For many years, back before I decided that choosing favorites was a no-win proposition, The Abyss held a rather bizarre distinction for me: it was both my favorite book and my favorite movie. This is bizarre, of course, because novelizations of movies are very rarely good, much less great, and film adaptations of books very rarely manage to capture the full power of an exceptional novel. But Orson Scott Card and James Cameron created such an exceptional pair of complementary […]
Elantrisby Brandon Sanderson656pp (Paperback)My Rating: 7/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.07/5Good Reads Rating: 4.23/5 Elantris is the first published novel by Brandon Sanderson, the author who will be completing the final novel in the Wheel of Time series. Although it leaves a few questions unanswered, this is a stand alone book and no sequels are planned. While Elantris is a solid debut and an entertaining story, it never rises above readable to the level of exceptional. The Shaod, a mysterious transformation […]
Duneby Frank Herbert544pp (Paperback)My Rating: 8.5/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.38/5Good Reads Rating: 4.32/5 Winner of the first Nebula award in 1965 and co-winner of the Hugo award, Dune is regarded with an almost reverent awe by some. As one of the first science fiction novels to emphasize characters, Dune is the precursor to many of the modern books in the genre that we read today. In spite of its reputation as a must-read novel in the genre, I put off […]
Dragons Wildby Robert Asprin368pp (Trade Paperback)My Rating: 6/10Amazon Rating: 4.6/5LibraryThing Rating: 3/5Goodreads Rating: 3.3/5 Dragons Wild is Robert Asprin’s return to solo writing after a long run of co-authored books and marks the beginning of a new humorous fantasy series from the author of the Myth and Phule’s Company books. Though his best work is now nearly twenty years old and many of his recent efforts have been uneven (and that’s being generous), Dragons Wild shows glimmers of Asprin’s previous […]
Last Dragonby J.M. McDermott400pp (Paperback)My Rating: 7/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 3.94/5Good Reads Rating: 3.25/5 J.M. McDermott’s debut Last Dragon is one of the books published under the new Wizards of the Coast Discoveries imprint. Discoveries includes novels by new authors in all types of speculative fiction instead of just epic fantasy with settings outside of the Forgotten Realms universe. The goal is to publish more mature fiction that appeals to adult readers instead of the simplistic but fun stories that […]
Hoodby Stephen Lawhead496pp (Hardcover)My Rating: 7/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 3.94/5Good Reads Rating: 3.96/5 Hood is the first book in the new “King Raven” trilogy by Stephen Lawhead. Scarlet, the second book in the series, is also available, but the concluding volume Tuck has not yet been released. Much like the tales of King Arthur, Robin Hood is a story that has evolved over the years and Lawhead wanted to tell the tale set during the time it seems to have […]
