Book Reviews
Fighting Patterns of Kuntao and Silat
There is a distinct dearth of books on Liu Seong Gung Fu in general and Liu Seong Kuntao in particular. While there are a few, the art of Willem Reeders remains elusive and, for the most part, available only through in-person instruction from schools scattered around the country. Reeders first came to the East... »
Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse
League Entertainment‘s latest offering in the realm of innovative fiction is Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse. Co-authored by Deanna Knippling and “Dante Savelli,” the novel is a deliberate parody and homage to the Choose Your Own Adventure genre that became popular in the 1980s. The beauty of this particular parody, however, is that it... »
Dead Beyond the Fence
What a wretched story this is. I do not say, “What a wretched book this is,” because it isn’t terrible. Brian Kaufman’s writing, while burdened with too many overwrought metaphors, is at least competent, and the book has been properly edited. As a construction, as an example of the craft of writing, it is... »
The Road
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a relentlessly depressing book. Written in a broken, personal diary style that is intended to make it more powerful, the text becomes less so because it seems gimmicky. Still, this tale of survival in a post-apocalyptic world held my attention when I read it, driving me on for page... »
Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead
Having never read any Indiana Jones novelizations before, I had no real preconceived expectations for Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead. I read it for one simple reason, really: it was written by Steve Perry, one of my favorite authors and creator of the Matador series (which begins with The Man Who... »
Death Star
Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry is not a Star Wars novel that just happens to be written by Reaves and Perry — it’s a novel by Reaves and Perry that just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. That’s an important distinction, and may explain why fans of Perry... »
Batman: Dead White
I’m a big fan of John Shirley’s other work, especially Crawlers and Demons — though rarely have I been struck, in reading a writer’s efforts, with quite so palpable a feeling that I am being informed of that writer’s personal details. In Shirley’s case, though I know nothing about him except what I have... »