Category: Reviews of Books

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...

He didn t get onto the most lucrative interstellar mission for the money Paxon came to be reunited with the woman he loves. But his high-stakes journey takes hi A great but short story about humanity turning on itself for profit. It’s a familiar story, but they do a well enough job here I’d be interested in seeing a follow up. Buy On Amazon!

Star Trek has energized friendships for over 50 years. Whether it’s exploring a convention, beaming into a movie theater, or joining in on a landing party watch party, generations have been as united in their love of the franchise’s bold storytelling and stunning action as they are in the honest fully realized relationships of their favorite characters. The publisher of the book was kind enough to send me a copy of the book, it’s both on instagram AND on my bookshelf. It’s a uniquely weird type of book, something that I’ve never run into in all my time collecting and...

The Grand Army of the Republic – led by Yoda, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi and the other Jedi knights – fight the New Droid Army of the Separists in this latest ‘ This was included in a box of Star Wars books I got from the local Goodwill for a couple bucks. It’s not a bad book, but it’s definitely written for beginners, both to the Star Wars universe and to reading in general. Buy On Amazon!

After the collapse of the Coalition, the Inner Cluster is besieged. The second of three books, and the author has doubled down on the bad stuff from the first book and just given up on all the cool stuff. Great concepts from the previous entry were just straight up abandoned in favor of building a story about shitty religions in the future doing the same shitty things they’re doing now. pretty happy I got these for free, but sad that such a great first book was followed up with this nonsense. I have the third one, but it might take...

“The only way to survive is to abandon Earth! With less than 24 hours before the last ark leaves a dying Earth, Dr. Ben Caewood’s daughter Sara has gone missing Well written by Marc Guggenheim, at least right up to the last issue, with fantastic art by Eduardo Ferigato, this six issue mini series desperately needed to be a 12 issue story. It’s got all the hallmarks of a series that would be a sleeper hit, so I have no idea why they chose to just wrap up 10 years of story in a single issue, which lead to an...

Humanity has endured centuries of plague and a brutal interstellar war, but there is still no time for peace and quiet. Stirred from aeons of sleep, the Inhibit Arguably both the best written of the trilogy but the subject matter was just out what I was hoping for. Instead of interstellar battles with unstoppable forces, we got a story of a guy that decided he never wanted to blink again, all in order to watch a planet blink in and out of existence, all while riding on some sort of city sized building bus that reminded me way too much...

Meet freshman Greg Willis, who has moved to the big city hoping to realize his dream of becoming a superhero. But will the realities of city life, college and s Surprisingly well done ‘first adventure’ of a new character in the wider Marvel comic universe, He’s apparently appeared in other places since this five issue mini series, but I’m not going to be seeking them out, and will just be happy with this collection as it is. Buy On Amazon!

The 25th century. Humanity has discovered a new form of energy, the Source, derived from the very basis of life itself. Using this power to travel instantaneously through space, humans have spread through their corner of the galaxy and coalesced into two groups: the Coalition and the Inner Cluster. They are held in an uneasy economic and cultural relationship by their reliance on each other, the Coalition with the technology of the Source and the Inner Cluster with the materials to make it a usable form of energy. When rumors of conquest, political undergrounds, and alien contact threaten this balance...

Star Wars Technical Journal of the Planet Tatooine, also styled as “Star Wars Technical Journal Vol. 1”, was the first of three volumes in The Official Star Wars Technical Journal magazine series from Starlog Communications International, Inc. It was published on October 1, 1993. The three volumes were later compiled into the compendium title Star Wars Technical Journal. Volume One was reprinted in July 1994 with a new foil-embossed cover to herald the release of the series’ second and third vol What a fantastic time capsule of Star Wars fandom and quasi canon back story. It was released in 1993,...

50 years ago, human intervention triggered an ancient alien system designed to warn of the emergence of intelligence in this sector of the galaxy. For aeons the Much better than the first in the series, with a lot more action and much less philosophizing. There’s new characters to enjoy, along with a few of the ones from the previous book, and the system level threat finally does what we’ve been building up to this entire time, with some pretty cool results. I continue to have problems telling the two main female leads apart, mostly because Reynolds uses their last names...

Meet Nick Sax, a corrupt, intoxicated ex-cop turned hit-man I had unfortunately seen the forgettable and not recommendable (even though it inexplicably went for two entire seasons) television show that I repeat, was not very good at all. So, when I got this TPB in a HumbleBundle, it went to the bottom of my ‘to-do’ list, which I just recently found when I started using a new book/comic book management application. The comic itself is pretty good, if pretty much exactly what I would expect from Grant Morrison circa 2012, with all the gratuitous violence and strawmen that normally comes...

Jonathan Swift’s timeless political satire takes a saucy turn when a student, Gullivera, finds herself shipwrecked. Barely clad and washed up on a beach she’s t I received this as a part of a HumbleBundle and it’s much more pornographic than I thought it was going to be, but it’s also much better than it has any right being. It’s a 1995 adaption of Jonathan Swift’s 1726 “Gulliver’s Travels” which was a satirical rip on European politics and governments of the day. Manara’s version of the story is more luridly salacious, foregoing any kind of society commentary for expertly drawn...

Ben Percy (Wolverine) and Ramon Rosanas (Star Wars: Age of Resistance) team up to present an epic tale that offers a global look at the Zombie Apocalypse. A Jap A comic book anthology mini series with four issues that have four different stories that all take place in each issue. Does it work as well as having one issue dedicated to each story? For me, who has all four issues, sure, but I know when I was buying single issues that I hated this kind of set up and would much rather have one story per book. It’s good enough...

Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection #180 Borg Cube This is the final issue of the series, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been a subscriber for as long as I have, nearly 10 years! There’s still about 7 ships that Eaglemoss has been unable to ship to me for whatever reason, so I look forward to getting those one day, either through Eaglemoss or through alternative vendors. Of course there’s a large and still growing “bonus issue” collection that they’re still adding to, but I think I’m done with the series for the time being, outside of the afore...

‘The Art of Horizon Zero Dawn’ is the ultimate gallery of the hotly anticipated new IP from Guerrilla Games (Killzone series). It focuses on the stunning artwor I believe this came with my purchase of Horizon Zero Dawn on steam, which was honestly a fantastic experience. This PDF book is a short read as it’s 99% concept art, but it took me the better part of 30 minutes to get through the 53 pages because of how much I could zoom in on the art and how much there was to take in. I wouldn’t have bought this on it’s...

900,000 years ago, something wiped out the Amarantin. For the human colonists settling the Amarantin homeworld Resurgam, it’s of little more than academic inter The first of the “Inhibitor” series, I’ve read books by Reynolds before, but I don’t think any of them were in this main series. As a start to the series, this is a great book, though the ended with the neutron star was bonkers and I think I only slightly understood exactly why they were turning into atom thin pancakes. Buy On Amazon!