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Shade’s Children by Garth Nix is a YA scifi novel occurring in a dark future. Fifteen years ago “the Change” happened, and all humans above the age of fourteen disappeared. The children were ushered into dormitories where they are raised until their fourteenth birthday. On this fourteenth birthday, they are taken to the Meat Factory where they are harvested to become the brains for a variety of creatures used by the Overlords. The Overlords war amongst each other on the empty Earth in a number of heavily codified territorial battles.
Not all children meet this unhappy fate, however. Some manage to destroy the tracker chips inside them and escape. Whether they do this by their wits or their power varies from child to child. Most children have developed Change Powers, strange psychic powers that have only started appearing since that catastrophic event. Sometimes these powers are useful, sometimes they do nothing to stop the child from being harvested. Read the rest of this entry »
When you’re stuck in traction in a hospital ward, you end up watching a lot of television. It doesn’t matter how many books, projects, or distractions you’ve had loved ones bring you. Unless you’re loaded to the gills with sedatives, you end up watching daytime television. This forced exploration of daytime television reawakened my love of one of the greatest shows of my youth: The Price is Right.
I remember summers as a young kid where I planned out a television watching schedule for when it rained or I was feeling antisocial. If I was up early enough, I could watch Robotech and Land of the Lost, though the former required me up extremely early. The next reasonable show was the Price is Right at eleven. If I stayed around, at one there was Bewitched. And if I were really lucky and really lazy, I could tune in for Press Your Luck at three.
The Price is Right is the one I saw the most. It was late enough for sleeping in during the summer but early enough I could go out and play like a normal kid after. I think it was also the least inoffensive to my mom, so if she wanted to relax and watch television, the Price of Right worked out fine. Read the rest of this entry »
Sharon Shinn’s novel Archangel takes place on the planet Samaria, a world colonized by humans. People are separated into two types: regular humans and a very small ruling class of angels, modified to have real wings and be able to fly great distances. The angels have one other duty, they can sing to Jovah and bring down rain, winds, floods, and lightning.
Rulership of the planet is in the care of the archangel, a position which rotates every twenty years. Each year the Archangel and his wife, the angelica, must sing a mass to Jovah called the Gloria. Failure to do so will start a chain of events which will lead to Jovah destroying the planet. Read the rest of this entry »
Wherein there are police, flowers, and a shock.
“You didn’t blow up the Circle Line,” said Bruce.
He had come to see me again in the hospital. I had invited him to read over what I had written and this was his first response after he finished reading my dealings with my clones.
“That sort of thing is so hard to confirm,” I said. Read the rest of this entry »
Felix Castor is an exorcist. He is no Catholic priest, arcane sorcerer, necromancer, or eastern shaman. He does not use arcane rituals, the power of God, indiscernible incantations, or psychic powers. He is just someone who found from a very early age that he could see ghosts, something he couldn’t avoid. He uses a tin whistle to exorcise ghosts, using the sound and melody to draw them out.
The Devil You Know is the first novel following Felix Castor. For years he has not practiced his powers of exorcism, after one experience in the past where his mistake hurt an old friend. This friend, possessed by a demon and incarcerated in a sanatorium, sends Felix a message at the beginning of this novel, warning him his next case will end in his death. Felix balks, saying he’s out of that business, but a financial crisis of his friend and landlady Pen has him taking a case to help keep her from losing her house. Read the rest of this entry »
Wherein the clone saga comes to a conclusion… on a boat.
The Circle Line is a ferry that operates out of South Street Seaport in Manhattan. Long time New Yorkers will tell you how it is the main way to get to Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty. Long time New Yorkers will also likely tell you that they’ve never actually been on it or to see the Statue of Liberty unless they were required to because of a school trip. You’d be amazed at how many of the touristy things that locals have never done. Empire State building? Nope. Statue of Liberty? Nope. Carnegie Hall? Nope, not even with practice. Read the rest of this entry »
