Category Archives: Book Reviews

In which the reader shares his thoughts on the books that possess his imagination throughout the year.

Book Reviews, Science Fiction

Redshirts ~John Scalzi

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(Cover image: Tor Books)

Growing up you had a dream and the sky was the limit. Well, actually the sky wasn’t the limit, it was just the starting point. For you are a citizen of the Universal Union and your dream has come true. You are Ensign Andrew Dahl and you have been assigned to the Dub U’s flagship, the Intrepid. The universe has just opened to you and your future holds, among other things, exciting away missions on exotic planets lead by high ranking members of the Intrepid crew. Could life get any better?

You think not, until experience shows that a great many of the crew members die on these away missions, many in unimaginably unpleasant ways. You are tapped early on for inclusion on these all-too-frequent excursions and thus you have front row seats to the fickle finger of Fate. Beyond the ever-present danger, something seems not quite right about these away missions. And as you ponder this feeling you discover that the finger of Fate may not be so fickle. For her choosing seems to be anything but random, and her fashion sense leans to one lone member of the color wheel: Red.

Author John Scalzi’s latest book is many things, but mostly a riff on the implausibility present in all hour long weekly action adventure television shows, most notably the long-running series–Star Trek–and the well known joke at the show’s expense that can be summed up in one word: redshirts.

Continue reading Redshirts ~John Scalzi →

Book Reviews, Fantasy

Neverwhere Group Read, The Conclusion

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(Image: A Gift from Old Bailey, Carl V., 2011)

It is with a touch of sadness–that satisfying yet melancholy feeling–that we say goodbye to Richard Mayhew and to Lady Door, to the Marquis de Carabas and to Old Bailey, to the two delightful villains Croup and Vandemar and to the world of London Below. It always pains me a bit to say farewell, after all these are friends of more than a decade who I have visited time and time again. The great pleasure of the written word is that you can actually return and visit your friends. With the passage of time you have changed, and so have they, and the discovery that despite those changes those friends continue to matter is one of the treasures of reading.

It was a great privilege to be able to go on this journey with Richard and Door with all of you. Some of you were returning for a repeat visit, such as I was, and others were taking this journey for the first time. Some of you were touched by the magic of Neverwhere, and others weren’t. This too is one of the treasures of reading–no two people experience the story in the same way.

I had decided that in lieu of specific questions this week, we would culminate this group read with each individual taking their own direction with what they wanted to share. I did suggest that I would be most curious to know how readers thoughts and feelings about particular characters were affected by the events in this final section of the book. Beyond that, let’s just chat about Neverwhere.

Continue reading Neverwhere Group Read, The Conclusion →

Book Reviews, Fantasy, Young Adult

The Freedom Maze ~Delia Sherman

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The Freedom Maze is the story of thirteen-year old Sophie Fairchild Martineau, a girl on the verge of young adulthood growing up in the racially divided South of the early 1960’s. In the aftermath of her parents’ divorce, she is trundled off by her mother to spend the summer on what is left of the family estate in the Bayou. To say that she is unhappy about this state of affairs would be an understatement. With the awkwardness and emotional volatility that only adolescence can bring, Sophie’s situation becomes increasingly more intolerable. One of the few remnants of the estate’s plantation days is a maze, overgrown but still very enticing for a girl looking to have an adventure. That adventure begins in the form of a disembodied, enigmatic voice that later materializes as a Creature Sophie could not have dreamed up in her wildest imaginings. A rash wish born out of anger and frustration causes the Creature to intervene, sending Sophie back 100 years into her past. There she discovers a vibrant, working plantation and gets to experience first hand what slavery was like for both her ancestors and their slaves, for in this past Sophie Martineau is not welcomed as a member of the family, but is instead mistaken for a runaway slave.

By the description you might think this would be the kind of book a forty-something male who reads predominately science fiction and fantasy would not gravitate towards. And you would be correct. Curiosity got the better of this cat when Delia Sherman won the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy at the Nebula Awards ceremony on May 19th. That win propelled me to investigate The Freedom Maze, and something about the cover image and the idea drew me right in.

I was entranced. I had to go into that maze. What I found there was a doorway to a thoroughly satisfying, richly detailed adventure.

Continue reading The Freedom Maze ~Delia Sherman →

Book Reviews, Fantasy, Short Stories

Selections from “Tapping the Dream Tree”, Part 2

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(Photo Credit: Dave Neukirch)

After a week off to catch our collective breaths, Kailana and I are back to discuss the next three stories in Charles De Lint’s collection, Tapping the Dream Tree. As I mentioned last time, I will be accompanying each story with a credited Creative Commons License image from Flickr that relates in some way, at least in my mind, to the story. We discuss some general ideas in our short story discussions to give you the opportunity to join in on the discussions too, so please feel free to do so.

And now, this week’s stories.

Continue reading Selections from “Tapping the Dream Tree”, Part 2 →