Tony Laplume

A wide variety of sci-fi stories come together in this short story collection. The first "story" called "Lost Books of Tomorrow" is a series of 32 vignettes I suppose you could say. Each of those could be a longer story in its own right. The one after that about someone whose parachute doesn't open after a skydiving accident is sort of dull and in my opinion the weakest of the collection. a couple of other stories don't have what I'd consider a satisfying conclusion, but overall this is a very good read, a whirlwind of imagination as I called it once.

That is all.… (mais)

My assumption is this has less to do with the Flaming Lips album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" and more with old kung-fu movies and modern updates like "Kill Bill." There is a girl named Yoshimi who has to train in martial arts, but sadly pink robots are sorely lacking...for now.

In the meantime, the orphaned Yoshimi trains by escaping 36 different foster families until at 15 she's finally released into the world. Her first stop is at the Peers academy, where she gets a book and a sword and gets some vague preparation for a battle against the evildoer who killed her parents. First she has to take on the Shadow Clan led by a guy named Bill, which seems an obvious "Kill Bill" reference despite that I haven't actually watched most of those movies as I have yet to embrace the genius of Quentin Tarantino.

Most of the book is entertaining enough and it's fairly short so it doesn't take a long time to read. I would have preferred a little more detail in the beginning about the foster families and at the end after Yoshimi's confrontation with Bill it might have been nice for things to slow down a little to get more detail about her travels.

There is a decent promise of more to come, though perhaps pink robots are not in the offing. Dang it.

That is all.… (mais)

Since I'm familiar with the author's love of comics from his blogs, I was really expecting more from this book. This is as they say a "hot mess." After about 35%, the Eidolon, Cotton Colinaude pretty much disappears from the book. Wasn't he supposed to be the main character? That last 65% is largely a bunch of philosophical dialogues that cause the story to grind to a halt.

It's hard to do a plot summary because so much of the plot is murky. When it starts off there's a Batman-type hero named Cotton Colinaude who goes by the hard-to-pronounce handle Eidolon. (I was glad to be listening to this on the Kindle so I would know how to actually say it.) There's another hero called Godsend who's a Superman-type. Godsend does not approve of the Eidolon's methods, especially as he goes after someone referred to as "the Cad."

And then...I have no idea. The middle section seems similar to Grant Morrison's "Batman R.I.P." though I think this book predates that. Then it turns into the Iliad. Throughout it there's a lot less action than you would expect and far more philosophical rambling.

To say something positive, it's obvious the author spent a lot of time assembling the world's mythology. There's a lot of background information on the characters and the city of Traverse, Alabama. There just needed to be less background and less philosophy.

That is all.… (mais)