One incredibly hard to write review - The Translators by Gord Rollo.

Take a moment and look at that cover. Seriously, check out the detail in it.

That cover lets you know some seriously bad shit is going down somehow. You don't know how, but you know it's gonna be bad.

This review is one of the hardest for me to write, because the book is written in such a way that it takes a basic premise, and judo flips it into a few different directions and you end up with something that TECHNICALLY matches up to what was mentioned but is also batshit crazy enough to warrant screaming SPOILER WARNING!!! any time you go to discuss the book.

So, basically, I'm not going to spoil this because I love this book, and I want you to have your brain as dislocated as mine when you read it. YOU SHOULD READ IT. GET THIS BOOK AND PUT IT INTO YOUR HEAD. I love this guy's work, but this is probably my favorite novel of his. Strange Magic was the original favorite, and then Valley of the Scarecrow came out and dethroned it, and now The Translators has come out (well, to be fair it's BEEN out) and now it occupies the #1 spot on my list his books.

Basically, the book starts with the end of the world, and rolls the clock back to explain just how the world is ending. This synopsis found in the front of the book sets the idea up a lot better than I could hope to.

"Most people think John is crazy. He's not. The doctors think he's schizophrenic. He's not. The government thinks he might be humanity's last flicker of hope, but unfortunately he's not that either. What he is is something no one - including himself - could have ever imagined..."

The story revolves around John, his fiance', and her kid. John has the unique ability to understand any language, and hears voices in his head translating them for him. Now, with that firmly in mind, realize this book goes kind of crazy. I can't really say anything about the book because, honestly, it's a house of cards. Everything is built on the next level of crazy, so when it amps up and you find out something new, it makes you realize that it was based on something earlier and boom, mind blown.

I love this book, and it's currently 2.99 on amazon, which is an incredible bargain.

It's not the BEST story ever told, but it is a hell of a book and one of the few I can recommend to anyone who wants an interesting reading experience.

Go get it, read it, and be amazed at how a story ranging from the end of the world to Nessie to temples in Peru can end up making sense. It's a hell of a ride.

Goodreads link so you can go find it wherever you need to get it from :
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18489287-the-translators

Next up in the review list, The Reckoning by Jeff Long!

Yes, I know you are thinking "Why are you reviewing an old book from 2004 when there are so many new ones to review?!?!" and my answer to you is "Pfft. It's called Random Boom Reviews for a reason" and also "I was reading it before I started the blog and I'm lazy".

So, THE RECKONING. Is it good? Yep. Is it weird? Yep. Is it worth reading? Yep!

Basic plot premise is a crew looking for missing U.S. soldier remains in Cambodia get a tip about a missing crew, and head off into the vast wilderness to go about finding said remains.

There's a lot more to it than that, but like I said, it's a basic plot premise.

I haven't liked all of Jeff Long's work, but I did like this one. It's interesting, the plot is officially something I have not seen done before, and the story is handled in a very unique way. There aren't any political leanings in the book, it doesn't feel like the author is trying to beat you over the head with his own ideology at all. There are pro and anti war characters, yes. There are discussions of things like the Kent State massacre, but it makes sense in the book given the way the characters were written, and at no time did I sense a soapbox for the author to stand on.

It's a horror/thriller with supernatural elements to it, and basically it's pretty creepy in places.

Minor spoilers about some of the book.

Gonna get on my own personal soapbox for a minute. I hate rape in books. It's virtually (99.9999999999999% of the time) ALWAYS pointless, and is an incredibly lazy way to either add "adversity", have the woman "overcome the odds" or "have a reason to enact vengeance because this time it's PERSONAL."

A truly lazy writer will make a rape the hallmark of the character, or it will be something she "overcomes" and goes forth to smite evil in the name of... well, not getting raped again I suppose. Either that or she will just exist to get raped/killed and that's it. That is creepy and you guys need to stop that. You can have a strong female character in books and not have rape involved at all. It's lazy writing and you should feel bad. If I had a rolled up newspaper I'd swat you and say "NO!" if I could.

The main character is a rape survivor, and I honestly can't decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing, because while it adds pretty much nothing to the story overall it doesn't feel like she was included to be rape bait like we see a lot of characters in horror books.

Anyway, that's not the point behind this character. It adds a backstory to her but I can't decide if it explains her actions in the book better than just being a normal lady who hadn't been abused as a kid. Hence me wondering if it's a good or bad thing.

Please note, she doesn't get raped IN the book , it's part of her backstory since the book is told from her perspective and she mentions it a time or two. Well, there is a weird bamboo thing that happens but that's less Evil Dead and more just "Well, that's odd".

So, that's a lot of paragraphs about the virtual sex life of a main character of a book.

Other characters don't really get played up as much since it's told from a first person perspective for the most part, but it's not like a cardboard cutout of a horror movie where there's Black Guy, Crazy White Dude, Nerdy Guy, Slutty Girl, Jock and OMG I CAN'T EVEN Valley Girl. The characters here are pretty 3 dimensional, and are fairly well written.

The main star of the book, though, is a lost city in the wilderness that we get occasional glimpses of but never really get much of an idea of what it looks like. It's always entrenched deeply in fog, with lots of horribly creepy things possibly around. The city itself is pretty amazing, and gave me a real Silent Hill kind of vibe, minus the weird monsters and sirens.

All in all, the book was pretty good. The ending was an interesting one, and the story keeps you entertained and flipping pages up until the end.

I'd rank it 3.75 dog tags out of 5.

Goodreads link so you can go buy it if you want to read it (which you probably do):
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/239074.The_Reckoning

Review Numbah one! Eric Carter returns in Broken Souls by Stephen Blackmoore!

Alright, time for review number one!

Broken Souls came out on Tuesday, and was bought Tuesday night. I read part of it Thursday morning, and just literally finished the book about an hour ago. I read this thing in 2 sittings.

This, is a damned good book. Seriously, they say you can't judge a book by it's cover, but that cover art is SWEET.

On a scale of "HOLY SHIT" to "WHAT THE FUCK MAN" this rates a solid "SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS" (hah! Necromancy pun!) from me, because I love this man's work.

This is urban fantasy, but GOOD urban fantasy.

I'm going to go off on a tangent for a moment, but I feel like I need to explain why I love this genre and hate it at the same time. I like the genre because I enjoy the real world settings (seems just, better than some imaginary forest populated by one race of elves, or a barren wasteland populated by one race of ghouls, you get my drift), but it has a few horrible failings, mostly of the "let's write porn and call it urban fantasy, cause my main character love getting gangbanged by werewolves or dragons", or the "My character is totally not a Gary Stu, but yes he is my height and coloring and has my hairstyle but he is like, way cooler and has all the sex with the chicks because he is AWESOME" variety. You either end up with a sex crazed lead who's banging anything with 2 or more legs, or you end up with some random author's version of themselves as Goku or Superman.

Looking for a good Urban Fantasy novel is HARD. Finding it is damned near impossible. You luck out, find a good author, and latch onto that bastard's work like a remora onto a shark. Blackmoore is one of the people I have on my instant "BUY WHEN THIS GUY HAS NEW SHIT" list, which is probably the best kind of shitlist for an author to be on.

Enough of the tangent, ONWARDS AND UPWARDS TO THE REVIEW! Or, you know, downwards and below, to the review...

It's a damned good book.

HOWEVER, and this is NOT a slam against the book whatsoever, This is NOT a good starting point for the series. I would strongly recommend picking up Dead Things first, or you will be wondering why some things are the way they are. Besides, Dead Things was another amazing book by him.

So, with spoilers ahead (minor ones at least), we can get the review on the road.

Eric Carter opens the book trying to find a way to get out of his deal with Santa Muerte, and from the literal start of the book we encounter crazy shit, and it keeps on running strong through the book. This theme of "What the fuck?" keeps up through the book and is done so in a very interesting and (to me) nifty way.

I won't spoil more of the book, but I will say that I am still a big fan of Sharpie Magic, and the fun of it carries over to this new book, and it works just as well in this book as it did in the first.

The plot carries itself very well, and there will be emotional gut punches, and to me, and ending that I completely did not see coming.

I enjoy his "universe" that he has built, and seeing characters from other novels of his that I enjoyed works in a way that doesn't seem to be heavy handed or in an over "wink wink nudge nudge isn't this cool" sort of way. They fit in the story where needed, and then go pop off to live their own little virtual lives. It gives the story a very organic feel, and that is one of the best qualities I look for.

It's a great read, and one I highly recommend. I rated it 5 stars on Amazon, and I'll rank it 5 here as well. Go read this man's work. You will encounter wonders like ghosts that eat people, psychotic midgets that are basically gollum on PCP, and the wonders of Sharpie Magic.

Link to the goodreads profile so you can find online or local versions of this book to own:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20579053-broken-souls

So, wow. I have a blog now. Is this 1998?

Yep. I have a blog now.

You may ask "Why" (I mean that as "you can ask, or may want to ask", not as some sort of Bond villain or royalty kinda thing), and I can only answer "Pfft, why not?"

So, a little about me. I am a guy. I read a lot. I thought "Hey, let me start a blog to keep track of all the stuff I read and post up a little review of em! Yea!" cause apparently I thought you guys needed to know what I thought about everything.

I don't really have anything to do with the publishing industry or writing industry other than reading books. I'm not an agent or publisher or anything. One day I'd like to write a book, but first I need to actually develop a plot and characters and not Gary Stu the hell out of it. I refuse to write crap intentionally, and I am also a bit of a coward as well, so I've yet to "nut up" and lob anything out on paper or screen.

However, much as I don't need to be a chef to know if a meal is good or not, I don't need to be a writer to know if a book is good or not.

Why should you listen to me? Because, well, I am a special unique snowflake who has a blog... Or maybe just because you want to know an opinion about a book. I don't have any political agenda, I more than likely will not have rants up pro/anti anything. The blog is basically to just let me review a book in a few sentences or paragraphs or pages if it's really really good or the thing just sucks and I hate the author for wasting my time and money.

So, basically, that's what the point of the blog is. I'm just an average dude who reads a lot, and thought other people might want to read my thoughts on if something was good, bad, or just interested.

First reviews will be coming up pretty soon, I'm kinda new to this whole blogging thing and frankly I don't really have a clue how this site works. I'm hoping if I hit publish this will show up. Wish me luck.