Birthright by Rick Partlow

Birthright [Kindle Edition]

Rick Partlow (Author)

Amazon page.

7/10

Ripping yarn, with lots of sci-fi action: guns, fisticuffs, space combat, some huggin' 'n' kissin', intrigue and some great bad guys and better good guys! There is plenty of rumination over legitimate moral issues, but this story isn't about that. In the end all the morality amounted to was this: loyalty, family and friendship wins the day. It's escapism, but really pulled me in.

This book needs a good edit: there were plenty of spelling and grammar mistakes here that distracted me just a little bit.

What I like most about this story is all the military sci-fi, weapons and enhanced humans - some great kick-ass characters. I would like to read more of Caleb.

Shatnerquake

This is a Bizarro novel, where the intent is to write shockingly silly stories, funny because they are so preposterous. At first I was like OMG how cool is that: Shatner battling TJ Hooker and Kirk and Denny Crane! Tell all my friends! And it brought a chuckle and silly grin a few times, like any fairly well written piece of fan fiction. But that's all this is - fan fiction that needs a lot more editing and drafting. It coulda been a contender, a grin that breaks out every time I watch Denny Crane fart inappropriately, kiss inappropriately, or sniff his friend Alan Shore because he has the lingering scent of a woman about him... inappropriately. Instead, it's a piece of gum that you enjoy only for the extraordinarily short time during which the flavor lovingly caresses your taste buds and fills your mind with the joyous sounds of a light saber singing as it decapitates versions of William Shatner left, right and centre, over and over again.  At least Shatner didn't sue: he even gave it his seal of approval at the end. :)

Check it out Jeff Burk's own Shatnerquake page or on Amazon.

The Call of Cthulhu

H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu is available on WikiSource.

H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu horror is both powerful and inaccessible because it is visceral. Cthulhu is a monster of indescribable horror that is being described. We are used to monsters in films, books and pictures so we can conjure up images of foul beasts easily enough, but it is decidedly harder to adjust our mental image when Lovecraft writes that "The Thing cannot be described".

Thus, the essence of Cthulhu horror is emotional rather than visual. Lovecraft tries to evoke the sense that the monster and the reality it belongs to is so morbidly incomprehensible that just bearing witness to it will bring insanity and inevitable death! This notion is not friendly to intellectual inquiry: we understand "monster" as something concrete but the Cthulhu monster is imbued with a fear of something abstract.

I see this abstract horror in stories that leave things unexplained: in the movies Cloverfield and The Mist we never find out where the monsters came from, how they got here or what they wanted. What Lovecraft adds on top of that is a sense of incomprehension; like a person from a two dimensional universe trying to comprehend our three dimensional universe. In the 90's Sam Neill starred in what I think are two horror movies that are very close to Cthulhu horror: In the Mouth of Madness and Event Horizon. Both movies involve a somewhat hapless curiosity that descends into an incomprehensible, inescapable and abominable fate.

I enjoyed reading Call of Cthulhu because it was challenging to me; trying to comprehend what Lovecraft wanted to portray by writing a story about incomprehensible horror.

3.5 out of 5

Read this on my iPod Touch.

Cleo by Helen Brown

ISBN-10: 1741759072. Publisher: Arena

*This review contains spoilers*

I really enjoyed this book. It grabbed me from the first moment with a picture of an ultra-cute kitteh on the front (Basement cat never looked so cute), and the blurb promising a sad tale with a thread of joy. Just what I am looking for this year for some reason. Thanks to Mum for buying it for me.

Well, it was indeed a sad tale, with a joyful thread; it is in fact is Helen Brown's true story. I shared her rendered heart when Sam, her eldest boy, was struck down. I felt the warmth grow with each new antic of Cleo. I also felt increasingly annoyed each time she let loose her inner voice whining about some aspect of the budding relationship she was developing with Phillip.

It is strange that Cleo is and is not the main character of this book. She grows up with the family, and "teaches" them how to focus on the positive. Right up until the end, when she is a 24 year old queen cat!

I will always hold this book dear to my heart because of the honesty Helen showed in this telling. The most striking moment in the whole book for me is this paragraph in the first 50 pages:

It was no easier for Steve. A few days after the accident I awoke under a waterfall of his tears. He'd never cried in front of me before. I should have reached out and embraced him then, but I was half-awake, unprepared. Distraught, momentarily confused. I simply asked him to stop. I didn't imagine the request would be taken literally and he'd never express sorrow in front of me again.

This paragraph alone describes what has become of the relationship with her first husband while they are both wallowing in sorrow. I was angry at Helen here: she *broke* her man; but on a deeper level I knew it was just the skin of a bubble bursting. It is a portentous moment of stark narrative clarity in a sea of misery that can only be told in hindsight.

A wonderful book - it makes me want to write the story of my cat, Nebulous - a grand 26 years old and still kickin (purring)!

See Helen Brown's website, upon which you can read the Cleo Launch Speech, Melbourne Australia, September 2009 and a page of letters people have written to Helen.