Mystery on Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Warren Ellis – Gun Machine [book review]

Fri, 04 Jul 2014 08:39:27 +0000

The reason why I keep reading Warren Ellis’s books is that I loved Transmetropolitan (his graphic novel(s)). Unfortunately, I don’t feel that his work translates very well to the written word. Sometimes it results in fascinating little swirls of crazy style… and at other times it feels oddly lacking.

Gun Machine is a good example of what I’m talking about: gory, very visual details like someone’s eye popping out of its socket as he gets killed; the murderer seeing the modern world as herds of deer, predatory animals, wolves with glowing eyes – and we’re talking about cars here. It feels definitely different from your usual sort of novel, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

It’s a mystery novel, the sort with a killer and a lot of unsolved crimes. Detective Tallow is out working a case with his partner which ends up with a lunatic shooting his partner dead. Tallow kills the killer – but ends up blowing a hole in the wall of a nearby apartment, which turns out to be some sort of creepy church-like place dedicated to guns. He’s supposed to take some time off, but due to somebody wanting to finish him and get him out of the job (why? I’m not sure), he’s back working the case of the crazy gun room, with the expectation that he’ll fail to solve it. And it turns out that each and every gun has been used to murder someone.

He’s left pursuing a crazy case, collaborating with a pair of wacky CSU, with coincidences forwarding his case (one of the people he randomly saves on the street turns out to be related to the guns/murderer), everybody knows things about Native American history, the police radio keeps spouting insane murders at every hour of the day – you’d think 20 to 50 people got killed every day there for all sorts of reasons. If the novel is meant to be realistic instead of fantasy, and I get the feeling it is, some of the details are wildly exaggerated.

An okay murder thriller, readable, with decently fleshed out characters… but at the same time it felt to me like it kept making small messes for the sake of convenience.

(findable on Amazon in Kindle format and as paperback on BookDepository for approximately the same price, with free shipping)

The mystery of the 1-star rating

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 19:57:27 +0000

Currently my rating for Flight from Hell over on the Big World Network is of 4.6/5 (with 9 votes cast). You can see it here. But not so long ago it was 4/5 (with 4 votes cast). Reverse it and try to figure out what the possible votes could be: 4*4 = 16, therefore the 4 votes amounted to 16.

Possibilities: 4 ratings of 4; 2 ratings of 5, 2 of 3; 3 ratings of 5, 1 of 1.

I’d already checked the rating before and it had been 5/5 with 2 votes, therefore only the latter two possibilities existed. But this is the internet where ratings of 3 are rare, so I was willing to bet that the last option was the correct option.

Three people had probably voted 5, one had voted 1.

Now, I’ve yet to see a bestseller with a perfect 5 and no book I love has ever lacked haters. I doubt that I will manage to enchant everybody like a mythical storyteller, so it was only a matter of time until that perfect 5 was marred by different opinions.

Still, a 1-star rating. Since the Big World Network more often has ratings than comments, there was nothing there to motivate the choice and I found that I really wanted to know why I got that one. Did the rater hate the premise? The choice of words? The pretentiousness, perhaps, the long sentences, the idea about Hell, the… well… What did the rater hate?

After all, knowing what they hate is a gateway into figuring out what they like, what they appreciate, what you do right and what you do wrong. It’s not just that they hate, it’s why they hate, and isn’t that fascinating and psychological and maybe you can use it sometime?

But I was most certainly never going to find out. So I figured I’d have to wait until the first bad review to be relieved of curiosity.

Luckily for me, my mother eventually said, „Ermmm, I was debating on whether I should tell you this.”

Me: „Yes?”

Mum: „I shared your novel on Facebook.”

Me: „Yeah…”

Mum: „And a friend clicked and she gave you a one-star rating.”

Me: „!!!!!!!!!”

Mum: „I’m sorry…”

Me: „Why? Why did she? She must’ve said.”

Mum: „Well, it’s stupid, really.”

Me: *dying to know the answer*

Mum: „She was looking for the ’like’ button, to share it with others on Facebook, but she only saw the stars and clicked on the first one and only realized her mistake later.”

Me: „…”

Mum: „Don’t be mad.”

Me: *bursts out laughing* „You have no idea how long I poked that rating, trying to figure out what had happened there. This is too damned funny.”

So, note to everybody out there who gets really weird ratings: sometimes, it’s really not about you 😀

Jim Butcher's "Storm Front" [Book Review]

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:53:20 +0000

Title: Storm Front

Series: The Dresden Files
Author: Jim Butcher

Rating: 4/5

Is this book for me? It’s an urban fantasy set in Chicago. It features a number of magical creatures, a plot best described as ‘detective mystery’, humor and, occasionally, profanity. If that sounds appealing, then the book is for you. If you’re looking for Deep Meaning, philosophical inquiry, Tolkien-like worlds, romance or Quotable Wisdom, then probably not.

One of the things I like about the Dresden Files is the down-to-earth, often funny, very human tone, with a strong component of realism. Well, realism as far as descriptions and psychology go, anyway. Seeing that this is fantasy, you can hardly expect the world to be plausible.

Harry Dresden is an honest-to-God real wizard trying to make a living out of his talent in a world that is very similar to our own (except the part where it secretly and stealthily contains magic). He collaborates with the Special Investigations Unit of the Chicago Police Department, where director Karrin Murphy was generous enough to believe him to be the real thing and offer him a collaboration contract which pays most of his bills. He also freelances and advertises himself in the newspaper – which works as you could expect it to work in the real world. Prank calls and people looking for lost husbands via psychics.

I first doubted Dresden’s abilities as a wizard. I mean, what sort of a poor sod is so bad at the magic business that he’s perpetually starving, like a magic copy of Henry Miller? (Henry Miller’s „Tropic of Cancer” is often mistakenly believed to be porn, but it’s actually hunger and philosophy) After Harry Potter and the Wands That Achieved Anything With the Right Wave and Words, Dresden seemed to be woefully underpowered and tragically unprepared for life. However, my respect for him grew in time – Dresden’s strength lies not in his ability to blast holes in things, or to summon fairies (although he can certainly do that), but in his vast magical knowledge, quick wit, preparation and ability to think on his feet, back, knees, belly and however else he needs to think.

The novel, as fast paced as your usual action-packed mystery, starts with Dresden getting two cases at the same time: a police-related one via Murphy, concerning magical murders, and a civil one via the worried Monica Sells, concerning her missing husband Victor Sells. As if that weren’t enough, Dresden is under suspicion of breaking the magical law and placed under the „Doom of Damocles”, which means he has somebody prepared to kill him shadowing his every foot and looking for any minor transgression that would warrant his killing – and also under suspicion of being behind the magical murders that Murphy is investigating.

Yes, you can bet 10 pounds/dollars that everything comes together into a single plot. But Jim Butcher manages to keep you guessing and to make you jump to the edge of your seat in excitement every time something bad happens. And he does it with a charm and ingenuity that are just maliciously, gleefully, horribly entertaining.

One of my favorite scenes has Harry Dresden fighting a magical construct while pretty much naked, with a lusty woman trying to jump his bones while doors and elevators are ruined around them. And it all makes sense at the time.

Lovely writing, edge-of-your-seat sort of thing, also good for a laugh or a few smirks (Dresden’s style of telling the story is simply delicious). I am definitely recommending it – 4 stars out of 5 because I know that the series gets better and I need gradation.

Available via Amazon UK:

And Amazon US: