John Griogair Bell's Blog

Tag: reviews

  • Rogue One

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    I saw a Rifftrax tweet about how A Star Wars Story: Rogue One, directed by Gareth Edwards, with Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, &al., was on Netflix (for which they have a riff available). I’d been waiting for The Defenders in August to renew my subscription, but decided to do that early, for less than the…

  • Extracurricular Activities

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    Extracurricular Activities, a short set in The Machineries of Empire series, by Yoon Ha Lee is a breezily written, as I understand, prequel that tells a bit of backstory about an interesting main character from the other novels in a richly developed future. The language is simple and not at all complex, so this short…

  • Legionnaire

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    Legionnaire, book 1 of the Galaxy’s Edge series, by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole is Generation Kill in space. In spite of the science fiction setting, the particulars are thinly veiled allegory for recent military misadventures, with all the usual suspects and situations. The danger didn’t quite reach the Hidden Fortress level of impossible-situation plot-twists,…

  • Witches of Lychford

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    Paul Cornell’s Witches of Lychford starts out weakly, with what felt like a complex fictional world only superficial developed and told in a rather pedestrian way. I had to go back and check to be sure this wasn’t intended to be a YA novel. But, it develops some fun. It’s kind of like an episode…

  • Theoretical Animals

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    I picked up Gary J Shipley’s Theoretical Animals because a quote from something else Shipley wrote related to Cyclonopedia Studies came up in a conversation so I wanted to check out a full work by him. I got this one because it was an inexpensive short ebook. This turns out to be literary performance art;…

  • The Assassin’s Road

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    I’d actually read Kazuo Koike’s and Goseki Kojima’s The Assassin’s Road, volume 1 of Lone Wolf and Cub, with a cover by Frank Miller, back in the late 80’s. I had a friend that introduced me to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight, and ended up checking this out as well, probably due to the cover; but…

  • Her Scales Shine Like Music

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    Pleasant language pleasantly written, with a few pleasant word surprises, and an interesting future world built quickly in Her Scales Shine Like Music, a short by Rajnar Vajra, was worth reading, though the very end left me slightly underwhelmed as it didn’t feel quite right to me. Seemed to me that the very end would…

  • The Sons of Osiris

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    The idea behind this little ebook-only release is pretty awesome. This little ebook-only release is a fucking embarrassment. This ebook is part of a series Weiser Books put out a few years ago that was a combination of re-packaged, but notable and not readily available, public domain material selected by Lon Milo DuQuette and several…

  • Lost Horizon

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    I’ve seen the Lost Horizon movies, both 1937 and 1973 versions at least a couple times, but for some reason I’d not picked up James Hilton’s actual 1933 novel. I was very pleasantly surprised. Of course, this is a classic that introduces mysterious Shangri-La. The book’s framing story sets up the sense of verisimilitude for…

  • Nightmare Abbey

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    As I read Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey, published in 1818, I kept seeing this story in my mind’s eye as a darker Dahl, Tim Burton stop action, Fallen London thingy. It felt like one of those modern period pieces. Surprisingly modern to the point of seeming anachronistic to the setting and the period in…

  • Off to Be the Wizard

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    I picked up this series over a year ago but accidentally waited to read Off to Be the Wizard until after it had not only been revised but also upgraded to Kindle-in-Motion, which includes additional art and animation by Liz Pulido, and I quite enjoyed that added bit of flair. Shades of both reality-in-a-simulation Matrix…

  • Doriana: Succubus at Large!

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    B L Lacertae’s Doriana is a sequence of three shorter stories about a succubus on vacation, undercover as a librarian, who accidentally becomes a dominatrix for kicks … as one does. I loved the worldbuilding, snarky tone of the main and diabolical character as narrator, and occasional self-aware self-deprecation breaking the fourth wall. Most of…

  • The Mindful Geek

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    I picked up The Mindful Geek by Michael W Taft because Al Billings was talking about it. After finishing it, I feel like up until now I’ve been lied to about the purpose, techniques, and outcomes of meditation. I mean, that’s okay, but, if you’re not seriously into meditation and already have had this epiphany…

  • Dear NSA

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    Dear NSA by Harmon Cooper is a collection of more or less purely insane short stories. Stand outs “Pedo Drew” and “Feeding Governor Christie” are worth the sticker price alone for sheer amphetamine wackiness, but there’s more! These are quick reads that have rapid fire internal pacing. Basically, this is a series of fitful indigestion-fueled…

  • The Weirdness

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    The Weirdness by Jeremy P Bushnell is a terrific twisty toboggan ride of a read. Good thing the author is an instructor because this is a well-crafted writing masterclass in fun fiction. The protagonist is jerked through a shocking, surprising character arc. There are fun plot twists that change everything. There are several bites of…

  • Aleph

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    Aleph by Paulo Coelho is the story of a famous author who travels across Russia, slowly revealing that he is a psychic vampire, and, while feeding off a particularly vulnerable and nubile young woman, discovers that he’s been an asshole across multiple lifetimes. I made 69 highlights and submitted 3 corrections for this book.

  • King Dork is Partridge to Andromeda Klein’s Scooby

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    A while ago I read and reviewed Andromeda Klein, and one of the things I mentioned was that I was going to read King Dork, Frank Portman‘s first book. Well, I did. My Andromeda Klein review has recently been re-published in Sekhet-Maat‘s journal Lion & Serpent V. 15 n. 1, so I’ve been revisiting this…

  • Andromeda Klein is unrepentantly and uniquely kickass.

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in

    I ran into mention of Frank Portman‘s Andromeda Klein in one of my various frequent search safaris. Here was a “young adult” novel that showed up on my radar because of a surfeit of esoteric references. It seemed unlikely that the story would live up to the seriousness of the references that brought it to…