If Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem were here, he’d know exactly what to do. It doesn’t matter that you can’t shoot cancer, because he’d probably find a way. Maybe there’s a spectacular shrinking device that could put Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem (along with Specialist Manny Loco, Private Jasper Jacks and the rest) into the blood stream of someone afflicted with cancer so that a rain of heavy weapons fire would lay decimation to the root of the problem. Maybe there’s another type of bullet, a medicine bullet that […]
C’mon, Luv. Let’s Go Do Druggy Sex Magic!
[Sound the Second Novel Alarm! Spoilers for The Magicians ahead. I mean it this time.] The Magicians was an exercise in literary frustration for me. I loved it. It was wonderful. Its adherence to explaining away its every mystery absolutely infuriated me. Reading it a second time allowed me to be well aware that the breathtakingly horrific things that occurred in the unfurling of Lev Grossman’s fantasy novel cioppino would not remain the unexplainable night terrors of a magical world beyond our reckoning and to simply enjoy the […]
And Is Probably More Hygienic Than Most Bikers
Occasionally timing is simply not on our side. Shortly after posting my review for Paul Chapman’s Porn Gnomes and Other Strange Tales, the author had a twenty four hour giveaway of his three collections, free to anyone who might have liked to download them from Amazon. Though I would have liked to have spread the good word, it was only at the very end of that day that I saw the announcement, and the price shortly thereafter returned to normal. Then again, maybe that’s for the best. The […]
I bet Silo workers keep their hats in the Caps Lock
[Second Novel In A Series Alert! Review of the first book is here] Sequels are exceptionally tricky affairs to balance. If you stray too far afield from what came before, then you risk alienating the audience you built with the original. If you hew too closely, then you’re bringing nothing new to the table. But as difficult as following up a story can be, fleshing out what came before is an even more difficult tightrope to walk. In order to write a proper prequel, you […]