Moe Lane

I picked Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories because, inexplicably, somebody hasn’t put together the definitive Fritz Leiber collection on Kindle yet; nor have they converted Nights Black Agents into electronic form.  This amazes me.  I mean, I see things out there on Amazon that people apparently thought were more important to work on than straightening out Kindle’s appalling Fritz Leiber shortage.  For shame, publishing industry. For shame.

And so, adieu to Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.

A buddy on Twitter reminded me of David Drake’s The Square Deal (Car Warriors #1), which is indeed set in the Car Wars universe — and I don’t know why I’m on a Car Wars kick this week, either. I just… am?  It happens, sometimes. Anyway, I’ve never actually read it but the reviews are pretty solid and, well, David Drake, right? Given that it’s six bucks, just how much worse off am I for grabbing it?

And so, adieu to whatever I picked while I was on vacation.  I gotta get a proper laptop for traveling. Or even an updated Chromebook.

Truth be told, With The Lightnings — David Drake’s first entry in the Leary-Mundy space opera series — is available for free.  But it’s still a fun series, not least because Drake has no intention of producing a happy-shiny spacefaring culture that has learned to get beyond those things that divide us and all the other anodyne proclamations. Nope! Leary and Mundy work for a star nation that can be rather obnoxious at times, amazingly culturally chauvinistic, and often cheerfully indifferent to corruption and the two don’t try to do anything about that. And why should they care about the way this might come across to their distant ancestors (i.e., us)? We’re practically barbarians ourselves!  I don’t know if I’d want to read nothing else besides this series, but it usually serves as a decent bracer.

And so, adieu to Silverlock.

I’m surprised that John Myers Myers’ Silverlock hasn’t been done before. Maybe I assumed that all of you already have it. If you don’t, well… be warned. You will be seduced into reacquainting yourself with Western literature. And it’ll be very sneaky about it, too.

And so, adieu to Lammas Night.

Katharine Kurtz’s Lammas Night is what you get when a talented writer decides to combine World War II, modern occultism, and an uncritical willingness to take The Golden Bough more seriously than it deserves.  Well worth reading if you like that kind of literary blending.  Which I, of course, do.

I’m going to have to update the sidebar later.  This Chromebook gets less responsive every year.

Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates is one of the best time travel novels ever written. I don’t say that sort of thing lightly. What makes it stand above most of the rest of this particular genre is in Powers’ uncanny ability to find hollowed-out places in the historical records where one is able to pour in a story or three. You are left with the sense that while things might not have turned out the way that he portrayed them (usually a safe bet, since he writes fantasy novels), but they should have turned out that way and there’s no way to disprove it now anyway. This was the first one of his that I read, and I’ve been buying Tim Powers on sight ever since.

And so, adieu to Carter and Lovecraft.

Sorry! It’s just been not a great week for books. I’ve read a bunch, but I wasn’t wowed by any of them. They weren’t bad, most of them; they were just kind of OK-I-guess. And I don’t want to name names, because apparently the easiest way to destroy a writer’s inner tranquility and will to live is to say that you were kind of indifferent to his or her latest tome. I freely admit to having a history of being a bit of a sadist, but I don’t throw punches like that unless they’ve been thrown at me first. I’m not a monster.

So, I dunno: go read Guns of the South, or something. That was a solid Turtledove AH.

Both by Jonathan Forward: Carter & Lovecraft is Mythos-tinged horror, and After The End of the World is its alternate-universe horror sequel*.  There has been a bit of an under-the-radar** controversy in the last few years in the horror community over old HP Lovecraft; which is complicated by the fact that it’s virtually impossible to write intelligent horror fiction that is neither positively nor negatively defined by the stylistic and conceptional tropes that Lovecraft instituted. Many, many, many reactionary*** critiques-in-fiction-form of Lovecraft’s views and literary style have been written; what distinguishes Forward’s two books here is that he can write.  I suspect that he also likes HPL a bit more than can be safely admitted among his set, but that’s just me. Anyway, fun books.

And so, adieu to The Dragons of Dorcastle oh my God that was such a good series I just chain-read it all.

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When I looked at the cover of Jack Campbell’s The Dragons of Dorcastle, I said There had better be a good reason why that woman is carrying a semi-automatic pistol in a fantasy setting. …I am now on book three of my chain-downloading of this series, because there was, indeed a good reason why she was carrying a semi-auto. They’re offering the Kindle versions of the books for ridiculously low prices*, so you might as well start drinking ’em down now before they come to their senses.

And so, adieu to… whatever it was last week. I’m on a remarkably slow platform right now and I’d rather like to be taking a nap instead.

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Imaginarium comes out on the 23rd, and all hail the power of a weak pound; a signed copy is apparently significantly cheaper on this side of the pond. In fact, lemme go put it on the Wish List, because Christmas is coming up in six weeks. It looks very very pretty…

AND SO, ADIEU… pardon me.  Just my little joke.  And so, adieu to… The Princess Bride? Must have never replaced the link on the sidebar, last week. Ach, well.