In a world that already has Terry Pratchett, I understand that it’s hard to reach the Terry Pratchett bar since it’s set so high up on the Terry Pratchett scale. So I feel for Robert Rankin on that front. But I also kind of think he picked up a pen and thought, “how hard can this be? Oh, I should put boobs in it too! Hehehehe, boobs. I’m a genius.” This book…happened. The plot had no idea where it was going, but it was going […]
Tell Me, Princess, Now When Did You Last Clean off Your Hard Drive
Alif the Unseen is a mess of a book, but in a good way. There is elements of cyberpunk, graciously borrowed from Neuromancer. There’s revolutionaries straight from today’s news stories. There’s teenager drama that would be right at home at Degrassi High. And underneath all of that is the Quran. Alif is a “grey hat”, which is what H4X0rz (sorry, I’m from the 90s, I had to) are calling themselves now, I guess. Alif’s clients needs to keep their sites of objectionable content up and out […]
The Haunting and the Haunted
Sethe, a former slave, is raising her last child left in the lonely, two story house at 124. Well, they aren’t completely alone. There is the spiteful spirit that bedevils the house, scaring away Sethe’s two sons and turning her mother-in-law infirm. The arrival of Paul D, another former slave that worked on the same farm as Seth, brings a short period of relief from the haunting. Until a few days later, when a young woman shows up on their porch, with no memory, who […]
If Serial Was Set in Victorian England
“The ordinary was made sinister.” Any Serial obsessed person can tell you that line pretty much sums up the whole podcast. It also accurately sums up the murder of three year old Saville Kent in England in 1860 at Road House. The residents and staff of Road House all had alibis that, if you believed them innocent, appeared innocuous. If you perceived them guilty, their testimony seems suspect. For example, when the governess awoke at 5am and noticed the three year old missing from bed, […]
More Than Just Fantasy Tropes
I promised myself last year that I would finish a few of many, MANY series I’m currently in the middle of before I start something new, so most of my reviews may not be very helpful to people that haven’t yet started a particular series. This is one of those times. I also won’t bore you with my simplistic summary of Sanderson’s world created in the Mistborn series; Sanderson created such a unique and well-crafted place that I can’t do justice to it in a […]
If a Tree Falls in the Woods and No One Posts about It on Facebook…
Have you read Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy yet? If you haven’t, do not pass go, do not continue with this review, do not collect your free surgery and body mods once you turn sixteen. Lest I be labeled a hater, I picked up Extras next because I knew I would more than likely give it more than a few stars. What can I say, dystopian YA is my JAM. Extras takes place a few years after the Uglies trilogy. It’s not exactly a spin-off, but it’s […]