Page 4 of posts filed: reviews

Review: Annihilation

Posted on 2014-02-07 at 6:25 by Dave

Annihilation (Book 1 in the Southern Reach trilogy) by Jeff VanderMeer, Read by Carolyn McCormick Length: 6 hours

It's  a simple, classic set-up: A group of explorers head out on an expedition to the mysterious Area X. They have gone through rigorous training that strips much of their identity in hopes of generating unbiased field reports. Instead, they are referred to simply by their scientific professions: Psychologist, Anthropologist, Surveyor, and Biologist. There was a Linguist too, but something

Posted in reviews, Uncategorized | Tagged annihilation, carolyn mccormick, jeff vandermeer, kaleidoscope of wtfery, southern reach trilogy

Review: Hide Me Among the Graves

Posted on 2014-01-31 at 6:1 by Dave

Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers, Read by Fiona Hardingham Length: 17 hours, 26 minutes

What do you want from a sequel? Comfort? More of the same? Or simply a continuation? A further exploration that goes somewhere different? There isn't one right or wrong answer. Sometimes it's one thing, sometimes it's something else, sometimes it's a mixture. Tim Powers' Hide Me Among the Graves falls into the latter category - there are similarities to its predecessor, but it is also very much its own book

Posted in reviews | Tagged fiona hardingham, hide me among the graves, tim powers, vampires

Review: The Land Across

Posted on 2013-12-31 at 7:25 by Dave

The Land Across By Gene Wolfe, Read by Jeff Woodman Length: 10 hours, 56 minutes

Toward the end of Gene Wolfe’s The Land Across, travel-writer Grafton tells his foreign secret police comrade that he doesn’t have anything to tell her, but thinks: “Really, there was a lot [to tell], but I had decided not to tell all that. I figured it out last night, and this morning…I didn’t know how to say it.” Well, I have to admit, I haven’t figured it all out, and I’d be lying if I thought I did, but I sure enjoyed

Posted in reviews, Uncategorized | Tagged fantastic travelogues, gene wolfe, jeff woodman, review

Review: Space Magic

Posted on 2013-12-19 at 7:6 by Dave

Space Magic Written and Read by David D. Levine Length: 7 hours, 56 minutes

I didn’t always love short fiction. For a long time, short stories seemed like distracting interludes from the main course - novels. But before I fell in love with audiobooks, I discovered Escape Pod – a science fiction podcast, and fell in with short fiction. Escape Pod delivers short science fiction stories on a weekly basis, most of them perfectly suited for a commute to work. Thanks to Escape Pod, I discovered tons of authors

Posted in reviews | Tagged Collection, David D. Levine, Short Fiction, Space Magic

Review: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Posted on 2013-12-09 at 6:38 by Dave

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown By Holly Black, Read by Christine Lakin for Hachette Audio Length: 12 hours, 6 minutes

Vampires are all the rage these days. Whether it’s True Blood or The Vampire Diaries or Twilight, vampires are everywhere in pop culture – even Dracula’s back – and it’s easy to see why some people are so bored with them.

I am not one of those people. For me, vampires are the most fascinating monsters. They can be terrifying, seductive, sickening – mirror images of ourselves we try and cover

Posted in reviews | Tagged christine lakin, hachette audio, holly black, vampires, YA

All Hallow's Listen: Doctor Sleep

Posted on 2013-10-31 at 5:35 by Dave

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King, Read by Will Patton Length: 18 hours, 35 minutes

As a parent, I often find myself dreaming for my kids - an easy and natural thing to do. We see these sweet children thriving, and we pour so much of into them, excited about all the possibilities waiting to be fulfilled when they'll grow up to be. But there's a fear buried as well - what if we fail? What if our kids fail? What if we live to see all our dreams for them fall by the wayside, and see them broken by the world

Posted in All Hallow's Listen, reviews

All Hallows Listen: The Shining

Posted on 2013-10-30 at 5:34 by Dave

The Shining
by Stephen King, Narrated by Campbell Scott
Length: 15 hours, 49 minutes

Some stories you discover long after they've become iconic.

I'd never read or heard The Shining before, and I've never seen the Kubrick movie. But The Shining is a story that has left a mark on our culture, and those kind of stories are always interesting to experience after the fact. Sometimes when you do, you kind of scratch your head, shrug, and say, "It was okay." Maybe it originated or popularized certain tropes, adn

Posted in All Hallow's Listen, reviews, Uncategorized

Review: The Fall of the Kings

Posted on 2013-09-27 at 19:58 by Dave

The Fall of the Kings (Riverside, Book 3) By Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Nick Sullivan, Simon Jones, Katherine Kellgren, Robert Fass, Richard Ferrone, Tim Jerome, and Neil Gaiman Length: 18 hours, 40 minutes

Often fantasy fiction relies on escapism through the fantastic, so it's refreshing when you come across a book like The Fall of the Kings that kind of skewers that the fantastic necessarily equates escape. The Fall of the Kings is very much a left turn from Swordspoint.

Posted in reviews | Tagged deliah sherman, ellen kushner, neil gaiman presents, reviews, riverside

Review: The Privilege of the Sword

Posted on 2013-09-24 at 6:19 by Dave

The Privilege of the Sword (Riverside, Book 2) By Ellen Kushner, Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Barbara Rosenblat, Felicia Day, Nick Sullivan, Katherine Kellgren, Joe Hurley and Neil Gaiman Length: 15 hours, 40 minutes

I have a serious complaint about Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword: it ended. I could’ve happily listened to 100 more hours of Katherine’s Tom Joad-esque mythology as a swordswoman for the disenfranchised and disempowered. But look, I'm getting ahead of myself. But look again, this book

Posted in reviews | Tagged ellen kushner, felicia day, joe hurley, neil gaiman, reviews, riverside, the privilege of the sword

Review: Fortunately, The Milk

Posted on 2013-09-20 at 14:28 by Dave

Fortunately, the Milk Written and Read by Neil Gaiman Length: 58 minutes

It should be a walk down the street, but on a father's trip to buy some milk for his children's cereal (and probably also his tea), aliens show up (as they do), and kidnap him. Dad escapes by breaking the time space continuum and lands himself on a 17th century pirate ship, and here - things get a little weird.

Throughout the rest of the book there are vampyrs, time traveling dinosaurs, exploding volcanoes, oh-so-self-fulfilling

Posted in reviews, Uncategorized | Tagged Children's Books, neil gaiman