With hints of the Hunger Games, Battle Royale, Ender’s Game and the guise of an educational setting, Pierce Brown’s science fiction novel, Red Rising, the first of a trilogy, is strongly written and completely engrossing. I’ll admit it took me about the first third of the book to get really hooked on the story,…
Category: The Book Shelf
The Trap (2015) – Melanie Raabe
There is an immediacy to Melanie Raabe’s debut novel, The Trap, which sees its English release this week, via House of Anansi Press here in Toronto. Translated from German the captivating tale draws the reader into the world that she has created, much as her character, author Linda Conrads, is drawn into the situations…
Star Wars: Bloodline (2016) – Claudia Gray
Claudia Gray who wowed me with her young adult Star Wars novel, Lost Stars, returns to that galaxy, far, far away, this time centering on a story about Princess Leia Organa. Set twenty years after the destruction of the second Death Star at the Battle of Endor, and ten years before the events of…
Illuminae: The Illuminae Files Vol. 1 (2015) – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
This week’s trip to the Book Shelf found me reading a fantastic science fiction novel, that keeps it’s humanity with a pair of wonderful characters, Kady Grant, and Ezra Mason. Kady is not having a good day. She’s broken up with her boyfriend, Ezra, and on the same day, her planet, which is housing…
Just After Sunset (2008) – Stephen King
So as I bounced back and forth about what I wanted to read next, I decided it was time to pick up another Stephen King collection. Short stories can be strange things, and collections of them can be just as odd. They either work together or they don’t, and some stories can be hits,…
Star Trek: Triangle (1983) – Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
There is one thing, and one thing only that is good about this Star Trek novel. It’s the last one written by Marshak and Culbreath. Once again, this one seems as nothing more than an excuse to write some shoddy fan fiction. One could argue that all the Star Trek novels are fan fiction,…
Star Wars: Dark Disciple (2015) – Christie Golden
The new Star Wars expanded canon universe is well on its way to being very impressive, and it’s book like Golden’s Dark Disciple that are doing it. Based on a set of unproduced scripts from the Clone Wars series, the book explores a pair of interesting characters and expands on their lives, their emotions,…
Star Trek: Black Fire (1983) – Sonni Cooper
It’s time for more non-canon journeys with the stalwart crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise this week as I dove into the next Star Trek novel in the Pocket Books collection. Set after, or towards the end of, the original five year mission, but before the events of the first film, this one literally starts…
Leonard (2016) -William Shatner with David Fisher
It was just over a year ago, that Leonard Nimoy passed, and like many people around the globe, I was profoundly affected by it. I grew up with Leonard, well not literally, I grew up with his most famous character, Mr. Spock on my television screen, in the books I read, and every few…
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) – Vonda N. McIntyre
Vonda N. McIntyre who had previously written the Trek tale, The Entropy Effect, which is given a bit of a reference in this one, adapts the screenplay for the second film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan into novel form. There are some nice differences, changes in dialogue and expanded scenes and characters…
The Mind Reels 