false 74 413 381 true 5639597 read 2 true 1149176 currently-reading 30 true 1149175 to-read 136 false 4136886 books-read-in-2009 112 false 1550846 books-read-in-2008 56 false 1149205 books-read-in-2007 21 false 1149496 books-read-in-2006 8 false 1149353 books-read-in-2005 2 false 1149364 books-read-in-2004 2 false 1149555 books-read-in-2000 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79098686 The Court of the Air (Paperback) by Stephen Hunt
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77391552 to: Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel (Hardcover) by John Irving
bookshelves: books-read-in-2009
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78824192 to: The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3) by Dan Brown
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/66560655 to: Catching Fire (Hunger Games, #2) by Suzanne Collins
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73270440 Alex C.'s review of Star Wars: Death Troopers
by Joe Schreiber

Thanks so much, and I also interview him on an episode of BookBanter too! ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73270440 to: Star Wars: Death Troopers (Hardcover) by Joe Schreiber
bookshelves: books-read-in-2009
All good horror novels have a foundation using a familiar horror trope, whether it be zombies, vampires, deepest darkest space, or creepy children. The really great horror novels employ multiple tropes to become terrifying, page-turning nightmares that the reader simply can’t put down. Star Wars: Death Troopers is one of thoxse horror novels.

The Imperial Prison Barge Purge is on its way through deep space to a distant and forgotten moon to deposit its cargo of five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless prisoners, as well as two teenage brothers who are there on a nonexistent charge. Everything is going as expected, or at least as expected as can be for Trig and Kale Longo trying their best to stay alive and wondering how their lives have come to this, until the Purge experiences engine trouble. Fortunately there is a Star Destroyer nearby that is a derelict, abandoned. Two teams are sent onto the destroyer with a couple of engineers to raid it for engine parts. They return coughing and getting sicker by the second. Zahara Cody, chief medical officer, scrambles to do what she can, but the sickness gets worse and people begin dying. The virus spreads throughout the barge and soon bodies are dropping everywhere. All that remain are the few people who are somehow immune: Trig and Kale, and Zahara to name a few. Zahara also discovers two familiar characters locked up deep within the bowels of the ship in solitary confinement.

Then all the bodies come to life. And these zombies are smarter than any we’ve seen before; they adapt to each situation, always looking to kill and conquer, always in search of fresh meat.

Joe Schreiber’s Star Wars: Death Troopers employs a number of great horror tropes that all combine to form one great novel that will have readers hooked from start to finish. He manages the plot well, with riveting cliffhanger chapters, and make it impossible to put down, while slowly dishing out the details so that full understanding and realization is not reached until the last few pages. But these are all important facets of a great horror novel.


For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71957968 to: Princess of Light (Paperback) by Marie Bilodeau
bookshelves: books-read-in-2009
We all react to different situations in different ways. The question is when we are tested to the extremes of our endurance, whether we will succeed or fail. In the genre of fantasy, readers find an escape in characters that defy the odds and triumph, often with magical powers. Marie Bilodeau has done just this with Princess of Light, the first book in the Heirs of a Broken Land series.

Princess Cassara Edoline always thought herself an ordinary princess, living in an ordinary kingdom, in an ordinary world. And that all changed when the Wall of Loss started to fail and the dark creatures entered her world. She fled with little more than a magical amulet, leaving a destroyed kingdom, a murdered family, and a brother now in the clutches of the invading hordes. But Edoline is learning things about herself, learning that she has powers within her she never knew about, powers that, with the magical amulet, can stop the evil flooding into her world. She will also use those powers to rescue her helpless brother. But first she needs to find out what is wrong with the Wall of Loss and see if she can fix it.

Princess of Light employs many of the tropes of your ordinary fantasy, and yet there’s a reason many fantasy fans eat up and read anything with a fantastical element; it’s the fantastical characters that face unbeatable odds and somehow are able to fight back. Edoline is one of those powerful female characters that readers will feel the thrill to read about in this first book of an interesting new series.

For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73467246 to: No Doors, No Windows: A Novel (Paperback) by Joe Schreiber
bookshelves: books-read-in-2009
It’s been recommended that writers should stick to writing what they know when it comes to writing, and what better character can a writer write about than him- or herself . . . a writer. But the writer in Joe Schreiber’s new novel, No Doors, No Windows, is one with a dark, disturbing past that even he doesn’t fully understand until the last few pages of the book, and has worked hard to forget and stay away from. One hopes that Joe Schreiber isn’t anything like his character, Scott Mast.

Scott Mast wanted to make it big as a writer, but it never happened. So now he spends his days living relatively well, writing copy for greeting cards. He currently lives in Seattle and is happily far away from his family and old life where he grew up. That is until his father dies and he must return home to New Hampshire, finding an alcoholic loser of a brother with a son who he neglects and fails at being a decent father to. As Mast contemplates what he can do to help – there’s the touchy history of their mother having died fifteen years ago in a horrific fire – he discovers a unfinished manuscript his father was apparently working on. It’s about a very special house where there are no corners or edges; everything is curved and rounded. In this house there is a door that leads to “the black wing,” where there are no doors, and no windows; where terrible things happen. But the story is unfinished and Mast decides that he must finish the book himself. After meeting up with an old girlfriend (their failed relationship is its own doomed story), he stumbles upon a remote house that turns out to be exactly like the one in his father’s manuscript.

And so Mast rents the house and begins writing the story, feeling a strange presence overtake him when he is adding to the manuscript. He knows it has something to do with the house, but he doesn’t know what. Meanwhile his brother falls deeper into his booze-filled spiral, leaving young Henry alone and abandoned. The clues gently fall in to place with each chapter, as Schreiber leaves the read wanting more, forcing the turning of the page, and the need to know what is the story behind Scott Mast and his strange mental state; what’s the story behind the house; what’s the deal with Mast’s brother; and most importantly: what’s the story behind the Mast family that deals with the dark history of the town. Horror readers will enjoy No Doors, No Windows for its psychological thrill ride that doesn’t get revealed and resolved until the very last pages of the book.


For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78168733 to: The Chosen ~ Rise Of The Darkness (Paperback) by C.A.Milson
Set in Australia, The Chosen – Rise of the Darkness is a story that can be told anywhere, in any country, on any planet, but it is a story that we are all familiar with; one of the war between good and evil, in a battle of power, might and magic, and the inevitable question of who will triumph? In the small town of Winmont, the Ancient Legion has been awoken and will stop at nothing in its effort to destroy everything. But in the balance of life and the world, there must be a good to fight the evil. Alex Manning is The One – though he of course doesn’t know this at first – but in a world where the supernatural is an everyday existence that, if not respected, can take you life within a breath, he is the only one to stop this evil. In this world knowledge is power: knowledge of the ways of the paranormal and how to fight them. The question is whether the young Alex Manning will be up to the task of stopping the Dark Forces?

Milson’s style is a little unusual with head jumping and throwing the reader full into the story, providing little history or back story, but this kind of works for the story being told. And while terms like “Dark Ones,” “The One,” and “The Elders” are cliché for a horror novel, Milson nevertheless has his own story to tell set in a world that is terrifying and threatening, where you just want to make sure you stay on the side of good, as those who are evil and twisted are beings you don’t ever want to meet.

For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/69225023 to: The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000 (Hardcover) by Chris Wickham
bookshelves: books-read-in-2009
Many people refer to the period of 400-1000 as the “dark ages.” After the fall of Rome, when society in Western Europe shut down, people went back to simple, primitive ways – terms like savages and barbarians are often used – as they squabbled and fought against each other, killing mercilessly for a bit of land; the only beacon of hope the growing light of Christianity. I’ve never been a fan of the term “dark ages,” or all the connotations, thoughts, and ideas that people – historians and laymen alike – infer from it. Thankfully there is Chris Wickham: a Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford and author of Framing the Middle Ages. Wickham has worked hard to educate those who are unsure or simply don’t that the period from 400-1000 was one of the most important growth period of ideas, invention, and thought in the history of Western Europe. The Inheritance of Rome does a fantastic job of explaining this in comprehensive detail with viewpoints from all of Western Europe, including the Near East with the Byzantine Empire. I won’t lie to you; this isn’t an easy summer read; it’s a heavy book in every sense of the word; but if you’re looking to educate yourself on what exactly was going on between the fifth and eleventh centuries in Europe, after reading The Inheritance of Rome, you will have amassed an impressive amount of knowledge and be able to defend yourself and the period against anyone who attempts to call it the “dark ages.”

Wickham begins with a concise wrap up of the waning centuries of the Roman Empire, setting the stage for the focus of the book, which is divided into four parts: “Part I – The Roman Empire and its Break-up, 400-550”; “Part II: The Post-Roman West, 550-750”; “Part III: The Empires of the East, 550-1000”; and “Part IV: The Carolingian and Post-Carolingian West, 750-1000.” While the time periods of each part do overlap, this doesn’t prove to be a problem as Wickham is analyzing different areas, but also does a great job of linking what’s happening in a particular location with what was going on in another location in the previous chapter. The author uses maps, illustrations, diagrams, and photographs to illustrate points about the constant trade, migration and commingling of societies, cultures, and kingdoms that continued to thrive during this period and were instrumental in setting a foundation for the eventual High Middles Ages and beginning of the renaissance. Wickham does have a theme and clear point to make, which is in the title: most of Western Europe had at one time been either a part of or bordered with the most dominating and impressive empire the world has ever seen, so it makes perfect sense that most of these different cultures would try to maintain and emulate the ways of Rome, which helped spark a genesis for new forms of writing, new ways of trade and negotiation, new forms of farming, a new judicial system of laws and ways, and forced societies that had been sheltered, supported and lapped from the bosom of Rome for so long, to gain their independence and establish themselves as individuals, with unique technology, development, and cultural ways, which helped give rise to the likes of the Merovingians and Clovis, the Carolingians and Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, and many others.

The Early Middle Ages has always been my most favorite period of history and I’ve never been able to explain succinctly why. It has something to do with the fall of Rome and leaving this vast world of different peoples and cultures to live on their own and develop their individuality whilst maintaining contact and trade with each other. It’s about the countries of Western Europe beginning, with the birth of many of the renowned cities we know today. The Inheritance of Rome helps fuel my interest and love for this period. And as more knowledge, evidence, and archaeology about the period is discovered, the more we learn that the “dark ages” is a great misnomer that should be stripped from this important period of discovery and development.

For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site. ]]>