Category Archives: Books

Dead Water Creek & Cold Dark Matter are mainstream mysteries about a woman who investigates scientific fraud for the Canadian government. Dead Water Creek was not bad, but the depictions of life in a science department did not mesh with … Continue reading →

(I skipped Farmer Boy and stopped after These Happy Golden Years.) I hadn’t reread these since I was a kid, when Little House on the Prairie was one of my favorite books for ages. They’re as good as I remember … Continue reading →

This is a fabulous book — best one I’ve read all year, and that seems unlikely to change. My only complaint is that it ended.

Picked up Michael A. Stackpole’s A Secret Atlas because I like the author’s podcast on writing (The Secrets), and I have a policy against taking writing advice from someone I’ve never read. It’s a solid epic fantasy with some nice … Continue reading →

Some months ago I asked what Cormac McCarthy’s The Road did differently from other post-apocalyptic novels. The answer is “Nothing.” The Road follows a man and his son as they travel towards the coast, years after a disaster caused fires … Continue reading →

Devlin’s Honor is the sequel to Devlin’s Luck, which I liked. Unfortunately, Honor has all of Luck‘s problems [1] and none of its charms. [1] Chiefly this one: The prose is at times a little lengthy for the content, reemphasizing … Continue reading →

What I enjoy most about Jones’ books isn’t the mystery plot — though they are interesting — so much as the characters. That was a good thing for this book, because the plot didn’t work for me and left me … Continue reading →

Cast in Shadow was even better than Cast in Courtlight. The beginning felt a bit slow to me — probably because it stopped to explain things I’d already figured out while reading the second book in the series — but … Continue reading →

Life is Too Grim Already — a group “working for a brighter genre” — now has a website. Currently it lists one book.