Book Review: Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Book Review:  Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe Tom is a good man, a Christian man.  Tom is kind, hard-working, trustworthy, intelligent (though barely educated) and honest.  He’s respected by his colleagues, a faithful husband to Chloe and a loving father.  But Uncle Tom is also a slave, and all his positive qualities mean… Continue reading Book Review: Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Book Review: The Marsco Dissident

Book Review: The Marsco Dissident by James A. Zarzana It’s a Marsco world. Much has changed by the last years of the 21st Century.  The rot started to set in with the Abandonment Policy (euphemized as “Divestiture”) where countries with prosperous sections and not-so-prosperous bits split off the not-prosperous sectors as “another country now, not… Continue reading Book Review: The Marsco Dissident

Comic Book Review: Vertigo CYMK

Comic Book Review: Vertigo CYMK edited by Scott Nybakken Disclaimer:  I received this volume from a Goodreads giveaway for the purpose of writing this review.  No other compensation was offered or requested. I don’t talk a lot about colorists.  In most comics, they’re not noticed unless they really screw up, or there’s a particularly striking image.… Continue reading Comic Book Review: Vertigo CYMK

Book Review: Riot Most Uncouth

Book Review: Riot Most Uncouth by Daniel Friedman Disclaimer:  I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway for the purpose of this review.  No other compensation was offered or requested. When George Gordon, Lord Byron, was a lad, his father Mad Jack often told him tales of the vrykolakas, immortal beings who fed on the blood… Continue reading Book Review: Riot Most Uncouth

Book Review: China Dolls

Book Review: China Dolls by Lisa See It is 1938, the tail end of the Great Depression, and San Francisco is trying to shake off its blues with a World’s Fair on Treasure Island.  They’re going to need a lot of employees for that, and the prospect of a job draws Grace Lee all the… Continue reading Book Review: China Dolls

Anime Review: Young Black Jack

Anime Review: Young Black Jack Black Jack was a manga series by Osamu Tezuka, about a renegade doctor who performs miraculous feats of medicine, but demands outrageous fees.  (Unless he decides to do it for free or a token.)  As Dr. Tezuka was an actual M.D. before he chucked it to become a full-time artist,… Continue reading Anime Review: Young Black Jack

Magazine Review: High Adventure #144 Captain Battle

Magazine Review: High Adventure #144 Captain Battle edited by John P. Gunnison This issue of the pulp reprint magazine has two stories by renowned adventure writer H. Bedford-Jones, both from the pages of People’s.  People’s was a Street & Smith publication that ran from 1906 to 1924 under varying titles, all of which had “People’s” in them.… Continue reading Magazine Review: High Adventure #144 Captain Battle

Book Review: The Opposite of Everyone

Book Review: The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson Paula Vauss was born with blue skin, so her mother Karen (“Kai”) named her Kali Jai after the Hindu goddess of destruction and fresh starts.  Estranged from her mother for many years, Paula has become a divorce lawyer, far better at the destruction part than the… Continue reading Book Review: The Opposite of Everyone

Book Review: Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante

Book Review: Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante by Susan Elia MacNeal It is late December, 1941.  The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, and America is now at war with the Axis powers.  The United States’ alliance with Great Britain is now an active one, and to cement that alliance,  Prime Minister Winston Churchill has crossed the ocean… Continue reading Book Review: Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante

Book Review: Jewish Noir

Book Review: Jewish Noir edited by Kenneth Wishnia Many of the themes of noir fiction, alienation, hostile society, darkness and bitter endings, resonate with the experience of Jewish people.  So it’s not surprising that it was easy to find submissions for an anthology of thirty-plus noir stories with Jewish themes.  (Not all of the authors are… Continue reading Book Review: Jewish Noir