Gimme that Old School Sword and Sorcery: The Hammer and the Blade by Paul S Kemp

On May 21, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on TwitterEgil and Nix are thieves.  Good thieves, as a matter of fact.  True, they have side interests and pasts. Nix knows something of magic.  Egil was trained as a priest of the Momentary God. Both of them have pasts and long careers as thieves, years of tomb robbing and other unsavory jobs. Now, [...]

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Review: Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

On May 17, 2012, in Book Review, Cathy Russell, by Catherine Russell

Share on Twitter   In Blackbirds, Chuck Wendig tells the story of a modern day Cassandra. Miriam has had the visions for years. All it takes is the touch of another person’s skin on her own, and she sees their death. When she meets a trucker named Louis, she sees him call her name before [...]

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Intrigue in Elizabethan England: Anne Lyle’s Alchemist of Souls

On May 14, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on Twitter   It’s the early 17th century. Elizabethan England. The scene is London,  a diverse and eclectic metropolis.  Maliverny Catlyn is a skilled but down on his luck swordsman and gentleman who is trying to scrape together a living on the hard streets of London, manage his relationship with his lover Ned, and [...]

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Skill beats Will: Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops: Control Point

On April 30, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on Twitter   The magic returns (or comes into being) to our technological modern day world is not a new idea in fantasy.  Rachel Pollack’s Unquestionable Fire. The novels of Alyx Dellamonica. The roleplaying games Shadowrun and GURPS: Technomancer hypothesize what would happen if magic erupted into the modern world. Other novels and stories [...]

Image of a Halfbreed Puca:And Blue Skies from Pain by Stina Leicht

On April 23, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on Twitter   When last we left Liam Kelly, the slow revelation of who and what he was had left him if not in a happy place, at least a relatively stable place. True, he had lost much in discovering his true heritage, lost his wife, lost friends, lost (or should we say, walked [...]

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Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper

On April 16, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on Twitter  Book Review: Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper. Gair has been keeping a secret. Although he a good warrior for the Church, he has a talent for magic that the Church decries as witchcraft. It comes as a terrible song that he cannot stop hearing, and when it manifests too strongly, [...]

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Book Review: MM9

On April 12, 2012, in Book Review, Carrie Cuinn, by CarrieCuinn

Share on Twitter “The work is challenging, the public is hostile, and the monsters are hungry, but the MMD crew has science, teamwork … and a secret weapon on their side. Together, they can save Japan, and the universe!” – from the back cover Hiroshi Yamamoto’s novel, about an alternate history where all of those [...]

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Review: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

On April 2, 2012, in Book Review, Cathy Russell, by Catherine Russell

Share on Twitter When I picked up American Gods by Neil Gaiman, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew only two things: 1.) It was cited as a genre classic and 2.) the podcast, Writing Excuses, mentioned a scene from the book where a god burned his fingers on a hot apple pie. And [...]

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Art Books: Weirdo Noir, by Matt Dukes Jordan

On March 30, 2012, in Art Nerd, Book Review, Galen Dara, by Galen Dara

Share on TwitterA few years ago, Matt Dukes Jordan compiled Wierdo Deluxe to showcase today’s leading lowbrow and pop surrealist artists.  With Weirdo Noir, he crawls into the cracks of the lowbrow genre to harvest some of the darker Gothic* works contained therein. Jordan’s introductory essay is a glimpse into the human obsession with what [...]

Knight to King’s Knight’s Six: Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

On March 29, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on Twitter   I am going to start this review off on a note and structure rather different than other book reviews of mine you’ve read of mine at the Functional Nerds and say this right up front: Prince of Thorns, a debut fantasy novel by Mark Lawrence, is a contentious novel with a [...]

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Review: Astronauts and Heretics by Thomas Marcinko

On March 26, 2012, in Book Review, Cathy Russell, by Catherine Russell

Share on Twitter Thomas Marcinko’s new anthology, Astronauts and Heretics, treats the reader to seven highly entertaining and imaginative stories. The first story, Faith in a Higher Power, tells of a world where super powers are strictly regulated and many treat their ‘gifts’ as an addiction. Despite this, the tale is playful and upbeat. Next [...]

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Sixguns, Steampunk and Wuxia: Tales of the Far West

On March 22, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on Twitter Imagine a  fantasy world that’s The Gunslinger meets Storm Riders meets Deadwood meets Afro Samurai meets The Wild Wild West (the series, not so much the movie) meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets Django meets Brisco County meets House of Flying Daggers and more. This is Far West. Far West started as [...]

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Review: Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

On March 19, 2012, in Book Review, Cathy Russell, by Catherine Russell

Share on Twitter Orson Scott Card‘s second book in the Ender series, Speaker for the Dead, takes place years after humanity’s war against the alien ‘buggers.’ Ender Wiggins, the former child hero of the Bugger Wars, has spent twenty years traveling from world to world, speaking for the dead – telling the truth about the [...]

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A Russian Bear of a novel: The Straits of Galahesh by Bradley Beaulieu

On March 15, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on TwitterLast May, I read The Winds of Khalakovo, and reviewed it here at the Functional Nerds. The Winds of Khalakovo is a secondary fantasy novel borrowing from cultures not usually invoked in fantasy–Tsarist Russia and ancient Persia. Throw in a pair of very different magic systems, very non standard cultural issues of duty [...]

Review: The Snow Queen’s Shadow by Jim C. Hines

On February 29, 2012, in Book Review, Cathy Russell, by Catherine Russell

Share on Twitter The Snow Queen’s Shadow, by Jim C. Hines, turns the fairy tale protagonists of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White into kick-ass heroines. Each princess draws her strength from a classic element of her original tale. Talia – Sleeping Beauty – is a deadly warrior who uses her fairy blessed reflexes and [...]

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Book Review: Chicks Dig Time Lords

On February 22, 2012, in Book Review, Carrie Cuinn, by CarrieCuinn

Share on TwitterDOCTOR WHO, the classic British scifi television series, recently celebrated 48 years since its first episode. I recently re-read Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who By The Women Who Love It and it got me thinking about what makes Doctor Who so special, and what makes MY Doctor Who experience [...]

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Review: Col Buchanan’s FARLANDER

On February 22, 2012, in Book Review, Jaym Gates, by Jaym Gates

Share on TwitterAirships! Secretive assassin-monks! Fanatic cults! The world at stake! Don’t let the airship on the dustjacket fool you, this isn’t your expected steampunk novel. Ash is pursuing an official vendetta. He is a member of the Roshun, a secretive order providing protection services through the use of living ‘seals’ that die with their [...]

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Review: Lost Tribe of the Sith by John Jackson Miller

On February 15, 2012, in Book Review, Cathy Russell, by Catherine Russell

Share on Twitter      The Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith series by John Jackson Miller will be releasing its eighth and final free eBook, Secrets, in all eFormats on March 5, 2012. The entire collected series will be published in paperback July 31st. As with all the previous stories, it will also [...]

 

Rumballs on the eve of War: Michele Lang’s Lady Lazarus

On February 8, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on Twitter The scene is Budapest, Hungary  in the late 1930′s. Hitler’s saber rattling over in Germany  is becoming more and more bellicose, and there is the scent of war in the air. The quasi-fascistic pre war Hungary is not the most pleasant of places, especially for a Jew like Magda.  The fact that [...]

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Book Review: Shadow Ops: Control Point, by Myke Cole

On February 3, 2012, in Book Review, Carrie Cuinn, by CarrieCuinn

Share on Twitter I bought Myke Cole’s debut novel the day it came out, on the strength of the reading I saw him do at last summer’s Readercon. Shadow Ops: Control Point is the first in a series, and it’s a quick read. I started it on the train ride from Trenton to Philadelphia, read a [...]

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Review: Death’s Heretic, by James Sutter

On February 1, 2012, in Book Review, Jaym Gates, by Jaym Gates

Share on TwitterSo, I have to start this out with a moment of honesty: I’ve been biased against novels published by gaming companies for…as long as I’ve been buying books. There’s no particular reason for it, and I really should have known better, but I just didn’t see myself as the target market. I don’t [...]

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Transcending Part of Speech: Kafkaesque, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel

On January 23, 2012, in Book Review, Paul Weimer, by Paul Weimer

Share on Twitter   Kafkaesque Adjective Marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity e.g. Kafkaesque bureaucracies. Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger. In the manner of something written by Franz Kafka. There are precious few writers whose names have transcended their status as a proper noun. Dickens has become [...]

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