The Runes of The Earth

It’s hard to know exactly where to start here, which seems to be how Stephen R Donaldson felt when he decided to take one more trip to the well for The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.  The Runes of the Earth is filled with the retelling of tales any fan of the earlier books already know-and surely no one would pick this up and start reading here-so why all the backstory? The Runes of the Earth is a pretty bad book on countless levels.  It follows in the tradition of the Second Chronicles-give the readers something broken-by allowing long years…

Continue reading

Skyjack-The Hunt for D. B. Cooper

In 1971 a man with a briefcase hijacked a Northwest Orient 727 flight.  He ransomed the passengers for $200,000 and then jumped out of the plane.  He has never been heard from since, leaving the end of his story open for everyone to write their own ending. Geoffrey Gray tells the story of D. B. Cooper, including every bit of minutia, every theory, and every crackpot who has claimed to be Dan Cooper since 1971.  Geoffrey Gray also reads the audio book and he can’t help but ham it up every once in a while.  There is also the occasional…

Continue reading

I Am Number Four

Shown in Theater Number 4, cute, huh?  The story of a group of aliens being hunted by another group of aliens all of whom have supernatural powers and are hiding in plain sight here on Earth-while blowing up everything they run across and showing up on YouTube.  It’s a pretty standard issue story and a movie only made possible by super cheap CGI. Like all setup movies, I Am Number Four is crammed full of dull and boring backstory about our super hunk alien and the nasty fish people who want to kill him.  Only it’s backstory that doesn’t really…

Continue reading