Book Giveaway - "Bloodlands" by Christine Cody

I have three (3) copies of Christine Cody's Bloodlands to giveaway, courtesy of Christine Cody. This is your chance to sink your teeth into the "Doomsday Fangslinger" genre. A post-apocalyptic Western. Vampires. Action. Suspense. What more could you want? (Don't answer break-dancing mummies rocking grandma pantaloons! That's my answer. Copycat!)

Check out Christine’s website at www.bloodlands.net. You can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Publisher Blurb for Bloodlands: It was called the New Badlands, home to the survivors of a cataclysm that altered the entire nation. Then the vampires arrived, and it was rechristened the Bloodlands. Not because of the vampire, but because of the gun-for- hire who'd decided to slay every monster in the country by any and every means necessary.

To Enter to Win: Send an email to pstotts@bloodofthemuse.com with the subject line "BLOODLANDS" and include your name and mailing address in the body of your email. Multiple entries will be disqualified. Winners will be selected at random. No purchase is necessary. Contest is open to everyone. Contest ends: August 31, 2011 at 11:59pm PST.

For more Blood of the Muse giveaways: click here.

Bloggers: if you promote this contest on your blog, I will give you an additional entry. Email me at pstotts@bloodofthemuse.com with the subject line "BLOODLANDS", and include the address to your blog in the body of the email, or you can leave the address to your blog in the comment section of this post. I'll check it out and make sure you get another entry.

Good luck to everyone who enters!

Winner of the Ghost Story Giveaway

I've finally gotten around to picking a non-scaredy-squirrel. This brave soul will receive a copy of Ghost Story by Jim Butcher. They might even read it with the lights off. (That could be difficult, though.)

The winner is Hillary L. from Maryland—my old stomping grounds. (Boy, I miss my parole officer!) Congratulations! Enjoy the book!

Thanks to everyone who entered! And if you didn't win this time, there are more giveaways coming soon!

An Interview With Christine Cody

A post-apocalyptic Western fantasy? Sounds like what you'd get if Clint Eastwood stumbled into Cormac McCarthy's The Road. But if you sprinkle in some vampires, then you've got Christine Cody's (official website) Bloodlands series.

The first novel in the series, Bloodlands, can now be found wandering the prairies of your favorite bookseller. The second volume, Blood Rules, drops on August 30 at High Noon, followed a month later by the third book, In Blood We Trust (September 27).

Christine generously took the time to answer a few questions about her new post-apocalyptic Western fantasy series. So strap on your plastic vamp fangs and Colt six-shooter, and grab your Geiger counter. Because it's time for the Good, the Bad, and the Irradiated.

Imagine you're a telemarketer cold-calling readers. How would you pitch your Bloodlands trilogy?

I’d use the Hollywood pitch—“Bloodlands is a paranormal Shane meets Mad Max. The series itself has also been called post-apocalyptic supernatural Western.” And here’s the Twitter plot-pitch: “They called it the New Badlands...until the vampire came, bringing danger to the settlers who took him in. Then it became the Bloodlands.”

You have a small backpack. It's filled with a few items that are essential for survival in a post-apocalyptic scenario? What would be in the backpack?

Humans would be wearing heat suits if they’re daft enough to be walking around the sweltering New Badlands during the day, and they’d have to make sure they scrounged up water and food from the desolate landscape and carried weapons to fight the dangerous mutated creatures that populate the area. But I think I’ll answer this question as Gabriel, the male protagonist of the books.

He’s a vampire, so his pack is going to differ from that of a human’s. As a creature of the night, he first and foremost needs blood, and he gets that from the animals that scurry around the New Badlands, so he doesn’t carry anything like beef jerky or normal food; however, he does have a solar battery-operated flask that keeps his extra supply of blood cool. He also has a jar of some strange “unguent” that he uses to “heal” his injuries—but that’s just a ruse to explain the reason he heals so quickly to any humans he might encounter. You’d also find a comb and a scrap of pink material that he carries so he can track the scent of the woman who left him back in the urban hubs. That’s why he’s come out to the New Badlands—because he’s trying to find her.

You find yourself in a Western-style showdown with a vampire. What time of day does this duel happen, and what would be the weapon of choice?

Since the vampires in the Bloodlands series don’t rise during the day, a good slayer would try to discover where they bed down at night…but that doesn’t make for a good showdown, now, does it? I’d opt for just before dawn, when a vampire might be worried about getting inside and away from the sunlight. And I’d use a weapon that belongs to the government-sanctioned slayers (also called Shredders)—a “chest puncher.” It’s a device that resembles a crossbow, but it punches into a vamp’s chest, tears it open to expose the heart, then burns the heart. A Shredder would then follow up with decapitation.

Sergio Leone famously made "Spaghetti Westerns". What phrase would best describe Christine Cody's Bloodland novels?

I’d call it the “Doomsday Fangslinger” genre, LOL.

You are walking down a dark alley late at night. A monster leaps from the shadows; it is the scariest creature you can imagine. What is it?

It’s a creature from the sequel to Bloodlands, the first book in the series. There’s this…thing…in Blood Rules (which comes out on Tuesday, 8/30, by the way!) that has red diamond eyes, long silver hair on its head and shorter sprinklings of it on its body. The silver hair looks like ash rubbed over its skin. It has four arms that wave around. Its mouth has long, long teeth, and its tongue darts out, splitting in two, coming at me and wrapping around me and reeling me in. Just before those teeth crush into me, I see a mindless, timeless craving in its gaze….

If you could pick one song to be the soundtrack for your Bloodland books, what would it be?

“Farewell Ride” by Beck. It’s got a bleak Western vibe, but the chorus has a hint of optimism in its chords. Bloodlands is the story of a lot of things, but part of it is about surviving, even under the worst of circumstances, no matter who you are, so the soundtrack should have some light in the darkness.

Check out Christine’s website at www.bloodlands.net. You can also follow her on Twitter http://twitter.com/ChristineCody and Facebook http://www.facebook.com/people/Chris-Marie-Green/1051327765

"Bloodline" by Mark Billingham (Mulholland)

Bloodline
Mark Billingham
352 pp. Mulholland. $24.99
Pub. Date: 7/14/2011
ISBN-13: 978-0316126663

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

Publisher Blurb: A killer is on the loose. The victims: children whose mothers can't protect them.

The past is coming back to haunt the people of London: a murderer is targeting the children of victims of Raymond Garvey, an infamous serial killer from London's past.

When Murder Squad veteran Detective Tom Thorne, who solves the London Police Department's most difficult cases, is called into what seems like, for once, an ordinary domestic murder, he thinks he's caught a break. A woman has been murdered by someone she knows. A positive pregnancy test found on the floor beside her. Thorne plans to question the husband, arrest him and return home to deal with his own deteriorating personal life.

But when a mysterious sliver of bloodstained X-ray that was found clutched in the victim's fist is replicated at other crime scenes around the city, Thorne realizes that this is not a simple case. As the bits of X-ray begin to come together to form a picture, it becomes clear that the killer knows his prey all too well and is moving through a list that was started long ago.

As Thorne attempts to protect those still alive, nothing and nobody are what they seem. Not when Thorne is dealing with one of the most twisted killers he has ever hunted.

Kudos to Mulholland Books for providing a home for crime fiction and championing under-appreciated wordsmiths like Duane Swierczynski, Charlie Huston, and Mark Billingham, among others. The crime genre looks to be in capable hands with Mulholland as they introduce these writers to a slew of fresh virgin eyeballs, bringing police procedurals and serial killers into Grandma's living room. Good plan. Because few things are as fascinating as serial killers.

Call it part morbid fascination, part wish fulfillment, but audiences love their killers unhinged. The more unhinged the better. Throw in some cannibalism, win an Academy Award for Best Picture (like Silence of the Lambs in 1991). A currently hot trend is the serial killer as anti-hero, popularized by Dexter from both the books and Showtime series. Audiences relate to these anti-heroes, understanding why these killers do the things they do. They make sense; real-world killers don't. Logic doesn't work with violent sociopaths. It is the mystery of the human psyche that makes real serial killers interesting, our fascination rising from our inability to understand them. They are the unknown. The embodiment of random violence. Human sharks.

The downside: serial killers are like vampires in the urban fantasy genre. Ubiquitous. And played out. Novels typically focus on the cat and mouse game between the killer and the police. Police get close, killer thwarts them. Rinse. Repeat. Killers are usually highly-functional and intelligent; the stupid ones would get caught on the first page. The smarter-than-thou type killer is a literary creation, a character that actively outsmarts the police. Real killers use their anonymity as a shield, cloaking them from detection.

The serial killer in Mark Billingham's Bloodline is mainly the smarter-than-thou type, consistently outmaneuvering the police detectives in a way that would make Machiavelli beam. Billingham elevates the novel above the standard fare with two wise decisions, one is that he creates a richly-detailed and complex lead detective in Tom Thorne, and the second is a nifty bit of misdirection late in the novel. Billingham challenges himself in Bloodlines. This isn't a writer going through the motions, writing the standard crime novel. Instead, he pushes at the story's framework, occasionally exploring an atypical choice. This is a writer who is trying to put his own unique twist on the material. Which is commendable, because it shows a respect for his audience.

The police procedure feels accurate and realistic. Billingham does a nice job guiding the reader through the process, keeping it real without inundating you with the minutia of the investigation. Most police procedurals bore me, because they can be redundant. But not Bloodline. Chalk that up to Billingham's assured writing. The language of the novel is heavily influenced by the British idiom, so for a patsy-faced American like me it reads decidedly British. (Luckily, I have a British-to-Ungrateful-Colonist translator).

Lead detectives can often be flat, but Billingham introduces a subplot into Thorne's personal life that really opens up the character. Thorne isn't an all-work-no-home-life type of detective. He has to balance one of the biggest cases of his life with one of his greatest personal struggles. It makes him human. And a character the reader can clearly connect with. The minor characters—while not complex—don't resemble cliches. They are well-developed with Billingham giving each one of them their own quirks, which make them feel not just unique, but real. Characterization this strong is a rarity in the genre.

Billingham has crafted an intelligent and nicely written thriller, one that's guaranteed to provide the reader with a few cool surprises. The material in Bloodline might seem formulaic, but Billingham does enough of the little things right to make the novel worth the time.

Excerpt - The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks

Brent Weeks has been working hard on the second volume in The Lightbringer Series, The Blinding Knife. (The Blinding Knife. Oedipus would be proud. But feeding his hubris likely a bad idea.) That hard work has been put on display as he's made the first three chapters of the book available. Interested? You need to head over to The Black Prism fan page on Facebook (engage wormhole here) and push the Like button. And if you want to do the hokey-pokey, that's up to you.

Guest Post - Slums of the Shire by Daniel Polansky

Occasionally you'll be with a group of people and they'll get to talking about their favorite historical epochs, nostalgic for lives they never led. One person will talk up their childhood love of the Wild West, another reveal a penchant for Victorian England. This last one just has a thing for corsets, but it's better not to call them on it.

When my turn rolls round I take a sip of whatever we're drinking and look at my shoes. “The mid 90's were pretty good,” I say lamely. “Slower internet and everything, but at least we had penicillin.”

Perhaps it's my being a history buff, but the past sucked. For about a millennium and a half after the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe just seems like a real shit place to reside. Lots of rooting in filth until you die at thirty a half mile from where you born. Nominally the nobles had it better, but still, your fever would have been treated with the application of leaches and your pretty young bride had like a one in two chance of surviving child birth.

This probably is why I don't understand fantasy—that is to say that collection of high medieval tropes collected by Tolkien and gleefully reproduced by two generations of descendants.

Take elves for instance—though perfectly capable of imagining a world where higher intelligence evolved in a species separate from humanity, my powers of make believe fail when positing that the relation between said species would be anything beyond unceasing warfare. Even a cursory glance at human history reveals our collective willingness to commit genocide on fellow homo sapiens—how much quicker would we have been to eradicate a separate species competing for identical resources? If elves existed, our ancestors would have hunted them down to extinction and erected a monument to the accomplishment.

But I digress.

Even when nestled comfortably in a quest to kill a dragon or overthrow a dark lord or what have you, strange thoughts plague me. What does the shady side of Gondor look like? How many platinum coins would a dime bag set me back? What is the point of hobbits? They're just short, fat people. People are plenty fat as it is.

Low Town is sort of my attempt to answer some of those questions (not the last one). It's the story of the Warden, a former intelligence agent and current drug dealer, whose gradual slide into self-destruction is briefly checked by the discovery of a dead body in the neighborhood he runs. An ill-timed bout of conscience rattles the easy cage of venality he's built for himself, and leads him on a collision course with the life he'd left behind. The Warden is a guy trying to survive the next few days, and not particularly squeamish as to what that requires—the sort of person more likely to populate a classic crime novel than to be found stocking the fantasy section of your local Borders (RIP).

More broadly, Low Town is an attempt to meld the best aspects of noir with a low fantasy setting—a meeting of tastes which I think complement each other nicely. The spare language and fast pace of good noir offers a pleasant counterpoint to the sprawling—one might even say bloated—length of much modern fantasy. On a somewhat broader level, the tendency of fantasy to focus on world shaking events often renders it irrelevant to the average reader, whose life relatively rarely devolves into single combat against vaguely satanic analogs. By contrast, noir is concerned with the individual, with greed and lust, sins all of us can comprehend to some degree. Low Town centers on the conceit that a world with magic wouldn't be altogether different from a world without it. People are still (on the whole) selfish, stupid creatures, focused almost exclusively on the immediate satisfaction of their basic desires, only now some of them can shoot fire out of their hands.

That's the idea at least. It comes out today (August 16th) in the US and Canada, and on Thursday (August 18th) in the UK and Commonwealth. I hope you check it out and see if I've succeeded, or if I'm just a pretentious clown. Or both.

Paul sez - I reviewed Daniel's debut Low Town (The Straight Razor Cure in the UK) a few days ago (review) and was impressed with Daniel's intelligent and poetic prose. Crime fiction lovers will gobble this one up.

"Prince of Thorns" by Mark Lawrence (Ace)

Prince of Thorns
Mark Lawrence
336 pp. Ace. $25.95
Pub. Date: 8/2/2011
ISBN-13: 978-0441020324

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

Publisher Blurb: When he was nine, he watched his mother and brother killed before him. By the time he was thirteen, he was the leader of a band of bloodthirsty thugs. By fifteen, he intends to be king...

It's time for Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath to return to the castle he turned his back on, to take what's rightfully his. Since the day he was hung on the thorns of a briar patch and forced to watch Count Renar's men slaughter his mother and young brother, Jorg has been driven to vent his rage. Life and death are no more than a game to him-and he has nothing left to lose.

But treachery awaits him in his father's castle. Treachery and dark magic. No matter how fierce, can the will of one young man conquer enemies with power beyond his imagining?

Wow, someone needs a hug.

Not many fantasy characters have needed a hug more than Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath, the provocative—and potentially divisive— anti-hero of Mark Lawrence's excellent debut, Prince of Thorns. Hug with caution, though; Prince Jorg is a short-tempered sociopath who would likely stab your eyes out with a barbecue fork if you tried. Cross Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas with a demon-possessed Linda Blair from The Exorcist and you get a character that'd piss his pants in the presence of Prince Jorg. Calling Jorg an anti-hero is like calling a nuclear bomb a weapon. Neither paints an accurate picture of just how destructive and explosive both are. Here's the kicker: Jorg is only fourteen. (And you thought your teenagers were bad!)

Lawrence is relentless in his portrayal of Jorg, creating a main character that is incredibly unlikable, and never wavering from that choice. Unlike Joe Abercrombie, Lawrence doesn't use black humor to make the dark, gritty nature of his characters more palatable. He writes unapologetically, never hiding what Jorg truly is from the reader. And this is the most fascinating aspect of Prince of Thorns: how unflinching Lawrence is in developing Jorg. Most writers would have eventually backed off and given Jorg a redeeming characteristic, a thread of salvation to pull him back toward the light; Lawrence doesn't. Jorg isn't a character, he's a twenty car pile-up, an accident you have to stop and stare at, too engrossing to turn away from. While processing what Jorg just did, your mind already wonders about what he'll do next.

In going full sociopath with Jorg, Lawrence is able to confound many fantasy cliches. Good characters need to play by a specific set of rules, but not Jorg. He doesn't just gleefully cross these lines, he obliterates them. Remember when you were a kid, how you would test your parents, exploring their limits, seeing how far you could push the boundaries, pushing, pushing, until out popped a healthy helping of whoop-ass. That's what Lawrence does; he pushes. And pushes. Pushes so far that Prince of Thorns reaches exciting new territory, venturing beyond the standard good/evil dichotomy. This is epic fantasy meets moral ambivalence, repulsive but utterly fascinating, simultaneously contradictory.

There is a simplicity to the novel; it's lean and muscular. There is no fat, no extraneous material to bog down the proceedings. Prince of Thorns is all story, and paced accordingly. It's very reminiscent to Brent Weeks's Night Angel Trilogy, where significant events happened on every page rather than over the course of twenty-five pages. The novel arises out of Jorg's first-person perspective, so its leanness is attributable to Jorg's man-of-action nature. Verbose descriptions would be out of character for the young man who constantly rides the edge between intense anger and insanity.

Jorge leads a group of colorful mercenaries known as the Brothers. They are a disreputable bunch who thrill at the prospect of looting, raping, and killing. They are a crate of bad apples that makes Jorg appear more rotten in comparison. Lawrence only gives us bits and pieces on most of the Brothers, but it is a testament to his writing skill that such a little taste makes the reader hungry for more. I wanted to read more about the Brothers, both before meeting Jorg and while with him. There is so much fertile ground to explore with these characters, ground that hopefully will be examined in the future volumes in the series.

Prince of Thorns is an incredibly impressive debut. Lawrence creates a character that, prima facie, is difficult to relate to, despicable and repulsive. Yet it is hard not to be utterly engaged by Jorg, his predatory nature nauseatingly charming, hard to turn away from, like staring into the eyes of a shark. The reader eventually develops a grim fascination with the character, a bond that speaks highly of the strength of Lawrence's writing. Prince of Thorns is a case where the sum is much greater than its parts. How that happens can only be attributable to the magic Lawrence weaves.    

"Low Town" by Daniel Polansky (Doubleday)

Low Town
Daniel Polansky
352 pp. Doubleday. $25.95
Pub. Date: 8/16/2011
ISBN-13: 978-0385534468

The Straight Razor Cure (UK)
Daniel Polansky
352pp. Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99
Pub Date: 8/18/2011
ISBN-13: 978-1444721294

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

Publisher Blurb: Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops . . . and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town.

In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its cham­pion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs. Every day is a constant hustle to find new customers and protect his turf from low-life competition like Tancred the Harelip and Ling Chi, the enigmatic crime lord of the heathens.

The Warden’s life of drugged iniquity is shaken by his dis­covery of a murdered child down a dead-end street . . . set­ting him on a collision course with the life he left behind. As a former agent with Black House—the secret police—he knows better than anyone that murder in Low Town is an everyday thing, the kind of crime that doesn’t get investi­gated. To protect his home, he will take part in a dangerous game of deception between underworld bosses and the psy­chotic head of Black House, but the truth is far darker than he imagines. In Low Town, no one can be trusted.

Certain things go together. Like peanut butter and chocolate. Acne and virginity. Philosophy degrees and unemployment. Me and my wife (+10,000 bonus points for me)! But crime fiction and fantasy? Nonsense! Might as well put on the motley and play the jester for spouting such poppycock. Imagine if Frodo and Sam had pawned the Ring and bought a hobbit-sized pile of Ganga with the proceeds. Sauron would have conquered the world while these two high hobbits were still in the Shire, snacking on a plateful of Jeno's Pizza Rolls. So in what sick, twisted world do those two genres cross-pollinate?

In the sick, twisted world inhabited by Low Town (published in the UK as the more ominous-sounding The Straight Razor Cure), Daniel Polansky's assured and wonderfully stylistic debut. Low Town, the eponymous city that serves as the novel's backdrop, is a dystopian nightmare, filled with crime, death, drugs, poverty, and the plague. Residents don't live as much as they try not to die. The environment is harsh and brutal; it is the worse inner-city ghettos as re-imagined by Thomas Hobbes. While the problems in Low Town are exaggerated, it's correlation to our urban reality is clear.

Low Town is essentially a crime novel with minor fantasy elements. If you are expecting an epic fantasy, or even an urban fantasy, you'll likely be disappointed. The fantasy aspects of the novel are underplayed; they add color to the story, not substance. Magic exists in the world, but an explanation of how it works is rare, mainly because the narrative unfolds through the first person perspective of Warden, an ex-detective, who is currently a drug supplier, and generally ignorant of the mechanics behind magic. Crime is his life; he understands it, from both sides of the fence. He understands the dirty politics behind any investigation, the procedures and conflict. And these are what he passes along to the reader. Polansky's choice of writing from Warden's perspective is what defines Low Town as a crime novel.

The strength of Low Town is Polansky's writing; he infuses the work with a poetic wit that is engaging. Often, I would pause to enjoy a marvelously composed turn of phrase. Unlike the majority of crime fiction which uses language economically, Polansky delights in words, in using vocabulary in a way that is fresh and unique in the genre. What makes Low Town a wonderful reading experience is how beautifully composed it is. It's special. And that shines through on each page. People will refer to certain authors as wordsmiths; Polansky deserves that classification.

Polansky's skill as a writer livens up an otherwise straightforward crime story. If you've read a few crime novels, nothing in Low Town will surprise you. The minor characters for the most part are present to fulfill a purpose. In the case of Warden's young go-fer Wren, his purpose in the novel becomes obvious midway through the book. Polansky has created an interesting cast; I just wish they had been fleshed out more. These quibbles are faults that are generally endemic to the crime genre, but they are ones that may turn off a more casual reader.

Style often overcomes story for me, and Low Town is an example of this. Polansky is an extremely talented writer, one who will always be readable because of the unique voice he brings to his work. My two favorite genres are crime and fantasy, and I love the attempt here at mixing the two genres. But it isn't an equal partnership. If Polansky had embraced the fantasy elements more and added more depth to the world, Low Town would have been a singular reading experience. Overall, Low Town is a fantastic debut; it's not quite genre-busting, but Polansky is clearly on the right path.

"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline (Crown)

Ready Player One
Ernest Cline
384 pp. Crown. $24.00
Pub. Date: 8/16/2011
ISBN-13: 978-0307887436

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

Publisher Blurb: It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.

I'm a video game enthusiast. There, I said it. (The first step is admitting to the problem. This isn't much of a problem as far as I'm concerned, though. Unless you are talking about how it impacts our storage space.) Magnavox Odyssey. I own it. Same with the Atari 2600 and 5200, the Mattel Intellivision, Colecovision, a variety of Nintendo and Sega systems, a TurboGrafx 16, Sony Playstations and Microsoft Xboxes. And boxes of games for every single one of these systems. Not enough. These full-sized arcade versions of Centipede and Galaxian pictured here are also mine.

So what's the point, you ask? Because my love of classic video games makes me the perfect audience (as well as terribly biased) for Ernest Cline's debut, Ready Player One. Ready Player One is a nostalgic look back at the geek culture of the late twentieth century, covering video games, movies, and music. If you've ever played Dungeons and Dragons, or put a quarter into a Donkey Kong machine, or recited the dialogue along with the actors in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or found the hidden Easter egg in Adventure for the Atari 2600, then Ready Player One is essential reading material. Forget Ready Player One being the best game-themed novel, it's more than just that. It is the best account of classic video game history in any medium.

Ready Player One revolves around an Easter egg hunt that arises after the death of legendary (and fictional) game designer James Halliday, a multi-billionaire who is part Richard Garriott (creator of the Ultima series and co-founder of Origin Systems) and John Carmack (creator of Doom and Quake and co-founder of id Software). Halliday is the creator of OASIS, an immense multi-world simulated reality, an MMORPG dialed up to 11, and the hiding place for Halliday's Easter egg, a multi-billion dollar prize that will give the winner control of the OASIS system. The main appeal of OASIS is that it is a refuge for its players who are escaping from a bleak and depressed reality.

Wade Watts is one of the players hunting for Halliday's Easter egg (these players are referred to as gunters). When Wade uncovers the first puzzle in the contest, he instantly becomes a celebrity. He also becomes a target of the IOI corporation which seeks to win the contest in order to gain control of OASIS, their ultimate goal to monetize the system.

Ready Player One is part race against the clock, part corporate intrigue, and part love story, wrapped in a historical account of video game and geek culture. Cline smoothly integrates the pop-culture references into the contest itself. The hunt revolves around Halliday's nostalgia for that past era, so in order to progress, gunters must be intimately familiar with the video games, movies, and music that Halliday loved. While knowledge of this geek culture is helpful to the reader, Cline's explanations work wonderfully for those who aren't gamers. And readers should readily relate to Wade who is both charming and naive in his role as the underdog.

Cline's love for the subject matter shines through in the novel; his enthusiasm is infectious, and it is difficult not to geek out with him. The fun in reading Ready Player One is discovering what part of geek culture Cline will explore next. Will it be the movie Ladyhawke, or a D&D module, or the video game Tempest? Cline doesn't just talk about video games, he breathes life into them, he immerses the reader into them. You aren't just playing or watching, you are experiencing them, living them. And this is where the joy the reader experiences comes from in Ready Player One. Not from the nostalgia, since nostalgia is just a memory of the past. But from making those memories real once again. Never got to plug a cartridge into a ColecoVision? Ready Player One will teach you how that felt, bringing back your childhood sense of wonder and awe.

I loved Ready Player One; it's easily one of my favorite books ever. A reading experience like this comes along for me rarely, maybe once every five years. Never have I wanted to thank an author for writing a book as much as I want to thank Ernest Cline. So, thank you Mr. Cline. May all your scores be high scores.      

"Missing Persons" by Clare O'Donohue (Plume)

Missing Persons
Clare O'Donohue
288 pp. Plume. $15.00
Pub. Date: 5/31/2011
ISBN-13: 978-0452297067

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

Publisher Blurb: The cause of death is "undetermined," but the cops peg Chicago television producer Kate Conway as the main suspect when her soon-to-be ex-husband, Frank, is found dead. To make matters worse-and weirder- Frank's new girlfriend suddenly wants to be friends.

Happy for the distraction, Kate throws herself into a new work assignment for the television program Missing Persons: the story of Theresa Moretti, a seemingly angelic young woman who disappeared a year earlier. All Kate wants is a cliché story and twenty-two minutes of footage, but when the two cases appear to overlap, Kate needs to work fast before another body turns up-her own.

Most mysteries read the same. A murder is committed, a detective is called, sleuthing begins. The detective must work to solve the case, immediate confessions would make for a very short novel. If a person is found standing over the body, bloody knife in hand, they didn't do it. Unless, of course, they did do it, we just won't know until the end. Endings cleanly wrap up all threads: the killer is unmasked and life returns to normalcy. Justice prevails before the final curtain is dropped.

Setting is where mysteries differentiate themselves. This one happens in the Amazon forest, this one in a preschool, this one on the moon. The more unique the setting, the more interesting the mystery. You want the author to transport you, to give you a behind-the-scenes peek at a world outside your everyday experience. You want to experience something new.

Clare O'Donohue sets her latest novel, Missing Persons, in the cynical world of television show production. Kate Conway is an freelance television producer developing a new crime reality series called Missing Persons. O'Donohue, who has years of experience as a television producer, transfers all of her expertise and professional experience into Kate, developing a believable and rich heroine. Kate accepts the two-faced nature required for her job, yet still struggles with the ethics. She doesn't fool herself, she understands her job is to make entertainment out of people's pain. But she doesn't have to like it. Kate's ethical questioning is only a tiny aspect of the story, but helps with the verisimilitude.

Missing Persons revolves around two mysteries. One deals with a missing person's case Kate is investigating for the show's pilot episode. The other focuses on the death of Kate's husband, whom she recently separated from. The missing person investigation is the more engaging of the two, and the driving force in the novel. The inquiry into the death of Kate's husband is more introspective, more an opportunity for Kate's self-discovery. Kate's interactions with her husband's mistress Vera are some of the high points in the book. Vera and Kate have an unusual bond, and nothing like you would imagine. O'Donohue develops an uneasy companionship between the two women that is fresh and unique. Making Vera an unlikable character would have been the easy choice, a choice O'Donohue avoids. Instead, Vera is sympathetic and endearingly odd and naive.

Suspects are not lacking, and O'Donohue paints them all to look incredibly guilty. The explanations for their dodgy behavior are believable. The minor characters adequately serve their purposes. None are innovative, since their purpose in the novel is only to further the mystery. Considering this, the minor characters could have been much more two-dimensional and flat, but O'Donohue does a good job breathing a little life into each of them, making a few even memorable.

The novel's resolution left me with mixed feelings. The way O'Donohue resolves the events in the novel is smart; it feels like the right explanation. But it is also anti-climatic. The ending isn't flashy, it's decidedly blue collar, which was a surprise considering a television show is the backdrop. I expected something more sensational for the reveal, a big ta-da. That likely would have ruined the novel, though. My mixed feelings about the ending arises from it not matching my expectations, which is more a personal reaction than any fault in the novel.

Missing Persons held my interest throughout mainly because of the behind-the-scenes peek at crime reality television and the relationship between Kate and Vera. O'Donohue delivers a solid novel that is witty, humorous, and ultimately satisfying. It does the little things well, which is enough to warrant a recommendation.