Monday, February 10, 2025

Book Review: The Third Rule of Time Travel


Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She's built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time, to any point in the traveler's lifetime, and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it's not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.

After Beth's husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella, their only daughter, and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.

Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp. As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.

Saturday, February 8, 2025

Book Review: Elphie


Young Elphie is shaped and molded by the behaviors of her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She suffers ordinary childhood jealousies when her sister, saintly Nessarose, and brother, junior felon Shell, arrive. She first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz, which live adjacent to but not intertwined with human settlements, haunted by a Monkey and receiving aid from Dwarf Bears. She thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship, a possible lifeline from her tricky family life. And she gleans the benefits of an education, haphazard though it must be—until she arrives at the doors of Shiz University, about to meet the radiant creature that is Galinda.

Elphie is destined to be a witch; she bears the markings from childhood—most evidently in her green skin but more obscurely and profoundly in her cunning and perhaps amoral behaviors, as she seeks to make do, to slip by, to sneak out, to endure, and to aspire.

Friday, February 7, 2025

Book Review: Soul Taker


Amarantha is the last of her race, an ancient species that has lived among us for millennia, feeding on the life energies of humanity. Now enjoying a peaceful existence in a retirement community, she continues to consume just enough to survive. But Amarantha has made enemies throughout her long life and an ancient foe thought long defeated has returned and is out for blood, while a newer threat seeks to capture her for their own nefarious purposes! Now Amarantha must do everything in her power to vanquish her enemies and protect the life she has made for herself.

Soul Taker by Jeannine Acheson, Thomas E. Sniegoski and Valeria Burzo will be published on March 11, 2025. Mad Cave Studios provided an early galley for review.

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Book Review: X-Men - The Manga Remastered vol. 2


The world of the X-Men expands!

After escaping Genosha, the X-Men return home to find Professor X’s mansion completely flattened! Who in the world can stop the unstoppable Juggernaut?! Who is Bishop, the mysterious mutant from the future? Is there anyone who can stand against Apocalypse and the chaos he leaves in his wake? The X-Men have protected the innocent and saved the day before, but they’ve never faced challenges like these!

X-Men: The Manga - Remastered vol. 2 by various creators will be published on March 11, 2025. VIZ Media provided an early galley for review.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Book Review: Lorne


Over the fifty years that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of Saturday Night Live, he has become a revered and inimitable presence in the entertainment world. He’s a tastemaker, a mogul, a withholding father figure, a genius spotter of talent, a shrewd businessman, a name-dropper, a raconteur, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, the winner of more than a hundred Emmys—and, essentially, a mystery. Generations of writers and performers have spent their lives trying to figure him out, by turns demonizing and lionizing him. He’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Tracy Morgan), the “great and powerful Oz” (Kate McKinnon), “some kind of very distant, strange comedy god” (Bob Odenkirk).

Lorne will introduce you to him, in full, for the first time. With unprecedented access to Michaels and the entire SNL apparatus, Susan Morrison takes readers behind the curtain for the lively, up-and-down, definitive story of how Michaels created and maintained the institution that changed comedy forever.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Book Review: Dissolution


Maggie Webb has lived the last decade caring for elderly husband, Stanley, as memory loss gradually erases all the beautiful moments they created together. It's the loneliest she's ever felt in her life. When a mysterious stranger named Hassan appears at her door, he reveals a shocking truth: Stanley isn't losing his memories. Someone is actively removing them to hide a long-buried secret from coming to light. If Maggie does what she's told, she can reverse it. She can get her husband back.

Led by Hassan and his technological marvels, Maggie breaks into her husband's mind, probing the depths of his memories in an effort to save him. The deeper she dives, the more she unravels a mystery spanning continents and centuries, each layer more complex than the last. But Hassan cannot be trusted. Not just memories are disappearing, but pieces of reality itself. If Maggie cannot find out what Stanley did all those years ago, and what Hassan is after, she risks far more than her husband's life. The very course of human history hangs in the balance.

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Book Review: The Californians


It’s 2024, and Tobey Harlan, college dropout and temporary waiter recently dumped, steals from the wall of his father’s house three paintings by the venerated and controversial artist Di Stiegl. Tobey’s just lost everything he owns to a Northern California wildfire, and if he can sell the paintings (albeit in a shady way to a notorious tech bro) he can start life anew in a place no one will ever find him, perhaps even Oregon.

A hundred years before, Klaus Aaronsohn, a German-Jewish immigrant and resident of the Lower East Side, inveigles his way into a film studio in Astoria, Queens. In love with silent cinema, Klaus will restyle himself Klaus von Stiegl, a mysterious aristocratic German film director. In true Hollywood fashion, he will court fame, fortune, romance, and betrayal, and end his career directing Brackett: a radical, notorious 60s-era detective show.

Weaving between Tobey and Klaus is the story of Diane “Di” Stiegl: Klaus’s granddaughter, raised in Palm Springs, who claws out a career as an artist in gritty 1980s NYC. As America yields the presidency to a Hollywood cowboy, as Diane’s grifter father and free-spirited mother circle in and out of her life, Diane will reflect America’s most urgent and hypocritical years back to itself, uneasily finding critical adoration as well as great fame and wealth.