Review: Cowboy Angels by Paul McAuley

Cowboy Angels Paul McAuley (blog, twitter) Pyr, 2011 I started this sort of randomly.  I mean, I certainly intended to read it next, but I was on my way to the bathroom (tmi?) and saw it sitting there on my desk and just sort of brought it along.  Then we had more than a foot [...]

Some thoughts on re-reading Gardens of the Moon

I first came upon Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series on the old wotmania (RIP) Other Fantasy forums and quickly ordered a paperback copy of Gardens of the Moon from amazon.co.uk.  I blew through the novel in a matter of days and was absolutely floored by what I read.  Sure it dragged in [...]

Hardly Reaching

The only story in Halo: Reach exists in its cut scenes.  This my friends, is a failure. Reach, stripped of those cut-scenes is by and large a fairly pedestrian shooter that offers little new to the table.  While the game is certainly attractive there is frequently very little that distracts you from path set before [...]

Review: Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card

Pathfinder Orson Scott Card Simon Pulse, 2010 My initial attraction to Pathfinder was based solely on the fact that the main character was named Rigg.  Rig is a less well known name of the Norse god Heimdall;  it is the name Heimdall goes by as he wanders Midgard, the tale of which is chronicled in [...]

Wooooaaaarghhhhhhh!!! (Or, MAGFest 9)

So apparently my WordPress android app decided not to post anything, that was awesome.  Things were quiet here because I left last Wednesday, amidst nearly 11 inches of fresh snow and several rail delays for the Music and Gaming Festival 9, i.e. MAGFest, down in Alexandria, VA.  From the convention’s about page: In short, MAGFest [...]

Review: Stonewielder by Ian Cameron Esslemont

Stonewielder Ian Cameron Esslemont Tor, 2011 When starting a Malazan novel my most frequent initial mental state is confusion.  This does not speak well for either myself or the novel concerned but has been almost universally true in the twelve or so novels I’ve read in this universe shared by Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron [...]

Review: Dauntless (Lost Fleet) by Jack Campbell (audio)

The Lost Fleet: Dauntless Jack Campbell Audible Frontiers, 2008 Audible Frontiers has so far done a bang up job of producing accessible and quality productions of recent and classic science fiction and fantasy works and their release of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet: Dauntless is no exception.  One of my favorite things so far is that [...]

Review: The Fall by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

I read and enjoyed The Strain (as did my friend Val) last year but this time out I nabbed the audiobook version of its sequel The Fall.  The Fall, second book in a planned trilogy, takes place bare moments after the end of The Strain.  New York is sliding further and further into chaos, rioters [...]

A Quick Look Back at 2010 (also…December Summary)

No big year end posts for me.  No choices for best-ofs, I’ve enjoyed too much over the course of year to make some sort of arbitrary decision about which was best.  Some interesting stats… In 2010 the blog had  aprox. 41,000  hits.  An increase over 2009′s 29,159 hits.  A fairly substantial increase.  I have no [...]