C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 73

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames review

"We're getting the (mercenary) band back together."

    KINGS OF THE WYLD is a book which I have to give extremely high marks because it's a story I haven't read before. This is kind of a weird thing to say but it fits with something that exists as a major problem of fantasy. Specifically, it's very rare we get anything resembling new stories in fantasy. The actual premise isn't all that original ("going to rescue a mercenary's daughter from a siege") but the handling of the sto...

Please Don't tell my Parents I have a Nemesis by Richard Roberts review

    The Please Don't Tell My Parents series is a great series about a middle-school (now high school freshman) collection of supervillains who are too nice to be bad guys but too mischievous to be heroes. The books have very low stakes, for the most part, and are really more about exploring the complicated network of lovable weirdos which exist in the Los Angeles superhuman world.

    The last book, I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence was unrelated...

The Ghost Brigades (Old Man's War 2#) by John Scalzi review

    THE GHOST BRIGADES is the sequel to John Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR and switches from the geriatric seventy-five-year-old recruits to the newborn Special Forces clones who serve ten years from birth in a decanter until they die in combat. This is about as far from an old man's war as you're going to get, which is disappointing since clone armies as a far less innovative subject than the idea of extremely old people fighting aliens. The Republic Commando series by Karen Traviss,...

Old Man's War by John Scalzi review

    Old Man's War is a book series I decided to pick up after finishing The Collapsing Empire. John Scalzi had intrigued me with his irreverent brand of humor as well as world-building, so I wanted to check out his most famous series. Having finished the first book, I've immediately picked up the second and am eager to finish the entirety of it because it's well worth it. Even so, I'm only going to give it a four of five stars. This is due to the fact the first half of the book...

Bookwraiths does amazing review of Lucifer's Star

What is easily one of the best reviews of my books ever done. I'm extremely impressed with what Wendell Adams had to say about the story, its structure, and it's character. I hope people who are still on the fence about picking it up will do so because of this.

Lucifer’s Star is damn fine space opera!  That was my initial reaction after closing the book, and now, several weeks later, I still feel the same way: C.T. Phipps and Michael Suttkus having crafted a rousing, pulse-pounding advent...

Grimdark, masculinity, and female authors

    I had an interesting conversation recently with a fellow board member on a list where he was discussing how he felt grimdark was a bastion of "male fiction." I blinked because not only did it not make any sense, I wasn't actually sure what he was referring to. After I brought this up to my friend, he went, "Well, you know because it's bloody and gory with lots of violence against women as well as men." Suffice to say, I felt he really didn't know that many women who were fa...

Evil is a Matter of Perspective review

    Evil is a matter of perspective. This is a quality which is extremely relevant to grimdark as it involves making sure even the most reprehensible characters have a point. Jaime Lannister is the Kingslayer but he did so because he wanted to save King's Landing and protect his father. Cersei Lannister has many defenders because her marriage to Robert Baratheon was such a nightmare. Glokta tortures people because it's the only thing left to him by a society which functions on...

Holy Avenger by Kenny Soward review

    I was a big fan of Kenny Soward's Galefire, which was a early example of grimdark urban fantasy. It was a story about a drug-addicted mind-twisted man named Lonnie as well as the colorful cast of weirdos he hung out with in Cincinnati. The ending of the book offered the promise of big change which I wasn't necessarily all that fond of since I was interested in the low-key storytelling that the first book excelled at.

    Holy Avengers makes a course correction...

The Dark Defiles review

    The Dark Defiles is, unfortunately, one of those cases where the ending is not a bang but, if not a whimper, at least a much smaller explosion than the first two novels. I liked the characters just fine and they remain aggressively likable from beginning to end but this seems to be a book which struggled to find its purpose. This is problematic because the book is a thick doorstopper novel which doesn't really to go anywhere until the end where the story feels like it stops...

Book Writing Update 5/22/2017

My current progress on multiple manuscripts:



Agent G: Saboteur (Agent G 2#): Complete and submitted to Amber Cove publishing. Jeffrey Kafer will be doing the audiobook. Cover complete.



Lucifer's Nebula (Lucifer's Star 2#): 41,000 Words (90K estimate for completed manuscript). Cover complete. Eric Burns will be doing the audiobook.



100' Miles and Vamping (Straight Outta Fangton 2#): 51,000 Words (65K estimate for completed manuscript). Cover complete.



The Kingdom of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Sa...