Category Archives: Fiction

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

I review ‘Treasure Planet’

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Another day, another review. I reviewed Hal Colebatch’s novel, Treasure Planet, for the American Spectator.

The Jim Hawkins character here is Peter Cartwright, a young man who helps his mother run an inn in a remote part of Wunderland. The appearance of Captain Skel, a demanding and dangerous old space-farer, sets off a plot whose general outlines will be familiar to any Stevenson fan. Long John Silver here is “Silver,” a Kzin with a prosthetic leg, and instead of a ship we have, of course, a spacecraft. The treasure in this book is not gold, but an alien library full of technological information left behind by a long-extinct species.

Read it all here..

Fiction

The Green Ember Is Great Fun

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I get why Loren hesitates to review Sam Smith’s The Green Ember, and I share his desire to see it succeed. Here’s a bit of his review:

“Here’s the best way I can sum up The Green Ember for you: It reads as if Brian Jacques had Sam Gamgee’s famous quote from The Return of the King (“Is everything sad going to come untrue?”) nailed above his desk while writing a version of Redwall that wasn’t awful. Far from being merely “not awful,” though, Smith’s first novel shows that he truly understands the essentials of storytelling.”

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

Presence of ‘Malice’

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They’ve revamped our friend S. T. Karnick’s The American Culture blog, and I’ve finally found a minute to write a book review for them. It’s a review of Keigo Higashino’s Malice.

That seems straightforward enough, but Detective Kaga is unsatisfied. The confession has minor holes, ones that nag at him. Gradually, as one peels away the layers of an onion, he works his way down to Nonoguchi’s true, secret motive.

Read it all here.

Authors, Fiction

Failure, Joss Whedon Style

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“Joss Whedon’s career is a testament to failure,” said his biographer.

“Pascale shares some of the life lessons gleaned from her research that help explain how Whedon built his fanbase and got all these projects done without killing himself.”

Elsewhere, Whedon says stories of advanced technology and artificial intelligence are our new Frankenstein myth.

Fiction

Scalzi and Redshirts

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“John Scalzi is interesting as someone who has built a writing career in these strange days,” Joseph Bottum explains. “He spent a few years writing movie reviews after college before landing, in 1996, a sweet gig at America Online as editor and in-house writer. Laid off in the meltdown of AOL, he took to writing guidebooks for the money and science fiction blog posts for the fame. Or, at least, the dribs of money and the drabs of fame. The blog, called “Whatever,” proved enjoyable for readers—a few years ago, he issued in book form selections entitled Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded—and it successfully established him as a voice to be reckoned with in the field.”

Scalzi’s most recent novel is called Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas. It’s a story about a red-shirted crew that discovers it’s dangerous to accompany the senior officers on landing parties.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

Advent Ghost Stories 2014

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“There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long. long ago.”

Loren Eaton hosts another round of ghost stories centered on Christmastime. There are many here, and Loren has a couple himself. Note this one called “Elizabeth.” Enjoy and post your comments.

Fiction, Reviews

Minder, by Duncan MacMaster

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A while back, I reviewed Joe Average, a satiric superhero story written by Duncan MacMaster, of the Furious D Show blog. I liked the book quite a bit.

I liked his recent novella, Minder, even better.

This is a dark and gritty story, suitable for a movie starring Liam Neeson. A crime boss in an unnamed city learns that a contract has been put out on a local woman cop. He doesn’t want a cop killing in his town. It’s bad for business. So he hires “Fitz,” a professional killer and IRA veteran, to protect her.

The story is well-written, the characters believable, the dialogue excellent. It’s simply a workmanlike hard-boiled story, entirely satisfying to the fan of the genre. The sort of thing Jack Higgins would have written before he ran out of steam. I wished it longer.

Recommended.

Authors, Fiction

Glimmerglass

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“Some years ago,” writes John Wilson, “I described the novelist and poet Marly Youmans as “the best-kept secret among contemporary American writers.” That’s still true today (so I think), and if you haven’t tried Youmans yet, her new novel, Glimmerglass, is a very good place to start.” (via Prufrock)

Authors, Fiction

Faber’s Book of Loss and Strange New Things

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Michel Faber has a fascinating story behind his novel, The Book of Strange New Things, as well as a curious story in the novel itself. The novel tells the story of an intergalactic missionary to works to translate the Bible to aliens who are not just a little different. They aren’t beautiful Martian queens. They are completely foreign to human beings, and they want to know about Jesus and “the book of strange new things.”

Steve Paulson of TTBOOK interviews Faber here as part of a show on science fiction.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Joy Cometh with the Mourning,’ by Dave Freer

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Dave Freer is best known as a science fiction writer. I don’t know him personally, but we have several mutual friends. One of those friends sent me a free copy of Joy Cometh with the Mourning for review.

Reviewing this book is problematical for me, because of fundamental presuppositions. The main character is a female pastor, and most of you know I consider that unscriptural. Still, I read the book and found it appealing on its own terms.

Rev. Joy Norton, the protagonist, is a young pastor newly installed in a remote parish in Australia. She’s insecure about the call, as she’s never served in a rural church before, or on her own. The situation is complicated by the fact that her much-loved predecessor’s cause of death is unknown. What makes it worse is that she begins to suspect that there were improprieties in his conduct, which might have given one of her parishioners a motive to murder him.

Unlike the mysteries I usually review, Joy Cometh with the Mourning is a “cozy” mystery. Instead of turning over spiritual rocks and discovering evil, Rev. Joy looks into human hearts and finds goodness there. Even that particularly maligned species of humanity, the Church Lady, is treated with respect and affection in this story.

I enjoyed reading Joy Cometh with the Mourning. If you’re more tolerant than I am of egalitarianism in the church, you’ll probably enjoy it very much.