First, a quick synopsis that contains no real spoilers. Swan Song was gifted to me about twenty years ago by a close friend who said, “Read this. It’s right up your alley.” Too foolish to heed my friend’s advice, though she knew well my love for science fiction, fantasy, horror...

Can art, or writing, or a stage play drive a person insane? It would seem so, for if one were to stumble upon this play known as “The King in Yellow,” that one would forever be changed. Maddened. When I was about sixteen, I started playing the Call of Cthulhu...

I really enjoyed this book, but to be honest that is in a big part thanks to listening to Wil Wheaton read it to me. I mean, seriously, he is the best choice for a narrator for these books. With that said, I did not love it. Not five stars...

With themes including morality, marriage, Christianity, faith, love, and obedience, That Hideous Strength is a good, deep read as a stand-alone book, and a worthy conclusion to Lewis’s Space Trilogy. The themes follow closely those of the first two books and the fantastical element remain, though is this volume they...

  11-year-old Frankie Peterson is found brutally murdered and all the evidence points to Little League coach Terry Maitland. Detective Ralph Anderson is particularly outraged and makes the fateful decision to arrest Terry in public, creating a media sensation in the process. But, as the investigation begins to unfold, doubts...

“Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams; I crown me with the million-colored sun Of secret worlds incredible, and take Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar, Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.” – Clark Ashton Smith, The Hashish Eater; or the Apocalypse...

Perelandra, the second book in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, is a retelling of the Adam and Eve tale. Think Paradise Lost without the loss. The tale is of another world in which sin has not yet taken hold. Our hero, Dr. Ransom, is sent to Perelandra to meet the inhabitants...

I’ve been meaning to read this for years. Not sure why it took me so long to get to it. Out of the Silent Planet is the first of C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy and I intend to get to the second one soon. C.S. Lewis wrote many works of fiction,...

Okay. Let’s do this. In terms of character building, I really like all the characters in the Anita Blake books, except the title character and her lycanthrope lover. So let’s take a minute and talk about the minor characters. Recurring characters who show up in this book include Jason, Zane,...

“It begins, as most things begin, with a song.” –Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys   A while back I got an idea for a selection of stories surrounding the theme of song. But song, in itself, is not theme enough. Each story needs possess its own themes, even if themes overlap....

I liked most of the stories in this collections, and I really like this writer’s style. Most of the tales are very short, quick reads that dive into a situation and rush through to a conclusion. The conclusions themselves leave something to be desired. In many cases–most cases–the tales end...

  About a year ago I found this listing on Duotrope (awesome site for writer’s. $50/year subscription. Check it out) for an anthology called Reach for the Sky. It was call for weird western stories from Rogue Blades Entertainment. They were calling for a few stories in a different genres...

I read the first book in this series (The Themis Files), Sleeping Giants, a while back and liked it a bunch. This second book knocked up the action a notch and made me really fall for some of the characters. We jump right into the action about ten years after...