In my “old” book collecting days, F. Paul Wilson was one of the authors whose books I bought and read, but it’s been years since I’ve even thought about him, until Tor asked me if I’d like to read his latest. He’s one of Stephen King’s contemporaries and published his first book in 1976, and I was curious to see what he was up to. Most authors don’t have that kind of staying power, but F. Paul Wilson, like King, has proven he’s a born storyteller, and I can attest to the fact that he hasn’t lost his edge. If anything, he’s better than I remember. Panacea was a wild adventure ride across several continents, as our characters search for the elusive “panacea” that may or may not be real, which can cure any disease. Wilson combines all the elements I love in just under 400 pages—adventure, action, humor, danger, mystery, fantastic characters and perfect pacing. If there was ever a “summer read,” then Panacea is it. I love my thoughtful literary science fiction and complex fantasy, but honestly, nothing beats a down-and-dirty adventure story. Laura Fanning is a medical examiner who is routinely called to murder sites to investigate bodies, but…

Dark Matter is a science fiction thriller that hooks you instantaneously and just doesn’t let go. Addictive, to say the least. I ripped through it in about a day in a half, and happily found it to be one of those books that pretty much demands you neglect all other aspects of your life because it refuses to get to a point where you feel you can set it down. But I certainly wasn’t complaining. I love getting so into a story that I can’t/won’t do anything else. Thankfully not all the books I enjoy are like this as I do have a life that needs tending to, but when a book grabs me like this, I have to say I love leaving the real world behind for a bit. The concept of this book is fascinating as well. It examines the questions, what would you do differently in your life if you were given a chance? How would that one decision impact the rest of your life? What would you do if one day your entire life has changed with no explanation of how or why? We get a brief picture of our protagonist, Jason, in his current life…

Surreal, imaginative, and even a bit quirky at times, Down and Out in Purgatory is a strange journey through love and death. The journey through the underworld has been done so many times now that it’s not easy to inject any sort of originality into it, but that’s precisely what Tim Powers does here. It all starts out with a somewhat perplexing trip to the morgue, followed by an even stranger trip off-road to a mobile home out in the middle of the desert. You see, when your entire life has been consumed by hatred for the man who stole (and murdered) the only woman you’ve ever loved, you can’t let something as simple as death stop you from seeking revenge. The mechanics of contacting the afterlife are central to the story, merging low-tech with the old-fashioned occult. As for the afterlife itself, it’s a bleak and depressing landscape, populated by those souls who either aren’t ready or who simply refuse to pass on. There’s some philosophical discussion about what might come next, but this is not a story about Heaven or Hell, salvation or damnation. Instead, it’s all about the revelations to be found in Purgatory. Needless to say,…

Last year I picked up Prudence, the first book of a new series starring the daughter of Alexia Tarabotti and Lord Conall Maccon from Gail Carriger’s celebrated Parasol Protectorate novels. I never did get into Alexia’s series after I dipped my toes into Soulless and realized it was not to my tastes, but the story of Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama AKA “Rue” was entirely a different matter. My first outing with her and the crew of The Spotted Custard was an adventure of courage, comedy, and discovery which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected. And so, craving more of the same from this sequel, I dove into Imprudence with enthusiasm. This book takes place in the aftermath of Rue’s return to London from India. The entire country is still reeling from knowledge she and her friends brought back from deep in the mysterious jungles, and our protagonist has even gotten a severe dressing-down from the Queen herself. Rue, however, is unperturbed, excited to finally reach her majority and to enjoy all the freedoms that will no doubt come with it. What she doesn’t realize though, is how much her life is about to change. Lord Maccon, Rue’s werewolf…

Underground Airlines is a modern day setting with many of the familiarities of our every day lives. But in this version of our world, slavery still exists in four southern states, referred to as The Hard Four. It’s an America that does not pretend that all people are equal. Amendments were added to the Constitution to not just make slavery legal, but also prevent those amendments from ever being updated or removed. It was a permanent decision guaranteeing The Hard Four will always be able to continue to practice slavery. The idea of any amendment being permanent and unmodifiable is really scary. When it is one that is discriminatory and inhumane, it is horrifying. First, I love the prose of this book. The descriptive quality and pacing, all of it is incredibly well done, not too much, but definitely vivid. And for the record, I don’t consider this a fast paced book, I really think it is a book whose strengths lie in its ideas. I also never felt it was slow. It’s the type of book where it is easy to just enjoy the words, picture and atmosphere the author creates. Victor has an interesting position. One would think that…

Julia Verne St. John’s fantasy steampunk alternate history novel The Transference Engine became one of my most anticipated releases of 2016 when The BiblioSanctum hosted the cover reveal for it earlier this year. The first time I glimpsed that beautiful cover was also the first time I’d heard of this book, and both the protagonist and the world sounded fascinating to me. A mystery involving necromancy, set in an alternate 1830s London that’s run on magic and machines? No way I wasn’t going to love this. In spite of my excitement though, by the time I was through the first few chapters, I realized I was probably going to have to adjust my expectations. These first few dozen pages or so introduced us to Madame Magdala, the proprietress of the Book View Café, a magical library where patrons can sit and read while enjoying a cup of coffee and freshly baked pastries. However, the café’s centerpiece is a magical book sorting contraption designed by Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, a literal search engine that can find any book you ask for in the library’s collection. Magdala and Lovelace—the woman who will one day become the world’s first computer programmer—go way…

It Happened One Doomsday is, I think, the first in the start of an urban fantasy series with sorcerers, demons and possessed cars!  I must say from the outset that I really enjoyed this, it was a very easy read, I thought the characters developed well along the way, it had plenty of pace and I genuinely hope there will be more books down the line.  Basically, this reads like the start of a UF series and it ends on a note that promises more to come – but I genuinely don’t know if more books are planned *raises one eyebrow hopefully in Mr MacNaughton’s direction*? I don’t want to give too much away so, briefly, this is a book about the end of the world – okay, more a plot to end the world.  Seven cunning sorcerers (known here as harbingers) have hatched a plan to wipe the slate clean and start again and the survival of everyone will be in the hands of a barely magical, crystal toting woman who desires a normal life with her dentist boyfriend. At the start of the story we’re introduced to Dru, a young woman with a smidgeon of magical ability that allows her…

Having only read (and enjoyed) the first adventure of Royce Melborn and Hadrian Blackwater, I didn’t enter into Age of Myth with the same expectations a long-time fan of Michael J. Sullivan might have. As such, I’d like to think I was able to read it a bit more objectively, and treat it more like a mass market debut than a long-awaited graduation from the indie shelves. There’s no doubt that Sullivan is a decent writer, and I admire his dedication in not just plotting out by actually writing all 5 books in the series before allowing one to see print. In an era where we often wait so long between books, and where publishes drop authors mid-series, that effort provides a level of comfort to the reader. It’s a double-edged sword, though, because I swear you can feel that comfort permeating the text. While I largely enjoyed the read, I didn’t feel there was any real drama or danger to the story. It felt like a comfortable, connect-the-dots kind of read, and I never felt as if the stakes were truly high enough to justify all that effort. The other (huge) problem for me was the characters – or, at least, half of them. The elves I quite…

Having read lots of enthusiastic reviews for Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, I was eager to try his latest. Tremblay has a talent for establishing a creepy atmosphere with very little information to go on. The reader is given small brushstrokes—a glimpse of a shadowy form lurking in the dark, a face peering through a window, pages from a diary scattered on the floor—and then must piece these things together to form an idea of what’s happening. It’s a very effective writing style and creates some great tension, but it can also be frustrating when nothing really happens until the very end. Sadly, I found myself bored at times with Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, especially the middle parts between the exciting opening scenes and the final reveal. In all honesty, I did have a rather fractured reading schedule this past week, which rarely improves the flow of a story. But I felt uninspired to pick the book up when I did have time to read, which frankly, makes me sad. However, having said all that, Tremblay is a wonderful writer and his book touches on a topic that many readers will relate to. The story opens at an emotional moment that…

Infomocracy by Malka Ann Older was a fascinating blend of technology, politics, big corporations and conspiracy.  Everything in this world revolves around Information, a corporatized database of sorts that contains pretty much everything. It’s like Google, research libraries and government databases all rolled into one mega-powered Information solution. Pretty much, it’s all the information in the world contained and controlled. I found the government structure in this really intriguing. Instead of countries ruled by their own local governments, the world is now broken into pieces (centenals – which contain a population of about 100,000). Each centenal is ruled by their elected government, at least until the next election in 10 years. They don’t vote for individual people here or there, the entire government is a whole package deal. They refer to this model as “micro-democracy”. Now, as you can imagine, the campaigning, research and everything else that goes into a typical election here is on a whole other level when it is the entire package being voted on. It pretty much turns governments into corporations (in fact, some of them bear the names of modern day corporations we are quite familiar with) and all the tactics are taken to a much…