Visiting the used bookstore in my wife’s hometown, I came across this book. I’m not fond of psychic detective stories – or psychic stories of any kind, but I picked it up based solely on the Stephen Baxter cover blurb.… Continue reading →| MarzAat
Review: The Arikara War: The First Plains Indian War, 1823, William R. Nester, 2001. It wasn’t much of a war. Nester covers it in just three paragraphs in his introduction. On June 2, 1823 the Arikara ambushed a fur trading… Continue reading →| MarzAat
I didn’t even remember I had this book until I came across it while looking for something else in a box of books. It’s certainly not a title I recall seeing in the bibliographies of fur trade histories. I inherited… Continue reading →| MarzAat
A few months back, I watched the 1940 film The House of the Seven Gables. I’ve long meant to read it not only because of its reputation but because of H. P. Lovecraft’s admiration of it. So, after watching the… Continue reading →| MarzAat
Delayed, but here is the subject of this week’s subject of discussion by the Weird Tradition group over at LibraryThing. Review: “The Two Musics”, Michael Cisco, 2024. Illustration by Natalie Foss …| MarzAat
A bit of a new format for this one. The books to be reviewed keep piling up. Since our detective narrates all these, there’s no point pretending his survival is ever in doubt. And you and I would b…| MarzAat
Contributor David Hambling sent me a review copy of this one. As usual, it jumped the review queue. Review: Tales of Shub-Niggurath, 2025. Cover by David Dodd There’s an obvious motif and plot elem…| MarzAat
The Raw Feed returns for . . . reasons. Remember Raw Feeds are not reviews but mere notes and spoiler filled. Raw Feed: Pashazade, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, 2001. I didn’t care for this book much. The alternate history wasn’t that… Continue reading →| MarzAat
On one of my many trips across South Dakota on I-90, I actually stopped at the “World Famous Wall Drug”. It had a surprisingly good bookstore stocked with titles on the history of the American West. I have no idea,… Continue reading →| MarzAat
After finishing Douglas Wynne’s SPECTRA series a while back, I picked this one up because it’s another detective story with fantastical elements. Review: The Wind in My Heart, Douglas Wynne, 2020. Wynne’s mystical murder mystery is short at a 118… Continue reading →| MarzAat
For various reasons, I haven’t done one of these for a while: a look at what The Weird Tradition group is discussing over at LibraryThing. Review: “The Pandemonium Waltz”, Jeffrey Ford, 2023. Our narrator starts right out telling us directly… Continue reading →| MarzAat
Essay: The Nyctalope vs. Lucifer, Jean De La Hire, trans. Brian Stableford, 2007. Cover by Denis Rodier From Paris to the mountains of Bavaria, from the Bermuda Archipelago to the North Pole, two m…| MarzAat
Yes, it’s time for another one of these. These are all part of the Sanctum Books reprint series. Like the Bantam Books reprints, they don’t publish the original pulp series in order. The (usually, …| MarzAat
Review: State of Ruin, Elliott Scott, 2022. I have to hand it to Scott. He’s not content in keeping his narrator Felix Lasko aka the Mook in any one setting for more than a single book. Oh, t…| MarzAat
Review: Terms of Service, Elliott Scott, 2021. Cover by Miblart Down the mean streets of Neotopia goes a poor man, an honorable man, with a disgust for sham and a contempt for pettiness and i…| MarzAat
This is another one I found just browsing Amazon. Review: Rim City Blues, Elliott Scott, 2020. Felix has a dream. He wants to be a big city detective like Phillip Marlowe. So he leaves his ru…| MarzAat
I didn’t know Adam Roberts wrote two science fiction private eye novels until I somehow came across them on Amazon. I’ve been impressed by the short fiction I’ve read of Roberts, but I’ve read none…| MarzAat
Review: Payne Before the Storm, Jeff Brackett, 2019. Cover by Streetlight Graphics It’s clear with this novel that the Payne books are an ongoing series. You can theoretically read them out of orde…| MarzAat
Electric Midnight whetted my appetite for more cyberpunk, and I came across the Amber Payne series. Review: Streets of Payne, Jeff Brackett, 2013. This is a fairly effective cyberpunk novel. …| MarzAat
I’ve been keeping odd hours lately, the kind of time that uses the energy for thinking a new post needs. I have been reading though, reading 1,052 pages of glorious prose and engulfing stories. It …| MarzAat
Many decades ago, before I started reading science fiction regularly, my preferred reading when young was Alistair Maclean novels and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I don’t read many thrillers or…| MarzAat
