needs more demons?

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Entries Tagged as 'm-author'

Debbie Millman: Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits

01 Feb 2012 · No Comments

Brand Thinking offers 22 short interviews with an astounding array of heavy hitters in branding, identity design, and related disciplines. It’s a fascinating and invigorating read. Millman coaxes the likes of Tom Peters and Karim Rashid into moments of almost shocking candor; Dori Tunstall and Alex Bogusky unflinchingly address issues of social and environmental [...]

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Tags: b-title · business · m-author

George Mann: The Immorality Engine

28 Nov 2011 · No Comments

I read The Immorality Engine even though I didn’t think much of the first two novels in Mann’s “Newbury and Hobbes Investigations” series, of which this is the third. Somewhat to my surprise, I liked it better than the other two.
I still found the prose a bit repetitive and the plot low on surprises, but [...]

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Tags: fantasy · historical · horror · i-title · m-author · mystery · science fiction

Paul Maliszewski: Prayer and Parable

27 Nov 2011 · No Comments

The strongest stories in Maliszewski’s Prayer and Parable were terrific: precise and incisive. They reminded me a bit of David Foster Wallace in their exacting detail and preoccupation with the limitations of communication. Maliszewksi’s characters are frequently aware that something they just said came out wrong, or that there’s a “right” thing to say, which [...]

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Tags: m-author · p-title · short stories

Chris Moriarty: The Inquisitor’s Apprentice

17 Nov 2011 · No Comments

The Inquisitor’s Apprentice is set in a vividly rendered alternate late-19th-century New York city. Magic exists in this world, but — officially, at least — it is controlled by wealthy industrialists like “J. P. Morgaunt,” a character inspired by J. P. Morgan (some more sympathetically rendered historical figures appear under their real names) . Thirteen [...]

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Tags: fantasy · historical · i-title · m-author · young adult

George Mann : The Osiris Ritual

20 Oct 2011 · No Comments

The second of Mann’s “Newbury and Hobbes” steampunk/mystery/adventures (following The Affinity Bridge) struck me as stronger overall than its predecessor, with a bit more depth of character. I found the tone a little inconsistent — there are a few moments that veer into excessively broad parody of pulp/adventure conventions and require a greater level [...]

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Tags: fantasy · historical · m-author · mystery · o-title · science fiction · thriller

Tim Wakefield, Tony Massarotti : Knuckler, My Life with Baseball’s Most Confounding Pitch

08 Aug 2011 · No Comments

I love the knuckleball.
I don’t know how any nerd could not love the knuckleball, or, as I prefer to call it, the “chaos pitch.” It’s thrown — at the velocity of a cheetah, mind you — with almost no rotation. Its path to, and hopefully over, the plate is determined, as much as anything else, [...]

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Tags: baseball · biography · k-title · m-author · sports · w-author

Courtney Milan : Proof by Seduction

06 Jun 2011 · No Comments

I was a little slow to warm to Proof by Seduction, mostly because of a familiar complaint with historical fiction: the characters seemed more like 21st-century people than 19th-century people. They pay lip service to the strictures of class and breeding, but they’re fundamentally not as beholden to them as Georgette Heyer’s characters, let alone [...]

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Tags: historical · m-author · p-title · romance

M. J. Locke : Up Against It

18 Apr 2011 · No Comments

In Up Against It a 25th-century asteroid-based community is beset by a confluence of disasters: a critical resource hemorrhaging accident, a takeover threat by the Martian mob, a rogue artificial intelligence in the asteroid’s systems — the list goes on. It explores both the fragility of human life in a hostile environment, and life’s pluck [...]

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Tags: l-author · m-author · science fiction · u-title

Beard, Donihe, Duza, et al: The Bizarro Starter Kit (Orange)

15 Nov 2010 · No Comments

I hoped The Bizarro Starter Kit would help me figure out if I’d like bizarro fiction, a genre self-defined by a loose collective of writers with a shared love of cult/trash cinema. It didn’t. The Bizarro Starter Kit makes the case that there’s too much going on for me to dismiss it, and too much [...]

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Tags: b-author · b-title · d-author · fantasy · horror · j-author · l-author · m-author · r-author · s-author · satire · science fiction · t-author

Lauren McLaughlin: (Re)cycler

14 Mar 2010 · No Comments

(Re)cyler is definitely not the book I expected it to be.
Cycler ended so abruptly and with so little resolution that I expected (Re)cycler to be basically the second half of a novel too long for one volume. I thought it was going to include an “origin story” for Jill (who turns, physically, into her male [...]

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Tags: m-author · r-title · young adult