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Filtered – G.K. Lamb

November 28, 2016 No Comments

When I read the opening pages of Filtered, I expected to find the book clichéd. A teenaged girl in an oppressive, gas-mask wearing society begins to question the structures that surround her. She deals with broken parents with a broken marriage, and frightening images of death by painful asphyxiation all around her. Will she be the chosen one? What unique power will manifest, turning her into a superheroine that cleans the toxic, ashen air? I was being superficial, and I regret my initial write-off of G.K. Lamb’s first novel as “just another” YA-targeted story. Filtered was engaging and well-crafted, and at the end of the day it was simply a good read. It hit me with particular intensity through vivid descriptions of waiting in line to enter and exit buildings—the heads-down shuffling, seeing only the legs and feet of the person in front of you, the weight of your skull

Contact

November 25, 2016 No Comments

Hi! I’m Elan, and I am a firm believer in the magic of language and story. You can take a look at my CV and professional portfolio at www.elansamuel.com. Do you have a book you’d like reviewed? Just want to chat? Use the form to get in touch!

Author Interview: Robert Batten

November 23, 2016 2 Comments

Robert Batten is in the top 25 in the Launch Pad contest, which means his work has a shot at being placed in front of some serious eyes in Hollywood. In this interview we chat about his book, Human Resources, zombies, Tasmania, and what’s next for him in the contest. Q: Tell me a little about yourself—how long have you been writing? In some ways, I feel like I’ve been doing it forever, and that it was inevitable. All my life, I’ve been a story person — whether telling my own or losing myself in someone else’s. I first started writing as a child, and have continued — on and off — ever since. As a child of two outdoor education teachers and mountaineers, my childhood was dominated by exploring the unrivaled wilderness of Tasmania. Rugged mountain ranges, dense temperate rainforests, high alpine plains; a perfect training ground for any budding adventurer. This was

These Are My Friends on Politics – Billy O’Keefe

November 8, 2016 1 Comment

It’s possible to summarize 2016 with a single meme. I know. That’s what the world has come to. Here it is: We’ve faced the deaths of cultural icons, widespread ideological violence, the overwhelming reality of our changing climate, and the disintegration of any semblance of civility in global politics. We have had to contend with the growing polarization of dialogue from every side of every argument. Today, we watch, holding our breath during a historic election: we will either elect the first woman, who represents a holding to the status quo, or the first rotten overripe tangerine who also happens to be a rampant misogynist, racist, and serial molester. To me, it seems like a really easy choice. But this has been the most contentious election season in my life, and quite possibly in the lives of my parents and grandparents. Which brings me to These Are My Friends on

Motive For Massacre – Chris Philbrook

October 26, 2016 No Comments

The sequel to Wrath of the Orphans is, incidentally, much less wrathful than its predecessor. Motive for Massacre might sound like it gets hairy—and it certainly does—the plot of Motive follows the Everwalk twins along the path to discovering who orchestrated the destruction of their home and the slaughter of its two hundred-or-so citizens, and why. It’s a much tighter story than Wrath, owing to the fact that it didn’t have to do much world building, allowing Chris Philbrook to immediately focus on the characters and their challenges. It is also stronger as a result. I listened to Motive on Audible at double-speed, which rendered the problems I mentioned in my Wrath review obsolete. Kevin T. Collins’s narration is strong, if still a little one-dimensional. Motive spends considerably less time traveling, which contributes to its sense is focus, and lingers on description only long enough to give you a sense

Simone – André Brun

October 24, 2016 No Comments

André Brun must be some kind of masochist. The author of Lies and Deception (to be published by Inkshares some time next year), knowing the difficulty of crowdfunding a book, has gone back for more on multiple occasions. For the currently-running horror contest, he’s entered a book of connected short stories, Arcadia, the first of which he sent me for review. Simone is very short, and in a pretty rough state, but what it lacks in polish doesn’t detract from the content of the tale. Secret cults, monsters, and true fear creep into the periphery, seeding curiosity in the reader about what’s to come in the stories that follow. Though it might frustrate some readers, there’s a moment in Simone that I found greatly appealing. The character—presumably Simone—states that, while she was traveling, she came upon a pillar in a jungle cave. There’s something delightful about not knowing the details

The Show – Filip Syta

October 5, 2016 2 Comments

I read Filip Syta’s The Show (published by Inkshares) a few weeks ago, and it was the final nail in a coffin that’s been long in the making. I knew that I couldn’t review the book with any kind of honesty until I’d given it some time to marinate, and waited for certain changes in my life (detailed below) to take place. To be frank, I’m still not even sure if I liked the book. The writing didn’t pull me in, though it’s mechanically good, and the protagonist is, for most of the book, a patently shitty person. But the book does one thing exceptionally well, which earns it a high rating in my opinion: it is deeply—almost painfully—honest about the experience of working in the tech world. Vic, the star of The Show, picks up and moves to San Francisco, a gleam in his eye as he considers his

WarblerChat — An Interview with G. Derek Adams

September 22, 2016 No Comments

When I read G. Derek Adams’s Asteroid Made of Dragons, I became infected with a new love of fantasy. You can read all about how much I loved Asteroid as well as his first novel, Spell/Sword, in the linked reviews. What I’m sharing below is the content of our delightful conversation last weekend. Talking with Derek was a delight, and I hope to interview him again when he has a fantasy novel empire.

Dreams of Distant Shores – Patricia McKillip

September 12, 2016 No Comments

Tachyon Publications has a knack for putting out excellent collections of short stories—in fact, it seems to be their specialty. This week’s “flavor” is Patricia Mckillip’s Dreams of Distant Shores, an excellent anthology that spans modern fiction, slipstream, and urban fantasy. Dreams of Distant Shores contains five short stories and two novellas, and while you should certainly read the whole collection, I’d like to focus on the novellas in this review. The first, The Gorgon in the Cupboard, is emblematic of Mckillip’s strengths at imbuing characters with tremendous reality and honesty. The cast is made up of artists and their many models and muses, principal among them a painter pining for another painter’s wife, and a peasant who has undergone the deepest of personal tragedies—the loss of a child. Oh, and there’s a talking painting of Medusa, too. The flow of The Gorgon in the Cupboard is fantastic. It maintains

Binti – Nnedi Okorafor

September 8, 2016 1 Comment

Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti just won best novella at the 2016 Hugo Awards, after having won the Nebula Award in the same category. I had no idea what the book was about, but based on the cover art alone, I knew I wanted to read it. It’s part of Tor’s new effort to publish shorter fiction through their Tor.com imprint, and they’d been advertising heavily on sites I frequent, so I’d seen the cover of Binti a few hundred times before I finally picked it up. It was a bit serendipitous, actually. I walked into a bookstore I’d never seen before near my house while my parents—who were visiting—explored shops nearby. I love going to local bookstores and scoping out their genre fiction sections. More often than not, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror are poorly represented, but Diesel books in Oakland had a lovely section in the back with a great selection.

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