C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 69

Rise of a D-List Supervillain by Jim Bernheimer review

    RISE OF A D-LIST SUPERVILLAIN is the fourth novel of the popular D-List Supervillain series by Jim Bernheimer. I should state before I begin this review you should probably ignore it if you are afraid of any kind of bias since not only is Amber Cove (Jim's label) my publisher but we're good friends. Hell, I'm even mentioned in the book itself as he named Paper Tiger (a D-List Superhero) after me. This is probably in repayment for the fact I mentioned Mechani-Cal (called Mec...

The Grimdark Drinking Game

Every fantasy story and most sci-fi has something dark or grim in it. When does it hit the boiling point and become "grimdark"? When you feel like it does. Every reader has their own standards of dark and gritty. Alternatively, it's whether the AUTHOR says they're grimdark.

Still, I think this is a subject which deserves to be handled by a checklist of common factors which can tell you whether or not a work is grimdark or not? A work can be grimdark if it has all of these or none of these but...

Hard Luck Hank: Robot Farts by Steven Campbell

    ROBOT FARTS is the latest of the HARD LUCK HANK series that I find consistently entertaining. It's a sci-fi series about the continuing misadventures of an immortal almost (but not quite) indestructible professional thug named Hank. Hank is a fairly awful person and has committed a number of murders for no other reason than he was paid to. He's also a person who has saved the universe on a couple of occasions.

    The series is notable for the fact every itera...

Color I WAS A TEENAGE WEREDEER cover

Here ya go, folks!

Finished I WAS A TEENAGE WEREDEER

 I finished I WAS A TEENAGE WEREDEER this week and I'm very glad to have yet another book coming for my wonderful fanclub. It's 83K words long and will be followed by a sequel novel called AN AMERICAN WEREDEER IN MICHIGAN.

What are my next projects as I work on these? I will be finishing up LUCIFER'S NEBULA and 100 MILES AND VAMPIN' which are the sequels to LUCIFER'S STAR and STRAIGHT OUTTA FANGTON. Both of those books are 2/3rds of the way done.

Hard Luck Hank: Stank Delicious review

     STANK DELICIOUS is the fifth novel in the HARD LUCK HANK series and I'm running out of things to say about the novels but still enjoying them tremendously. While I had a lot of complaints about the third book, the fourth book completely subverted them. Stank Delicious is even better because it manages to go in a completely unexpected direction. In a series primarily about a thuggish rogue on a space station negotiating treaties between various hostile powers, this is...

The Dark Tower (2017) review

Warning - This review will contain spoilers for The Dark Tower book series.

    The Dark Tower is a movie which is difficult to summarize my feelings regarding. Well, no, I hate it. I really-really hate this movie. It's problematic because I don't hate this movie because it's bad. If this were a completely generic action movie with a sci-fi premise, I'd put it up with Resident Evil as a multiple re-watch. However, this is THE DARK TOWER. It is one of the most signature pieces o...

I Was a Teenage Weredeer cover sketches

Hey folks,

I thought now would be a great opportunity to share the cover art sketches of I WAS A TEENAGE WEREDEER. This is my upcoming urban fantasy novel taking place in the same world as STRAIGHT OUTTA FANGTON but which I'm actually a lot more impressed with. Jane Doe (oh, her poor cruel parents) is probably my favorite character along with Gary and Lucien.


The premise of IWATWD is the following:

From the best-selling author of The Supervillainy Saga:
 
The unfortunately named Jane Doe is o...

Hard Luck Hank: Suck My Cosmos by Steven Campbell review

    HARD LUCK HANK: SUCK MY COSMOS is the fourth novel in the Hard Luck Hank series. The series changes every volume with the station of Belvaille going through a variety of social and economic changes. In this volume, Hank's efforts in the previous books have paid huge dividends and it's gone from being Mos Eisley to a combination of Manhattan, Vegas, and Dubai. Hank can barely afford to to live on the station now and only manages to do so by doing the odd favor for the city's...

Caliban's War (The Expanse #2) by James S.A. Corey review

    CALIBAN'S WAR is the second installment of the Expanse series, which compromises the majority of Season Two of the series. Unlike with the first volume, I read this before watching the second season and I'm glad I did. I felt my viewing of the second season of the Expanse was enriched by my reading how the author originally intended the story to go.

    The premise for the Expanse series is it's roughly two hundred years in the future and mankind has spread to...