Book Reviews

There might be an impulse when seeing a book like this to think that it’s only for completists.  I say this as a Philip K. Dick fanatic who would read a collection of his grocery lists.  I’ve read a lot about and by Philip K. Dick so I’m fairly certain I can tell what belongs in his canon and what is less vital.  Search for Philip K. Dick is one of the best books about Philip K. Dick I’ve ever read – yes, as good a window into his life as his late autobiographical Valis novels.  It is a more-vivid […]

As readers we tend to have a hidden agenda as we pore over the words of a new story. Sometimes we just want to be wowed or possibly brought to our knees. There are times when we want exactly what we just had either in another story or by another author. There is a mental checklist we often carry with us that is comprised of what we consider a requirement to a good read. And as we progress through the story we mark off these specific items and at the end we quickly calculate the score to determine where the […]

From the back cover of Terra Nova: The Search –

In a small central California town, a seismologist working for the United States Geological Survey has made a terrifying discovery. A recent seismic phenomenon is predicting global volcanic activity that threatens to wipe mankind from the face of the earth. Fearing widespread panic and civil disobedience, it is decided to keep the truth a secret from the public. In order to save the human race, the President pushes forward with a dramatic initiative to overhaul NASA and begin a new mission: to colonize deep space.

The newly formed deep space

I live in Tennessee, so there’s much in Sara San Angelo’s opening page of Drift that has me thinking, “Oh, yeah. Yep. It’s just like that.” The suffocating heat, the weeds and shrubs and dirt roads. The cow fields and the horses.

I even drive a battered green (-ish/blue) Toyota.

Because of this, the first page manages to hold me. However, if not for all of these familiar things, the first page would, I’m afraid, move too slowly.

Which is not to say I wasn’t interested enough to hop to page two looking for something to happen. That’s exactly what […]

Agony Hill by Roger Saltsman is a novel of redemption. Eric Roberts is teen-age distance runner whom we first meet running Agony Hill on a bitter New Year’s Day with his best friend Mary Klein. The two young people are good friends, although Eric tries Mary’s patience frequently with his competitiveness and obsession about becoming the best distance runner in the state. The son of a widowed mother who is the sole support of three boys, Eric is determined to win a racing scholarship to college and earn a bright future for himself. However, he is also a very poor […]

Curse of the Tahiéra is a pleasant and straightforward epic fantasy with likeable characters and a plot and setting that are detailed enough to maintain interest from cover to cover.

Young Rom is an outcast because his unknown father belonged to a despised race. He sets out alone on a trading mission, but he is joined, somewhat against his will, by a big, hearty fellow named Yldich who turns out to be a gifted shaman. The two travel through a forest where supernatural forces are bubbling through an increasingly thin wall of reality, and Rom has to come to terms […]

The more self-published books I read, the more despondent I get over the state of what now appears to pass for “writing” in general. With some (OK, most) of these books, you are sometimes forced to wonder if it isn’t a case of reader bias brought about by shoddy packaging. It seems that it would go without saying for a self-publisher to go out of his way to make sure that he spends just as much effort on the design and layout of his novel as he has supposedly spent on writing the prose. But as any of us who […]

The concept that “Writers should show, not tell,” may be a bit  overused. The basic premise of show don’t tell is that you can better inspire empathy for a character if you shows what a particular moment feels like, rather than just saying: He was sad.  That sentence will convey nothing if there’s no context illustrating that sadness.  However, if a writer is too strict about showing and not telling, there’s the potential to only write around a subject, and this is not necessarily an accurate reflection of how people think or act. It can actually add some unreality to […]