Wednesday, July 15, 2009

 

Not Free SF Reader on Book of Secrets

"Blue Tyson," who reads everything, has reviewed Book of Secrets for his Not Free SF Reader, and has some nice things to say about it.
The Book of Secrets starts out with a journalist deciding to pursue a story about a wealthy recluse, and gets progressively odder from there, to the point where you have pretty much ended up in something Simon R. Green might have come up with, Nightside style. Thanks to the title object, that is. Being a vaguely hardboiled journo, he likes the booze, of course.

His grandfather has also died, and left him a box of papers - which includes multiple adventures of a hero called The Black Hand - from the era of The Shadow, the Lone Ranger, pirates, highwaymen and more. Always a Black Hand, though, even if not as consistent as The Phantom down through the ages. Excerpts of these different styles of adventurers and stories are actually presented in the novel, which is fun.

Labels:


Comments:
When I first got on Librarything, input all my books and surveyed my collection and thought that it was awesome, I stumbled across BlueTyson and thought he must surely be a fraud, or a collective, or even a library. Now, I'm just scared of him. How the hell does he do it?
 
I don't have any idea how he manages not only to read so much, but to *digest* it and then provide apt summaries and rankings. His brief write-ups, rarely more than a sentence or two long, are like crazy haikus that cut right to the heart of a story.
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by 

Blogger. Isn't yours?