Sometimes it really surprises me how much my enjoyment of a book is linked to my current headspace. For example, I read The Magicians a year or so ago and I recall really liking it. But this time around, I hated it. Well in truth the book was ok; what really I hated the main character. This read around he just totally rubbed me the wrong way. ¹ Then there was Blood and Honey. I don’t know for sure that it’s something that would normally be to my taste; but when I read it, I was in something of an angry mood ² Or we could look at the Dresden Files which over all has been a great source of entertainment of late; unfortunately too a great source, as it’s been keeping me waaaaay too late into the morning as I read each volume. ³

Other Notes

• I hadn’t realized how much a pair of worn out shoes were affecting my general feeling of well being. At least, I hadn’t until I finally bought some new ones. Good lord, I totally should have bought new shoes sooner.
• Speaking of things I should have done sooner, I went in to the doctor’s office today and got some antibiotics for the sinus infection that’s been wiping the floor with my system.
• I’ve been working on the new theme for this site, and I’ve got a rough prototype worked out for the home page. But I just don’t like it much. It’s not god awful, but it’s also not good enough. So I’ll probably be ditching the current redesign I was thinking about and try another approach.

Books, Headspaces & Other Notes © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

Note: This review is based upon an uncorrected proof which I received via a giveway on GoodReads.

I don’t, as a rule, read True Crime; I do enjoy a good mystery. So when I saw this book being offered in a giveaway over at GoodReads.com; I felt I just had to enter.  Then when I was home sick the other day, the book arrived in the mail. Given I hadn’t yet noticed I’d won a copy it was a very pleasant surprise.

I moved the book to the top of my to-read list and once I started on it was glad I had done so. It’s strange; there’s no quick paced action,  no tense drama yet I couldn’t put it down. Maybe it was the author’s fasincation with Gilkey (the theif)  & Sanders (the “bibliodick”) or maybe it was the author’s own fascination with this private world of rare book dealers. It certainly wasn’t the characters that drew me in. Gilkey was given the most “pagetime” but he wasn’t very interesting. Simply an unrepentant crook (all protestations to the contrary) who choose credit card fraud as his easy method of living the good life, which happens to involve owning rare books. Sanders was slightly better but seemed too angry/bitter for much of the book.

While I’m still not sure why I enjoyed this book, it’s safe to say it was an good read.

Review: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Reading List © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

So I am looking forward to seeing this and hopefully it won’t suck like the trailer.

¹ Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on a Tree
² I’d give you a direct link to the trailer, but they built their site entirely in flash so there’s no way for me to do so. Apple now has the trailer for The Dark is Rising on their movie trailers page.
³ The main character of the book.

The Dark Is Rising © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi
My Rating: 5 out of 5.

This book is a delightfully wacky tale of one man’s fight to keep a very special sheep alive. In the process, our hero will have to fight off various aliens and a few treacherous villainous humans. Scattered throughout The Android’s Dream are numerous one liners. Each one of these taken by itself and outside the context of the story are funny, but put together and in context they’re hysterical. LOL is a common abbreviation used online that stands for “Laugh Out Loud”. These days it is mostly used to indicate somebody found something else amusing and does not actually mean any truly laughed outside of their own head. I bring this up as I repeatedly found myself laughing out loud while reading The Android’s Dream. Below are a few of my favorite lines from the book:

Jesus, forgive me, he thought. I really shouldn’t have eaten that panda.

“No more shoes in advance for anyone,” he said.

“Today people have tried to kill me, the police are looking for me, and I’ve just discovered every Easter of my childhood, I ate one of my relatives with mint jelly. I’m just fine.”

“I don’t know … You’d have to ask the sheep.”

It drives physicists mad and every few years on e will snap and begin raving that sentient beings should nae fuck with that which they ken nae unnderstan’

If my little review here fails to entirely convince you to rush out and find a copy of this book to read, then try Bookgasm’s review

Review: The Android’s Dream © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein*
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children Of The Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card*
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson* This is really three books that they’ve lumped altogether and I don’t see any combined version for sale on Amazon. The individual books are: Lord Foul’s Bane (Book 1), The Illearth War (Book 2) and The Power That Preserves (Book 3).
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview With The Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash., Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein*
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

50 most significant sci-fi/fantasy novels © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Valley of the Soul
My rating: 5 out of 5.

My first introduction to the world of Faldorrah came about 2 years ago. AWelkin knew the author and had an early copy of the first book, Ghosts in the Snow. My wife and I were over at AWelkin’s house for a visit, planning to watch some anime. However my wife picked up Ghosts in the Snow and was lost to us for the evening, as she wouldn’t put down the book for anything. I got my chance to read the book later that weekend and was hooked myself. That first book in this series combined elements I really enjoyed from a variety of genres into one book and it was fantastic. Then last year, Threads of Malice, the sequel was released. It was a good read, I found the second book to be too dark disturbing for my tastes. At the end of this month, the third book will finally be released. But having “connections” helps, as AWelkin was kind enough to provide me with an advanced reader’s copy. Fortunately, I’ll have to give it back and go out to buy my own copy.

Yes, you heard me right. I am quite happy to return this free copy so I can go out to buy my own copy. No, I’ve not lost my mind or been replaced by one of the pod people. While I tend to keep a grip on my spending money; this book is definitely worth buying to support the author. This third book in the series is probably Ms. Jones best work yet.

This time around Dubric is out of the castle investigating some gruesome¹ animal killings. All of the characters who survived the Threads of Malice are still around but have definitely been psychologically scarred by their experiences. It’s really good nice.… Hmm, it’s horrible the sorts of things these characters have been put through but it’s great that Ms. Jones continues to build on her previous work, rather than just ignoring how her characters would react after living through something like that.

While Dubric is out in the field, he almost gets his first ghost of this book. I say almost because it’s just the head, the rest of the ghost’s body is missing. This is something new and disturbing for Dubric. The reason behind the ghosts showing up in parts² was a surprise but one that fits nicely into the world Ms. Jones has created. In a sense there are multiple villains in this book and Ms. Jones kept me guessing throughout the book. Basically, if you like Ms. Jones’s other works (particularly her first book) then I’d highly recommend you pick this one up as well.

¹ Not nearly so gruesome as the 2nd book in this series, but still rather unpleasant.
² If you think revealing that there will be multiple ghosts in this book is some kind of spoiler, than you must be completely unfamiliar with Ms. Jones’s work.

Review: Valley of the Soul © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Old Man’s War
My rating: 5 out of 5.

For a while now I’ve been despairing of finding new science fiction authors I like. I would go through my local bookstores and the only ones that didn’t seem like pure twaddle were either books I’ve read previously or by authors I was previously familiar with. Authors who usually are very old or already dead. Oddly this problem only seemed to be happening with science fiction. Fantasy, horror, mystery and so on all are fine right now. I just haven’t for the longest time been able to find any decent science fiction by an author who wasn’t all corpsified (or close to being so). This has concerned me as I misspent much of my youth blasting around the universe on the dread rocketship Imagination fueled by the works of many fine authors. I wish to continue to doing so, but the fifth or fifty-fifth time you read a book it does not always generate as much juice as the first time.

All that being said, I am pleased to say I have found a new science fiction author who writes something worth reading! A while back, I was reading Doug Stewart’s blog and he mentioned getting a particular book for his birthday. Interestingly enough the author of Old Man’s War, John Scalzi, stopped by Doug’s blog and wished him a happy birthday. I thought that was pretty cool of him. Given that Doug described the book as a gift that should “warm any decent sci-fi fan’s hardened heart”; my interest in this book was peaked.

I followed the link from the author’s comment to his website and noticed he had a free, sample chapter of the book online. I read through the sample and quite enjoyed it, so I added the book to my list¹. A few weeks later, the wife and I stopped in a Barnes & Noble to rest our weary feet and grab a coffee from their café. Before we went into the café, we looked around the store for some reading material. I still remembered wanting a better look at Old Man’s War, so I hunted around and found a copy of it. I thought the plan was to simply browse through the material while having our coffee but I was overruled and she bought the book with the coffees. As we sat down, I started to flip through the book but she wanted to look at it. Since she hadn’t found anything to look at and I actually had several books at home I was in the middle of; I let her have it. That turned out to be something of a mistake on my part, as I didn’t get it back until she finished it the next day. Since I didn’t get it back right away, I stuck it into my stack of books to read. I held off a couple of days before I broke down and yanked it out of the middle of my stack. I read it cover to cover in a single evening and loved it. I just read it again (since I’ve been home sick for a week) and still loved it. But enough about me, you probably want to know something about the book other than I loved it.

Right, Old Man’s War is set in the future. How far in the future is not explicitly stated but it seems to be the not-too-entirely-distant future. In this future, humanity is living and fighting amoung the stars. It turns out while there are numerous stars & planets out there; only so many of them are of any use to us and to the other races we’ve met. That’s right, there is alien life out there and it ain’t friendly. Human space is protected by the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) which boasts the oldest army ver fielded by man. The CDF’s infantry is entirely made up of the elderly. People, like the main character (John Perry), cannot even join the CDF until they turn 75. The elderly are joining up in droves because they all know the CDF must have someway to make them young again. After all at 75 years on Earth, humans are not exactly in the ideal condition for fighting a war.

The book starts with Mr. Perry visiting his wife’s grave and then joining the army. From there it’s a fast sprint through the rest of the story. Mr. Scalzi’s writing is easy to read, in part because he does not bog you down with tons of details about the new technologies used in the future. Also the characters are very likable and easy to relate to. But the book is not without its flaws.

The CDF is an independent entity from Earth and has more power than any goverment on Earth, but there’s nothing in the book telling us how this came about. Mr. Scalzi hints at it saying that the CDF isolated Earth from the rest of space² and then used technologies it developed or stole from other races to maintain its monoply on humanity’s spaceflight. The actual details of how the CDF managed the initial isolation and how they continue to keep Earth from building more skip drives³ and sneaking off planet. Also the plot covering John Perry’s rescue by the Special Forces and subsequent interactions with his rescuers seems.… a bit too deus ex machina. Mind you it was fun to read but it stretches the believability more than just a little and no I won’t tell you exactly why as that would require me to reveal big spoilers of the plot. Hopefully some of this will be cleared up in the sequel, The Ghost Brigades (due out next week according to Amazon.com).

¹ The list of books in my head that I need to buy when I have the money and am in a bookshop. It fluctuates depending on how good my memory is, how empty my wallet is, how often I’m visiting any given bookshop and how big an impression a book or an author makes on me.
² Due to an outbreak of an alien disease that sterialized all but 1/3 of Earth’s men.
³ The skip drive is the FTL drive in Mr. Scalzi’s universe.

Review: Old Man’s War © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Deception Point
My rating: 2 out of 5.

This started off as a fun book and for a long time into it I was able to suspend my disbelief to enjoy it. It read something like a weak Tom Clancy novel. At least up until a certain point in during the climatic finale of the story. At that particular point in the story, my disbelief slipped into overdrive and suddenly I felt I like was reading a bad movie script. *sigh* And it was so looking better than

To avoid spoiling the book for those still interested, the scene in particular will only be described after cut. Even there, I will try to avoid spoilers as much as possible but if you wish to read the book completely spoiler free; go read it before you read the rest of this article.

The heros are on a sea research ship anchored ~30 miles off the Eastern seaboard. The ship is there to gather data about some ugly sharks that have been attracted to the area some a geothermal event. Magma has risen up through the Earth’s crust and gotten close to the ocean floor; however the ocean is working as a massive heat sink cooling the magma and preventing it from erupting. All but one member of the crew is on shore leave celebrating.

The main villian, employing a 3 man special forces team, has tracked the heros to the ship. The villian & his team arrive at the ship in a black-ops helicopter, jamming all radar & communications. They fire a one of a half-ton of laser guided missles at a Coast Guard helicopter sitting on the research ship, destroying it killing the pilot instantly. The helicopter then goes to attack the remaining heros and does considerable damage to the ship. One of the heros makes it into a speed boat that is attached to the ship but he’s wounded and the others are cut off from him. Some of the damage to the research ship caused the speed boat to break free. The one hero character immediately starts up the boat, full throttle to try getting out of jamming range and to call for help. The helicopter drops 2 of the special ops troops on the ship and goes after the speed boat.

The remaining heros on the ship end up taking out one of the special ops troops and use him as a distraction to take out the other one. The helicopter fires a missle destroying the speed boat and returns to see their men have been incapacitated. They land, the main villian reveals himself¹ and distracts the heros for a bit. There’s a fair amount of talk, the remaining special ops troop figures out what the heros were doing there and that the hero’s gun is out of bullets. We get some fighting that ends up with one of the heros releasing and re-engaging the anchor/cable/winch. This causes people and equipment to go sliding all over the deck of the ship.

The real moment that caused me to lose my ability to suspend disbelief was when the helicopter went over the side and Mr. Brown described it sinking into the depths of the ocean with all those missles. Right down through the black ocean to the magma bubble. He totally lost me at that point. *sigh* And up until then it was pretty good. Oh well.

¹ Don’t ask who it is; I won’t tell you. You have to read the book.

Review: Deception Point © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Threads of Malice
My rating: 4 out of 5.

I read Threads of Malice last week¹ and wowsers! If you’ve read Ghosts in the Snow then you need to be warned before reading Threads that Ghosts is a much lighter book than Threads. The villian in Threads is far more evil than the one in Ghosts and this gives the book a much darker tone. Still with that being said, Threads is a great read.

This time around Mrs. Jones takes us out of the castle and up into The Reach. Young boys have been disappearing throughout the region for the past couple of years. When Dubric arrives in the area; he’s greeted by dozens of ghosts all at once. It’s quite the unexpected & draining experience for him. Additionally, we get to see Dien’s family and Lars learns what real family life is like.

I don’t really know what else about the story I could tell you without giving away either the mystery or the good non-mystery bits. This is a problem that I’m not the only one has. I say this because at ICON this past weekend, I attended a panel where Mrs. Jones read some passages from Threads; as well as a few pages from her third Dubric book². One of the passages she read from Threads was included one of my favorite scenes in the book, though it turns out we visualized it somewhat differently. The scene takes place as Lars along with 2 of Dien’s daugthers are walking into town to buy some supplies³.

He hurried after them, their names hovering in his throat, but he halted after a few steps. Aly climbed onto the head of a massive stone rabbit, then slid down its back, laughing all the while. Jess leaned against it, her hand on its nose, regarding him with mirthful eyes.
“Lars, Hargrove, I’d like to introduce you to your geandfather’s rabbit.” She bowed with a flourish and grinned at him.

That’s just a fragment of the scene, but it’s the important part to me. When I first read this scene, my mind drew up a picture of a rabbit sitting up on its hindlegs wearing a waistcoat (like something you’d expect from Alice in Wonderland). The rabbit was made of a “mostly” white marble, with bits of grey scattered about here & there. The weather had caused a small crack to form near the top of the rabbit’s head, just above the left eye. Some moss had begun to grow in that crack, looking something like a scar and giving the rabbit a certain roguish appeal. From speaking to Mrs. Jones at ICON, I found out she had imagined the stone rabbit looking like a rabbit you’d see in nature. Ok, so maybe it’s not all that important but I found the scene very endearing.

I’m feeling a bit out of it; so I’m going to wrap this review up. The book was excellent but didn’t quite grip me like Ghosts had. On the other hand, the intense evil and darkness in this book was somewhat balanced out with Lars getting his first real taste of what family life is like. It’s a highly enjoyable read and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to any adult readers⁴. Mrs Jones, good job and I look forward to the next book!

¹ Since then I’ve read through Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad. I just didn’t feel like writing up reviews for those books.
² Currently, the third book is titled “Valley of the Soul”.
³ Taken from pages 144–145 of Threads of Malice.
⁴ Given the forms that the evil takes in this book; I would not recommend this for younger readers.

Review: Threads of Malice © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.