Point by Thomas Blackthorne (Book Review)

From the back cover: “It’s spreading. The suicide cults of kids barely through puberty. They kill themselves in Cutter Circles, brought together by 3g and desolate dreams. It’s a virus. A plague. Who knows how to stop it? Find out who caused it. Find out who’s in charge. Destroy them. Survive.” This novel is a different kind of science fiction thriller. This was a book that I started several times but was unable to continue to the end due to its subject matter. Stories on suicide may interest other readers even in a fiction setting, but it wasn’t for me. The review copy was provided by Lee Harris. Book format: mass-market paperback, 384 pages Publisher: Angry Robot Books Author website: [http://www.johnmeaney.com] Available: January 2011 US/Canada Edition ISBN 978 0 00 732 948 9 Ebook Edition: ISBN 978-0-85766-080-0 Chapters.indigo.ca

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (Book Review)

John Finch, detective, is assigned to a double murder that the gray caps are particularly interested in. one human and one gray cap are found dead in an empty apartment in the City of Ambergris. Finch’s superior, a gray cap, Heretic, is pushing him to find immediate answers to the case.

The story is filled with underground mushroom inhabitants in a mysterious setting. The gray caps are mushroom people who have disbanded the government, taken over the country by martial law. They provide the human inhabitants with food laced with drugs, keep them in interment camps and use torture to keep them under control.

This is a hardboiled detective story in a fantasy setting with a multitude of different elements: mystery, crime, political, intrigue, horror and romance.

Initially I had difficulty settling in to read this book due to the clipped writing style, and by mid-point had almost set it down permanently not to continue reading. Perhaps the confusion stems from not reading the first two books in this trilogy. Once I reached halfway into the book the plot became understandable and some of the plot twists made sense. The story became interesting after that and I was able to keep focused once time travel was introduced, although this aspect had a brief explanation where I thought there should have been more. Two-thirds in there is an anti-climax ending which provided too much information and spoiled the ending for me. I did complete the book because I wanted to learn what happened to Finch’s long time partner and friend, Wyte, who suffered a deadly fungal growth, and Finch’s cat, Feral. There are interesting aspects to this story, like the memory bulbs, and Heretic's nasty creature accomplice: the skery.

A special thank you to Matt Staggs for providing the review copy.

Honors:
---San Francisco Chronicle’s best SF/Fantasy list
---Washington Post’s Best Books of the Year
---Barnes & Noble Review’s Best Books of 2009
---An IndieBound Featured Book of January 2010.
---Wall Street Journal’s “literary profiling” 2009 recommended holiday reading list


Book format: paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Underland Press
Author website: Jeff VanderMeer

Available: November 1, 2009

Amazon.com

Chapters Indigo