Consumers of everything from lipstick to lawn mowers are misled by inflated product ratings and reviews on ecommerce platforms. Like everyone else, readers face this challenge when they buy books. So, what to do for an honest critique? As these platforms use a 1 – 5 rating scale with 1 representing ‘awful’ and 5 representing … Continue reading In Praise of Three Star Book Reviews
Category: Reviews
Book Review – THE ESSEX SERPENT
The Essex Serpent’s MacGuffin is, of course, the Essex Serpent. The monster is Sarah Perry’s fulcrum to lever forward the plot, plumb the story’s characters, and probe the novel’s various and manifold themes. It can all seem a bit self-conscious and mannered at times, but Perry has, by in large, crafted an amusing story taking … Continue reading Book Review – THE ESSEX SERPENT
Film Review – ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
More of a mood than a movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is nonetheless an arresting, dark satire of changing times for filmdom and TV. It also explores Tarantino’s focus on the border between story-telling and ‘reality’, though here, the characters’ reality is a rather surreal 1969 Los Angeles. And the film viewer’s reality … Continue reading Film Review – ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
Book Review – TELL THEM OF BATTLES, KINGS AND ELEPHANTS
It’s easy to be intrigued by a story that not only contains a Kipling epigraph, but also entitles the novel with a quote from a Kipling poem. And, by the way, has Michelangelo as its protagonist straddling Renaissance Italy and Ottoman Turkey. And does all this in a lyrical 140 pages. Mathias Enard wrote Tell … Continue reading Book Review – TELL THEM OF BATTLES, KINGS AND ELEPHANTS
Advance Praise for THE LORDS OF POWDER
“Intensely felt, ravishingly decorative and movingly personal . . . the motifs ring with authenticity and heat . . . an authorial feat both timeless and transient.” ModernUrbanFantasyFanzine.com “Though a swashbuckling, action-packed read with literary pretensions that may accurately render some of South Florida in the late ’70s, The Lords of Powder should in no way be construed as a true … Continue reading Advance Praise for THE LORDS OF POWDER
