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Lurk – Adam Vine

February 13, 2016 1 Comment

After reading The Monstrous, a collection of horror shorts edited by Ellen Datlow, I fancied myself reborn; a fan of a new genre. So when Adam Vine emailed me asking if I’d review his debut horror novel, Lurk, I was quick to accept. Here’s the thing I learned from my second foray into the genre: I’m something of a scaredy-cat. And I shall henceforth wear that mantle with pride. Another thing I learned is that I really enjoy reading horror. It is a peculiar thing, to discover that a genre which has no appeal for me in visual media resonates so strongly in literary form. I should like to study this more closely, but I imagine that it’s not all that complicated. The feeling a page-turning novel like Lurk elicits in me is likely the same feeling most fans of horror get from watching a scary movie or TV show.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

February 5, 2016 No Comments

I’ve now put a second Haruki Murakami novel on my “read” shelf, and while I have several more to work through, I think I’ve read enough to form a solid impression of his work. I’m looking forward to reading the others, but for the time being I can comfortably say that he’s an incredible writer. His stories so successfully instill a sense of floating disconnect from reality that after reading (or listening) for an extended period of time, my perception of the world needs time to recover. More than once, I’ve sat silently in my car at the BART station, minutes after turning off the engine, staring out of the window at nothing, thinking about the surreal world Murakami built under the nose of a normal, functional society. Thematically, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle shares quite a bit with the other Murakami book I’ve read, Kafka on the Shore. Lost cats.

Collected Fiction – Hannu Rajaniemi

January 29, 2016 1 Comment

There’s just something about Scandinavia, I guess. Tachyon published a collection Finnish Author Hannu Rajaniemi’s short stories last year, and while (I believe) it is sold out everywhere, it’s well worth finding a used copy so that you can experience what it might’ve been like if Knausgaard wrote science fiction. While Rajaniemi isn’t quite as good as Knausgaard (is anyone?) he is extraordinarily good, and often employs similar style in his short fiction. Most of the pieces in the collection approach scifi from dystopian angles, and while they are occasionally superficial in a way—the end-game effects of data-hungry social media, for instance-they are nonetheless effective. Raja noemi builds worlds both believable and un-, equally compelling in their frightening proximity to things as they are now and in their far-flung and wild postulations. Rajaniemi has a way of describing even the most spectacular visions with eloquent simplicity, such that his

Physics: A Short History from Quintessence to Quarks – John Heilbron

January 15, 2016 No Comments

In Physics: A Short History from Quintessence to Quarks, John Heilbron sets himself an ambitious task: to cover some 2500 years of scientific development in a few hundred pages. Thinking about non-fiction in terms of pacing seems odd, but one of the things I thought about most while reading Physics was that it was moving too fast for me. Ironic? Maybe. The book jumps rapidly through time, pausing occasionally to linger on critical moments in the history of the study of physics. In a way, that makes it an excellent book for the layperson/enthusiast, since it can point interested readers to periods of time that pique their curiosity in particular. For my part, I now want to read much more about the development of astronomy and mathematics in the age of Muslim intellectualism, the ancient Greek schools, and 19th and 20th century developments. There are portions of Physics where Heilbron

Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates

January 8, 2016 No Comments

Writing about a book as monumental, as vital, as shattering as Between the World and Me is a difficult task. For all its difficulty, it is drop against a universe’s weight in water compared to the difficulty with which it deals, the difficulty MacArthur genius Ta-Nehisi Coates faced in living and writing it. It’s difficult to write about a book like Coates’s painfully honest, stripped-down look at the state of things for the black community in the US. It is difficult especially because it is written as a letter to his teenage son, a letter filled with the fear, pain, and sadness that are part-and-parcel of the black experience in this nation. A letter in response to the confusion, mistrust, and pain his son Samori felt after the lack of indictment in the killing of Michael Brown; one of many such events and subsequent injustices that have only recently begun

Mycroft Holmes – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Anna Waterhouse

December 29, 2015 No Comments

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career has extended well beyond the sphere of his tremendous success as an athlete. He is a regular contributor to Time, has starred in many films (even opposite Bruce Lee!), and has written a number of books, the most recent of which, Mycroft Holmes, written with screenwriter Anna Waterhouse, is excellent. Audible.com generously supplied a review copy of the audiobook, which I gobbled voraciously. The narrator, Damian Lynch, was exquisite, and brought to life the multi-ethnic cast of characters with extraordinary skill. His accents were flawless—except perhaps his American, which was a bit cartoonish, but appropriate for its character. His narration was one of the highlights of the experience, and I found myself listening with two sets of ears: one to a great story, and the other to Lynch’s wonderful performance. The story follows a young Mycroft Holmes, elder brother of Sherlock Holmes, on an adventure from London

2015 Year in Review

December 25, 2015 1 Comment

This year has been terrific for the Warbler. I decided—I believe in November of last year—to read and review one book every week. While I haven’t kept to that weekly cadence, I’m proud of what I accomplished as a reviewer and as a reader. I read forty-three books this year. I published thirty-four posts on the blog, and am a couple books behind in my review schedule. 2,197 different people from around the world viewed the Warbler 3,525 times in 2015. It’s marvelous to see how the site has grown—turns out that regular posts bring more viewers. Stats aside, some wonderful things have happened this year: The Warbler is now on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Medium. I’ve developed a working relationship with two publishers, Tachyon and Inkshares Audible.com contacted me and began sending audiobooks for review I’ve begun receiving review galleys from several publishers through NetGalley, including Tor/Forge, Oxford University Press,

Of Sorrow and Such – Angela Slatter

December 11, 2015 No Comments

One of the biggest unforeseen benefits of ramping up review cadence and outreach on The Warbler is the opportunity I’ve had to read so many different works by authors of whom I hadn’t heard, in formats outside the long-form epic fantasies I long favored. Through this new, widened lens, I’ve (re)discovered that novellas are wonderful things. Angela Slatter’s Of Sorrow and Such is one such thing of wonder. Slatter is an award-winning Australian author—a doctor of creative writing—with an impressive list of published short fiction, flash fiction, and anthologies in her CV. Of Sorrow and Such is published by Tor’s new imprint dedicated to short fiction, Tor.com Publishing. Of Sorrow and Such occupies that special space in speculative fiction, wherein a fantastical, dystopian, or utopian setting is a vehicle for the expression of raw human experiences. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a great story in it, but the novella deals with hard, human

Slow Bullets – Alastair Reynolds

December 4, 2015 No Comments

When he was a graduate student in astronomy, Welsh writer Alastair Reynolds published four short stories that marked the beginning of his career as an author. While working at the European Space Agency, he began work on what was to be his debut novel, Revelation Space. He’s been a published writer for almost 30 years, with over forty published short stories and twelve novels. But I hadn’t heard of Alastair Reynolds until I saw the cover of Slow Bullets in Tachyon’s catalogue. The cover intrigued me—a spaceship seemingly in good repair that, when examined closely, exhibits signs of decay, over a planet covered in swirling storm clouds that shows no sign of advanced life: no lights twinkling from cities on the night side. No speckling of settlements on the light side. The description of the novella hooked me as well, with one line in particular: “Their memories, embedded in bullets,

One Who Waits – John Robin

November 29, 2015 No Comments

When I started writing reviews for Inkshares, I made a daily habit of perusing the site for appealing projects. Among the projects I found interesting was Blood Dawn, by John Robin, an epic fantasy with hints of horror and what appears to be a mountain of world building behind it. Through various mechanisms, John has quickly gone from author-whose-book-I-preordered, to collaborator-and-group-mentor to the Inkshares community at large, to co-blogger, and finally to part-time employer. In that time, I’ve exchanged a substantial number of typed words with John, and I say, confidently, that he is the genuine article. He can write, he cares deeply about the craft and community, and is inspired by the shifting world of publishing. He’s a go-getter, and when it comes time to put my own self-marketing hat back on, I’ll be going to him for some pro tips. Now, on to One Who Waits. One Who

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