There is this TV show out there, called Travelers, already well into its second season, that no one seems to be talking about. It's not based on comic book characters, it is actual original content (gasp!). It's Canadian, of course. With no flashy budget and subtle acting, it manages to slip through some ingenious ideas. For one, it is the only show I've seen so far where humanity's fate is controlled by a benevolent artificial intelligence, something I feel it is inevitable.

Groups of people are being "directed" to do things, using the huge computational resources of the AI called The Director and the convenient fact that it resides in the future. Its role is to change the past as to avert the horrible future humanity got to. So called Travelers are being sent to inhabit the bodies of people in the present, essentially killing them and taking over their lives. Very interesting dynamics based on the merging of the traveler personalities and the connections of the people they replaced, too. Considering changing enough of the past would change the circumstances that created The Director, it is a fine line that the show needs to thread. I also find it amazing that a show involving time travel can actually be good, considering most stories break horribly when exposed to the cheap time travel stuff they usually employ for movies and TV.

The cast is great, too, with talented actors in strong roles. You probably know Eric McCormack, Patrick Gilmore, Jennifer Spence or Leah Cairns, but all the others have shows to their belt. The individual episode stories feel fresh, too. They could have gone with the tired storylines of the "team" that solves problems used in a zillion shows before, but instead they go their own way, with a different feel that reminds me of European sci-fi, rather than American.

My recommendation is to give it a go, watch a few episodes, see if it grows on you. It is not something that people see a few scenes of and fall in love, but something that needs a bit of a grind before you become a fan. It is worth it.

I think Richard Kadrey didn't know exactly what he wanted with this book when he started it. The full title is Butcher Bird: A Novel of the Dominion, but it's his only book related to the Dominions as far as I know and Butcher Bird is a rarely used name for a secondary character in the story. Even the Dominions didn't really feature for more than a few pages in it.

Leaving the title aside, this was a pretty fun book. Not a masterpiece, but one of those fish out of water fantasy stories where the hidden realm reveals itself to the main character, then pulls them into weird adventures. This one features angels and demons as ordinary denizens of the "spheres" among other crazy intelligent species, magic, flying ships, trips to Hell, getting friendly with Lucifer, old gods, cities of old memories and lost things and so on and so on.

It was an easy read, so it didn't take me much to finish the book. It wasn't so much wanting to know how it ended (which was obvious - the heroes win) but what other weird visions Kardey can conjure before it does. The lead character is a bit uncommon, as well, as a motorcycle riding tattoo artist called Spyder who is still a nice romantic at heart. At least it's not an adolescent child in an English boarding school!

Bottom line: I am kind of curious about the many Sandman Slim novels by the same author, so this book was a success. If you want something easy and fun, this is it for you.

Sleeping Where I Fall is an autobiographical book from Peter Coyote. You might know him as a Hollywood actor, a man with a stern face, playing congressmen, detectives and conservative dads or other such people in authority. What you probably don't know is that before he was 40, when he decided he would try his hand at an acting career on the big screen, he was a "live off the land" hippie, a fervent believer in alternative cultures that eschew capital and personal property and value human connection and respect of the land and of the spirit, a man who chose his last name as most representing of himself. The guy on the cover is Peter Coyote, too. This book is an amazing recounting of those times, one of the works that I believe need to be read, whether you like them or not.

Personally, I found it amazing. It's not the writing style or how it played with emotions, but the information buried within that makes it a valuable experience reading it. In fact, if I was to critique anything about it, it is that is so packed with anecdotes and mind blowing ideas and descriptions of people, groups, ideologies and places, but does little to bring the reader to the emotions of the writer. It is too intellectual, trying so hard to be accurate and objective as to make the reader numb. Everything else, though, is top notch.

I don't think I would do the book service to summarize it in this review, but it goes so many different and interesting places: hippie communes, motorcycle gangs, famous artists, drugs, politics, road trips, changing the world, personal stories, psychology, acting, music, environment, native American culture, Wall Street, Easy Rider and so on. I do feel that the man who wrote this book is a great human being, but I have the nagging feeling that he misrepresents some of what he describes. Perhaps it is the somewhat neutral tone, the elevated language to render heart wrenching moments or just the fact that I find it so hard to believe a man could go through all that in just under two decades. I don't want to read Emmett Grogan's book Ringolevio on the same period, but you might want to, in order to cross reference and get a more accurate picture.

I recommend this book to just about everyone. It is one of those things that open your eyes a little to what was lost and what could be different and what you never thought about.

As additional resources, you might want to look at The Digger Archives online, where the site is terribly out of date, but the information there is (as is the Digger way) free. Frankly, I am disappointed to see that neither Sleeping Where I Fall or Ringolevio are offered free on that site.

Star Trek Continues, a fan production which started in 2013, ended with the eleventh episodes. As so many others, they are ending a perilous enterprise (pardon the pun) through CBS legal issues and moving to other, non Star Trek related, productions. And it's too bad, because you can see that this series had quality rivaling official Star Trek franchises. I have embedded the playlist with all the episodes. Enjoy!



Here is what Vic himself had to say about the ending of the production:

Drown is a tiny collection of 10 stories about Dominican people, written from the viewpoint of an adult talking about their childhood. Up until the end of the book I was convinced I was reading the story of the same family, written in some weird ass way, and I am sure the stories were changed a little to reflect a similar point of reference; however in truth the 10 stories have little in common other than the fact that they are about Dominicans and that I liked each and every one of them.

It is so interesting to see a good writer pour out his heart on paper. I felt like a greedy vampire, drinking on the lifeblood of the writer. Junot Diaz is, of course, Dominican and the stories are partially autobiographical. I find fascinating how sure of themselves and focused are underprivileged people, as compared to my own experience of ever doubting myself and never feel like I am good enough. In a perverse way, the stories show how liberating it is to know and to be constantly reminded that you are not good enough. You handle rejection well, you always try, because any success, not matter how small, is a victory. No character in this book is ever happy, but they are rarely unhappy. Discontent? maybe. Rebellious and angry against the shit cards they have been dealt? sure. Not giving a shit about anyone but themselves? unfortunately so. But at every step we are reminded of the struggle of the characters to get anywhere in life.

Bottom line: to me it was a refreshing subject, with great writing style. I don't think I will actively pursue any other work from the author, but as a first contact, it was nice, short and to the point.

I've vaguely heard about Elif Shafak before, but she only came to my attention when she did a TED talk that I really liked. I mean, it was a little on the feminist side, but the speaker was both articulate and correct - not to mention cute, so I wondered what she wrote about. So I started with Black Milk. And it was as much feminist as they get, discussing women writers in the context of the author's own challenges as a woman and a mother affected by postpartum depression. Therefore, if you don't like these kinds of books, don't read it.

Personally I liked the writing a lot. I didn't really feel interested in the subject so much, but that's also a plus for the book: if you can make people like reading about something they don't care about, then you are doing it right. I find different viewpoints on life interesting, as well, so all in all I enjoyed reading the stories. Yet, the feminism bit threw me off a little. Shafak identifies a lot not only with being a woman, but being a feminist middle East female writer, and she doesn't let anyone forget it. It is difficult to feel connected with the author when she's constantly reminding you of the differences between you. Even the thumbelinas in the book (thumb sized representations of the facets of her personality) are all female. It is true that you hear a lot more about the feminine side of guys rather than the masculine side of women, but still.

What I thought was a little bit misleading was the description of the book as a memoir. In fact, there is little of the author's actual experiences in the book. Instead, there are short anecdotes of her life, strongly dramatized and fantasized, followed by longer analogies with other female writers and their own stories. The book does present a very personal viewpoint on all it describes, but it reveals the author just through comparison rather than through confession. It does not feel intimate, it feels pretentious, an intellectual treatise on things Shafak claims very personal and emotional.

Bottom line: while I liked it, as something very different from what I read and a well written book by a very imaginative author, I think it would have benefited more from a more personal and less argumentative touch.

Imagine a space pulp "escape from a room" story and you get The False Admiral (also known as simply Admiral). Sean Danker writes a short and fast paced story about three Evagardian space navy members that find themselves on a derelict ship on an unknown alien planet. From start to end the hero of the story, helped by the other younger three, must solve problem after problem in order to keep them alive. It's a short, fun and simple book.

At first I was convinced that this was not the beginning of the story. The main character mentions previous events that are not described in the book and he makes efforts to hide his real identity from the others, to the point where they have to choose between trusting him or arresting him as an enemy spy. But no, that part of the story is not written yet. A second book in the Admiral series has been released, called simply Free Space, but I will probably not read it. And this is not because I did not enjoy Admiral, but because I have other stories I would rather read.

Bottom line: when you need a quick disconnecting read, try this book. It's dubious sci-fi and it is rather more similar to detective noir than space opera or military stories, but it is fun.

Hex has a very King-like feel. The quintessential American little town, the close knit community, the apparent order and control, the breaking of chaos and the reveal of the true face of humanity. And yet, the inspiration for the story came from Roald Dahl's The Witches and it was originally about a little Dutch town. However Thomas Olde Heuvelt saw an opportunity while reviewing the English translation of the book and updated it for an American audience.

The premise is interesting enough. Imagine a modern town that is also haunted by the 350 year old witch that cursed it. People have molded their lives around the witch, using the Internet and technology to monitor her and hide her from the world outside their little town. And when something goes wrong, it goes very wrong. However, I loved that the end was not the typical American horror story, in which the baddie does unspeakable things and the heroes suffer and maybe prevail after grievous losses. It's difficult to talk about it without spoiling the ending, so you will have to read the book and remember me when Katherine displays shock.

Now, I can't say I loved the book. It is well written and the characters are compelling enough. However, it did feel like someone was excited to write a story in the American way, and that is exactly what I did not expect from the author. I mean, I've read The Boy Who Cast No Shadow and that was both powerful and fresh. Hex is not very long, though, and easy to read. Perhaps its best feature is also its worst: it is predictable. You read it and it's like those supposedly funny fail videos where you know something is going to happen, you can even guess what it is going to be, but you are still watching to see it unfold. If you like Stephen King, you will like this book.

As an experiment, try to find this video without knowing the name of the song or of the band. I tried so hard until my brain just gave up and remembered the name of the band all by itself. So here is the video. Now I can always find it when I need it. Cool song and video, I think.



And so that other people can find it: it's a music video about an astronaut crash landing on an alien planet and finding his own dead bodies and more versions of himself continuously falling and dying in different ways.

Obsidian and Blood is a collection of all the works in the Aztec magical universe created by Aliette de Bodard. It contains the three books Servant of the Underworld, Harbinger of the Storm and Master of the House of Darts, plus three short stories (which perhaps you should read first). The stories can be found online, if you want a free taste.

Now, while I enjoyed the books, I felt a little cheated. In fact, these are not fantasy books as much as policiers, just set in the tiny and magical Aztec world. Acatl, priest of the Dead, is trying to solve the mystery of various murders and magical transgressions. He is driven, moral and relentless, willing to sacrifice everything in order to save his friends, loved ones and ultimately the world. So it's basically a cop book, only with Aztec gods around.

The writing style is very technical, reminding me of so many other authors that learned the craft in writing classes, with a mentor and a group and so on. However, it was in no way innovative. I felt that the books are the written equivalent of TV movies: professional, but mediocre. And while I stuck through all the books instead of stopping with the first, it's kind of like watching the rest of a miniseries just because you watched the first episode.

The context is the only thing that elevates the book above average. It is an interesting setup to base the stories on Aztec mythology, but I felt that modern sensibilities prevailed and the author chickened out when it came to child sacrifices and ritual torture and so on. They are mentioned, but everybody, whether heroic or villainous, is rational and follows a modern way of thinking.

Bottom line: I wish these were filled with the horror and majesty of the old blood gods, making me feel something visceral and true, more like the short stories and less than the books. As such, these are just police mystery stories set in the Mexica empire.

Hungry Trekkies, not nourished enough by the latest Star Trek movies, have been treated with not one, but two Star Trek series this fall. One is Star Trek: Discovery, the other is The Orville.

You may be incredulous at first, considering you are likely to not have heard of The Orville at all and, if you did, you thought it was a Star Trek parody. But no. Four episodes into the series it's pretty clear that this is a serious sci-fi opera, with some comedy added for spice. What about the new Star Trek series? Well, it's set before The Original Series, it has the visuals closer to the Abramsverse Star Trek (but without the flares, thank you very much), it has redesigned Klingons and a pretty impressive first two episodes.

It is too early to discuss the plot of Discovery yet as the premise hasn't even been revealed in its entirety. As of yet I can only tell you that I hate the main character. A human female raised by the Vulcans behaves in a way that makes one believe her education was acquired only from Vulcans in Pon Farr. CBS went all in and made the show available on their own CBS All Access network and hired actors like Michelle Yeoh to play in the pilot.

Yet Orville, with clearly less money and with TV actors and comedians managed to do better. The episodes are separate, like in a traditional Star Trek series, rather than a long serialized story. The plot of each episode is related to social or moral issues, like in traditional Star Trek series. People are positive and talking about themselves and their feelings, like traditional Star Trek series. There is comedy, but it is not part of the scaffolding of the stories. It's just a funny crew in a Star Trek clone that's as close as it gets. And if we are at the subject of celebrity actors, episode four has freaking Liam Neeson in a few scenes.

Conclusion: it may go either way, but right now The Orville seems to have done what I thought people would do: renounce the CBS/Paramount property and their money grabbing schemes, but keep faith with Gene Roddenberry's vision. Because that is the soul of Star Trek, not the money thrown by corporations to turn it into an all action and explosions piece of crap. Still, I have hope for Discovery as well. Only time will tell.

P.S. Now if they would only do Andromeda right...

While Blood of Elves is the third work in Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher series, it is the first actual book, the rest being collections of short stories. The style is the same, the characters the same. What changes is the scope of the story, the size of the described universe.

Is that a good thing? I can't say. While I applaud Sapkowski's attention to historical detail and the way the names are written or spelled in human or elven languages, the action still feels like I'm watching one of those Polish TV plays for children. A lot of dialogue, some exposition, no end to the moralizing stories about the environment and how politicians suck. So I am undecided whether this is a better way of treating The Witcher. However, I can say that the first book in the saga is nothing more than a chapter in a large story. A lot of set up, a lot of discussions, a lot of "almost there, but not quite" and then the book ends when you were starting to wonder what is going to happen. That makes the book incredibly disappointing as a stand alone story and, as I don't intend to read more of the Witcher, kind of a waste of time.

It is similar to one of those Hollywood movies that get split into two parts and it is never a good idea to watch the first part, then wait for a year to see the continuation. While I could read it really fast and there was nothing complex in it other than the political and geographical details, the story is almost nonexistent. I didn't like that at all. To add insult to misery, the book is about Ciri, the princess/witcher/witch, and very little about Geralt who appears mostly in memories and does very little in the story.

Bottom line: unless you are committed to read the entire Witcher series, don't bother reading this volume. It's not that it is badly written, it's that it does nothing but setting up the next books. It is an oversized chapter of a larger story and cannot be entertaining as a stand alone.

This book is NOT about vampires. For a long time I avoided reading it because the title so suggested some steamy vampire young adult crap. But no! The book is a hard sci-fi book about the end of humanity, written in a style that I can hardly imagine any man would be able to adopt. And that's a good thing.

Lilith's Brood is in fact a collection of three works (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago) by late writer Octavia E. Butler. That is why it is so damn long. Since she died, there won't be any more books in the series, so the "Xenogenesis #1-3" label is a bit misleading, just the name of an out of print collection that gathered the three stories together.

The story is about a species of aliens who decide to save the human race after a global war that had doomed it to extinction. The aliens are very interesting, but even more interesting is how the author surfs the edge of defining them as good or evil. Some of the things they do are benevolent and generous, others are, by human standards, insidious and evil. Imagine a benevolent Zerg species coming to Earth. Or a biological Borg with good intentions. Or an intelligent virus that rationalizes its actions as for the better good. It is difficult to keep reading as it pretty much describes the salvation of the human race as a centuries long rape and corruption process by a species that is much more advanced than us, but in very important ways, more animal than humans are. And we are almost helpless. Imagine you are a pet of omnipotent new-age vegans. It's something like that.

I was saying that only a woman could have written about it in this way because the focus is on survival and procreation, on protecting and avoiding death, on how the body feels rather than the mind. I do think that males were presented as either violent mindless rapey idiots or sensitive pacifist weak side characters. The arrogance of the aliens also has a strong vibe of "mama knows best", which explains why males were reduced to enraged murderous states. I mean, that's always the result of that "educational method". But the book is good enough to make you ignore that.

The bottom line is that this is a great book, one that is incredibly detailed and focused on characters, rather than technology or some story arch that has to end at some defined point. It made me think of so many things. I've once had this fantasy of writing a book about people being treated as pets. This is as close as I've read so far. Lilith's Brood made me reconsider the way I raise my dog! It also made me think of the nature of individuality, its benefits and perils, or the definition of humanity. Can you still be human when stripped of all dignity? As I said, while very very good, it is not easy to read. I was sometimes putting the book down and fantasizing on things I would have done if I were some character in the book.

Worth a read, that's for sure.

The Last Wish is not what I expected. I liked the Witcher games reasonably well, but I liked the character in the stories of the games more than the one in this book. Andrzej Sapkowski creates this character who is trained by pain, knowledge, poison and discipline to become the ultimate monster killer. However, the result is a very ordinary person, one who is better at fighting and resisting various magic or chemical attacks, but still a regular dude. He has friends, he falls in love and has moral qualms, he gets defeated and knocked out.

The book is actually a collection of short stories with Geralt the witcher as the main character. Some are reimaginings of classical folk tales, but all of them are about real versus perceived monsters. Is something huge with dagger like teeth a monster to be killed or is there a cursed person inside. Is a normal human less monstrous just because he looks normal, or is he a cruel and vicious villain? In all stories there is a lot of dialog, with characters that are not clearly developed talking a lot about what is going on. I didn't like that. It felt like reading plays.

But even so, I would have said that the book is OK. Like someone trying to write a fairy tale of their own. Why not? But there was this expectation from the games that the witcher was a womanizer that decides who lives and who dies based on his own strange code and lives on the edge by the strength of his skill. In fact, in the books he is the most decent hero I've read about in a while. He is one of the last of a dying breed, like samurai or American native warriors, not because of the monsters that kill them off, but because of humans spreading everywhere and expecting everyone to live by their code of conduct. If he would kill all the monsters in the world, he would be the very next to be destroyed by the people who no longer need him and have always hated him. Let me tell you that it is hard to reconcile my expectations with the book character.

Bottom line: an OK book. Certainly not great in any respect. I recommend you read it before researching the character or playing the games. I think that the book makes the games more interesting, by adding a backdrop story, but the games make the story hard to enjoy... because they are simply better.

We Eat Our Own is a reimagining of the making of an infamous movie called Cannibal Holocaust. It was an exploitation movie, featuring all kind of violence, from rape to murder and cannibalism, but also one that strives for maximum realism. In her book, Kea Wilson is portraying a world of emotional dog-eat-dog, with the movie and even the reality around the film set becoming part of a cannibal act where people use and consume and corrupt others.

I can't say I enjoyed the book too much. It is very well written and it makes the reader get visceral feelings about the people and the events inside, however I couldn't make myself care about any of it. In striving for realism herself, Wilson managed to make all her characters human, flawed, real, and almost impossible to empathize with. You understand some of them, you even see yourself think or act the same, but none of it is something you would want to see yourself do. Also, while a lot of the people in the book are caught in an abuse cycle, none of them is actually stuck there. They can leave at any time. Perhaps this is the most intriguing and interesting point of the story: even the most horrible things that we do to each other require some form of consent from the victims, some form of submission, without which the abuse would never happen or at least, not last too long.

In conclusion, I am sure there are a lot of people that will enjoy the hell out of this book. People oriented, feeling focused people, perhaps. I had difficulty making myself finish it, even fully conscious that the writing was very good. But this is my review, so I will not grade this above average. Probably it is a good idea to watch Cannibal Holocaust first, even if the movie is only an inspiration for the book.