Closet Sci-Fi Geek

A Really Great Book and DVD Trading Service

Just a heads up: On occasion you’ll see me review a book or DVD here and I’ll be giving it away for free. I’ll be doing this through Bookins, which is a fantastic online book/DVD trading service. What you do is sign up and then earn points for giving your used books and DVDs away. You can then use those points to get other books and DVDs. You just pay $4.49 for the shipping (ONLY when you receive).

I’ve been so excited about this service. It is beyond easy to use. The great thing is that if you have old books and DVDs to give away, you don’t have to pay to ship them out. You go to the website, print out a label with postage, and the receiver pays the shipping.

I’m on a mission to promote them a little bit more because I’d just like more people taking my books and DVDs. (OK, I do get some free “points” through referrals, but no cash.) If there’s one downside to this service, I find that some of my books can sit there for a long time without getting taken. So sign up using my link here and then when I have something available and post it here, you can be the one to get it.

What Dreams May Come

I remember seeing the 1998 film What Dreams May Come when it first came out in the theater. I loved it then; the visuals were absolutely spectacular, especially by 1998 standards. It’s now 10 years later and I just watched it again at home. I’ve also since read the book (which the movie was based on).

What Dreams May Come, in case you missed it, is a film about the afterlife. Specifically, it’s about an afterlife where your thoughts create your reality. Thus, if you are a good person and in a good mental space, you may see an afterlife that is filled with beauty and lush scenery. If not, it’s off to your personal hell you go.

Robin Williams starred in the film as a man who dies and goes to heaven. Soon his wife commits suicide and is sent to hell. (She’s the one who has sent herself to hell.) Throughout all this, we get to see sappy flashbacks of their affluent life, before their kids died in a car crash and everything turned sour. Continue reading What Dreams May Come…

Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen

This young adult fantasy novel is so charming and so ready to be made into yet another loveable series that it did not surprise me in the slightest to find it has already been optioned as a screenplay.

Unlike most of the kiddie-fantasy being published today,  this is more adult and has adult protagonists varying in age from 18-26; one who is married and has a child and has been to war. Set during the time of World War I, the novel is a page-turner deluxe that has you gasping right up until the final page. I won’t spoil the ending and please I beg you do not read up on the book at Amazon, for they give away one of the best parts of the novel.

Three Oxford scholars come together because of a book called The Imaginarium Geographica, which is essentially an atlas to the lands of magick and high fantasy. Being a caretaker of this tome is no easy task and right away, the three friends have to deal with a murder in London (of the last caretaker) and then being whisked off to the Archipelago of Dreams, which is the land where all fantasy lives (basically another dimension).

Each scholar has his story. Charles is very level-headed but a bit retiring. Jack is young and trying to prove himself plus he has a dark-side. Lastly John, who is the new caretaker, is a man shattered by his experiences as a soldier in World War I and very unsure of his abilities to handle such an extreme situation. The reader will grow side by side through the story as their guide Bert and his daughter lead them through the Archipelago of Dreams on a dragon-ship.

There are a thousand possiblities already in just the creation of the Imaginarium Geographica. It’s quite brilliant really and I cannot wait for the actual tome to be published. Author James A. Owen is also a talented artist and his illustrations that begin each chapter are stunning.

This first story in the “Chronicles” as it is being called is filled with high-level excitement and much familiarity that will be revealed at the end of the book. It is worth every page to get there and just have that final moment of OH. MY. GOD. Just go with it, don’t try to think too hard because you will probably figure it out, which I would have if I had not been so tired while reading it. Ultimately I was glad because rarely do I get a great surprise like this!

Orson Scott Card had the following to say about the book - “Is there anyone who wouldn’t enjoy reading Here, There Be Dragons? If there is such a person, I haven’t met him, and I doubt that I would like him if I did. I am only disappointed that, because this book is so new, I’ll have to wait too long to read the sequels.”

I agree completely. I hope the author can write fast!

Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton

Hailed as the “DaVinci book for kids” I picked up Endymion Spring at Wal-mart a few days ago just to have a light quick fantasy read. I was right on two counts, it was light and it was quick. 

I actually enjoyed the book though I admit I was much more ramped up to a spectacular ending than the book offered. As a bibliophile myself I was quite entranced by the plot which consisted of a 12 year old (or around that) boy finding a blank book in the Oxford library that is the key to a much larger mystery that includes Johann Gutenberg and Faust. Some pretty weight material for fifth graders! 

The book is well-written no matter what age is reading and that is always a pleasure. I can see clearly by the open ending that Mr. Skelton plans an entire series and why not? Those Harry-Snicket-Fowl-Materials books have made their authors millions (and even in JK Rowling’s case billions!), so who wouldn’t be interested in diving in? 

On some levels that bothers me as they are all so commercial. In fact I just read a fantasy book (part of my Wal-mart buy) that actually included ADVERTISEMENTS for CoverGirl make-up and tampons in the book itself. I am serious. CoverGirl was listed in the credits and certain shades of lipstick and nail-polish were mentioned in the fairly vacuous book and the Tampax website was also listed in the credits. For me, that is going to far. 

Fortunately Endymion Spring had no in your face advertisements though it would (like Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series) make a compelling tourist enticement to visit Oxford. Oxford being the real-world equivalent of the fantasy Hogwart’s. 

This is a fairly smart story with very little character development. It is an excellent debut novel however and I am sure as the story continues it will grow in its depth. 

The Shelters of Stone (Earth’s Children, Book 5) by Jean M. Auel

I have read some duds in my day (basically everything Terry Goodkind has ever written), books that made me practically give up all hope that there is a single author/editor/publisher on earth dedicated to anything but mediocrity - but this…this…catalog of repetitive, slogging, meandering, sixth-grade writing level piece of mammoth dung is one of the absolutely WORST books I have ever not finished. I couldn’t finish it, honestly - I just couldn’t - not after five hundred some odd pages of wanting to go directly to FRANCE and spray paint graffiti all over the cave walls that were Ms. Auel’s inspiration for this mess. Continue reading The Shelters of Stone (Earth’s Children, Book 5) by Jean M. Auel…

The Seeress of Kell (The Malloreon, Book 5) by David Eddings

I read and enjoyed the Belgariad - in fact; it really shook me up, emotionally. I even cried. But this tripe - this Mallorean - five books of vacuous-ness of utterly wasted words on paper that poor trees were cut down to deliver! The horror, the horror! To say it was bad is an insult to things that are truly bad. This was beyond awful. I have created more plausible storylines on cocktail napkins. I have read more entertaining and witty prose on the bathroom wall at the port authority.

This series should have never happened - it was as if - the big monumental saving of the world in the first series didn’t “count,” like - oh, that - we weren’t serious - NOW you really get to save the world. Continue reading The Seeress of Kell (The Malloreon, Book 5) by David Eddings…

Son of Avonar (The Bridge of D’Arnath, Book 1) by Carol Berg

I’ve read all of Carol Berg’s novels and Son of Avonar is by far her best. She has evolved as a writer and storyteller and has managed to create something refreshing and new in the field of Fantasy - believable, fallible and human characters.Her character work has always been her strong suit, in that even minor characters are usually fairly well fleshed out. But this book (the first in a trilogy) is a self-contained masterpiece. You could read this book and go no further. I was sure she would hang me out on a cliff like most Fantasy authors do in a multi-book collection, but she wrapped it up nicely at the end, left me wanting so much more but not suffering using tired devices to keep my interest. Continue reading Son of Avonar (The Bridge of D’Arnath, Book 1) by Carol Berg…

Lord of the Isles by David Drake

I cannot tell you how sick to death I am of derivative epic fantasy novels. But I will. Why don’t people have original thoughts any more? Isn’t there something different you could do to your epic that doesn’t hearken back to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time or Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth (my most hated ever) series?

I often randomly choose fantasy series to read because I like to discover a good yarn. But these books don’t develop anything close to it. Continue reading Lord of the Isles by David Drake…

Dragons of a Fallen Sun by Margaret Weis

I began with Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s Dragonlance Chronicles long after their glory had been established. The original series, Chronicles, was published in 1986, the year I graduated high school. At the time, although I was an avid Dungeons & Dragons fan, I was more interested in the Forgotten Realms and had been playing that and reading those books instead. Thus the world of Dragonlance did not come to me until 20 years later. Continue reading Dragons of a Fallen Sun by Margaret Weis…

Exile - The Legend of Drizzt (Book II) by R.A. Salvatore

For me to finally read the books that center on of one of the fantasy genre’s most beloved character’s (and one that I think everyone who ever played D&D in the Forgotten Realms world wanted to be) was a fait accompli. I had generally enjoyed many of the books I read under the Forgotten Realms banner (though many were little more than two-hour, “while I’m eating a sandwich,” reads) and yet had not read anything including R. A. Salvatore’s dark elf gone good, Drizzt Do’Urden. I was bound to find them in my hands eventually. Continue reading Exile - The Legend of Drizzt (Book II) by R.A. Salvatore…