We continue snippets of my forthcoming Magical Girl-based novel. When we left off, Steve had been asked to do something that seemed physically impossible... ----- Chapter 2. Steve goggled down at the slightly oversized rat with its overly-shiny white fur, tiny golden crown, sitting on his hind legs and regarding Steve with a far too knowing look. "Become what?" "Mystic Galaxy Defender, Princess Holy Aura," Silvertail repeated calmly. The repetition of the ridiculous phrase left Steve speechless. He would have [ Continue reading... ]
Princess Holy Aura: Chapter 1
August 21, 2017 By 4 Comments
Today I begin snippeting Princess Holy Aura. The book is due out in very early December, and the eARC usually comes out three months before that, so the snippets will probably overlap with the eARC to some extent. Here we go! PRINCESS HOLY AURA Part I: The Princess and the Rat Chapter 1. The screaming came from the alley to Steve's right; it was high-pitched, the voice of a child in terror and pain. Steve found himself sprinting down the alley before he'd even consciously realized what he was going to do. This sure wasn't [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Spider-Man: Homecoming
August 17, 2017 By Leave a Comment
This movie (plus small segments in Captain America: Civil War) represents the third depiction of Marvel's flagship hero Spider-Man in fifteen years. The first, starting in 2002, was Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3. Andrew Garfield rebooted the role in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Now Tom Holland takes up the webslinging role. Unlike the prior two incarnations, this version of Spider-Man doesn't bother us with the origin story. In that, I think the movie does depend on the viewer having [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Delirium Brief
August 8, 2017 By Leave a Comment
In the prior Laundry Files novel, The Nightmare Stacks, the UK was invaded by a desperate army of super-Nazi magic-wielding Elves. Fortunately, the army was defeated when the innocent young vampire (er, sorry, PHANG) agent captured the heart of the Elven Princess and the two of them defeated her Evil Stepmother and Evil Overlord Father, thus making her the All-Highest. Of course, all this troperiffic goodness was filtered through the twisted nature of the Laundryverse, but still, it was surprisingly upbeat; eldritch horrors notwithstanding, [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Tom Derringer in the Tunnels of Terror
August 1, 2017 By 1 Comment
Lawrence Watt-Evans has been one of my favorite authors for years, and I've liked many of his books. I've previously reviewed his first entry in the Tom Derringer series; it's good to finally see the next of Tom's adventures. The Tom Derringer series takes place in a world superficially like our own in the late 1800s – but one in which "Adventurers" of the pulp sort are a real thing, where there are mysterious cities of gold, ancient cursed temples, hidden worlds of unknown races of men, and so on. Tom himself is the son of a [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Nightmare Stacks
July 25, 2017 By 1 Comment
Alex Schwartz used to be a programmer for an investment banking group, basically dedicated to finding new, more effective, more profitable, ways to analyze financial data and guide investments. His was a six-figure salary, the vision of ever-increasing bonuses, and a life mostly constrained by in-house geekery and a lot of pressure. Then he programmed something a little too elegant and complex, and summoned something from the mathematical beyond that lurks just beyond the edge of everyone's normal reach in the Laundryverse. That [ Continue reading... ]
Just For Fun: Here’s the detailed drawing…
July 21, 2017 By 2 Comments
... of the image partially seen on the cover of Princess Holy Aura! Original by Morinekozion, of course! [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Dragonball Super
July 20, 2017 By Leave a Comment
I have previously reviewed Dragonball and Dragonball Z (http://grandcentralarena.com/on-my-shelves-dragonballdragonball-z/), which in a nutshell I described as "the Skylark series of anime and manga. It has much of the same cheerful, full-speed-ahead energy, the same innocence of the protagonists, the same fairly simple, blunt-instrument approach to moral problems… and the same incredibly-escalating powerscale. It may not be the BEST of its kind, and perhaps many of the pieces were there beforehand, but it was the one that put them all together [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Wonder Woman
July 11, 2017 By Leave a Comment
(technically it WILL be On My Shelves but was On The Screen) I recently had the opportunity to see the new Wonder Woman movie starring Gal Gadot. This means I get to post a review of something that ISN'T ten years out of date! Short and unspoilery: This is what the DC-Cinematic universe has been waiting for, a movie with a superheroic main character who's allowed to be – who insists on being – a Super Hero, one whose conflicts stem from idealism versus the real world's limits, and that refuses to accept the real world's [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Annihilation Score
July 6, 2017 By Leave a Comment
Dominique "Mo" O'Brien is a combat epistemologist, expert violinist, and field agent for The Laundry, the same ultra-top-secret bureaucracy that Bob Howard works for. In fact, Mo is married to Bob. Their marriage has had… stresses on it. All Mo has to deal with is her eldritch violin trying to either seduce her or control her (it's hard to say which), being suddenly assigned to run a brand-new division of law enforcement, having to work with Bob's fearsome ex Mhari, the sudden outbreak of superheroes (and villains) popping up everywhere, the [ Continue reading... ]
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