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Red Desert - Back Home
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Kindred Intentions
Apr 26, 2016Get it TODAY, Apr 25FREE Shipping on eligible ordersIn StockMore Buying ChoicesThe Mentor
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Author Updates
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Blog postAs you may have noticed, I love writing reviews of all (or almost all) books I read. The book reviews published on this blog are also submitted on Goodreads, Anobii(another social network for readers) and several Amazon stores, namely the US, UK, CA, AU, NL and of course IT stores.
At the end of the past week I published my review of “Stardance” by Spider & Jeanne Robinson on this blog and on my Italian blog (an Italian version of it). Then, as usual, I started submitting the same revi -
Blog post**** Dancing in the vacuum
The plot of this book certainly doesn’t lack originality, as it attempts to narrate dance, which is already difficult, but above all to do it in a science fiction context. The novel tells the story of Shara, a talented dancer who will never become famous because of her physical peculiarities (she doesn’t have a minute body) and who then invents a new type of dance in zero gravity: a star dance. And in some ways the attempt is also quite good. In the scenes in whi -
Blog post**** Abuse and madness
“The Missing” wants to be a genre novel, specifically a psychological thriller, but at the same time addresses the issue of abuse on women, which would put it in the so-called literary fiction. The result of this union is not entirely successful. The reader doesn’t exactly know what to expect and in some ways they see their expectations disappointed, but in others they are pleasantly surprised. The risk, however, is to lose them well before the end of the book.I admi -
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Blog post***** Even in Iceland people kill
Halfway between crime thriller and mystery, this novel by Michael Ridpath is the first of his series set in Iceland and starring Detective Magnus Jonson (or rather, Ragnarsson).Threatened by the boss of a gang against which he must testify, Magnus, a homicide detective from Boston, is sent to Iceland, which he is originally from, to collaborate for a short time with the local police and at the same time stay safe until the trial. He is thus involved -
Blog post**** Complex and enjoyable story with a slightly slow start
This novella is the first book in a series of thrillers whose main character is Frank Bowen. Although it is a short text that is often offered for free to encourage the reading of the following one, it is completely self-conclusive and works well as a single book. Furthermore, the text is very good. I haven’t noticed typos or other errors (if there are any, they must be just a few). The story takes place in the 90s in the period b -
Blog post***** An interesting alternative present and future
In 1959, when this book was published for the first time, we had yet to go to the Moon (it would happen ten years later, a few months after the author’s death) and the conquest of space was seen as a normal extension of the so-called Cold War. This far from optimistic scenario is the background to the story of a family of astronauts unravelling for two hundred years.Wyndham’s pessimism, which I had already seen in his post-apocalyptic nov -
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Blog post**** Very well structured and enjoyable, but not extraordinary
“Artemis” is a techno-thriller with a well-developed scientific component, as I expected from Weir. If I wanted to make a comparison with the books of other authors, the first name that comes to mind is Crichton (sorry, Master!), for the fact that the whole story is enslaved to the intention to talk to the reader about science. However, any resemblances end here. Crichton’s books, in fact, tended to revolve around a great scien -
Blog postAs usual, at the end of December I find myself taking stock of the year that is coming to an end and setting goals for the next one. Writing this article was relatively easy in the past years, as many of the projects I would undertake depended on factors under my complete control. One year ago, however, I had to limit my resolutions, as I didn’t know if some things that were at stake would have come to completion and therefore I wasn’t able to plan anything specific after the month of May. Now f
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Blog post**** The future of the past
Four years ago I read “Salamander War”, the sequel to this book, and I appreciated it greatly, despite being old-fashioned science fiction. “Colonists of Space” clarifies the previous events, that is, it narrates the journey of the Colonist’s crew to a planet called Bel, with all its difficulties. In my opinion there is a lesser originality than what will be seen in the next book, so much that it suffers more of the passing of time, but it was still a pleasant r -
Blog postWhen “The Mentor” was published two years ago and became an Amazon international bestseller, hitting No. 1 in the Kindle Store in USA, UK and Australia, I was amazed by how many readers had I copy of my book in their Kindle and actually were reading it. More than 170,000 people read my book, which was a lot more than what I hoped when I sold the English translations rights to Amazon Publishing.Now, two years later, my agreement with Amazon Publishing is coming to an end and in about three weeks
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Blog post***** A timeless classic
I always feel a strange emotion in getting into the classics, as they present ways to narrate that would have no room in modern fiction, yet some of them retain the unchanged ability to engage the reader.This is the case of Wells’s “The Time Machine”, where the narrator voice is a secondary character that merely reports what the protagonist tells. This kind of framed structure could create a certain distance between the reader and the events, but this doesn’t happe -
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Blog postToday’s guest is an old acquaintance of this blog: science fiction writer Richard J. Galloway. Author of “Amantarra” and “Saranythia Part 1: The Gates of Setergard”, both translated into Italian by me, Richard offers us his own presentation of the latter and answers to a few questions I asked him.
Three hundred thousand years ago Amantarra’s sister Saranythia had set off on a secret mission to save her people. She’d never been heard of again. She’d hidden her tracks so well that eve -
Blog post***** The Void Returns
Seven years after reading the Void Trilogy, I returned to the Commonwealth universe created by Hamilton with this first book in the Chronicle of the Fallers duology and met Nigel Sheldon in a new story set in the Void. Chronologically the story outside this anomaly located in our galaxy overlaps in part with that of the trilogy but has minimal contact with the latter. In the Void, however, we know new characters in a new planet where a spaceship was conducted about t -
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Blog post***** An engaging and unpredictable story
I read each page of this book with great curiosity, because it was not the usual thriller with a dark and dramatic atmosphere where somebody eventually dies. Aside from the prologue, “The Swimming Pool” brings you into the life of Natalie, a normal woman with a husband and a teenage daughter, who lives an extraordinary experience: make friends with Lara Channing, a local celebrity. She is thrown into an artificial environment that attracts her more -
Blog post***** The (almost) thriller you don’t expect
I had never read anything by Allende, it just had not happened until this book ended up in my hands. I was curious that an author like her, who certainly didn’t write genre fiction, had tested herself with a thriller. How was it possible?But, as I read, I realised that “thriller” was little more than a label given to a book that is hardly labelable.Of course there is a serial killer, an investigation and in the end a considerable amount of suspe -
Blog post***** Bosch never disappoints you
This time Harry Bosch has to deal with a case from the past that personally concerns him: the murder of his mother, a prostitute whose death has never found an explanation. For a long time he wanted to avoid taking care of it, but now in a new period of crisis he’s facing (his woman left him, his house will be demolished and he is suspended from work for attacking his boss, while he sees the returning of his problems with alcohol) he decides to make clear -
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Blog post*** Interesting plot, but unconvincing execution
This book never takes off.It starts with the typical scene of certain crime thrillers, narrated from the point of view of the victim; a scene we already know how it will end. The protagonist, Erika Foster, is a detective of Slovak origin (like the author), who is considered to be very good at her job, but has just lost her husband during a police action. He is recalled to work to investigate this case because of her skills, but is constantly -
Blog post***** Surprisingly outstanding
I came across this book in a jumble sale. The objectively ugly cover (in the Italian edition), which reminds me of a manual, was almost discouraging me from buying it, but convinced by the price, I decided to pick it up. When I started reading it, I was immediately pleasantly surprised by the opening scene featuring some action, which won my last hesitation due to the many typos.Although the original book was published in 1990, the future in it is still fairl -
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Blog post***** Another accidental hero by Ludlum
A great author such as Ludlum had the ability to enter into completely different settings and stories, at the same time proposing a version of his “flawed” hero, to whom all sorts of things happened in the book and who was at risk of dying more than once, but in the end he could succeed, despite the fact that he always made many false steps and hurt himself a great deal. In this case, there’s a British university teacher, James Matlock, who is involv -
Blog post*** A set of things already seen and predictable twists
My opinion on this book has changed a few times while reading it. The beginning did not impress me, but about halfway through the story I found myself involved in it, and then I was miserably disappointed at the end.Let’s start with the positive aspects.Dugoni writes well, there is no doubt about that. The story flows smoothly, thanks to the evocative environments that cannot help but recall dreary images of familiar disturbing villag -
Blog post***** Great historical reconstruction by the master
The great robbery on the train in 1855 is one of the true stories in which reality overcomes fantasy. The ingenious way with which the robbery was prepared, its development full of twists and the surprising ending seem to be the result of someone’s imagination, and instead they are history.Crichton wrote this book halfway between account and novel, mixing facts coming from his research with fiction scenes created by him on the basis of su -
Blog post**** Amazing, but not credible
Despite my overall positive opinion on this novel, there are so many aspects that have left me puzzled.The plot is that of the classic ferocious serial killer, who for inscrutable reasons attacks couples, but with the peculiarity of letting one of the two choose who must die, and ends up starting a perverse game with the police.One of the first things I noticed during my reading is the total absence of a geographic reference. I realised that it was set in the -
Blog postThe theme of artificial intelligence that evolves into self-consciousness is one of the most beloved and feared themes of science fiction in recent decades, but at the time of Michael Crichton’s “Westworld” it was still moving its first steps in the genre and it’s no coincidence that this film has become a true cult. For this reason, deciding to offer this theme by revisiting the storyline according to the current times in a high-profile, complex-looking TV series was a potentially risky project
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Blog post***** The heir of Bourne (and Ludlum)
The change of pen is evident, though, I have to give merit to Van Lustbader for trying to approach Ludlum in so many small details (for example, the use of swear words, though not so excessively). But the difference is there. Van Lustbader’s writing is much more tidy, but devoid of the madness that Ludlum gave to his characters and made them fragile, fallible, and hence human. This new Jason Bourne is much more clear headed and controlled. One can take -
Blog post**** Genial anti-hero, forgettable case
With this novel I discover an anti-hero who can’t help but immediately become an idol. Cormoran Strike, son of a rockstar and a supergroupie, and a veteran of Afghanistan, where he has lost one foot and one leg in an explosion, is a private investigator who has just been abandoned by his girlfriend. Everything seems to be failing in his life, when a new interim secretary and a wealthy customer appear; the latter wants to hire him to demonstrate that
Books by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli
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