Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts

Monday, November 25, 2024

In the Belly of the Whale Reviews

 Hi All

The National Space Society reviewed Dad's last work, In the Belly of the Whale. Take a read here, and don't forget you can buy the book anywhere books are sold (including Amazon, B&N, Indigo, etc).

It was also reviewed in Locus by Paul DiFilippo as a TOF Spot reader graciously informed me. Check it out here. DiFilippo refers to the large cast of characters that Dad created and it reminds me that Dad, like a certain very famous SF/mainly Fantasy writer, was a gardener of a writer, except that he created English ornamental gardens. Characters, plot lines and details were researched, planned and plotted out to the smallest detail. His office walls and cabinet doors were covered in print outs, maps, and index cards of research and notes he was attempting to keep in order as he wrote. He wrote something set in Milwaukee during the time period he and Mom met and researched for - days, weeks? - over the color of the street signs in that time period. As if one of you, his readers, would clock that if he got the wrong color and let the world know. Maybe you would have!

Like a certain very famous SF/mainly Fantasy writer, this immense dedication to detail and characters sometimes meant he got caught up in that and fell behind in the writing, I'm sure much to any given editor's irritation. But that was Dad. If you brought home algebra homework, he was known to start looking at it to help you and then get up from the table and wander off with your algebra book to compare it to some math book he had in his office while you haplessly sat there. The question, "What did you do in school today?" could lead to a 45 minute lecture if you'd had a social studies or history class that day, complete with Dad pulling books related to the day's lesson off the shelf and handing them to you. 

Additional Reviews: John Purvis III at writing on the Medium

She Treads Softly

Saturday, May 25, 2024

In The Belly of the Whale: Publisher's Weekly Review & Pre-Order Links

 Hello Fans of Michael Flynn.

In the Belly of the Whale
I am pleased to let you know that Dad's novel In the Belly of the Whale will be released by CAEZIK on July 16, 2024. It has received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, which you can read here. Publisher's Weekly calls it "thought-provoking" and "an impressive and original epic."

If you're wondering where and how you can get your hands on it, no worries! Several retailers already have pre-order links available for you.Of course folks outside of the US know your booksellers better than I do - I just went with what I could find.

US Retailers

Amazon Pre-Order

Barnes & Noble Pre-Order

Powell's Pre-Order 

Books-A-Million Pre-Order 

Oblong Books in Upstate NY Pre-Order 

 Canadian Retailers

Indigo Books Pre-Order

Australian Retailers

Mighty Ape Pre-Order 

UK Retailers

WH Smith Pre-Order 

Swedish (I think) Retailer

Science Fiction Bookhandeln 

German Retailer

Lehmann's Pre-Order

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Chasing the Phoenix

Chasing the Phoenix

by  
Tor Books, 2015
 
TOF is unsure of the publication date for this gem, he read it in prepublication proofs. The web says August 2015. However, Faithful Reader ought to reserve a copy as soon as he, she, or it is able. Everything in this noble novel works -- from Surplus, the genetically-engineered dog, to the Hidden King who wants to reunite a a far-future, post-tech China, to even the office-names of supporting  characters. (One general is named Powerful Locomotive.) The dialogue is entertaining, the plot twists clever and supple, the narrative voice perfectly tuned, and the whole story suffused with sly Swanwickian humor.

There seems more than a touch of R. A. Lafferty in the thing, for those whose tastes run in that direction.

In this future, armies march with archeologists on staff, whose job is to unearth and restore ancient high-tech battle machines. The AIs that once ran the world tried to exterminate man, but were outlawed and destroyed. Maybe.

Darger and Surplus, the two heroes, are a pair of con-men whose goal is to get rich by attaching themselves to an up-and-coming warlord, the Hidden King. They pretend to have limited superpowers (Darger calls himself the Perfect Strategist) and bit by bit they talk themselves deeper into the complex rivalries of this future China.

They are not, however, the only ones running an agenda.

In the Belly of the Whale Reviews

 Hi All The National Space Society reviewed Dad's last work, In the Belly of the Whale. Take a read here , and don't forget you can ...