The third book in the American Gods series.
Another good little novella, very much in the similar to The Monarch of the Glen, with Shadow getting himself caught up in things uncanny and folklore-ish once again.
Yes folks, it’s just more of that really good Neil Gaiman writing.
Not anything like i was expecting.
I bought this because i’ve just gotten back into drawing after nearly 30 years of not doing any and i thought it might help a little. I was expecting a book about how to draw, literally, but this isn’t really about that.
This book is more about working on your expectations and why you draw in the first place. It’s more about drawing as just something you should do and what it should mean when it becomes as normal to living as eating and drinking. What’s the point in drawing if you don’t know why you’re drawing?
What are you drawing for? What do you really want to draw and why?
These are a few questions that the book made think about without directly asking them.
So don’t expect a book that tells you how to hold your pencil properly or what lead you should use on what paper, expect a book about your expectations and then go and draw something, anything, it doesn’t matter, just draw.
To sum this book up nicely would be this quote from the last few pages:
DON’T SAY “I can’t draw” especially when what you mean is, “I don’t draw.” DON’T SAY that either.
More of Modo and the Permanent Association with a very enjoable 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea flavour to it.
This time the Clockwork Guild have created an invisible man to liven it all up for us readers.
And a French secret agent joins in the fun.
Same caveat applies as in the first book of this series, and in Jules Verne’s books also: just don’t think too hard about the science. Put your 21st century scientific judgement aside, simply enjoy the tale being told and let Modo and the rest take you on a journey to the bottom of the Ocean.
Well written and very enjoyable.
So now i’m going to dive straight into book 3: Empire of Ruins
Having previously read the first 2 books in the series many years ago — before the 3rd and 4th hadn’t been written — i looked forward to coming back and re-reading this when i finally collected all four books: it was as enjoyable as i remembered it.
It’s the kind of steampunk that isn’t going to explain the workings of everything to you. The best way to approach this series is to just leave your curiosity on the shelf as to how everything actually works, not question the science behind it all, and simply allow yourself to be taken along for the ride.
And it’s a good ride that never lets up from beginning to end with some great characters that draw you into their story. Arthur gives us some well-likeable, root-able goodies while conjuring up some despicable, evil-doing baddies to balance everything nicely, and even throws some double crossing in to make things fun — just coz.
Just some good old, well written, steampunk fun.
And i’m looking forward to devouring book 2 as i dive straight into that without a rest. It really is quite unputdownable.
A very interesting look into how Lisa currently believes our brains create our emotions. Lisa pushes well against the tide of established beliefs and makes a fairly good case for her theories.
But, we’ll probably throw this one on the “scrap-heap-of-wild-scientific-ideas-that-came-and-went” in a few years time, along with all the other thoughts that currently suit the zeitgeist.
Interesting though.
A.I. and that — and it was free so i thought i’d may as well give a new writer a try.
It was rather a disappointment.
At no point does it explain how this AI is a cyborg — or how a cyborg could be classed as an AI. It makes clear that it was completely manufactured so where the term cyborg is relevant to this i have no idea. One would think that a when one sets out to write about a cyborg one would spend at least a minute or two at Wikipedia and find out what the term meant.
This is also a short-story/novella kind of thing and one would also think that with the couple of minutes at Wikipedia the writer would get a friend who can read to go quickly through the book and point out the errors. Missing words and jumbles are pretty inexcusable for a book this size.
And the story is quite unimaginative and wishy washy, with no effort being made to the actual realism of experimenting with a military cyborg or AI or whatever it is. How did this get out of the laboratory, why wasn’t it isolated from the facility’s mainframe/network?
Nothing much here to make me want to read anything else by this writer.
A free book that i received when i signed up to the Wonderland Press newsletter. I think you get a different free book now so you’ll have to go to Amazon and buy it now.
This is my first book by DeAnna and i was delightfully impressed with it. Although it’s just a short little novella, it does allow you to sit quietly for an hour or so and read the whole book, quite easily in one sitting, with a cup of coffee and slice of cake — or whatever your reading thing is.
If you’re into the AI/VR stuff with downloaded/uploaded human minds (a bit like what goes on in Altered Carbon) then you’ll most probably really enjoy this.
I do hope that DeAnna writes some more stuff in this sci-fi arena: the New Cotton Club seems like a wonderful playground for many more literary adventures.
Wonderful stuff for a freebee, but worth paying for as well.
Wooohooo…. finally, an audiobook gets to make an appearance on Kindleworm, whatever next?
If you go to Audible you get a 30 day free trial and you’re allowed to keep the audiobook you chose. I chose this because i remember the original Jeff Wayne double album from years gone by; yeah, real vinyl played on a record player and all that — showing my age here. Anyway, i got this because i thought it was like a super extended full story version of that.
It’s a bit of an annoyance as you can only listen to it using the “Audible App”, but you can still listen to your audio book after you cancel your free trial membership as long as you keep the app cluttering up your chosen device.
So onto the review:
As i said above, i got this because i really liked the original version from way back in the long ago and i genuinely thought that this was a super extended version of that, but it isn’t.
It’s a completely redone thing with different actors — sorry ladies, no David Essex on this one . . .
And worse of all, there’s none of the original music. No songs whatosever. Just crappy remade, piecemeal versions of the original music playing in the background and foreground far too occasionally — and, worse of all, without any lyrics whatsoever.
Sadly, i’m very disappointed with the whole thing. It’s basically a simple radio play of the book with some mood music thrown in.
It would have been superb if the original double album had been built up with the full story, but alas, it wasn’t to be.
So my first attempt at an audio book, after all these years of resistance, has ended in woe.
Final thoughts: if you enjoyed and loved the original version you’ll probably not like this at all — especially if you liked, loved, or had a schoolgirl/boy crush on, David Essex. 
An enjoyable little short story that hops back and forth between past and present a few times. You have to pay a bit of attention to where you are, but if you do it works ok and builds up nicely towards the wonderful ending.
I look forward to reading more from this writer.
Another addition to The Book of Deacon series.
This novella takes up the story after the events of Jade when Myn has gotten a little older, and i admit that i did have hopes that we may have found some of the answers to the questions that Jade had left festering in my mind: alas it was not to be. 
Answers aside though, it’s a well written novella set in one of my favourite series, so i’m not complaining too much about being kept in the dark. I’m sure Joseph will get around to filling in all the blanks for us in some future books.