A day on the ice

Spent the afternoon today ice fishing with my Father and brother. We used to this a lot when we were younger, now we try to do ti at least once a year. We go to a local farm pond of a friend of ours and set up for a few hours. It's a lot of fun, and today there was some success. Took home a meal for 4. A mix of Bluegill and Bass...mmmm tasty! It was about 24 degrees out and the ice was about 4-5 inches thick. A great day.

Your faithful blogger in what appears to be a fat suit.

Shackleton? Cook? Nah just two weirdos on a cow pond

View the rest of the pictures here.

Do You KNOW How Old Your Tires Really Are?

Think you have good Tires? Better check again. This video shows a growing problem of death in this country, and how to know what your getting put on your wheels.
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=4826897
Stay Safe
-Mookie

Book Review: Deadtown by Nancy Holzner

When FanLit interviewed Nancy Holzner last month, I thought she sounded so nice, and her debut, Deadtown, sounded awesome. While shopping that night at my local Wal-Mart, I noticed Deadtown on the shelf, so, naturally, into my cart it went, and I started reading as soon as I got home.

After a mysterious plague strikes Boston, its fallout area becomes known as Deadtown. Deadtown residents are controlled by the state of Massachusetts — they have few rights and must carry identifying papers when they move about the various zones. Paranormals are segregated, creating a racially tense atmosphere that underlies the whole story.

Deadtown’s lead character is a deceptively dynamic female shapeshifter named Victory Vaughn (Vicky). Through her welsh ancestry and hard work, Vicky became a demon hunter for hire. She gets wrapped up in a series of events that has Boston’s human and non-human communities in danger. Lots of action, political intrigue, and sleuthing are required from Vicky in order to try to save the city and its people.

There is a wide cast of supporting characters in Deadtown, and they range from typical to downright awesome. Holzner’s take on demons is a fun mix of literal interpretations of abstract concepts and actual demons you’d find in typical fantasy. For example, Hellions are demons who feed off violence and destruction and can be summoned and bound by sorcerers in the typical fantasy fashion. But then there are the Eidolons — demons that manifest from an individual’s feelings of guilt. They are self-created, but not any less real than the Hellions are. It’s a cool way of imagining demons. The zombies in Deadtown are also great; Vicky’s zombie sidekick/trainee, Tina, chews gum, wears midriff-baring t-shirts, and possesses an inhuman amount of strength. Holzner regularly takes a known urban fantasy device and twists it in her unique way. Vampires, werewolves, and witches are all spun creatively. I look forward to seeing what kind of characters Ms. Holzner brings into a sequel.

Deadtown is also well-written. Holzner uses a straightforward storytelling approach that I like and is quite common in urban fantasy. I think the plot pacing was somewhat unbalanced, as I felt a little rushed during the last 1/4 of the book. I reached a point in the story where I was getting concerned that I was not going to get a satisfying ending. I kept thinking there is no way she’s going to wrap this up in the amount of pages left. The story however did get wrapped up, and ultimately I was satisfied with how Holzner pulled it all together.

I became a fan of urban fantasy when I ran out of Jim Butcher’s THE DRESDEN FILES books. My search for substitutes has brought me to discover several authors in that same vein who I particularly like: Patricia Briggs, Simon R. Green, and now Nancy Holzner. That’s lofty company for a debut fantasy writer, but Deadtown holds up quite well against the best in the genre. It’s really an exceptional start of a new series. I’ll be eagerly waiting for the sequel.

www.fantasyliterature.com.

You can also learn more about Nancy’s books at the Fantasyliterature Nancy Holzner page

Book Review: The Morganville Vampires (omnibus edition of Glass Houses and The Dead Girl’s Dance)

I pretty much avoid sparkly vampire stories. I’ve never read Twilight, and have not seen the movies. I am only vaguely familiar with Anne Rice’s stuff. I have been “self-sheltered” from vampire fantasy fiction. But when I saw that Penguin Books was re-releasing Rachel Caine’s The Morganville Vampires in omnibus editions, I asked for a copy of the first one (Glass Houses and The Dead Girl’s Dance). I wanted to get a feel for this whole area of fantasy about which I was mostly clueless.

Glass Houses and The Dead Girl’s Dance were both written from the perspective of 16-(almost 17!)-year-old Claire Danvers, an exceptionally smart girl who got into college early. She wants to go to Yale or MIT, but before her parents will allow her to live on the other side of the country, they are making her do a two-year term at a close college in Morganville, Texas. This proves to be a rather unwise decision on the part of her parents, as Morganville happens to have a lot of vampires. Our little Claire ends up in the thick of them rather quickly.

In Glass Houses, Claire is getting harassed and beaten by other girls in her dorm, so she takes refuge in an off-campus house with three roommates. Claire and her roommates become the four central characters of the story as they try to unravel the bloody secrets of Morganville while trying not to piss off the local vampires. Glass Houses ends and The Dead Girl’s Dance begins in the middle of the same knife swing. In The Dead Girl’s Dance, the four girls get deeper into the vampire doodoo, and it’s fun to speculate about how they are going to get out of it without nuking the entire town.

The Morganville Vampires books are definitely intended for teenage girls. I suffered through several detailed descriptions of hunky dudes with windblown hair, various shoe selections, and lots of kissy-face action. But I knew what I was getting into and, to be honest, none of the girly stuff was overdone. I felt that Rachael Caine wrote the extremely smart 16-year-old perspective rather well.

I have only a few real complaints, mostly with the first book: In Glass Houses all of the characters except for Claire felt a bit shallow and the plot felt rushed. It’s almost as if Ms. Caine needed to get this opening book out of the way in order to get into the more juicy bits of her story. In The Dead Girl’s Dance several characters go through changes that bring them more depth and the plot is more complicated and feels more cohesive. I wondered whether these two books were originally written together, because it certainly felt that way.

I enjoyed The Morganville Vampires books, even though I’m way outside the intended demographic. I think it’s safe to recommend them to any fantasy fan that needs a break from their usual fare. I can definitely recommend them to our teenage readers. I would advise parents to read to them first, though, especially if your young one is under 15 or 16. There is some suggestive content, but all of it falls within a PG rating.

There are seven Morganville Vampires books out now, with #8 (Kiss of Death) on the way. I hope Penguin plans on publishing the rest in the 2-for-1 package, for it makes it a worthy purchase.
—J.B.

See this review and others at www.fantasyliterature.com

Book Review: Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie

Joe Abercrombie is a master of his trade, and his trade is dark fantasy. He is becoming the standard bearer for gritty realistic fantasy, and Best Served Cold might well be the masterpiece that represents that sub-genre. Monza Murcatto is a renowned and very successful mercenary, or was…till she was stabbed, beaten and thrown from a mountain side by her employer. Best Served Cold tells the tale of Monza and her quest for revenge. Monza contracts a party of unsavory characters to aid her in her revenge quest. The story goes from dark to black to “a wet match in the bottom of a dark cave”. Everyone suffers, lots of people die, the trail of blood and tragedy that Monza leaves in her wake is unprecedented. Abercrombie takes what appears to be a simple tale of revenge and twists it into a sanguine journey of self discovery on the part of each character. No other author I’ve found works so hard to create likeable characters out of such nasty individuals

The book is exceedingly well written, so much so that I have really no other option but to give this book 5 stars. It really is an amazing work. Reading his work is always bitter sweet for me. I know I’m going to get an amazing story, with unique characters told in a way that only Abercrombie is able to pull off. All the wonderful writing comes with a price for the reader. The price is that it changes you a little, it’s altered my perception of what fantasy can be. Before reading Abercrombie I was blissfully unaware of how truly brutal and tragic fantasy as a medium can be. Sure there is George R.R. Martin and his love of killing off main characters, but these books are different. In Martin’s work I never had any doubt that I was observing the story from the outside. With Abercrombie he makes it a point to bring you there. I feel the character’s spirit break in the hands of the torturer. I know the person that was on page 112 is now someone else on page 113, and it makes me sad. There is no redemption, no “making it up” later…they’ve simply changed. It’s a very real and unsettling thing to experience as a reader, and it’s a feeling that’s not commonly found in fantasy. The heart of Best Served Cold is how Abercrombie strips our “heroes” down to their core and reveals with in them who they truly are.

I have a love hate relationship with Abercrombie’s books. I will most certainly continue to read them, they are just too incredible not to. I will be sure to keep something exceedingly happy to read right afterwards. Best Served Cold is technically a stand alone novel, but I would highly recommend reading The First Law Trilogy prior to this since I get the feeling of an overall “Big Picture” taking place in this world. Read this book if you are ready to have your thoughts on fantasy challenged. Do not read this book if you like your fantasy to be a pleasant escape from the harsh realities of life. -JB

See this review and others at www.fantasyliterature.com