Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

The Anubis Gates ★★★★★

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Title: The Anubis Gates
Series: ———-
Author: Tim Powers
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 353
Words: 162K

I’ve read this multiple times before and so I was wondering how this would turn out. After my recent experience with On Stranger Tides I had high hopes though and thankfully, this not only met those hopes but exceeded them.

Some old used up has-been magicians are trying to bring back the old gods of Egypt into our modern world (well the 1800’s through 1980) but with magic drying up like a raisin, things don’t quiiiiite go as planned. One of them gets possessed by Anubis and pretty much turns into a body switching werewolf. Another side effect is that time holes open up and people from our time figure it out and a dying tycoon takes advantage of it for his own purposes. Then the main character gets stuck in the past and has to deal with various other mad magicians who also cycle through time (they are trying to change history but their efforts simply make it happen, of course) and there is murder and mayhem and romance and lots and lots of weirdness. I loved every second of it. The magic was just different enough that it didn’t affect me like in Powers’ other books and for that I am grateful.

The only weak point is the ending. Once the main character accepts that he is now an obscure poet in a new body (that body switching Anubis guy causes a LOT of problems), Powers takes us through his life in about 10 pages and then right at the end, when he’s like 60 or something, (at least if I did my math right) he gets to live his own life. It was a very amateurish attempt to deal with Free Will and Pre-destination. That wasn’t the main point of the book, but it was a theme and I didn’t feel that how it was handled was very professional.

For a book that I am giving 5stars too it seems like I should have more to say. But since this is at least my 3^rd read, if not more, simply being able to enjoy the story and saying so is going to have to be enough.

This re-read has convinced me to seek out Powers’ earlier work, The Drawing of the Dark. From my experience, the further into the past I go with Powers, the better I like his stuff. DotD was published in ‘79 so if my hypothesis is right, it should be right up my alley and possibly the book I like best by him. Only time will tell.

I’ve included the original 1983 cover, because just like with Santiago, this image is what is burnt into my brain to be associated with this story. While some of the later covers look very nice and all, they’re just not the same garish awesome that I want. The little picture up above is clickable for a much bigger version for those who are curious.

★★★★★

The Anubis Gates (2006 Review)

Monday, February 06, 2023

Blue Ward - MTG 4th Edition

Sunday, February 05, 2023

Dates with Death ★★★✬☆

Title: Dates with Death
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 210
Words: 76K

Due to everything going on when I read this (see my “Personal” section of the January ‘23 Roundup and Ramblings post), I simply don’t remember a thing. So I’m including the table of contents and calling it good. The rating is based off of my previous Hitchcock reads and the fact that I can remember nothing bad about any of the stories.

TOC

THE DUSTY DRAWER – Harry Muheim

DRUM BEAT – Stephen Marlowe

THE USES OF INTELLIGENCE – Matthew Gant

THE QUEEN’S JEWEL – James Holding

THAT TOUCH OF GENIUS – William Sambrot

THE CROOKED ROAD – Alex Gaby

THE AMATEUR – Michael Gilbert

THE SINGING PIGEON – Ross Macdonald

JUSTICE MAGNIFIQUE – Lawrence Treat

GREEDY NIGHT – E. C. Bentley

A HUMANIST – Romain Gary

THE OBLONG ROOM – Edward D. Hoch

DEAD MAN’S STORY – Howard Rigsby

THE JANISSARIES OF EMILION – Basil Copper

CHINOISERIE – Helen McCloy

★★★✬☆

All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Saturday, February 04, 2023

PCP: The Meeting

The Meeting

There’s obviously waaaaaaaay more to our meeting than that, as we had met randomly on Xanga (a now defunct blogging platform) and our shared interest in a Saturday Sabbath led us to email and become friends. Still in the days of dial up so things went much slower. We never thought we’d have a chance to meet because of being on opposite sides of the US, but when the wedding of my friend “Stamps” occurred, we decided to meet in real life. I was with my group of Bibleschool Graduate friends and she was with her brother, so everyone was safe. It was almost literally love at first sight, but even that was tempered by the several years we had had of getting to know each other as friends. We had a rock solid foundation too, as we were both very dedicated Christians. So we began courting.

What came next? Well, I guess you’ll have to come back next Saturday for …..
* cue dramatic music *

The Land of Water and Fire!

All “Project Christmas Present” Posts

Friday, February 03, 2023

Author Index: Update

Back in November I began to work on my Author Index Project for the blog. I started out haphazardly but then decided to be a bit more organized about it. I started at Z and have been steadily working my way backwards. Once I finish I’ll go through and add all the new authors I’ve read since then and then try to update it on a monthly basis.

BUT!

I am finished with up to the M’s. What a chore! 79 authors with the last name starting with “M”. And only about half of them had their names as tags so I had a bleeding lot of work to do. The only other letter with more authors is “B” at 87. I am not looking forward to that already :-/

But rejoice with me. Things like this make me happy 😀

The Hastur Cycle (The King in Yellow Anthology #6) ★★★✬☆

Title: The Hastur Cycle
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #6
Editor: Robert Price
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 329
Words: 139K

Price appears to be a HP Lovecraft and Cthulhu buff and one of those bores who will kill a party quick as spit by telling you the historical importance of the works of HPL and why it matters. HPL did enfold some of the King in Yellow mythology into his works and thus, Price splits this book into stories directly about the King in Yellow and the rest are about Cthulhu with some of the KIY mythology names tacked on.

They were still good stories and I enjoyed them, but I wanted All the King in Yellow, All the time and I didn’t get that. So I waffled between giving this 3 or 4 stars and ended up coming down in the middle because my disappointment was perfectly balanced with my overall enjoyment.

This definitely felt puffed. Price includes a full story from both Chambers (who wrote The King in Yellow) and Lovecraft (who wrote Cthulhu) and while I appreciated that as it helped tie down the other stories by reminding us of why they were included. Saying a “random” name once in your story appeared to be enough to be included, so knowing how that “random” name actually tied into the mythology was good. But it didn’t take away from the fact that Price was including copyright/royalty free stories to pad the page and word count. Instead, I wanted all new stories and I didn’t get that.

Overall, between the “feels like padding” stories and the fact that this wasn’t strictly a KIY collection, I had to ding it. As a cosmic horror collection, I think it’s pretty good though. So there’s your mixed message for the day 🙂

★★★✬☆

Thursday, February 02, 2023

Mending Fences (Bone #17) ★★✬☆☆

Title: Mending Fences
Series: Bone #17
Author: Jeff Smith
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 22
Words: 1K

Gran’ma Ben reveals that Thorne is a lost princess, that the Lord of the Locusts is her deadly enemy and that war is now inevitable. We also learn that the Lord of the Locusts is just an underling to some invisible spirits who live in a deserted cave. Yeah, that is EXACTLY what I want to find out when I read a comic.

When I read the One Volume way back when, the turn into an epic fantasy storyline took me by surprise. Here, with the change in direction taking so long, I’m almost ready to close my eyes and take a nap while Smith drives us around that curve.

★★✬☆☆

All My “Bone” Reviews

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

Trouble for Lucia (Mapp & Lucia #6) ★★★☆☆

Title: Trouble for Lucia
Series: Mapp & Lucia #6
Authors: E.F. Benson
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Humorous Fiction
Pages: 281
Words: 81K

The final Mapp & Lucia book by Benson.

While I enjoyed this, I am at the same time glad it is over. Both Mapp and Lucia were so petty and small minded that it stopped being fun part way through it. In one instance Lucia is so taken up with presenting an “image” that she even freezes out her husband Georgie, who has been used to seeing her in private as she really is and loves that side of her. That was unpleasant to read about. Then Mapp. She becomes the Mayor’s Woman (a post to empower females) AND becomes a Town Councilor and her only goal is to stymie and undercut Lucia. The level of backstabbing and bickering jumps to a whole new level too.

There are still flashes of the humor from previous books but it wasn’t as prevalent. Definitely not a series I ever plan on re-reading and it really put the kabosh on me seeking anything else by Benson.

★★★☆☆

All My “Mapp & Lucia” Reviews

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

January '23 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels 13 ⭤

Short Stories 0 ⭤

Manga/Graphic Novels 2 ⭤

Comics 3 ⭤

Average Rating 3.19 ⭤

Pages 3238 ⭤

Words 1002K ⭤

The Bad:

Cat Magic – 2stars of cult programming masquerading

Bone #16 – 2stars of complete and utter filler

The Good:

Santiago – 5stars of re-read goodness

James and the Giant Peach – 5stars of just the right book hitting at the exact perfect moment.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

January has been one of the worst we’ve had in about a decade. Even worse than last year’s January when we both got covid and had to go to the hospital via ambulance.

I got a light case of food poisoning between Christmas and New Years. On New Years, Mrs B had the start of a crohn’s flair up that turned into the worst one she’s had in 10 years. Then she got vasculitus and we’re still dealing with that. Urgent Care visits, ER visits, dr visits, specialists being as unhelpful as possible, it all came together to make life as close to a living hell as we could imagine. While Mrs B is doing better now and her primary care doctor has started her down the right path of specialists to see and taken care of getting her out of work, Mrs B still has a good way to go before she’s healthy again. This has obviously been preying on my mind the entire month.

Also, Mrs B takes a monthly injection and her specialist has completely dropped the ball on getting the authorizations for that. Thankfully, since I am me, and expect the worst of everyone and every situation, I had prepared for just such an eventuality. But it means the safety cushion is now gone so I have to start building it back up again.

Outside of work, I pretty much retreated into our condo and outside of church, had zero social time in real life. I’m still pretty raw emotionally right now and it doesn’t take much to hurt me, hence the limited real life social thing. There’s no need to take it out on other people who are just asking an innocent question.

What this whole time has also shown me is that when I am in the middle of a situation, I have ultra-mega-tunnel vision. I can’t trust myself to look at the big picture or to think properly. Not being able to trust myself is very unpleasant and for an introvert like myself, extremely unsettling.

Because I’ve been so unsettled, my writing has gone up about 10,000%. I figured I was going to have many days in January where I had no posts and was kind of looking forward to doing nothing. But when I stress, I write. So I wrote every day here on the blog and actually already have half of February taken care of too. My personal journal writing became a daily thing instead of a weekly thing. The Cervantes Journal I showcased in November? I’m already 2/3rds of the way through it. It used to take me a year to go through one of those. I’ve also been reading my journal from my junior year in Bibleschool and I hope to be talking about that sometime in March. It’s slow going because as emotional as I am now, I was a daily rollercoaster of ups and downs in my 20’s. It’s making my Freshman Journal look pretty even-keeled!

Multiple rain and snow storms have also meant work has been unsettled and so it feels like every aspect of our lives is in turmoil right now. All small stuff, you know, but like I said, tunnel vision makes it hard to get perspective. Even with church I am dealing with some interpersonal stuff, which while not bad, is just one more thing that makes me go “Oh come on, I do not need to deal with this right now”.

I am tired and am not sure when I’ll get to stop being tired. And so as you can see, the words just spew out like a raging torrent.

Plans for Next Month:

Pretty much exactly like this month. No movie, can’t handle it at the moment (not that I’m not watching stuff. I’m actually watching quite a bit more to try to turn my brain off). So Magic Mondays, books, manga’s and comics, some more of the PCP (Project Christmas Present) and if I get really words’y, probably some silly double posting just to vent and get it all out.

Monday, January 30, 2023

The Currents of Space (Galactic Empire #2) ★★★☆☆

Title: The Currents of Space
Series: Galactic Empire #2
Authors: Isaac Asimov
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 165
Words: 69K

Rik is a victim of soicumstances! Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk….

I’m never going to re-read this, you’re never going to read it and I just don’t care. While a step better than the previous Galactic Empire book, that is because Asimov left out the romance angle. While the absence of something can make the whole better, it doesn’t mean that what is left is actually better. I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it now and I’ll say it again in the future, Asimov couldn’t write a full length novel to save his life.

His strength was in the short story, in the “Idea”. His anthologies are great. Some of the best SF out there in my opinion. But these Galactic Empire novels, well, they’re already on the dust heaps of history and sinking fast.

On a funny side note, every time I see the title all I can think of is Currants of Space. And I imagine The California Raisins in space suits playing their instruments, hahahahaa.

Thankfully, there is only one more book to go and I’m already girding up my loins to do battle. Conan AND Tarzan, combined, couldn’t do more loin girding that I am doing. And with that wonderful image, I shall say my goodbyes.

★★★☆☆

All of My “Galactic Empire” Reviews