Book #93 of 2024: Yendi by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #2) Published in 1984, this second Vlad Taltos novel is a prequel that’s lighter on the worldbuilding lore, taking us back to earlier in that assassin / crime boss’s career when the antihero was running a smaller territory and hadn’t yet married. In fact, he …
Tag Archives: books written in 1984
Book Review: Orion by Ben Bova
Book #82 of 2023: Orion by Ben Bova (Orion #1) I loved this science-fiction novel — and to a lesser extent the loose series that follows — when I was a teen, and I’m glad to find that it holds up pretty well today. It’s definitely a product of its 1984 publication date in some …
Book Review: A Jewish Bestiary: Fabulous Creatures from Hebraic Legend & Lore by Mark Podwal
Book #17 of 2023: A Jewish Bestiary: Fabulous Creatures from Hebraic Legend & Lore by Mark Podwal An interesting read, but not quite what I was expecting and definitely not as in-depth or exhaustive as it seems like it could have been. This modern title presents encyclopedic entries for 35 different animals described in the …
Book Review: A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith
Book #145 of 2022: A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith This 1984 bestseller about a fictional family’s frontier history is required reading in many Florida schools, which is where I first encountered and absolutely loathed the title. But it has plenty of accolades and its fair share of adherents, and so I’ve always wanted …
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Book Review: Archer’s Goon by Diana Wynne Jones
Book #79 of 2022: Archer’s Goon by Diana Wynne Jones This 1984 sci-fi / fantasy novel, which I read and reread countless times as a child and is apparently one of Neil Gaiman’s favorites as well, opens with an irresistible premise: a hulking enforcer camps out in the thirteen-year-old hero’s kitchen, saying his mysterious employer …
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Book Review: Daughter of Regals and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #246 of 2020: Daughter of Regals and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson Stephen R. Donaldson is one of my very favorite authors, and although I don’t remember liking this 1984 collection of fiction as much as his novels or the later Reave the Just and Other Tales, my current reread through his oeuvre …
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Book Review: Clay’s Ark by Octavia E. Butler
Book #233 of 2020: Clay’s Ark by Octavia E. Butler (Patternist #3) The Patternist books were written all out of chronological order (5-2-4-1-3), and I’m finding that reading them as they take place is an odd experience, since the texts don’t really form any coherent narrative arc so far. My working assumption for now is …
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Book Review: Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić
Book #226 of 2019: Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić This is one of the strangest books I’ve ever encountered, and I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it — or if I would have reached the end if it hadn’t been selected for me to read and review by one of …
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Book Review: The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
Book #213 of 2019: The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King Given a recent string of underwhelming titles, I decided to revisit this old favorite of mine. It was the first Stephen King book that I ever read, and it got me hooked on the author at a stage when I didn’t feel brave …
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Book Review: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
Book #144 of 2019: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy #4) This novel is packed with the usual dry witticisms and absurdist observations of author Douglas Adams, but it carries a very different tenor to the rest of this comic sci-fi series. The new …
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