Mucho Reviews

We finally got internet access back late on Saturday so I’m trying to catch up on blogging. I won’t be able to get to every post I’ve missed but will get back to regular visiting tomorrow. Today’s post is going to be reviews of books I’ve read lately.

Mark C. Durfee: scent of the garden within
A jam packed collection of poetry, with nearly every inch filled with Mark Durfee's sometimes loving, sometimes bitter, but always accurate words about today's world. This is the third in a trilogy of poetical works, and is the largest in scale. Mark is one of our blogging buddies, of course. For more information, or to order a copy of this book, see Mark’s blog.

Gerald So: We Might Have: Poems
This is a collection of contemporary poems that I read for Kindle ebook. I'm not sure if it's available in other formats. I didn't intend to read this one so quickly. I just got it yesterday. But I read the first few while taking a break from TV and found them addictive. Most are short and pithy. But there's clearly a sound talent behind the words and a lot of feeling in them. I'm 52 now and these poems probably apply most strongly to younger individuals, in their teens and 20s perhaps, but I could easily put myself back in those days and recall when I felt just like this. Good stuff. Gerald blogs here.

Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall: Night of the Living Trekkies
Since this is somewhat of a "gimmick" book, I was afraid it would be awful. But I love Star Trek so I decided to give it a try. It was actually very well done and I enjoyed it very much. I'm very pleased to have been wrong about it.

The key to this kind of thing is good writing and this certainly qualifies. And clearly the authors knew their subjects, both Star Trek and Zombies, and Star Wars to boot. Lots of nice touches, like using episode titles for the chapter titles, and having the dialogue at places reflect the shows.

Kudos to the authors.

Robert B. Parker: Resolution
I didn't think it was quite as good as Appaloosa or Brimstone but it was enjoyable and I feel comfortable giving it four stars.

Christopher Rowley: Heavy Metal Pulp: Pleasure Model: Netherworld #1
I reviewed this on Goodreads and gave it 2 stars and just said I didn’t much care for it. I’ll say a little more here. First the positives. It was a very quick and easy read. It’s heavily illustrated and the illustrations are pretty good. It was well edited and the writing was certainly professional. However, I personally found it fairly full of clichés. I also think the book didn’t quite know what it wanted to be. It sort of acted like it wanted to be an SF, hardcore porn version of a noir detective novel, but the sex was very limited. The SF aspects were not explained well enough for us to clearly see the world in which the story was set. And the noir detective part was certainly rather standard. There was a lot of graphic language but the story itself seemed fairly tame. It also didn’t really have a clear cut ending to the immediate story line, and I tend to dislike that. Even a series book should have a clear cut ending, I think.
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