Category: Reviews of Books
Astra has become one of the most popular Sentinels in Chicago, past scandals notwithstanding, and is now the team leader of the Young Sentinels. But on their first big solo outing, the new junior Sentinels fall into a new scandal—one which could cost them the team. And Astra has a dream visit from Kitsune, the odd shapeshifter-thief who precipitated the battle between the Sentinels and Villains Inc. the year before. The dream warns of a fresh disaster, in a town Astra has never seen before and that may not actually exist.Astra’s efforts to find the town from her dream leads...
“Batman in Barcelona: Dragon’s Knight”: When a string of bizarre murders hits Spain’s beautiful coastal city of Barcelona, Batman makes solving this crime his top priority. Batman in Barcelona: Dragon’s Knight is a one-shot with a cover date of May, 2009. It was published on March 27, 2009. When… Batman goes to Barthalona to find killer croc. Spoilers: he finds him and beats him senseless. Buy On Amazon!
TALES OF THE EWOKS! On the moon of Endor occupied by the species called Ewoks, a group of these stout creatures has gathered around the fire to recount tales of triumph, defeat…and horror! In the art-forward manner of storytelling, watch an eclectic group of artists interpret the stories from the unique minds of Ewoks in a manner only they can envision! This can’t-miss issue for Star Wars fans of mirth, merriment and artistry is the book you’ve been craving! A one shot comic with no dialogue at all, but that cover spoke to me: an ewok with the flames of...
The reward for a job well done is another job. After the Sentinels’ takedown of the second incarnation of Villains Inc., things are relatively quiet in the great metropolis of Chicago. Astra, aka Hope Corrigan, is able to breathe a little, to hang out with her friends, and even to attend classes (where her professors are starting to think she is a myth). But Blackstone is loading more training and responsibilities on her, and converging events threaten the compromises she has made to balance her superhero career and student life and to protect her family and friends. Worse, a new...
It was supposed to be a working vacation… For Jacky Bouchard (aka, Artemis: vampire, former night-stalking dark avenger, and reluctant superhero), a trip to the Big Easy was a chance to solidify her new Bouchard identity, meet the grandmother she didn’t know she had, and do a favor for the New Orleans Police Department by helping them keep an eye on their local vampires. Watching a bunch of fashion-obsessed goths with fangs should have been easy, but now she’s dressing in black and sleeping in a coffin even though living the whole Fiend of The Night stereotype makes her want...
FIGHTING THE FUTURE. Astra has finished her training and is now a full-fledged Sentinel, but things are not going well. She suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the public revelation of her relationship with Atlas has caused her popularity to nose-dive.To complicate things, the Teatime Anarchist’s intervention has changed the course of events–leaving her with lots of knowledge about the way the future was before the Big One, a complete future-history that is now out of date. And just when she thinks she’s getting a handle on things, unfolding events (a bank-robbery and a horrific murder) show that one of...
WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPERHERO? Hope did, but she grew out of it. Which made her superhuman breakthrough in the Ashland Bombing, just before starting her freshman year at the University of Chicago, more than a little ironic. And now she has some decisions to make. Given the code-name “Astra” and invited to join the Sentinels, Chicago’s premier super-team, will she take up the cape and mask and become a career superhero? Or will she get a handle on her new powers (super-strength has some serious drawbacks) and then get on with her life-plan?In a world where superheroes join...
All his life, Hank Cho wanted to join the ranks of the Habsec – the rulers of the orbital habitat his people call home. But when he finds a powerful, forbidden weapon from the deep past, a single moment of violence sets his life – and the brutal society of the habitat – into upheaval. Hunted by the cannibalistic Habsec and sheltered by former enemies, Cho finds himself caught within a civil war that threatens to destroy his world. A fun journey with lots of back story to soak in, I’ve love to see more of this universe to find...
The Enterprise-D Crew embarks on a new five-part adventure in this fantastic hardback book brought to you by the Star Trek Graphic Novel Collection!Published one year after IDW’s STAR TREK: TNG: The Space Between, the creators of Klingons: Blood Will Tell deliver brand new TNG missions.Follo I didn’t enjoy this story as much as I had hoped I would, the four separate storylines that all culminated in a transdimensional rift alien confrontation just felt weird when I looked at the details too closely. From the Tardis holodeck to the seemingly unrelated assassinations, how did these all end up being planned by a Romulan that knew he might need...
Delve deeper into the world of Star Trek with special one-shot stories focusing on the memorable alien species! At no point in any of the solicitations for this book did they mention it was a reprint of three books: Star Trek: Klingons Star Trek: Trill Star Trek: Ferengi All three of these are great stories that I haven’t read before, but I think I would have preferred reading them in floppy form instead of a omnibus collection. None of the stories are related to each other in any way, with different writers, story styles, art styles, or even story purpose....
An all-new novel based on the landmark TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine from the acclaimed author of A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe! Jadzia Dax has been a friend to Etom Prit, the Trill Trade Commissioner, over two lifetimes. A well done look into some pretty zany Trill backstories, all of which seem to involve the Dax symbiote in some way or another. This is a follow up to a couple plot lines introduced in the television show, one about how more Trill were eligible for implantation and one about a hidden and murderous past...
When an experimental shuttlecraft fails, Captain Christopher Pike suspects a mechanical malfunction—only to discover the very principles on which Starfleet bases its technology have simply stopped functioning. He and his crewmates are forced to abandon ship in a dangerous maneuver that scatters thei This is is one of the best Trek books that I’ve read in a while, with no offense intended towards the other ones that have come and gone. I’m somewhat surprised that I had such a great experience with it, as I recently read “Rogue Elements” and hated nearly everything about it, and both of them were...
The USS Enterprise has been granted the simple but unavoidable honor of ferrying key guests to Betazed for a cultural ceremony. En route, sudden tragedy strikes a Federation science station on the isolated planet Kota, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard has no qualms sending William Riker, Data, and Chief If you were to tell me that this was based on an unaired script for a few episodes, I’d believe it. There’s three distinct stories going on, one on Batazed, one on a potential colony planet during a survey, and one tracking down some stolen goods. All three are decent stories, but the one...
More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers–men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need. When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone...
In a desperate attempt to prevent the artificial intelligence known as Control from seizing crucial information that could destroy all sentient life, Commander Michael Burnham donned the “Red Angel” time-travel suit and guided the USS Discovery into the future and out of harm’s way. Starts off slow and in a manner that’s exceptionally similar to something that actually happened on the TV show, I think I need to rewatch season 4 in order to properly contextualize the meetings that Burnham has. I say it starts slow, but it definitely doesn’t stay that way, as this is more like a series...
Salvage vessel Cortes tracks the Lonely Orphan, a planet with no star system to call its own. Somewhere on this hostile rock is a payload fit for a king. To attain it, though, the crew of the Cortes must brave razor rock, poisonous vapors, treacherous footing, and… the most mind-numbing horrors imaginable. Struggling to stay alive, they are beset at every turn by horrors from their own nightmares. Now, they have discovered that they are not alone on the planet, and the other inhabitants welcome them… as sacrifices to an elder god. Stranded on a vicious, murderous, seemingly intelligent planet,...
A decade ago, 300,000 citizens of Philadelphia were suddenly lost in Oblivion. The government made every attempt to recover them, but after many years, they gav I stopped buying single comics that didn’t have “Star Trek” in their title right as this series was wrapping up and I just finally got the time to read through the final couple issues, and boy howdy do I wish I had stuck with the series when it was being published, just so I could have taken part in the discussions that were happening at the time about the resolution of the story. It...
From the pages of the AHOY interactive sensation STEEL CAGE! Penultiman, The Next-To-Last-Stage In Human Evolution, is the greatest, best-looking, and most admired super-hero in the world! So how can he stop hating himself? His android understudy, Antepenultiman, thinks he knows the answer! Created by Tom Peyer (THE WRONG EARTH) and Alan Robinson (PLANET OF THE NERDS). As with most books that nether overwhelm, nor underwhelm, I don’t have a ton to say about this series about a super hero that’s been kicked back to our more primitive time period from a far future where he was created by mistake...
Ten years after they landed. All over the world. And they did nothing, standing on the surface of the Earth like trees, exerting their silent pressure on the world, as if there were no-one here and nothing under foot. Ten years since we learned that there is intelligent life in the universe, but that they did not recognize us as intelligent or alive. Being a comic book fan sometimes means that you don’t get the full story that the creators intended, and I guess as much as the world loves Warren Ellis, that same world didn’t care for his “aliens...
Told through the eyes of Starship Trooper Johnny Rico, Robert A. Heinlein’s classic story of war and warriors is set 5000 years in the future. Not sure why I felt like I needed to reach this again, other than it popped up to the top of my Kindle list for some reason. It’s still one of the best military science fiction stories with nearly a third of the book taking place in boot camp and really only having a single real combat story element, but it’s tightly written and the world is so well made that I didn’t even notice...
Nadia, an assistant EMT for a privately-owned business known as Trauma Team International, is the sole survivor of a failed rescue mission turned shootout. Afte After watching the anime from Netflix, I’m somewhat more interested in this universe. The Trauma Team plays heavy in both the show and this book, and it’s a unique concept to me: a military extraction team that can stabilize a patient and put plenty of lead down range. Of course it’s framed as a failure of the capitalist society that Cyberpunk 2077 exists in, but it’s still a novel idea that has legs. Buy On...
HIDDEN AGENDASCaptain James T. Kirk and the Enterprise crew race to save a missing Federation scientist, only to become trapped between the Klingons’ infamous Captain Kang and Starfleet’s mysterious Operation: Vanguard.ANCIENT TERRORSIn eons long past, alien hegemons known as the Shedai ruled A well written novel with all sorts of fun adventures for a very small subset of the crew, who are trying to find a missing scientist, only to find a god like creature has enslaved a planet’s worth of natives and is going crazy. I’m not too happy with some of the main thrusts of the book, primarily how many...
A savage satire reuniting the critically acclaimed team behind DC’s The Flintstones-writer Mark Russell (SECOND COMING) and artist Steve Pugh (Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass)-in a new graphic novel. Welcome to Billionaire Island, where anything goes…if you can afford it. But the island’s ultra-rich inhabitants are about to learn that their ill-gotten gains come at a VERY high price. After sitting on these issues for a few years, I finally got the gumption to read them. The story feels familiar, with a similar feeling to “Martha Washington Goes To War”, a dash of “Watchmen”, and it’s own unique take on the...
All-out war engulfs the Star Wars galaxy! Notorious bounty hunter Boba Fett has finally landed his greatest prize – Han Solo, frozen in carbonite. But Solo is about to become one highly sought-after smuggler! The rebels want their friend back, the Empire seeks revenge on one of its greatest enemies, and other bounty hunters have their eyes on a big payday – but what moves will the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate make? Featuring Darth Vader, Jabba the Hutt, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Valance, Doctor Aphra and more! Collecting: Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters Alpha (2021) 1, Star Wars:...
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and astronomer Carl Sagan imagines the greatest adventure of all-the discovery of an advanced civilisation in the depths of space. I’ve seen the film that this book was based on, but I learned in the afterward by Sagan that the book is based on a film treatment that he did in the hopes of making a movie, which is a funny turn of events, one that I’ve seen a few other times, but this is the best example of it in my mind. I spent the entire time comparing the movie that I know and love to...
There are many myths our culture perpetuates about domestic cats: they live longer indoors, sleep all day, are easy and low-maintenance pets, and can’t be train A well written book, if a little light on solutions or suggestions, with plenty of great pictures of cats. I believe they’ve coined a phrase in “Felis interius” to refer to cats that are born inside, then live their entire lives within walls. They’re assertion, and one that I agree with, is that cats have always been semi tamed animals that made a choice to live with humans due to our associated comforts and...
Initially charted by Starfleet probes dispatched to survey the Taurus Reach, the planet Cantrel V now plays host to a budding Federation colony as well as a combined civilian/Starfleet exploration team. Ancient ruins of an unknown civilization scattered around the planet have raised the curiosity The last of the Seekers books, but my most favorite of them all with an extremely classic Trek adventure with some clever modern twists, it’s a shame this is the end of the series. Not the end of the character though, as the Endeavor continues to pop up in various other books in the time...
An indepth look deep inside the world’s biggest animal rescue. Find out what REALLY happened on the Gulf and how you can help save America’s pets today. Orphans of Katrina is a vivid journey, a historical account, and a celebration of the volunteer rescuers–and the animals we share our world with. I got this back in 2017 for free from Amazon and the contents of it are about as professional as the cover image is, which isn’t necessarily a knock against the book, but it’s obvious that this was an author that put it together themselves or with a low...
A PLANET IN PERIL…As disasters and miracles multiply globally at an ever-increasing rate, it’s up to Captain Clark Terrell and his crew to shut down the experiment-gone-wrong before its storm of chaos causes the planet’s destruction. But the odds against their success—and their survival—might be too A stand alone adventure (so far at least?) that really works for me, with a bonkers story that includes some really out of the norm adventures that would actually have fit pretty perfectly as a TOS episode. I loved everything about this story! Buy On Amazon!
The Taurus Reach. Once the conquered realm of a powerful alien species, this region remains largely shrouded in mystery even as it brims with potential for exploration and colonization. The Federation has sent in two of its finest starships on a quest to uncover the secrets it may yet hold…The A continuation of the first Seekers book, but with some minor changes in the power levels and temperaments of nearly all the characters. That’s my only complaint though, as the story and its resolution is satisfying and enjoyable. Buy On Amazon!
“Based on Star Trek: the Next Generation created by Gene Roddenberry. X-Men based on the Marvel comic book.” There’s a pretty good comic book that precedes this book and I had a pretty good time reading that, so I figured I’d give this book a try, as it was only $0.99 at the time. This is not a good book though. I’m not going to lay that at Michael Jan Friedman’s feet though, because this feels like there was a definitive decision to aim the book at a much younger audience, something in the 10-12 year old range, which is...
Jake Cardigan’s quest to piece together his fractured life is interrupted when it’s discovered that a new, deadlier strain of Tek called ‘grease’ is infecting r This is a much different adaptation than the Marvel Comics version that came out a long while before this one. This has more violence, more sexual content, and more post apocalyptic feel to it than the more hopeful and sanitized Marvel version. It’s not necessarily done for the better, as the plot gets buried under the weight of trying to be edgy, but it works for the most part. I picked up all but...
A new mission: The late twenty-third century—Starfleet’s golden age of exploration. Desperate to stay one step ahead of its rivals, the Federation sends two starships, the scout Sagittarius and the cruiser Endeavour, to plumb the secrets of the vast region known as the Taurus Reach.A doomed race A great start of a sorta sequel to Star Trek: Vanguard series, this one features a couple of the ships that were around for most of the Vanguard shenanigans. I’ve heard tale that the series was based off concept art that spoke to one of the authors, and it shows that this is...
Starfleet was everything for Cristóbal Rios — until one horrible, inexplicable day when it all went wrong. Aimless and adrift, he grasps at a chance for a future as an independent freighter captain in an area betrayed by the Federation, the border region with the former Romulan Empire.His greate I really wanted to like this book, but while it has some amazing spaceship inclusions, it also includes in no certain order: The Iotians, which IMHO are truly the bottom of the barrel of TOS species, they’re the ones that emulate 1930’s American gangsters because a printed book was left behind...
Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Let It Fall) examines the mythology of the DC Universe in this compelling new graphic novel! Reframing iconic moments of DC history and charting a previously unexplored sociopolitical thread as seen through the… I had expected this to be a comic, but it ended up being a short novel that took on the task of reframing minority characters from DC Comics from their admittedly problematic origins to origins that are just as problematic. I wasn’t a fan of the end result, as neither the writing nor the art really captured me,...
An all-new eBook exclusive adventure in the Taurus Reach with the starship crews, undercover agents, civilian colonists, and alien power players of the Vanguard saga, based on Star Trek: The Original Series.Following the dramatic events as chronicled in Vanguard: Storming Heaven, the U.S.S. Ente Ah ha! I knew there was another book in the series after the “final book” and it’s more of an after action report involving the TOS crew than an actual story progression of Vanguard, but boy howdy is it a great look back at the entire situation that wound up costing lives and a significant amount...
Stranded light-years from home, Major Andrew Grayson and his crew are on a desperate mission to discover the Lankies’ secrets. They can’t let what they’ve found die with them. Nine hundred light-years from home, Major Andrew Grayson and the crew of NACS Washington are marooned in a sunless system with limited water, reactor fuel, and food. The last hope for survival is to go where nothing human has gone before. Kloos has been absolutely killing it with this series, and while this feels like an ending of sorts, it also feels like the beginning of something. I may need to...
“When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls ‘an animal rights organization.’ Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesn’t tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named kaiju roam a warm and human-free...
“I WAS THERE UNTIL THE END, MATE. THE BITTER, BLOODY END.”Vanguard is under siege. Surrounded by enemies, Admiral Nogura sends the scout ship Sagittarius to find an ancient weapon that might be the Federation’s only hope of stopping the alien threat known as the Shedai . . . Qo’noS is wracked by Well this is it, the absolute end of the series, with absolutely no possible way to have another book in the series. This cover is fantastic and I loved it so much I spend a few moments before I read it soaking in every detail, but it turns...
The history of Marvel Comics with replications of historical artifacts. Buy On Amazon! This is a great look at the history of Marvel the company and the people that got it to where it currently is. It does stop right when it’s recent history got interesting, a few years before the Disney purchase. I’m told there’s an updated version (for just a few bucks too!), if I see it in the wild I may pick it up to see what the new content looks like.
Collecting the first outing of Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer and his girlfriend Betty. With an introduction by Harlan Ellison. Originally published in monthly comic format by Pacific Comics, 1982. From the forward that Ellison gives, it is obvious that Harlan Ellison and Dave Stevens had a close relationship, he heaps a large helping of well deserved praise on Stevens’ work. I may have read all these stories before, as I’ve been trying to get the entire run of appearances of the character, which in theory isn’t going to be very difficult. Not many people are in a rush to get...
The Taurus Reach: the source of a secret that has driven the great powers of the 23rd century to risk everything in the race to control it. Now four new adventures—previously untold tales of the past and present, with hints of what is yet to come—begin the next great phase in the Vanguard saga.W A collection of four short stories! It’s a first for this franchise, but a welcome one: “Almost Tomorrow” by Dayton Ward Prequel to the main storyline, showing when and how several of the main characters met each other and started their relationships. It’s a good but...
Diego Reyes, court martialled Starfleet commodore and disgraced former commander of space station Vanguard, discovers that his role in deciphering the truth about the Taurus Reach is not yet over. As friend and foe join forces in a separate peace against the threat of the Shedai — the godlike alien The Diego Reyes drama comes to a head and just when you thought it was the worst it could get for him, it gets worse! Then it gets even more worse! Then I bet you can’t believe this, it gets better. But then it gets worse! The poor guy really...
The Taurus Reach is in turmoil.With tensions mounting between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, Ambassador Jetanien works frantically on Starbase Vanguard to halt the escalation toward war. Commodore Diego Reyes, the station’s former commander, awaits trial for treason, while the shattered I completely missed doing a writeup on this one, I finished it and immediately went on to the next book (Precipice), then finished that one and moved onto the book after that one and remembered that I hadn’t written anything at all about “Open Secrets”. This is where the story of T’Prynn’s background really gets going and her...
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man, of course, is king. Anyone that’s seen Idiocracy knows this story pretty well: a man frozen in time is awoken in the far future and learned that the idiots have inherited the Earth because the smart people were too busy being smart while the dumb people were all out there breeding. The solution in this story from 1951 is vastly different than the one in Idiocracy, here they’re just straight up killing off the surplus people by making them want to take a trip to an off planet colony. The story...
The mystery of the Taurus Reach is about to be revealed. Ancient secrets lie on the fourth planet of the Jinoteur system, and three great rivals are fighting to control it. The Federation and the Klingon Empire want to wield its power; the Tholian Assembly wants to bury it. It’s the third book in a nine book series, but it feels like everything gets nice and neatly wrapped up. I’ve already started the next book, so I know that things aren’t as neat as you might expect, but if you were to read the first three books of this series,...
The Taurus Reach: a remote interstellar expanse that holds a very old and potentially cataclysmic secret, the truth of which is feared by the Tholians, coveted by the Klingons, and dubiously guarded by the Federation. Second book in the Vanguard series and things are moving much more quickly now, with Klingons Romulans, and Tholians all making major moves that result in the complete destructions of planets and entire solar systems. There’s great story being set up here and I’m happy to take the ride. This book does remind me that i need to get the “before you read this” thing...
ALIAS meets STAR TREK: The watchword is intrigue as the humans and aliens of a Starfleet space station spearhead the race to find the secret behind a potentiall Guess the synopsis of the book tells you how old it is, and I guess what they’re going for, though this is more of a standard Trek adventure than I think they’re setting people up for. I mean, I’m reading it because I’m a Trek fan, not because I’m a Alias fan, right? Regardless, this is the first book in the Vanguard series, it features it’s own cast and crews of an...
After World War II, suburbs proliferated around California cities as returning soldiers traded in their uniforms for business suits. After-hours leisure activit It should be no surprise that I found this book to be both entertaining and informative, as I’ve long has a fascination with what I knew of pop tiki culture since I was in high school and was introduced to it through MTV’s Beachhouse Tiki God. The MTV version was terrible on nearly every level, but it was the seed that grew into wanting to know more and forming an identity for myself. I’m the proud owner of...
Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer’s Manual is a supplement published by FASA in 1988 for Star Trek: The Role Playing Game to update game material following the premiere of the new television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. However Paramount Pictures did not feel FASA’s new material match This is a well done book, but unfortunately was developed separately from the main TNG show, so there’s a ton of information that makes no sense at all in context of what people were expecting after seeing TNG on the screen. Add to that, most of the ship designs are hilariously...
