Category: Books
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Happy Birthday Star Trek
50 years ago today yesterday, the first episode of Star Trek (now known as ‘The Original Series’) aired.  Sci-fi fandom hasn’t been the same since.  Hundreds of episodes of TV across five decades, scores of books and comics, big budget movies, video games, copycats and parodies, Trek holds a special place in our pop culture.  Star…
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Book Review – The City Stained Red (Bring Down Heaven #1) by Sam Sykes
I became aware of Sam Sykes mostly via Twitter, and his interactions with Myke Cole, Daniel Abraham and other authors I followed. Â He was funny, and when the first book in his new series was discounted, I took a shot. Â The City Stained Red, book one of the “Bring Down Heaven” series, follows an adventuring…
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Book Review – Archivist Wasp
For months, one of my online friends has been recommending Archivist Wasp to pretty much everybody. Â It was on my list to check out some day, but when it went on sale a few weeks back she decided to just gift the book to a few of us and be done with it. Â I’m very…
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Book Review – Firefight (Brandon Sanderson’s Reckoners #2)
I enjoyed the first book in the Reckoners series (Steelheart) despite some silly YA trappings that felt like they were there just to check a box on a form (let’s have some new slang for the kids!) but I’m a sucker for some good comic book action, and I like the hook here. Â In Sanderson’s…
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Book Review – Star Wars: A New Dawn
Are you watching the new Star Wars cartoon, Rebels? Â Do you want to know more about Kanan? Â Well, it takes quite a while to get interesting, but A New Dawn is your jam. Â There’s insight into Kanan (then under his real name) and his training as a Padawan before Order 66, the first meeting with…
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Book Review: Star Wars – Tarkin
Remember how strange it was in Ocean’s Twelve when it was revealed that Danny and the boys had won because they had outsmarted the bad guys off-screen? Yeah, pretty much what you have here. Â We begin Tarkin, by James Luceno, with an attack on a station Moff Tarkin is familiar with, so Palpatine (now the…
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Book Review – Half a King, Joe Abercrombie
Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King is my first book of his, and it’s great, if not ground-breaking. Â It follows young Prince Yarvi, who has a withered arm, content to step away from the throne and dive into a life of books and study. Â Not strong enough to fight, he hones his mind, but everything changes…
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Book Review – Shadow Ops: Control Point
I came to Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops series via Twitter, but not from a recommendation.  He tweets often with James S. A. Corey and seemed like an interesting guy, and the premise of “Black Hawk Down meets the X-Men” was right up my alley.  What it really feels like is what would happen to Marvel’s mutants…
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Book Review – Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves
As soon as I heard James S. A. Corey (the Sci-fi pen name for writers Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham) had signed on to write a Star Wars novel, I was all in. Even better was the fact that most SW novels get put on Netgalley so I can read them early review them for…
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Book Review – Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy
I keep an eye out on NetGalley for books that may some day interest my kids, and I became curious about Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee when I saw it was one of the most requested books on the site. Â What I found was a fast-paced reimagining of the Snow Queen story…
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Book Review – Maul: Lockdown
It was with some trepidation that I started this latest Star Wars novel, Maul: Lockdown. Â Kindly provided via NetGalley, it had several warning signs. Â First, it’s about a prequel trilogy character, one that barely qualified AS a character. Â Maul was red and black, and had a saber-staff. Â He got killed by Obi-Wan, which has to…
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Book Review – Runaways, Volume 1: Pride and Joy
What would you do if you found out your parents were supervillains? Â That’s the basic question answered in Brian K. Vaughn’s (Saga) Runaways series. Â Each year, 6 families come together for a meeting – the kids are told it’s to plan out charitable giving for the year. Â “Good deeds should be done in secret, with…