From page one, hell from the first line, I was pretty much hooked on The Martian.  It lived up to it’s hype.  A marooned story — like Castaway or 127 Hours — only here I genuinely liked the character.  I didn’t think he was an idiot.  You root for him because he MacGyver’s billions of dollars of tech to survive.  Or as he puts it, “I’m gonna science the shit out of this planet.” Easily one of my favorite — if not THE FAVORITE — books […]

I adored Ready Player One.  It was this nice blend of Willy Wonka and Wargames.  Easter eggs abounded.  It was every ironic t-shirt I’ve ever sweat in playing 8-bit games in a barcade.  Here, Cline tackles the world of space invaders ala The Last Starfighter, Ender’s Game and to some extent Iron Eagle.  Only here, I felt like the story was overburdened with too much nerdstalgia to retain it’s structure.  I didn’t care much about the characters and I felt like I was getting fois grased with references.  It […]

This is a superpowers story, not a super hero story.  This is a love story, where everyone is incredibly selfish and self-serving and kind of an asshole.  It takes a dark, mean, ugly path in the telling, swiping bitchass claws at reality TV and toxic relationships and super powers.  It’s an amazingly nasty and incredibly brutal story but really, really well done.  We don’t need another hero, and we certainly don’t get one here.

Kadrey’s gotten pretty deep into his urban hellscape of Sandman Slim.  With his seventh installment, you’d think he’d be dangerously close to treading water.  He sort of won the game with the last book, but now he has to carry on, only sans most of his superpowers.  It’s a heady reset, chock full of all the stuff that makes this one of the best damn series around.  If you like hard boiled noir with a side of angels v. demons, this is the series for […]