One of the books I picked up at Ad Astra was Dangerous Dames [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] by John Zakour & Lawrence Ganem. This is a two-in-one that combines the first two Zachary Nixon Johnson books, The Plutonium Blonde and The Doomsday Brunette.

I'll admit that the first few chapters worried me. I really wanted to enjoy these books, having heard good things about them. (Not to mention the fact that I've met one of the authors.) But the first few chapters felt like they were trying too hard to be funny, giving backstory and shooting off jokes without really starting the story.

Thankfully, those chapters were short, and the book picked up once things started happening.

The Zack Johnson books have been described as part parody, part homage to the old pulp detective novels. It's fifty years in the future. Zach Johnson is the last licensed P.I. on Earth. He's a bit of a celebrity, which means he gets some interesting cases. In book one, Zack and his partner HARV (supercomputer extraordinaire) must track down a homocidal plutonium-powered android superbabe. Book two sets Zach and HARV out to learn who murdered a genetically enhanced superbabe. (There's a theme* to these books...)

After those initial few chapters, the books were a lot of fun. Some jokes worked better than others -- I couldn't quite buy everyone swearing by "Gates" and "DOS" -- but then, that's going to be the case whenever you write humor. The story is good enough to draw you along, which means the humor is a bonus.

I thought the second story was stronger than the first, and I've been told the series continues to improve. The silliness sometimes threatens to cross the line, but it never felt over-the-top enough to throw me out of the story. Not even the attack toaster or the pixie/nymphs.

Will you like the books? That depends a lot on your taste and sense of humor. I wish I could find a sample chapter to link to. The silliness quotient is higher than in my goblin books, if that gives you a basis for comparison.

They're fun. Not terribly deep, but who am I to complain about that? If you're looking for a fun, light read, I'd give them a try.

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*The "superbabe" theme could very easily have gone in a direction to make me throw these books away. Particularly the first book, wherein we have an android duplicate of a former exotic dancer. From a feminist perspective, there are aspects of the stories and characters that annoy me, but no more so than most books out there. The women are actually pretty well-developed characters. But while I enjoyed the stories, I will say it's a little tiresome to read about yet another male hero either fighting or saving a world of exclusively superbeautiful, supersexy women.

Tags: review

On The Faery Reel, by someone who openly admits she has a "fairy intolerance"--she only enjoyed a handful of the stories:
Alas, a Blog

and The Del Rey Book of SF&F by BookLoon:
BookLoon Reviews

The reference is to Mississippi Congressional District 01, where today a special election runoff will determine whether Travis Childers(D) or Greg Davis(R), will represent that district in the next congress. The race has gotten a fair amount of attention, nationally, mainly because it's not supposed to BE a race. This is a red district in a mostly red state. Davis should be running away with it, but the GOP's own internal polling reputedly shows Childers up by 5pts.

Davis has played the race card to the hilt. He's raved about the scary liberals. He's done everything by the book for a typical Republican in a typical MS district, all the fear-mongering and divisive crap that's worked so well for them over the years. And there's still a very good chance, not a certainty, not a "slam dunk," but a very good chance he's going to have his head handed to him today.

Hope is painful, often, but still better than the alternative. It's not my district so I can't vote, but I'll be watching what happens very closely. And I think a lot of other people will be, too.

Current Mood: Scarily Optimistic

I posted this in a reply to Rudi last night, but it occurs to me that it since this place is low on content lately, I may as well put it here for all y'all to read. My rankings of the five books in my snazzy Jules Verne omnibus, just completed (SPOILER WARNING OMG):

1. A Journey to the Center of the Earth: the funniest of the bunch, with the best characters and the wildest "science." Hans the Icelandic guide = my hero. A faithful film adaptation would be a laugh riot (apparently there is some 3-D monstrosity with Brendan Fraser about to be released), and I don't even mean the suspect (or outright wrong) science. Best chapter heading: "TERRIBLE SAURIAN BATTLE." How can you go wrong?

2. Around the World In Eighty Days: the best-plotted of the bunch. Some cringe-worthy colonialist commentary, but hardly stands still long enough to be offensive. The characters are not quite as well drawn as in Journey, but Passepartout has some great moments, and Fogg works well after an iffy beginning. Oh, and there's an actual FEMALE character in it, wonder of wonders.

3. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: exciting in parts, but too often a catalog of undersea flora and fauna and/or a menu of meals served on the Nautilus. Some surprisingly effective description; when they were trapped under the icebergs and running out of air, I actually started to feel rather short of breath. Overall, though, it's just a travelogue, with no real payoff or anyone to root for. Ned Land the Canadian is annoying. Nemo's pretty much the only character of any interest here, and he's left an enigma in the end. (More on that here; thanks to Rudi for the link.)

4. From the Earth to the Moon: the main virtue of this is that it's short. The mild parody of the Gun Club is amusing, but a little goes a long way, and too much of the book turns out to be caught up in the mathematics and design of the, well, moon-shot. The most interesting part of the book for me was wondering how much Verne influenced the naming and siting of the actual American space program nearly a century later.

5. Round the Moon: there's even more astronomy talk (both elementary and advanced) in this sequel, but it's worse because it all takes place between three guys stuck in a bullet. I actually gave up on this one about a third of the way through and skimmed ahead to see if they ever actually landed on the moon. (They didn't.)

Tags: books

busy busy busy

Have been getting shit done this week, both at work and at home, advancing various projects. Writing has been slowly stuttering back to life. I'm dissatisfied with everything I write. Stupid words. Be more interesting.

In general I've been feeling somewhat distant and.... thoughtful. *shrug* And so on.

Reading about the Spanish Civil War. Good times.

Current Music: Sparklehorse

Unfortunately, due to a lack of submissions, we are declaring the Shiny Short Story Writing competition null for 2008.

Thank you to those entries and interest we did receive. 

Tags: shiny

Congratulations are in order for the very talented robshearmanwho managed to snag himself a Sony award in the UK last night! Apparently the award is for "innovative experiments in the short story form". Well deserved!

Mr Shearman has a story forthcoming in Andromeda Spaceways issue 38 late in 2008, and a collection to be produced by Twelfth Planet Press early in 2009.  

www.newceres.com is currently down due to technical issues.

You can still access the site at: http://www.ceres.dreamhosters.com

And it will be accessible from the new Twelfth Planet Press website which will soon be up and running.

Issue 1 of New Ceres is, has and will always remain free. And it's downloadable from the website. You could started getting in some background reading in preparation for New Ceres: the anthology...

Tags: new ceres;
Current Mood: chipper

The hideousness of the death toll in Myanmar and China currently just boggles me. It is horrific and terrifying, and I'm sort of at a loss for words about the whole thing. Not that there's anything I can say about it, other than--if you have a few extra dollars, it wouldn't be a bad week to chip in to Doctors Without Borders.

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and in the department of things-that-are-shatteringly-trivial-by-comparison, but-life-must-go-on:

Another bad climbing night yesterday. I managed two 5.7s I'd done before (One of them is overhung and I spend the whole damned time dogging on the rope, but I get there.), but my left big toe has been giving me trouble, and the damned thing started to hurt so badly after two routes that I bailed on the third one about ten feet up. Also, the left shoulder is not giving me the love, and my ankle is a little sore, I think from favoring the toe.

Blah. I really want to go for a run this morning, as it's still cool and pretty out there. But the smart thing is to stay home and give my foot and ankle a break. Blah!

I think I need to step up project less-of-me, because it would not hurt my joints to get an extra forty or sixty pounds off them before I expect them to manage this stuff I'm throwing at them. There's some sort of delicate balance between exercise, joint pain, serotonin reuptake, caloric intake, and how much owie I can reasonably expect my body to absorb with in the process of trying to keep it healthy that I need to strike here.

Hmm. I wonder how stupid it really would be, to go for a run. Screw it, we'll give it a try, and if it hurts too much, we'll stop.

Tags: falling off perfectly good rocks, heavy weather
Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: NPR - Morning Edition

Are you the type that picks up a book but for one reason or another never manage to finish it? Have no fear, the Padded-Book Builder is here! For $1.99*, we'll insert additional pages into the books you buy! Do you read only halfway through a novel before moving on to another one? We'll double the page count of the book so that by the time you reach the middle, you're done! Order now and we'll throw in the Fake-Ending Builder for your friends who love to take a peek at the last page of the book.

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Tags: blog entry