Either/Or

Courtesy of Booklikes

BOOKLET OR TOME?
Booklet.  I'd rather read three entertaining shorter books than plod through one tome.

PRE-OWNED OR NEW?
Pre-owned if I can swing it.  I'm pretty cheap.

HISTORICAL FICTION OR FANTASY?
Fantasy.  Historical fiction is too easy to spoil.

HARDCOVER OR PAPERBACK?
Paperback.  They're easier to store and easier to lug around.

FUNNY OR SAD?
Funny.  The world is already full of sad things.

DO YOU PREFER READING IN SUMMER OR IN WINTER?
Winter is a heavier reading time.  There's not much else to do when the snow is forty feet deep in the middle of the winter that lasts a generation.

CLASSICS OR MAINSTREAM?
I don't consider most of what I read to be Mainstream but it's definitely closer to Mainstream than it is to Classics.

GUIDEBOOK OR FICTION?
Fiction.  I'll guide my own way.

CRIME NOVEL OR THRILLER?
I prefer crime novels because I generally find them to be more intelligently plotted and have more surprises than thrillers.  I don't want to invest time reading something when I can see all the twists coming.

E-BOOK OR PRINT EDITION?
This one is tough.  If I'm reading in bed or have to do a lot of traveling, I prefer e-books.  For casual reading on the couch or kitchen table, print all the way.

COLLECTING OR CLEARING OUT?
I used to be a collector until I saw what a fine line there was between collecting and hoarding.  Now I only hang on to my favorites.  Much less stuff to move if I have to flee in the middle of the night.

INTERNET OR BOOKSTORE?
If I'm paying for them, I'll always go to the used bookstore.  I hate paying ridiculous prices for ebooks since they can't be turned in for store credit when I'm finished.

BACKLIST OR NEW PUBLICATION?
Lately, I've been hitting NetGalley pretty hard so I'll say New Publication.

BEST OR BAD SELLER?
Bad Seller.  Being a best seller is normally a red flag for me since most of them are dumbed-down crap.

COOKBOOKS OR BAKING BOOKS?
Cookbooks.  I find them way more practical.

Doctor Who: Touched By An Angel

Doctor Who: Touched By An Angel by Jonathan Morris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Eight years after his wife's death, Mark Whitaker receives a letter from his future self, giving him instructions on how to save her. But why are the Weeping Angels following Mark? And can The Doctor, with Rory and Amy in tow, stop the Weeping Angels from rewriting history? Of course he can! He's the Doctor...

I got this from Netgalley.

I have a few Doctor Who tie-in novels under my belt at this stage in the game and few of them really manage to capture the feel of a Doctor Who episode. Touched By An Angel could have easily been a fifth or sixth series Doctor Who Adventure.

The plot looks pretty simple on the surface. Mark gets a letter for himself and tries to stop his wife from being killed in a car accident. However, Touched By An Angel uses a lot of timey-wimey stuff and has more twists and curves than a Moebius strip.

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory are well-written and true to their episodic incarnations. Mark Whitaker is the character that sets this Doctor Who novel head and shoulders above most of the others. If you had a chance to undo the untimely death of the love of your life, wouldn't you do it?

Once Mark finds himself in the past, the plot really starts twisting in on itself. The Weeping Angel's plot makes a lot of sense, as does the actions future Mark, the Doctor, Amy, and the Rories(?) take in order to make sure history doesn't get rewritten and empower the Weeping Angels. Mark's final fate is right in line with some of the more poignant Doctor Who endings.

That's about all I can say without spoiling too much. If you're looking for an Eleventh Doctor novel, this is the best one I've run across so far. Four out of five stars.

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Cruelty: Episode Four

Cruelty: Episode Four by Edward Lorn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tom Morgan is in a coma but still alive. Twon and Ollie go looking for Will Longmire and their money. Markum is closing in on Cruelty and Forgiveness is on the loose. Oh, and Merlo the cowardly dog and Randy Miser join forces.

Mama Lorn's little boy has done it again. While Cruelty didn't make an appearance, a lot of dominos were set up in this installment. The setting is starting to feel a little True Detective-ish, always a good thing.

There's not a lot more I can say without revealing too much. As always, the episode blew by and left me wanting more. I'm looking forward to rereading the series in one whack once the whole series is released. Four stars out of five stars.

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The Ten Thousand Things

The Ten Thousand Things by Tim Marquitz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nina Weaver and company are riding the rails and Lao Xu's hell train is right behind them. Can they stop the train full of Deaduns before it catches them? And even then, can they elude Lao Xu?

Step aboard the cliche train for a moment. The Ten Thousand Things is Those Poor, Poor Bastards on steroids with the volume turned up to eleven. Nina and company go out of the frying pan and into the fire so many times they should have burn marks on their asses.

Ahem... The Ten Thousand Things is the second book in the Dead West series, currently slated as a sextology. Heh, sex. Anyway, these books are so action-packed they're exhausting to read at times. Lots of Deaduns get killed and the good guys take a world-class shit-kicking. The gore level is pretty high.

The writing group of Soward, Marquitz, and Martin deliver the goods. I've grown to care about the Daggett brothers, miserable assholes they may be, as well as the rest of the cast. Nina continues taking steps toward her destiny and the rest of the characters prove to be more multifaceted than originally suspected. I'm getting really excited about the final confrontation with Lao Xu and it's likely still several installments away.

I don't have many bad things to say about this series so far. I expected a higher body count among the main cast in this one but I'm sure a few of them will drop like flies in the next installment. Much like the last book, there's a gag-inducing part near the end, this time involving a worm the size of a whiskey bottle pulled out of someone's head.

If you like weird westerns prominently featuring zombies, give this one a shot. The guys at Ragnarok Publications are good people and they know how to spin a yarn. Four out of five stars.

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Dead Man's Drive

Dead Man's Drive by Michael Panush
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Zombies, demons, and a new crime boss named Roy Roach threaten the sleepy 1950s town of La Cruz, California, and the only ones that can save them are the supernatural hot rodders at Donovan Motors. Will Roscoe the hot rodding zombie discover his old memories before his friends are killed? What's Wooster's secret? And what are the bad guys really after?

I got this from Netgalley.

It's hard to resist a book about supernatural creatures driving around in hot rods. The Donovan Motors crew acts as troubleshooters for the town of La Cruz, named for an unholy relic hidden in the nearby mountains. Roscoe, their newest recruit, is an amnesiac zombie. Other members of the crew include a bankrobber named Wooster, a Mexican named Angel, a college student named Bettie who is also a witch, and young Jewish teen Felix who is also a wizard. Oh, and Felix's pet Yeti cub, Snowball.

Sound good so far? How about leftover Nazi Reed Strickland, who wants to run the crew out of town so he can take over? Or Mr. Roach, the cannibal with a centipede for a tongue?

Dead Man's Drive is like a 1950s hot rod movie, only with lots of supernatural creatures and laughs. There's also a fair amount of gore but most if it is perpetrated against zombies. It's a really fun little book and didn't overstay its welcome like a lot of books of the same type.

The book didn't really have many slow parts. The book may as well have been written according to Lester Dent's formula. The heroes were introduced and the shit kept piling up, like an overflowing toilet in a lackluster Mexican restaurant. Even though it's the first book in the series, I wasn't sure who was going to survive.

Befor I wrap this up, here are potential blurbs I came up with while reading:
- Zombies, flying skeletal birds, yeti cubs, quaint 1950's style racism, this book has everything!
- Dead Man's Drive is head and shoulders above all the other books about zombies driving hot rods while defending a small California town from supernatural threats in the 1950s out there.
- It's like The Fast & The Furious meets The Munsters, only it doesn't suck!

3.5 out of 5 stars. I'll be returning for the next Rot Rods adventure, Detour to the Apocalypse.

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Sharcano!

Sharcano by Jose Prendes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When volcanoes erupt all over the world, the lava is not as dangerous as the unholy beasts that swim in it, the lava sharks! Can a motley crew scattered all over the world save humanity from the lava shark menace and the accompanying hellfire flu?

I got this from Netgalley.

I eyed this up on Netgalley for a couple weeks before finally pulling the trigger on it. It looks like a B-movie in book form. What could be wrong with that? I'll get back to that in a minute.

Sharcano is way better than it has any right to be. It reads like one of Christopher Moore's Pine Cove books, only on a global scale. Instead of a B-movie in book form, it's more like a parody/homage of big budget disaster movies. It could easily have been a Michael Bay movie with an all Aerosmith soundtrack.

Sharcano packs a lot into its pages: philandering newscasters, hot lady scientists, sinister Asian scientists, redneck Bigfoot hunters, Area 51, volcanoes, disease, and sharks made out of lava. It's a buffet of carnage up in this bitch.

Like I said earlier, the writing was way better than I thought it would be. I actually cared about the characters, something I did not anticipate. It's loaded with funny similes and quotable dialogue, which contributes to the length. And therein lies the rub.

For what it is, Sharcano is about twice as long as it needs to be, especially since it's the first book in a trilogy. When you watch a B-movie or cheesy disaster flick, it's only two hours out of your life. This cheesefest is over 420 pages and it's not as fast of a read as you'd think. Ultimately, it feels like a spectacular 100 page novella crammed into a 420 page book, to paraphrase the mighty Ebert.

Still, it's pretty fun. I was entertained by the concept of lava sharks but it had all worn a little thin by the end. Imagine the feeling you'd get after watching three disaster movies in row.

Three out of five stars. I doubt I'll be returning for the next installment, though.



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The Word Exchange

The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When her father disappears just days before his life's work, the third edition of the North American Dictionary of the English Language, is set to debut, she has no idea of the rabbit hole she'll soon be going down. People are forgetting common words and coming down with what is called the word flu. Is there a connection between the word flu and her missing father?

I got this from Netgalley. My initial impression was that the book was overwritten by someone who was into literary fiction and "slumming it" by writing a sf book and a little too in love with its own cleverness. Did my impression change? Read on...

The Word Exchange is set in a very near future where everyone uses electronic devices called Memes for lots of everyday tasks, like the way people use Smartphones now, only kicked up a few notches. Meme use is so prevalent that people commonly pay a few cents to look up words online. That's fine, until everyone starts speaking gibberish.

First off, I found the worldbuilding a little lazy. Douglas Johnson's age and birthdate didn't gibe with the book's post 2016 time frame. Also, I found it a little too convenient that the only technological advancement was in the Memes. However, I was able to brush that aside. What really irked me early on was that the story was told by two POV characters in the form of journal entries. In and of itself, that's fine. The problem was that both narrators were ramblers so it took forever for anything to actually happen. And the footnotes! Footnotes should only be used in sf/fantasy if your last name starts with a "P" and ends with "ratchett."

Around the 40% mark, I stopped being such a curmudgeon and focused on the story, which had finally begun making some forward progress. The intrusion of nonsense words into Anana and Bart's journal entries was fairly well done and the word flu actually wound up being pretty good, though I liked the way Neal Stephenson did the language virus concept in Snow Crash better.

As people lose their ability to communicate and later access the Internet, society quickly slides downhill, illustrating how dependent everyone has become on electronic devices.

So here we are at the end and I'm not really sure how I felt about this book. I thought parts of it were good but I wouldn't precisely say I liked it. It felt about 100 pages too long. It was a mystery/conspiracy novel that featured sf concepts I thought were done better in other books. I'm giving it a 3 but I'm not really thrilled about it.


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