The book that introduces Serge A. Storms, the hy­per­ac­tive serial killer, and his stoner sidekick, Coleman.

The frenzied plot follows a large cast of characters chasing $5 million of drug money down Florida to the Keys. Most of them are Unnice People who will come to well-deserved bad ends.

Dorsey is not in control of his plot. Random flashbacks lay down the backstory for newly introduced characters. The plot jumps about with wild abandon, revving on all cylinders. Somehow it comes together at the end, with some funny moments along the way.

(I read the latest book, Hurricane …continue.

This book concludes Robinson’s trilogy about en­vi­ron­men­tal collapse, begun in Forty Signs of Rain and continued in Fifty Degrees Below.

Set in the near future, major climate change has already begun: freezing winters, melting icecaps, and rising sealevels. Senator Phil Chase has just been elected President and his aide, Charlie Quibler, must help the new ad­min­is­tra­tion tackle en­vi­ro­men­tal collapse head on. Frank Vanderwal, formerly of the National Science Foundation, follows his boss to the White House when she becomes the new president’s science advisor.

Robinson draws a fright­en­ing and realistic …continue.

Sequel to The Wrong Kind of Blood, in which private eye Ed Loy returned to his native Dublin after 20 years in Los Angeles.

Loy is asked to find Emily, a teenager from the pres­ti­gious Howard family, after porno­graph­ic photos of her are sent to her father. He locates her easily, but not before he finds a body, the first of several murders that will rip the Howards apart, unearthing long-buried secrets.

Loy is a hard-boiled private eye, somewhat in the Marlowe vein: "a man of honor, by instinct, by in­evitabil­i­ty, …continue.

(Image courtesy of The Learning Center.)

Up to now, all of the books that I’ve reviewed have been ones that I have bought or borrowed.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a publicity manager at Harper­Collins in reference to my review of The Wrong Kind of Blood. She offered to send me a copy of the next book in the series if I would be willing to review it on my site. No strings were attached. I agreed. The review will follow in a later post.

It’s time for me to establish a formal review policy, so as to maintain trans­paren­cy.

No good deed goes unpunished might be the motto of this sequel to Rats, Bats, and Vats.

In the previous book, a motley assortment of grunts destroyed a hive of the alien invaders. The military es­tab­lish­ment don’t really appreciate being shown up as in­com­pe­tent buffoons, and do their best to persecute and prosecute the human leading the grunts, as well as the military in­tel­li­gence major who spotted what they were up to and sent in help.

Our heroes are forced into a con­fronta­tion with the …continue.

Microsoft announced today that it was buying aQuantive for $6.1 billion. I work for Atlas Solutions, a division of aQuantive, so I will once again be an employee of Microsoft when the deal closes.

I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.

More truthfully, I can’t honestly say that I’m overjoyed to be part of the Borg again. Anyone who’s ever read MiniMsft realizes that many MS employees find Microsoft to be deeply dys­func­tion­al.

Atlas has a pretty good corporate culture and a sane work-life balance. I’ve heard plenty today about our people are our greatest asset and that Microsoft will be mostly leaving things alone.

At this point, it’s impossible to say how …continue.

Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, died today. As an atheist, I don’t believe in hell, but if it existed, a thor­ough­go­ing shit like Falwell would surely be headed there. Falwell was a liar, a hate-monger, a parasite, and a crook.

“The abor­tion­ists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the Pagans, and the abor­tion­ists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an al­ter­na­tive lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have …continue.

A bunch of grunts, trapped behind enemy lines, wreak havoc on the hive of the Magh invaders. No ordinary grunts these, they include a dozen uplifted rats and bats, a vat-grown human sous-chef turned conscript, and the rescued daughter of a very rich Share­hold­er. The rats revel in Shake­speare­an names and ribaldry. The bats have stage-Oirish personas, socialist leanings, and expertise with explosives.

Due to forceshield technology, they’re fighting a World War I-style trench war on the planet Harmony and Reason, The generals, like the rest of the ruling …continue.

Henry Perowne undergoes a long, stressful day on Saturday, February 15th, 2003–the day of the giant anti-Iraq war march in London. Perowne is a middle-aged neu­ro­sur­geon, happily married to Rosalind, a lawyer, and father of Theo, a rising blues musician, and Daisy, a newly published poet living in Paris.

His day begins very early when he sees a flaming plane in the sky (not an attack but an engine fire); a morning drive turns nasty when his car is sideswiped by a thug known as Baxter; his normally friendly squash match becomes …continue.

Kivrin is a student historian sent back in time to December 1320 to observe a medieval Christmas in an Ox­ford­shire village. Back in the Oxford of the mid-twen­ty­first century, her tutor Dunworthy grows extremely worried, as the tech who sent her back collapsed into a coma, mumbling something about slippage.

The book alternates between Kivrin and Dunworthy. Kivrin falls sick just after she lands. She wakes in an isolated, snowbound country manor, being nursed by Lady Eliwys and her mother-in-law Lady Imeyne.

Dunworthy becomes ever more worried when Oxford and its environs are quar­an­tined. The …continue.