K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 35

Book Review: Memory and Dream by Charles de Lint

A story about giving your life to art and creating and how it can consume you, especially if your art comes alive. Isabelle is a young artist taken in by a brilliant artist, Vincent Rushkin. Rushkin isn’t what he seems to be. He becomes more abusive as their relationship deepens. The twisted relationship seeps out from the art studio to Isabelle’s friends and their lives, drawing them into Isabelle’s denial of reality and being used and abused for her art. The story jumps between now and twenty ...

Book Review: The Callahan Chronicals by Spider Robinson

After reading this book, I almost wanted to find a pub to call home. That’s coming from someone who doesn’t drink or like crowded places, or bars and pubs for the matter. But somehow, Spider Robinson hid humanity in its best to Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon; I was like, yes, that’s humanity when they care, that’s humanity surviving when they have been kicked into their nuts and rejected. The ones who never got on with the program. At Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, you are accepted as you are.

The...

Book Review: Spiders: Learning to love them by Lynne Kelly

I read an article on BBC about spiders and their intelligence, and I went into a frantic search to find a book about spiders. I needed to know how they behaved and why. I found this book (and one other,) and I immediately ordered it, not because of the learning to love them part nor to get over my fear of spiders. I got over my anxiety when I started taking macro photographs, and suddenly, no insect (except gadflies) held terror. (Okay, I have to admit, I still feared the giant spiders, the ones...

Short Story: Cerulean Blue

I have been on the move for as long as I can remember. Never stayed in the same town for more than a week. And I mean that. I haven’t gone to a school like ordinary people do. I was homeschooled or more like hotel and car schooled. The only person I know, and I mean I truly know, is my mother. You can’t get too attached to anyone else when you never be there when they want a second date. All this has started to bother me. I see how things should go on the TV and read from the magazines, but none...

Book Review: All You Zombies and Other Stories by Robert A. Heinlein

A small collection of weird short stories with sci-fi elements. The tone of the stories reminded me of Ray Bradbury, maybe because there was this slightly off-beat and melancholia to them. All the stories ponder some sort of concept and run away with it to play; I love that because you can see the openness of Heinlein to all the possibilities of reality and human variety. That’s why I have always loved science fiction: the openness to all. In sci-fi, all humans, whatever form they come, are acce...

My satirical fantasy novels are for free the rest of the week

It’s that time of the year that nights grow dark and days cold, and my books are free. Worth of Luck, Penny for Your Soul, and the newest one, Mechanics of the Past, are free until midnight November 14. They all can be read independently and may include pondering about human nature and how silly we can be. They are available at Amazon and free at your local site.

Worth of Luck

Worth of Luck is a wry, humorous fantasy novel set in Leporidae Lop. It is a satire of politics, friendshi...

Book Review: The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

I have meant to read this book for ages now, and I finally picked it up. I wasn’t disappointed. The book was a positive surprise. It has been a long time since I have been sucked deep into the story, finding the characters and the setting compelling. This was such an occasion. The Invisible Library hit every mark of a good entertaining book, which has a correct balance of easy to read and yet not inconsequential. As the name entails, it has that stereotypical librarian wit with literary referenc...

Short Story: Log 1391 of the Plant Wars

This morning has been grim. I deployed three hundred of our troops to the last valley our enemy occupies in my sector, and only seventy of them came back. Our enemy has grown more intelligent with every year that passes on. Nevertheless, I still believe our victory is possible in a year or two, a decade at most. We have taken most of the planet back, but we can’t underestimate their destructive capacity. Our enemy almost wiped out our camp yesterday, but we drive them off to their caves. I have ...

Book review: Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber

Off Armageddon Reef is one of those rare books that mix sci-fi and fantasy well and in the right amount. The use of both elements is well explained and justified. The sci-fi aspect of the book comes through history, the setting, and transformation. It has a significant role in world-building and motivations for the story. The fantasy element is the world with its krakens, lizard monsters, and swords. It’s where the characters interact. The fantasy period is hard to define. It’s not medieval, nor...

Book Review: Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen

This is one of those books that bends the lines between genres. It’s a literary sci-fi story about family, time travel, and trauma. I went in without reading the synopsis, remembering having seen the book everywhere when it first came out. So I didn’t have a clue what the story was about except for time travel and thinking there were Catch-22 elements. I was pleasantly surprised that there was a layer of family, and not in some cheesy way. There was conflict, love, hate, anger, and all the other...