Top 10 Posts and Episodes for August 2017
Another month, another list of our most viewed things! Here are the most popular posts and episodes from July 2017:
Blog Posts
Blog Posts
Blog Posts
Book Review: A Passport to a Nation of Talking Slugs by Andrew Kozma
In all honesty, this should really be called a booklet review, or, to be fancier, a chapbook review, because this is a slight little thing that a person could easily read all the way through while waiting in line at the DMV, still having time to start on another short story collection or anthology before her number was called. Which is to say that A Passport to a Nation of Talking Slugs could actually fit into a passport, as its amusingly apt cover might suggest. But though it be little, it is fierce, is this collection of Kafka-meets-Ionesco-as-Introduced-by-Borges bits. With just four wee stories, Kozma manages to sneak a few emotional wallops among what seems like whimsy, and, to readers like me who have been trained on Gene Wolfe for so long, he’s managed to suggest a degree of intertwined meaning that he might not have intended but feels like it’s there.
Blog Posts
Book Review: MJ-12 Shadows by Michael Martinez
Syria, in the Middle East, is full of turmoil. Violence, political chaos, powers outside the region meddling and backing various factions and individuals, only enflaming and extending the conflict. The government there is on the edge of collapse, as outside agencies and internal struggles threaten to destroy Syria entirely. Good people trapped in a horrible situation that there seems no way out of, and everything even the United States tries to do just makes it all worse. A novel detailing the modern-day tragedy there? Sadly, no. The year is 1949, and we are in the midst of an alternate history, a history where the end of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War was marked by the emergence of paranormally gifted individuals, individuals who are scooped up by the espionage apparatuses of the United States and the Soviet Union, as the game of espionage takes a fantastic turn.
Torture Cinema Polls
Torture Cinema Poll: September Revenge of the 90s!
Well, you did it guys. You picked an absolutely awful movie last month, so hopefully you enjoyed our screams of agony as we reviewed Battle Beyond the Stars. Now you have a chance to take your revenge on us for whatever it is we’ve done to deserve all this torture. We imagine it was something truly terrible, like eating the last cookie. Actually, we just picked all 90s movies to take revenge on Shaun for being ridiculously picky about what appeared in the poll this month. SUCK IT, SHAUN! Have at it, folks! TORTURE US WITH ALL THE AWFUL THINGS WE ALREADY ENDURED IN THE 90s!! (It’s no wonder we’re so messed up)
Blog Posts
Guest Post: The Hobby-Writer’s Tale by Basil Mahon
I took up book writing after retiring from regular work. It’s a wonderful hobby, but a harsh one. Being able to write well is not enough. To gain even the most modest success you need passion for your subject, great perseverance, and a measure of luck. I am one of the lucky ones, having had three books published which together have sold about 50,000 copies and been translated into five languages. This hasn’t made me rich but I have the tremendous satisfaction of knowing that every day someone, somewhere in the world, is getting enjoyment from reading my words. Perhaps something of what I’ve learned on the way may be useful to someone setting out on a similar path. I hope so. There’s something paradoxical about writing a book. It’s a solitary activity—there’s no escaping the sense of isolation when one faces the first blank page. Yet, to me, the joy of writing lies in the fellowship with readers, in the sharing of enjoyment.
Blog Posts
Book Review: Buried Heart by Kate Elliott
All good things must come to an end, and with Buried Heart, author Kate Elliott brings to a conclusion the YA Court of Fives trilogy. Talking about plot developments in the third and final volume of a trilogy is difficult and perhaps foolish to try, so I will instead discuss the essential theme of this volume, one that has been slowly surfacing through Court of Fives and Poisoned Blade, but here gets its full fulminating flowering: Revolution. In Buried Heart, Efea’s oppressed status, something that the author has been delineating from the very first chapter of Court of Fives, comes out in full force. Of course within the potential revolution of Efea against the tyranny that holds it is the struggle of powers around it, and the struggles of the current royal occupants to hold the throne against kin and family. The first two novels, which suggested that Jessamy, the Spider, would be subsumed into that dynamic entirely, prove to have been a false flag. In the third volume, Jess finds herself caught between father and mother, her lover and her land, and must make often difficult choices as the people of Efea struggle to reclaim their freedom.