What’s happening to me, personally, doesn’t matter. If it’s not the ideal time, well, it’s the only time we’ve got.” As I was listening to a section about a third of the way into Bloodline I was struck by the deeply screwed up dynamic of the Skywalker family. Some friends and I joke that Anakin and Luke Skywalker are the biggest drama queens in the galaxy. Listening to Leia recount being tortured for hours by the man she now knows was her father, it doesn’t feel like […]
Your smile will tell you what warms your heart, or How to go from zen bliss to a massacre in three easy steps
James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, is officially dead, but in his universe, there is all kinds of dead. While he tries to figure out where he is and why he’s there, he’s trying not to get deader. At the end of The Perdition Score, Death, formerly known as Samael, formerly known as Lucifer, has left him on a mountain at the edge of Hell looking at a sandstorm. The sandstorm is the Havoc, a Mad Max style caravan with a portable gallows led by a […]
Business is Business
I was planning on saving Lock In for another time, but after listening to The Dispatcher, I needed to listen to Lock In. I listened to the Wil Wheaton narration. Listening to Wheaton’s narration made me think of Armada, which I had just listened to him narrate. Very briefly, the title of this review was “That’s how you do nostalgia, Cline!” I changed it because that would have been unfair to John Scalzi, Ernst Cline and their respective books. Just so you know, though, Scalzi […]
Patience and Time and Silence
Last year, John Scalzi’s written for Audible novella, The Dispatcher, narrated by Zachary Quinto, was offered for free. I snapped it up, but didn’t listen until yesterday. Scalzi is one of those authors who has been on my list, but remained unread. I enjoyed both Scalzi’s story and Quinto’s performance. In the near future, people who are murdered come back to life. No one knows why or how, just that it happens. It has given rise to a new profession, the Dispatcher. Dispatchers are trained, […]