Worth Reading: Stories and Novels

I have had a little downtime lately and I was able to plow through some great books.

Tim Pratt’s The Strange Adventure’s of Rangergirl @ Amazon

A very interesting novel which IMHO is more great fiction than sci fi.

Description

Marzi works at Genius Loci, a coffee shop in Santa Cruz, California, whose claim to fame is the murals in it, painted by Garamond Ray, who disappeared after the 1989 earthquake. Marzi also writes a neo-western comic called The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, in which the heroine battles otherworldly versions of the villains of westerns. When one of the shop’s regulars shows up claiming to worship the god of the earthquake, and moments later a quake rocks the place, and Marzi sees an oddly dressed figure running off–well, then, things are clearly becoming strange. Life begins to imitate art too closely for comfort: a woman made of mud, part of a story in Marzi’s comic, is wandering the streets trying to achieve her own mysterious goals, and the villain of the same piece–a primal force from the otherworld behind the locked door in the Desert Room of Genius Loci–turns out to want to destroy California. With Lindsay, a friend from art school, and Jonathan, who lives in Genius Loci’s attic apartment while he is studying the murals for his thesis, Marzi travels beyond the possible into a grand and magical western, indeed

I definitely recommend this book which I thoroughly enjoyed. The only issue I had with it was that it seemed to take to long to get to the “other world”. Even withits shortcomings the characters are well developed and diverse. The “other world” was intersting to me and very well presented.

Check out a Ranger girl Yarn HERE

I would love to see more stories taking place in the world of Rangergirl. I enjoyed the Yarn almost more than the the otherworld adventures presented in the Book. Tim, if you read this some great short stories live here please write more about these adventures of Rangergirl.

Tobias Buckell:
Fish Merchant @fictionwise

Great short story involving Pepper a name you may not be familiar with but when Crystal Rain Comes out in about a month you will learn more about him. Pepper = Hardcore. Well worth the ~50 cents and the time to read.

All Her Children Fought @fictionwise

Interesting short story, It was worth the read and gave a good view of some of the characters in a short story although I didn’t really get into it.

Four Eyes @ManyBooks.net

This was one of my favorite short stories from my weekend of reading. I have always been intrigued by the mystique that surrounds the Obeah even though I didn’t know that name for the person. I especially enjoyed the Marrying of old shamanistic(word?) elements with technology. I would love to see this develop further as either a novel or a serial release, Manny would be an interesting character to follow.

Currently Reading
Tobias Buckell – Necahual @ manybooks.net
Tim Pratt – Little Gods @fictionwise