From the category archives:

Books

Luck Be a Lady: Matt Forbeck’s “Vegas Knights”

September 13, 2012
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Matt Forbeck’s Vegas Knights could be described as Harry Potter meets Ocean’s Eleven. In fact, that’s exactly how it is described on the cover. Unfortunately, it lacks a lot of what makes those two stories so engaging. While the premise starts out with a fantastic amount of promise, hinting at a fresh, exciting narrative, it [...]

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In Which Gail Carriger’s The Parasol Protectorate, Book the Fifth: Timeless Is Reviewed

April 8, 2012
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A Word of Caution: While every effort has been made to ensure the minimization of the prevalence of spoilers and their harmful effects, they are impossible to avoid all together, this being a review of the third in a series.  Therefore, if you have not yet had the pleasure of partaking in Soulless or Changeless or Blameless or Heartless, by one Ms [...]

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Gods, Monsters, and Giants: Fultz’s Seven Princes

January 25, 2012
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I have always been a fan of big, grand, all-out, non-ironic, epic fantasy–magic, kingdoms at war, heroes, destiny, magic, mythic creatures, Big Bads, gods, villains, and, oh, yes, magic–but in recent years, a great deal of the epic fantasy out there primarily seeks to deconstruct the genre, to act as a commentary on its form, [...]

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“Rise of the Machines”: Andrew P. Mayer’s Hearts of Smoke and Steam

January 5, 2012
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Andrew P. Mayer’s already extremely inventive steampunk superhero saga, The Society of Steam, grows even more so in the second installment, Hearts of Smoke and Steam. Rather than summarizing the plot of the first novel again and potentially spoiling a new reader for its major plot twists and turns, I will simply point you towards my [...]

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“Brief Candle”: Eric Brown’s The Kings of Eternity

December 2, 2011
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Science-fiction author, Eric Brown’s lovely new novel, The Kings of Eternity, which he apparently worked on for over ten years, originally began its life as a short story which he later expanded into its current form. Even as a full-length novel, it still, however, manages to retain the feel of a short story. There is [...]

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“Apocalypse Now”: Trent Jamieson’s The Business of Death

November 21, 2011
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Experiencing the last chapter of a much-loved saga, whether it be a novel, film, or final episode of a television series, is always a bittersweet endeavor. No matter how impressive, satisfying, or well-told an ending it is, this will likely be the last time one will get a new story about these characters, barring an [...]

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Bejeweled: Mark Hodder’s The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

November 10, 2011
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Last year, my poor little mind was absolutely blown to smithereens by Mark Hodder’s ingenious work of darkly humorous steampunk, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, to the point that stringing together coherent sentences with which to compose a review after reading it proved difficult. I loved it that much. Unsurprisingly, I initially approached its [...]

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We Could Be Heroes: Grant Morrison’s Supergods

August 8, 2011
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While reading “The Golden Age,” the first part of legendary and legendarily controversial comic book writer, Grant Morrison’s new book, a rumination on and history of superheroes entitled Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, And a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human, I was pretty firmly convinced that it was the definitive [...]

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Defining Dragons: Blake Charlton’s Spellbound

August 5, 2011
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Last year, I was truly captivated by Blake Charlton’s debut novel, the highly imaginative and exceedingly intelligent Spellwright, which shook up some of fantasy’s most well-worn tropes with a refreshingly new magic system and a fresh perspective on the genre that paid homage to stories that came before it even as it simultaneously spun itself off [...]

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Steampunk in the Big Apple: Mayer’s The Falling Machine

August 2, 2011
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With masked heroes, a mechanical, humanoid automation called “Tom” for short, and more alliterative names than you can shake a Golden Age comic book at (Sarah Stanton, Dennis Darby, and Doctor Dynamite, to name a few), Andrew P. Mayer’s The Falling Machine–the first in his The Society of Steam series–is a pulpy delight from start to finish. [...]

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