Technically speaking, this is part of Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, but that’s a bit long of a name, and I rather like “Quarry Cove” better. I’m also quite happy to have had another opportunity to get my camera out.
Quincy J. Allen
I’m standing by that title, and it makes a good follow-up to my review of the short story prequel to this that was in one of the anthologies I read recently.
It’s still a wonderful take on post-civil-war America, and I quite enjoyed the read; although, being as I’m without internet as I’m writing this, I’m rather annoyed that I don’t have the sequel, because there’s a whole lot left to happen in the plot. Like, to the degree that I’d argue this shouldn’t have been the end of the book, just the end of Part One of the book.
Still, it’s a fun read – the main characters are a delightful pair of cowboys that are basically married with a child,1 and if I want to utterly misrepresent the book I’d call it the story of their vacation to San Francisco. Although, considering how much they enjoy themselves, it sorta is, if a bit more lethal than the average vacation. Hey, the six destroyed buildings won’t cost that much to fix, right?
Basically it’s a fun romp of a book, and I’m quite happy to recommend it. Give it a read.
Catherine Lundoff
The last of my string of anthologies; I’ve run out of them for the moment, and I’ll be going back to reading and reviewing novels for a while, at least.
A Shakespearean tragedy, though not in the normal way.
And this, folks, is why we leave the dead alone.
There’s something really fun about a staggeringly normal person getting caught up as a side character in an epic story.
I wanted this to be a bit happier than it actually was, but I liked it regardless.
A happier ending to the Tam Lane story than I really expected it to have.
Now I want to watch a police procedural that takes place in a medieval kingdom full of knights and magic.
If I were a TV witch, this would be the point where my chatty familiar would give me sound advice, which I would then ignore. But then, if I were a TV witch, I wouldn’t be a dyke with the hots for her old college sweetie.
The fact that this whole thing was leading up to a “Beauty and the Beast” joke is just spectacular.
An odd twist on the noir detective trope.
I kinda hate body-swap stories, it’s just difficult to keep track of who’s who.
The city of sorrows has a Diablo sort of feel to it – ancient curses and all that.
All in all, a good collection of stories to end on. Give it a read.
Yet another anthology! I’m on a roll.
Cayleigh Hickey
Oh, we’re off to a good start here. I wasn’t expecting to leap into the land of the fae, but here we are.
Aaron Michael Ritchey
Okay well, this belonged more in the last anthology I read than here, but oh well.
J. M. Franklin
Futuristic steampunk! An interesting twist, and one of the more hopeful bits of post-apocalyptic fiction I’ve ever read. I like it.
Gerry Huntman
Short and sad.
Traveling through time turns out to be loud and flashy but not as uncomfortable as you might think.
Told as a letter from, basically, a background character in an Atomic Robo flashback sequence.
Keith Good
Well that’s a rough life, my guy.
Quincy J. Allen
I’m gonna be honest, I was kinda hoping this would turn into a horrid romance noel halfway through. The sequel’s still got room for that, though, so I’ll hold out hope.
David Boop
Well, that got dark.
J.R. Boyett & Peter J. Wacks
Oh, that was cool. A variant on vampires, and a retired hunter? Very cool.
Vivian Caethe
An exoskeleton-wearing monster hunter, clearing out the Wild West.
Aaron Spriggs
If you’re claustrophobic, don’t read this one.
Peter J. Wacks
Another good story that I’d like to read more of. Tiger is an interesting character, as is Hummingbird.
David W. Landrum
Well that war went a bit differently than the British expected, I’d say.
Sam Knight
A portable X-ray, I think? I wish we had more stories of grifters using some sort of advanced technology to pull it off.
With a salute, punctuated by a word that sounded like a punch to the stomach in Yiddish, the assembled tossed the raft in the river.
It’s a comedy in a style I’d describe as “British Imperial Braggadocio,” which isn’t exactly to my taste, but a couple lines (the one above, for example) got a laugh out of me.1
Jonathan D. Beer
Why do anthologies end on such weird notes? I’d rather have them end on something happy, which this could be if you squint, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Nonetheless, this was another good collection of stories that I’m comfortable recommending. Give it a read.
In my panic I struggled to remember precisely what the five stages of grief were supposed to be, so I experienced denial, anger, gassiness, and that strange confusion you get when you feel you’ve left a door unlocked before finally achieving acceptance.
I’m continuing on my anthology kick, I suppose.
The Great Exhibition had attracted a seething mixture of nationalities—scar-faced Americans, queue-sporting Chinese, green-scaled Inner Earthers—even an odd Frenchman, the latter drawing suspicious glances from John Bull and continental exiles alike.
Ah, Britain.
Folly Blaine & Randy Henderson
“Imagine that with power.”
Jessica Corra
I do enjoy a story where the women are smarter and the men don’t reject that fact.
Howard Andrew Jones
A slight Pirates of the Caribbean vibe to this one, even though the whole thing takes place in London.1
Emily C. Skaftun
This is the saddest one so far, somehow.
Elsa S. Henry
There’s a slight Pratchett feel here, and it works really well.2
Eddy Webb
Sherlock Holmes investigating actual hauntings, basically; I wish this was a series I could read more of.
Nayad Monroe
Gotta love good old Victorian capitalism.
Jonah Buck
While that was a pretty obvious outcome, I’m still annoyed about it.
Erika Holt
Man, I’m with the narrator, I hope he didn’t actually succeed.
Wendy Nikel
A locked-room mystery! Oh, I do like those.
Parker Goodreau
Another one that I want more of – I’d quite enjoy reading this weird love story.
Christopher Paul Carey
Well, that could’ve gone better. I’m a bit curious as to how a cold-burning fire can be used to generate electricity, although I suppose it’s possible…
T. Mike McCurley
I think I’m gonna go ahead and call this my favorite from the book, without even reading the rest: it’s set post-WWII, during the cleanup from a war where Germany weaponized life-force and the Blitz was done with something like a neutron bomb. The entire city wiped out… and an army of angry ghosts left behind.
Scott Fitzgerald Gray
Another excellent one – feels like a post-apocalyptic version of Girl Genius.
Richard Dansky
And this is why we need unions, folks.
Nick Mamatas
A sequel to an earlier story in this anthology, actually, which made it even more interesting.
Spencer Ellsworth
I suppose the title should’ve warned me that this one would be a tragedy.
Liane Merciel
Oh, the wick was a nice touch, I didn’t expect that part.
Richard Pett
Forget about the cuckoo, I want to know what happens to the engine.
Like everyone who had read a newspaper in the past twenty years, I was familiar with Professor Thaxton’s temper. He’d been at the heart of brawls at scientific conferences on six of the seven continents; only Australia has, so far, been spared.
I can only assume he just hasn’t been to a scientific conference in Australia yet, that seems like the most likely place for a brawl at a conference.
That said, we’re also throwing this in the category of “I desperately want a whole series of this.”
Cat Hellisen
Oh, we’re ending on another sad one.
Quite a few very good reads in here, I definitely recommend it if you’re in the mood for some bite-sized works. Have a read.
That’s actually a nice little wordplay in the title there – it’s a steampunk anthology centered around Southeast Asia. From the introduction:
… if in the larger English-language science fiction world straight white men call the shots, then our anthology presents a range of authors and characters that is predominantly women, and hella queer.
Timothy Dimacali
Man, I’d have been more attentive in violin lessons if being able to play well was going to enable me to fly, dang.
Marilag Angway
Post-apocalyptic landscapes are usually made that way by nuclear weapons, but this time it was just a ton of volcanoes. Still unclear on what, exactly, they’re trying to extract from the volcanoes, though.
L.L. Hill
Something about clockwork and holy places just doesn’t mesh in my head; I blame the Luddites.
Alessa Hinlo
Oh, now that is a story. I like it, and I might have to do a bit more research on the myths behind it, they seem interesting.
Nghi Vo
I was expecting a very different ending, but I guess that works.
Paolo Chikiamco
There’s a trend through all of these – more respect and acknowledgement of ancient things than you get in the mainstream of steampunk. It’s different, and it’s a good contrast.
Kate Osias
A tragedy, and a tale of revenge. Sad and sweet and wonderful.
Olivia Ho
I wasn’t really expecting to laugh at a story this grim, but dang was it ever funny towards the end.
Robert Liow
Less ‘steampunk’ than it is ‘biopunk,’ and it’s cool.
z.m. quỳnh
There’s a lot going on in this one, and I’m a bit at sea. Which apparently doesn’t exist here?
Ivanna Mendels
It’s like a superhero team, I’m digging it.
Pear Nuallak
A strong ending to the anthology.
I liked the whole thing- a lot of good stories, and authors that are well worth supporting. Give it a read.
Oh, I am absolutely sold on this setting – I was expecting medieval or renaissance level technology paired with magic, and it turns out I got, like, 30th century, space colonies and holograms… paired with magic. And man is it a fun cast of characters, I’m so down for the other novellas in here.
This might be the first time I’ve hoped for a government to have a policy for civil forfeiture, but if somebody is gonna pour a couple billion dollars into building a Bond-villain-esque mountain base, they may as well repurpose it after the bad guys are gone.
I like a good heist, but in all honesty, I’m still not entirely clear on what happened. I may have missed it while I was busy being annoyed that the future’s equivalent to the DEA is apparently named “EIEIO.”
It took this long to learn that ARGO, the Federation/Empire/Alliance sort of thing that runs the human-control areas, stands for Allied Races of the Galactic Ocean.
Probably my favorite story so far – there was more character development evident than any of the others have had, it was nice.
And a little prequel at the end, showing how the gang got together. I wish there’d been more explanation of the actual contents of the Plundered Tome, though, it was still annoyingly vague.
All in all, a nice little collection of stories that I enjoyed reading. Your turn.
Cat Rambo
An anthology, but all the stories are written by one author, so just the one name at the top here. And just the one link, as well, if you’d like to read it.
The protagonist here, though I feel that may not be the right word, is as if someone heard a quote about “the small-minded man” and wanted to write a character who was the epitome of that epithet. Ugh.
I came to London, where the air smells like smoke and despair.
And really that sums this story, and the feel of the book so far, up: smoke and despair.
This story was pretty fun, but it’s the second time we’ve had a protagonist I’d describe as some sort of terrible. The lady isn’t interested, dude, leave her alone.
Abraham Lincoln isn’t above necromancy, it seems, which made the civil war a rather short affair.
That said, I desperately want more of the main character of this one – she deserves a whole novel to herself.
Oh, now that’s a neat pairing for a detective movie: a telepath and a robot.
And we’re back to everything being depressing forever. Cool.
I’m reminded of Castle Heterodyne, which can only be a good thing.
Now I’m disappointed that I’ve never seen a conspiracy theory claiming vampires own the global transportation network.
I’m slightly confused by how the ‘moments’ work – are they just an arbitrary segmentation of time? I mean, probably, since they worked well for the structure of the story, but still, I want to know more. I enjoyed this one.
There’s some serious hand-waving of science going on in here, but I do like the resulting riff on the core concept. I just wish it was all a bit better-explained.
This month I’m working with the Castleman Quartet Program as their intern and liaison to Linfield College. Part of what they’ve got me doing is publicity, including designing posters to advertise their upcoming concerts.
Which, as it turns out, was a bit of a fun challenge, as we don’t have a color printer, so the design had to be in grayscale only. We’ve also got two concert series – one of chamber music, and one of solo music – and while I wanted the two posters to be clearly related, I didn’t want them to be identical, because that would lead to people glossing over one or the other, assuming it was just another copy of whichever one they’d seen first.
Here’s the result:
Oh and, of course, the concerts are open to the public, free of charge, so if you’re in the area, feel free to come by!
I actually remembered to do this on time so it would post on time! That’s a rare thing, you’d think I’d have a repeating reminder in Things by now or something.
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako
Killer Queen – FIL BO RIVA
22 (OVER S∞∞N) – Bon Iver
Real – Majik
Haze – Amber Run
Wastelands – Amber Run
Go (feat. Ed Droste) – Woodkid
Cruise (Feat. Andrew Jackson) – Kygo
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Battle Symphony – LINKIN PARK
Changed – JP Saxe
One More Light – LINKIN PARK1
Dreams – Sunday
Hope For Something – Panama
Hold Up, Rewind – Close Talker
48 Hours – Triangle Park
High On Humans – Oh Wonder
Parties – Jake Miller
Goodpain – YOKE LORE
VPN ft Palmistry – Mr. Mitch
All We Need – Fyfe
Take Five – Patrik Almkvisth
Better Man (Feat. Peter Gregson & Iskra String Quartet) – Fyfe2
Zero Summer – Dirty Nice
Make a Move – St. Humain
Animals – Tamu Massif
The Roman Call – Beshken
Thunder – Imagine Dragons
Holding On – GHOST LOFT
The Ends and the Means – Robby Hecht3
Leave Out All the Rest – LINKIN PARK4
Steve Berman
I’ll begin by saying that, just before I read this book, I tried reading one that was about lesbian werewolves,1 and it was bad.2 So it’s not getting reviewed here; instead, I switched to this one, and it was so much better. Like, not only was it better-written, it was also just one of the best ghost stories I’ve ever read. Strong vibes of Sixth Sense or Ghost Whisperer, depending on which you used to watch.34
It also gets a strong plus from me for being what I refer to as “queer propaganda” – namely, any book that includes queer characters for purposes other than the “Bury Your Gays” trope. Representation is important, y’all.
That said, the title of this post comes from the fact that I switched to my normal ‘scary movie’ tactic, namely sarcastically commentating all the way through. Which turned it into an oddly hilarious experience, because the main character did a good deal of the scary movie tradition of “making horrible, horrible decisions.” The biggest one goes to “falling in love at first sight,” with the notable kicker being “falling in love with a ghost.” C’mon, man, that’s all sorts of bad choices right there.
And it just goes from there. It’s actually pretty fun, and as I already said, probably my favorite ghost story experience. As is my traditional link for books I like: have a read.
DJ Butler
Alright, who remembers Wild Wild West? It was this weird steampunk western movie that Will Smith was in, came out in the 90s at some point, and was just a strange experience all around. But it was also cool, because steampunk is great and adding it to a western isn’t a twist that you see often enough, so I enjoyed it.
This book? This is what that movie wishes it could’ve been. Not only is it all sorts of steampunk craziness, it’s also set in an alternate history world where the Utah Territory became the Kingdom of Deseret,1 an independent nation led by Brigham Young, the independent Republic of California is issuing their own currency, and after clockwork machinery made slavery irrelevant, Harriet Tubman wound up as the President of the Reunited States of Mexico. A big world with a lot of things going on, for sure.
The story also has a lot going on – the first few chapters gave me a vibe along the lines of Oceans Eleven, somehow – I think it was the “ensemble cast” thing going on. You’re bounced from character to character, but they’re all in the same room together, and trying to get a grasp of their varying motivations and goals is a heady rush. The Civil War is coming up fast, and everybody knows it… but with strong nations sharing an actual border wit the United States, there’s some political maneuvering to be done. Deseret has a military tech lead over everyone else and would be a strong ally on either side, and the favor of Young is not something to be trifled with.
I’m not going to give much more away here, but I’ll say it again: I loved this book, and I couldn’t recommend it more. It was a delight to read, and I’m hoping there’s more by this author that I can dive into later on. Give it a read.
Conor Kostick
I don’t think I’ve reviewed anything by Kostick before, but I’ve definitely read some of his work – his Epic series was delightful, and shares something in common with this collection of novellas: a lot of playing around with virtual worlds.
Slightly on-the-nose about it, but as a card-carrying millennial I am contractually obliged to like a story about the evils of capitalism.
The nice thing is that, in the setting of a post-scarcity and apparently post-death virtual utopia, the whole thing becomes aggressively about the service economy, and also makes the whole thing low-stakes enough that it’s just a nice story.
Again, a very cool concept thanks to the interesting setting. I’m enjoying the little references to Epic, as well – there are both name-drops and references to the actual storyline.
In a world where people can’t die, thanks to the ability to restore themselves from backups,1 finding a way to make the stakes high can be a bit difficult. It’s played nicely in this one.
A nice prologue story, answering a few questions I’ve had building up from little references in the other stories.
I’m feeling like I should check the publish dates of these stories and Epic, because this one really felt like a precursor to the larger novel.
A nice follow-up to the previous story, and a bit of interesting discussion of the relationship between the virtual world in which the stories take place and the physical reality in which it’s anchored.2
All in all, it’s a nice little box set of books, and it’s not too pricey, either. Have a read.
Ekaterina Sedia
This was a very… interesting book. And I say this because, beyond that, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I didn’t really enjoy the plot, but I found everything else fascinating – the world in which it takes place has a weird set of rules unlike any I’ve seen before, and it fits well with the unique main character.
And it’s interesting that, despite my interest in this sort of thing, I haven’t actually read many books where the narrator is a machine. That’s the real twist to this book – and no, it’s not a spoiler, because they’re clear about what they are – and it plays remarkably well. It’s done remarkably well, too – the perspective is slightly off of what you’d get with a human narrator, and I think the author did a wonderful job of using that difference to tell the story they wanted to tell.
So I suppose I’m comfortable recommending it – as I said, I didn’t actually like what all happened with the plot, but the storytelling was interesting enough that it held my interest the whole time, and I do think reading it was a good use of my time. Have a read.
James Rollins and Grant Blackwood
I’m not kidding about that title, by the way; I’ve mentioned that I enjoy this genre of action novel, and Cussler takes a firm second to Rollins in terms of writing quality.1 And apparently Rollins has been writing at a prodigious rate – there’s something like eight new books in his Sigma Force series that I still haven’t read, so that’s all exciting.2
“War Hawk” actually is a Sigma Force novel – or at least, tangentially related. Sticking to my Cussler comparisons, it’s like how the Dirk Pitt and the Oregon Files series take place in a shared universe, and occasionally overlap – the main character in “War Hawk” showed up as a supporting character in some of the earlier Sigma Force books3 and some of the cast of the Sigma Force books are supporting characters in this one. It’s a nice touch, and I think it works well, although the reasons for not involving them more were a bit contrived at times.
Like I said already, Rollins writes higher quality books than Cussler; in the above-linked Cussler review, I make a complaint about a pretty elementary mistake in some of the book’s usage of the Spanish language.4 Meanwhile, in this book, which involves a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (something I know a wee bit about), had only one or two little things for me to pick nits with.5
The moral of the story is, I quite liked the book – more than Piranha, for sure, and enough that I just went downstairs and grabbed one of the other Rollins novels that I own to give it a quick re-read. And hey, how could I not recommend a book where the narration is occasionally from the POV of a dog? Give it a read.6