Kilcannon

A non-character doesn't do anything for four hundred pages. Some stuff happens around him. He goes to meetings about bridges. Pointless and aimless.

Yikes. This is some crazy, vile, antisocial, fetishistic exploitation stuff.

TNT should hang out with Golgo.

And I'm going to have to collect this whole series.

This was an odd one. It took just enough chances to feel like more than a large-scale episode. It pushed the characters in ways that threatened (although ultimately didn't change) the status quo, and it read, at times, more like fantasy than sci-fi.

I liked it.

I can't stop reading Palahniuk, even though the awesome is always undercut by lots of dumb, and there's always some repetitive stylistic gimmick that is annoying as hell.

Have you always thought that First Doctor stories would be better if they had more rape and disemboweling? Do you want to read a book where the Doctor appears for maybe 20 pages and does nothing? Then this is the book for you!

The language is a beating, serving no purpose other than ... no, just no purpose.

The characters aren't characters, and the story is no story. Borders on tone poem territory, in prose.

A slog all around.

Pretty weak. And the story barely holds together.

I gave it a whole extra star just for having a Fred Olen Ray reference in it.

I had four stars worth of fun reading this, but it has enough thematic and story problems that I should really give it less.

The female characters are treated pretty shoddily (by the author, I'd say, moreso even than Jack Barron), and good ol' Jack is waaaaay too slow on the uptake in figuring out things that are obvious to the reader as soon as they come up.

But the language is a riot, the rough racial content is for good ends, and it's a good moral outrage romp in a “Network” kind of way.

Plus I always enjoy outdated futurism.

Kikuchi is bugnutz crazy.

Gratuitously meta and packed with continuity fanservice, there's really no reason for me to like this. Plus there was some out of place bathroom humor, which usually puts me off.

But I enjoyed seeing the new Doctor Who books tied in with the audios and the old lines of books, and Russell seemed to be having fun with it in a way that few of the modern authors have. And it's a couple of days after Christmas, so I'm feeling generous.

Because an extra star from me on a Goodreads review is totally a big deal.

The second and last Una McCormack novel I've read. How someone manages to make a book that's so short and light such a boring slog, I'll never know.

Dumb. I haven't seen the movie, but it will have to have a lot of style to make up for this lack of substance.

Shouldn't feminists hate this book?

It was better than I expected. I mostly liked the Nick characterizations before the story really got going.

I should probably only give it three stars, but it was compulsively readable and I've been star stingy lately.

Although maybe I should deduct a star for it being yet another book about writers.

Good enough for what it is. Thankfully didn't gush too much over Martin and Lewis, but then was surprisingly tepid on Abbott and Costello. And Maltin has a serious hate-on for Zeppo, who never hurt anyone.

It caused me to add a bunch of stuff to my watchlist.

The gimmick/gag didn't really work for me. I think reading this in one sitting is vital to enjoying this book.

Moments of greatness, but I think it ended up less than the sum of its parts.

Ending dropped the ball a bit. But intriguing all around.

Some crazy pulp with a weird and unexpected religious message adding to the general nuttery.

Story was a bit sparse and not dramatically satisfying, but Sam Kieth brought his A-game to this one.

Now I get why people love Robert Silverberg.

Give me this kind of world building over the over-expository bloat that's popular these days. So many questions left unanswered, and that's perfectly satisfying.

I almost gave it five stars, but a few minor missteps and an ending that didn't quite connect with me, kept me from it.

Not bad for what it is, until it got just a bit too stupid at the end.

Wow, what a bizarre, amoral, nationalistic screed. It has all the subtlety of a Chick tract.

I doubt I'll ever give something with Sam Kieth's art less than three stars.

OK, so it might be a little trite and some of the staging is a little student-theater precious. But it's so damned heartfelt and sentimental that it's impossible to dislike. This is basically just a love note to a friend who left too soon, and it beats any phony baloney tribute I can imagine.

The attempt to capture the development of language and human cognition was admirable, but it may be a failed experiment. Action was frequently difficult to follow as a result. Still interesting.

I'm smart and read smart things.