An Arthur C. Clarke story adapted for television: "It was intoxicating..."
One thing that can be said for Dean Koontz is that he likes to mix it up. His characters may tend to look similar (as what author’s don’t?), but he likes to experiment with his stories. 77 Shadow Street, I think, is unusual among his books in featuring quite a large cast of characters and constantly jumping the point of view from one to another. I wish I could say I thought the experiment was a great success, but I wouldn’t call it a total…
My grandfather was a self-educated man; it’s unclear whether he even made it to high school, yet he picked up a Masters Degree in Real Life via a voracious reading habit and thirty years in the Marine Corps. Of the many books he cherished, there was one he esteemed above all others: The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. This general survey of the greatest thinkers of all time was the only book he refused to lend me–as he simply could not bear to part…
Such genuine trust, so sweetly expressed, bears witness to an innocence in the human heart that endures even in this broken world and that longs to ring the bell backward and undo the days of history until all such trust would be justified in a world started anew and as it always should have been. There’s a large company of readers for whom a new Dean Koontz book is always cause for rejoicing. But more than that, a new Odd Thomas book is cause for…
"... he felt uncomfortable, as though that prescient Eye, years in the future, could with a wink summon the police. But it was separated from him by a barrier of time that only the natural processes could shorten. And, in fact, it had been watching him since his birth. You could look at it that way ..."
"... Wells has written a very clever story as to the condition of this planet in the year 802,701 A.D., though the two letters A.D. appear to have lost their meaning in that distant date ..."
I think I'll just start my review by saying that T. L. Hines's The Unseen is one of the most impressive thrillers I've read in some time—not just among Christian books, but among thrillers in general. I liked Hines' first novel, Waking Lazarus, quite a lot. This book—in my opinion—knocks it out of the park. It works on many levels, not only as a straight thriller, but as a cultural metaphor.Lucas, the hero, is not strictly a part of the normal world. He moves from…
"I’m on a crusade to prove that entertainment has value in itself, not just as a dose of sugar to help audiences swallow more important themes. Entertainment allows us to temporarily shut down our brains and waken later with emotions refreshed." - Hannah Sternberg
The young crime-fiction aficionado Patrick Ohl writes: I have a confession to make. I love action movies, especially all those movies from the 80s and 90s starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, or any one of their rivals with the general exception of Steven Seagal. Dumb and derivative they may be, but I have plenty of fun watching the creative action, well-choreographed fights, and terrible acting. But above all, my guiltiest pleasures are watching Jean-Claude Van Damme movies.I cannot explain this love of mine in any…
A novelty in publishing which has come in with the e-book, almost unremarked, is the e-story. Where we used to go to the pulp (and slick) magazines for our short science fiction, today we can often find such stories at low prices for downloading to our Kindles or Nooks. The downside is that, in the absence of traditional editorial apparatus, we're often not sure whether we'll be getting good work or vanity-published dreck."For Conspicuous Valor," by Darwin Garrison, is good work.
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