Yup, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s been a while since I read it, and it’s time that I rectified that. It’s got such an interesting place in the horror canon, after all; so many people kind of shrug and spread their hands on its literary merit, and yet it shaped so much of what came after…
At any rate: adieu to Son of the Black Sword.
wow this book is good Continue reading Book of the Week: Son of the Black Sword.
Why Jane Austen’s The History of England? Because… it’s a history of England? Written by Jane Austen? Yes, the Jane Austen. She was 16 and had her sister do the illustrations: so it’s short, but apparently… what you’d expect from somebody who grew up to be Jane Austen. This is a facsimile copy of the original, you can get it for four bucks, why are you still here?
And so, adieu to Angels of Music.
Continue reading Book of the Week: “Jane Austen’s The History of England.”
Angels of Music is Kim Newman’s next book; it’s out October 4th. It’s also ABOUT DAMNED TIME that Kim Newman wrote a new book; I was starting to get worried about that. It all looks very historical and horrific and stylish and fun, just like Newman’s other novels: I don’t know if it has vampires in it. Although it does have Kate Reed, so maybe.
And so, adieu to The Thin Man.
Newton’s Cannon is the first book in Gregory Keyes’ Age of Unreason series, and it flows from an interesting idea: what if, when Isaac Newton went looking for alchemy, there was something there to be found? …The answer to that question took several books, and by the end of the series most of the survivors kind of wished that Newton had stuck to optics. But I will say no more on that subject.
And so, adieu to The Thin Man.
I’m a little surprised that I haven’t read this particular Dashiell Hammett book before, either. I mean, it’s not like I don’t read hard-boiled detective stories normally. Although I haven’t read any in a while. So maybe that’s why I haven’t read The Thin Man before? :shrug:
At any rate, adieu to Great Pacific War.
This one is interesting: Great Pacific War was written in 1925, and it imagined what a naval war between the United States and Japan would have looked like if it happened in 1931. It’s highly plausible – many of the Japanese moves in that war were reflected in our World War II, which may not have been accidental (it was an influential book, apparently) – but I’m struck more by the differences. The Imperial Japanese are remarkably more respectful of the laws of war in this book, for one thing. Although that may be balanced out by the casual assumption that of course poison gas would be used in battle this time, too. Still, definitely worth a read, especially at that price.
And so, adieu to Our Lady of Darkness.
Moe Lane
Never underestimate the power of social media. I came across author M.C.A. Hogarth on Twitter because she kept saying interesting things that other people retweeted; and her space opera book Earthrise was available for free on Kindle. So I figured, why not?
…And here we are.
And so, adieu to Herb-Witch. I’m already at book three in THAT series.
Herb-Witch was written by Beth McCoy, who is an old friend of mine from the In Nomine List days. And now she writes books! This is the first one of hers that I’ve picked up, and it’s rather good. A well thought-out system of alchemy and herbalism as sciences (and not in the sense that one is chemistry and the other is botany, either), and the likely implications thereof. So far, so good.
And so, adieu to The Nightmare Stacks.
I just finished it, and I’m comfortable with naming The Nightmare Stacks my Book of the Week. It’s about elves, and vampires, and (for a British Lefty, at least) a surprising amount of military porn. I mean, it was weird. I’d have totally expected it from an American author, but from Charlie Stross? Guess that’ll teach me to assume.
And so, adieu to The Thousand Names. I read the next two books in the series, by the way. They were good! Continue reading Book of the Week: The Nightmare Stacks
