Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 26

Out of the Earth by Jake Bible

Out of the Earth by Jake Bible

Dozens (if not hundreds) of kaiju are climbing out of the Yellowstone super volcano, ready to destroy anything in their reach. It’s a great premise, with the book roughly divided between people trying to survive the kaiju and the president trying to figure out how to destroy them. On that level, this is an exciting, action-packed, adventure, but what makes it really great is that the biggest monster is not a kaiju but a very sick man hunting down the son born to a woman he raped. Throw in some dangerous convicts and an anti-government militia and you have everything you need for a great story. My favorite character surprised me and I’m betting you’ll be surprised by how much you like him too.

 

A Long Time from Now by Michael Z. Williamson

A Long Time from Now by Michael Z. Williamson

I loved this book for about the first 80% of the novel, then I felt like it (or maybe it was me) ran out of steam just about the time we were hitting the climax. On its basic level this is a story of ingenuity and survival in the far past. Ten U.S. soldiers are mysteriously transported through time to the remote past where they have to learn to survive without any support from modern civilization. That in and of itself is quite interesting, but Williamson spices things up considerably first by having the soldiers encounter stone age peoples and then by having them encounter other accidental time travelers.

 

It's all quite fascinating until you start to think about just how much this random ten soldiers knows about living in the stone age. The tech specialist makes sense, she’s trying to keep the modern tech working. The medic has knowledge that makes sense as well. But honestly, do we really think that a random ten soldiers will know how to weave, tan leather, forge metals, etc. It was a bit too much and that started to be really driven home for me somewhere around the 80% mark when future time travelers were seriously impacting the storyline.

 

I also frankly didn’t like the resolution of the story. I don’t want to give spoilers here, but I liked the setup and thought that there was a whole series to be developed on that idea. The resolution felt a little too close to a deus ex machina to me. It wasn’t quite that, but it felt close to it.

 

So, in summation, this is a good book if you’d like to read about 10 people trying to recreate civilization in the ultimate wild.

 

Destroyer 62 The Seventh Stone by Warren Murphy

Destroyer 62 The Seventh Stone by Warren Murphy

I’ve been rereading the entire Destroyer series for a couple of years now, but the blurb for this book made me highly reluctant to open this one. I guess the point of the blurb is that “sex sells” but it was highly misleading as sex really has almost nothing to do with the plot. In fact, this is a fairly classic Destroyer adventure with a little more cleverness than we’ve seen in the majority of the last twenty or thirty books.

 

Roughly 2000 years ago, a ruler hired Sinanju to kill his brother, and then tried to get out of paying them because he thought natural causes were the reason for his enemy’s death. Naturally, the Master of Sinanju could not accept this and rather painfully proved that he had in fact killed the ruler’s enemy. This made the ruler willing to pay the master, but not willing to publicly do so (as he had publicly denounced the master earlier.) So, the Master of Sinanju set about changing the ruler’s mind, eventually driving him out of his kingdom and chasing him around the world until he lost track of him off the coast of North America. 2000 years later, the ruler’s descendants are looking for vengeance.

 

Now the idea of the family who keeps its grudge for millennia happens with a fair amount of frequency in this series, but it’s still a good plot device. The bulk of the book is taken up by their attempts to kill Remo and Chiun. It was entertaining and there was a very well-prepared surprise in the novel. Too bad the book has a blurb which really has nothing to do with the story.

 

Disc World 15 Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Disc World 15 Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

The City Watch returns as Sam Vimes is leaving the institution to marry into the nobility (he generally despises all nobles except his soon-to-be-wife) and a conspiracy acts to get rid of the patrician by restoring the descendant of the last king (who died centuries ago) to the throne. The king-to-be is—unsurprisingly—on the City Watch.

 

Pratchett is in true form here, satirizing just about everything from politics to policemen. He also takes a very humorous look at such serious questions as racism, getting people to think about tough topics without preaching at them. This is the book that also proves that the City Watch has legs as the focus of a novel (just in case the first one featuring them wasn’t proof enough) and happily leads him to write many more about this great crew.

 

Superman: The Unauthorized Biography by Glen Weldon

Superman: The Unauthorized Biography by Glen Weldon

Superman has been around for more than eighty years, often getting changed but in the end being pulled back to the core concepts that originally fueled his creation. He is the ultimate nice guy, willing to suffer anything to help people. In this book, Glen Weldon walks the reader through his long history in sometimes excruciating detail. I’ve never thought of myself as a serious Superman reader, but I was amazed at how many times—even in the periods before I was born—I remembered what Weldon was talking about. It turns out that reading Superman anthologies in the doctor’s office, picking up stray copies at friends, and reading a lot of books that Superman appeared in, plus the television series, movies, cartoons, songs, and so much more, actually has made Superman a common feature in my life. It was fascinating to see how often I “recognized” a particular incarnation, and fun to walk through the many retcons and other changes that his writers have subjected him to over the years. If you give the book a try, I’ll bet you’ll be surprised by how well you know Superman too.

 

Occultober Day 31 Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend

Occultober Day 31 Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend

As the season of Occultober draws to a close again I offer one of the most interesting paranormal tales I’ve stumbled across in the last year—Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend.

 

This is an unusually gripping story that pulled me right in from the beginning and didn’t let go until I finished the last page. Jack works the cash register at a 24-hour gas station, basically taking care of the entire facility while he’s on shift. Jack suffers from an unusual medical condition which should lead to an early death and dive him crazy along the way. That makes him the very definition of an untrustworthy narrator as he describes the absolutely extraordinary things that happen at this gas station, mostly after dark. To give you a hint at the sorts of problems he encounters, there’s the ghost of a cowboy in the gas station bathroom. He doesn’t do much and certainly doesn’t harm people, but he’s a ghost and that’s unusual. Then there are the hand plants growing out back. Never heard of a hand plant? You’ll have to read the book to understand, but they are, to say the least, unusual. He’s got crazy raccoons, absolutely bizarre customers, and a heck of a lot of supernatural happenings pretty much from start to finish.

 

As strange as all of that is, it’s not why you’ll like the book so much. That reason is quite simply Jack. He’s got a wonderfully odd way of looking at the world around him and the truly bizarre things happening never seem to faze him in the way they would you and me. He’s not particularly brave, he’s just…odd. And that totally atypical way of viewing the world adds a tremendous amount of dark humor to the story. Most people do not react calmly when they learn their friend has accidentally run over some one and, not knowing what else to do, stuck the body in the trunk of their car. Jack not only reacts calmly, he’s able to put the whole episode out of his mind and function as if it didn’t happen until it pops up again. It’s just strange enough to make the whole situation extremely fascinating.

 

Then there’s Jack’s psychiatrist. He isn’t likable. Isn’t supposed to be likable. He’s totally dismissive of the bizarre events Jack relates to him, which is annoying to the reader. But we know Jack is supposed to be going crazy, so isn’t it possible that the psychiatrist is right?

 

And that’s what ultimately makes this book such an enjoyable read. It seems highly improbable that everything that Jack reports actually happens. It also seems highly improbable that nothing he reports is actually happening. So, if you’re looking for something refreshingly new to read, take your car down to the gas station, fill up the tank, and meet the weird cast of this novel.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...

 

If you’re interested in Tales from the Gas Station, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 30 The Jungles of Ekanga by Gilbert M. Stack

Occultober Day 30 The Jungles of Ekanga by Gilbert M. Stack

As we approach the end of Occultober 2022 I offer the prequel novel to my most successful fantasy series, Legionnaire. Legionnaire follows the exploits of Marcus Venandus as he leads his legion in defense in defense of his homeland in a conventional fantasy environment. The Jungles of Ekanga chronicles Marcus’ adventures at the beginning of his career—long before he commanded thousands of men. And the threat isn’t a conventional fantasy threat, it’s a problem out of the horror genre.

 

Jungles is packed with enemy shamen and warriors, treacherous senior officers, a mysterious murderer, and a mystery at the heart of it all that I hope will send shivers up and down your spine.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08...

 

If you’re interested in The Jungles of Ekanga, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 29 The Last Storm by Sam Sisavath

Occultober Day 29 The Last Storm by Sam Sisavath

Here’s a wonderfully creepy horror story about two groups of people who take refuge in an abandoned high rise to escape a hurricane. One group is a criminal team who has just pulled off a robbery. The other is composed of two cops, a prisoner, and a civilian mother and her seven-year-old child. The tension between the two groups is great and could have made a thriller-style tale, but that’s not what Sisavath has in store of the reader. There’s something supernatural happening in the abandoned high rise and he expertly increases the tension as bad things start to happen to the large cast.

 

One of the cops makes what I think was a major mistake when the trouble starts to heat up. She and her group have been taken prisoner and there is no hint at this time that the criminals intend to do them the ultimate wrong. But she tries to escape anyway with many serious unintended consequences—and that not only ups the tension, it fuels the supernatural storyline.

 

The novel quickly falls into the “who will survive” type of tale, but Sisavath makes it very interesting. He also does a good job of letting the reader learn a lot about the supernatural threat without actually telling anything about it. If he makes one mistake, I think it is in the ending when I expected the supernatural—I’ll call it a curse even though Sisavath avoids that term—to be passed on to one of the survivors. I don’t want to say more as I don’t want to spoil the story. Even without this “the threat is not really over” problem, it’s a very good tale.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09...

 

If you’re interested in The Last Storm, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 28 Indomitable by Claudia Brooke

Occultober Day 28 Indomitable by Claudia Brooke

As we end the fourth week of Occultober, I want to introduce the first book of a promising new series. It isn’t perfect yet, but there is so much hope that I think it’s worth everyone giving the first book a chance.

 

Indomitable benefits from some excellent worldbuilding. Vampires exist in a sort of two-tiered fashion—full vampires and half vampires who have not been fully brought over. There are also angels and at least a few other types of supernatural beings such as reapers, who harvest the souls of the dead. Most interesting, there are a few human beings with special souls that come in multiple flavors including the “indomitable” spirit of the title. That “flavor” gives them certain special abilities—not superhero level abilities—but special none the less.

 

The novel starts with its most interesting character, Gracie, whose controlling family is trying to compel her to go to graduate school. Gracie has other plans. Her great dream in life is to own a cake truck and make her living baking and selling fabulous cakes to whoever has the taste for one. Her family can’t understand this and isn’t interested in doing so. Even her fiancé is unsupportive of her great ambition even though he appears to be a pretty good guy by other measures.

 

The first few chapters focus on Gracie attempting to raise money to buy the used cake truck of her dreams. In doing so, she agrees to become the dog walker for a very rich woman who is convinced her dog is a vampire who feeds on squirrels. It’s a delightful storyline that I wish had gone on longer. Gracie is a superb character, instantly interesting and sympathetic, and I enjoyed all the chapters from her POV.

 

Unfortunately, Gracie isn’t really the main character of the novel. That honor goes to Felix and he is not quite up to the responsibility of carrying the book. Felix is (purposely I gather) dislikeable, and that proves to be the biggest weakness in an otherwise wonderful novel. Fortunately, the other POVs are better, including a very interesting reaper, but I think the whole book would have been much stronger if the author had stuck with Gracie throughout. This would have raised a few storytelling challenges, but let’s face it, all of the most interesting things in this plot happen to her and she’s delightful. In addition to discovering the world is not as mundane as she had believed, she has to deal with some tremendously traumatic events including an emotional betrayal that was quite simply expertly constructed by the author.

 

And so much does happen to Gracie and those around her. The angels appear to be fighting with each other. Death is plotting to do something very selfish with potentially diabolical consequences. Vampires are seeking to elevate their place in the hierarchy of the planet. And I could go on, but you should really read the book and uncover these golden nuggets for yourself. Because you see, despite my frustrations with Felix, I want to learn what happens to Gracie. So, not only will I be reading the sequel, I suggest you read the series yourself.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B...

 

If you’re interested in Indomitable, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 27 Devil's Desk by Mark Tufo

Occultober Day 27 Devil’s Desk by Mark Tufo

If you like action, attitude, and a touch of the paranormal, you’re going to love Devil’s Desk. Mike and his wife, Tracey, join their best friends, BT and Linda, on a camping trip in the Alaskan wilderness. While they are there, a massive earthquake sinks chunks of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska (and presumably parts of Canada too) setting off volcanic eruptions and tsunamis that basically cut the four (and the other campers) off from civilization. That would have been bad enough. There are a lot of bizarre personalities in the campground, including a man who turns out to be a psychopathic murderer. But the group’s problems are only just beginning. Because all of the seismic activity has also drawn a clan of yeti (or maybe sasquatches) down out of the mountains, and they have quickly discovered they like the taste of human flesh.

 

What follows is a truly exciting adventure in which the humans try to figure out how not to get eaten while fighting continuously among themselves. BT’s wife is initially worried about harming what must be an endangered species. The college kids don’t want anyone telling them what to do. The psychopath similarly can’t play nice. BT (a cop) can’t get it through his head that this isn’t the best time to be telling the psychopath that he’ll be charged with murder when they get back to civilization. And that’s all before the extraordinary tension causes real problems to come out between the friends and their fellow survivors.

 

Tufo also makes the yeti actions seem highly plausible as they show they are more than animals if less than human. This low-grade intelligence makes them all the more terrifying as they tighten the noose around the humans. Things get so bad that about seventy percent of the way through the book I started wondering what the author could do with the last pages—first few chapters of another novel?—because it seemed impossible for everyone not to be dead in the next few pages. Yet, each time what happened seemed credible, even when one of the group starts lambasting the man who keeps saving them for being a killer and therefore morally inferior to the others.

 

There are two elements to this story that scream for a sequel without in anyway making the book less than a standalone novel. The first is the prologue. What exactly happened in the mine? Is this the true source of the yeti as I initially suspected, or is something else going on? The second is an almost throw away line which suggests that one of the group isn’t from this timeline. I suspect that Mark Tufo has a lot more instore for us. I can’t wait to read his next novel.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09...

 

If you’re interested in Devil’s Desk, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...