James Pyles's Blog, page 9

Review of “Dead Beat” (2006), Book Seven in the Dresden Files Series

Yesterday, I finished book seven in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series Dead Beat. Like the rest of the books in this collection, the title is a play on words. This time, Harry Dresden faces the threat of necromancers, users of magic of the dead. Harry’s life gets increasingly worse with each book and sometimes I […]

Iconic

Time traveling tourist Glinn Tanning staggered into the restaurant dressed in surplus fatigues and dragging a canvas rucksack in his right hand. It contained a couple of canisters of pepper spray and the makings of several Molotov cocktails. “Where are the protesters?” he complained to the bored looking woman behind the counter. “We’re closing soon,” […]

Podcast Promoting “Shoot the Devil 3: Martyr’s Miitia” This Friday

UPDATE: Here’s the public link for tomorrow’s podcast: https://www.youtube.com/live/qIGZAddSpk4 I’ve been promoting the anthology Shoot the Devil 3: Martyr’s Militia for a number of weeks now. It features my short story “The Book of Names.” A nearly-immortal man who is currently known as Griffin has been searching for the letters and syllables that make up the […]

Eviction Day

Eliab strolled through another collection of junk. It was only a small sample of the enormous task they were facing. They had given so-called “modern humans” 200,000 years to build a civilization harmonious with themselves and their planet. As predicted, they failed miserably. He was of the majority opinion, but “the Big Guy” kept giving […]

Book Review: “A Scanner Darkly” (1977) by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly is about drug addition and the physical, mental, and legal consequences it brings about. The character Bob Arctor/Fred is prey, predator, and victim. The book is also autobiographical since it (through fiction) chronicles Dick’s own experiences with addiction and the drug culture in the 1970s. I’m not […]

Tunnel Visions

Hill always came to places like this when he couldn’t sleep. He needed the dreams but without sleep, there were only visions. In his visions, he’s alone usually by choice. People made too much noise. When he couldn’t sleep, it was because his own brain made too much noise and because he couldn’t let go […]

Book Review: “The Warship – Rise of the Jain, Book Two” (2019)

A few nights ago, I finished Neal Asher’s 2019 novel The Warship: Rise of the Jain, Book Two. I read and reviewed the first book in this trilogy a little over a year ago. That’s really too long a space between these volumes. As with most of Asher’s novels (and there are plenty of them), […]

Baboons and the Aliens

The zoo was closed which was what Chen was counting on. Right before he was “let go” from the IT department, he installed a backdoor into their security system letting him bypass the gate locks and alarms. Even knowing he was alone, he looked left and right as the snow fell on him and the […]

A Boy and His Racoon

“Oops.” Twenty-year-old Calvin Weiss wiped a clump of dark hair out of his eyes with one hand while balancing his grandfather’s mystic tome in the other. “That isn’t what I wanted.” “I keep telling you Cal, it’s long-A on the umlaut and short-A on the tilde. Geez, will you ever get it right? The pudgy […]

With Two Cats and a Flood

“Our house, is a very, very, very fine house With two cats and a flood…” He stopped singing the old song and listened to the water coursing down the street. “Sure, I’ve been stuck on the floor days, your food has run out, and no one can get here to help, but we have each […]