The Literary Lucy

I really wanted to like this book.  It seemed like it was right up my alley.  But it turns out that alley isn't a place I have any interest in going. Red Ben is a mystical creature living under a forced peace with humans.  He is content to sit and drink and mourn over the loss of his most recent relationship when an old enemy moves against him. The interruption barely upsets Ben because of the aforementioned peace but the enemy's taunts that Ben no longer enjoys protection because another like him has awakened gets his full attention.  Soon he is desperately trying to track down a former goddess hell-bent on revenge while fending off his old enemy and a coven of dangerously powerful witches who have kidnapped his ex-girlfriend. I think the major problem I had while reading this is that there are no real female characters existing on their own merits without being used as props for the male protagonist.  Atiya  gets treated as a Mcguffin or an object of...

I have really enjoyed R.S. Belcher's previous works The Six-Gun Tarot and The Shotgun Arcana.   I was so excited to see a new novel by him, even if it was an urban fantasy instead of weird Western.  I have to say, though, I was a little disappointed in Nightwise. Sorcerer Laytham Ballard is not a nice man.  He has lived most of his life for the thrill of magic, willing to do anything to chase the title of "Best."  But when his dying friend asks him to hunt down a Serbian war criminal, Laytham agrees even though it will gain him nothing.  The search leads him through nasty supernatural creatures, run-ins with the Illuminati, and an age-old secret hidden in the very fabric of America. This was just a shade too derivative of the Hellblazer series, the Harry Dresden novels by Jim Butcher, or any number of badass-but-tortured antiheroes.  It's still a fun read but I was looking for the sheer newness of his Golgotha series.  Still, his world-building i...

This is the debut novel of Annalee Newitz, who is most well-known for being a founder of io9.com and now is a contributor to Ars Technica. After a drug she sells turns deadly, pharmaceutical pirate Jack immediately begins research on synthesizing a cure while trying to prove that the company who holds the legal patent knew about the drug's dangerous side effects.  Meanwhile, Paladin, a fresh-off-the-line military AI robot is assigned to track down and eliminate Jack.  Paladin finds the human it is paired with, a former cop named Eliasz, more fascinating than the mission, however, but is troubled by the knowledge that it is not in control of its own programming. The novel has very grand ideas and some solid world-building courtesy of Newitz's extensive scientific and technological research.  It feels like we are one good global catastrophe away from this as a future but that very realism starts to work against it.  The future this paints is one of environmental a...