Category: Reviews of Books
‘Smart Brevity’ is a writing and communications manifesto for the information age. It will teach readers how to communicate better with fewer words and more pun As a book about saying more while pruning back the number of words, they do a good job of lending themselves as an example, the book is 224 pages long, but it’s a super breezy read. Most of that is because their primary point is that nearly all articles can be broken down into a missions statement with no more than 5 bullet points, then a “one thing you should take away”, and maybe...
A thrilling new Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine adventure from New York Times bestselling author Dayton Ward!2369: Shortly after Starfleet thwarts a Cardassian attack on a Federation star system, the Cardassian government orders an end to its fifty-year occupation of the plane This is a great prequel story for Deep Space Nine that largely avoids the prequel tropes that make my eyes roll, mostly by having the TNG crew be the ones interacting with known DS9 elements like Gul Dukat, Kira, or Odo. The main story is wrapped about at about the 90% mark and there’s...
Following a freak summer storm, David Drayton, his son Billy, and their neighbour Brent Norton join dozens of others and head to the local grocery store to repl I’ve seen both versions of the film, both the happy ending and the not so happy ending, and I’ve read King saying that he was happier with either of those endings than he was with the ending he came up with and I’ll have to agree with him on that point. The rest of the novel is pretty well written, as most of Kings stories are, and he managed to write the...
The big day has finally arrived for Popeye & Olive, and everybody is showing up for it! A cute story by Peter David about the struggles of getting Popeye to the wedding table with some good story elements and fantastic art. Not my cup of tea, but I’m happy to have read it. Buy On Amazon!
How well do you know Star Trek? Lifelong science fiction fan, podcaster and author Tom Salinsky decided that the answer was “not well enough,” and so at the beginning of 2022, he embarked on a two-year mission to watch everything from the start of The Original Series to the end of Enterprise, at the Due to be released in just a few days on the 29th, this is a fantastic stroll through TOS, TAS, and TNG with well written and enjoyable looks at each episode. It’s a great trip down memory lane with insightful comments that cut deep into what...
Star Trek video games have been around almost as long as Star Trek itself. From humble beginnings as an unofficial text-based game playable on mainframe computers to modern multi-million dollar spectacles, Star Trek video games span the history of gaming itself.In Star Trek Video Games: An Unoff I’m not sure if it’s the “send to kindle” option from NetGalley or it’s an issue with the actual book, but I believe every page had formatting errors, missing spaces, extra paragraph returns, and curiously placed images. The content of the book itself is an easy and breezy read that feels like I’m...
Rising Tides is the story of a new hero, Killjoy. The triggering event that makes him a breakthrough happens during the Chicago Attack that opened Repercussions and the reader gets a street-level view of the attack and its aftermath. Killjoy is not your typical superhero; his breakthrough power is teleportation, jumping, and Kingston James Parks, has zero interest in becoming a cape. He’s on the short and slight side, not a physically brave person, and his primary goal, initially, is to find a decent-paying job (not using his power) and . . . that’s really about it. Especially since his...
The Sixth Men The last of the books in the “The Superhero Spectacular Book Bundle” that I bought just about a year ago, there were a total of 11 books in the bundle that ranged from nearly unreadable to some of the best super hero stories that you’re ever going to read, which was the one book that I’d already read, “Wearing the Cape”. This book from Jeff Deischer is in the middle of that range with ‘rebooted’ superheroes that had fallen into the public domain and while the story is set in a modern setting the story, characters, and...
From Mark (James Axler) Ellis, author of the best-selling OUTLANDERS and Deathlands novels and comic series such as DOC SAVAGE and the legendary JUSTICE MACHINE, comes INVICTUS X, Book One in the INVICTAVERSE! Humanity holds Knightwatch in awe, their foes view them with fear. But never has this heroic juggernaut faced so deadly and powerful a force as INVICTUS X!The ruthless Invicta League has escaped from Tartarus, the most maximum security prison ever conceived. The warden, the beautiful and enigmatic Doctor Sirocco DeWynter, warns Knightwatch that the League seeks a power so vast it can kill all life on earth.Or...
6 Superhero Stories “Forced Retirement” What if Alzheimer’s struck the World’s Mightiest Hero? His daughter, heroic Hericane, finds out the hard way. Gripped by dementia, godlike Epitome tears apart a city, and no one can stop him. Will his madness destroy the entire world? Not if Hericane recruits the one big gun who stands a chance in Hell of stopping her father in his tracks. But the battle of the century between the super-charged titans might just kick-start the Apocalypse instead of stopping it. Being dropped face first into a super-hero universe can be rough, especially with characters that have...
Two years after the USS Voyager’s return from the Delta Quadrant, Seven of Nine finds herself rejected for a position in Starfleet…and instead finds a new home with the interstellar rogue law enforcement corps known as the Fenris Rangers. The Rangers seem like an ideal fit for Seven—but to embrace t For all the Trek content we’ve had in the past, hundreds of hours of tv, dozens of hours of movies and literally thousands of Trek books, the amount of time spent outside of the Federation “safe space” is practically nil, with nearly every aspect of the previous works having...
Based on:”Call to Arms” written by Ira Steven Behr”A Time to Stand” written by Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler”Sons and Daughters” written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle”Rocks and Shoals” written by Ronald D. Moore”Behind the Lines” written by Rene Echevarria”Favor t The fourth and final book in this series and the second half of the DS9 novelization of several episodes during the Dominion War, but stopping at the retaking of DS9, leaving the remainder of the war and the retaking of Cardassia untold in novel form. It’s well enough written and all the main points of the stories...
From the Gamma Quadrant they came, hordes of merciless Jem’Hadar soldiers commanded by the shape-changing Founders, who seek to conquer both the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire. Now that the Dominion has joined forces with the Cardassians, and claimed Deep Space Nine as their pri Book 3 of 4, which is actually book 2 in a story of how a couple members of the TNG crew saved the alpha quadrant from an artificial worm hole from being opened up by the Dominion, a story concept that didn’t actually work for me too well, it just opens up...
Don’t miss out on this exclusive “lost episode” celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fan-favorite show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine! I read these as they came out individually, but the TPB collection just hit my local library and it’s a great read from cover to cover. The dog is a bit of a weird thing for Trek to have in it’s books, it’s apparent that the Trek writers / fans are more cat people than anything not a Targ, and other than a weird alien dog with a horn on his head, I think there was only one or...
DEEP SPACE WAR “Call to Arms” written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe “A Time to Stand” written by Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler “Sons and Daughters” written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle “Rocks and Shoals” written by Ronald D. Moore “Behind the Lines” written by Rene Echevarria “Favor the Bold” written by Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler “Sacrifice of Angels” written by Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler This is a great novelization of the stories in those episodes but has nothing at all to do with the first book in this series. Now...
From the Gamma quadrant they came — hordes of fierce Jem’Hadar warriors commanded by the mysterious Changelings, who will stop at nothing to achieve victory over both the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire. Now that the Dominion has entered into an unholy alliance with the Cardassi After reading a series of short stories in “Tales of the Dominion War” I realized I had a whole series of books that dealt with what various crews were up to during the entire horrifying ordeal, so I started in with book one. It’s a great story of what the TNG...
Untold stories from one of the most dramatic and popular periods in Star Trek history I’m on a bit of a short stories journey right now, starting with an unrelated (except for DeCandido’s involvement as author & editor) Precinct series, now this one about various parts of the Domion War. The conflict was a huge part of the last two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but they still didn’t tell even a small portion of the possible stories of what the various crews were up to, the situation on Earth, or even on the allied planets. This collection...
In a ruined and hostile landscape, a community exists in a giant underground silo. Inside, men and women live an enclosed life full of rules and regulations, of secrets and lies. The people who don’t follow the rules are the dangerous ones; they dare to hope and dream, and infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple and deadly. They are allowed outside. Jules is one of these people. She may well be the last. A collection of three books, then three short stories. The longer stories are fantastic and are a novel take on the end of society...
Humans and elves, dwarves and gnomes, wizards and warriors all live and do business in the thriving, overcrowded port city of Cliff’s End, to say nothing of the tourists and travelers who arrive by land and sea, passing through the metropolis on matters of business or pleasure-or on quests. The hard-working, under-appreciated officers of the Cliff’s End Castle Guard work day and night to maintain law and order as best they can. A fire in the neighboring city-state of Barlin has resulted in hundreds of refugees pouring into Cliff’s End, forcing the creation of a new neighborhood-Albinton, which everyone calls...
On a distant Earth colony, an orphaned survivor of an alien invasion discovers that the greatest world-ending dangers aren’t behind her. It’s been eight years s Set in the same universe as the “Frontlines” series, Kloos has wisely wrapped up the storylines from that first set of books and continued on with a new character that’s a survivor of the Lanky invasion and is holed up in an underground bunker on a far away planet with little to no hope for rescue or help from Earth. As like Kloos’s other books, this is so exceptionally good that I managed to...
The long-awaited memoir from iconic, beloved actor and living legend Sir Patrick Stewart! At just over 450 pages, I thought this was going to be a slog to get through, but Stewart’s writing style is snappy enough that even his descriptions of his childhood home’s lack of a toilet was interesting enough that I was able to finish this in just a couple reading sessions. Surprising to me however was both how open he was about his marital mistakes and how little he talked about his time making Trek and the various movies that he did afterwards like the X-Men...
Humans and elves, dwarves and gnomes, wizards and warriors all live and do business in the thriving, overcrowded port city of Cliff’s End, to say nothing of the tourists and travelers who arrive by land and sea, passing through the metropolis on matters of business or pleasure-or on quests. The hard-working, under-appreciated officers of the Cliff’s End Castle Guard work day and night to maintain law and order as best they can. This volume brings together ten pieces of short fiction-some previously published, some brand-new for this book-featuring the Castle Guard: new cases for Lieutenants Torin ban Wyvald and Danthres...
Cliff’s End is rocked by the death of Lord Albin. His son takes over and institutes changes in how the Castle Guard is run: enforced retirements of older guards Pretty damn huge spoiler there for the previous book, but it is what it is, and what it is is a huge change in the dynamics of the world that the Castle Guard and their investigative forces. It’s a great wrench to throw into the story and leads to a perfectly enjoyable story that feels as fresh as the first book in the series. Buy On Amazon!
As Cliff’s End struggles to deal with a massive influx of refugees following a devastating fire in the neighboring city-state of Barlin, the docklands are rocked by a stunning tragedy: the legendary Pirate Queen has been murdered! Long the scourge of the Garamin Sea, the Pirate Queen’s death has ripple effects beyond Cliff’s End. Even as Lieutenants Danthres Tresyllione and Torin ban Wyvald investigate her murder, they find themselves embroiled in conspiracies, politics, and the arcane law of the sea–and of the land! Yet more fantastic world building with an investigation into the death of a much beloved Pirate Queen,...
Humans and elves, dwarves and gnomes, wizards and warriors all live and do business in the thriving, overcrowded port city of Cliff’s End, to say nothing of the tourists and travelers who arrive by land and sea, passing through the metropolis on matters of business or pleasure – or on quests. The hard-working, under-appreciated officers of the Cliff’s End Castle Guard work day and night to maintain law and order as best they can. A new drug called Bliss is sweeping across the slums of Goblin Precinct. It makes people feel better – but if they take too much, they...
Humans and elves, dwarves and gnomes, wizards and warriors all live and do business in the thriving, overcrowded port city of Cliff’s End, to say nothing of the tourists and travelers who arrive by land and sea, passing through the metropolis on matters of business or pleasure-or on quests. The hard-working, under-appreciated officers of the Cliff’s End Castle Guard work day and night to maintain law and order as best they can. Arra Cynnis is the youngest child in one of the most powerful families in the wealthy district of Unicorn Precinct. When she’s found murdered, with the culprit’s identity...
A Guardian Science Fiction Book of the Year. Mimi is drowning in the world’s trash. She’s a ‘waste girl’, a scavenger picking through towering heaps of hazardous electronic detritus. Along with thousands of other migrant workers, she was lured to Silicon Isle, off the southern coast of China, by the promise of steady work and a better life. But Silicon Isle is where the rotten fruits of capitalism and consumer culture come to their toxic end. The land is hopelessly polluted, the workers utterly at the mercy of those in power. And now a storm is gathering, as ruthless local...
Why are some people and organizations more inventive, pioneering and successful than others? In business, it doesn’t matter what you do, it matters WHY you do i One of the books for my local PMI chapter, this book was adapted from the above 18 minute Ted Talk, and while the concept is great and greatly explained, the book doesn’t offer much more than stretching the material well past it’s breaking point with limited new material and repetition of the same points over and over again. It’s still good material, but there’s only about three examples here, unlike some of the...
Truth of the Divine The second book in Lindsay Ellis’s well written series of books about cyborg robots that show up on Earth and have some pretty emotional experiences with the humans they bond with. The story drifts around for several of the middle chapters with a character going through some pretty intense psychiatric issues and I found that I really just wanted the story to do more than it ended up doing in this book, but it sets itself up for at least one more entry in the series. I’m hopeful that Sterling will keep the series going, but...
Seventeen-year-old Kevin Jason starts his first day at his new school by unintentionally punching the local bully through the cafeteria wall. When Kevin’s father, a legendary superhero, learns of this, he insists on training Kevin to master his new powers, though Kevin finds his father’s training methods a lot less exciting than he thought they were going to be. But Kevin’s training takes on new urgency when the local bully’s father—Master Chaos, one of the world’s most dangerous supervillains—breaks out of prison and declares Kevin his new archenemy for harming his son. Now Kevin must complete his training as a...
People say when you want to change your life, you need to think big: swap job, move house, change partner. But they’re wrong. World-renowned habits expert James I read this for a book club that I’m participating in through my local PMI chapter, unfortunately there were only two of us that participated in the meeting, but we had a great conversation about the book. I had my concerns about how dry I was expecting the book to be, but author James Clear really made an excellent collection of narratives and stories to go along with the basic principals for iterative...
New costume? Check. Superhero mentor? Check. Government conspiracy to cover up the End of the World? Uh… check? Luke Gillis is barely dragging himself through college. Of course, if he wrote term papers the way he thrashed bank robbers, he’d probably be a doctor by now. His mentor is the Miracle Worker. Yes, that Miracle Worker. Some say he’s more outlaw than hero, but beggars can’t be choosers. Still, Luke must be doing something right. The U.S. Army has invited his alter ego–the dashing speedster Spitball–on a top-secret mission. With the country’s premier superhero team missing-in-action, this could be his...
The USS Khai Tam Technical Orientation Manual is your complete guide to the galaxy’s first jointly designed Federation-Klingon starship. True story this is the “home ship” of the local Star Trek fan club that I belong to, not that they make it easy to find them, they don’t actually mention my home town on their website or facebook group and don’t even mention that they’re a Trek fan group. The international association at the head of the entire organization uses a starship based naming scheme with every group having their own Home Ship, the USS Khai Tam being the name...
Myth by Name. Villain by Nature. Hero by Choice. A fight between a second-generation superhero named Red Bolt and a villain-for-hire named Icarus goes terribly wrong, resulting in the drowning deaths of three innocent civilians and orphaning a six-year-old boy. Racked with guilt, Red Bolt visits Cameron Wilson at the hospital every night and won’t leave the boy’s side until he falls asleep. Befriended by a night-shift nurse, the man in costume begins to disclose what really happened after the fight—and why he feels the deaths of Cameron’s parents and sister fall on his actions. A superhero didn’t survive that...
Who are the 3 Valkyries? Wearing ancient Viking masks that confer upon them the powers of different Norse gods, they are teenaged metahumans pledged to take up challenges lesser mortals dare not face. In their first exciting adventure, Thora the Thunderer, Ravenwing and Bifrost brave the dangers of Yellowstone National Park to hunt a three-eyed monster called the Trinoculus—but how can they defeat a creature whose very nearness sucks the life out of any who approach it? From the author of Doc Savage, and the creator of Squirrel Girl! Either this book was targeted to young readers and it was...
While we live, the enemy shall fear us. Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity. They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until...
IF YOU’VE SEEN WHAT’S OUT THERE… IT’S ALREADY TOO LATE Malorie raises the children the only way she can: indoors, with the doors locked, the curtains closed, and mattresses nailed over the windows. The children sleep in the bedroom across the hall, but soon she will have to wake them and blindfold them. Today they will risk everything. Today they will leave the house. Josh Malerman’s New York Times bestselling Bird Box is a terrifying psychological thriller that will haunt you long after reading. Bird Box is a quick read, it only took me a couple nights of reading before...
When the Hale-Bopp soared across the sky in 1997, Amy Rose thought it was the start of an amazing new future. Instead, it brought news of a horrible tragedy at the Heaven’s Gate compound just down the road. Amy had always known there was something off about the community she grew up in. I bought this under the assumption that the marketing material that mentioned this young girl lived with a cult that fully believed the happenings of Star Trek had actually happened in some way meant that Trek was going to be more than just a one panel side...
In the tradition of the greatest cyberpunk novels, Blood Music explores the imminent destruction of mankind and the fear of mass destruction by technological ad The author of this passed back in November of 2022 and at the time I think I had read one or two of his books previously, but there were a whole truck load of people saying that this was one of his best works, which I’m not sure I entirely agree with. The concept is absolutely bonkers and super interesting, but the implementation of it feels like an undercooked pizza that would have been delicious...
Jonathan DeVane must assemble a rag-tag team of misfits in an attempt to stop a devastating attack on Earth by malevolent alien raiders called “Astrals“. Can DeVane and his pack of underdogs find salvation in each other, and overcome the demons of their sordid pasts long enough to save the world? I picked this up at a recent comic book convention based on a some of the promo art that was at the author’s table. I was able to get the book and a art card signed by him and his producer, which the card is going to live in...
A thrilling untold adventure based on the acclaimed Star Trek: Picard TV series!Following the explosive events seen in season one of Star Trek: Picard, Raffi Musiker finds herself torn between returning to her old life as a Starfleet Intelligence officer or something a little more tame—teaching Following in the foot steps of most of the other “Star Trek: Picard” novels, this story doesn’t follow Picard at all, he’s more of a book end character and one of the supporting characters from the show are the main stars in the books. In this case it’s Raffi who gets the spotlight and...
Amethyst, one of the most renowned and mysterious costumed heroes of Super City, is found dead on a rooftop. Detectives Milewski and Alvarado of the Super City Police Department are assigned to the… After I was done with the “Wearing The Cape” series I was hungry for more superhero stories and there was a Story Bundle of super hero stories and I recognized several of the authors, it even included the first Wearing The Cape book, so I knew it was at least an OK bundle. This one is by Keith R.A. DeCandido, an author that’s actually met at a...
A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei’s childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon — and America itself — in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.George I was able to read this in just a single 2 or 3 hour sitting, though I have plans to go back through it and letting the art work soak in. While it wasn’t a difficult book to read, it was still a difficult story to hear. We had done this a few time prior to the internment of...
Captain Michael Burnham and the crew of the USS Discovery are finding that each day is a critical adjustment to their new lives and new missions in an Alpha Quadrant more than nine hundred years in the future. It’s here that Discovery is reconnecting with various worlds where the cataclysmic event known as “the Burn” has decimated Starfleet and, with it, the United Federation of Planets. There’s been precious little time for the crew to truly come to terms with their present reality, as their devotion to duty hides the emotional stress that could impact their effectiveness, and even threaten...
Armed with Buffy’s broken scythe, Willow has entered another dimension and begun a quest to somehow, someway, against all odds, bring magic back to Earth. She m It’s been a very long while since I checked back in on the Buffy verse, this mini series was a $1 bin steal a couple weeks ago. It’s set during the story continuation that they did after the show was canceled and well before they rebooted absolutely everything a couple years ago. I don’t know if I ever wrote about that, but the entire thing felt off and I didn’t really dig it....
Clark Kent struggles with a book he’s writing while Superman takes on a garbage problem from Lex Luthor. I pulled this from the $1 bin at my local comic shop and it’s worth at least that much to read just once, there’s some great art and a story that’s pretty different from the Superman stuff we’re getting lately. He’s a more grounded character, with a more grounded supporting cast and the story is far slower than a modern book at well, with some space left for the story to properly develop. The Lex Luthor portion of the story is pretty...
Repercussions ended with victory, at a cost. A Sentinel is dead, Megaton lies grievously injured, and Astra is no longer a member of the Sentinels, America’s premier cape-team. Beyond the personal consequences, both the US and Europe must recover from crippling attacks. Now Astra and her Joyeuse Guard must find their footing in the world after the Chicago and Brussels Attacks. Mal deals with an unexpected complication to his recovery. A journalist is invited to ride along with the new team. Ozma and the rest pursue their campaign to liberate Oz. Santa Claus comes to all the towns. Shell and...
Celebrate the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the STAR TREK franchise with this all-new adventure! At the edge of explored space, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise come face to face with a new Klingon threat… with the fate of the galaxy at stake! Also includes the Klingon Language version of issue #1! Having an entire issue of the series in Klingon is a neat gimmick, but even as deep as I am into Trek, I still don’t know how to read a single word in the language. “Manifest Destiny” is a Kelvinverse story with a focus on...
The heroes are on vacation. Really. The wedding of Dane and Annabeth (Danabeth) is over, the team has caught their villain-of-the-month, and Hope thinks everyone deserves a break from the cycle of training and public-relations appearances. So except for Ozma and Grendel (who’ve decided to return to adventures in Oz) they’re all enjoying the sand and the sun in Littleton, the safest secret community in the world.But then Shell vanishes—her quantum-neural link with Hope and Shelly severed—and Ozma and Grendel return with ominous warnings that something is happening back in Chicago. As the Young Sentinels race to return home, the...
In the 11th millennium of the rule of the Eternal Empress a squad of planet-smashing super soldiers find their routine mission to be anything but. These are the Set in a universe that reminds me GREATLY of the Warhammer 40k universe with a Eternal Empress on the throne and “Forged” soldiers based off her DNA that has abilities and mech suits out fighting the filth of the galaxy. Don’t get me wrong though, this is a GOOD series that I highly suggest to anyone that wants to read some large format comics that really kick into high gear in the...
