Reviews and Comments

Michael Steeves

steevmi1@books.theunseen.city

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

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Back to Jim Crow and the Turner family

4 stars

The new book picks up a short time after the end of the first book. The new book focuses more on Hippolyta and George, though Montrose and Atticus have a thread as well. They're still being used as pawns in the games of the various sorcerors, though as always they're adept at finding the gaps to maneuver in so that they're not completely powerless (the way they are in society as a whole).

The main threads cover Hippolyta, her son Horace, and Letitia, running an errand for the ghost Witham, Atticus and Montrose taking a trip to the plantation where their ancestor, the slave that would become known as Nat Turner, started his journey to freedom (and where they meet an old friend unexpectedly), Ruby and what became of her after the climax of the last book, and Hippolyta's husband George dealing with a cancer diagnosis.

I wonder if a …

The Tao of Travel (2011, McClelland & Stewart) 3 stars

Not really a book as such, but more a book made up of snippets from other books arranged by themes or topics for each chapter. It wasn't bad, but also not really something that I'd recommend in general. I was hoping for something that's probably more like his other books, which is a narrative around travels that the author has taken.

Lovecraft Country (EBook, 2016, Harper Collins) 3 stars

Soon to be a New HBO® Series from J.J. Abrams (Executive Producer of Westworld), Misha …

An interesting reimaging of HP Lovecraft's works

No rating

So overall I really liked this book. It recast the standard Lovecraft mythos in Jim Crow America, with the protagonists various members of the same African-American family who get pulled into the various machinations of groups of cultists. The fact that this was already a group of people that were pretty much at the mercy of whatever white America chose for them makes them ideal fodder for a group that can capitalize on that to use them as pawns in their own games.

Probably my biggest gripe in these was that there was very little of Elder God-like beings in these books. There was one instance where some very non-human creature made an appearance, plus a couple of instances of ghosts/spirits, but by and large this was focused on the people and there wasn't a lot to distinguish the sorcerors as being particularly Lovecraftian. In some ways this was almost …

Nona the Ninth (Hardcover, 2022) 5 stars

Her city is under siege. The zombies are coming back. And all Nona wants is …

Third in the series

4 stars

So, sadly I am yet again reminded that I am old. I'm no longer able to keep details of these series in my mind so that I can read the next installment a year or more later, and also don't have the free time to take a week and just plow through all the previous books as a refresher (how much time did I lose to rereading all the Robert Jordan books all those years ago....?).

That having been said, I did not do a bad job at recalling what had gone before here. Still a fair bit of "Wait, who was that character again?" but overall I was able to follow the plot and know what was going on relatively well. Still a puzzle/mystery to figure out what was going on in this book, but also got some good backstory to help fill in some of the bigger picture …

Ghost Rider (Paperback, 2002, Ecw Press) 5 stars

A moving tale of recovering from the unrecoverable

5 stars

My path to this was more than a little roundabout. After watching the "Time Stand Still" documentary, I found myself thinking of the documentary before this, when they talked about the events that became this book. As I was in enthusiastic about what I had to read, I decided to give this book a try to see if there was some fresh content from the band to consume.

The book details the events that took Neil's daughter and then his wife, and his multi-year struggle to reconstruct his identity and life after his loss. Written as a part travelogue, part memoir, it covers his travelling and his attempts to put the pieces back together.

The look into his process of painfully going back to see who he is now is raw, fascinating and unflinching. It takes him a solid two years to pick up a pair of drumsticks again (and …

Ghost Rider (Paperback, 2002, Ecw Press) 5 stars

My path to this was more than a little roundabout. After watching the "Time Stand Still" documentary, I found myself thinking of the documentary before this, when they talked about the events that became this book. As I was in enthusiastic about what I had to read, I decided to give this book a try to see if there was some fresh content from the band to consume.

The book details the events that took Neil's daughter and then his wife, and his multi-year struggle to reconstruct his identity and life after his loss. Written as a part travelogue, part memoir, it covers his travelling and his attempts to put the pieces back together.

The look into his process of painfully going back to see who he is now is raw, fascinating and unflinching. It takes him a solid two years to pick up a pair of drumsticks again (and …