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Self-published Book Review: The Ghost Box by Mike Duran

Self-published Book Review: The Ghost Box by Mike Duran

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Ghost_box_coverI’d like to keep the monthly schedule going, so please keep sending me books to review — see the instructions here.

Reagan Moon is a paranormal reporter working for the Blue Crescent, an LA tabloid. He’s good at his job, and one of the things that makes him so good is he doesn’t believe. Oh sure, there are strange things out there: cults and designer drugs and brain hacks, but nothing supernatural. Nothing that can’t be explained. He hasn’t believed in much since his dad died, and his girlfriend’s, Ellie’s, death less than a year ago only made him more of a cynic.

But tabloids don’t pay a whole lot, and if a rich eccentric wants to pay him to talk to a medium, he’s game. The problem is that Klammer wants him to make contact with Ellie, hinting that she wasn’t incinerated in a freak accident but rather harvested for some grotesque purpose. In grand noir tradition, Reagan is soon dodging the police on suspicion of being involved in the death of said medium. Whether holed up with the Mad Spaniard and his daughters, Kanya and Cricket, in their Asylum for strange artifacts, or following a lead to the Spiraplex, a grand building/science experiment centered around a giant statue of Anubis, and built by Klammer’s old business partner and rival, Soren Volden, Reagan is constantly in over his head.

The Ghost Box is the first book in Mike Duran’s Reagan Moon series. I reviewed the second book, Saint Death, last year, but I figured I should go back and cover the first one. Mike Duran started publishing in the Christian market, writing novels such as The Resurrection and The Telling, both of which contained supernatural elements that don’t neatly fit Christian theology, for which he received blow back from many readers of Christian fiction. The Ghost Box is an effort to get outside the narrow restrictions that limit what he can do in Christian publishing. Mike Duran doesn’t hide his Christian worldview, but neither is he pushy about it.

In fact, it’s clear that Reagan Moon is not a believer in pretty much anything. And there’s no conversion experience in this book. Or rather, it’s not a conversion to Christianity so much as a conversion to hope, an acknowledgment that there’s more to this world than the physical, that our spirits do survive after death.

Of course, to get there, Reagan Moon first has to see it with his own eyes. Enter Rival’s Curtain.

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A Novel You’ve Been Waiting For Your Whole Life, and Then Some: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

A Novel You’ve Been Waiting For Your Whole Life, and Then Some: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

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The-Strange-Case-of-the-Alchemists-Daughter-Theodora-Goss-smallWhat if a genius decided to combine a fantastical feminist romp with a classic whodunnit of the mackintosh-wearing era… and tossed in some madcap Dickensian adventure?

You’d have yourself The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss, a 400-page extravaganza featuring five women you have dreamed of in your heart of hearts but have never seen on paper. Better yet, they’re the daughters of legendary characters from classic fantasy and science fiction.

When Mary Jekyll’s mother dies, the young inheritor of her meager estate discovers her father — Henry Jekyll himself — associated with a troubling league of gentlemen endowed with brilliant scientific ambition. With the help of Diana Hyde, a feral and headstrong spitfire (and daughter of Mr. Hyde), and a miraculous and unwilling scientific marvel named Beatrice, whom her revered father has tainted with poison from noxious plants, Mary embarks on a quest to discover just what her father’s band of brothers sought to accomplish.

Along the way, they enlist the help of an exemplary detective named Sherlock Holmes, his cherished assistant, Watson, and Catherine Moreau, daughter of the most barbaric and daring scientist of them all. Unless you factor Doctor Victor Frankenstein into the equation… whom, now that we mention him, happens to be the father of the last partner in crime, a kindhearted giantess named Justine who harbors a tale potent enough to warrant a novel of its own.

I appreciate Goss’s innumerable acts of kindness toward readers who have not yet read the classic works of literature to which she has paid tribute. (I confess, I am guilty as charged. Dear friends have told me in the past that I need to read Frankenstein, and I agree. It must happen). By doing so, Goss has eschewed the How Much Do You Know About This Facet of Nerddom? quiz routinely thrust upon so many innocent fans, allowing her readers to bask in the wisdom and whimsy of her characters instead.

Additionally, Goss honors the infamous gentlemen who have carried their stories through the years with the fierce compassion of an author reckoning with the staggering contradictions of the human species. And these men have to contend with their fair share of reckoning. That is, the ones who survive.

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Show: EPISODE 5: The Strand (Full Audio Drama)

Literary Wonder & Adventure Show: EPISODE 5: The Strand (Full Audio Drama)

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Show EPISODE 5 The Strand-small

I was three years old when Star Wars scorched movie screens with the force of a Death Star Superlaser. 2001: A Space Odyssey had already been out for almost a decade, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock syndicated for twice the duration of their original mission. Sci-Fi, in other words, had already conquered both the big and small screens. Radio shows had been long superseded by new technology. Yet here I am in 2017, thoroughly enjoying the Literary Wonder & Adventure Show, a retro audio show streamed to me via a wireless router, via a cell phone tower shaped like a palm tree, and ultimately from the workstation of the talented Robert Zoltan.

His latest offering, “The Strand,” is short, compressed tale, which may have gone without a single commercial break back in the old days. Nonetheless, it contains all the ingredients of compelling drama — passionate characters, a setting bursting with possibilities, high stakes, and a very clever literary device which underpins it all.

The milieu of The Strand is only quickly sketched in, but it suggests a multiverse of planets, their populations going about their workaday existences ignorant of shadowy organizations doing battle to control the fate of them all. Agents of these organizations can travel between the dimensions. Yet agent Guy, the protagonist, is preoccupied with a more personal concern: in his travels, he met and fell in love with local girl Hope, and soon thereafter, they were forced apart into different planes. Now, Guy can only speak to Hope using a jury-rigged machine via a Strand — a wispy, elusive thread of electricity or astral energy or whatnot.

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An Original and Unpredictable Interstellar Romp: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

An Original and Unpredictable Interstellar Romp: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

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Defy the Stars Claudia Gray-smallThe action starts right away in New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray’s latest novel, Defy the Stars. Teenage fighter pilot Noemi Vidal only has twenty days to live, since she has volunteered for a suicide mission to protect her world. But time runs out when evil mechs – robot warriors from Earth – burst through the intergalactic Gate and start shooting at Noemi’s squadron while they’re still training.

One of the deadly machines attacks her best friend, Esther, who was never supposed to see combat. Noemi rushes to defend her and successfully beats off the mech. Still, Esther will die if Noemi doesn’t get her medical care fast. The only prospect of first aid is an enemy starship drifting nearby, abandoned during a previous assault.

What Noemi doesn’t know is that Earth’s most advanced mech, Abel, has been trapped in that mothballed hulk, all alone, for thirty years. Docking her fighter in the ship from Earth, Noemi reactivates its systems and frees Abel, whose first priority is to kill her.

A Young Adult novel, Defy the Stars will please both young and old science fiction fans with an original, engaging, and unpredictable interstellar romp. In the universe Gray has created, Earth has degenerated into a dystopian, post-apocalyptic husk, and its citizens are desperate to immigrate to Noemi’s lush colony world, Genesis. Fearing that humanity will only repeat its past mistakes and ruin Genesis’s environment just like Earth’s, the authorities on Genesis have long sent warriors like Noemi to prevent such an influx. Accordingly, when Noemi learns it’s possible to destroy the Gate between the two star systems, she seizes the chance to do so. Acquiring the necessary tools, however, requires her not just to partner with Abel, but also to become the first Genesis citizen in generations to pass through the Gate and visit other star systems, where she witnesses the plight of others.

In addition to Noemi’s mission to destroy the Genesis Gate, her relationship with Abel drives the book forward. Love stories often take two people who are supposed to hate each other, throw them together, and turn the screws until love blooms. Gray’s version goes beyond this, taking two sworn enemies in an interstellar war and adding an even more unlikely twist: What if the protagonist’s love interest isn’t recognized as a person? What if he’s only supposed to be a machine?

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The Man of Legends by Kenneth Johnson: Q&A with the Author, Part 1

The Man of Legends by Kenneth Johnson: Q&A with the Author, Part 1

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Man-of-Legends-Cover-Kenneth-Johnson-Q-and-AThe Man of Legends is now available at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

The title of the novel The Man of Legends refers to its central character and one of its numerous narrators: an enigmatic figure with a history stretching back to the ancient world. But the title can also apply to the book’s author, Kenneth Johnson. Although not as much a household word as Gene Roddenberry or Rod Serling, Johnson has left an indelible mark on a generation who grew up watching the shows he produced, developed, wrote, and directed: The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk, V: The Original Miniseries, Alien Nation…

Basically, for people of my generation, Kenneth Johnson was our secret Gene Roddenberry, our hidden-in-plain-sight Rod Serling.

The Man of Legends feels like a declaration that Johnson’s legacy is no longer secret or hiding. Although he’s published novels before (most recently V: The Second Generation, a 2008 continuation of the 1983 miniseries), The Man of Legends is an original story that reads as a collation of the humanism in Johnson’s television and movie work. If a story about a cursed man forced to wander the world, helping people along the way even if it backfires on him, instantly calls up Bill Bixby as David Banner in The Incredible Hulk television show, it’s no coincidence. Johnson even tucks in a few direct references to the TV series. (“Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”)

But The Man of Legends isn’t a retread. It’s a summation and expansion. This is unmistakably the work of the author who brought emotional power to David Banner’s lonely quest to be the best person he could while coping with an unconquerable rage and a relentless pursuer. But it’s also unmistakably the work of the author who crafted an anti-fascist epic about a panorama of people struggling against an abusive power (who also happened to be zoophagous alien reptiles). If you recall Kenneth’s Johnson’s brand of humanism and science-fiction excitement from his television work, The Man of Legends may be the best new novel you read in 2017.

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In 500 Words or Less: Revenger by Alastair Reynolds

In 500 Words or Less: Revenger by Alastair Reynolds

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oie_3005748uG2KzsYG (1)Revenger
Alastair Reynolds
Orbit (544 pages, $15.99 paperback, $9.99 eBook, September 2016)

Alastair Reynolds is one of the few authors I’ve read who manages to draw me into a standalone novel, immerse me with compelling characters and a complex world, and leave me begging for a sequel by the time I read the last page. He accomplished it with Terminal World. Then he did it again with House of Suns. And with my latest Reynolds read, Revenger, I sat back again and demanded out loud, “But wait – what happens next?!”

No one should be surprised when I say that Reynolds is a masterful storyteller. If you’re a fan of science fiction, you’ve probably at least heard his name – and if you haven’t, go pick up one of his books right now. Probably the best part about his writing is that it’s very much hard science fiction, but isn’t overly detailed or cumbersome the way I find a lot of hard SF writers to be (I lean way more toward soft SF and fantasy).

Reynolds’ work is always fast-paced and interesting, weaving the detailed science with just enough of the fantastic to add that sense of wonder and a perfect balance of action and character work. Revenger, for example, has the pacing of Firefly or Star Wars, so that even as he’s explaining the steampunkiness (is that a word?) of the starships and personal technology in the novel, you’re never mired in an info-dump or bored by too much scientific description, just to understand how everything works.

Revenger is particularly good because it’s a very human story: it focuses on two sisters who want to escape their homeworld and sign on with a starship crew not for pure escapism like Luke Skywalker, but specifically to earn money to help their father’s struggling business. What begins as a story of adventure and wild-eyed wonder as these sisters get to know their very first crew becomes a dark and harrowing tale almost immediately, as Reynolds takes his protagonists through multiple twists and unexpected locales.

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Smugglers, Alien Vampires, and Dark Dimensions: The Best of C. L. Moore

Smugglers, Alien Vampires, and Dark Dimensions: The Best of C. L. Moore

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The Best of CL Moore-small The Best of CL Moore-back-small

The Best of C. L. Moore (1976) was the sixth installment in Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series. After taking a break from the fifth installment to let J. J. Pierce edit, Lester Del Rey (1915–1993) returned to edit and give an introduction to this volume.

You may recall that Dean Ellis (1920–2009) did the cover art for the first four installments in the series with Darrell Sweet handling the fifth, though still in the style of Ellis. But the fabulous cover art of The Best of C. L. Moore was done by “The Brothers Hildebrandt” (twin brothers Greg [1939–] and Tim [1939–2006]) and represents something of a departure from the artistic precedence of Ellis and Sweet. It’s a portrait of the main character in Moore’s story, “No Woman Born.”

Catherine Lucille Moore (1911–1987) was one of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers of the Twentieth Century. Writing under the name C. L. Moore, she was one of the first truly successful women writers in genre fiction, gracing the early pages of Weird Tales and Astounding Stories. She was also was famously married to another well-known sci-fi writer, Henry Kuttner (1915–1958), whom she collaborated with on many stories. However, all but two of the tales in The Best of C. L. Moore were written before her time with Kuttner. As with the previous books published while the featured author was still alive, Moore has a small afterword at the end.

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Half Past Human by T.J. Bass

Half Past Human by T.J. Bass

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‘Civilization is too high a price to pay for survival’

Moon from Half Past Human

I don’t know what made me buy Half Past Human (1971) by T.J. Bass fifteen years ago. It was one of those books I had always seen on the used book store shelves, but nothing about the cover (the basis on which I tended to buy unknown books back then) made me go “Gotta buy it.” Something on the back cover, though, must have caught my attention that day, because I plunked my money down on the counter of Red Bank, NJ’s (sadly, long gone) Book Pit. I started reading it on the ride home, and before I knew it I was a third of the way done. A week later I made a circuit of used book stores to get my hands on the sequel, The Godwhale (1974).

Initially published by Ballantine, Gollancz released the duology in 2014 as part of its Masterworks collection. If you’re a sci-fi reader of a certain age, or a student of the genre, you’ll recognize most of the books in the collection, definitely most of the authors. But with only two books published nearly fifty years ago, I wonder how many know Bass’s name today. Which is a shame.

The fear of overpopulation was immense in the late sixties. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb promised that if population growth was not brought under control, humanity faced oblivion. Regular famines, overcrowded cities, a polluted environment, and dwindling natural resources seemed to be our future. Science fiction was examining the problem with books like Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (1966) (the basis for the Charlton Heston sci-fi noir Soylent Green) and John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar (1968). This fear set the stage for Bass’s vision of Earth crushed by the weight of three trillion people.

In this, the third millennium, Earth was avocado and peaceful. Avocado, because all land photosynthesized; and peaceful, because mankind was evolving into the four-toed Nebish — the complacent hive citizen.

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You Deserve a Great Mummy, So Here’s My Favorite: The Mummy ‘59

You Deserve a Great Mummy, So Here’s My Favorite: The Mummy ‘59

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Mummy-1959-US-posterMy short take on The Mummy unleashed to theaters last week as the start of Universal’s “Dark Universe” franchise gamble: It’s an embarrassment for everyone involved. Except maybe Sophia Boutella as Princess Ahmanet. She deserves a real mummy film, not a schlock Tom Cruise action picture only interested in selling later movies. The Mummy ‘17 is ugly, confused, stupid, and boring. North American moviegoers decided to watch Wonder Woman again rather than see Universal trash its own legacy: The Mummy opened to a glum $32 million domestically, putting it almost $25 million behind Wonder Woman’s second weekend. However, The Mummy is targeting international revenue (one of the reasons Universal allowed the criminally miscast Tom Cruise into the room), and so far it’s grossed $141 million in foreign markets. The “Dark Universe” will proceed, but under a bleak curse.

Okay, I’m finished with that movie. Healing time. I shall now read from the Scroll of Life, brew tana leaves, and bring back the sleeping Gods of Egypt with what I consider the high point of eighty-five years of movies about the undead of the Nile River Valley: 1959’s The Mummy from Hammer Films Productions.

The Alchemical Feat of The Mummy ‘59

“The Mummy made by Hammer Films is, in my opinion, one of the best films of its kind that British cinema has made.” — Christopher Lee

Because it stands in the shadow of Hammer’s first two Gothic hits, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula/Horror of Dracula (1958), it’s easy to gloss over The Mummy as merely a good Hammer horror film rather than one of the greats. But since it debuted on Blu-ray in the U.S., I’ve come to the realization I prefer The Mummy ‘59 to the famous 1932 Boris Karloff-Karl Freund film. I didn’t believe this was possible: The Mummy ‘32 is on my shortlist of Universal’s best classic monster movies. But watching the Hammer version in a pristine Hi-Def restoration, the vibrancy of its colors and designs rescued from dull DVD transfers, I had to face my emotions honestly and embrace it as My Favorite Mummy.

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In 500 Words or Less: Dogs of War by Jonathan Maberry

In 500 Words or Less: Dogs of War by Jonathan Maberry

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oie_16223419LR6sdDWQDogs of War (Joe Ledger #9)
Jonathan Maberry
St. Martin’s Press (544 pages, $10.99 paperback, April 2017)

When I was a kid (and into my late teens/early adulthood), I grew up watching the series 24. Right from the Season One premiere on Fox, my parents and I were hooked, and watching became one of my family’s few rituals. Yes, 24 was a sometimes-ridiculous show and not without its problems, but what I loved was how real it was. This was the first program I watched where the hero really showed the effects of the terrible things he went through, and how he overcame personal and emotional hurdles to somehow save the day. (And we all hope Jack Bauer manages the same in Russian prison, until Kiefer Sutherland returns to the role).

The above is one of the main reasons I’m such a fan of the Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry, and have waited with baited breath for each sequel since I first tore through Patient Zero like the book’s pathogen-infused zombies. Much like 24 was about way more than Jack Bauer, this series is about way more than its main protagonist, Joe Ledger, and is filled with a host of deeply-imagined heroes and villains. So the short version of this review is essentially two points: first, that if you’ve never read this series, you really need to; and second, if you’ve read even part of the series and you’re worried that it might lose steam nine books in, your worries are needless. If anything, each book is better than the next, which is a feat I’ve only encountered from one other author besides Maberry.

Every Joe Ledger novel features some sort of established horror premise – like vampires, zombies, and even Cthulhu – and gives it a mad science twist, where the cause of this horror is genetic engineering, pathogens or computer software. Dogs of War actually opens with a warning from Maberry that the drones and nanotechnology he discusses are based on projects that already exist or are in some stage of development, which possibly makes this novel the most horrifying of them all.

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