Book Review: The Sunless Countries

In four books Schroeder has had four completely different main characters, in four completely different locales within Virga, with four completely different (immediate) plots. There’s a larger story, but Schroeder has almost been building it up by sonar. We’ve been getting a sense of larger, looming events by a series of glancing blows — collisions between our many protagonists and the greater story, as they pursue their own ends. But with Book Four, The Sunless Countries, one gets the distinct impression that we’re almost at the main event.

Read all about it at AE. One more Virga book to go.

Restaurant Review: The Pizza Oven

. . .I love these weird, out of the way places. It’s kind of like ecology. Every crack in the sidewalk, life takes root, plants find their tiny patch of soil and sunshine. Small business does that, too, finding economic niches in the oddest spots. Perhaps no species is more versatile than the pizza delivery place.

Fresh, oven-baked copy over at the Spectator Tribune. Get it while it’s hot.

Book Review: The Universe Versus Alex Woods

When Alexander Morgan Woods was 10 years old, he was hit on the head by a meteorite. It passed through his roof as if it were papier-maché and split open his skull like it was a soft-boiled egg. But that’s not the most important part of the story. What matters is what came after.

Because after any tramautic event, life goes on and we keep pushing forward, bearing every bruise and scar we collect along the way. Read the rest of my review at the Winnipeg Free Press, and perhaps you’ll decide you want to read the book as well.

More LJ Reviews

Alas, the time commitment at Library Journal has become just a bit too much, and I’ve had to step down from my post. Since not every review I write makes its way online in any form, I don’t know if my final review for them can be expected to turn up.

My review of The New York Times Book of Mathematics is long out, however, and can also be seen at the Barnes and Noble page here.

Book Review: Pirate Sun

“They had provided him with two torturers today.” With this, probably one of the greatest opening lines in literary history, Schroeder sets the stage as quickly as possible, and then we are right in the thick of it. An action-packed jailbreak precedes a novel-length journey for home, through foreign lands, an ongoing war, and the machinations of a larger extra-terrestrial plot the Admiral’s only seen hints of.

My full review of the third Virga book is up now at AESciFi.

Broadcast Television and Required Summer Watching

[I]t’s a different television landscape than we would have seen even ten years ago, and the traditional television seasons now find their borders challenged. We can thank many massively-popular reality television series with lower production costs for largely creating a genuine summer TV season.

Today in the Spectator Tribune, watch me throw television recommendations at you while I muse on the changes in the broadcasting process which have led to a an entirely different artistic landscape for the medium.

Book Review: The Golem and the Jinni

These are the opening chapters of Helene Wecker’s literary debut, and they’re doozies. Perhaps the most famous beast of Jewish folklore is paired with a creature right out of the Arabian Nights. And they’re re-imagined as developed, human-like characters. It’s an unusual combination, to say the least.

Read my review at the Free Press.

Book Review: The Human Division

The Human Division isn’t a spoof or a straight-up comedy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be funny. It is set in a future wherein hundreds of technologically similar alien races are fighting each other. Humanity is, in this universe, forever on the brink of extinction.

Read the full review in the Free Press.

Book Review: Sun of Suns

The working out of the physics is one of the great joys of this novel. The combination of a microgravity environment that nevertheless contains a breathable atmosphere makes for some fascinating possibilities, and Schroeder takes us through them one by one. But it’s also a rip-roaring story.

I’ll be covering Karl Schroeder’s complete Virga series at AE over the next several months. Read along with me, starting with this one.