Based on the footage released thus far, I’m getting a sinking feeling that HBO’s GAME OF THRONES series is going to suck ( Read more... )

I'd picked up A GAME OF KINGS, the first in Dorothy Dunnett's Chronicles of Lymond series, based on a rec somebody had made a while back (I forget who or when or where). And I'd gotten a little way into it, but found it remarkably annoying, so I'd put it down. Then
( Read more... )

The paranormal/modern fantasy genre is all the rage these days. From romance to thrillers, the urban fantasy is all over the bookshelves. More than such literary antecedents as, say, Charles de Lint, the authors tend to be heavily influenced by television and film, most notably Joss Whedon's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: the typical urban fantasy ( Read more... )

Found via a forgotten course, Roger Boylan links to an article about writers who fail as human beings and has the same reaction I do to a key quote:

[Dickens] gave an interview in 1862 to a young Russian journalist named Fyodor Dostoevsky which Slater [Dickens's biographer] guesses Dickens thought would never see the light of day ( Read more... )

I read Justine Larbalestier's YA novel LIAR, about which I've seen a number of people raving. I'm sure you'll be stunned to find that I didn't like it much; I found it intensely boring until a certain point, and then found it mildly interesting until I got grumpy with it again at the end. This is not because the book is terrible, but because ( Read more... )

Acclaimed SF writer John Scalzi has written and will be publishing a remix/reboot of H. Beam Piper's acclaimed, beloved, Hugo-nominated SF novel LITTLE FUZZY. I am, as y'all know, JUST SLIGHTLY IN THE TANK for H. Beam Piper, and so roughly half the people I know dropped me a line about this and asked for my reaction ( Read more... )

So, the Consumerist had an article about the Manllow, a fan-crafted Etsy item available in Edward and Jacob versions. (The scariest part: IT HAS HANDS.)

Y'know the first thing I thought of? Other than Japanese 2D love, I mean. Substitute Logan, as seen in Nancy Lorenz's Wolverine/Rogue fanstrip Cheeto RunFandom, you don't know how ahead of your ( Read more... )

I've owed Harry Connolly a review of his CHILD OF FIRE, the first novel in his Twenty Palaces series, for a while now. Full disclosure: Harry and I have known each other online for several years and pop up in each other's comments sections fairly often. That said, his book sucked. -- no, I'm just kidding; it's really pretty damn awesome, and its ( Read more... )

Some of you folks may recall that a while ago I mentioned that the curious thing about Piers Anthony, to me, is that while people often dump on Anthony for being weird, skeevy, disturbing, and that sort of thing, nobody doing so ever mentions the stuff that *I* find to be really disturbing. (And remember, when we say "Piers Anthony" we're talking ( Read more... )

I happened to pick up W.S. Baring-Gould's ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES over lunch, and lemme tell you, it is danged interesting to contemplate the introduction when you have ready access to an iPhone with an inflation calculator app, because W.S. Baring-Gould tells you how much money Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made. Even better, Baring-Gould generously ( Read more... )