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THE SECRET CHAPTER – Genevieve Cogman

Posted by Daniel on March 17, 2021
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

The sixth book in Genevieve Cogman’s fantasy/adventure ‘The Invisible Library’ series already!  It seems like it that wasn’t so long that the first book came out (I reviewed it in 2016).

Librarian Irene is on a short break from her last adventure when she gets the call for her next task.  One of the worlds is devolving into chaos (the world where she grew up) and there is one book that can stop the madness.  But there is only one known copy of that book and it is in the collection of a very mysterious trader/dear, Mr. Nemo.
Nemo welcomes Irene and Kai, and a few others, to a dinner gathering, where he asks that the party of individuals steal a specific painting from a specific world. In return, he will let each member take one item from his collection.  It sounds easy, except having such a diverse, distrustful group try to work together might be too difficult to overcome.
I feel as though these books have settled into a comfortable groove. For some, that might not be a good thing, but I appreciate that the character of Irene isn’t battling so many different fronts at this time.  It’s given me more of a chance to appreciate the story, rather than wondering which part of the story the action is coming from.
There is also a comfortability between Irene and Kai that makes this easier to read now.
This book feels like a good in-between book, still with action and excitement, but as if there’s a reset happening before the next big shift in the storyline.
I enjoyed this quite a bit and look forward to the next in the series.
Looking for a good book? The Secret Chapter is the sixth book in Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library series and anyone interested in urban fantasy/adventure books will want to read this.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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The Secret Chapter
author: Genevieve Cogman
series: The Invisible Library
publisher: Ace
ISBN: 1984804766
paperback, 336 pages

LUCY IN THE SKY – graphic novel

Posted by Daniel on March 15, 2021
Posted in: CHILDREN'S, GRAPHIC NOVEL, Uncategorized, YA. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

I was not sure what to make of this book – going back and forth from liking the book, to not liking the book, and back to liking it again.

The book is a coming-of-age story of Lucy, a middle school student. Like middle school students all over the world, she’s going through a lot of turmoil. She’s just coming to discover the things she likes and the things she’s good at. Her friendships are on-again/off-again, with friends sometimes being the cruelest. Her family is splintering, with her grandmother – the steady influence in Lucy’s life – showing frightening signs of aging.

Lucy discovers two things that give her something to feel good about.  She discovers her love of music and with some friends starts a band. And she discovers her father’s old Beatles’ records, solidifying her love of music.  But what if music is what separates friends? Can music make things right, too?

What grabbed me initially about the book, of course, is the obvious Beatles connection.  The title and the cover image homage to Sgt. Pepper are definitely eye-catching to those of us who are Beatles fans. Yet while we’re likely to be the ones to pick up this graphic novel, we’re also likely to be a bit disappointed because this book is not for us.  This is for our children and grandchildren.

And that’s why I struggled initially. I wasn’t putting it into context as to who the target audience for the book was.

The book feels a little bit over-written. Lucy goes through SO. Much, Drama. with her friends.  It’s back and forth without resolve.  I wanted to give up a few times and I admit to looking ahead to see how many pages were left.

But a middle-school girl? This is every day of middle schooler’s life. I think a young reader will immediately catch on to and connect with this.  The Beatles part is secondary to a middle-schooler’s reading. The Beatles get the attention of the older generation who are perhaps more likely to purchase the book to give to the young reader.

Real or not, I did not need the drama to drag on quite so much. We already have a lot going on – parents, grandparent, friends, music – that pulling it all together a little tighter would have made this a more enjoyable book for this reader.

The art by Sean Chiki, is ‘simple,’ solid lines with bold colors and not a lot of depth/shading.  It works well for this book and complements the story nicely,

Looking for a good book? Beatles fans may get sucked into picking the graphic novel, Lucy in the Sky, but it is the reality of the middle school slice of life that will keep young readers interested.

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

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Lucy in the Sky

author: Kiara Brinkman

artist: Sean Chiki

publisher: First Second

ISBN: 1626727201

paperback, 304 pages

CRANK PALACE – James Dashner

Posted by Daniel on March 12, 2021
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, YA. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

The Maze Runner.
Since the days of the ‘boy wizard’  books and films geared toward a young adult audience have flourished, but only a couple have had real success and one of those is James Dashner’s “Maze Runner” series. I’ve only seen the first film and I’ve only read one of the books but when I saw there was a new story, a novella, in the series I was quite curious to check it out.
This is Newt’s story. He does not want his friends to have to watch him suffer from the virus as he falls into a madness, so he leaves a note and before they return from a mission in Colorado, and heads out to the streets. But the streets have unique dangers. He has to avoid the infected as well as those trying to track down the infected. Ultimately he will find his way to Crank Palace – the home to those without hope. Is this the end of Newt’s story?
This is a character-driven story (my favorite kind) and even though I’m not really familiar with Newt (not like the dedicated fans) I understood this character, his motivations, and his trials. You don’t need to know the entire series to enjoy this particular story, though I greatly suspect that those who have more of an attachment to the series and the characters (and Newt in particular) may find this emotionally exhausting.
This definitely has me interested in going back to read the entire series.
Looking for a good book? You don’t have to know the entire series to enjoy Crank Palace, a Maze Runner story by James Dashner.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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Crank Palace
author: James Dashner
series: The Maze Runner #5.5
publisher: Magnus Books
ISBN: 9781626015685
hardcover, 168 pages

BACON AND EGG MAN – Ken Wheaton

Posted by Daniel on March 10, 2021
Posted in: HUMOR, SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Our government is at war. With fast food.

We are in what might be best described as the future in an alternative timeline in what was once the United States of America.  The Northeast has seceded and the rest of the country is now run by “the electoral descendants of King Mike, a man who made it his mission to form a country based on good, clean living.”

And what happens when something becomes illegal? There becomes a black market for those things. Wes Montgomery is a journalist at the last actual paper newspaper in the union (now called the Federation). When he’s not covering the news, he’s making it, as a bacon and egg dealer on the side. He gets caught by the local constabulary but Detective Blunt has bigger fish to fry and wants to use Wes to get at the biggest illegal food dealers in the Federation.

Wes will be watched closely by Detective Hillary Halstead, who falls for his charm (and his steaks) and the two get intimately close. Together they will face the dangers of the underworld and enough gut-filling foods to film a feature-length dining scene ala Tom Jones.

I really loved the idea of this book, and the on-point pertinent satire. We’ve had leaders declare a war on drugs, a war on communism, war on immigration, war on business monopolies. How much of a stretch is it to suggest someone might declare a war on junk food – particularly in light of the fact that Americans are generally more obese than those of any other country and Americans also consume more junk food than anyone else.

Once the novelty of this idea wore off, however, the book began to sag a bit.  Wes’s slow, dry manner made it hard to keep up the energy needed to stay interested. What’s in the next chapter? More Food?  more sex?  And this is different from the other chapters how…?

This was fun, but I feel it would have been better off with tighter editing and a sharper focus toward the end.

Looking for a good book? Bacon and Egg Man by Ken Wheaton is a clever dystopian novel that follows in the footsteps of satire novels such as Catch-22, Candide, and Slaughterhouse-Five but doesn’t quite live up to these literary giants.

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

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Bacon and Egg Man

author: Ken Wheaton

publisher: Premier Digital Publishing

ISBN: 162467111X

paperback, 274 pages

THE RESURRECTIONIST OF CALIGO – Wendy Trimboli & Alicia Zaloga

Posted by Daniel on March 8, 2021
Posted in: ROMANCE, SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Roger Weathersby digs up corpses for medical schools. It is his hope to earn enough money by this means to buy his own text books and study to become a physician. Though he’s never been a man of wealth or means (he was the son of a servant) he had been childhood friends with a princess – Princess Sibylla – though that was many years ago.

For her part, Sibylla had been rather pleased when Roger left the estate. She had seen him kissing members of the staff and heard that he’d taken a bribe to leave the palace.  A man like that was not needed around royalty.  Now Sibylla is focused on continuing her magical bloodline, which means finding a suitable mate. (Can we guess where this might be going?)

Roger is accused of murdering one of the corpses he digs up.  Since the police are sure it’s him, and he (and we) know it’s not, that means there is a killer on the loose and it’s up to Roger to find him. Roger’s only hope is his old friend Sibylla and time is running out!

I really found this book quite average.  There is a slight sense of steampunk-ness given it’s mock-Victorian-era setting, but it’s not fantastically steampunk or Victorian.  There is a slight murder mystery but the book is more interesting in establishing two characters to really give us a meaty mystery. There’s a slight hint of magic, which gets used more frequently as we’re about to be done with the book, but even this seems to be more a prop for a longer story arc than important to this book. And that leaves us with … I’m not sure what.

The story, such as it is, takes way too long to develop.  It’s maybe two-thirds in before we start to feel like we’re getting what we came for, those pages filled with backstory and character development. But if we don’t see where it’s headed, we don’t really care where we’ve been.

This was one of those books where I could see that others might enjoy it.  Romantic Victorian fantasies have a following but I rarely have ever enjoyed such myself. I was hoping for a little more on the mystery portion of the book, or perhaps even some adventure, but I found it a little too … flowery? … to provide much to interest me.

Looking for a good book? There’s a specific audience out there for The Resurrectionist of Caligo by Wendy Trimboli and Alicia Zaloga, but if you’re not into Victorian fantasy romances it might not be for you.

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

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The Resurrectionist of Caligo

authors: Wendy Trimboli and Alicia Zaloga

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857668269

paperback, 360 pages

BOARD STIFF – Piers Anthony

Posted by Daniel on March 5, 2021
Posted in: HUMOR, SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized, YA. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

I’ve never before read a Xanth novel. As a regular reader of fantasy and science fiction I have been aware of this series.  How could I not … this is the 38th book in the series.  Thirty-eight! That’s a remarkable accomplishment.  So when this was available I decided now was as good a time as any to foray into the Land of Xanth.

The young woman named Irrelevant Kandy is looking at her reflection in the water of a well.  She sees the classic beauty that men see, but she sighs with frustration because she has a brain and personality but men never see that.  Aloud she complains that she’s “board stiff” and “wants Adventure, Excitement, and Romance.”  The wise wishing well hears her use of “board” rather than “bored” and grants her wish, turning her into a stiff plank with knothole eyes.  She is picked up by a young knight who will take the stiff board on his adventures.  Kandy is still able to communicate (somewhat telepathically) with her knight (though it’s pretty difficult to explain who and where she is) and together they set out to abolish puns in Xanth.

Oh my.  What to say about this.

The book is 250 pages of fantasy puns.  On more than one occasion while reading this I thought “The 17 year old me would have LOVED this.” The old man me, though, tended to roll my eyes and think, “Did they really just go for that really bad pun?”

I’m not used to reading light, humorous fantasy. I definitely prefer works with a bit of a bite to them, though I recognize that some readers enjoy something quick and fun from time to time.

There is a story – a plot – here, which is pretty classic fantasy adventure, but for the most part I found this to be a one-note novel and that note is ‘puns.’

Looking for a good book? Board Stiff by Piers Anthony is the 38th book in the popular Xanth series.  Your enjoyment of the book may well depend on how much you enjoy a constant barrage of puns.

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

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Board Stiff

author: Piers Anthony

series: Xanth #38

publisher: Premier Publishing

ISBN: 1624670865

paperback, 250 pages

THE GLASS TEAT – Harlan Ellison

Posted by Daniel on March 3, 2021
Posted in: ENTERTAINMENT, MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

As a teenager I was completely and utterly enthralled with Harlan Ellison and his writing. I’ve read everything he wrote that i could get my hands on.  I met him at book signings and conventions and easily rated him as my favorite author.

Ellison’s anger and angst and pomposity was fun, or at least identifiable for the teen me. And over the past few years I’ve purchased his entire catalog of available works in digital format so that I can read them again.  This is perhaps an unusual place to start, this collection of essays since it was his fiction that first attracted me, but in many ways it was my reading The Glass Teat that first got me interested in reviewing.  Long before I started this book review blog (which I’ve been doing for eight years now!) I’ve been a reviewer of art shows for a local paper, a reviewer of books for West Coast Review of Books magazine, and a reviewer of live theatre for a Los Angeles newspaper, and I can pretty much trace it back to my having read this book.

The Glass Teat is a collection of essays and reviews from Ellison’s column of the same name in a Los Angeles newspaper where he reviewed and mostly disparaged the current slate of television shows (current from the late 1960’s to mid 1970’s mind you).

A few things struck me on this reading.

1) This doesn’t stand the test of time too well.  The programs he talks about are now fifty years old.  Do we really care that in 1968 Ellison thought that:

The two shows that really tell us where it’s at are The Outcasts and Mod Squad. These are the shows that dare to take the enormous risk of utilizing black folk as heroes. These are the shows that win the title hands-down for this being The Year Of The Shuck.

Not only are the shows out of date, but the idioms Ellison uses so frequently are also out of date.  Ellison wrote to the people, here and now, of his time.  He spoke to them as if he were one of them (he’d take issue with my “as if”) but 50 years later, we are not one of ‘them’ (even if we were back then).

2) I was a little surprised at how often Ellison’s supposed television review column devolved into rants.  Rants about the television industry were probably in line with the topic of the column.  Rants about how he was treated by other industry insiders was marginally in line with the column theme. Rants about politics, “the Man,” and ‘square’ school administrators who don’t approve of his language and aggression when visiting high schools seemed a bit outside the parameters of a television review column.  But it’s Harlan Ellison.  He pretty much did whatever he wanted and if he got shut down for not playing by the rules, it would just give him something more to rant about.

3) And my last impression here was noticing just how egotistical Ellison was.  It’s certainly no secret he thought highly of himself, but it really comes through in these essays where he is wronged and maligned by others who don’t recognize him when he’s right.  It’s kind of made me wonder about my younger self – the one who really ‘dug’ this guy.

Despite my above comments, I generally enjoyed reading this – mostly from a nostalgic point of view. But I really look forward to re-reading Ellison’s fiction.

Looking for a good book? The Glass Teat is a collection of mostly television reviews and essays by Harlan Ellison. Those who remember television in the 60’s and 70’s may find it fun to look back on what one cantankerous writer thought of television programs of the day.

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The Glass Teat

author: Harlan Ellison

publisher: Open Road Media

ASIN: B00J90EQ5M

Kindle Edition, 279 pages

EUGENE O’NEILL – Robert M. Dowling

Posted by Daniel on March 1, 2021
Posted in: ENTERTAINMENT, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

I have an undergraduate degree in theatre and am familiar with the works of Eugene O’Neill, having read or seen (or both) most of his body of works. I was only passingly familiar with O’Neill the man, the writer, from brief bios in college text books.

Author Robert M. Dowling has done an exhaustive amount of research to give us a deep understanding of the man, Eugene O’Neill, and understanding the man provides insight to the works.
Dowling gives us O’Neill in a straight-forward presentation, and although I presume he has respect or deep appreciation for O’Neill, manages to keep his personal thoughts out of the writing. There are times, especially early in the book, when this comes across as dry academic writing and it takes some patience to keep going, but the further we get in the more I appreciated the style.
O’Neill the playwright defined an era.  When his play Long Day’s Journey Into Night had its world premiere in Sweden, the critics wrote that O’Neill was (according to Dowling’s postscript), “the world’s last dramatist of the stature of Aeschylus and Shakespeare.” I may not go quite that far but I respect the way he raised the bar in modern drama.
Like so many writers of this past era – especially those who brought forward deep themes – O’Neill had his demons. How much those demons affected his writing or how much his writing created the demons can only be guessed at and debated by scholars and students, but books like this are important tools for those who really want to understand the man and his work.
Looking for a good book? The biography Eugene O’Neill by Robert M. Dowling is an important scholarly work and should be required reading for any theatre or English student.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts
author: Robert M. Dowling
publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300170335
hardcover, 584 pages

THE IMAGINARY CORPSE – Tyler Hayes

Posted by Daniel on February 26, 2021
Posted in: SF/FANTASY. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Where do ideas go when we’re done with them? If we believe in an idea enough, it becomes real. But if we abandon an idea that we once really loved, it falls into the Stillreal – a seedy segment of the Imagination.  It is here we find Tippy the Triceratops. Tippy was once the imaginary friend of a little girl who created him in order for her to make sense of the grown-up world. But when the girl’s father dies, she’s forced to face the real world and her imaginary friend Tippy heads to Stillreal.  There, Tippy passes the time by taking on odd detective jobs for other unwanted ideas.  It’s convenient and unremarkable … until Tippy makes the acquaintance of The Man in the Coat – a nightmare who can do the impossible … turn an imaginary friend into an imaginary corpse.

This book is … wow … I don’t know how to define this.

Imagine reading a book the way a child reads a book, believing and accepting the fantastic as possible.  Now imagine reading some specific children’s books, as adults, and believing in and accepting the implausible as possible – Corduroy, A Dinosaur for Danny, The Borrowers. Now give those same books some more adult themes and we start to inch toward what this book is like.

Wildly inventive is putting it mildly, and honestly, I kept expecting the ‘real world’ to break in at any moment, as though we were on the outside, looking in, rather than being part of this.  I think that’s not necessarily a good thing … but I’m entirely sure because this was so different. This is Philip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll, Fredric Brown, and the Teletubbies rolled into one dark detective fantasy.

I was pulled in to the book right at the start, by the introduction of the highly unusual characters and location.  We aren’t hit with a bunch of narrative backstory (which is good) and since this is so different we can’t help but sit back and hope the author is able to make sense of this world for us.  Thankfully, he does.

I love being tossed into a story that’s already underway and having to catch up with where we are and what’s happening while still following the present action.  Fantasy author Roger Zelazny was very good at this, as is Philip Pullman (and now, perhaps, Tyler Hayes).

While this kind of writing and story absolutely thrills me, I can see that this is not something that will appeal to the masses. Read the description, read the reviews, and if it looks like something you might like, then definitely give it a try.

Looking for a good book? The Imaginary Corpse by Tyler Hayes is a very real fantasy/mystery that may bring back some childhood nightmares.

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

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The Imaginary Corpse

author: Tyler Hayes

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857668315

paperback, 297 pages

DEADLANDS: GHOSTWALKERS – Jonathan Maberry

Posted by Daniel on February 24, 2021
Posted in: ENTERTAINMENT, SF/FANTASY. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

The great quake of 1868 split California into scores of labyrinthine caverns, mostly flooded with ocean water. But the quake also revealed a new substance known as “ghost rock” which creative individuals have discovered can be useful for making some inventive weapons, among other things. Ghost rock provides the source for many steampunk-like inventions.

Right out of a classic 1950’s western, our hero is a gun-for-hire, haunted by his past (quite literally in this dark fantasy), who wanders into a town that desperately needs a hero-for-hire to rescue them from a mad scientist who’s  creating an army of undead. Assisting our hero is a British-educated American Sioux because … well, why not?  It takes place in the old west so some Indigenous Peoples representation needs to happen.

This was my second attempt to read the book. It is a long, drawn-out work that doesn’t even come close to living up to the expectations, given that it’s based on an RPG game and mashes westerns with fantasy and the supernatural. This should be a slam-dunk winner for a reader like myself who loves all these genres.

First, I should admit that I am not at all familiar with the role playing game game on which this novel is based. If that’s key to enjoying this book, then I shouldn’t have bothered trying. But I don’t see anything on the cover that warns me of this. And even if this warned in bold letters that this was based on an RPG, I’d still probably have wanted to read it, based on the themes and the fact that I’ve enjoyed some RPGs.

No, the problem here is that author Jonathan Maberry goes on and on describing every little aspect in great detail. It is exhausting reading through this, and not because of the high energy action but because this fractured fantasy world is full of varied pieces with no unify story.  Okay… that’s not entirely true, but the unification is so remote and so far off in this massive book (475 pages that reads like 900) that it could just as well be non-existent.

I’ve liked Maberry’s work that I’ve read in the past.  In fact it was his name as well as the western/fantasy/zombie story that had me interested. But by the end I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps Maberry’s worked so long in the comic/graphic novel world that he’s forgotten how to write novel-length prose.  I don’t know what his comic scripts look like, but I can imagine him going on at length to describe a scene, which gets interpreted into 4-6 panels of art so we don’t read all the description. But here there’s no artist to interpret and condense.

I wish I could have liked this because I put in a great deal of time and effort reading it, but ultimately this just doesn’t work.

Looking for a good book? You need to be really committed to wanting to read this book, and perhaps already familiar with the role playing game, to enjoy Jonathan Maberry’s Deadlands: Ghostwalkers.

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

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Deadlands: Ghostwalkers

author: Jonathan Maberry

series: Deadlands #1

publisher: Tor Books

ISBN: 0765375265

paperback, 476 pages

STRATEGIC PLANNING IN THE ARTS – Michael M. Kaiser

Posted by Daniel on February 22, 2021
Posted in: ENTERTAINMENT, NON-FICTION. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I’ve been working in the arts for four decades and I’ve seen a lot of changes in how arts organizations approach the business of presenting arts programming. Treating the arts as a business is probably the biggest change I’ve seen. This might seem like an obvious direction, but I’ve known very few artists who are wise with a business sense, and fewer still who enjoy the business side of the arts.

Most arts business books I’ve come across have been about “producing” – gathering teams and resources in order to present your chosen art form. But to truly look at the business side of an arts organization one needs to understand the organizations strategic plan.  What’s a strategic plan you ask? Well author Michael M. Kaiser has some answers for you in this book.

Kaiser takes the reader through, step by step, with all the essential processes to creating an arts business. One of the key ingredients is having and understanding the strategic plan. And yet this is surprisingly not as easy as it might sound.

The information presented here comes from actual instances of strategic planning and not simply ideal-but-unrealistic proposals. And while none of us reading the book are actually planning on running The Kennedy Center or The Metropolitan Opera, it is most beneficial if we were to proceed as though we were.  Even the small town community theatre or symphony orchestra should be treated as professionally as possible and that starts on the business end, with a solid strategic plan.

Looking for a good book? Michael M. Kaiser’s Strategic Planning in the Arts is a must-read for anyone working in an arts organization and wants to see it step up to the next level.

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

* * * * * *

Strategic Planning in the Arts: A Practical Guide

author: Michael M. Kaiser

publisher: Brandeis University Press

ISBN: 1512601748

hardcover, 200 pages

GLOW – Tim Jordan

Posted by Daniel on February 19, 2021
Posted in: SF/FANTASY. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

From the publisher’s description, as found on Goodreads:

After the Nova-Insanity shattered Earth’s civilization, the Genes and Fullerenes Corporation promised to bring humanity back from the brink. Many years later, various factions have formed, challenging their savior and vying for a share of power and control.

Glow follows the lives of three very different beings, all wrestling mental instability in various forms; Rex – a confused junkie battling multiple voices in his head; Ellayna – the founder of the GFC living on an orbital satellite station and struggling with paranoia; and Jett – a virtually unstoppable robotic assassin, questioning his purpose of creation.

…

I think that’s all you really need to know, although the description does go on.

Three beings wrestling mental instability, including a robotic assassin questioning his purpose.  Uhhhh….  That alone would suggest that either this is going to be a wild, Philip K. Dick-like tale or a messy conglomerate of ideas.  The possibility of the former is what had me excited to read it, but unfortunately it came across as the latter.

There’s a lot going on here … a LOT … but that shouldn’t be a detriment to the story – it should enhance the reader’s desire to put it all together. Unfortunately it is a detriment. We get bogged down in the weight of this world and all the information that we have to receive in order to make sense of it all.And somehow there’s characters in here, involved in the story, but I never felt I got to know them and I certainly cared even less about them.

A big chunk of the plot revolves around ‘Glow’ – a nanotech drug. While there was a pretty interesting facet of this drug (the ability to survive from host to host, carrying portions of the previous host(s) into the next host), I really couldn’t shake the feeling that this was so familiar.

Drugs and drug use in science fiction is not a new concept but it does feel as though we’ve suddenly seen a rash of ‘tech drugs’ in recent sci-fi and I can name three that have come from publisher Angry Robot (Ramez Naam’s Nexus series; Ferrett Steinmetz’s Flex series [okay … not a tech drug, but a high-profile drug around which the series is based]; and Amanda Bridgeman’s Salvi Brentt series’ drugs).

‘Glow’ didn’t feel new and creative but rather a slightly creative rehash of what has gone (recently) before.

Looking for a good book? Glow, by Tim Jordan, is a science fiction novel that tries to encompass too much in a wildly inventive manner and the result is a difficult to read mess.

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

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Glow

author: Tim Jordan

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857668439

paperback, 400 pages