The Backlog Is Even Bigger

It’s one of those times when my book backlog keeps growing and growing and growing.

As I’ve said many times already, I don’t necessarily view this as a bad thing. The few times I haven’t had a big backlog are times when I scramble around for new books. If I find a new book in a time without a backlog and it turns out to not be very good, then I have to scramble anew.

Yet if I read a backlog book and that turns out subpar, then, well, I can just grab the next book out of that. And frequently that turns out a lot better than the previous one. I try to balance my book purchases, even within the “cheap thriller” types so that I don’t get too overloaded by any one genre. It may be counterintuitive to have a big pile of unread books, but it works for me.

 

My new review at SLP

I reviewed Chris Nuttall’s “Storm Front” (wish the title could have been a bit less awkward, oh well) on the Sea Lion Press blog.

Fuldapocalypse Snippet Reviews

I decided that the best way to square the circle between “I want people to know about this obscure book” and “This book doesn’t seem like the type that can sustain a long review” is to just make the individual reviews shorter and bundle them in a “snippet review” collection.

The first such installment of reviews on Fuldapocalypse is here.

100 Fuldapocalypse Posts

Fuldapocalypse Fiction has reached a hundred posts, and I’ve decided to commemorate it with a special post.

It’s been amazing to have this review blog. Really, really amazing.

An Unusually Influential Book

One of the most influential books I’ve read has been Bobby Akart’s Axis of Evil. It was the third book I reviewed on Fuldapocalypse, the first two being the classic World War III novel Chieftains and the more modern The Red Line.

Now, Axis of Evil was not a particularly good book in my eyes. But I owe it a huge amount of gratitude nonetheless, for it turned Fuldapocalypse into a far more diverse blog. Opening the door to more than the narrow Hackett-to-Peters big WWIII spectrium I’d originally planned was a wonderful thing.

My favorite part of book blogging

I’ve done a lot of book blogging and reviewing even before Fuldapocalypse started, and far and away my most favorite part is finding a hidden, obscure delight of a book and thus being able to share it with the internet. Oh, I like reviewing big-name books from time to time, and they can be good.

But they’re not the most fun to review. The most fun to review are when I look for the book with the most zombie sorceress induced “Arkansas vs. the blimps” premise, find it, and then discover that it’s actually a good tale beyond it. There was Team Yankee and Tin Soldiers, the classic tank novels. There were many more good authors I found. The crowning glory of this was the Survivalist, where I took the plunge and read over two dozen books of ramping-up-crazy.

In fact, one of the biggest “problems” I have with my blog is as follows. Do I continue reading existing authors, which are harder to review for even if good (because you’ve already said what exists about it) or take a chance on unknown ones (which can be very good or very bad)? It’s ‘tough’, but it’s a good ‘problem’ to have.

Fuldapocalypse Week In Review 2/17-2/23

Under the experimental “three books a week” schedule, this past week I reviewed three books on Fuldapocalypse, my other blog.

Carrier: Enemies – A book with horrible fundamentals (as in, the plot involving the main antagonist is ultimately left unfinished), but which attracted my attention via an enemy bizarre even by 90s technothriller standards (Greece)

Strikemasters – A Mack Maloney treat. Maloney is not afraid to go “Prepare book for ludicrous speed”, and he can do genuine drama as well in this tale of super C-17s.

Death Watch – The final book in Jerry Ahern’s decade-plus epic soap opera that had long ceased to be post-apocalyptic in the slightest. In my opinion, primarily interesting for seeing “what does the twenty-seventh book in a prolonged series truly look like?”

When I Judged Books By Their Covers

I’m normally not the biggest cover enthusiast when it comes to books. But the covers at least played a role in delaying my interest in Mack Bolan novels for a while. First the background, where there were these things called “bookstores”, and all of the Executioner/SuperBolan/Stony Man books were still chugging along in print, unlike now where the latter two are cancelled and the first is reduced to a few ebooks a year.

I knew who Mack Bolan was because I knew he was the basis of the Punisher. So that brought a slight bit of name recognition. My impression of the Bolan books I saw on the shelves was… iffy. And it wasn’t because I was sneering at the concept-I was every bit the fan of escapist lowbrow fiction I remain today. I was more into science fiction and the occasional technothriller instead of contemporary action.

So I saw the Gold Eagle Bolans on the shelf, and they just seemed, from the cover, description and title, meh. And keep in mind the comparison books I usually ended up actually buying were things like Starfist books, which had dubious plots and even more dubious covers. But the Starfist/Baen covers were at least dubious and distinct.

The Bolans I saw were somehow both overly garish and overly bland at the same time. Don’t just take my word for it, look at the initial covers for later Executioners and Superbolans. (For what it’s worth, the later Stony Man covers hold up considerably better, but I don’t remember seeing those, probably because I didn’t know the connection at the time).

I never took the plunge-I checked the back blurbs a few times but never actually sampled, much less bought a then-new Bolan. And if I had, it’d probably have stayed a one-and-done novelty. Only much later, after Gold Eagle closed in December 2015 and after I read War Against The Mafia did I take a chance on the Bolans I’d previously passed up.

 

X-Wing Series Reviewed at Fuldapocalypse

So for the newest Fuldapocalypse review, I review Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston’s X-Wing series . These were some of my favorite Star Wars books as a kid, and I’m delighted to be reviewing them.

No Number Scales

I simply don’t like reviewing on a number scale.

How can a number scale take a seriously flawed but seriously enjoyable story into account? Both an overambitious but slightly lacking book and an unambitious but fun potboiler can be considered “mixed” but in totally different ways. That’s just one example why I don’t want to review on a number scale.