The Warbler Books

The Sword of Shannara – Terry Brooks

July 27, 2015 No Comments

The book of many tropes lumbered adverbially through its mire of repeating words, and languished in its easy use of one female character whose strength was in her utter obedience. As the Lord of the Rings fanfic slogged on, an adjectival thought bubbled descriptively to the surface, where its oily film reflected murky rainbows upon the backs of my eyelids, and with its final, shuddering death-throes, fizzled and threw its final cliché, weakly, at the already covered wall of my mind. A harsh opening, to be sure, but man was this an uninteresting listen. The reader was skilled, but there was very little substance to the story. There’s some mildly intriguing world building — long after the bombs, presumably, radiation created elves, gnomes, trolls, and magic — but it falls flat in the face of a seemingly endless cavalcade of tropes and cliches. A mysterious wizard shows up, and informs

The Iron Dragon’s Daughter – Michael Swanwick

July 14, 2015 No Comments

When he left his job, my old manager bequeathed to each of his subordinates a token by which to remember him. Though we’d only known each other for a few weeks, we managed to connect over various extracurricular interests, including (but certainly not limited to) video games and genre fiction. To my delight, not only was he steeped in fantasy and sci-fi, but he was practically a guru of the stuff. His gift to me was Michael Swanwick’s The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, along with a card declaiming it as his all-time favorite sci-fi/fantasy book. In the card, he wrote that his hope was that I’d fall in love with it the same way he had. I didn’t exactly fall in love with it, but it is definitely a read I won’t soon forget. Michael Swanwick has a way with words that completely transports you into his world. His writing hints

Dawn of the Algorithm – Yann Rousselot

June 25, 2015 No Comments

After reviewing Gary Whitta’s Abomination for Inkshares, I stayed in touch with them, hoping that they’d send some more awesome work my way. Inkshares’ own Angela Melamud fired back almost immediately, asking if I’d be interested in reviewing a book of poetry. I clicked the link to the book’s page, read a little about the book, and watched the short promotional video thereupon. Spliced clips from Akira — one of my all-time favorite films — with the poet reading his own Akira-inspired piece over them. Even though I felt (and still feel) unprepared to review a book of poetry, I accepted Angela’s offer, and started reading Yann Rousselot’s Dawn of the Algorithm that evening. That was four months ago. I finished the last poem today, standing in an overpacked train car, in a tunnel under the bay, as it hurtled along the tracks on its way to San Francisco. I am an

Buddha’s Brain – Rick Hanson & Richard Mendius

June 7, 2015 No Comments

After reading Altered Perceptions and writing that somewhat personal review, delving into my own thoughts and issues with mental wellness, the topic of mental health and depression began to rise with increasing frequency in my everyday life. A few days after I wrote that review, my girlfriend (a strong advocate for therapy and medication in general,) came home from work, afire with excitement and a new book recommendation for me. Buddha’s Brain: The practical neuroscience of happiness, love & wisdom, by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius, is that book. It’s a tall order — happiness. It’s easy (and perhaps something of a cop out) to say that it’s relative and fleeting, or that it’s immutable and just beyond our grasp, or even that it’s simple and inside us all along. These grandiose statements, inspiring, comforting, or disheartening as they may be, aren’t very interesting to me. The question of consciousness

The Great Bazaar & Brayan’s Gold – Peter V. Brett

May 31, 2015 1 Comment

You may recall my less-than-stellar review of the best-selling first novel in Peter Brett’s Demon Cycle series, The Warded Man. In that review, I complained that there were too many clichés, too many fantasy tropes that felt weak, too little that made the book really stand out as exemplary. There was a significant caveat to those statements, you may also recall. I emphasized that many of the issues I took with the book were most likely caused by the Graphic Audio production, which left me confused more often than not, and generally whitewashed the characters by making nearly everyone a boorish country bumpkin. Ultimately, I found the story beneath the sound effects, accents, and ear-splitting shrieks to be one that I knew I would enjoy if I’d read it myself. I haven’t read The Warded Man on paper yet, but I will, and soon. Why, you ask? A few

Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

May 27, 2015 No Comments

Okay. I don’t know why I waited so long to read this. The title stared at me from the glowing screen of my kindle for months, and I kept thinking I’ll get to it when I get to it and moving on, reading other books, the majority of which were excellent. But why did I wait so long for this one?! Ready Player One is Ernest Cline’s first novel, and it’ll be a tough act to follow. Fortunately, he seems up to the task with Armada, his forthcoming novel which appears to be about an alien invasion that reminds the intrepid protagonist of his favorite video games and sci-fi. Cline may have a certain theme he likes to work with, but that’s fine by me, given how much I liked Ready Player One. A love song to the 80s by way of Willy Wonka, Dan Brown, and Snow Crash, Ready

Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

May 18, 2015 3 Comments

Based on some cursory research of reviews of this book, it appears that those who’ve read it fall very neatly into two camps: absolutely hated this book, or were completely changed by it. Keep in mind that the “research” I conducted was looking at Love in the Time of Cholera’s Goodreads page and skimming the comments, most of which were either 1-2 stars, or 5 stars. Love in the Time of Cholera by Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is, if anything, an artful high-prose novel which desperately seeks to proselytize the Truth that Love is the single and solitary motivating emotion. It does so in a way that, truth be told, I found difficult to care about. Cholera is a timeline-jumping, whiny tale about unrequited love. Its cast is composed of adulterers, jealous husbands and wives, controlling parental figures; vacuous souls consumed with petty selfishness and greed which masquerades as

Out of the Mouth of the Dragon – Mark S. Geston

May 17, 2015 No Comments

In the weeks leading up to my departure from Seattle, I made a habit of stopping by Opheila’s Books, which was about a 10 minute walk from my apartment, almost every day. It smelled of old books, and was staffed by a funky, lovely lady and her friendly cat, which would loudly meow if you stopped rubbing him behind the ears. It dealt primarily in used books, so there ended up being a relatively regular rotation of titles coming through. One day, giddy with excitement, the lady informed me that she scored a great collection of old pulp sci-fi novels from the late 60s through the late 70s. Based on the covers alone, I selected three. Among these was Mark S. Geston’s Out of the Mouth of the Dragon, predominantly because its cover reminded me of a darker version of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The

Legion: Skin Deep – Brandon Sanderson

May 8, 2015 No Comments

In my last review I mentioned that right after reading Altered Perceptions, the final 20% of which was composed entirely of an early draft of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, I read Brandon’s (second) most recent novella, Legion: Skin Deep. (I say second there because in the intervening week I noticed he released another novella.) Legion: Skin Deep is the sequel to Legion — which I read, thoroughly enjoyed, and didn’t review — both of which feature the same rather peculiar protagonist. Stephen Leeds is a man with multiple personalities. The catch? His personalities aren’t quite hallucinations. And he uses their help to solve mysteries. Sound fun? It is! In the first book, he takes catches a flight to Israel to recover a camera that can (presumably) take photos of the past. It’s action-packed, fun, quirky, and leans heavily on one of the most unique character dynamics I’ve read

Altered Perceptions Anthology – Various

April 26, 2015 1 Comment

I heard about this anthology through the twitter accounts of the hosts of Writing Excuses, a podcast I’ve mentioned before on the Warbler, of which I’m rather fond. You’ll notice on that image of the cover that it was edited by none other than Brandon Sanderson, whose novels I’ve reviewed before, a few times. The anthology features the work of some 30 authors, alongside essays detailing their personal experiences relating to mental illness. I suppose that’s how I should have started this review. Altered Perceptions was compiled as a fundraiser, to help author Robison Wells out of a financial hole caused by four debilitating mental illnesses. Authors clamored for the opportunity to partake in this campaign, which ran on Indiegogo and raised over $120,000 toward the cause. I hadn’t heard of almost all of the writers from this anthology, and truth be told, I probably won’t be buying many

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