Previous SFF Author: Richard E. Goddard
(1967- )
Christopher Golden is an award-winning and bestselling writer of horror, fantasy, and suspense for adults, teens, and children. He also writes the Body of Evidence thriller series and contributes to Star Trek, Hellboy, X-Men, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, Angel, and Battlestar Galactica. His original novels have been published around the world in more than fourteen languages. He lives in Massachusetts. Learn more at Christopher Golden’s website.
Christopher Golden also writes as Thomas Randall.
Click here for more stories by Christopher Golden.
VEIL by Christopher Golden
The Veil series, by Christopher Golden, is something of a mixed bag. The first two books, The Mythhunters and The Borderkind, are fairly good. I enjoyed the world created in The Mythhunters. The books are a new take on some of our well-known characters from various fairy tales, legends, and pantheons. The legends of The Veil, however, are to children’s bedtime story characters what Stephen King‘s Pennywise is to circus clowns.
Guest´s rating: 2.5 | Christopher Golden | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden
On a cold autumn night, under a black sky leached of starlight and absent the moon, Captain Henry Baltimore clutches his rifle and stares across the dark abyss of the battlefield, and knows in his heart that these are the torture fields of Hell, and damnation awaits mere steps ahead.
Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (2008) is a darkly poetic story of supernatural horrors unleashed during World War One.
Jason Golomb´s rating: 3.5 | Christopher Golden, Mike Mignola | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Poison Ink by Christopher Golden
Poison Ink is the first YA novel that I’ve ever read by Christopher Golden, and from start to finish, I couldn’t be more impressed. As usual, the first thing that stands out is the author’s top-notch writing. Which in this case encompasses his ability to convincingly adopt the personality of a sixteen-year-old female high school student; faithfully capture domestic, social and high school life — including different cliques, lunch ladies, texting, flirting, and peer pressure — and a gift for witty banter:
“My Clever plan for world domination failed.”
“So what next,
Robert Thompson´s rating: 4.5 | Christopher Golden | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Mind the Gap by Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon
Even though Mind the Gap is extremely fast-paced, the novel started out really slowly for me and it wasn’t until 160 pages in that I began to get excited about the book. The problem was that for almost the first half it seemed like Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon were just going through the motions, delivering a plot that was one recognizable convention after another:
The protagonist’s mother mysteriously murdered by shadowy people and forced on the run… Raised to trust no one,
Robert Thompson´s rating: 3.5 | Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon
Mind the Gap, the first collaboration between award-winning and bestselling authors Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, was a solid offering, marred by a slow start and conventional plotting, but ended on a very strong note. Their second collaboration follows a somewhat similar path — slow beginning, powerful ending — but with some key differences.
Firstly, the setting for The Map of Moments is much more interesting than it was in Mind the Gap.
Robert Thompson´s rating: 4 | Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Shadow Men by Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon
The Shadow Men is the fourth book in Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon’s THE HIDDEN CITIES series. If (like me) you’re not familiar with the previous books, it may be good to know that all four books can be read as standalone novels that share a common premise but (as far as I know) no major characters or plot elements. In the series’ fantasy universe, cities have something like a soul or consciousness,
Stefan Raets´s rating: 2.5 | Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Waking: Dreams of the Dead by Thomas Randall
Considering what an awkward foot Dreams of the Dead by Thomas Randall (Christopher Golden) starts off on, I was pretty surprised when, shortly after beginning, I found myself unable to put it down.
In spite of my overactive imagination, I like something scary once in a while. Poor Thomas Randall was already up against some stiff competition, since only days ago I wheedled my husband into watching Ringu (the Japanese horror film re-made as The Ring) with me.
Beth Johnson Sonderby (guest)´s rating: 4.5 | Christopher Golden, Thomas Randall | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Father Gaetano’s Puppet Catechism by Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden
There is just no way I can resist reading a novella called Father Gaetano’s Puppet Catechism, especially when it’s written by the guy who created Hellboy. As I expected, I was rewarded with just over 4 hours of constant audio entertainment.
The young priest Father Gaetano has just been assigned to a church in Sicily that has taken in children who were orphaned during World War II. The nuns love the children and are doing the best they can,
Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Christopher Golden, Mike Mignola | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Tell My Sorrows to the Stones by Christopher Golden
Christopher Golden says in his introduction to Tell My Sorrows to the Stones (a quotation from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, perhaps Shakespeare’s cruelest play), “A collection of short stories is like the strange history of a period in a writer’s life[.]” This crystallized my thinking about short story collections, as I become more and more of a reader of short science fiction, fantasy and horror: a collection gives you a picture of a writer,
Terry Weyna´s rating: 3.5 | Christopher Golden | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Cemetery Girl: The Pretenders by Charlaine Harris & Christopher Golden
“I’m pretty sure I died. For like, a minute, at least.”
Against a blue and black background, a spidery streak of lightning illuminates the sign, Dunhill Cemetery. In the second frame, a car appears, twin spots of red, the brake lights, gleaming like eyes as a shadowy figure unloads another figure from the trunk and hurls it down a defile. That’s how Cemetery Girl: The Pretenders, by Charlaine Harris and Christopher Golden opens.
Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Dead Ringers by Christopher Golden
During my final college years, I was frequently greeted with warmth by complete strangers who thought they knew me. It was disconcerting to be hailed across the quad only to have these folks say, “Oh, you’re not her,” when they got a bit closer to me. Apparently I had a doppelganger! It happened again a few years later, when my college boyfriend (with whom I had broken up) got a new girlfriend who looked enough like me to be my mirror image. That was creepy.
Terry Weyna´s rating: 3 | Christopher Golden | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Joe Golem: Occult Detective by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden blends the private eye genre with the golem legend and takes place in a future world in which part of New York is under water and people get around by boats, makeshift bridges, and unstable-looking planks. This first Joe Golem trade includes two stories — one three issues long and the other two issues. However, they are connected as Joe meets a young woman in the first story (Lori Noonan), and we see her again in the second, and Joe’s character develops from one tale to the next.
Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Christopher Golden, Mike Mignola | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Blood of the Four by Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon
Magic is an elusive and dangerous thing in the kingdom of Quandis, forbidden to all except a few select priests who spend their lives preparing to handle the ancient magic, and even then inhale only a few smoky tendrils of the powerful magic. Princess Phela thrives on sneaking through hidden passages of the castle, seeking to overhear others’ information and secrets. When Phela hears her mother, the queen, confessing (in a drug-induced haze) to her lover Linos Kallistrate that she, the queen,
Tadiana Jones´s rating: 0.1 | Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The January 2014 of Nightmare Magazine opens with “The Mad Butcher of Plainfield’s Chariot of Death” by Adam Howe. Gibbons is the proud owner of Eddie Gein’s car, a genuine relic of the murder on which Alfred Hitchcock based his movie Psycho. Gibbons has a carnival show built around the car, a regular “Disneyland from hell,” and he can’t figure why it isn’t the huge success he expected when he spent his inheritance from his mother on the thing. But not only don’t people flock to see his show with a two-bit carnival traveling from town to town;
The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology by Christopher Golden (ed.)
FORMAT/INFO: The New Dead is 400 pages long divided over nineteen short stories. Also includes a Foreword by the editor Christopher Golden, and biographies on all of the anthology’s contributors. February 16, 2010 marks the North American Trade Paperback publication of The New Dead via St. Martin’s Griffin. Cover art provided by Per Haagensen. The UK version will be published on February 18,
Death’s Excellent Vacation by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner (eds)
Even paranormal creatures need to get away from it all sometimes. In Death’s Excellent Vacation, editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner present a collection of thirteen stories tied together by the theme of “vacation.”
The “headliners,” as evidenced by whose names are in big type above the title, are Harris, Katie MacAlister, and Jeaniene Frost. Each of these three authors contributes a vignette from one of her popular series: Sookie Stackhouse,
Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Jeaniene Frost, Katie MacAlister, L.A. Banks, Lilith Saintcrow | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes edited by Christopher Golden
FORMAT/INFO: The Monster’s Corner is 400 pages long and consists of 19 short stories. Also included is an Introduction by the editor Christopher Golden, and biographies of all of the anthology’s contributors. September 27, 2011 marks the North American Trade Paperback publication of The Monster’s Corner via St. Martin’s Griffin. The UK version will be published on the same day via Piatkus Books.
ANALYSIS: The New Dead was one of my favorite books of 2010,
Dark Duets edited by Christopher Golden
Christopher Golden explains in his introduction to Dark Duets that writing is a solitary occupation right up until that moment an alchemical reaction takes place and a bolt of inspiration simultaneously strikes two writers who are friends. Golden has found that the results of collaboration are often fascinating and sometimes magical, as when Stephen King and Peter Straub teamed up to write The Talisman. Writing is an intimate,
Terry Weyna´s rating: 3 | Amber Benson, Carrie Ryan, Cassandra Clare, Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Gregory Frost, Holly Black, Joe R. Lansdale, Jonathan Maberry, Kevin J. Anderson, Rachel Caine, Rick Hautala, Robert Jackson Bennett, Sarah Rees Brennan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Tim Lebbon | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Urban Allies edited by Joseph Nassise
I’m always impressed when authors work together, and in Urban Allies, editor Joseph Nassise has managed to pair up twenty authors who not only collaborate, but merge their own characters into ten brand-new and original adventures. Each story shares a similar theme: popular characters from existing series or novels meet up and must join forces in order to defeat a common threat. Since these are urban fantasy authors, every story has a supernatural or paranormal aspect, though the situations and resolutions are completely unique to each tale,
Previous SFF Author: Richard E. Goddard
I might say "formulaic" actually.
Your review made me curious, so I looked this book up. Sure enough: Tor. Tor seems to specialize in these…
It's a tightrope act for sure.
[…] Stuart (2 December 2015). “Roadside Picnic: Russian SF classic with parallels to Vandermeer’s Area X | Fantasy Lit…. fantasyliterature.com. Retrieved 8 […]
yes, I mean, there are certainly lots of good sci-fi/fantasy novellas out there, so they aren't impossible to do, but…