![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrog
Dig my book reports.JUST FINISHED
Double Vision by Tricia Sullivan
This is my second outing with Sullivan after enjoying her previous book Maul. This one involves a psychic who is paid to watch an alternate universe where humans are at war on an alien planet – or so she thinks. It’s an interesting mix of consumerism satire, alien warfare and karate, with all sorts of pop culture signposts from the mid-1980s when the story is set (D&D and those old text-based computer RPGs figure into things as well). The high-concept stuff gets a little jumbled by the end, but still, Sullivan continues to impress me as a writer.
JUST STARTED
The Naming Of The Beasts by Mike Carey
The fifth book out of six featuring down-and-out exorcist Felix Castor. I’ve really enjoyed the series so far and can’t recommend it enough. Hopefully Carey can sustain the quality to the end, but what I’ve read of this one so far, I like.
RECENT TITLES
And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks by William S Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
A long-lost novel co-written by Burroughs and Kerouac before they became published writers, based loosely on a real case involving a mutual friend, Lucien Carr, who killed another friend, David Kammerer. The book went unpublished at the request of Carr, and is only seeing print after his death in 2005. Both Burroughs and Kerouac would go on to write much better things, but as a slice of post-WW2 life in New York City, it’s actually pretty good. Still, it’s probably more for Burroughs/Kerouac fans.
The CIA Manual Of Trickery And Deception by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace
A reprint of two long-lost CIA manuals written by magician John Mulholland in the early 1950s on how CIA agents could use magical illusion techniques for things like secretly drugging yr drink. The intro by Melton and Wallace provides an interesting history of how the CIA became interested in such ideas, and the manuals themselves are neat if you want some insight into sleight-of-hand and misdirection techniques.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
One of those classic Russian novels that I never would have thought to pick up if someone hadn’t told me it was actually about The Devil paying a visit to Moscow and wreaking havoc. There’s more to it than that, of course – there’s the story of Margarita who makes a deal with The Devil for the man she loves, and a lot of satire of modern Moscow. Probably the thing I’d most recommend it for is that it’s an argument against atheism, but one in which The Devil comes off looking pretty good.
Tales Of The Unexpected by Roald Dahl
I confess, I bought this as an emergency airport book, even though Dahl has always been on my radar as someone I should read (having read a couple of his children’s books). I was right – on this evidence alone, he really was the master of the short story with the twist ending. They’re not all zingers, but Dahl always managed to hook me in each time and build up the suspense as to where things were going to go. I’ll definitely be looking to read more of him.
Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze by Lester Dent
Doc Savage is one of those pulp science-hero characters that I’ve always been aware of but never read. I downloaded this – his first adventure – as an e-book to try him out. It’s written in the typical pulp-action style (lots of exclamation points, coincidence and repetition), and it’s silly he-man hero stuff, but still good fun. I’ll probably check out a few more of them.
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
The notion of a Crichton-style take on vampirism co-written by Guillermo del Toro sounds good on paper (so to speak), and the opening sequence of a plane landing at JFK with everyone apparently dead inside is a great hook. Sadly, it’s all downhill from there, thanks mainly to poor writing, tedious detail and cliched characters. Also, the “science” of vampirism that somehow still allows most of the cheesy myths to be true isn’t all that convincing. I’ll skip the rest of the trilogy, thanks.
Dead and gone,
This is dF
