Search Results for: Soyka

David Soyka Reviews The Translated Man and Other Stores and Mr. Stitch

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The Translated Man and Other Stories Threat Quality Press (224; 11.99 USD; softcover 2007) Mr. Stitch Threat Quality Press (248; 11.99 USD; softcover 2010) Chris Braak Chris Braaks’s duology featuring Detective-Inpector Elijah Beckett demonstrates that you can tell a book by its cover.  These book jackets are dark, primitive and ugly; the novels are set in a steampunk Victorian metropolis called Trowth that is equally dark, primitive and ugly. It was early morning and the strained watery light that flickered…

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David Soyka Reviews Journal of a UFO Investigator

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Journal of a UFO Investigator David Halperin Viking (304 pp, $25.95, Hardcover February 2012) Reviewed by David Soyka The premise here is we’re reading a diary account of the titular UFO investigator who also happens to be a troubled teenager (though, arguably, “troubled teenager” is redundant).  What starts out as a geeky outlet for outcast middle schoolers to pretend to be something other than outcast middle schoolers metastasizes into a fantastic escapade involving a self-selective group of super smart teenagers…

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David Soyka Reviews Prince of Thorns

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Prince of Thorns (Book One of The Broken Empire) Mark Lawrence Ace (324 pp, $29.95, Hardcover August 2011) Reviewed by David Soyka This is pretty brutal.  Relentlessly brutal, right from the opening paragraphs: Ravens! Always the ravens. They settled in the gables of the church even before the injured became the dead. Even before Rike had finished taking fingers from hands, and rings from fingers. I leaned back against the gallows post and nodded to the birds, a dozen of…

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David Soyka Reviews Prospero in Hell

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Prospero in Hell L. Jagi Lamplighter Tor (347 pp, $25.99, August 2010) Reviewed by David Soyka As you might expect, L. Jagi Lamplighter’s Prospero in Hell, the second volume of her Propsero’s Daughter trilogy and follow up to Prospero Lost, is loosely based (very loosely) on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In Lamplighter’s retelling, Miranda, daughter of the magician Prospero, does not marry Ferdinand but instead becomes the virgin devotee of the Greek goddess Eurynome, which qualifies her for a life extension…

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David Soyka Reviews Is Anybody Out There

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Is Anybody Out There? Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, eds. DAW (312 pp, $7.99, June 2010) Reviewed by David Soyka The $64 question of the modern era is not whether God exists. How you answer that depends on intangibles and inferences based more on faith than the scientific method. What is nearly as imponderable is the empirical evidence of a vast universe (and possibly co-existent multi-verses) within which conditions exist (or once existed) that may give rise to life as…

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Gothic Noir: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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The Shadow of the Wind (Penguin Books, February 1, 2005). Cover by Tal Goretsky Shadow of the Wind is the English rendering of  La sombra del viento, the 2001 novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and the first (though a standalone story sans cliffhangers) in his five book Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, translated by Lucia Graves (a serendipitously appropriate last name and, as it happens, the daughter of poet and historical novelist Robert Graves, he of I Claudius and The…

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Everyone Knows This is Nowhere: The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

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The Book of Elsewhere (Del Rey, July 23, 2024). Jacket design by Drusilla Adeline Can someone who has been alive for 80,000 years find wonder and meaning in every day life? Would such an immortal still be capable of surprise, still uncertain about his own motivations, still unable to come to grips with the meaning of it all? After experiencing centuries upon centuries of the death of others, and frequently inflicting those deaths, do you become oblivious to the fate…

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Not Fade Away: The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

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The Cemetery of Untold Stories (Algonquin Books, April 2, 2024). Cover artist unknown We live our life telling a story Of what we’ve said and done But lately you caused me to worry That you’re spinning fiction — Amanda Fish, “The Hard Way,” Kingdom What perhaps separates humans from our fellow creatures is the capacity, indeed the compulsion, of storytelling. Hardly an original observation on my part (cf., The Stortelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall), though for all we know the…

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The Great Escapes: James, Kindred, The Reformatory by Percival Everett, Octavia Butler, and Tananarive Due

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James (Doubleday, March 19, 2024), Kindred (Doubleday,July 1979), and The Reformatory (S&S/Saga Press, October 31, 2023 Percival Everett’s James is receiving a lot of well-deserved critical praise. As the title indicates (and the choice of the formal name a key trope), this reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn elevates the escaped slave Jim from supporting stereotypical character to leading man status. Fearing he is about to be sold by his owner and separated from his family, James becomes a runaway…

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We Are All Time Traveling Together: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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The Ministry of Time (Avid Reader Press, May 7, 2024) Perhaps second only to space travel, science fiction is obsessed with time travel and in particular the paradox that if we go back to the past, how do we affect the future; can we inadvertently or purposely alter our “present”? Sometimes the answer is that your somehow being in the past is essential to determining your present (e.g., Kindred by Octavia Butler where the protagonist travels back to antebellum South…

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