ISBN: 0142402532
I purchased this book.

Matilda is the classic story of an incredible smart little girl who develops telekinesis and uses it, not to improve her own horrible home life, but to help others. Don’t know it? Perhaps you should.

The differences between the book and movie versions are minute, but present. The movie is more Americanized and the story is smoother, but it lacks one of the books very strong points—a higher level of vocabulary.

In Matilda Dahl (also the author of The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches and James and Giant Peach) presents his typical style, pitting a child against horrible adults who actively hate or seek to do the child harm. The title character lives in a home that not only doesn’t appreciate her high level of intelligence, but ridicules it because her family is intimidated and scared by it. Matilda’s family is emotionally abusive and neglectful, which some parents would seek to avoid, but I find an honest approach to life. Dahl’s books don’t treat children like they can’t handle the darker side of things. Dahl doesn’t ignore that there are some pretty crappy people out there, and sometimes they happen to have kids.

Dahl, unlike a lot of authors, presents childhood as a battlefield. However not all children are perfect angels (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an example here), and not all adults are horrendous bullies. In Matilda her family may be part of the problem, but she finds an ally in her teacher, Miss Honey, who is a survivor of a bullied childhood.

Through the book we learn not about revenge on bad people, or being nice despite being bullied and neglected, Dahl teaches kids to recognize and treasure the good parts of life, without letting the bad parts define themselves, or their experience.

Also a smart part of this book is the accelerated vocabulary, which again, shows that Dahl distinctly decides not to treat children as incapable or juvenile. Because of the number of big words, all used in a context that makes them easy to understand, this book is best read as a collaborative effort between an adult and child, unless an child closer to teendom is the reader.

I highly recommend Matilda on every level, especially because in the realm of fiction girls are often sentenced to be side kicks and creatures of first crushes, but Matilda is a strong, independent, intelligent girl who solves problems on her own. Matilda is the precursor to the more recent Coraline, with less a less scary and a more over the top spin.

ISBN: 9780060506650
I received this book free through the LibraryThing Early Readers Program.

Manny Rupert, an addict, a cop kicked off the force, an the ex-husband of a murderer, is back for round two. This time he’s been hired to go undercover in San Quentin and determine whether a sick old man in for vehicular manslaughter is really who he claims to be—the infamous Nazi Doctor of Death, Joseph Mengele.

That’s where Pain Killers starts, but where it goes is on an insane, gritty, noir venture through the darkest parts of society. Pain Killers is a humorous black romp if by humorous you mean “Oh my God they went there” and by romp you mean going by limo from prison snail back love shack to Christian porn sets to meth houses and mansions and back again. This novel is, to steal a line, truly, truly outrageous.

Stahl’s humor is not for everyone, possibly not for anyone that possesses an iota of sensitivity about religion, psychology, the human condition, addiction, sex, or just about any subject. But there’s a sort of victorious feel to seeing character so truly messed up still intelligent and stubborn and taking on the face of human evil. There’s more talking than action, so the pace is not forceful or fast. At times the conversations while interesting and amusing come off as off topic, when the point is to solve a mystery. And the WTF factor is, at times, very high. But it’s a wild ride, different from everything else out there which certainly has an audience in today’s marketplace.

ISBN: 9780441017812
I bought this book.

Doubleblind, the third book in Aguirre’s SF-romance series, isn’t going to be my favorite book in the series. In this volume jumper (a special kind of person who can navigate the subspace area that makes deep space travel possible), ex-criminal and formerly broken Sirantha Jax lands on the infamously closed planet Ithiss-Tor, home of bounty hunter-turned-friend, Vel, on a mission to forge an alliance between humans and Ithtorians to save both from the savage cannibal Morgut who are raiding space ports and far planets, leaving occupants dead. With her mother (head of the criminal Syndicate) trying to make sure she fails, and lives depending on Jax’s success, not to mention the Ithtorian repulsion of humans, disaster is not just possible, it’s imminent.

First the good, Aguirre maintains a full cast of characters, each with unique strengths and weaknesses and stories. Jax’s struggle to shuck her selfish, party-girl past comes to odds with the responsibilities and expectations others unfairly put on her creating a tense, conflicted inner dialog as the story moves on. Jax’s personal quest to rebuild the mind of March, once her lover, a psi forced to cut himself off from his emotions to mentally survive a war thrust on him by manipulations of his personal honor, is especially heart breaking.

Aguirre spins a fascinating world in Ithiss-Tor, home world of a bug species that, true to type, communicate as much with body language and scent as with verbalized language. This is truly a reason to pick up this book, as the imagery is complex and solid, not to mention the Ithtorian characters are full developed despite being such a inhuman race.

Aguirre’s rich and descriptive world and characters are as solid as ever in Doubleblind, so already established fans will definitely want to continue with their story.

And, finally the bad. Aguirre, with Doubleblind clearly comes down on the side of romance rather than maintaining a fine split between romance and science fiction as in the previous novels. A large amount of the drama and tension has to do with the personal relationships between the characters. In the end I was left with a feeling that conflicts were tied up too neatly, with very little actually conflict, just emotional strain.

March’s method of recovery is truly interesting, but easier than I expected. Add to that only one true fight scene in the whole book, which Jax largely avoids, and a climax with wired in tension, but no conflict after all is said and done and I was left with a bit of a dissatisfied feeling with this addition to the Jax world.

I badly wanted to see Jax throwing down in some sort of ritual combat to prove her worth to the Ithtorians and earn at least some respect from them instead of primarily suffering emotionally and playing politics. She is such a contrary, stubborn and steel-souled character that all the politics, as Jax herself worries about in the book, neuters her too much for my tastes.

I hope Aguirre finds a place between emotionality and action for the next book. Coupled with the vivid details, fine characterization and inspired writing it makes for excellent writing, which is what I’ve come to expect from this series.

ISBN: 1934069

One snowy night Lauren Kemper, the only doctor in a small ski town, is called out to a building leased by a team of scientists doing research in the frozen hills. What she finds there is one of the scientists, sick, collapsed with her stomach bulging and squirming as if she was pregnant. But not ten minutes ago Marianne was in good health, with a stomach as flat as a board. It’s what Lauren finds inside, what Marianne’s corpse gives birth to in Lauren’s clinic and what escapes to terrorize a small ski town, that sets off this horror story.

Hosts reminds me a lot of Dean Koontz’s Phantoms, boiled down to all the action. It lands more on the mainstream side of horror, that with wide reader appeal, than with the more esoteric books available. The characters are developed enough, but remain typical, ordinary people. The danger is threatening enough to maintain suspense without losing readers with fuzzy logic, or horrendously bad science. It’s also not a completely insurmountable danger, so as not to drown readers in hopelessness and fear.

Hosts is a solid, if not short, and enjoyable read that’s probably best for readers who enjoy books by King and Koontz rather than Edward Lee. It’s a great time killer with few overt problems. A stronger touch from an editor could have helped some to strengthen the story itself, but rather than making a dismal book good it would have only made a good book better.

ISBN: 9781906584115

Murky Depths stands out among the offerings of the small press, largely because it contains graphic strips and illustrations, as well as the mix of dark genre work that I find simply tantalizing.

Issue 7 features a large number of dark science fiction tales, each one excellent examples of the genre.

“Scratch” by Jason Palmer is half mystery and half psychological science fiction where people wear their obsessions and addictions on their arms, or legs, or tongues, and the battle to resist self destructive tendencies overshadows the battles of good and survival and everything else.

The first graphic offering, “A Brief History of Dogfighting” by James Johnson is a silent film, of sorts, with a deeply ironic tone and a fast pace. Following it and backing up the silent film feel, is a behind the scenes feature which chronicles the evolution of the storyline and the story as a piece of art.

“The Longest Road in the Universe” by CS MacCath is an incredibly emotion piece, easily the kind one might find in a larger publication, following a member of a species bred and genetically manipulated to love and serve a “higher species”. But when their parental figures who used and abused them vanish a whole race has to face their own abuse, with varying, and in this story almost lovingly detailed, results. This is definitely one not to miss.

The immediate follow up, “A Healthy Outlook” by Bill Ward, is a short, tight piece that shows the same sort of mental turmoil, from the point of view someone so die-hard-determined not to be a victim that the farce reaches a morbidly funny point.

“Viewer’s Choice” by Willie Meikle keeps to the themes of obsession while softening the science fiction focus. Here the lead can’t break away from his television, to the point that all the major memories in his life have a direct link to a television event. A situational story, it nonetheless clearly comments on our favorite societal past time.

“Bite the Bullet” also by James Johnson, is a fantastic romp through the limits of future technology, exploring how technology affects us, for good or ill.

“Psong” by Ian Rogers has less focus. A story about a futuristic assassin, the reader is loaded down with personality and detail without much context. Of course since the lead is a telepath and an object reader this adds more strength to the point of view of the assassin, but readers still have a very limited view of why this story is taking place at all.

“Survivalist” by Kevin Brown is one of the best vampire stories I’ve read lately, bringing the old Gothic critter into the modern world without turning it into a sex idol.

“Bait” by Paul Milliken follows the vampire story with its natural counterpart, a shape shifter story. This one follows the more traditional formula of an ordinary person whose life intersects with a monster. But this monster comes from the sea and remains more of a mystery than readers might like.

Luke Cooper’s “Flashback” adds another tale to the collection surrounding his gritty detective neck deep in the war between Heaven and Hell. In this addition to a potentially interesting plot, readers learn how Goulding got sucked into the Big War in the first place, but his role in it still remains a mystery.

Finally comes “Haruspex” by William Douglas Goodman, a second place finisher to the earlier “The Long Road Home” which brings the issue back around to tales of twisted mentality. In this story a boy finds that he’s gained the ability to get visions from dead animals, which has interesting results when your father is a trophy hunter.

All together here’s another fine issue that shows the people behind Murky Depths have their head on straight. I look forward to more.