rhetorical excursions

This book was the most incredible piece of literature that I’ve had the privilege to read in a number of years. A stark dystopian world ravaged by the very essence that once gave us life is slowly consuming the world and its inhabitants. The Sun’s massive power explodes without warning sending millions of death rays killing off most mammals and plant life in a matter of minutes. Those lucky enough to survive are forced into a world of survival of the fittest. Not a world of the strongest, but a world of the wisest and cleverest. The pages of this book are filled with mass murder outside of the sun killing people, cannibalism and even entire groups of civilization forced back further than the dark ages in order to survive. New groups emerge as vicious drug addled monsters hell-bent on controlling the surface all the while a smaller more sophisticated group creates an underground utopia where the world’s leading experts in all things left to know are rapidly creating a system that s...

This is a beautifully crafted, clever story broken up into 3 separate books. Moojie is an orphan left at the door of a church in a little town off of the coast of California at the beginning of the 1900's. A town where the folks are settled in their ways, still believers of mythical stories and have a tremendous hatred for the Natives of the land. Truthfully I believe it's more of an ignorance-driven fear then hatred, like most bigots the town folk are quick shoot and slow to aim. The first 6 years of Moojie's life pass by quite uneventfully. Save for the family that adopted him, the strange and miraculous situations that happen when he's excited or angry. His inability to walk or talk and the eventual sudden death of his mother. Poor Moojie's life at 6 changed drastically. After the death of his mother, his father decided he could no long be a parent and abandoned his poor crippled speech-impaired son on his Father, Captain Finnegan, or Pappy as he comes to be...

In this issue we learn the origins of the Aliens, the Evorah and how they came to this planet, how they created a system to track human emotions and how they formed a pact with a small number of influential humans. This group, Kindred Corp. harvests the emotions to keep the aliens at bay and in return make trillions of dollars at the very nasty expense of innocent human lives.  Guy stumbles into Woody's house after his was destroyed by Kindred Corp. to demand answers and finds Woody dissecting an Evorah in hopes of using it's brains as a weapon against the rest of the Swarm. I cannot wait until issue #3 is released, this is getting interesting!  For more information on Negative Space or Ryan K. Lindsay & Owen Gieni please visit the DARK HORSE page.

What an incredible read, here. A corporation secretly harvesting the emotions of living beings to be used to feed demons. One prolific writer on the verge of suicide and huge pinkish aliens bent on eating the world. And that's just the first issue?! I cannot wait for this series to take off. Unfortunately this series is only 2 issue in so far and regrettably issue #3 will not be released until January of 2016! For more information on  Negative Space  or Ryan K. Lindsay & Owen Gieni please visit the  DARK HORSE  page.

This was a very short collection of very short poems written about life & death; sex & food and memories & regrets. I enjoyed the raw grittiness of it all. I felt like many of these were written on the fly with little hope from Brautigan of ever seeing them published. I really enjoyed Brautigan's, " Willard and his Bowling Trophies " and I felt that this collection was definitely in the same vein. I could waste my time writting a long thought provoking review, but it would be longer than this book, proper.  I gave this a 5/5. For more information on Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork or Richard Brautigan , please visit his Goodreads page.

This is a very interesting book, to say the least. It has subtle undertones of Dead Like Me, a really great television show about Grim Reapers from the early 2000's mixed  faintly with the writing style of A. Lee Marteniez's Divine Misfortune, all cleverly narrated by Roquet's spunky slack-off protagonist Lana. Also, there isn't a single religion that has not been targeted. Blasphemy, all around. Archangel, Gabriel is a terrible alcoholic, The Grim Reaper himself is a power hungry business mogul and the afterlife has become just another job to work at for survival. The world in of itself is very fascinating, for example, the City of Limbo is where all the Reapers live, some souls that have been harvested can either bribe their way into staying on shore and work in factories in Limbo City to avoid not being chartered off to an afterlife or thrown into the Sea of Eternity. The souls have even created a Union and demanded and won their right not to work on Satur...

This is an incredibly long series that has been a guilty pleasure of mine for the last 2 months, in this volume, Dray finds himself once again stranded on the beach of a land with which he knows nothing about, where only moments ago he was sailing swiftly through the night sky's with his friends and his sweat Delia, Delia of the Blue Mountains! Immediately, per usual, Dray is shackled and sold into slavery to do another Apim's bidding until he either kills everyone, or grows bored and does something about it. For the next 11 years Dray grows and Army, is a Slave, becomes a King and takes part in the murder of a Kovneva. An interesting and key factor to this volume is how Dray is forced to be a miner in the Heavenly Mines. To dig and produce a relatively bland and boring looking material, yet very important to the Hamalese and their flying machine. In this book we are introduced to the propulsion science behind the flyers, well sort of, and it appears that all the myst...

Talan follows his desperately hungry stomach into a city that fills his guts with empty promises and sorrow. He's forced into a labor camp after being treated like royalty to slave and toil for a force greater than anything he's ever know. Poor Talan feels he was duped into slavery by a mysterious Gray man and his equally gray fox as he, Reynar procured Talan with a mysteriously rusted key to the only known entrance into this curious city. Reynar offers his sincerest warning before Talan embarked but sadly he did not heed to such nonsense. Talan has developed a sixth sense and newly found powers, which are so wonderful and terrible and with this knowledge he forges a master weapon called Muse, with Muse and his newly found powers Talan manages to destroy the evil forces which have been devouring his world slowly. Talan overcomes all odds but at a painfully awful price. Now he must learn to live again as humble and peacefully as possible. Bard continues to blow my...

I really enjoyed this book in the most literal sense. Not because I fancy myself an activist, nor do I indulge in anything remotely close to activism, but simply because the story was captivating and held me in awe from the very first page. Consequence as a whole is definitely against the grain of my normal tastes but suitably so as I found this book so terribly difficult to put down. Page after page of lyrical prose filled this novel. I especially enjoyed the back and forth banter between Chagall and Christopher, which were aggressive and domineering as both parties fought for control and in the end one side completely fails to hold up the agreement and betrays the other. I will say, in my opinion that this book was not a gut clenching thriller, in any sense, but it did leave me feeling uncomfortable and afraid of the outcome for many a character. Masover is smooth with his delivery and direct with his words. For more information on Consequence, by Steve Masover , p...