C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 40

Bones of the Past by Drew Hayes review

    BONES OF THE PAST is the sequel to FORGING HEPHAESTUS by Drew Hayes as well as the second volume of the VILLAIN'S CODE series. I happen to have read this as the first of Drew Hayes' superhero novels and really need to get around to reading the others. However, I will admit a certain bias to this novel. I, too, write "villain" books, particularly superhero books and this is straight up my jam. The previous book was a big meaty volume that really got into the day-to-day lives of supervi...

Of Honey and Wildfires by Sarah Chorn review

    OF HONEY AND WILDFIRES by Sarah Chorn is a steampunk fantasy novel that is a marked contrast to her previous novel, SERAPHINA'S LAMENT. The latter novel was a dark and foreboding story set against a fantasy version of the Ukrainian famine engineered by Joseph Stalin. The former is a fascinating story about company mining town where the poor are forced to labor daily in order to extract a magical liquid called Shine. Of the two, I think I like this one better but both are ones I strong...

The United Federation of Charles 2020 Indie Book Awards

Hey folks,

I thought 2019 was a year that was going to be an enormous pair and I actually missed out on doing my awards for that year. Well, it had absolutely nothing on 2020 and I was actually expecting it to be skipped as well. However, being quarantined for as long as I was turned into a chance to read even more books than my normal bibliophile brain.

Sculpture of HP Lovecraft by Bryan Moore/copyright 2009.

You may wonder why I'm presenting a bust of H.P. Lovecraft as my award. Well, for two re...

Interviews with Paul Lafferty

Hey folks,

I'm pleased to say that I got two interviews with Paul Lafferty (author of Down the Lane) and really got into the nitty gritty of both The Rules of Supervillainy, publishing, and my Agent G series. I hope you guys will check out both of these discussions. Paul is a really great guy and has a neat conversational style.

Interview 1#

 

Interview 2#

Thanks for listening!

Agent G: Infiltrator available on Bookbub this month and January!

 

 Hey folks,

If you haven't checked out my AGENT G series, it's available for 99c this month and January from Bookbub. It is a contemporary cyberpunk series that follows the transformation of our world into a dystopia ruled by megacorps. Agent G is a cybernetically-enhanced assassin who has had his memories erased by the sinister International Refugee Society, a megacorporation that uses its charity status to hide a murder-for-hire business that caters to the ultra-rich. He'll receive them ...

The Agent G Omnibus is now available!

 
AGENT G's first three novels have been assembled into a single large volume! remains one of my favorite creations and remains up there with the Supervillainy Saga and the Bright Falls Mysteries. I absolutely love cyberpunk and spy fiction, both genres that you wouldn't necessarily think would go together but which I managed to merge into a beautiful Frankenstein's monster more borged out than its titular protagonist.

I'm pleased to say that Crossroad Press has assembled the first three novels of...

Cyberpunk 2077 review

 

Reposted from Grimdark Magazine: https://www.grimdarkmagazine.com/review-cyberpunk-2077/

    "Capitalism, capitalism never changes."

    Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that has been hotly anticipated for the better part of nine years. Delayed by both the mammoth juggernaut that was The Witcher 3 and its DLC plus the inability to get it to work on current generation consoles, it was finally released in the tail end of 2020. The people here at Grimdark Magazine were hotly anticipating this game and I had...

Alex Rider (2020) review

    I read the Alex Rider books in community college. They're basically the James Bond Junior show, except even younger with young Alex being a 14 year old boy who gets recruited into MI6 for complicated reasons and then sent against a variety of Bond villains. The villains are as campy and memorable as your typical Bond antagonist with one wanting to kill all the children in England, another making clones to insert into wealthy families to replace their loved ones, and a guy...

Ghost of Tsushima (2020) review

    GHOST OF TSUSHIMA is a game I picked up in-between replaying Spider-Man (PS4) and Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It looked fantastic and I'm a huge fan of Akira Kurosawa and historical samurai anime. I'm also going to admit specific bias in the fact my college degree is in Medieval Asian history so I'm doubly in my wheelhouse here. However, if you are not a fanatical student of samurai then you may not get as much from this game as I did. Alternatively, you may get just as much or more because y...

Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS4)

     I'm a big fan of Miles Morales due to the Spider-Verse and the simple fact that he seems to be a fun character who nicely contrasts Peter. Peter was a jaded misanthrope as a teenager and outsider. Miles is a happy go-lucky kid. Peter is motivated by soul crushing guilt. Miles want to live up to his idol. Peter is the stereotypical 1960s nerd. Miles is a cool 21st century geek. Peter is so whitebread that he doesn't even have a cultural identity. Miles is biracial black and Hispanic. Yet bot...