Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Lock In review up at Perihelion Science Fiction


The good people at PerihelionSF have published another review I wrote for them. The review is for John Scalzi's new novel, Lock In. Check it out and feel free to share. There's a link to the review below the cover photo:




Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Downfall (Cal Leandros book 9) review up at Buzzy Mag


The good people at Buzzy Mag have published another review I wrote for them. The review is for Rob Thurman's new novel, Downfall. The first two paragraphs and a link to the review are below. Check it out and feel free to share:


Downfall, Book 9 of the Cal Leandros Series. Managing a series of stories in one larger story has to be difficult. Not only worrying about canon, the creator has to keep fans interested and coming back for more. Introducing bigger and badder bad guys works for a bit but readers will quickly grow tired of “now this is the worst we ever faced type of build up from book to book. Having an underlying problem that has to be dealt with at some point is a good strategy for return readers. Having something almost happen each time, works for a bit as well, and then something really has to happen.

Brothers, Cal and Niko, have been able to face and defeat just about all of their enemies, all of them except Grimm. Like Cal, Grimm is another half Auphe (an almost unstoppable, unthinking killing machine). But Grimm is less interested in killing the brothers and more interested in seeing Cal become full Auphe. Grimm believes he and Cal could be the second coming and rule or destroy the world. But just as their luck, the brothers have other problems. In Slashback (Roc, 2013), we saw Cal use his powers in front of humans. There is a rule that monsters (called paien in this universe) can’t use their powers where the world can see. Now a crazed paramilitary group is out to kill him along with the werewolf mafia. All the while Cal feels the darkness in him growing. (More...)