Sean

A nice little romp (if a tad slow) for a spin-off from the Agent Pendergast series.

Ever since Lincoln and Child introduced Corrie Swanson into the realms of Pendergast, I was waiting for them to expand her role. I figured she would have been great for a YA series with Pendergastian overtones, but now she's an adult, a grown woman who followed in her mentor's footsteps and joined the FBI. At first, I was looking forward to this, but she does not come off too well in the first book. She's a little uptight, a little by-the-book. She's lost some of the goth edge that she possessed when she was first introduced.

Nora Kelly, the widow of the last William Smithback, is an old friend from the Pendergast realms. It's nice to see her getting a larger role in this world. She's intelligent and strong, and a good protagonist.

OLD BONES starts off promising, with a hunt for Donner party campsites, but the book really only simmers and never boils. It does not really live up to the expectations I have for typical Lincoln & Child work, but I'm going to chalk that up to the fact that it's a first book and they're still finding footing for both of the characters. Both women, formerly secondary characters in Pendergast's world, are now front and center and the writers seem to be figuring them out.

The first book in this spin-off series is solid, but doesn't really hum. However, I anticipate a second book will not suffer a sophomore slump.

Another standard Flanagan romp around the world of Araluen. As usual, the Rangers are smart, the Skanadians are fierce, and much coffee is drunk.

While this book serves as a nice crossover between the worlds of the Rangers and the Brotherband, at its heart is a long siege. As with most sieges, it's slow. This book is a little more plodding than most of his stuff, but the Mary Sues win in the end and you feel good about them doing so.

One of the most horribly written books I've ever read. I almost had to stop talking to the person who suggested I read it.

Vampire fiction is dead. Move on to superheroes. ;)

Another strange murder, another dose of Minnesota nice, and–as always–a heaping helping of the subtle sadness that seems to have a way of following Nils Shapiro around.

The third Nils Shapiro novel follows a twisted path around something that starts as a simple murder, but Matt Goldman finds a way to show us that murder, like life, is never simple. There are always too many variables to consider, and too many angles to take when trying to solve something like this. Add into it the complexity of Nils's life, relationships, and acquaintances, and you're left with a very fulfilling adult mystery that both gives you hope and knocks you down a peg.

I like the Nils Shapiro books partly because of my relationship with the Mini-Apple: I have been there. I've driven a lot of those streets, had dinners in a lot of those suburbs, and I know people like the characters in those books. The Midwest has a way of shaping people. I like the Nils books partly because I've had the good fortune to meet the writer on a number of occasions, and I find him to be a likable, interesting, and well-spoken fellow–totally someone I'd get a beer with, especially if he was paying. Hell, if he's buying, I'll even drink Grain Belt or some horrible Minnesota micro-brew. But, the predominant reason I like the Shapiro books is because of how Shap walks a fine line between having a normal life and being stuck in shadow. There's a cloak of depression in the books, it's not overt, but it's constant. I identify with that quite heavily.

I can't recommend this series enough. It's not a rollicking, rolling, throwing-punches, and driving fast sort of detective novel. It has more in line with thinky PI novels like something Colin Dexter might put together than anything Hollywood would traditionally glom onto. For that, though, I think it makes the series all the better.

This was a good start to a potentially great series. It gets a little bogged down at times, but the premise is solid and the writing was sharp.

I've read every book that Lincoln & Child have done together, and this one was probably one of my favorites. Often in the Pendergast series, they have a tendency to get bogged down with Pendergast's wealth, his relationship to Constance, and Pendergast's own misanthropy. With ‘Verses for the Dead,' they returned to a more standard serial killer mystery and introduced two characters I hope they bring back: Dr. Fauchet and Armstrong Coldmoon.

With giving Pendergast a partner who was his opposite in nearly every way (Coldmoon is Lakota, from the Rez, poor, with simple tastes, and was more by-the-book), it only served to enhance Pendergast's character in ways that even his pairings with D'Agosta did not highlight. SA Coldmoon was an interesting character in and of himself. I could stand to see him brought back for more adventures in the future.

There were no major revelations about Pendergast's family. No major twists or turns. This book really did not add to the overall story of Pendergast's world. It's a good stand-alone, much like ‘Still Life with Crows' was. Because of this, it was a refreshing revelation, especially since the last few books had been a little heavy and plodding with that sort of history.

I could definitely stand to see them to a few more Pendergast books like this one. Get back to the simple art of chasing down serial killers, fellas. It makes for better books.

As a massive Marx Bros. fan, this book seemed like an automatic buy for me. Harry Turtledove has a long history of doing some interesting alternate reality works, and taking the frantic foursome and tossing them back in time the Fredonian Rebellion was a neat take on the brothers Marx.

It was weird to see them referred to by their birth names, though. Only real fans would be able to keep them straight in their heads. The book was also not nearly as humorous as the Marxes were. At first, I was a little distracted by that, but having read enough biographies of the brothers, it was much more reflective of the melancholy and angst the brothers suffered offstage.

I liked this book, but I will be the first to tell you that it's probably not everyone's cup of tea.

I just don't like this book that much. I always hate it when someone tries to take an established legend like the Arthurian tales and “re-envision” it. It's plenty envisioned as it is. It doesn't need to be redone from a femminist point of view. It was fine as an original.

To me, this is like doing a cover of a Beatles' song. You can do a cover–but it will never, ever be as good as the original.

If you're a fan of the podcast, you'll like this book.

If you're not, you may still enjoy it, but you won't have the same appreciation for it. It gets a little verbose at times when the author waxes philosophical about some of the supernatural events, but it's still decent writing, so it's forgivable.

I really like Richard MacLean Smith's voice on the podcast, so when you read this, you cannot help but hear him reading it in his mellifluous tone. That's what makes it fun to read.

If you're really a fan of the podcast, I'd suggest picking up the audiobook version instead. However, there are a few pictures in this book that go along with the stories that you'd miss out on, but not enough to make a difference in your appreciation of the tales.

I've always said that as a writer, you can only write the book you, yourself, want to read, and then you can only hope that others will want to read it as well. That's the advice I always give to students I teach, that's what I tell people when I do presentations–the rest is just details. Sebastien de Castell not only writes books that I want to read, but he writes the books that I wish I'd written. Something about his style of storytelling, his characters, his plots, his level of detail–it synchs up perfectly with what I feel makes a great story. I can given him no higher praise than that. Since I first discovered his debut “The Traitor's Blade”–the first book in his Greatcoats quartet–he has been in my pantheon of my favorite writers.

I'm a little depressed by this book, because I know that Kellen Argos only has one more go-round before this series ends. It's a great YA series, but the stories are not dumbed down at all. They fit with adult sensibilities and the characters are easily reachable by adults, despite their youth. In many ways, Kellen is the guy I wanted to be as a teenager–hell, he's kind of the guy I wish I could be now. It has been a pleasure to witness his journey over the four books in this series so far, and I look forward to the fifth book–even if it is the final in the series.

When people ask me for recommendations, de Castell is always on the tip of my tongue. Right up there with Rafael Sabatini and Alexandre Dumas. Dude's good. Flat-out good.

Well-written and interesting. However, reading this made whatever minor scraps of respect I had for Steve Jobs go away. Clearly, he was a psychopath who should have been sterilized before he had any children. All the respect in the world for Lisa for surviving him and coming out alright.

I don't usually review books that I think aren't that good, but I figure Baldacci is a big enough name that
A) If he sees this, it won't hurt his feelings, and
B) He won't see this.

I'd never read a Baldacci book before, but I got the audiobook for this one a few days ago and played it in the car while on my long days at work. The prose doesn't sizzle, but it's competently written. There are a lot more adverbs than I'd care to hear, and he uses a lot of hamhanded dialogue attribution he didn't need. (He's probably big enough that his editors cut a lot less than they would with a new author because it pads page counts and makes for a more expensive book...) It really bothered me that there is no cursing in this book, too. In scenes where military dudes with guns are in a standoff with each other, you better goddamn believe there's going to be cursing.

(In a scene where a military dude pours himself a bowl of cereal, there should be cursing to make it realistic. My friends who are in/were in the military seem to be completely incapable of forming a sentence without cursing.)

This is the sort of book that makes me really question why I can't get an agent and publishing deal if they're producing tripe like this. I might be biased, but I'd rather read one of my books than this thing.

Baldacci basically created another ultra-Mary Sue main character along the never-do-wrong, always-wins mold of Jack Reacher, Mitch Rapp, and Peter Ash, complete with tragic backstory. Atlee Pine hits all the high notes of a cookie-cutter action hero. The murder of her twin sister sent her on a path to the FBI because she wants to make sure all families have the closure she never got. She's an Olympic-level weightlifter, expert MMA practitioner, and all-around better-than-you athlete. She's tall and well-built, but like all good female main characters, she doesn't think of herself as beautiful, but yet she attracts the attention of the ex-Special Forces Green Beret stud (who is old-fashioned and humble before her). In the course of this book, Atlee fights Russian army guys, a North Korean assassin, and a couple of would-be rapist rubes, handling them all with relative ease.

She's everything that's wrong with this genre of fiction.

In spite of that, I didn't bail on this book because she was compelling enough that I was interested to see where the story went.

Baldacci wrote one of those twisty-turny thrillers that gets so caught up in the twists and turns that it forgets to be realistic. It's a big-screen action movie that would get lambasted for its silly plot and cardboard characters. It goes from a mystery about a dead mule and a missing hiker at the Grand Canyon to a bizarrely thought-out plot to start a war with North Korea, with a bunch of crazy stops in between.

Yet, this is a best-selling series.

Why?

I don't get it.

My Abe & Duff Mystery Series was written specifically to be the antithesis of books like this. Abe and Duff aren't going to win any fights, they're ugly and they know it (and everyone else knows it), and they're not going to be the envy of others. They are grounded in reality. They might make some quips and banter a bit, but that's about it. They joke–because I don't think I've ever had a conversation with anyone for more than a few minutes without making some sort of attempt at levity. No one wants to be friends with a person who is always serious. Life is serious enough. Make a joke already.

I honestly don't get jealous of other authors. I always say a high tide raises all boats, and clearly people must like this series because it seems to be quite popular...but, when I see a book like this get a lot of success, I really start to wonder, “Why not me?” because I don't think this book was all that good.

I think I'm going to put this book into the same realm as I put things like Reality TV Singing Shows and Taylor Swift–they're popular, sure, but popular doesn't mean “good.”

There are far better books out there and more deserving authors.

Louis Sachar is the type of writer who deserve JK Rowling-type legions to be following him. He deserves midnight openings for his books.

I've been a fan of his since I was in second grade (way back in ‘81 or ‘82...oh, christ, I'm old...and I read “Sideways Stories from Wayside School” for the first time.

They build ‘em different in Wyoming. For the last decade and change, Craig Johnson has been constructing a modern day superhero in his lead character, Walt Longmire. Part philosopher, part throwback to the old cowboy heroes, and part Timex watch, ol' Walt takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin' while tossing out the occasional one-liner and playing fast and loose with the number of times a square-jawed ex-Marine on the verge of qualifying for a AARP card can take a punch.

In his newest romp, DEPTH OF WINTER, Walt has left the familiar and relatively safe confines of Absaroka County, Wyoming, to head south of the border to rescue his daughter, Cady, from the hands of the nigh-unkillable cartel head, Tomas Bidarte. Walt and Bidarte had tangled in previous books, but Tomas has crossed and uncrossable line by going after Cady, and it's time for the wily sheriff to finish the war.

Walt crosses the border and goes after a well-armed cartel with little more than an Ambrose Bierce biography in his pocket, hooking up with a collection of roughnecks and oddballs worthy of Absaroka County to aid him in his fight. However, waltzing into the middle of the Chihuahuan desert and saving Cady ain't gonna be easy.

But, as Longmire's very name would suggest: It never is.

I've been following Johnson's novels since 2007. THE COLD DISH, the first one, came out in 2004. I've enjoyed all his books. Even the worst Longmire novel is better than many writers' best novel. Every year, I look forward to another tale of Walt's exploits. As usual, Craig delivers the goods. This go-round is a high-octane, long-odds, search-and-rescue adventure with literary nods to the aforementioned Bierce, Hemingway, and Miguel de Cervantes.

Like Cervantes' most famous character, Longmire finds himself tilting at windmills and trying to retain some semblance of chivalry in a lawless land against lawless people. At times, his good nature and unwillingness to pull a trigger on men who truly deserve to die gets frustrating in that same way that you want to yell at Donald Pleasence for revealing his world domination plans to James Bond before setting the death trap in motion and leaving the room–JUST KILL ‘EM ALREADY, WALT!–but, it's that goodness and unwillingness to kill that makes Walt who he is, and makes us keep rooting for him. Never change, Sheriff. Never change.

Every year, I run out and get the newest Longmire book as soon as it's released. It's one of the few books that I will actually purchase as a hardcover (because I'm cheap). Every year, I tear through it as quickly as I can because I want to know what torture the poor sheriff is going to have to endure. And every year, when the adventure is done, I feel sad because I have to wait a full year for another trip with ol' Walt. DEPTH OF WINTER, while taking place in the relentless heat of a Mexican desert, delivers on the chills.

I'd like to think that I'd have the fortitude to walk smiling into a compound of men who think nothing of peeling off someone's face and stitching the skin-mask to a soccer ball, and come out on the other side, but let's be honest: I'll leave a restaurant if I have to wait for a table. I don't do adversity. I guess that's why I have such admiration for Walt Longmire. He does nothing but adversity.

They build ‘em different in Wyoming.

Man, I really hoped this would be better than it was. It was fine, don't get me wrong–but for more than a decade, I've been hoping for official Firefly novels. I don't know if anything could have lived up to what I wanted them to be.

This was a fine novelization. Decent story. Good interactions with the original crew. It just did not live up to the easy-going back-and-forth of the show. I look forward to future trips around this world, though. I'm already looking forward to the next novel.

An instant classic.

Horowitz delves into the making of 007 for the first time. The first few chapters of this book detail James Bond's call-up to the double-oh ranks, and how he was given his infamous License to Kill by MI-6.

Horowitz is a master storyteller and a gifted writer. His prose is dead perfect for Bond stories, and he delivers all the action, suspense, wry Bond dialogue, and classic Bond villains you could want.

The story surges like riptide until the explosive climax.

A worthy entry into the Bond franchise, and one I'd like to see adapted to the screen.

Vampires. Steamboats. George RR Martin's prose. What's not to like?

I'm not a huge fan of vampire novels, but I did like this one. It caught a sense of the time and history very well, and while it was a little fantastical at times, I still enjoyed it.

It's not a classic like ASOI&F, but it's not horrible, either.

Matt Goldman writes a solid mystery. The inciting incident is confusing at the beginning, and by the end, you understand how everything went down, even if the ‘why' of human nature doesn't necessarily jibe with how you roll. The detective, Nils Shapiro, is sharp, but he's not Sherlockian. Nor is he Mike Hammer. He doesn't walk into a room and instantly know everything like Holmes would, and he would never beat an answer out of someone. He gets it done by being smart, asking good questions, and paying attention. He dogs out the answers with relentless pursuit and the occasional epiphany. The characters in Goldman's books are real. The mystery and the solution are believable. And the prose is as crisp as a late fall evening in Minnesota.

This being the second go-round of the aforementioned Mr. Shapiro, as a reader, you're always on the lookout for the proverbial Sophomore Slump. I'm glad to say that if Goldman's first book, ‘Gone to Dust,' was a solid base hit, then ‘Broken Ice' is a stand-up double. I'm using baseball analogies, but given the subject of the book, I think hockey analogies would be a little bit more productive, but it's a little tougher to think of one.

Let me think for a second...

In this book, Goldman five-holes the goalie from just inside the blue line. I found the prose even better than it was in ‘Gone to Dust,' and the mystery was even more interesting. Nils Shapiro, being a private detective, only gets called into things that the police can't figure out on their own, so by that notion, the mystery is never going to be cut-and-dried, and Nils will have to do his own legwork.

The story clips along at a good pace, but it's never hurried. The writing is readable and adult. Goldman doesn't pull punches, but he can gloss the prose with a little Minnesota Nice when necessary. Goldman's background in TV writing is evident as the book is also quickly recognizable as being worthy of a film adaptation. You can see the television beats and the scenes flow with visual appeal. I'd love to see the BBC get ahold of this series for a run on ‘Masterpiece: Mystery.'

I'm looking forward to starting the third Nils Shapiro book, ‘The Shallows,' because of how much I enjoyed the first two of Goldman's books. If the publishing gods are willing, Shapiro will have a long and healthy run at the presses.

I wrote this, so my opinion on it doesn't count, really.

The book is based upon the wildly popular TeslaCon Steampunk Convention held in Madison, Wis. every fall.

My buddy, Eric, runs the convention. It's his brainchild. I'm playing in his sandbox, but it's a great place to play. The story is original and set apart from the Con's canon, but it has elements that work within it.

Right now, there are at least two more books in this series slated for production.

SMOKE EATERS by Sean Grigsby

George Carlin once said “It takes a genius to point out the obvious.” In Sean Grigsby's debut novel, SMOKE EATERS, instead of the tired trope of using knights and warriors to battle a scaly menace, he has firefighters fighting dragons and ghosts (yes, I said dragons AND ghosts–it's pretty awesome). He might not be the first one to try that combo, but his execution of this concept is pretty genius, and it's a brilliant ride.

The main character, Brannigan, is on his way out of the job, a job that's only gotten harder since E-Day, the day the dragons emerged from underground. He's fought fires for thirty years, and it's time to retire, to settle down. However, just days before his retirement, Brannigan finds out he's a Smoke Eater, nearly immune to smoke and heat. From there, he gets tossed into the Smoker Eaters brigade, a sort of futuristic, power-suited, balls-to-the-wall brand of firefighters whose job is to kill dragons and defend people from wraiths, the ghosts of those killed by dragonfire.

If all that wasn't enough, there's something fishy about the goings-on of the higher-ups in the administration of Parthenon City, and Brannigan has to content with real dragons, as well as the dragons of a corrupt bureaucracy.

The prose is slick and easy. The dialogue sounds crisp and real. And, thanks to Grigsby's background as a firefighter, the technical aspects of the book feel very real, even if they're done in an over-the-top, worthy-of-an-action-movie-starring-The Rock-sort of way.

SMOKE EATERS, in many ways, is an homage to Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR (at one point in the book, Brannigan even reads that book). It's a worthy tribute because the head nods to Scalzi are not subtle, but at the same time, SMOKE EATERS blazes its own glorious path. Definitely worth checking out.

Man, what a great series. Yes, it can be a little wordy, but it's so beautifully told. Anne Shirley has to be one of the most wonderful characters in all of literature.

The Tufa series has come to a fitting end. When Alex announced that THE FAIRIES OF SADIEVILLE would be the final book in the series, I was of two minds about it: on one hand, an author should be allowed to end his series when he feels like it, but on the other hand, the Tufa of Cloud County were important to me, and I would miss them. In the final installment of this beautiful, critically-acclaimed series, the mysteries of the Tufa are revealed, and the book is closed on Cloud County. It is a beautiful and wonderful end to the series.

However, given the nature of the story and the mechanisms in the book, it makes this book VERY difficult to review without dropping major spoilers.

I will say that, as always, Bledsoe's prose is wonderful and lyrical. His ear for dialogue is enviable, and his writing flows like a Tennessee River. The characters, all the Tufa that have become so familiar over the years, make their appearances, coming by to wave good-bye one last time throughout the book. The hinted mysteries of this strange race of banished fairy-folk are revealed in glorious detail, and when you read that final page, you will be both sad to see them go, but fulfilled by the fact that it ended so well.

I hate to see books like this end, but at the same time, you don't want a series to overstay its welcome. For example, as much as I love the TV series ‘MAS*H,' the last three seasons of it are almost unwatchable. It's hard for any series to maintain its strength through a simple trilogy, let alone the six books we were given in the Tufa series. Bledsoe managed to wrangle six perfect books out of the series, and is now galloping on to greener pastures. I cannot wait to see what he will do next.

I will miss Bronwyn, Bliss, Mandalay, and even Junior, and the rest of the Tufa. There were probably plenty more stories nestled in the hills and valleys of Cloud County, and maybe if we listen hard enough to the Night Wind, we'll catch inklings of them.

Well done, Alex. Thanks for the ride.

As usual, Sebastien de Castell astounds me. He finds ways to torture his protagonists to the brink of giving up, and then somehow finds ways to make them whole again.

As much as I miss the Greatcoats, I have grown to really love this series.

While I understand this was GRRM's attempt at a book for middle-grade readers, and while I believe GRRM's prose is solid...this book was just sort of an empty fairy tale that did not really do anything for me.

A solid debut.

This is the type of book I love: A young hero-in-the-making, still in his apprenticeship, a mysterious, talent master to oversee him, and a dark political mystery with an assassin lurking in the shadows.

I enjoy this sort of story more than just about any other. RJ Barker tells a good tale, and Girton Club-Foot is a worthy hero.

I jumped on the sequel immediately after finishing this one.

4.5 stars.