Posts Tagged ‘TA Pratt’

Poison Sleep put to Sleep, Enter Lovecraftian Bond Please

Jan 26th, 10 / 0 Comments

51l0-vYvmaL._SL160_ (1) So I blew through Poison Sleep in two days. What a fun book! And so much more satisfying than the first one was. I will be after the rest of this series this year for certain. This novel follows Marla Mason, lead sorcerer for the fictional city of Felsport, actually battling it out within her own city. (The first novel had her fighting some foe in San Francisco, something I always thought annoying. I mean why create a fictional city and then not even use it in your debut novel?)

The character development is more involved here and there is a feeling that the characters are not cardboard cutouts like I sometimes felt in the first novel. Either way a very enjoyable read.101869

For the next read I am going to do something that I don’t normally do, I’m going to re-read a  book I read about a year ago. Some of you you just “whoopty-dooo’d” me into next week, but honestly I do re-reads very rarely and usually only after several years.

But with the possible release of a third book in the fantastic Laundry series, I thought I should make the effort to re-read on of the funniest and funnest books that I have read, ever. The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. And this has me ahead of the game for the week starting book 3 inside week 2 is always a good thing.

Books, SciFi

Pride Prejudice and Zombies Finished

Jan 25th, 10 / 0 Comments

515P9ohF L._SL160_ On Saturday I finished the vastly popular Pride Prejudice and Zombies from Quirk Press. The basic premise is that of a Victorian England story of misunderstood love that everyone is familiar with thanks to the forced reading of the novel in high school and from the excellent BBC productions that have been produced over the years. There is one major difference however, the addition of a strange plague that has afflicted England’s corpses reanimating them into the “unmentionables” (zombies) “denizens of Satan” with a penchant for brains.

At first, I wasn’t too sure about this book and therefore left it alone for the better part of a year, but my resolve and curiosity finally gave way and it was added to the Queue. This was a really fun book to read and honestly was hard to put down. It was fun and funny and really kept me interested even though I knew the main plotline almost as well as the back of my right hand. 51l0-vYvmaL._SL160_

It is campy with lots of innuendos about England’s “balls” and I was happy to see Mr. and Mrs. Bennett still are the primary humor for the story. I won’t go into the prime differences as they are far too numerous to list. But just know that if you LOVE the original you likely won’t enjoy this version. But, for those of us that are casual fans or totally unfamiliar with the story it will be a really funny read. I can say that reading this has actually made me want to read the original because you realize how very good it really is. So I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Now for the next on the reading list is Poison Sleep by T.A. Pratt, book 2 of the Marla  Mason  series, I’m already about half-way through so another post on it should follow this week.

This means that I am still on tract for the 45 books this year. Yippee to me, prematurely at least.

Books, SciFi

Yes I Am Alive…

Sep 10th, 09 / 0 Comments

So I’m sure no one is wondering why the sudden drop off in posts in the last few months, but I will go ahead and lay it out for you anyway. My wife is currently pregnant. That alone meant the initial drop off of posts is justified, but then to complicate matters, she decided that we had to buy a house. Immediately.

So, for future reference, purchasing a house with a pregnant wife, using a loan broker that is not local, and an internet lender equals months of stressed induced insomnia, weight gain, and depression. And thus leading to a lack of motivation large enough to deny any hope of doing virtually anything, much less blog.

Thankfully, we finished the purchase of our first house on September 2nd and moved over the Labor Day weekend. This past Tuesday we went to the doctor and saw the first ultrasound of the new little one on the way. And a week ago today I started taking happy pills. So all in all, things are looking up much more than it had even a week ago.

For those of you that know me well let me give you an example: for the seven weeks it took us to purchase our new home I was only able to finish two books! That alone was almost more tragic to me than virtually anything else.

n49294 The book that I picked at through the majority of the process was Larry Niven’s Ringworld. For some reason I had never read this series, and I’m not certain as to why. Ringworld was a great read, a little slow at times possibly but still an awesome science fiction story.

The other book that I finished was the amazing start of the Marla Mason series  belgBlood Engines by T.A. Pratt. This was a real surprise read for me and provided a necessary escape when I needed it most. For that reason I killed it in just over a day. And it is worthy of the read too. Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series will love it. It’s violent and gritty and just damn good storytelling. A must read for any fan of the urban fantasy genre. I feel I should go ahead break bad news here though as I learned that Mr. Pratt’s publisher has opted to not pick up the fifth novel, ending the series unexpectedly on a cliffhanger.

n4724 I also finished reading my first Terry Brooks novel, I know don’t laugh. Magic Kingdom for Sale-Sold was a surprising little twist of fantasy that I read more because it was free on the Sony EBook store than for any other reason. It was a delightful little story, and although I am not certain that I will BladeItself-752023ever read the others in the series, this book was a good read. Brook’s tends to be long winded in the narratives but other than that this would make a nice introduction into the fantasy genre for young newcomers.

So next on the reading list will likely be Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, book one of the  First Law Trilogy. I have heard a lot about this series and his new book from the same world, Best Served Cold, and thought I should give it a shot.

Books, Personal