Friday, March 28, 2014

The Sleep Room Review is up at Buzzy Mag

The good people at Buzzy Mag have published another review I wrote for them. It is a review for F.R.Tallis's new novel, The Sleep Room. The first two paragraphs and a link to the review are below. Check it out and share.



Genres are meant to be broken down and mixed. Some authors really shine in one particular genre but become stale if they don’t try to break out of it every now and again. Some, such as Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury, can write in multiple genres with skill. Others, like Nora Roberts, may only choose a couple and write successfully in them. And then there are the authors that are better off just sticking with what they know.

Dr. James Richardson is a young ambitious psychiatrist who gets the opportunity to work with one of his heroes, Dr. Hugh Maitland. Not only does Richardson get to head Dr. Maitland’s hospital at Wyldehope, he gets to be in charge of Maitland’s most ambitious experiment, the sleep room. The sleep room is an experiment where patients are kept asleep for months at a time in order to treat their mental disorders. Using a process called narcosis (also known as deep sleep therapy), Maitland believes he can cure what plagues the patients in the sleep room. While the explanations here are interesting-Tallis is a clinical psychologist–it doesn’t do much for entertainment or intrigue. Tallis spends quite a bit of time setting up a spooky atmosphere and explaining something he has extensive knowledge about, but at the expense of moving the narrative forward. More...

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Lost Planet 3 review up at Perihelion SF


The good people at Perihelion Science Fiction have published another review I wrote for them. It is a review for the video game Lost Planet 3. You can read it through the link below, it is the first review.



Friday, March 7, 2014

After Death review published at New Myths


The good folks over at New Myths have published another review I wrote for them. The review is for an anthology, After Death. The link is below feel free to click it, read it, and share it.


You can find the review here.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

A Natural History Of Dragons Review up at Buzzy Mag

The good people at Buzzy Mag have published another review I wrote for them. It is a review for Marie Brennan's novel A Natural History Of Dragons. The first two paragraphs and a link to the review are below:


Dragons are fascinating in the fact that though there has never been any evidence of their existence: they appear in various cultures throughout history. Their symbolism pretty much runs the entire gamut of meanings. The entire fantasy genre is heavily influenced by or centers on dragons. But what if dragons were real? As in really real and not some magical based nonsense. That would be an awesome field of study.

Lady Trent is the most respected expert on dragons. She begins to look back at her lifelong study, beginning as a young girl—at the time she went by her given name, Isobella—who fascinated with the tiny sparklings, dresses as a boy so she can join a dragon hunt. Her interest doesn’t wane as she grows into adulthood but luckily she finds a man, Jacob, who not only indulges her in her study of dragons, he encourages it (even though it wasn’t thought to be a lady-like pursuit at the time). The couple befriends Lord Hilford and thus begins her academic study into dragons. It’s here where the novel departs from its metafictional approach and takes on more a straight up narrative tone. It’s a pity, because Brennan shows real talent for metafiction writing...more