DEAD ON THE BONES – Joe R. Lansdale

Posted by Daniel on July 25, 2017
Posted in: Dark Fantasy/Horror, SF/FANTASY, SHORT FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

If you’ve ever thought to yourself: ‘they sure don’t write them like they used to’ – then this book is for you.

If you’ve ever longed to read a new, pulp-style adventure story – then this book is for you.

If you’ve ever wished someone would take up the mantle and write new adventures in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard – then this book is for you.

This book is for me.

I’ve enjoyed the Joe R. Lansdale books that I’ve read previously and was excited to get something by him that looked a little different from what I’ve read before. And not just a little bit like those great Robert E. Howard Conan books I read back in the 1970’s and 80’s.

This book is a throw-back … no … this book is an homage to the great adventure pulp fiction of the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. In his introduction, Lansdale writes about his appreciation for Burroughs, growing up on Tarzan and John Carter and Carson Napier, and Lansdale’s fondness for these stories and this style is evident by the passion he puts forth in his own stories.

One of the best stories in the collection is the title story “Dead on the Bones”  in which our pulp hero boxes with the dead.

“Tarzan and the Land that Time Forgot” is every bit a Tarzan story, as if Burroughs himself had written it and combined Tarzan with the afore-mentioned Carson of Venus and John Carter of Mars.

“The Redheaded Dead” reads much like a Frederic Brown story, though it’s dedicated to Robert E. Howard.

I’ve tried going back and reading some of the old pulp fiction and have found much of it not nearly as exciting as I remembered it being. Lansdale manages to capture the feel of the genre and keeps it interesting to the modern reader as well.

This is highly recommended.  It’s a collection of short fiction, and it brilliantly captures the tone of the really great adventure heroes and their stories.  It’s an all-around winner.

Looking for a good book? Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire is a collection of short stories by Joe R. Lansdale that pays tribute to some of the greatest fictional heroes in adventure and fantasy literature while keeping the modern reader delightfully entertained.

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

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Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire

author: Joe R. Lansdale

publisher: Subterranean Press

ISBN: 1596067470

hardcover, 296 pages

DEMON, VOLUME 4 – Jason Shiga

Posted by Daniel on July 24, 2017
Posted in: GRAPHIC NOVEL, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Jason Shiga finishes off his unusual graphic novel series, Demon, with this, the fourth issue.

Jimmy Yee is a man cursed(?)/blessed(?) with a power that prevents him from dying.  He discovers this fact when, about as far down on his luck as a man can get, he tries to kill himself.  The essence of Jimmy is then transferred to the nearest human.  One man seems to understand what Jimmy is and what he can do, but despite his best efforts to capture Jimmy, Agent Hunter isn’t able to contain Jimmy since Jimmy simply kills himself when trapped so that he can take over another body.

Now, over the course of nearly 400 years, Agent Hunter shows that he, too, is a Demon possessed and has spent the last century planning and preparing for the one way to eliminate Jimmy.  And Hunter uses Jimmy’s Demon daughter, Sweetpea, as the bait.

But whereas Hunter has used the centuries to build the perfect fortress, Jimmy and Sweetpea have used the same hundred years to prepare a way into the fortress and exact revenge on Hunter.

The first two issues of this series were tremendous.  Shiga walked the reader into a strange situation without explaining what he was doing, letting the reader figure it out. There was quite a story to unravel and the books took the reader on a roller-coaster journey with plenty of death and destruction along the way.

But these last two issues changed it up.  There’s less story, more death and destruction and depravity, and all mostly without purpose.  This volume steps it back up a step, with each of our three main characters driven by a goal, but the book still feels as though it’s padded with filler, boring me for the most part.

The story does wrap up, which was a nice surprise, but I had stopped caring.  I was interested initially because I wanted to know what was happening and why.  Once those questions were answered, the series became a story about a cat and mouse game between Jimmy and Hunter (want to guess what role ‘Hunter’ played?) and this was much less interesting because really there wasn’t much to describe except the constant evisceration or decapitation of a few billion people.  The entire planet became a breeding ground for slaughter for a couple of people who were trying to best one another.

If Shiga’s ‘point’ behind this book was to show just how much we’ve become inured to violence and depravity, then he’s succeeded.  If he’s simply trying to entertain … mmmm, he’s succeeded only to a point, and then passed us by.

I was glad to have read this series, but have been left unimpressed.

Looking for a good book? Demon, Volume 4 by Jason Shiga finishes off the series, and humanity as well. It’s worth reading if you’ve started the series, but not recommended.

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

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Demon, Volume 4

author: Jason Shiga

artist: Jason Shiga

publisher: First Second

ISBN: 1626724555

paperback, 177 pages

HOW TO PACK – Hitha Palepu

Posted by Daniel on July 23, 2017
Posted in: NON-FICTION. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I enjoy traveling but I know that I can be an over-packer.  I tend to jump on Google the night before a trip, search for packing lists, print three or four and then randomly fill my suitcases and check things off the lists.  Not exactly efficient. So when I saw this book available, complete with lists for various types of travel, I was eager to take a look.

I should mention that I am male.

That doesn’t seem like it should be important, but it is.  Nowhere does this say “For the Savvy Woman Traveler” or “For Women” or any sort of gender-identifying terms. I read the introduction and thought only, “This woman seems to do a lot of traveling, she probably has some great insight.”  And up through the first 30 pages (which is almost a quarter of the book) everything seemed really straight-forward and some good tips on selecting the type of suitcase for the type of traveling (I’d never given this much thought).  And then she starts to get a little more specific, talking about the type of hair-dryer to pack, the sort of jewelry case to use, and the kind of makeup case that is most effective.

Well…okay…not a big deal.  The variation for men, with what kind of razor to bring and so forth will be a few pages later.  Right?  Um…

Bras, skirts, dresses, jumpsuits. Scarves and leggings.  Makeup, bobby pins, hair-bands. Cocktail dresses and skinny jeans.

Where is the list for the male traveler?  What kind of casual shoes should I be packing?  How many ties and what colors?

It is okay that this list, this book, is for women.  I just wish it had told me that.  Somewhere. Anywhere.

There are things I can adapt for my traveling (rolling and folding, for instance) but there are just as many things that don’t apply to me at all while tips that might help the man aren’t to be found.

What I had hoped to be a useful book proved to be not so.

Looking for a good book? How to Pack by Hitha Palepu is a useful ‘how-to’ book for women, but leaves the male traveler out in the cold.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, through Blogging For Books, in exchange for an honest review.

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How to Pack

author: Hitha Palepu

publisher: Clarkson Potter Publishers

ISBN: 1101905646

hardcover, 128 pages

GIRL IN A BAND – Kim Gordon

Posted by Daniel on July 22, 2017
Posted in: MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I’m pretty fascinated by music and musicians (if I could live my life over again I would try to write music) and when I saw this biography of a founding member of Sonic Youth, I thought I would try it out.  I borrowed the audio version from my local library for my drives to/from work.  The audio is narrated by the author, Kim Gordon.

Though I’m a fan of most music, Sonic Youth appeared on the scene during one of the very few points in my life when I was not listening to much music and so I know little-to-nothing about the band. Still, I recognized the name and wanted the inside scoop, as it were, on this group.

Gordon approached her story very distantly, which strikes me as surprising.  It’s almost as though she has no vested interest in the subject;s life, even though it’s her own. In some ways it’s hard to differentiate between the story and the narration. Her vocal attention was very laid back and calm, showing almost no emotion even during some very emotional times.

Gordon’s life is interesting but it never comes across as anything special.  I understand that from a personal point of view she may not have recognized that what she was experiencing – being a lead female in a very male-dominated art form and creating something ‘new’ – but if she still doesn’t see it after the fact, reflecting on the scene, then she’s kind of blind and a biography/memoir is sort of pointless.  What we do get is a fair amount of name-dropping from the art and music scene of the time.  I’ve never been much impressed by name-dropping and less so when I don’t even know the people being mentioned.  I guess I’m just not hip enough to ‘get’ it.

All in all, this was a disappointing read/listen.

Looking for a good book? Girl in a Band is an autobiography/memoir by Kim Gordon of her lead up to and involvement in Sonic Youth, a popular rock band from the 1980’s-90’s.  It’s not quite as titillating as one might expect.

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Girl in a Band

author: Kim Gordon

narrator: Kim Gordon

publisher: HarperAudio

ASIN: B00RDBK37Y

7 hours, 14 minutes

AND SOON I HEARD A ROARING WIND – Bill Streever

Posted by Daniel on July 21, 2017
Posted in: MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

When I request an ARC of a book, I generally request books that I expect to like – typically in a genre that I am fond of, or an author that I enjoy reading.  Occasionally, I go outside my typical reading box and request books that I know nothing about but for one reason or another appeal to me at the moment. Usually I don’t have a clue as to what to expect from such books which is actually rather exciting.  And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind was such a case.

Author Bill Streever has done more than write a fascinating history on wind and man’s attempts to understand it, record it, and predict it.  Streever has also written a memoir.

Streever writes about a sailing voyage he and his wife take, leaving Texas and heading to a port in Guatemala, sailing, then, through the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.  Naturally, as a sailor – and one perhaps not as accomplished as you might hope for such a voyage – he expresses concerns about the weather he might face and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.  This leads, quite smoothly, into his research on wind and wind-and-weather study and prediction.

Streever navigates his story and research as well as his sailboat on the sea, guiding us from one biographical anecdote to a story from history and back with ease.

I quite enjoyed this format, though there were times when I was learning things about the history of wind and weather prediction and didn’t necessarily want to go back to hear more about his sea voyage.  And vice versa.  Either one could have made an interesting book in itself, though again, I rather enjoyed this concept.

However, I will remind the reader of this review that I had no expectations of the book going in.  I didn’t know if I was going to be reading a history of wind (prediction) or a memoir or even if it might be a book of fiction.   You aren’t disappointed if you have no expectations.  However, I’ve looked at some of the reviews of others as I prepared to schedule this review and I see that some are disappointed, expecting a stronger focus on one subject.  If I were doing research on “a natural history of moving air” then I might be disappointed, but as someone who simply likes to learn new things, and likes to be entertained by the written word, this was really a tremendously enjoyable book.

Any weekend sail-boater or anyone with an interest in nature/our natural world, should enjoy this book.

Looking for a good book? And Soon I Heard A Roaring Wind: A Natural History of Moving Air by Bill Streever is a clever combination of a sailing memoir used to prompt the history of wind and weather prediction.

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

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And Soon I Heard A Roaring Wind: A Natural History of Moving Air

author: Bill Streever

publisher: Little, Brown US

ISBN: 0316410608

hardcover, 320 pages

THE BURIED LIFE – Carrie Patel

Posted by Daniel on July 20, 2017
Posted in: MYSTERY, SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

If you’ve read many of my reviews you’ve probably seen me mention one of my favorite sci-fi publishers, Angry Robot Books.  No…I get no kickbacks or preferential treatment for mentioning them.  I like them because they take risks.  They remind me of what DAW books was like in the 1970’s … edgy sci-fi that didn’t fit into the big publisher models. And Angry Robot does that today… sci-fi that doesn’t conveniently fit under the labels.  And so I never know quite what to expect when I start a new series from Angry Robot.

What surprised me most about Carrie Patel’s The Buried Life is how little sci-fi/fantasy there appears to be in the book.  More than once I scrolled back to the front of the book to see the publisher’s imprint because this struck me as a mystery and not a sci-fi story.  But there’s Angry Robot surprising me once again.

The Buried Life is a mystery in a post-apocalyptic world.  The city of Recoletta is an underground city, as is much of the United States, following a great war a hundred years prior.  But it hasn’t taken long for a division of elite and labor classes to develop, and though this is set in a post-apocalyptic future, the feel is very Victorian, making this a bit of a steampunk-like read.

One of the elite is murdered and inspector Liesl Malone is tasked with solving the case.  This world of the upper class is new to Malone and it isn’t easy to get information from a crowd unwilling to welcome someone from a different class.

In addition to Malone, we get an insider look at the upper class from a servant.  Laundress Jane Lin is also looking for a truth in the case of this murder and because of her position as someone who generally has access to the elite areas but remains invisible to those around her she has a unique perspective.

While the sci-fi/fantasy aspect is important to the story, it tends to hang like a backdrop rather than a front and center curtain for the reader.  Really, it’s the mystery that is in play here and the development of the major characters (Malone and Lin) that drives the story.

I found the mystery interesting.  Though a little tame by some standards, the characters of Malone and Lin helped this.  I definitely want to get to know these people better and hopefully there will be a little more depth to them and to some of the surrounding characters in future books.

Looking for a good book?  The Buried Life is the first book in a new series by Carrie Patel.  Mostly a mystery in a sci-fi setting, this promises to be an interesting series.

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

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The Buried Life

author: Carrie Patel

series: Recoletta #1

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857665219

paperback, 359 pages

THE CHANGE: ORBITAL – Guy Adams

Posted by Daniel on July 19, 2017
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Combine World War Z and Mad Max and put it into a comic book without pictures and you get the fast-paced feel for The Change: Orbital.

“The Change” came about suddenly, turning the world into an instantaneous post-apocalyptic, dystopian world.  Howard wakes up in a car on a highway to discover the change and is confused by what he sees, and his surroundings.  Nature has become cruel – with pigeons attacking like zombies – and men have formed scavenger gangs.  Howard runs into an odd fellow who goes by the name of ‘Hubcap’ who brings Howard into the safety of his gang.

But Howard has a secret that even he isn’t sure of.  He has a very strong feeling that he and Hubcap are supposed to make a journey into another territory to explore what’s at the heart of this change.  A dark blob of goo appears, gobbling down members of a biker gang.  Howard and Hubcap must pursue Howard’s intuition.

In many ways this is a pretty standard post-apocalyptic sci-fi story.  Author Guy Adams doesn’t need to spend much time describing the setting or giving s a lot of background because most of us are already familiar with the genre and the look and feel of the world because we’ve watched The Walking Dead or the Mad Max films or any one of dozens of similar films.  What the book has, then, that makes it a little more unique, is a mystery.  This is not a survival at all costs story, there’s something afoot and Howard is a part of it, and that’s about all we know.

Even at the end.

Yup…this book doesn’t end.

Like comic books, or graphic novels, this appears to be written in serial style.  ‘Book One’ really means ‘Chapter One’ of a larger story.

There’s a good history of serialized fiction, especially among the British (thank you Charles Dickens!) and while I’ve more than once bemoaned the lack of ending in a book because of the attempt to get you to buy the next volume, thus lining the publisher’s pockets with your pennies or pounds, this feels a little different.  First this is a short book.  A novelette, perhaps?  And it doesn’t try to pretend to be a complete book, which I think is the main difference. Going in to this you have a pretty good clue that you’re not going to get the whole story in this one volume.

Still…I’m not a fan of leaving so many questions unanswered simply to sell another volume.  The book loses one star for that.

If you like the genre and don’t mind some familiar tropes in order to begin a mystery, then you might want to consider giving this a chance.  It’s a quick read, so it won’t take up a lot of your time.

Looking for a good book? The Change: Orbital by Guy Adams is the first, slim, book in a series about a strange sudden change that came over the world, casting it into a dystopian wonderland where something dark and evil lurks at the heart of it all, but you may have to pay out for many more volumes before you get a better sense of the whole story.

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

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The Change: Orbital

author: Guy Adams

series: The Change #1

publisher: Endeavour Press

ASIN: B008SU060

Kindle Edition, 94 pages