Welcome to my Book Reviews!

There’s no particular rhyme or reason to these books, they are simply books I’ve read that I’ve enjoyed, and why I enjoyed them. If you’re looking for negative reviews, feel free to skip these, as I don’t tend to post negative reviews.

Enjoy!

Ten years old and ready to tear it up!

A review of Judd Winick’s book The Big Book of Barry Ween, Boy Genius. Don’t for a moment think of this book as a book for children. It’s easy to make that mistake with graphic novels. This is definitely a story for grown-ups, even though the protagonist is a 10-year-old boy. Barry Ween has an…

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Ferocious tales of dark revenge!

This month’s book review is Murderous Love, edited by Laura Eliabeth. It’s a dark and violent anthology of tales by eight different authors: Piper CJ, Nenia Campbell, Kristen Coar, Maggie Hoopis, Lauren Cate Leake, Rachel Pendley, E.V. Sauvage, and Ava Smiddy. I read it as I was on vacation, so it got to sit out…

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Nom nom Super-chomp!

A review of Eliot O’Donnell’s book Werwolves. As a child, I discovered I enjoyed creature features, and – bless her heart – my mother often indulged me in that. Somehow, somewhere, she found this book and got it for me. At the time, I devoured it (well, in retrospect, that’s on-brand for me), but over…

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“Beware of The Chemicals”

A review of Richard Brautigan’s book The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western. I’ve very much enjoyed Richard Brautigan’s work since I was introduced to it in the mid ‘80’s. I haven’t read everything, but what I have read has stuck in my head and constantly wormed around. He’s mostly known for his poetry, and his…

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A Sassy Pass Through Literary Shenanigans

A review of Matt Youngmark’s book series The Arabella Grimsbro Collection. Youngmark definitely has his voice down and the feel for his main character Arabella Grimsbro. As she moves through her adventures, you can feel her sense of impatience and frustration, and as deeper “tricks” are revealed, her surprise comes through clear as a bell.…

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Both what to do… and what to avoid!

A review of Carrie Lacina’s book Hoof (Sera the Well-Adjusted Serial Killer). Okay, so this was fun, and fun to read. And REALLY interesting. Structurewise, I appreciated the short chapters. That keeps you coming back to the narrative. I also appreciate that the main character, Sera, is not… super professional. We can’t all be Bret…

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An insane — and wonderful — jewel

A review of Orrin Grey’s book How to See Ghosts & Other Figments. I think short story collections are one of the most interesting views into an author’s heart and soul. A short story can be nearly anything the author wants. It can be any shape or form. It can address any topic. There are…

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A subtle sharp knife…

A review of Kasey Kubica’s book Woebegone. Woebegone opens with a heart-wrenching scene of great tragedy. Be aware there there are no emotional punches pulled. On the narrative level, the story drives toward solving the mystery of that tragedy, as well as many other tragic and horrifying events, all connected. But when I fully digest…

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Plan your time for this breathtaking page-turner.

A review of K. L. Young’s book The Secret Language of Spiders. The Secret Language of Spiders is a title so fantastic, I had to pinch dozens of people to be sure it was real. It is quite real, as my alleged parole officer keeps insisting. In a small, dark, dying, and twisted town, horrible…

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An Animalist Emotional Epic!

A review of Bestiary of Blood, edited by Jamal Hodge Let’s start off right away with the structure – Bestiary of Blood is a book outrageous in breadth and scope. Tons of established and tons of upcoming authors, all hand-picked by the editor Jamal Hodge, to fit his theme of Modern Fables and Dark Tales.…

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A man with no name

A review of Samuel R. Delaney’s book Dhalgren. I have read this book many times in my life. The first time I read this book, I was about sixteen years old and even at that early an age (for this sort of book, that is a fairly early age), the imagery haunted me. A city on…

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Clever, beautiful, and heartbreaking at times

A review of Bruce Taylor’s book Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity. There are two aspects to Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity. They are very different aspects, but I love both. First, the story. From birth to death, Edward is followed throughout his life, in each major moment, and major place. Where he makes…

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A fun tour through a Lovecraftian minefield!

A review of J. T. O’Connor and J. Walt Layne’s book The Coming Of T’Loal. O’Connor and Layne remind us that some of the trickiest bits of Lovecraftian horror aren’t the monsters or the rubber suits or the excess use of liquid latex on set. One of the hallmarks of Lovecraftian horror is the cosmic aspect,…

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It navigates tricky waters very well!

A review of Noel Figart’s book At the Foot of the Throne. I enjoyed At the Foot of the Throne. That might seem a somewhat simple statement to make, but please let me clarify. My reading tends toward technical stuff, and science fiction. I read very little fantasy. By and large, I find fantasy annoying, for a…

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A certain beautiful brutality

A review of Jonathan Moon’s book Stories to Poke Your Eyes Out. Sometimes I read a collection of short stories and it feels like a roller coaster ride that I’ve been on before. I know the twists and turns, and I can anticipate each one. I have a great time. When I’m done, I feel lighter…

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When reality fights belief, reality ought to win!

A review of Lawrence Wright’s book Remembering Satan, A Case of Recovered Memory and the Shattering of an American Family. I lived in Olympia during the “capture”, interrogation, and conviction of Paul Ingram. I was working at the Cooper Point Journal with another fellow, Chris Bader, who was writing a regular column then called “Weird…

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“Fear is the mind-killer…”

A review of Barry Glassner’s book The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Well, this is the message our media keeps shoving down our throats, according to claims by Glassner. In The Culture of Fear, he spins through a lot of different scenarios that we,…

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A taste of cosmic finality

A review of Carl Sagan’s book Billions & Billions. An amazing book. This is a smaller book than his previous book The Demon-Haunted World, but no less powerful. Sagan makes a case and pleads for the sanity and safety of the human race. While his previous book possessed a certain manic drive, this one is,…

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Dreams on a page…

A review of Ursula K. LeGuin’s book Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences. Definitely one of the most lyrical books I’ve ever read. LeGuin’s stories and poems evoke an image of the rangy Coyote of the North American Indian mythos as a jeans-wearing, swearin’, spittin’ woman who’s seen too much of the world to take…

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Makin’ it happen on command!

A review of Malcolm Godwin’s book The Lucid Dreamer. The first time I ever heard about lucid dreaming was an article in The National Enquirer (back when it was still fun to read) and you know how factual that can be. Fortunately, I recovered. In a lucid dream, the sleeper is conscious of the fact…

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Is it really a matter of cycles…?

A review of Walter M. Miller’s book A Canticle for Leibowitz. High school students are supposed to read Canticle for many of their humanities classes, but they rarely do and those who have seemed to have been unaffected by it. Of course, maybe it’s the gas-pumpers I grew up with, I dunno’. The book takes…

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All legends have a beginning…

A review of Jan Harold Brunvald’s book The Big Book of Urban Legends. Piranha Press publishes these Big Books pretty regularly, and somehow, this one is just perfect for the subject matter. Hundreds of one-page stories, each one a different “Urban Legend”. In case you’re not familiar with the concept of an Urban Legend, just…

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“Elizabeth Borden took an axe…”

A review of Rick Geary’s The Borden Tragedy. Rick Geary is probably my favorite comics artist and I can’t imagine anyone taking such a weird and horrific story of the Borden Tragedy and making it as whimsical and weird as he does. The artwork is simply perfect for the story, as well as clean and…

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A history of strange plans

A review of Bernardo T. Arriaza’s book Beyond Death — The Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile. For thousands of years before the Egyptians mummified their dead, a small tribe of fishermen on the Arica coast of Chile mummified their corpses, using very elaborate methods. Unlike the Egyptians, the Chinchorros mummified everybody — men, women, children,…

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