More mini reviews to put a further dent into my horrible book review backlog. Those pressed for time may wish to check the executive summaries (in italics) at the end of each mini where I rate each book for creepiness, suspense, violence, and erotic factor. Each executive summary ends with a one word summary of the book.
Several years of writing regularly has made it clear to me that it is deceptively hard to be entertaining. Roman Dirge is among those gifted with the ability to make even the weakest plot sing with life (or death, as the case may be). Read LENORE – WEDGIES to keep up with what dead megalomaniac little girls are up to these days. This book is the graphic novel equivalent of doing things like taping firecrackers to tomato worms, playing how-and-tell with scab collections, or putting a deceased, mummified lizard on a giant ant pile to see what happens. THRILL! As Lenore spends three pages playing with a dead frog. GASP! As Lenore realizes she pickled a fairy queen. LAUGH! As Lenore sends a bacteria-eating slime monster back to hell with a plunger. Creepy, funny, violent, and repulsive. Rotten. (Titan Books, 2010) Lenore: Wedgies on Amazon
As usual, Tim Powers carefully piles painful injures on his protagonist in DINNER AT DEVIANT’S PALACE. When Greg Rivas is hired by a brandy baron in post-apocalypse Los Angeles, he discovers that his mission is to rescue and deprogram his first love, who has been kidnapped by a dangerous religious cult. Along the way, he discovers the truth in the Residents lyric: “The only really perfect love is one that gets away.” As mentioned before, he also collects a dizzying array of non-fatal injuries, and we swoon as part of his skull becomes squishy. This being a dent left by a falling architectural feature after his meeting with the Deviant, who I can’t tell you about without spoiling the book. I thought the book was OK. Published right after THE ANUBIS GATES (still my favorite by Powers), this book was the 1985 Philip K. Dick Award winner and a Nebula Award nominee. Creepy, suspenseful, violent, and more about love than sex. Painful. (Ace Books, 1985) Dinner at Deviant’s Palace on Amazon
When I read the second novel in the Detective Inspector Chen series by Liz Williams, I wondered if the second was inferior, or if the novelty had worn off a little and made it seem not quite as stellar as the first. PRECIOUS DRAGON, the third book in the series, has made things clear by being made of awesome and dark fantasy based on Chinese mythology with strong female characters. If anything at all must be clear by my continued celebration of this series, it is that I am in love with it. You readers thirsting for truly imaginative adventure should really check it out. Start with SNAKE AGENT. See my reviews of the first two books, here and here. Creepy, suspenseful, can be violent, not really sexy. Awesome. (Nightshade Books, 2008) Precious Dragon on Amazon
Richard K. Morgan turns in another fine hard-boiled Takeshi Kovacs thriller in BROKEN ANGELS. After loving his novel ALTERED CARBON and hating THIRTEEN (see my review here), I was curious but a little worried. Protagonist Kovacs goes AWOL to help a group of rouge archeologists investigate a priceless alien artifact that leads to a massive abandoned space ship. It makes for a fascinating story with an almost nonsensical ending. Morgan includes a lot of gratuitous exposition about power, war, politics, and violence, which is rather thinly disguised as dialogue. There was enough of this that I got a little annoyed, but unlike THIRTEEN, some people in this book have a sense of humor. I liked it. Slightly creepy, rather suspenseful, ultra-violent, and hyper-sexual. Hard-boiled. (Del Rey, 2004) Broken Angels on Amazon
Many thanks to Titan Books for the review copy of Lenore – Wedgies.
RSS Feed
