I love historical fiction, and one of the most fascinating settings for that genre is feudal Japan. The culture was quite alien to that of modern America, yet there were shared values like honor, bravery, and chivalry. Mojo Mori’s Six Expressions of Death is a murder mystery set in this era. Though I’ve never been […]
For my 100th online review as the Steampunk Desperado, I consider Philip Ligon’s young-adult steampunk novel “The King’s Regret,” published in 2019. It’s a “fantasy world” type steampunk which follows a pair of teenage siblings from the aristocratic Falconbone family. Once leaders of the mining city of Airendale, their family was betrayed by their country’s […]
My wife Arlys and I are long-time anime fans, but it’s become difficult for us to find something we like. Like American TV networks, Japanese animation studios produce many series that are maudlin and unoriginal. We prefer shows that are out of the ordinary, generally with a sci-fi, supernatural, or crime element. Recently we encountered […]
For the last two years, I’ve made it my personal quest to discover and promote the most interesting specimens of steampunk fiction. Though there have been fewer published since the peak of the movement’s popularity around 2010, the demise of steampunk has been greatly exaggerated. One of the more interesting works I’ve encountered is Eric […]
When I was a kid, Westerns were still a big deal, not just in books, but in movies and television. In retrospect, it was quite strange how quickly they disappeared from the American landscape. That’s why I was really glad to see a new writer like Peter Grant continuing this tradition. Surprisingly, he’s not even […]
This is yet another entry I found in a “Best Steampunk Books” list that didn’t actually fit the genre. 14 , appropriately published in 2014, is a sci-fi mystery centered on a hundred-year-old apartment building in Los Angeles and the eccentric tenants that inhabit it. The main character is Nate, a thirty-something single guy who […]
I discovered Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age, or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer shortly after it was published in 1995. I’d read his preceding book Snow Crash and loved its anarchic spirit. By contrast, Diamond Age seemed stodgy at first as it centered on the prim and proper Neo-Victorians. As I read on, however, […]
