Lord-Triceratops

I want to start off this review with a strange question. It’s a strange book, so I’m allowed. Who invented the solar-punk aesthetic? I know what steampunk is. It’s based off steam or coal powered devices. The term was invented by author KW Jeter (that took some research, believe me) and flourished under numerous other writers and artists. Cyber-punk is a role-playing and video game by Micheal Pondsmith. I guess solar-punk is supposed to be a healthier answer to those two aesthetics that rely on the machines, one way or the other. Solar-punk relies on Mother Earth. I’m not criticizing it. I’m just wondering. This book could be the first instance of “plant punk” where everything revolves around vegetation. I’m going to criticize the hell out of it. There’s a married couple, Mr. Iravan and Mrs. Ahilya, that live in a flying tree city. That’s what it says on the back cover, and that would be weird enough. Their city flies above a vast jungle of non-flying trees and terrible

This year is off to a rough start. I started the first book I read, The Olympian Affair, last year so I’m not counting it. Sinner Man was awful, and this one wasn’t much better. I believe that one simple trick could fix this book. It was put in the wrong part of the bookstore, the fantasy and science-fiction section. Yes, the author claims that magic is there, but barely. She also claims it’s historical fiction, namely the 1920’s England. It is, if you don’t mind the history is inaccurate. It might be a gay romance novel, albeit a forced and predictable one that feels about as romantic as filing taxes. This book does not belong in any of those sections of the bookstore. This book is about a woman’s obsession with herbalism and interior decoration. It belongs in that section. It would still be a shitty story, but at least it would be in the right section. A woman named Anne Crowther moves to Crow Island, which is somewhere between England and Oz, to inherit her late father’s

It’s a new year. Time for new possibilities. New books and genres. I cannot be the only person that thinks film noir and gangster stories are cool. I have always enjoyed the tough-guy-in-trench-coats aesthetic, namely for private detectives and film noir art. One of my favorite movies is The Godfather. But I’m not an expert in either. This is the first time I’ve read a “hard crime” novel about the Mafia or the Underworld. This may also be the last. Part of me wants to just slash this book for being unlikable and depressing, but another part says that I’m not well-versed in this genre. A third part (I’m a complicated man) wants to address that this is the author’s first book and that it was lost somewhere for fifty years. Maybe he’s improved since then (I hope so) and maybe if I lived 50 years ago, I’d have a different standpoint. Then again, maybe not. I hate this book. The book starts out on a vicious note. Donald Barshter just beat his wife to death on page one. He says