Tag: book reviews

Reedsy Review of ‘Rags and Muffin’: A Preview

I just received a book review from Reedsy Discovery for Rags and Muffin. The review won’t be live until February 8th, at which time I will link to it, quote it in its entirely, and also add it to the book’s metadata on Amazon and other locations.

This is an official, professional review, not as presitigious as, say, Kirkus, but more affordable (yes, I paid for it and yes, that’s a legitimate practice).

For now, I’ll just say that the review is quite flattering. It has a few minor but understandable errors, but it correctly perceives the influence of manga and anime, though the reviewer suggests, as comparisons, titles I’m wholly unfamiliar with. In fact, Cardcaptor Sakura is its most immediate inspiration from manga, but that’s hardly obvious. Most of the story’s elements are ones I developed independently, before I knew much about manga or anime at all, so many of the resemblances are coincidental.

I’ll give a teaser quote:

Luckily, Davidson is an able storyteller with a knack for describing his chosen world and crafting his characters. Sights, smells, and sounds are brought to life with startling clarity, as are every bruise, broken bone, and bleeding wound the children experience.

The reviewer correctly notes that this is a niche title—that it’s unusual to have child protagonists in a story aimed at an older audience. But so it goes; I have my niche and like it even if it’s a tiny one.

Speaking of which, I have a collection of Rags and Muffin short stories underway. I’d like to get that done before writing my planetary romance, circling back to Jake and the Dynamo, and continuing with Rags. An author’s work is never done.

The First Review of ‘Rags and Muffin’

We are just days away from the December 10th release of Rags and Muffin, and the first review has just arrived.

Over at Scripts and Reviews, I have given an author interview, and they have had the following things to say about the book:

I have to say, this is the best book I’ve read in a while. Usually, depending on the book, I fly through them. This book was so richly worded and heavy in world-building and creativity it took me a little longer to get through but was totally worth it.

Rags and Muffin is filled with epic fights and detailed landscapes. The ragtag group of heroes is each unique with their lifestyles and struggles. Seeing glimpses into their past and their lives tugs at your heart, but then other scenes are riddled with comic relief. So while you’re reading, you get a full range of emotions that keep you hooked and turning pages until the very end.

This story was incredible to read, filled with Gods and intrigue. This is a book you won’t want to put down. This book is easily one of the top 5 books I’ve read all year!

Book Review: ‘The Night Land’

Featured artwork: “Attack of the Abhumans” by Jeremiah Humphries.

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson. . Published by various, but available through Project Gutenberg.

Around the turn of the century, the Englishman William Hope Hodgson spent several years as a seaman before he attempted to make a living as a personal trainer, during which time he led a colorful life and even had a controversial run-in with Houdini. When making money from exercise didn’t pan out, he in 1904 turned to writing fiction in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe and ultimately produced a large body of work.

Recently, I read my way through the most famous of his writings, including The House on the Borderland, the stories of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, and The Ghost Pirates. Then, with much trepidation yet determination, I turned to the most gargantuan and formidable of his works, his novel The Night Land.

Twice before, I have tried to get through The Night Land. Twice before, I failed. But this time, I grit my teeth and slogged my way through, though I believe the effort took me almost a year (I read a lot of other things in the meantime, of course). Hodgson was never a great writer by any standard, but he could spin a good yarn from time to time; some of his stories set at sea show both a genuine knowledge of seamanship and skill at adventure-writing, and certain scenes in The House on the Borderland show him to be a competent action writer as well. But The Night Land is simultaneously a breathtaking work of imagination and a nigh unreadable act of self-indulgence and pretentiousness. It is Hodgson’s magnum opus—but the problem is that he knew it was his magnum opus, so he wrote like a middle-schooler picking up a pen for the first time, convinced that he was crafting a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

I likely would not have read this book if it did not come highly recommended by John C. Wright, the husband of my editor, who has produced a series of frightening and beautiful novelettes based on it (collected in Awake in the Night Land) and who insists that its fantastic elements are so important that its glaring flaws deserve to be overlooked.

Having read the novel, I haven’t decided whether to agree with him or not. On the one hand, yes, Hodgson forged a new path in the world of fantasy and deserves credit for such bold inventions, but on the other hand … the book is just awful. I mean it’s really, really bad.

Continue reading “Book Review: ‘The Night Land’”

Book Review: ‘Battle Royale’

The original bloody mess.

Battle Royale: Remastered, by Koushun Takami. Translated by Nathan Collins. VIZ Media, 2014 (originally published 1999). 647 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-4215-6598-9.

Here it is, the instant classic that has informed so much of Japanese pop culture in the twenty-first century. If you like anime and manga, you sooner or later run into allusions to Battle Royale. Indeed, if you’ve followed this blog, the anime version of Magical Girl Raising Project, which I discussed at length, is basically Battle Royale with magical girls.

This novel by Koushun Takami appeared in 1999 and was an instant sensation probably in part because it resulted in some pearl-clutching. As an exercise in ultraviolence, it received some condemnations, and its notoriety was secured in the following year when the movie adaptation received criticism from members of the Japanese parliament. I noticed a DVD of the film at the store one day and saw that the blurb on the back proudly boasts that it is banned in several countries.

The effect of Battle Royale on pop culture reaches outside Japan: it is arguably the source of the slew of teen dystopias that have populated YA fiction of late, as it is a likely inspiration for The Hunger Games, though author Suzanne Collins may have come up with the concept independently. Whether or not Battle Royale is responsible for this trend in YA fiction, however, it is certainly responsible for at least one successful video game: the much vaunted Fortnite: Battle Royale is transparently inspired by the novel. Wikipedia even names “battle royale” as its own genre and give several examples of works that follow the general premise of the novel, including a lot of manga and anime. Continue reading “Book Review: ‘Battle Royale’”