Month: September 2010

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

According to Banned in the USA by Herbert N. Foerstel this is the fourth most banned book in US schools because of its use of the “n word.” It’s a shame, because Twain’s portrait of the pre-Civil War South is a damning satire of the post manumission world in which racism was simply driven underground rather than addressed.

Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter.

What started off as a pretty dull, sub-Crichton, Space Cowboy type story turned into something much more compelling half way through. You need to persist past the near future 2010 and clunky technobabble but then pay-off is worth it; the same mind-bending stuff that Bear and Simmons regularly trade in.

Full Moon Rising by Keri Arthur.

I got this free with Stanza in what I can only imagine is an attempt by the publisher to try and get people to buy the rest of the series – I still feel short changed. I don’t think I’ve come across a published book that reads as much like a bad teenage fantasy as this… and I’ve tried to read the Twilight ‘books’. If you want a bunch of bad deus ex machinae, wooden characters that all have the same voice, and some really bad semi-furry sex then read away. Everyone else, life’s too short