I do star ratings now.
Mostly Audio Book reviews recently. I will at times add a paperback review.
Looking for a review? Send me an audio book. Genres: thriller, crime, horror, science fiction, (maybe) fantasy.
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You Play, You Pay by B. L. Morgan StoneGarden Publishing ISBN: 1-60076-140-2 204 pages (c) July 2009
I have read all of Bob's work. I have known this talented writer since 2001 (or was it 2000?) and was stoked to get a copy of his latest book: You Play, You Pay, in the post and I devoured it in to sittings (damn job lol).
I have one word for you: Fantastic.
This book is extremely readable and based on the premise of everyone's wish to find a bag filled with money. And Sheriff Hector O'Grady has done just that. He is thinking of his financial future after retiring and he knows that a cops retirement fund is not going to support him and his wife. Even now they are just getting by with two kids to feed and mortgage to pay.
Unfortunately, the money does belong to someone and that someone is a person you don't mess with and three men are sent out to find that money and get it back, regardless of the cost.
It is Hector who pays the greatest cost.
You'll fly through this book as the plot and characters carry forward from one page to the next. It is a short book and I really would have loved to see more.
Bob knows how to tell a tale and he spins the web so thick, one can't escape until the last page.
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry St Martin's Press ISBN-13: 978-0-312-38285-8 ISBH-10: 0-312-38285-8 421 pages
This is the first Jonathan Maberry book I have read, though I've known of him a long time. I discovered him over at the Masters of Horror social site. I ordered Patient Zero for two solid reasons.
The first: It sounded like a zombie book, and I like zombies. The second: It sounded like a zombie book, and I like zombies.
And yes, this is a zombie novel. The story is about Joe ledger, a cop who is recruited into a secret organisation called The Department of Military Science (DMS). They fight terrorists who are trying to release a new virus that turns people into zombies.
Joe is a smart-ass detective and is not interested at first, so Mr. Church has to find some leverage to get Joe to join them and lead a small team into the jaws of hell. They find that leverage in the form of Joe's close friend and shrink: Rudy.
Joe has a team of five and during their first training together, they get called out and attack a warehouse, where zombies are getting ready to feast on children, or infect them and send the blighters home. (That part is not clear.)
I also found interest in this book waning as it seemed to take forever to get to the zombies. There was a LOT of explaining going on to entice Joe into the fold and it was told in a boring manner. Personally I didn't think all those details needed to be told. I know it was added to give flair and explain how the zombie virus worked, but for me, nope. I found myself skipping paragraphs and waiting to reach the end of the chapter and many chapters are really short.
When we finally got to the action, the first person POV killed the scene. Some parts were over-explained and others were not.
Z Day is Here, Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse by Rob Fox Publisher: Library of the Living Dead Copyright 2009 ISBN 13: 9781448603077 209 pages
Wow. That's my initial reaction after finishing Z Day. I am not sure but I think this book started off as a blog book and was then picked up for a POD CAST and then publication. And it is well worth the read. Once you get past the formatting and typos (on purpose in some cases - it is meant to resemble a blog, not a book), you'll find yourself rooting for the MC and several of the stragglers he comes in contact with.
The book is a quick read (and I'm a slow reader), I finished it in three sittings. It is an account of the first 101 days of the Zombie Apocalypse and it starts with an interesting reason to how the world died. And it all started with a little boy. Read the first page, it is all explained in an excellent way -- as background to the story taking place. I loved that.
Zombies are the new vampires and this is the perfect book to set you on your travelling way through the land of the dead.
Once you finish this book, you're gonna want more and there is more. One of the characters continues the journal 280 days later. And you can find that blog HERE.
There's been a discovery. It's top secret and the president wants some private investigation into the thing. The president is struggling in the polls and is competition is hammering him over the errors that Nasa has made, and there are a hell of a lot of them. It all sounds good, but the execution is poorly done.
Brown feels the need to teach the reader science in a boring way, that drags on for pages and pages.
Yes, his fiction is based heavily in fact but he doesn't pull this off like his other three books. If most of the information he gives us could have been delivered in a more interesting way, like he did in Angles and Demons or Digital Fortress.
If a hundred pages were cut, things may have gone faster. Don't get me wrong, the book is still a good read with several story lines coming together nicely. It's just unfortunate the main plot didn't work and bored me.
One by Conrad Williams Virgin Books 2009-07-29 ISBN: 978-0-7535-1810-6 363 Pages
Richard Jane is a deep sea welder. While at work the end of the world happens.
This is a hard book to explain but the basic storyline is: Richard Jane gets to shore and walks the long road back to London. He wants to see his son, he is sure his son is still alive and through out the book we get to experience his life with his son.
Along the way he meets up with a number of survivors, an Australian couple who constantly bicker and the wife goes nuts; an elderly British couple (their role in the book is short lived but required); Becky and her young ward, Aiden (who has a blood disease). There are thugs and druggies, a strange girl in white who decides to follow Richard and a few other people along the way, including zombie! Yay! But these zombies are called Skinners and I won’t say what they really are.
The book is broken into two parts: Births, Deaths and Marriages and Lazarus Taxon.
Book one is all about Richard Jane’s (herein after called Jane as in the book) trek to London and the many problems that arise. Book two (ten years) Jane is in London as part of a resistance kind of outfit. Skinners are the main problem. They are blind but all other senses are heightened. Oh, and there’s a Lion on the loose, rats are not afraid of humans and will feed on sleeping adults. There is rumour of a raft and once confirmed a huge exodus take place. It seems as if there are hundreds of hundreds of people still kicking around in London.
Conrad Williams is an awesome writer, his words flow smoothly and hours can pass without your knowledge as the pages keep turning. But, and it’s a big one. Stuff just happens in the middle of a paragraph. Other scenes are not described clearly, especially the last scene leading to the war and the explosion, because stuff just happens off the cuff, in the middle of something else. There’s no lead up, no build up and maybe that is what Conrad was going for, but to this reader it was confusing and many times I had to go back and re-read the last few pages trying to find the start point that hints at the coming event--but there is none.
Jane is a man driven to keep breathing in the hope of one day seeing his son. He won’t accept the fact the boy could be dead, he refuses to accept it. He has hallucinations and dreams of his son and he talks out loud to the non-existent child.
The end is as you would expect, but it is a chocker moment (yes a near tear jerker), because Jane is such a rounded character driven by a basic need to find his son.
The Strain is book one in a three book series planned. Most books about writing will tell the learner to never, never, never use “Once upon a time” to open a story. And that’s exactly how this book opens. Del Toro takes us straight in to the fantasy aspect of the story by introducing us to our first main character, who becomes the one with all the information.
Abraham Setrakian’s grandmother used to tell him of tales surrounding a giant, Jusef Sardu, who becomes a monster. Many years later, Abraham meets this monster face to face in a POW camp. Strigoi, AKA The Master, is a vampire centuries old. Abraham decides to kill the monster and it becomes his life long pursuit.
Sixty years later, he is an old man, a pawnbroker in the Spanish Bronx. One afternoon, watching TV he sees a plane land. It doesn’t move off the tarmac. The plane is dark and all electronics and coms are dead. Boarding the plane, authorities find everyone dead, save five.
The CDC are sent in to investigate. Eph Goodweather is called, but he doesn’t want to answer the phone and tries to ignore it. He is spending time with his son and in the middle of a custody battle with his Ex. There are other things going on as well, giving the character depth -- but, I never felt for Eph. The other minor characters are so well drawn with just enough to gives a hint of whom they are. I liked them better, especially the exterminator, Fet, who starts noticing a difference in Rats behaviour in the underground (unused) tunnels running under NYC; and Gus is a great character as well.
The start of the book is a little slow as the vampire virus gets free, starting with the dead passengers on the plane, who go to their homes and kill family members and neighbours, turning them all into vampires.
The five uninjured passengers are released from hospital via a lawyer (one of the passengers) and guess what they do... (see above paragraph)
Abraham meets up with Eph, who naturally doesn’t believe him and Abraham gets arrested. In jail he meets Gus and Gus’s friend who was attacked by a vampire. He tells Gus to kill his friend. His friend is turning. Gus can’t.
Eph gets Abraham out of jail as the virus has him and everyone baffled. Only Abraham seems to have any idea of what’s going on. He tells them the story of Strigoi, The Master, and takes them to his pawn shop. In a hidden basement, he shows them proof of the vampire virus. And in the course of a week, Eph goes from healer to slayer.
And yes, they do run into Strigoi.
There are a lot of sub plots going on at the same time that all tie in near the end of book one, but there are other plots that I am sure will link in to the next book: The Fall.
A great undertaking, this book has moments of greatness and moments of bored horror. Some of the first attacks are filled with way too much detail that the killings are--yes--boring. But all that changes once the virus is fully understood; the reactions of those turning are realised and how these vampires feed is awesome.
As mentioned there is a bit too much explanation going on but the last 200+ pages fly past and before you know it, the sun is rising, the book is done and it’s time to start the day.
The Edge of the World Book One of Terra Incognita Kevin J. Anderson Publisher: Orbit ISBN: 978-1-84149-663-4 574 pages
This is a big book. Roughly 140,000 words, and it is the first book in Kevin J. Anderson’s Terra Incognita series. As with Epic Fantasy’s there are a host of characters (thankfully all names are pronounceable--unlike a lot of fantasy books I have read), so many that there is an eight page glossary in the back.
With so many characters it could be easy to get lost, correct? Nope. All up there are only a few main characters: Criston Vora and Adrea Vora (his wife), Prester Hannes, Aldo (chartsman), Princess Anjine Korastine and her childhood friend, Mateo Bornan.
The story revolves around the aforementioned characters with a lot of extras that add weight to the plot and help head the book in the direction it is intended. In Edge of the World, there are two nations trying to live in peace, but an unfortunate death of an officials son and a fire that burns down a main city, sparks a war that both sides fear they cannot win.
For 13 years the two nations take pot-shots at one another, attacking small villages and ports. The two nations: Uraba and Tierra follow the same god: Ondun. The Aidenists (Terraians) are blamed for the fire in Ishalem (though it wasn’t them) and when the Aidenists return to Ishalem they are murdered by Urecari (Urabaians). There is no turning back. Each side starts preparation for the war to come, they build ships, they build armies, the Urecari kidnap children for a special project, that in the end pushes the war forward.
What’s special about this book are the characters. You will come to be addicted while reading about them and the lives they lead during the 13 year build up for war, and the changes they all go through, some are major, some are minor but they all work to form strong characters with a distinct voice.
Although I did not like the style of writing at first (the ‘show don’t tell’ ratio doesn’t match), it slowly grew on me and once several of the characters had been formed, I was flying through this book.
