L.S. Popovich's Blog, page 21

Review of The Complete Multiple Warheads by Brandon Graham

It’s a shame that such magnificent artwork is undermined by amateurish writing. The layouts and designs are reminiscent of Moebius, while the dialogue and plot are barely readable pulp, pun-infested nonsense. Plenty of good ideas, creatures, gadgets, and character potential beneath the immaturity, but it’s well-lathered with cringe-worthy speech bubbles. It is worth picking up […]

Review of Awakening (The Commune’s Curse Book 1) by Lucy A. McLaren

In this new debut fantasy novel, promising a series to follow, adaptable child protagonists deal with past hardships in a refreshing way. The conflict stems from a menacing society within the context of an intriguing fantasy world. Children play a key role in the world building of this novel at the center of which is a heartless […]

Review of Njal’s Saga by Unknown

This took me way too long to read. The Goodreads police put a warrant out for me for the number of in-progress books on my Currently Reading shelf. I flew through the beginning and hit an oil slick somewhere in the middle and slid into the rough. This book is very different from the Edda […]

Review of Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

A stirring first-hand account by one of the most daring authors out there.   I often suffer from Ballard fatigue, which is a syndrome wherein I suddenly hate Ballard after reading two or three of his books in a row. This illness has recurred at least four times. But this fictionalized account of Ballard’s childhood is […]

Review of Puttering About in a Small Land by Philip K. Dick

Puttering About is minor PKD. One of his sidelined realist novels.  A quiet, marital struggle in a normal American suburb. It oozes nostalgia for a lost time and place, like an old sitcom, where ‘traffic jam’ refers to fifteen cars on the expressway and people still do things like get their television repaired, instead of […]

Review of Innocents Aboard: New Fantasy Stories by Gene Wolfe

Innocents Aboard is the first short story collection by Wolfe I’ve read. It is a diverse helping of mind-altering tales. Ranging from Melville satire to Egyptian myth and Chinese folktale, a plethora of ghost stories and atypical Arthurian fantasy, with a few Biblical allegories thrown in. Story after story, I was constantly surprised, and typically […]

The Pyramid by Ismail Kadare

The Pyramid Dreams. Kadare takes some liberties with history, of course, often speculating wildly for dramatic and symbolic effect, but there is enough verisimilitude here to cast the pall of history over the pages. It has a very similar aura to the writings of Kafka, borrowing much of the atmosphere of oppression and psychological tension. […]

Review of House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

A dense mosaic of mesmerizing notions injected with a jumbo-sized hypo of s-f crack, rich with subtle corollaries of theory and conjecture. Huge, labyrinthine, wild.  My first Reynolds. Now I have that combination of elation and despair, knowing that I’m in it for the long haul. I have to read all of his books. There’s […]

Review of The Acephalic Imperial by Damian Murphy

Let there be no doubt that D. M. is the master of occult, shadowy fiction, draped in velvet, drenched in smoky moonlight, whose refulgent landscapes are colonized by sinister, eldritch characters, each enacting esoteric motives in a sibilant daze. He is paramour of ravished beauties, languorous mansions, and impending nightmares. He is a literary mage […]

Review of Kramberger with Monkey by Rick Harsch

A rollicking satirical, experimental novel about assassination, serialized in the online publication The Collidescope,  featuring taboo-trouncing, grimly ravenous characters, a melange of lyrical and journalistic styles. Superbly literary, lasciviously hilarious, Rabelaisian, and a gravitas-inducing addition to Rick Harsch’s vastly underappreciated body of work. Read all of his novels. Voice and wit unmatched in recent ‘American’ […]