This Week in Reading

BOOKS:

Hard Magic, by Larry Correia, pages 96 – 215.

At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft, COMPLETED.  

Rebuilt, by Michael White & Tom Corcoran, pages 99 – 151.

The Warlord of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, pages 1 – 30.

COMICS:
Adventure Comics 479
Bloodlines Annuals: Flash #6, Green Arrow #6, JLI #4
Doctor Who: Eleventh Doctor 6 – 10
Hellblazer Special 1
Mister Miracle 25
Whiteout 1 – 4
Whiteout: Melt 1 – 4

Podcast Milestones!

I wanted to recognize a number of my podcasting buddies who have recently (or are about to) reach big round-numbered milestones.

800 - No Agenda is my favorite news and media analysis podcast. The show, produced twice per week by  broadcast and media veterans John C. Dvorak and Adam Curry, recently released its 800th episode. I discovered the show around episode #10, and have been a huge fan of it ever since.

500 - Mignon Fogarty's excellent Grammar Girl podcast recently crossed the 500-episode threshold. This weekly show runs approximately 10 minutes, and covers writing-related topics such as grammar, spelling, and linguistics.

500 - Dave Elliot's short-form Fantastic Fourcast is approaching episode 500. It's a show that is consistently fun and consistently funny.

400 - One of the first podcast's I ever found, Paeter Frandsen's Spirit Blade Underground just released their 400th episode. He covers geek culture from an evangelical Christian point of view.

300 - My favorite business and stock market podcast, DH Unplugged recently released its 300th episode. Veteran magazine writer John C. Dvorak and money manager Andrew Horowitz do a great job making the complicated world of business and finance understandable.

200 - One of the first long-form comic-book podcasts that I followed from the beginning, From Crisis to Crisis just reached its 200th episode. Michael Bailey and Jeffrey Taylor are almost halfway through with their mission, which is to cover all of Superman's comic book appearances (and his TV appearances, as well) from 1986 to 2006. It is a show that regularly delivers top-notch content.

Review of Angelolopolis

Book #9. Angelolopolis, by Danielle Trussoni. Unabridged audio.

This is the follow-up to Trussoni’s prior novel, Angelology (reviewed here), taking place a decade after the prior book. The long-lasting battle between the Nephilim and the Society of Angelologists continues.

At the end of prior novel, Sister Evangeline recognized that she was in fact an angel. In this book, her surprise appearance in Paris attracts angelologist Verlaine and other angel-hunters across the globe. Her sudden abduction by a creature who has been the angelologists’ most-wanted list for hundreds of years. The search for Evangeline takes the characters from the Eiffel Tower to the palaces of St. Petersburg and into the darkness of Siberia and the Black Sea coast.

As dramatic and exciting as the plot is at times, the strength of Trussoni’s novels is the world-building. The notion that Russian Faberge eggs represents the desire of Russian royalty for a Nephilistic birth is interesting, as is the idea that the presence of chocolate eggs at Easter speaks to this desire. The story includes modern science and angelic genetics, right alongside divine warfare. And once again, the fate of humanity is at stake. 

The first novel had long chunks of explanations, sometimes in the form of actual lectures. This book has fewer of those sections, and is able to integrate new information more smoothly into the action. But again, the actual technical aspects of the writing are not this novel’s strengths. The strength of the novel is the audacity of the “big idea,” along with the fascinating world that Trussoni has created.

Source: public library

This Week is Reading

BOOKS:

Vicious Circle, by Mike Carey, COMPLETED. Review here.

Angelopolis, by Danielle Trussoni, COMPLETED.
Hard Magic, by Larry Corriea, pages 1 - 96.

Rebuilt, by Michael White & Tom Corcoran, pages 64 – 99.

COMICS:
Conan the Barbarian 100
DC Bombshells 10
Fables 138 – 140
Sad Sack Navy 7
Walking Dead 121 – 132
Underworld Unleashed tie-in: Manhunter 12, The Ray 19, Robin 23

Review of Vicious Circle

Book #8. Vicious Circle, by Mike Carey. Hardcover.

This is the sequel to Carey’s The Devil You Know (reviewed here). Some time has passed since the prior novel, and the dead have continued to make appearances across London. This has made people with Felix Castor’s skills as a “freelance exorcist” necessary. But as in-demand as his services are, his business is still struggling.

Along with consulting for the local police, Castor has returned to his “supernatural services” business, but he’s barely making ends meet. The action in this novel starts when a client hires him to locate a stolen ghost – the whole “ghost thing” is still pretty new, but this is not the way that ghosts are supposed to operate. Felix is also trying to keep his eyes on an old friend in a private hospital, who is hosting an ever-more disturbingly violent demon. A supernatural “colleague” of Felix asks for his help when a local church is by a dark presence.

It turns out that all of these events (and more) are not just connected, but they are connected to Castor. And worse things are on their way. Many of the characters that we met in the prior novel appear here, including Felix’s priest brother and Juliet the succubus.

The specific plot in this book is darker and more gruesome than in the prior novel, but this raising of the stakes adds tension to the story. Carey’s ability to combine supernatural action with compelling character moments makes this a highly readable novel. I enjoy Carey’s comic book series The Unwritten, and have found his novel-writing equally solid.

I enjoyed this read, and look forward to picking up more novels in the series as time goes by.

Source: Bexley library

This Week in Reading

BOOKS:
Vicious Circle, by Mike Carey, pages 295 – 373.

Angelopolis, by Danielle Trussoni, pages 232 – 280.

Rebuilt, by Michael White & Tom Corcoran, pages 43 – 64.

COMICS:
Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor 13 – 15
Fables 130 – 137
Four Seconds 1
Fred Hembeck $ell$ the Marvel Universe
Watson & Holmes 2 – 5