perspective, and the gruff, cowboy Walt Longmire’s acceptance of the inexplicable.  This is definitely highlighted in this book.  In his introduction, Johnson mentions wanting to update a classic ghost story and with this book he succeeds.

If you aren’t already familiar with Walt Longmire and the Longmire series, you should consider starting the series at the beginning.  However, Johnson does a superb job of telling a self-contained story within the covers of each book so it is not essential to read them in order.  However, the characters and their relationships do progress and grow, so it is nice to be able to follow the growth.

For those who aren’t familiar with the character, Walt Longmire is a sheriff in a small country in Utah.  He is a cowboy, and perhaps the last of the classic, rugged, cowboys, struggling to transition to the modern world – not opposed to it, just not familiar with it.

Johnson’s storytelling is strong but what really makes his books work are the characters.  Each character is unique and fully fleshed out. Even those who make only a brief appearance come across as real individuals with history and lives.  But Johnson doesn’t fill the book with unnecessary characters, so even those with a minor appearance are there for a reason.

This book, and the series, is highly recommended.

Looking for a good book? The Highwayman by Craig Johnson is a Walt Longmire story and an updated ghost story that works tremendously well.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Highwayman

author: Craig Johnson

series: Walt Longmire #11.5

publisher: Viking

ISBN: 0735220891

hardcover, 190 pages