Category 5 star
Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts
Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts is a collection of related short stories by Misha Burnett. I’ve been a fan of Misha’s writing for a while, so I knew up front that I’d enjoy this. The stories all follow Erik Rugar, a detective who investigates magical crimes for the city government. I imagined the setting as […]
Series: Prince Roger
March Upcountry Before I discuss the stories in the Prince Roger series, I thought I’d say a few words about the two-man writing team. I’ve always wondered how a writing duo works. Do they write alternate chapters? Do they each “own” certain characters, and write from their point-of-view? Does one person lay out the basic […]
Series: Hard Luck Hank
Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy You may have noticed that I haven’t been online for the past few weeks. I’ve become increasingly frustrated at work, so I’ve been spending all my free time searching for jobs, filling out applications, and driving across the country for interviews (typical result: the company changes its mind and […]
Movie: The Raid: Redemption
The Raid: Redemption This movie isn’t science fiction, but I’ve noticed that many sci-fi bloggers are fans of John Wick, and the two movies seem similar to me, both having enough plot to be real stories, but focusing primarily on action with a high body count. (My wife has just pointed out to me […]
Review/Nomination: Kings of the Wyld
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames Kings of the Wyld is about bands of mercenaries, with the modern concept of musical bands thrown in: the mercenary bands are small (four or five people), and have fans and booking agents. The primary characters are the older members of a band which broke up long ago, […]
Mini-Review: The Thorne Legacy
The Thorne Legacy I’m still being crushed (under a mountain of paperwork) at my job, so I don’t have time tonight to write up another magazine review and continue my last Four Apes story. Instead, I thought I’d put down a few words about a story by fellow blogger JD Brink. While thinking about […]
Mini-Review: Snapshot
Snapshot Snapshot is a novella-length story, roughly two and a half hours of audiobook, which I’m estimating would make it about 80 pages long if it were offered as a paperback (ebook and audio are the only current options). Although Brandon Sanderson has published many books through the big houses, he chose to self-publish this […]
SFF Magazine News
I don’t have time to write up a magazine review (or a silly intro story) this week, but I thought I’d mention some news concerning two of the magazines which are competing for the top spot in my magazine quest. Red Sun Magazine’s third issue is out. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks […]
My 2016 Planetary Award Nominations
I’ve posted my thoughts about 2016 short stories, 2016 novels, and 2016 indie reading. Many of the stories I mentioned could have been #1, but it’s time for me to quit being indecisive and pick my nominees for the Planetary Awards. Short Story For best short story, I’m choosing “Paper Cut” by Aeryn Rudel. It was published in […]
Award Thoughts – Indie Reading
I’ve already posted my award thoughts concerning short stories, and the better novels I read last year. At the start of 2017, I made an effort to read some self-published books (and a couple of traditionally-published I hadn’t gotten to) to see if they might be worth nominating for best SFF book of the year. (I […]
Award Thoughts – Novel
I’m having trouble picking my favorite novel of 2016, just like I’m having trouble picking a short story. I don’t have as many novels to choose from, so I’ve expanded my candidates to include books that aren’t the first in a series. Joel Shepherd’s Drysine Legacy was in the lead, until I realized that although the […]
Award Thoughts – Short Story
I haven’t made my choice for best short story yet, so I thought I’d share my top contenders with you. I read around 40 issues of SFF magazines in 2016, as well as several anthologies and a couple dozen stories off the web. I haven’t reviewed issue 125 of Space and Time Magazine yet, but I […]
Review: The Second Experimental Notebook of C. S. Boyack
The Experimental Notebook of C. S. Boyack II CS Boyack‘s second experimental notebook is the perfect book to read just before Halloween. It has vampires, a haunted house, murderers, grave robbers — What? I missed the Halloween deadline? OK, I can work around that. Let’s try something else: CS Boyack’s second experimental notebook is the […]
The Olympians
I’ve read a lot of short stories. There are some I’ve completely forgotten, and others that I’d recall only if I started to read them again. There’s a smaller group I might remember if I heard the title or something about the plot. There are very few stories that I read years ago, but still […]
Rath’s Deception – my choice for best self-published novel of 2015
Last week, I posted my nomination for the Planetary Awards in the short story category. In that post, I mentioned that I found a couple of surprise gems in my December novel-reading binge. The best of these was Rath’s Deception by Piers Platt. I wasn’t familiar with the author, and the polished writing and page-turning quality […]
Review: The Experimental Notebook of C. S. Boyack
The Experimental Notebook of C. S. Boyack Four Royal Crowns (4 out of 4 rating) I had trouble reviewing this collection of 12 short stories. Deciding on a rating was easy — I enjoy short-format stories, and was totally immersed in 9 of the 12. My problem was what to write about each of them– […]
Move over, 007
When I was a kid, I loved the James Bond films. They gave me action, exotic locations, and fantastic villains (I may have been too young for “bond girls”). I probably watched the first films on TV, adjusting the rabbit ears to make the picture less fuzzy. Later, the films were agreeable to family members […]
Review: Leviathan
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan Four Royal Crowns (4 out of 4 rating) I’ve blogged about why I enjoy the Lost Fleet series and why I was disappointed with Steadfast; now I’m glad to see the series got back on track with Leviathan. The novel starts off a bit slow, as the two […]
Boardgame: Tomorrow
Four Royal Crowns (4 out of 4 rating) In this game, the world’s major powers have gotten together and decided that there are just too many people in the world. It would be a lot of hard work to slow population growth, but you know what would be easy? Unleashing an arsenal of biological weapons […]
Review: Spikebreaker
Four Royal Crowns (4 out of 4 rating) Spikebreaker is a story about a police unit which partners regular officers with telepaths. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it; I’m a sucker for anything which combines sci-fi and cops, but I wasn’t so sure about the psychic angle. After reading, I was impressed enough to […]
Movie: Edge of Tomorrow
Four Royal Crowns (4 out of 4 rating) A spoiler-free blog post for people who haven’t seen the movie This is the first movie review here at PDC. As you may know, PDC is currently headquartered in a non-western country, and either because the country isn’t considered important in Hollywood, or due to the […]
Series Review: The Lost Fleet
Four Royal Crowns (4 out of 4 rating) The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell (pen name of John G. Hemry, a retired naval officer) is one of my favorite science fiction works. As a new book in the series (Steadfast) was just released today, I thought this would be a good time for a […]
Review: Eat Fish and Die
Four Royal Crowns (4 out of 4 rating) I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this story from the description; I was expecting a two-fisted, butt-kicking shoot-em-up with a side order of humor. The main character seems to fit my expectations; he sounds like a man who’s been around the galaxy, and now sits […]
Ranking System
Most websites that rank things use a 1 star (awful) to 5 star (great) system, but I decided to do something a little different here. I use 4 ranks, because otherwise it’s just too easy for me to call something “average” and give it 3 stars out of 5. I won’t be using stars, because […]
Planetary Defense Command 