Shambling back into view...

It's been far too long since I last posted a book review. That said, here we go:

Read: August 2006
Title: World War Z
Author: Max Brooks
ISBN: 0307346609
Binding: Hardcover (though I read an ARC)

Brooks (son of funnyman Mel and probably quite tired of being parenthetically labeled such) writes this in the style of an oral history, presenting transcripts of eyewitness accounts arranged more or less chronologically from one of the first outbreaks of infection in a remote Chinese village through the liberation of America as the army of the living reaches the Atlantic Ocean. While staying true to the usual rules of the genre, he (I think wisely) doesn't even attempt to come up with a pseudoscientific explanation for whatever it is that first created the zombies. Instead, the focus is entirely on the events and emotions related by the survivors of the zombie war.

Truthfully, I found the book bloody brilliant. The disaster driving the story could easily have been smallpox or a new more virulent (perhaps airborne) strain of rabies or any one of dozens of other quite plausible threats. But zombies? Wow.

I highly recommend this book. But don't just take my word for it. Read this review written in the style of one of the stories and make up your mind for yourself.

Read: January 2003
Title: Only Human
Author: Tom Holt
ISBN: 1857239490
Binding: Mass Market
Pagecount: 343

The Plot: God and Jesus go on a fishing trip, leaving Kevin Christ (the younger begotten son) in charge. Kevin, bored, dinks about with the heavenly mainframe, resulting in a bit of soul swappage between various humans and a picture, a milling machine, a lemming, and a duke of hell. In addition, an alien lands and tries to make contact. Mild amusement, but not much hilarity, ensues.
I liked this one better than Wish You Were Here, but not nearly as much as Expecting Someone Taller or Who's Afraid of Beowulf. However, I did appreciate one completely throwaway scene in hell with a fan who has been damned because of his habit of telling authors that their earlier work was better. Was Holt acknowledging that this book is one of his weaker offerings when he wrote that part, or was he just telling his readers to sod off?

Read: January 2003
Title: The Compleat Enchanter
Author: De Camp, L. Sprague & Pratt, Fletcher
ISBN: bookclub edition
Other: Hardcover, 341 pages

I don't really see how they can justify the title when they admit right in the book that there are at least two Harold Shea stories that didn't get included (those extra stories can apparently only be found in The Complete Compleat Enchanter)
A group of psychologists figure out that by mathematically expressing the assumptions of another world (such as one where magic works) and holding the equations firmly in mind, a person can transfer himself to that other world. This leads to stories set in Norse myth, Spencer's Faerie Queen, and Ariosto's Orlando Furiosio (with a brief stop in Coleridge's Xanadu).
The writing has a strong pulp flavor, but the underlying rules of magic are fairly rigorously worked out. Combines college-level English literature with early high-school level emotional maturity. Like too much fantasy and sf, especially the early stuff, it seems aimed at arrested (or to be fair, actual) adolescents.

Back before I changed jobs and started working insane hours, I used to keep a book journal. Because I haven't had the time to generate any new reviews, I'll post a few of my older ones here.

Erin had a wonderful idea. So good, in fact, that I thought I would steal it.
Hopefully, sometime soon, I'll start posting short reviews of books I've recently read and movies I've recently seen. My stuff won't be as deep as hers, however, since I mainly read scifi (and the occasional stuff that merits the more hoity toity label of SF).