The Human Target by Peter Milligan (writer), Edvin Biukovic (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), and Robert Solanovic (letterer) Christopher Chance is the Human Target. He is able to impersonate anybody, and he takes the place of those whose lives are in danger, often when there is a hitman pursuing them. He digs deep in his method […]
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Starfish by Peter Watts In a future overpopulated and under-resourced Earth, a geothermal energy plant has been constructed in a trench thousands of miles under the Pacific Ocean’s surface. The humans of the maintenance crew who live and work in and around the power station have been genetically engineered to withstand the harsh deep-sea environment. […]
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Chocolat by Joanne Harris I love stories that feature outright magic, fantastical worlds and mythical creatures — but sometimes all it takes is a tiny dabble of enchantment to turn a story into something really special. That’s what Joanne Harris achieves with her bestseller, Chocolat, a timeless story about love, motherhood and, best of all, […]
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The Visitant by Kathleen O’Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear The Visitant brought all sorts of family vacation memories to my mind. It reminded me of all the times I’d hiked through the ruins of Mesa Verde and imagined all the people who had worn those same rocks smooth hundreds of years ago. That’s part […]
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I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream: The Voice From the Edge Vol. 1 by Harlan Ellison Probably everyone who knows anything about Harlan Ellison knows he’s a jerk (please don’t sue me, Mr. Ellison). I had to consciously put aside my personal opinion of the man while listening to him narrate his audiobook […]
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100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello (writer) & Eduardo Risso (artist) 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso is one of the first lengthy comic book series I read (along with Y: The Last Man and Sandman), and it remains one of my favorites, competing in its writing and art with the best that Sandman […]
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Song Quest by Katherine Roberts I read Katherine Roberts’ Song Quest (book one of the three-book ECHORIUM SEQUENCE) as a child when it was first published in 1999. A few years later it was the first book I ever cajoled an unsuspecting customer into buying during my Saturday stint at the local bookshop. It is […]
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Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear follows several characters — a molecular biologist, an archaeologist, and a public policy maker — through a cataclysmic pandemic sweeping through the human race. This disease is an HERV, a human endogenous retrovirus, which is a piece of dormant genetic code that, when activated, only […]
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A Living Nightmare by Darren Shan “Only the world’s dumbest person would run a risk like that again. Step forward — Darren Shan!” Darren Shan (which is the name of the author and the protagonist of the CIRQUE DU FREAK series) was having a pretty normal life until one of his best friends finds an […]
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Beyond the Highland Mist by Karen Marie Moning Modern Seattle: Ravishingly gorgeous Adrienne de Simone (whose every body part is “perfect,” though she doesn’t know that) hates beautiful men because she just had a bad experience with the gorgeous man who was her fiancé. Never! Never again! Medieval Scotland: Sidheach James Lyon Douglas, otherwise known […]
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Guenevere: Queen of the Summer Country by Rosalind Miles The literary world is crammed full of books surrounding Arthurian lore — so many, in fact, that it could very well be a genre of its own. The problem, however, is that because the main events, characters and storylines are already set out in the mythology, […]
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Space Wolf by William King In mankind’s distant future there is only war. Welcome to the world of WARHAMMER 40,000; a time flung so far into the future that the past has long been shrouded in legend. The human empire spans the universe but is assaulted on every front by demons, aliens, and the followers […]
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Dark Prince by Christine Feehan Mikhail Dubrinsky is the leader of the Carpathians, a powerful race that is dying out due to lack of females. Raven Whitney, a human, is vacationing in the Carpathian Mountains after using her telepathic skills to help catch a serial killer. Raven senses Mikhail’s distress and the two of them […]
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Orcs by Stan Nicholls The Wolverines are an elite Orc fighting unit bound to the service of an evil witch-queen. War rages between religious factions — those who follow the one god who places humans above the elder races (orcs, dwarves, trolls, etc.) and those, such as the Wolverines, who worship the old god. On […]
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The Search for Senna by K.A. Applegate Best known for her bestselling pre-teen series Animorphs, K.A. Applegate takes on a darker subject matter for a significantly older audience in her twelve book series Everworld. Straight away one of the advantages to the story is that there’s an end in sight (unlike the Animorph series which […]
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World’s End by Mark Chadbourn World’s End is the first book in British fantasy author’s Mark Chadbourn AGE OF MISRULE trilogy. The novel was originally released in the UK in 1999, and has been re-released in the US by Pyr in 2009. World’s End can probably best be categorized as dark contemporary fantasy. The setting […]
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THE OATH OF EMPIRE by Thomas Harlan The Oath of Empire is a series of four books, namely The Shadow of Ararat, The Gate of Fire, The Storm of Heaven, and The Dark Lord, which is at once a fantasy and an alternate history of the Western and Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empires, and which is set […]
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The Gnomewrench in the Dwarfworks by Nick O’Donohoe Set during World War II, The Gnomewrench in the Dwarfworks (1999) concerns a young man who works at an industrial plant selling furnaces for war production. When he gets an order for a furnace sized for someone who is only three feet tall, he investigates and discovers that […]
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Dawnthief by James Barclay Dawnthief is the first book in James Barclay‘s CHRONICLES OF THE RAVEN trilogy (followed by Noonshade and Nightchild). In addition to the trilogy, the author also published four LEGENDS OF THE RAVEN novels and one Raven novella, as well as two ASCENDANTS OF ESTORIA novels and the stand-alone Vault of Deeds. Dawnthief […]
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The Thief’s Gamble by Juliet McKenna The Thief’s Gamble is a difficult book to review. The difficulty arises primarily from the same thing that my lukewarm 3-star rating does: the uneven, jam-packed narrative and the periodic confusion that it caused. The narrative is really three-fold: (1) the main story, as seen through the eyes of […]
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THE VIEW FROM THE MIRROR by Ian Irvine I wonder how much of an abstract autobiography this tale is. The main character shares a name very similar to that of the author (Ian and Llian) and his occupation is that of a chronicler and teller of tales. In other words, he is the rough equivalent of an author and […]
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Sir Stalwart by Dave Duncan Dave Duncan delivers a fun, sword & sorcery romp in a short book that you don’t need to invest hours slogging through. Too often there are books out there that simply can’t stand on their own without being 800-900 pages in length and Duncan seems to avoid this. Now, if […]
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First Test by Tamora Pierce Throughout Tamora Pierce’s range of fantasy books, the Protector of the Small quartet is unique, mainly because it is not primary a fantasy series, but a school story — more akin to the likes of Enid Blyton’s Naughtiest Girl in the School or Mallory Towers. This may seem like an […]
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The Shadows of Albion by Andre Norton & Rosemary Edghill I’ve heard others gripe that this book is basically fluff. Well, yes, it’s light, but that’s part of what I liked about it. I’ve read a lot of serious (and sometimes depressing) books lately, and this one was a much-needed cool breeze of just plain […]
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A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones While I await my copy of the third book of Sword of Shadows, A Sword from Red Ice, I’m re-reading the first two books of what may be my all time favorite epic series. For A Cavern of Black Ice, which I first read back in 2000, […]
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