Reviews Archives - Full of Words

Dead End Jobs: The Dead Take the A Train

October 10, 2023 by Jeff James

Julie Crews takes the nasty jobs.

If something eldritch is trying to lay eggs under your skin to prepare the way for the end of the world, she’ll flay you open, jam her arms up to the elbows into your chest cavity, carve the fucker out, sew you up and send you on your way, only mildly traumatized.

Whatever it takes to get by in New York City, after all. That and support her cocaine habit.

The Dead Take the A Train is not for the faint of heart. It’s gory and gruesome in new and inventive ways that I found invigorating as long as I wasn’t eating at the time.

Inside Man: Double Threat by F. Paul Wilson

October 11, 2023August 15, 2023 by Jeff James

In F. Paul Wilson’s Double Threat, the main character, Stanka Daley, is a con artist who makes the fateful, life-changing decision to hide out in a desert cave while on the run from some angry housewives she scammed with a fake car contest.

While Daley, as she prefers to be known, hides in that cave, a strange slug-like creature drops on her head and knocks her out. When she comes to, she stumbles to the house of Juana, a local who watches over the cave and who informs her that surviving an interaction with the alaret, as the creature is known, is a vanishingly rare occurrence, and that she will now serve as Daley’s guide.

Daley isn’t sure what to think when Juana tells her that her life will change forever, but she soon finds out what she means when she starts seeing a man following her and hears his voice in her head. Is she going insane, or did something far stranger happen to her because of the alaret?

The End of the World Tour: The Last Book You’ll Ever Read by Cullen Bunn

November 9, 2022 by Jeff James

Olivia Kade is a self-styled provocateur, bleak and flippant about the end times. In The Last Book You’ll Ever Read, she stubbornly embarks on a doomed book tour, ignoring all the warning signs that her writing may be inspiring real-world darkness.

Strange Beasts: The Wolf Queen, Vol 1

July 31, 2022 by Jeff James

Humans lay eggs and young wolf-people change genders every full moon in this slim initial volume packed with unique world-building but not much story.

Inner Workings: LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin

November 13, 2021November 13, 2021 by Jeff James

Tamara Shopsin’s debut novel, LaserWriter II, is slim and largely plotless, and yet somehow manages to be charming and totally compelling.

It’s a very quick read, but it has stuck in my mind in the weeks since I finished it.

LaserWriter II is a coming-of-age story about Claire, a young woman who gets a job at Tekserve, a famous (now long-closed) Apple repair shop in New York City in the 90s. She starts in intake and then moves up the ranks into repair technician. Along the way, she discovers that she is really good at repairing obscure and discontinued printers.

Forbidden Fruit: Comfort Me With Apples

November 13, 2021November 11, 2021 by Jeff James

All I knew about Comfort Me With Apples before I read it is that it’s hard to summarize without spoilers. The basics are that it’s about a woman, Sophia, who lives in a planned community; Sophia’s only purpose in life is to please her husband. She was made for him.

Truth is a Mystery: Magic for Liars

September 10, 2021 by Jeff James

Magic for Liars has a very cool cover, but I think it led me astray. I was expecting something a bit more dynamic based on that design and the book’s excellent title, but the resulting story was only competent and a bit unexciting. I did like the book well enough, and would definitely be game for reading work by Sarah Gailey – I’ve seen raves for just about everything they’ve ever written – but maybe I’d prefer the ones about carnivorous hippos?

A Picture is Worth Less: Mawrth Valliis

September 9, 2021 by Jeff James

Mawrth Valliis by EPHK has a gimmick: all of the dialog is in the “original Martian”, so you have to infer the story from the illustrations. However, nothing in the book itself actually explains the conceit; instead, all context is left to whatever marketing materials you’ve read before cracking the cover.

Blame It On The: Black Star by Eric A. Glover and Arielle Jovellanos

June 18, 2021 by Jeff James

Sticking with a recent theme, Black Star is minimalist sci-fi, focusing on characters caught in a deadly conflict. In this case, my favorite part of the book was the art. The story was straightforward enough, but the main character spends all her time doing terrible things for the sake of no one but herself.

This Time: Aion by Ludovic Rio

June 8, 2021 by Jeff James

Ludovic Rio’s Aion is a simple but effective sci-fi story. There really isn’t very much to it, but that minimalism isn’t necessary a mark against it; instead, the book takes a few basic elements and delivers a solid genre piece that explores the ethical boundaries of technological advancement.

We Regret to Love You: The Regrets

March 28, 2021 by Jeff James

The Regrets by Amy Bonnaffons is a book that holds you at arm’s length. It’s also not quite what the summary on the back advertises, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The overall effect adds up to a bizarre and compelling story about a toxic relationship.

Color of Life: In by Will McPhail

January 22, 2021November 7, 2020 by Jeff James

I think I experienced a bit of synesthesia while reading In by Will McPhail.

The book is largely done in sketch-like black and white, the characters little more than outlines on a white background, except for moments when Nick, the main character, experiences real human connection. As soon as he makes that connection, the pages burst into fully painted, dynamic scenes, and I oftentimes felt like I could hear the sounds of crashing waves or the swell of some imaginary film score in my head. It made the whole thing quite extraordinary.

Not Much There: Fangs by Sarah Anderson

October 7, 2020 by Jeff James

Sarah Anderson is best known for her Sarah’s Scribbles web comics, where a big-eyed, spiky-haired version of herself deals with introversion, anxiety, and the vagaries of modern life in a humorous, relatable way. Those strips are the exact sort of thing that people love to share on social media.

When I heard about her new book, Fangs, I was intrigued because it sounded so different from her oftentimes silly work in Sarah’s Scribbles.

Turtles and Cats in the City at Night: The Intergalactic Interloper by Delas Heras

October 3, 2020October 2, 2020 by Jeff James

When I read about Delas Heras’ debut, The Intergalactic Interloper, it sounded like a perfect change of pace from the world outside.

It’s a short book, humorous if not laugh-out-loud funny, and charming in a gentle, nostalgic way.

The action begins in the distant past of New York City 1995, a place and time that feels comforting purely because it is a quarter of a century and thousands of miles away from where I am right now.