Monday, February 25, 2013
"The Word Bearers Omnibus"
The Word Bearers Omnibus (Anthony Reynolds)
This is three novels collected into one omnibus. I'm going to give each novel its own mini-bite-size book review - if you have an issue with this, take it up with Black Library; There's three full size novels in this omnibus, so you get three reviews here. More like small meal sized book review.blogspot.com!
Dark Apostle: I liked this book well enough, but I have two nits to pick, one big and one small. The small one is that the Word Bearers are about as evil as you get, and that's saying something in Warhammer 40k; I feel that the author goes a little overboard in trying to drive home that these guys are scum, to the point where they don't just light a candle, they light the BLOOD WICK on a BLOOD CANDLE, because, btw, they are evil. The larger issue is that these guys are chaos Space Marines, some of the baddest MFers out there, and when they invade an Imperial world and start fucking shit up, the loyalists send in..... the Imperial Guard? This is like sending in your local middle school's football team to play Green Bay. Even the chaos space marines comment on this, with one of them wondering what the hell the Imperium is thinking here. There's a little less tension than there could be because the Word Bearers never face credible opposition. These issues aren't huge, but the second one especially keeps the book at a good-not-great level, and it's perfectly skippable except that it sets up the next novel.
Grade: B
Dark Disciple: This is where it really picks up. There's a little bit of a refresher for those just joining us, and then it's straight into the ultraviolence. Most of the book is our heroes (is that the right term?) racing to unlock the macguffin from the previous book, backdropped against the Tyranids battling an Imperial fleet trying to stop them. Oh, and there's also a spoiler race hanging out up to no good (who ever is in Warhammer, though?). I really enjoyed this book - there's not a wasted page here, and once it gets going, I believe this may be the most violent novel I'e ever read. The amount of humans, space marines, tyranids, and race I can't name because it's a spoiler getting shot, stabbed, cut, blown up, burned, bludgeoned, and otherwise dispatched is truly impressive. I don't want to sound like a psycho and say I enjoyed it just because it's so violent, but it certainly is action-packed, and I'm not sure I can say more without sounding like a back of the book quote. (Although the back of the book quote is from somewhere called "Huntress Reviews" that yells right on its 1998 era front page that they ONLY GIVE OUT THREE TO FIVE STAR REVIEWS, so, Black Library, if you're one of the four people reading this blog, I'm sure I can come up with a better quote: Buy this omnibus or you're a dumb stupid moron!)
Grade: A
Dark Creed: Now with the activated mcguffin (spoiler alert), the Word Bearers plan is sprung. The first half of the book is setup and a big naval battle, which is nice and tense. In the second half, the Word Bearers finally (!) come up against loyalist Space Marines. I'm kind of amazed it took three novels for this, and unfortunately when it does come it's kind of an anticlimax. In fact, the second half as a whole is a bit weak, culminating in a not so fulfilling ending (there's one thing the Word Bearers do to save the day that had me wondering why they didn't just do it sooner). This is still a pretty good book - lots of 40k novels unfortunately have less than great endings, and judged against some of the ones I've read, this one is just a mild letdown - but I can't really say more without giving the whole plot away. Having come this far, it's nice to see everything get wrapped up. Dark Creed's not quite as good as the second book in the omnibus, but thanks to the cracking first half is better than the first.
Grade: B+
The omnibus closes out with a extra short story called "Torment" that wraps up the fate of one of the series main characters. It's not really nessessary reading, but it's a nice little bonus. Overall, this omnibus is pretty easy to recommend - $10 for three pretty good full-sized novels is nothing to sneeze at.
Overall grade: A-
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
"The King's Gambit"
The King's Gambit [SPQR I] (John Roberts)
Apparently the ancient Roman murder mystery is a fairly popular little sub-genre; there's like nine books in this series alone. Going into this first one, I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise - I think what leapt out at me most is how historically accurate the book is. This works quite well, although it does rob the book of a little suspense if you know much about Roman history (and I'd assume that's why you'd be reading the book in the first place), as well as an exciting climax. Still, I feel these are good tradeoffs for the book's believeability and accuracy, not to mention the "A hah!" moment when what you know is going to happen goes down. Honestly, I don't know if you'd get more reading this if you don't know anything about ancient Rome so you're completely surprised, or if you'd be better off with those moments where you know what's going to happen, but I enjoyed it either way.
Grade: B
Apparently the ancient Roman murder mystery is a fairly popular little sub-genre; there's like nine books in this series alone. Going into this first one, I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise - I think what leapt out at me most is how historically accurate the book is. This works quite well, although it does rob the book of a little suspense if you know much about Roman history (and I'd assume that's why you'd be reading the book in the first place), as well as an exciting climax. Still, I feel these are good tradeoffs for the book's believeability and accuracy, not to mention the "A hah!" moment when what you know is going to happen goes down. Honestly, I don't know if you'd get more reading this if you don't know anything about ancient Rome so you're completely surprised, or if you'd be better off with those moments where you know what's going to happen, but I enjoyed it either way.
Grade: B
Friday, February 15, 2013
"Klingon Bird-of-Prey Haynes Manual"
Star Trek: Klingon Bird-of-Prey Haynes Manual (Ben Robinson & Rick Sternbach)
I don't know what exactly a Haynes manual is, but what you've got here is a slim little tome about, yes, Klingon Birds of Prey from Star Trek. Wisely, it's light on technobabble and instead is full of charts and diagrams (if you've ever wondered where the bathrooms are on these starships, here's your answer!), and the book's delving into Klingon society is a nice side-trip. To come totally clean, I did fall asleep reading this book, but that was more because I was exhausted and not because the book is boring, which would make a great jacket blurb for the next print run.
Grade: B+
I don't know what exactly a Haynes manual is, but what you've got here is a slim little tome about, yes, Klingon Birds of Prey from Star Trek. Wisely, it's light on technobabble and instead is full of charts and diagrams (if you've ever wondered where the bathrooms are on these starships, here's your answer!), and the book's delving into Klingon society is a nice side-trip. To come totally clean, I did fall asleep reading this book, but that was more because I was exhausted and not because the book is boring, which would make a great jacket blurb for the next print run.
Grade: B+
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Nham's Bookshelf: February 2013
I thought it might be fun as a very occasional feature to show my shelves of to-read books. Currently it's a bit overstuffed thanks to Christmas and a trip to Barnes & Noble to pick up a book for K. Ham's college course where we also ended up with $100 worth of other books we saw. Due to a slight review backlog, the books appearing on this shelf may not actually start appearing here until next month, but eventually, every book on this shelf should end up reviewed here (or I'll die first, isn't that comforting?).
Shelf 1 (click to enlarge)
Sorry about the strong flash on this one. The three washed-out books to the right of Out Of Time are Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, Death: The High Cost of Living, and The Books of Magic.
Fiona is standing in front of Iron Curtain, Street Without Joy, and Like Wolves on the Fold, which I stole from my wife's shelf. I had to put her up here as my cats figured out how to scale the bookshelf up to the lower shelf she was on, smack her on the floor, and chew on her. Fiona, I mean; The cats chew on my wife, too, but she's too big to fit on my shelf.
The white envelope is a signed 8 by 10 of Spoony I'm going to have framed one of these years (yes, really).
Shelf 2:
The bracelet says "I (heart) BOOBS". I think my wife got it at a breast cancer fundraiser. I don't think that candy is safe to eat anymore.
Shelf 3:
I stole Discretion off my wife's shelf (man, I hope she's not reading this). Can you spot the Warhammer books? Probably, since most of them say "WARHAMMER 40000" on the spine. If you don't want to squint, they're The Founding, The Saint (both omnibuses), Angel Exterminatus, Titanicus, Soul Hunter, and The Joy Luck Club.
No, just kidding; Angel Extermantus is an Amy Tan book about four Iron Warriors meeting to eat dim sum and play mahjong.
NO, still kidding; hold the angry comments.
And that's it. I don't forsee this being a regular feature given that some of these books have been on here for years; hopefully in 2014 I'll be able to make another one of these and there won't be too many familiar faces.
Shelf 1 (click to enlarge)
Sorry about the strong flash on this one. The three washed-out books to the right of Out Of Time are Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, Death: The High Cost of Living, and The Books of Magic.
Fiona is standing in front of Iron Curtain, Street Without Joy, and Like Wolves on the Fold, which I stole from my wife's shelf. I had to put her up here as my cats figured out how to scale the bookshelf up to the lower shelf she was on, smack her on the floor, and chew on her. Fiona, I mean; The cats chew on my wife, too, but she's too big to fit on my shelf.
The white envelope is a signed 8 by 10 of Spoony I'm going to have framed one of these years (yes, really).
Shelf 2:
The bracelet says "I (heart) BOOBS". I think my wife got it at a breast cancer fundraiser. I don't think that candy is safe to eat anymore.
Shelf 3:
I stole Discretion off my wife's shelf (man, I hope she's not reading this). Can you spot the Warhammer books? Probably, since most of them say "WARHAMMER 40000" on the spine. If you don't want to squint, they're The Founding, The Saint (both omnibuses), Angel Exterminatus, Titanicus, Soul Hunter, and The Joy Luck Club.
No, just kidding; Angel Extermantus is an Amy Tan book about four Iron Warriors meeting to eat dim sum and play mahjong.
NO, still kidding; hold the angry comments.
And that's it. I don't forsee this being a regular feature given that some of these books have been on here for years; hopefully in 2014 I'll be able to make another one of these and there won't be too many familiar faces.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
"Iron Warriors Omnibus"
Iron Warriors: The Omnibus (Graham McNeill)
This omnibus collects one full-sized novel and a bunch of short stories about the chaos-aligned Iron Warriors. These are all by the same author, and all have the same main character, a guy named Honsou, and at times this feels more like the Honsou omnibus featuring the Iron Warriors. This isn't to say that the omnibus is bad, but it's not terribly thrilling either, and the second half of the book where it's all short stories can feel quite disjointed. One of the more interesting characters, a renegade Raven Guard, shows up for a few short stories, then is captured off-screen and never seen again, and Honsou's entire motivation for hating the Ultramarines is not present in this book, either taking place in other novels or not appearing in print at all. This isn't to say the book is bad, but it's entirely skippable; For the low price, you do get a lot of 40k violence, and that's just about the best thing I can say about this book.
Grade: C
This omnibus collects one full-sized novel and a bunch of short stories about the chaos-aligned Iron Warriors. These are all by the same author, and all have the same main character, a guy named Honsou, and at times this feels more like the Honsou omnibus featuring the Iron Warriors. This isn't to say that the omnibus is bad, but it's not terribly thrilling either, and the second half of the book where it's all short stories can feel quite disjointed. One of the more interesting characters, a renegade Raven Guard, shows up for a few short stories, then is captured off-screen and never seen again, and Honsou's entire motivation for hating the Ultramarines is not present in this book, either taking place in other novels or not appearing in print at all. This isn't to say the book is bad, but it's entirely skippable; For the low price, you do get a lot of 40k violence, and that's just about the best thing I can say about this book.
Grade: C
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
"The Crimean War"
The Crimean War: A History (Orlando Figes)
The Crimean seems like a difficult war to make an interesting book out of, since it basically is just (spoiler alert!) two battles and a long siege. It's to the author's credit that the book doesn't drag, mostly I think due to his careful scene-setting before the war itself starts. Unfortunately, his equally exhaustive post-mortem goes on a little long (decades after the titular war itself is over), but this is really the only nit I can pick. The end.
Grade: B+
The Crimean seems like a difficult war to make an interesting book out of, since it basically is just (spoiler alert!) two battles and a long siege. It's to the author's credit that the book doesn't drag, mostly I think due to his careful scene-setting before the war itself starts. Unfortunately, his equally exhaustive post-mortem goes on a little long (decades after the titular war itself is over), but this is really the only nit I can pick. The end.
Grade: B+
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