0 comments on "Merchanter’s Luck, by C.J. Cherryh"

Title: Merchanter’s Luck (Company Wars, #2)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Genre: sci-fi
Summary: The fateful meeting between the owner of a tramp star-freighter that flies the Union planets under false papers and fake names and a proud but junior member of a powerful starship-owning family leads to a record-breaking race to Downbelow Station–and a terrifying showdown at a deadly destination off the cosmic charts.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is a great book. I liked Cyteen, but I didn’t like a lot of the other Alliance-space novels as much. I just wasn’t that into the ideas behind them.

“Merchanter’s Luck” has a different feel from the Alliance-space novels, at least it does to me. It’s about a man alone on his merchant ship that comes to a station and meets a girl. It just so happens that the girl is from a powerful merchant family that numbers in the hundreds. They’re like a nation all their own. And he’s just one man.

After she bails him out of jail, he gets talked into taking the woman and a couple of her cousins on as crew. They basically take over his ship, which has him freaking out. Then they go to deliver a cargo they manage to get and the story starts.

This is a “classic sea tale,” but on board a spaceship. It features a protagonist coping with severe mental trauma who now has to deal with strangers invading his personal space. It’s not some socio-political treatise on the life and times of people in the future. It’s just a straight up story with interesting, likable characters and entertaining scenes of action. And maybe a little bit of romance.

Heroes & Villains at Amazon
0 comments on "Free copy “Pulse of the City”"

So my brother’s birthday is on the 21 of October, so I thought I’d give away copies of “Pulse of the City” until his birthday. Pick it up at Smashwords.com and enjoy.

Go grab a  free copy of YA superheroine novel “Pulse of the City.” Coupon Code: JD58M Expires Oct 21. http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/82109

Please read and review! Why? ‘Cause that would be awesome. Like Totally.

All Systems Red at Amazon
Fortress in the Eye of Time at Amazon
0 comments on "Exquisite Corpse, by Poppy Z Brite [horror]"

Title: Exquisite Corpse
Author: Poppy Z. Brite
Genre: horror, serial killer
Summary: After escaping prison, serial killer Andrew Compton heads for New Orleans to pursue the art of what he calls “the art of killing boys.” He joins up with a dissolute playboy who has pushed his art to limits even Compton hadn’t imagined. Together they set their sights on a young Vietnamese-American runaway, whom they cast as the perfect victim.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Definitely NOT for children or anyone with a weak constitution or any kind of gag reflex. Seriously, the stuff in this gets pretty heavy-handed and pushes the limits of everything that’s right in the world.

“Exquisite Corpse” is, at its base, a story about someone looking for a soul mate. Someone that is alone in the world and sees the people around him, but has no real connection to them in any emotional capacity. Oh, and he’s like Jeffrey Dahmar.

This is basically Dahmar (or a character startlingly like him!) somehow escaping from prison and going on the lam. He kills a bunch of people on the way, and somehow manages to find his way to the French Quarter in New Orleans (where the vampires and ghouls live, because that’s where I would live if I was a vampire or ghoul. Though honestly, I’d probably move to Alabama, which my nephew firmly believes is overrun by zombies and that’s why we don’t go there. Or Amsterdam.)

He meets a man that shares his morbid interests and they get together to have sex amongst the rotting corpses and plot to kill a somewhat wide-eyed street kid that was probably the most interesting character in the whole book (a male Vietnamese prostitute? Hell yeah.) From there, things get hinky.

All that said, I gave this book 4 stars because it was morbid and fascinating and sucked me into reading the whole thing. Not Brite’s best, but still a creepy “What-if” story.