PLEASE NOTE: I'm rarely active here anymore, but please feel free to follow me on Goodreads, where I post regularly.
These are the chronicles of a book addict, a photo junkie, and an aspiring author, rewriting the very fabric of reality one page (and one snapshot) at a time. From the strange to the unusual; the abandoned to the abnormal; the haunted to the historic; the supernatural to the surreal; the forests of dark fantasy, the cemeteries of gothic horror, and the post-apocalyptic ruins of science fiction are the landscapes of my imagination.
A nice balance this week, with lots of reading, our usual features, and even a few special guests:
On the review front, a few new digital additions this week, the first two of which are destined to be WTF Friday reads. Car Nex: The Evil One by E.R. Robin Dover promises a NYC mayor who summons a creature of Hell to destroy the underground terrorist group he's been secretly financing, while F.U.B.A.R. by Joe King features a punk rock witch, a werewolf, a medium, a ghost, and a female Japanese ninja facing off against a globe spanning, world devouring evil.
The last addition offers up a chance chance to read an author I've been curious about for some time now. George MacDonald Fraser is best-known for his legendary Flashman series, but we're beginning our literary encounter with Captain in Calico, featuring an illustrious eighteenth-century pirate who marauded the Caribbean seas, lost his love to the governor of the Bahamas, and rediscovered his passion with famous Irish pirate Anne Bonney.
On the just-because front, I also nabbed a handful of Kindle freebies this week featuring ghosts, tentacles, elves, and archaeologists.
And, finally, I picked up my Book Outlet shipment of 'Daves' today - the Star Trekcross-over omnibus from David Mack, my missing Lord of the Isles volume, and a nice box set of first three Safehold novels.
I took some time away from the new-release review schedule the past two weeks to work through my first five titles in the #SPFBO. Now that I'm back, I've decided to throw caution to the wind, ignoring release dates, and just reading what catches my eye.
• No Return by Zachary Jernigan
This is a book that somehow slipped by me when it was first released, but the blurb for the upcoming sequel caught my attention. It's a different sort of fantasy epic, a violent, sexually-charged, apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy hybrid . . . and I'm enjoying it.
• The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán
Anybody who thought I could sit on this until closer to the release date is crazy! It's a book that gets off to a rollicking, dinosaur-laden start, with some of the most inventive battles I've ever read, interesting characters, intricate conspiracies, and a biting edge to the narrative.