Smorgasbord Fantasia

The Burning Dark is my second book by Adam Christopher - Having earlier read his excellent debut, Empire State - his take on superheroes - I would like to say I've become familiar with his craft and imagery that he builds out. With this book, however Adam makes a departure from his urban fantasy/pulp-noir books, steering towards a horror/sci-fi mash-up in the first of the Spider War Chronicles. Hell, a haunted house story on the outer fringes of space ? Absolutely original idea and I was all for it. I was also stoked when I spied the book on certain 2014-best-of lists. I jumped right in - hooked by the strange Captain Abraham "Ida" Cleveland and his quirkiness. I have to say, this isn't strictly a science-fiction book. While yes - it does feature your regular sci-fi gadgetry and terminologies - psi-marines, warp-drives, sentient aliens, shadow stars and more - It is more of the old-school creepy psychological horror story. The world is at war - with a giant sen...

I know am late to this rocking party that’s got Adam Christopher right in the center – what with a couple of his novels getting nominated for the biggies recently and his hotly anticipated space-horror(?) novel Burning Dark soon to be released by angry robot this year. So as soon as I got the ARC for burning dark, I went and bought his debut, Empire State to dig through the media-generated hype around the breathlessly positive buzz that this “stunning mash-up of trending cultural touchstones” was generating – A pulpy sci-fi cooler by juxtaposing it against a crime/noir thriller not to forget the superheroes? Cool huh! So – Empire State is set in two worlds. New York during the times of prohibition and another bleaker paler washed out version of New York, called Empire State that exists in vacuum. And most of the story is viewed from the POV of Rad Bradley, a forty-something, down on his luck private investigator who is uncovering the mysteries behind a sordid murder of ...