I was very excited last night to find out that Clarkesworld Books, which used to be one of my favorite bookstores before it closed, is temporarily open through July 31. The order minimum is $35, but it’s for a good cause – the owner is trying to free up some space so his two boys can have bigger rooms. So you can always justify your order by telling yourself it has nothing to do with an uncontrollable book buying addiction […]

The Peace War by Vernor Vinge 304pp (Paperback) My Rating: 7.5/10 Amazon Rating: 4.5/5 LibraryThing Rating: 3.85/5 Good Reads Rating: 3.80/5 “Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” – Vishnu, by way of J. Robert Oppenheimer Vernor Vinge has developed into one of the greatest science fiction authors of the last few decades, despite producing barely more than a half-dozen full length novels in his career. His last three books have all won the Hugo award for the […]

Blood and Ironby Elizabeth Bear448pp (Paperback)My Rating: 8.75/10Amazon Rating: 4/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.05/5Good Reads Rating: 3.63/5 Blood and Iron is the first book in Campbell award winning author Elizabeth Bear’s urban fantasy series, “The Promethean Age.” The third book in the series will be out on July 1 and a fourth book is scheduled for release on August 5 of this year. With its lush prose, gray characters, and interweaving of mythology, Blood and Iron was a very enchanting story with […]

I finished Blood and Iron, the first book in Elizabeth Bear’s “Promethean Age” series so I should have a review of that up in the next couple of days. You could say I liked it since I want the next book now. It is out, but I’m going to be patient (ha!) and wait until the third book is out on July 1 and just order them both since I can’t find the next book at any of my local […]

I visited Realms of Speculative Fiction today and found I’ve been tagged. I’m now supposed to get the nearest book, turn to page 123, and copy the fifth sentence. Hm, there an awful lot of books that could qualify as “nearest” with 8 bookshelves here… So I chose the book I just finished, Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear. That sentence is… You should go. Well, that’s a boring sentence. What’s on page 223? Seeker whirled and hurled the glass […]

For many years, back before I decided that choosing favorites was a no-win proposition, The Abyss held a rather bizarre distinction for me: it was both my favorite book and my favorite movie. This is bizarre, of course, because novelizations of movies are very rarely good, much less great, and film adaptations of books very rarely manage to capture the full power of an exceptional novel. But Orson Scott Card and James Cameron created such an exceptional pair of complementary […]