Alex C. Telander's Blog, page 23
January 13, 2016
Book News: Sandman Reader’s Guide, Bowie’s Reading List, Library Finds & More!
Library Surprises
Some interesting things found within the pages of library books, and it’s not words and stories.
Waiting for Winds of Winter
Five recommended fantasy series that have been completed while you wait for the next George R. R. Martin.
2016 Adaptations
The most anticipated book to movie adaptations coming this year.


January 9, 2016
“Dead Ringers” by Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s Press, 2015)
What if you weren’t the only one of your kind? What if one day you saw someone who looked exactly like you, to the point where your friends and family couldn’t really tell the difference, and this doppelganger was also better looking and more successful than you? And what if he or she wanted to kill you so they could take your place?
Tess Devlin runs into her ex-husband in downtown Boston; she notices something different about him. He looks younger, thinner, healthier, and he acts like he has no idea who she is. When she calls him later to vent, he tells her he never saw her because he’s in New Hampshire.
Frank Lindbergh is wondering if it’s time to give up and just die. A few days ago this guy showed up who looks exactly like him, only better. He stripped him naked and chained him to a pole in his own basement where he’s been going to the bathroom in a bucket and eating whatever scraps and leftovers his doppelganger deigns to bring him. He’s withering away and is actually starting to see the basement floor through parts of his naked body. The man who isn’t him is living his life, working his job, and fooling everyone. So does he just give up and die or does he fight?
Not everyone has an exact, evil copy of themselves; it’s only a select group. What they have in common is a special house where bad things happened, where bodies were found that had been buried for a long time. Dark and twisted rituals had been performed there and somehow that’s important. Then there’s the psychomanteum.
As with his previous novels, Christopher Golden has proven he has a talent for writing the out of the ordinary horror story. Dead Ringers is a story about a haunted house and ritual black magic; it’s also about feeling lost and out of control, and what it means to have your whole life threatened by someone who looks exactly like you. It is both terrifying and horrifying on many levels, some of them subtle, some of them painfully obvious.
Originally written on January 7, 2016 ©Alex C. Telander.
To purchase a copy of Dead Ringers from Amazon, and help support BookBanter, click HERE.


January 5, 2016
Bookbanter’s 2015 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.


December 30, 2015
Book News: The Resurgence of Used Bookstores, Spike TV Goes To MARS, Book Riot Makes Lots of Picks & More
Despite the success of Amazon, used bookstores are becoming more prominent and profitable.
Fantastic Beasts
The trailer is out for the adaptation of J. K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find, which Rowling wrote the screenplay for.
Dinosaur Bookends
What’s cooler than dinosaurs? How about dinosaur bookends which you can make in five minutes?


December 24, 2015
Book News: Top Book Picks From The White House, Atwood Writes Graphic Novel, Potter Play Gets New Cast & More!
Book Gifts
The ten rules for giving books as gifts for the holidays.
Shoot to Read
With guns very much in the news these days, here are some recommended reads.
Have Yourself a Merry (Harry Potter) Christmas
If you truly want to turn your tree into one that would be approved by Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, here’s your guide.


December 17, 2015
Book News: Gifts for Readers, NYT’s Best of 2015, Bookish Baby Onesies & More!
Bookish Gifts
The big day is quickly approaching and here are some reasonably priced bookish gifts.
Bookish Onesies
Some book-related clothing for your little bundle of joy.
Le Petit Prince
An adaptation to the beloved children’s story will soon be coming to a screen near you, and here’s the first trailer.


December 16, 2015
A Post From the Deep, Dark Bowels of Work Hell
Right now my work days are over twelve hours long, giving me little time to live a life, so cutting Bookbanter posts back to once a week. We will resume a usual program in the new year.


December 11, 2015
“The Paris Protection” by Bryan Devore (Bryan Devore, 2015)
The Secret Service is in some ways like the NSA, CIA or some other government lesser known acronym group: just about everyone knows who they are, but they don’t really know exactly how they operate or what they do. The Secret Service’s job is to protect the President of the United States 24/7, no matter what it takes. Their lives are always on the line for this one person. But what does this truly unique job entail?
The premise for The Paris Protection seems somewhat mundane and ordinary: a terrorist group has infiltrated the hotel where the United States President is staying and plans to assassinate her. They are fully confident in their success, while the Secret Service knows the job they have to do.
Abigail Clarke has done a lot of work – as a state prosecutor, US Senator, and governor of Virginia – and sacrificed much to become one of the most powerful and important people on the planet; many say the most important. President Clarke does not take her job lightly and has very little free time. She is now in Paris for a summit meeting as she hopes to bring the prickly subject of organized crime to the international stage and address it as a terrorist attack. For now, the day’s work is done and she is at her hotel carrying out various conference calls with important people back on US soil and around the world.
Maximillian Wolff, who once served on the Israeli Security Protection team when Yitzak Rabin was assassinated, has suffered much during his life and holds the United States accountable for its world domination, and with a huge and highly trained team of mercenaries, his plan is to remove the head of power and bring the US to its knees. His right hand man, Kazim Aslan, has spent his time as an insurgent soldier in Iraq who has lost loved ones because of the United States’ policies and wants their assassination plan to be just as successful. Maximillian also has a hero: Hannibal Barca who once brought Rome to its knees.
The Paris Protection is three-hundred-and-fifty-odd pages that is anything but ordinary and mundane. Devore skillfully takes the reader step by step through the attack, giving POVs from both sides and plenty of detail of tactics, weaponry, and skill. It is a gripping thriller at its best. Here and there, he provides some back story to his characters–again on both sides–that help the reader understand what is fueling their desire and drive. Maximillian goes into numerous contemplations of how Hannibal handled certain situations to help them in their current one, which is juxtaposed with Secret Service Agents contemplating their skill and training and what past agents have done in similar situations.
It is the ideal blend of action and story with plenty of well-researched details that keep the reader glued to the page. The story passes throughout the hotel with some impressive “battles,” eventually leading down deep into the haunting Paris catacombs that serves as a terrifying arena for a chase scene. The Paris Protection is one of those books where you don’t know who will make it out alive and how it’s really going to end; a perfect example of the thriller genre.
First published in Manhattan Book Review.
Originally written on October 27, 2015 ©Alex C. Telander.
To purchase a copy of The Paris Protection from Amazon, and help support BookBanter, click HERE.


December 8, 2015
“System: With His Face in the Sun” by Jon A. Davidson (CreateSpace, 2015)
The key to good science fiction is that it doesn’t just have to be set in the future with some cool tech and characters questioning the status quo, it also has to be believable. Jon A. Davidson’s debut novel, System: With His Face in the Sun, the first in a planned trilogy, does exactly this: taking our current tech and knowledge and pushing it further into the future in a logical way that makes everything totally believable and seemingly inevitable.
We are at a point in the future where the world has changed. The System now controls everything; think of it as a sentient Internet that tells you what to do. Almost everyone on the planet is connected to the System through their CommCuffs, and the System lets you know how to get anywhere, what you should be doing to make yourself feel better, and whether your marriage is worth it. The seas rose, and things went to hell, so the System was developed to fix things, which it did, shrinking the population through some secret, not so liked means, and making the world a much better place to live. Now everyone lives their lives guided by the System, and, while it’s not illegal to disagree with what the System tells you, you might disappear from society if you disagree too much, because the System is never wrong.
Wallace Blair thinks everything is going just right in his life. He has a wonderful wife he loves very much, a job he really enjoys that makes him be creative and somewhat individual, a unique facet in the world of the System, as well as two kids and a lovely home. And then one day the System lets him know through his CommCuff that he and his wife are in Transition, meaning their marriage is about to end. Wallace doesn’t accept this, knowing he’s perfectly happy in his marriage, but the System is never wrong. His wife fully believes their marriage is over once she gets the same announcement on her CommCuff, and this begins a long and interesting journey for Wallace. He confronts Arthur, his father, who is a highly-ranked worker in the System, about why this is all happening to him.
The trail leads him to discovering his grandfather, Edward, apparently isn’t in a care home with dementia, but living hidden away in an abandoned town in Spain, completely disconnected from the System. When Wallace eventually finds his grandfather, he learns a lot about why the man chose to keep his life secret, and upon returning to London, everything changes for him, as the System comes for him.
For a self-published work, System is a surprisingly well-edited and copy-edited work of fiction. While there is a couple of typos and the occasional grammatical error, the flow and voice feel like something published by a big publishing house. The science is interesting and believable, and the book never really slows down, as the reader is hooked in wondering where it will go next. The reasoning and reveal at the heart of System is just as entertaining and enthralling as any other work of good dystopian science fiction. It can best be described as The Matrix meets 1984.
First published in the San Francisco Book Review.
Originally written on June 20, 2015 ©Alex C. Telander.
To purchase a copy of System: With His Face in the Sun from Amazon, and help support BookBanter, click HERE.


December 4, 2015
“Flare” by Jonathan Maas (CreateSpace, 2014)
Flare by Jonathan Maas is one of those doomed futures that, in some ways, seems almost foreseeable. During the day, the world is now an inhospitable place for people. Due to unknown means, an extended solar flare is bombarding the planet, causing temperatures to reach new and lethal heights. Any skin that is exposed to the sun during the day immediately burns, as if it were stuck within the flames of an extremely hot fire. Many have died across the planet, but there are some who have survived. They have been forced to become nocturnal, and it is a much changed and harsh life where the only way to survive and not become like the other dead is to adapt.
Ash awakens to find himself living within the world of the flare. He serves as a great introductory device for the reader, as he remembers little at first, but soon finds his twin sister, who explains what has happened to him. They are now hiding in a house away from the sun, trying their best to survive. The windows and openings have been boarded and blocked with mattresses, and anything else that could be found to block the lethal rays, for a small sliver could cause painful burns. Heather, his sister, is looking after a man she cares greatly for, who has been horribly burned, but is somehow still alive. It serves as a symptom of the way things are now in this world. The man, a doctor, is dying, and there is nothing that can be done for him, he simply lives in a world of nonstop pain.
At night, the world becomes a different place again, as the survivors venture outside in search of nourishment and resources. It has become a dog eat dog world, and Heather and Ash have to be careful, and defend themselves when necessary. In a convenience store, they meet Raj who reveals that there are survivors out there who know why all this has happened; who may, in fact, be behind the cause of the flare. He shows them special papers that can withstand the flare that are puzzles. Ash is a gifted individual, who begins working on the puzzles. They are unable to find Raj again, but do discover more of these puzzles. Ash continues working on them, and begins to solve the riddles locked within. They point to a secret location called Salvation, where survivors can live some semblance of a normal life. So Heather and Ash set out to find this special place.
Then, there is Zeke. Another character who has his own ability to deal with the flare. He is unique in that his skin is almost black, and while he cannot survive in the direct sunlight, he can withstand small amounts of sun, and sets out on his own journey meeting different people along the way, and eventually learning of Salvation. But Zeke’s journey is a far more grueling and harsh one, compared to Ash’s, as the reader gets to see some of the truly despicable examples of humanity left in this world.
There are some very good things about Flare. While at times the characters feel a little artificial and robotic, they are still interesting. Animals have developed certain techniques to adapt to the flare and survive, as have certain plant life and cacti, which is fascinating. But, at times, the book seems to go to a dark place, just for the fun of it, such as with Zeke’s plight in experiencing the worst of humanity that just feels over the top and unnecessarily gruesome. There is also the constant use of religious names throughout the book that never really get explained. While the ending does leave the reader somewhat satisfied, it also feels somewhat lacking, as Zeke and Ash never come together as had been presumably hinted at throughout the book.
Overall, through the ups and downs, Flare is still an interesting read that presents a different take on the dystopian end of the world genre that continues to be popular. Much like The Walking Dead, it is not a story about this terrible event, but about how people adapt and survive, just as we have for millions of years.
First published in the San Francisco Book Review.
Originally written on June 3, 2015 ©Alex C. Telander.
To purchase a copy of Flare from Amazon, and help support BookBanter, click FlareHERE.

