FullReviews Index

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams' THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY is not just a book--it's a phenomenon. It's based on a BBC radio series that spawned four other books, a TV series, a movie, and a computer game. A fleet of alien spaceships blows up Arthur Dent's planet setting him off upon a hectic and hysterically funny adventure that includes torturously bad poetry, a depressed robot, and the two-headed President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox himself.

Anathem
In 'Anathem,' Neal Stephenson's long anticipated return to science fiction, the author molds the inverted planet of Arbre, where scientists and mathematicians are monastically cloistered apart from the religious sects and ugly consumerism of the outside society. Meanwhile, beyond Arbe, cosmic events are unfolding that will change life on their world forever.

The Stone Gods
In Jeanette Winterson's "The Stone Gods," the inhabitants of Orbus are running out of planet. The unchecked consumption of fossil fuels has finally run its course. Global Warming is no longer a disputed phenomenon or a point for political positioning. Sea levels have risen, ice caps have melted, and the planet has been laid to waste. The world has devolved to three massive urban axes: The Central Power (a thinly disguised United States), Eastern Caliphate, and the SinoMosco Pact.

Sharp Teeth
An ancient race of lycanthropes has survived to the present day, and its numbers are growing as the initiated convince L.A.'s down and out to join their pack. Paying no heed to moons, full or otherwise, they change from human to canine at will—and they're bent on domination at any cost.

Spook Country
Open onto a room in L.A.'s Mondrian Hotel; the French art curator's white lego robot bumps about the legs of an Aegean-blue table while Hollis Henry, the female lead-singer of a now defunct indie rock band, receives a 3 am call from her editor at Node, a yet unknown British version of Wired Magazine. Did I happen to mention the empty can of Asahi Draft on the bedside table? Yes - you've unmistakably found yourself in the middle of the latest William Gibson novel, Spook Country.

The Road
Oprah Winfrey has chosen Cormac McCarthy's spare and glorious novel, The Road, for her book club, and McCarthy will soon appear on her show. This is quite a departure for both of them. The Road is an enormous departure from Oprah's last selection, Sidney Poiter's "spiritual autobiography, The Measure of a Man. While she has nearly always chosen thoughtful books of literary merit, none has approached the richness of this one.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
"Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? ... For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth." -General Travis D'Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

The Wave
Errol's father has been dead for several years. Yet lately Errol has been awakened in the middle of the night by a caller claiming to be his father. When he hears the unmistakable sound of a handset being put down on a table, he decides to investigate. Errol sneaks into the graveyard where his father is buried. Caught up in a war between a secret government security agency and an alien presence infecting our world, touched by the Wave, he knows that nothing will ever be the same again.

The Traveler
Like a film written to be a summer blockbuster, supposed first-time novelist John Twelve Hawks' The Traveler has something for everyone: a strikingly beautiful, violent woman; a young black martial arts teacher, estranged from his odd church; mismatched but loving brothers with a tumultuous past; car chases; and a hint of romance. The characters aren't ciphers so much as they are roles, but this is less a novel than a thinly-disguised screenplay; nothing occurs that cannot be translated to film.

The Amadeus Net
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart walks into the sex change clinic, determined to have his “sprouter” snipped off. So begins The Amadeus Net, a satirical novel set in the year 2028. For more than two centuries, the wunderkind has kept his existence secret while he tried to understand his immortality. Living through funds raised by selling "lost" Mozart works, he has also helped to create Ipolis, a utopian city-state, after the cataclysmic Shudder, a global disaster caused by an asteroid strike in 2015.

Ringworld's Children
The Ringworld: a landmark engineering achievement, a flat band 3 million times the surface area of Earth, encircling a distant star. Home to trillions of inhabitants and host to amazing technological wonders, the Ringworld is unique in all of the universe. Blending awe-inspiring science with non-stop action and fun, "Ringworld's Children," the fourth installment of the award-winning saga, Larry Niven's "Ringworld."

Bride of the Fat White Vampire
Who is kidnapping and dismembering the fetching young vampiresses of the High Krewe of Vlad Tepes? Who is draining the blood of black preachers and dumping their bodies in the French Quarterlagoons? Andrew Fox's "Fat White Vampire Blues" introduced Jules Duchon, the fat, white, taxi-driving vampire of the New Orleans night. "Bride of the Fat White Vampire" finds Jules embroiled in mystery upon mystery, wrapped snugly in Fox's humor of the absurd and the undead.

Fat White Vampire Blues
In Andrew Fox's first novel Fat White Vampire Blues, he has created an Ignatius Reilly (A Confederacy of Dunces) of the undead and as in John Kennedy Toole's famous novel, Fox takes full advantage of the exotic and eccentric nature of New Orleans. Jules laments the decaying of his beloved city into a combination crack ghetto and homogenized strip mall.

Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood’s new novel, Oryx and Crake, is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it. With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter.